by Layton Green
As the taxi drove away, Andie and Cal stopped ten feet before the fence, holding up their palms in a sign of peace.
“Hi,” Andie said to the guard. “Do you speak English?”
“Closed.”
“We know. Listen, I don’t mean to startle you, but we’re video travel bloggers and are dying to get a few pictures of the catacombs at night. Our channel is focused on mysterious sites around the world, and authentic footage goes a really long way.”
“Come tomorrow. During day.”
“That’s the thing . . . We really like night shoots. I know it’s underground, but there’s no one around after dark, and this courtyard is so atmospheric . . . We’d be in and out quickly. I promise.”
Annoyed, the guard waved the rifle toward the road, then started walking back to the shack.
“We’ll pay you,” Cal said.
The guard paused with his hand on the doorframe.
“One hundred US dollars.”
Though Andie had hatched the plan to bribe any security guards they encountered, Cal, who had experience paying off officials of all sorts, had suggested the amount. Not too high to raise suspicion, not too low to waste anyone’s time. Just enough to pay for a week or two of groceries, a couple bottles of liquor, or a nice gift for a wife or girlfriend. To Andie’s great annoyance, Cal had also said that an Egyptian guard would take a request from a man more seriously.
The guard remained still for a long moment, facing away from them so they couldn’t read his expression. At last he turned and said, his eyes flicking nervously toward the road, “Two hundred.”
“One fifty.”
“No.”
Cal released an exasperated sigh. “You’re cleaning me out, man. Can’t we talk—”
“Two hundred or leave now.”
“Okay, okay. You missed a career as a Hollywood agent, my friend.”
“Money now.”
Cal reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, and counted out ten twenties. As he approached the gate, holding the bills in the air, the guard insisted they both hand over their backpacks. With little choice but to comply, they squeezed the packs through the gate and let the guard search them. Andie had the Star Phone safely in her pocket. During the search, the guard took out a six-pack of Heineken. “I take these too.”
Earlier, not knowing what awaited, Andie had devised a plan consisting of three parts: bribe money, a pair of bolt cutters purchased at a hardware store near the harbor and which they had dropped in the bushes once they had seen the guard, and the beer to sweeten the deal if the bribe faltered.
“Sure thing,” Cal said. “We were going to celebrate with that later, but they’re all yours.”
“Consider it a tip,” Andie said.
The guard raised a bottle in salutation, grinned, and unlocked the gate to let them through. “One hour. No more.”
“Fair enough,” Cal said.
Andie felt relieved. She had been worried he might limit them to five or ten minutes. On the other hand, she knew the contents of the catacombs had been looted long ago, the place was deserted, and the guard probably didn’t care if they stayed all night.
Andie and Cal retrieved their backpacks, and the guard relocked the gate and led the way across the courtyard toward the mausoleum. Though surrounded by a city of millions, the silent scattered ruins of the necropolis—isolated atop the hill and swathed in darkness—made her feel as if they were exploring an archaeological site in the middle of a wilderness dig.
After the guard had retreated to the guard shack, Cal said, “Do you take all your guys to the graveyard on the first date?”
“Let’s get this over with,” she muttered. She was thinking of the three levels of catacombs lurking beneath the surface, as if the mausoleum were the petrified hand of a corpse reaching out of the soil in a shallow grave, a portent of what lay unseen beneath.
The noise of a tram in the distance followed them inside, then faded into silence. The air felt heavy with dust and stone. Andie reached into her backpack and took out their final purchase of the night, also from the hardware store: a handheld flashlight with a beveled edge and one thousand lumens of illumination. She still had her pocketknife, and Cal had purchased a small wooden club he had stuck in his backpack. Neither of them knew much about guns, or where to get one in Egypt.
The flashlight revealed an interior with rough stone walls, dominated by a well of darkness looming in the center, a central shaft used to lower bodies into the tomb. Scaffolding covered the wall to their left.
Andie stood at the edge of the shaft and shone the light down. Thirty feet below, they could see the faint outline of a stone floor.
“I guess we’re doing this,” Cal muttered.
“Even if the catacombs were open, photography isn’t allowed inside. This is the best option to see if the Star Phone has something to show us.”
On one side of the cylindrical shaft, a set of stone steps spiraled down into the catacombs, separated from the main shaft by a wall. Darkness lived and breathed at the edges of the cone of amber light as they navigated the staircase. Windows cut into the stone wall provided glimpses of the central well as they descended, and the air grew more damp. At the bottom, all traces of moonlight disappeared, leaving them utterly dependent on the flashlight.
A short passage led to a rotunda supported by columns hewn out of the bedrock. Andie slowly turned about the room, illuminating two more corridors and another shaft that, she knew from her research, dropped to the flooded bottom level. Since entering the catacombs, she had peered through the lens of the Star Phone several times, but nothing had changed.
“If we weren’t down here alone at night with assassins on our trail,” Cal said as he took in the underground sepulcher, “I might appreciate the atmosphere more. How big is this place?”
“Not that large, though archaeologists think this could be one of hundreds or even thousands of catacombs hidden underground nearby. This whole section of the city might have been one giant necropolis.”
“That’s a lovely thought.”
She stepped through the opening on their left, into a hall lined with stone benches and the broken remains of pottery still littering the floor. “I read this was a banquet hall where relatives came to toast the deceased.”
“Down here?”
“I don’t know. It seems more authentic than a funeral parlor with flowers and elevator music.”
“Authentic. Yeah, I wouldn’t argue with that.”
They found nothing of interest in the triclinium. After returning to the rotunda, they tried the remaining corridor, which led down a set of stone steps to the main burial chamber. Floor-to-ceiling pillars marked the entrance, resembling the front of a Greek temple. Atop the open portal was a frieze depicting a winged sun flanked by a pair of falcons. Bearded serpents carved in bas-relief guarded the sides, and above each serpent was a shield in the likeness of Medusa, a mythological creature whose stare could turn human beings to stone. Wards designed to deter would-be tomb robbers.
Wooden planks, laid to preserve the floor, led through the portico into the burial chamber, as well as into two side passages exiting from the sides of the vestibule. Andie stepped into the passage on the left and shone the flashlight down a corridor honeycombed on both sides with empty square slots, each just large enough to fit a sarcophagus.
The claustrophobic passage lined with tombs gave her the shivers. Her imagination ran wild, envisioning all manner of things lurking in the darkness, ready to crawl out of those holes as soon as she turned her back.
Stop it, Andie.
“The maps show this passage wrapping around the burial chamber,” she said.
“It doesn’t look very inviting. Do we need to explore it?”
“Maybe. Let’s try the main one first. There’s more iconography inside.”
The wooden plank beneath their feet creaked as they stepped warily between the pillars and into a chamber decorated with Greco-Roman statues
and carvings hewn from the rock walls. The statues felt eerily alive in the gloom, and Andie felt as if their eyes were following her about the room.
They found three stone sarcophagi inset into the walls, each with heavy stone covers. Cal walked around the room with the flashlight, illuminating the ancient art as Andie followed behind with the Star Phone. Just as she was wondering whether they would have to pry open one of the coffins, Cal called out to her.
“Andie,” he said. “Check out the tip of that spear.”
“Where?”
“On that statue to your left.”
At the edge of the cone of illumination cast by the flashlight, she saw the jackal-headed statue—Anubis—to which Cal was referring. The Egyptian god of the dead was depicted with the uniform of a Roman legionary, an ode to the syncretic beliefs of the time. The muscular statue was holding an upright spear and facing the doorway. Andie had to step closer to see the sphinx carved into the handle of the spear, just below the point.
“Hold the light steady,” she said, holding her breath as she aimed the Star Phone at the sphinx and pressed it to her eye.
The room spun as if tilted on an axis. Andie’s familiar dizziness was exacerbated by the lower level of illumination. Yet once she got her bearings, a thrill passed through her when she saw a new image replacing the statue of Anubis. The familiar scroll representing the library remained in place, yet instead of the alphanumeric string below it, two new symbols hovered: a sun in the form of an ouroboros rising over water, and a cross with a loop at the top.
“What is it?” Cal asked.
After sealing the image in her mind, she handed him the Star Phone and let him see for himself.
“Holy shit,” he said, taking a few wobbly steps back and forth while he gained his equilibrium. “This thing is for real. What’s that snake-eating-its-own-tail thing called?”
“An ouroboros.”
“And the ankh—”
He was cut off by a loud thump from somewhere behind them, as if a heavy object had fallen down the central shaft.
Cal’s face was rigid as he returned the Star Phone to Andie and waved the flashlight through the entrance to the chamber, illuminating the stairs beyond. “What was that?”
“I think we should go see,” she whispered.
“I think we should get the hell out of here.”
“What if someone’s waiting for us to climb those stairs?”
“So what do you suggest—hiding out here until morning?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I don’t like the thought of doing anything without knowing what made that noise.”
She gave brief consideration to hiding somewhere in the catacombs, but the only place she could think of, squeezing into one of those hollow cavities in the passages around the central burial chamber, seemed more dangerous than staying put. If anyone came looking for them, their hiding place would become their tomb. She supposed they could slip into the murky waters of the flooded lower level, but that was an absolute last resort that terrified her just thinking about it.
After a moment, Cal raised the miniature bat with his right hand and took a step toward the doorway. “Let’s go take a look then.”
Andie gripped her pocketknife and followed him out, pointing the flashlight at the floor. Side by side, they passed through the vestibule and crept back up the stairs to the rotunda. Everything was as quiet and undisturbed as before. Disturbingly so. What had caused that thump?
She aimed the light into the flooded shaft at their feet. Not the faintest of ripples disturbed the ominous dark surface.
“Maybe a piece of scaffolding fell,” Cal suggested. “Or one of the stones broke away.”
“Maybe.”
Emboldened by the thought, Andie sucked in a breath and led the way down the final passage. Just before they reached the spiral staircase leading to the surface, the flashlight illuminated a motionless form crumpled on the floor at the bottom of the central shaft. It only took a moment for Andie to realize the figure was the guard who had let them in, his neck bent at an unnatural angle, blood spreading like a dark nimbus on the floor around his head.
23
As Andie stifled a scream, backing away from the body, Cal gripped her arm and said, “It’s not the guard.”
Swallowing, Andie watched as Cal pointed the flashlight directly on the dead man’s features. He was right: though the clothes and general build were the same, she gasped as she recognized the darker skin tone and chapped lips of the Indian man who had followed her throughout London. “I know him.”
“What? Who is it?”
“His name was Kumal,” said a cultured voice with a slight Middle Eastern accent, from somewhere in the darkness behind them.
Andie spun, gripping her knife as fear and adrenaline spiked through her. Cal raised the bat and whipped the flashlight wildly about the chamber.
A dark-haired man in a green windbreaker emerged from the gloom of the corridor leading to the rotunda. He was composed and very handsome, and inspecting them with a raptor’s gaze that Andie knew from past experience missed nothing.
Cal took a step toward him, brandishing the bat. In response, the man calmly raised the bottom of his jacket and removed a handgun tucked into a holster. Cal slowly lowered the bat. “Who are you?”
“The man who’s been chasing me,” Andie said. “What do you want?”
“To deliver you.”
The statement, along with the casual certainty with which he had uttered it, sent a chill creeping down Andie’s spine.
“Deliver me? To whom?”
The slow, thin-lipped smile that spread across his face unnerved Andie even more than the fresh corpse lying on the floor behind her.
“I thought he was your friend,” she said, glancing back at the body.
The man took the gun out of his pocket and waved it toward the spiral staircase. “Up the stairs.”
“Why?” she asked. “Where are we going?”
He pointed the weapon at Cal. “He lives to ensure your compliance. If you both come peacefully, I’ll release him once we arrive.”
“Sure you will,” Cal said.
“Your voice was silenced long ago. What do we have to fear from a disgraced journalist?”
“Is that why you followed me around LA and tried to kidnap me? Because I’m silenced?”
“Cal,” Andie warned. “I’ll go. Don’t tempt him.”
“He’s lying, Andie.”
She turned to lock eyes with Cal, trying to convey that she already knew that, but with a gun pointed at them, what could they do except try to survive a bit longer?
The dark-haired man aimed the gun at Cal. “If you’re seeking another reason, American deaths raise questions, even those of disgraced journalists. And I don’t have time to dispose of the body. But I will kill you, right this very moment, if you both don’t drop your weapons and start climbing.”
With one hand raised, Cal set the bat on the ground, handed the flashlight to Andie, and reached to open his backpack.
“No,” the man said.
“I’ve got another flashlight—”
“Move. Now.”
With his other hand, the man flicked on a silver penlight with impressive illumination. Left with little choice, Andie dropped the knife and let Cal proceed first up the spiral staircase, hoping he might have a chance to run away. Their captor made her start climbing right behind Cal, and then stayed on her heels, limiting her options. She debated a swift kick to his face, but he was just out of range.
Though dazed by the turn the night had taken, fear and adrenaline sharpened Andie’s focus, and she thought furiously through her options. If the man wanted them dead, the catacombs seemed a pretty good place to leave the bodies. He had already dumped one inside.
And why had he killed the other man? Did they have a falling-out? A different agenda?
A more important question loomed: Should she let their captor take her somewhere, or fight to the death right
now? Neither option boded well for her future, but she agreed with Cal. In the end, the man wasn’t going to let either of them live. Maybe it was true he didn’t want to leave the body of an American in public, but he could just shoot Cal in the head when they reached his car and stuff them both in the trunk.
Either way, they probably had a better chance of escaping right now than wherever he planned on taking them. A shiver of dread coursed through her as she decided to fight as hard as she could before they reached his vehicle, and a desperate plan took shape.
After they had climbed in silence for some time, nearing the top, Andie asked, “Why me? Whatever it is you think I know, I don’t.”
No response.
“You’re with them, aren’t you? The Leap Year Society?” She took another stab, remembering the name in Dr. Corwin’s journal. “Or is it the Ascendants?”
She glanced down to gauge his reaction, but his expression remained neutral. When she looked back up, Cal had reached the last step and was about to exit the shaft.
“What’s the square root of one thousand and fifty-six?” Andie asked, right before she clicked off her flashlight and threw it straight down on their attacker’s head, hoping to crack his skull with the beveled edge. There was a faint thud as the flashlight struck home.
“Run!” she screamed to Cal.
Though the man did not cry out, darkness consumed the space around them as the light from his pen spun downward into the shaft. She prayed he had fallen to his death. Above them, a sliver of moonlight illuminated Cal’s hand reaching down to help her up the last few steps.
To her left came the sound of flesh slapping on stone. As she reached for Cal’s hand, she looked over to see the man pulling himself through one of the windows cut into the wall that overlooked the shaft from the staircase. A liquid blackness—blood—gleamed on his forehead. The bastard must have vaulted across the inside of the shaft when he fell. As he bounded up the stairs, Andie and Cal fled the mausoleum, screaming for help as they ran through the courtyard, knowing the real guard was either dead or tied up.