Library of Gold

by Alex Archer

  Danislov slipped the locator into his pocket. But he must have felt Goshenko’s gaze on him, because he glanced up suddenly and nodded once in respect. Goshenko did the same in return.

  Beside him, the Italian was engrossed in the map.

  “I trust you know how to get us to the vault,” Goshenko said. “Especially since the good sergeant just gunned down your competition.”

  “Of course I do,” the other man sniffed. “I’m the one who discovered Fioravanti’s journal in the first place.”

  Goshenko didn’t care if Fioravanti himself had told him where the vault was buried as long as the Italian could take him there. The colonel hadn’t doubted Creed’s abilities, but this idiot…

  He shook his head. He’d deal with that when the time came, he supposed. For now, he wanted to get them under way.

  First, though, they needed to get rid of the bodies. He sent one of Danislov’s men out into the tunnels to find a suitable dumping ground while the others searched the bodies for anything that might identify them.

  Good riddance, he thought, watching his men pick over the bodies of their former comrades. Anyone dumb enough to get themselves killed by a pair of unarmed captives was too stupid to live.

  Except they weren’t really unarmed, were they?

  When he’d first heard the commotion he thought he’d seen something flash in the Creed woman’s hand, but it wasn’t until he observed that final showdown between her and Danislov that he realized what he was looking at.

  The bitch had been wielding a sword that was at least as long as his arm, perhaps even longer.

  Where the hell had it come from?

  And perhaps more importantly, where had it gone?

  The man he’d sent off to find a good place to dump the bodies came back, talking about a sunken chamber that was already full of skeletons. Goshenko forgot about the sword Creed had been using and focused on more important matters.

  Like finding that library at long last.

  Chapter 38

  Annja sat up with a gasp, her breath exploding out of her as if she’d just been punched in the gut. Memories flashed in her mind’s eye—Gianni’s contempt, Goshenko’s gloating, the scar-faced Russian raising his weapon in her direction, the half mad, half desperate charge she’d made across the room, hoping to reach the gunman before he could pull the trigger… .

  In that moment she’d found out just how fast she actually was.

  Not fast enough.

  And yet, here she was.

  Wherever the hell “here” happened to be.

  She was in utter darkness. She couldn’t see a thing—not even when she held her hand directly in front of her face and waved it back and forth. She reached up toward her forehead, looking for the headlamp she’d been wearing before she’d been shot. It was gone, perhaps ripped away by the force of the shot, perhaps stripped from her after she was down.

  Fear gripped her as a new notion occurred to her. What if she wasn’t in darkness at all, but that she had lost the ability to see? Her head pounded like a steel drum and her stomach roiled with nausea, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch to think she’d been blinded. It was a distinct possibility, as she was certainly experiencing the symptoms one might expect.

  She heard someone whimpering and she went still, listening closely. When she didn’t hear it again she breathed a sigh of relief, and in doing so realized she had been the one making that forlorn sound. That worried her even more.

  It wouldn’t do to survive getting shot in the head, only to succumb to madness.

  Condition, then situation, she reminded herself, going through the litany she’d learned years ago during an Outward Bound course the nuns had sent her on in an attempt to quell some of her restlessness. The instructors had taught her that in an emergency, you had to understand the state you were in before deciding on the best way of extricating yourself from the situation. That your physical condition might limit the options available to you.

  Condition, then situation.

  Tentatively Annja reached up with her left hand and touched her temple. A bolt of pain shot through her head and her hand came away sticky with blood. She gritted her teeth and did it again, this time moving her fingers farther back along her skull. Same results.

  The bullet had burned a furrow down the side of her head, just below the hairline. A half inch to the left and she would have ended up with a gaping hole in the back of her skull instead. The wound hurt, a lot, and Annja worried that it had done more harm than she knew right now, that some vital connection to something—her eyes!—might have been damaged from the impact alone. She had little doubt the nausea and loss of equilibrium were a result of the injury, as well.

  The good news was that the rest of her seemed intact and that she was relatively mobile. She might not be able to see her hands moving right in front of her, but she was confident that they were responding to the signals her brain was sending them because she could feel them. The same went for her legs.

  To prove the point, she drew her legs up underneath her and rose to a crouch. She stretched her hands out on either side, the tips of her fingers balancing her against the surface she’d been sitting on, which turned out to be cold and slightly damp stone.

  As she began to think more clearly and her fear receded, she began to put two and two together. Stone beneath her feet, complete darkness all around—it seemed likely that she was still underground, perhaps even in the cavern where she’d been shot. She felt the urge to call out, to see if there was anyone nearby. If the Russians, who no doubt thought she was dead, heard her, they would come back to finish what they had started. Without the ability to see, she would be unable to defend herself.

  So, no shouting, then.

  Instead, she ran her hands along the stone surface, looking for anything that might be of help to her. When she didn’t find anything, she got down on her hands and knees and inched forward, still searching, not knowing what she would find. She was somehow more afraid of not finding anything at all, afraid that the darkness would just go on and on, that she would wander down here for weeks until she took a wrong step and ended up at the bottom of a deep hole from which she couldn’t escape.

  The feel of flesh beneath her fingertips caused her to recoil violently. That in turn impacted her hard-won equilibrium and set her head pounding even harder. She fought the urge to vomit and waited for her head to stop spinning before trying again, reaching out tentatively with one hand, hoping like hell the body was still there, that it hadn’t gotten up and moved.

  Her fingers touched dead flesh again and this time she successfully controlled the instinct to recoil. Gritting her teeth, she felt around in front of her with both hands, ignoring how she felt about touching the cooling flesh and the half-dried viscous fluid she knew to be blood. Given the man’s size, it only took her a moment to recognize who it was.

  Vladimir.

  Annja bowed her head in grief. She’d genuinely liked Vlad. He didn’t deserve what had befallen him. Even worse, he’d died in an attempt to save her life rather than his own. The world would forever be reduced from the loss of a man like him.

  The world had too few heroes as it was.

  After a moment she wiped the tears from her face, thought an apology in the dead man’s direction and then put her squeamishness to the side and went to work. She checked the pockets of his fireman’s coat first and hit the jackpot right away. The granola bar and bottle of water were excellent finds, no doubt about that, but when her fingers found the three-inch-long narrow plastic tube her heart began to beat faster.

  She gripped the tube in both hands and tried to break it in two. It bent, just as she expected it to, and there was a soft pop from somewhere inside it.

  Green light spilled from between her hands.

  Annja decided there wasn’t anything more beautiful in the world than a chemical light stick. She was relieved to know that there was nothing wrong with her eyes, that it had been only normal darkness that
had kept her from seeing.

  She raised the light stick above her head and looked around.

  Vlad’s corpse lay at her feet. The bullet that had killed him had struck him high in the neck, tearing out his throat and severing his carotid artery. He probably hadn’t lived more than a moment after that, and for that Annja was glad. At least it had been merciful and quick. He was still dressed in the clothes he’d been wearing when she had last seen him. Apparently his killers hadn’t had the time or the inclination to strip him of his possessions.

  The glow of the light stick didn’t reach much more than a foot beyond Vlad’s corpse, but at the very edge of its light Annja could see his discarded fireman’s helmet. On the helmet, affixed there with a rubber headband, was Vlad’s spelunking lamp.

  Annja scrambled over his body and dashed forward…only to come to an abrupt halt as she saw what was strewn across the floor at the far edge of the light.

  Skeletons.

  Dozens, if not more, of skeletons.

  Chapter 39

  Annja put the light stick on the floor and picked up Vlad’s fireman’s helmet. There was no way she was going to be able to wear it over the wound on the side of her head, but she didn’t care. All she wanted was the headlamp. Stripping it off, she set the helmet back down and then held the lamp near the light stick and looked it over.

  It appeared intact except for a few nicks and scrapes. She found the light switch and with a silent prayer heavenward, she angled the headlamp away from her face and turned it on.

  Light. Crisp, clear, white light. Annja felt immeasurably better. She had a little food, some water and light. It seemed she might get out of this, after all.

  Holding the lamp in her hand, Annja stood and took a look around.

  She was in a small chamber that was maybe fifteen feet across at its widest point. It had a low ceiling and a sunken floor. The tunnel mouth was a good six feet above it. She and Vlad were near the entrance, right where she would expect them to be if their bodies had been tossed from the mouth of the tunnel. The bodies of the men she and Vlad had killed during their abortive break for freedom were stacked a few feet farther into the room, laid out with far more respect than her own “remains” had been.

  Past the more recent bodies, she stared at the dozens of skeletons, some still dressed in scraps of clothing, perhaps uniforms of some kind, that lay in the rest of the room.

  Annja moved to take a closer look.

  They were all male, she could tell that immediately just by looking at the structure of the pelvic bones. Their ages were harder to pinpoint. If she had to say she would guess that they ranged from teenage boys to grown men, though she could easily have been off. It would take a forensic anthropologist to determine their exact ages; she was just making an educated guess. She had no trouble identifying the sword cuts and bullet wounds on the bones, however. She’d seen too many of these marks not to recognize them for what they were. These men had all suffered a violent death at the hands of someone else.

  What were the skeletons of murdered men doing way down here? Then it hit her.

  Fioravanti and his men.

  She was looking at the remains of the crew that had been brought in to build the vault for Ivan and then were slaughtered to keep the czar’s secret.

  Annja stared at them, stirred by their fate and their lack of a proper burial. It just wasn’t right.

  She vowed that if it was in any way possible, she would be back for them. She would see to it that the world knew what had happened to them, that their remains would be identified and given a proper burial. They wouldn’t lie down here all alone in the dark for the rest of time if she could do something about it.

  “I promise,” she whispered.

  She turned her attention back to her immediate need, which was to find a way out. Vlad’s body had still been cooling when she’d touched it, which meant that it hadn’t been long since they had been dumped here like so much discarded trash. The fact that they’d been treated so cavalierly made Annja’s blood boil.

  That, of course, brought the bastard Gianni to mind.

  With the help of the light, she searched the bodies of the dead FSS agents, but didn’t find anything useful. She then gave Vlad’s body another once-over. She picked up his helmet and, after a moment’s hesitation, placed it over his face. It reminded her of the way fallen soldiers were always treated in the films about World War II and that felt right somehow.

  “I’ll be back for you, Vlad,” she told him, then, with a final hand on his shoulder, she rose and moved to the mouth of the tunnel.

  The opening was too high for her to pull herself up without help, so she stepped back and called her sword to her. Examining the area just below the opening, she found what she thought was a suitable place, then drew back her hands and jammed her sword deep into the earth at that point, creating a makeshift step. The activity sent pain shooting through her head, but she ignored it. If she wanted to get out of here, she didn’t have any choice.

  She leaned on the sword, trying to move it, but it was stuck in there pretty good, which was just the way she wanted it.

  Annja backed up a few yards, shook her arms to psych herself up and then ran at the wall as fast as her beaten and injured body would allow. At the last second, she stepped up onto the extended blade of her sword and vaulted herself upward.

  She grasped at the side of the entrance, scrambling for purchase. Her foot caught on a small ledge, giving her some balance, and she used that extra leverage, along with her arms, to haul herself up and out of the grave chamber.

  Below her, the sword jammed into the cavern wall winked out of existence.

  She was lying on the tunnel floor, catching her breath, when raised voices echoed back to her along the passageway from somewhere up ahead.

  Discretion told her the best thing to do was to retreat while she had the chance, to head away from the voices and search for a way out to the world above. She was vastly outnumbered and outgunned; even if she followed them, a confrontation made no sense. What did she hope to do against Goshenko and his men?

  The enemy thought she was dead. They wouldn’t be looking for her and so she would have the opportunity she needed to get away from them, to find a way out without them hunting her through the dark passageways and tunnels.

  But Annja wasn’t listening to discretion. All she could think about was the way Vlad and she had been gunned down in cold blood, their bodies left behind to rot in some forgotten chamber deep underground. Or the expression on Gianni’s face when he’d fingered her as having the map, clearly aware of just what the colonel had in mind for them.

  She couldn’t let that go.

  Annja turned in the direction of the voices and quietly headed that way.

  * * *

  FROM HER VANTAGE POINT a short ways back down the tunnel, Annja could see into the chamber in front of her where Gianni and the FSS colonel, Goshenko, were arguing heatedly.

  “I’m telling you, it should be right here!” her former teammate was saying in English as she crept a little closer, the light of her headlamp off. Giving herself away was not part of the plan, after all.

  Goshenko’s contempt and annoyance were obvious even from this distance. Annja could see Goshenko’s henchman, Danislov, off to one side, along with two of the other men they’d encountered earlier. The thugs had been pressed into service as light bearers, standing there holding bright halogen lanterns over their heads so the others could see the room.

  The rest of the security team was missing. Either they were within a section of the room she couldn’t see or else Goshenko had sent them off on another task, not wanting to share the moment of discovery.

  Annja sincerely hoped it was the latter. That would make what she was about to do much easier.

  The group stood within an intricately carved stone vault that looked as if it had been designed to hold the Library of Gold. Even from here Annja could see the swirl of colors from the Italian marble that made up
the complex design covering the floor and the stone shelves covering the walls as far as she could see.

  Except the shelves were empty.

  The library, if it had ever been here, was gone.

  “You told me you could lead me to the library,” Goshenko said in a flat voice. “Where is it?”

  Flustered, Gianni stalked over to a section of the shelves and began examining it closely, no doubt looking for some sign that the books had been here. He pulled out the map, but he barely glanced at it before staring at the empty shelves around him again.

  “It should be right here!” he said. “The map says so. Someone must have been here before us, must have smuggled the library out of hiding and moved it to a new location. That’s the only explanation I can think of.”

  This time, Annja heard desperation creeping into his voice.

  Gianni had seen what Goshenko had done to his former friends, Annja realized, and must now be having second thoughts about failing a man like him.

  Annja wasn’t shocked at all when it happened. Goshenko stared at Gianni a moment, as if weighing something, and then made a simple hand gesture to Danislov. As Gianni began to protest, Danislov smoothly drew the pistol from his holster and shot the Italian twice in the chest.

  Gianni stood there for a moment, mouth open, and then toppled over. His blood splashed across the marble floor’s beautiful surface.

  Before the echoes had died, Danislov calmly walked over and put a third bullet through Gianni’s head to finish the job. “When you told me the plan hinged on Travino, I warned it might come to this.” He picked up the map that had fallen from Gianni’s hands and gave it to Goshenko.

  The colonel glanced at it, then tucked it away. He headed toward the exit from the room, speaking over his shoulder to Danislov as the other man followed.

  With Gianni dead, the two men had switched back to Russian, so Annja didn’t bother to listen. Besides, if she didn’t move, they were going to walk right into her, so she quietly turned and made her way back up the tunnel to where she had seen a small opening off to one side. She crawled into the space and pulled her legs in close, doing her best to make herself as small a target as possible.