by Max McCoy
"The chancellor will be well pleased," Kroeger said, and plunged the skull back into its leather case. "Even if its power is based on mere superstition, it is an unparalleled work of art that will become an inspiration to those of us who have sworn fidelity to the point of death and beyond."
The cavern seemed infinitely darker now.
After handing the case back to Belloq, who gently returned it to the interior of the canister, the colonel removed his gloves and snapped his fingers. Two sailors struggled with a case from the deck of the U-357.
They placed the case at Belloq's feet.
"Aren't you going to inspect it?" Kroeger asked.
"I trust you," Belloq said. "But then, I must. What could I do if it were ingots of lead instead of gold? You could blow this cavern to bits, and Malevil above it."
"We could," Kroeger said. "But we won't."
"Merci," Belloq said humorlessly.
"But we do insist that you retire now from your shadowy activities," Kroeger said. "You have made your fortune. Be well satisfied, and avoid the temptation to accept work from our competitors."
"But mon ami," Belloq protested. "This was not part of the bargain. I am an archaeologist. It is not a matter of money, but of passion."
"Ah, passion," Kroeger said wistfully. "The weakness of the non-Aryan races. The French, I understand, are particularly susceptible to meaningless sentimentality. How difficult it must be to live with such a handicap."
"You've got to be kidding," Indy blurted out. "Who are you guys?"
Kroeger looked at Indy as if he had just noticed him for the first time. He stepped forward and peered at Indy with piercing blue eyes that squinted against the smoke curling up from the cigarette dangling at the corner of his mouth.
Kroeger placed a hand beneath Indy's chin and held his face toward the light, inspecting the recent work of the Daguerre twins. His thumb paused at the scar on Indy's chin left so many years ago by a bullwhip.
"Who is this wretched creature?"
"The name is Jones."
Indy grabbed Kroeger's wrist.
With a flourish, the sailors on either side of Belloq leveled their submachine guns. The Daguerre twins drew their guns at the same time, and Belloq cringed in the middle.
Belloq began to laugh, if unconvincingly.
"He is nobody," the Frenchman said nonchalantly. "A fool... An American tourist who stumbled into the cavern quite by accident. As you can see, my men have already taken care of him."
"Too bad they did not pay more attention to his tongue," Kroeger said, and motioned for his men to lower their weapons. "Jones... such a pedestrian name, no?"
"I do a lot of walking," Indy said.
Kroeger lifted the flap of Indy's holster and withdrew the Webley. "Do American tourists always go abroad armed, Herr Jones?"
"Doctor Jones," Indy said. "I'm a college professor. Princeton. And by the way, that thing isn't loaded—I get uncomfortable in a foreign city, and I carry it just in case I need to scare somebody."
"Is that so?" Kroeger asked. He placed the Webley firmly against Indy's temple. He pulled the trigger. The hammer fell with a metallic snap!
"Ah, I see that you are correct." Kroeger laughed.
"There is no need to waste your time on this one," Belloq said quickly. "He is really quite harmless."
"Quite," Indy said. "Say, I thought all of these old U-boats were destroyed according to the Treaty of Versailles, but looks like they missed this one." He slowly took the revolver from Kroeger and returned it to the holster. "But I guess you guys have been too busy persecuting Jews, closing down newspapers, and abolishing trial by jury. Huh, Major?"
"Colonel," Kroeger corrected, then bit his lip. "Clever. I am impressed. But tell me, why do you enjoy flirting with death?"
"It beats burning books on a Saturday night."
"You Americans amuse me," Kroeger said. "Everything is a joke to you, and you denounce what you do not understand. Wait, let me tell you one. It's about an American who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, and his overly sentimental French friend is unable to save him. Hilarious. Oh, I'm sorry, you look as if you've already heard it."
"Belloq is nobody's friend," Indy said.
"Is this true, Rene?" Kroeger asked. "You have no association with this man, no connection of any sort?"
"None." Belloq shrugged.
"Then you won't mind killing him," Kroeger said. He relieved one of the sailors of his submachine gun and placed it in Belloq's hands. "You may keep the weapon, as a souvenir of your service to the Third Reich. And do not be surprised if you receive, from time to time, a reminder of your obligation to the Fatherland."
Kroeger snapped his fingers and the sailors lifted the yellow canister between them and carried it carefully toward the U-357. The colonel followed, stepping from the flagstones onto the submerged deck of the submarine, then paused.
"I am sorry we did not get to know one another better. But I do not have the luxury of time, since the tide will soon be going out and I have no desire to ground this boat in French territorial waters. Auf Wiedersehen, Doktor Jones."
In a moment Kroeger had slipped down into the conning tower and dogged the hatch behind him. The submarine was already in motion. The con slid deeper into the water as the boat backed out of the cavern toward the subterranean passage to the open sea.
"I could come to hate those guys," Indy mused.
Belloq tossed the submarine gun to Claude, the nearest of the Daguerre twins.
"Surely you're not going to kill me," Indy said, and showed Belloq his empty palms. "The Nazis are gone. There's nobody here but us. I thought we were friends. What about all that talk of working together someday?"
"Impossible," Belloq said. "If I do not kill you, they will kill me. In the measure of things, Dr. Jones, it is a small price to pay for my peace of mind."
Claude Daguerre jabbed the snout of the submachine gun in Indy's direction and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Jean stepped forward and attempted to wrest the gun from his brother. Belloq cursed them in French to find the safety, but Indy was already scrambling toward the water. He snatched his hat and bullwhip from Belloq's feet at the same time as he heard the clink of the safety.
The cavern erupted in the chatter of gunfire and the whine of ricochets as the submachine gun, the object of a tug-of-war between the Daguerre twins, came to life. Belloq was screaming in French at the twins to take better aim, that any respectable Chicago gangster would know how to handle a fully automatic weapon, so why couldn't they?
Indy jammed his hat tightly onto his head, filled his lungs, and dove into the black water. Bullets zipped around him, strings of bubbles marking their trajectories like aquatic tracers. He felt one of the slugs sting his thigh, but he resisted the urge to grasp the wound and instead swam with all of his might after the slowly retreating submarine. In the dim glow of the running lights he could see the silhouette of the deck gun, and as he reached it he lashed his whip tightly around the muzzle.
He could feel the rhythmic thrum of the screws as the submarine negotiated the passage, and the harsh grating of metal against rock made his heart beat a little faster. The pressure in his ears increased to a painful level as the submarine dove deeper. Indy risked freeing one of his hands from the muzzle of the gun. By pinching his nose and blowing gently, he forced air into the tiny eustachian tubes in the back of his throat. There was a crinkling sound in his ears as the pressure equalized, and the pain disappeared.
His chest, however, felt like fire.
The carbon dioxide building in his lungs was pleading for release. He knew from experience that, for him, this sensation came at a minute and a half underwater. He opened his mouth and let a little of the spent air escape from his lips, which eased the fire somewhat, buying him a little more time. Professional skin divers could hold their breath for four minutes or more, but Indy knew that his own limit was well below that. He had, at best, another ninety seconds. If the U-boat had
not cleared the passage into the harbor by the end of that time, Indy knew he would drown.
Indy shut his eyes and forced his mind to go elsewhere, to disengage from his tortured lungs and throbbing brain, to green fields and sunlit pastures. Then the pale blue eyes of Alecia Dunstin popped into his mind, and he studied the waves of her hair, the curve of her jaw, the fullness of her lips. He remembered their first meeting at the British Museum in London, while he stood in front of her desk with hat in hand as she seemed to reach down to his very soul with those remarkable blue eyes. If he drowned, he thought, he would have only one regret.
Then the beat of the props increased and the drag of water against his body stiffened. The submarine had cleared the passage. Indy unlashed himself from the gun. He felt the deck of the submarine slide at an angle beneath his feet as it executed a lazy turn to point the bow seaward.
Indy kicked off his shoes and made for air. The U-boat had only been at ten meters, and in a moment Indy popped to the surface. He gulped in a few lungfuls of fresh night air, got his bearings, then swam toward shore—all the while mentally cursing Rene Belloq.
Alecia Dunstin had mentally cursed Indy for the hour she had waited on the rock outside the entrance to the ruins of Forteresse Malevil, cursed him for not letting her accompany him into the depths of the cavern. When she had grown tired of cursing him, she made her way down to a cafe on the waterfront, drank coffee, looked at the full moon overhead, and waited some more.
Finally, she had begun to worry.
She was more relieved than surprised when she saw Indy swimming toward the shore, and she left her table and picked her way around to the shoreline at the base of the fortress. She waded out and met him in waist-deep water, and she threw his left arm around her neck as she helped him up the rocky bank.
Indy coughed and sputtered and sat down on the nearest boulder. He allowed his head to hang between his knees until the coughing subsided. Then he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and looked up at her.
"It got away," Indy said dejectedly.
Alecia sat down next to him and placed a hand on his leg. When Indy grimaced, she drew her hand away and was shocked to see that it was covered in blood.
"You're injured," she said.
"Shot," Indy said.
"My God," Alecia said. "Let's get you to a doctor."
"No." Indy felt the wound with tentative fingertips. "Most of the force was absorbed by the water. I can feel the bullet just under the skin. I can dig it out with a knife, I think."
"I still think we should get you to a doctor," she said. "Or a chemist, at least. That could become septic quite easily, you know."
"I'll live," Indy said.
"How did you get out here in the bay?" Alecia asked.
"I hitched a ride on a German submarine. Belloq sold the skull to the Nazis. There, you can still see the wake of the U-boat in the moonlight. It's running shallow, and if you look sharp, you can see the periscope and radio aerials bristling above the water."
"It looks like it's stopped," Alecia said.
"Um." Indy took out his pocketknife and slit open his pants leg to better inspect his wound. "I wish they'd sink. Do you know Belloq tried to kill me?"
"Of course," Alecia said. "Indy, I've been thinking. Maybe all of this business about a curse really is nonsense. Let's just pretend it never existed and stop this foolishness of trying to chase it down. Let the skull go."
"We've tried that already," Indy said.
"Don't pick at that," she said sternly. "That knife's not sterile."
She put her hand beneath his chin and lifted his face to hers.
"You're going to get yourself into a jam you can't get out of one of these days. A bullet that's too deep, or a beating that's too severe, or any one of a hundred other horrible things."
"Alecia, I almost had it," Indy said. "I was close enough to put my hands on it this time. But that submarine can't take it all the way to Berlin, and somewhere along the line there will be another chance—another chance at our life together."
"This is driving us both mad," Alecia said. "And we're doing it to ourselves. So let's approach this empirically. The hypothesis is that you are cursed to kill what you love, so let's put it to one last test. Show me how you feel."
"I can't," Indy said.
"Try," she said. "We're alone."
"But all the other times," Indy protested.
"Coincidence," Alecia said.
She leaned forward and allowed her lips to brush against his.
"What's wrong?" she asked. "Don't believe in the scientific method?"
"God help us," Indy said.
He took her in his arms and kissed her. The kiss had in it the force of a passion that had been denied for long summer months that seemed like aeons, a forbidden longing that had threatened to drive both of them mad.
"Now say it," Alecia said as she tore herself breathlessly away.
"You know how I feel."
"Say it, damn you."
Indy caught his breath.
"Alecia Dunstin," Indy said, "I luh—"
"Uh-oh," Alecia said.
She was looking over his shoulder toward the harbor. Indy turned. Far out, but closing fast, a pair of luminous tentacles were reaching toward them in the moonlight.
"Torpedoes," Indy said.
The furious counterrotating screws driving the pair of German self-propelled torpedoes were churning up bioluminescent plankton as they streaked across the harbor toward the base of the old fortress.
"So much for the scientific method," Indy said as he jerked Alecia to her feet.
They scrambled up the rocky slope, and when Indy saw that the torpedoes had nearly run their course, he ducked behind the biggest rock he could find and pulled Alecia down with him. But when the expected explosions did not come, Indy dared a glance over the top and saw that the wakes of the torpedoes had disappeared beneath the ancient fortress.
"They can't both be duds," Indy said.
As if in answer, the whum-whump! of a double explosion shook the fortress. Indy felt the power of the blasts reverberate deep in his gut, and he held Alecia tight until the rumbling subsided. When the shower of seawater and small stones subsided, Alecia sat up with a stunned look on her face.
"They couldn't have been aiming at us," she said. "Could they?"
"No," Indy said. "Just a reminder for Belloq. But if we had stayed down there and continued our—experiment—the concussion would have killed us both."
The explosion had lured a gaggle of tourists from the cafes and shops surrounding the Old Harbor to the ramparts enclosing Forteresse Malevil. They leaned far out and pointed at Indy and Alecia, chattering excitedly, and one of them thumbed through her phrase book.
"Don't talk to him," her husband said in a thick Chicago accent. "He looks like a bum."
"I'm going to ask him if he's hurt," the woman insisted. "Ooh ahvay-voo maul?"
"We're all right," Indy called back.
"What happened?"
"The gas tank of our fishing boat exploded," Indy said. "I guess I shouldn't have been smoking around it. But we're not hurt, at least not badly. Thanks for asking."
"See there?" the woman said. "He speaks pretty good American for a bum."
"They all do," the man said. "It just proves they understand you, even when they stand flat-footed and stare at you like you were from the goddamn moon. Come on, Edith. I know drunken bums when I see them. Probably wasn't even their boat. Throw them some change and let's go."
The woman opened her purse and tossed a handful of coins over the battlement. The coins jingled upon the rocks between Indy and Alecia. Then the American tourists left without looking back, and the crowd dispersed.
"Why do people always throw coins toward me at times like this?" Indy mused.
"Well," Alecia said, brushing herself off and trying to regain her composure. She picked up a fifty-centime piece and stared at it.
On her cheek, a single tear glistened in
the moonlight.
"Look at it this way," Indy said, wiping the tear away with his thumb. "We're a little richer. We know the scientific method works. And if we had been killed, at least we'd have died happy."
"But Indiana," she whispered. "That's the problem. I don't want to die. I'm sorry, but I can't do this anymore."
1
Dragon Bones
Princeton, New Jersey
Halloween 1933
Alone in his tiny office on the fourth floor of the Department of Art and Archaeology, Indiana Jones unscrewed the bottle of Scotch and regarded with contempt the pile of student papers and unanswered mail on his desk.
Outside, happy ghouls and goblins raced across the quad in search of new victims. But Indiana Jones's door was locked. He had even disconnected his telephone. He had a bellyful of superstition and did not want to be reminded that his belief in science remained unreconciled to his own bitter experience.
It had been a week since he felt like working, and as the stack of papers grew, the less he was inclined even to begin. Dragging himself to class every day had become an unendurable chore, and he had curtailed many of his lectures and substituted instead heavy reading assignments and guest lecturers. His students would have had cause for concern if his chief pinch hitter had not been Marcus Brody of the American Museum of Natural History.
Indy's routine now pivoted upon the arrival of the daily mail. Only then, as department secretary Penelope Angstrom handed him a new bundle each morning, did a glimmer of hope beat within his chest. Asking Miss Angstrom to shut the door on her way out, he would sort slowly through the letters without opening them. When he had finished he would sort through them again. Invariably, none were postmarked London.
The bottle of Scotch was the latest addition.
He had carried it back to his office and shut himself in this evening on the pretense of attempting to jump-start his flagging work ethic. He allowed himself a crooked smile as he imagined how his father, Professor Henry Jones, would react to this unpardonable breach of trust between a teacher and his pupils.