From above them there was the sudden sound of an explosion. Rodrigues smiled grimly.
“That should even the odds a little,” he said. “This way.” He headed off down the tunnel. The lava tube went noticeably downward for two or three hundred yards, meandering around extruded rock formations as it found its petrified path, narrowing until it was barely wide enough to navigate. Finally it was no more than a crack in the seamed, black stone.
Peggy felt her chest constricting. Without the naked lightbulbs in the roof of the now two-foot-wide passageway, she knew she’d be having a severe case of the screaming meemies. Tight spots and stalled elevators had never been her favorites. The fact that there was probably a squad of armed goons behind them wasn’t making her feel any better.
“Getting a little claustrophobic here,” she muttered warningly to Holliday, who had taken up a position right behind her.
They were shuffling sideways now, faces inches from the rock walls.
“It’ll be over in a few seconds,” soothed Rodrigues ahead of her in the impossibly narrow corridor.
Peggy wasn’t quite sure she liked his choice of words.
Suddenly Rodrigues vanished. She heard his voice.
“Mind the step,” he said. Peggy squeezed out through the crack and stopped dead in her tracks. She felt Holliday slip out behind her onto the small stone platform.
“Holy crap,” she whispered.
“My God,” breathed Holliday, stunned by the vision that rose before him.
The scale was almost beyond belief.
They stood at the foot of a cavern almost as large as the main concourse of Grand Central Terminal in New York City. It was as wide as a football field and twice as long. The ceiling, towering more than a hundred feet overhead, seemed to pulse with life. Color, form, and texture danced up from the mists of time long past as giraffes and wildebeests wandered across endless plains; ibex, scores of them, raced in bent-legged flight, horns swept back as black stick figures pursued them over the great veldts.
Bears, not seen in the Azores since the dawn of the last ice age, roamed through ancient forests. Life-sized Phoenician triremes, sails bent above twin hulls, drove across restless seas through the Pillars of Hercules and beyond into the great unknown sea. Crusader ships followed them, white Templar crosses proud on red sails. Soldiers in armor and chain mail, thousands of them, marched forever out through Jerusalem’s gates. Red, green, black, yellow, and ochre, blues azure and aquamarine, blacks and browns and silver, flowing muscle, finely wrought bone, men, animals, creatures that were both and neither, hundreds of them, herds of them, armies and oceans of them, all danced, sailed, rode, and ran across time and the arching ceiling overhead in a strange fantastic vision on the stone.
It was the most awe-inspiring work of art either Holliday or Peggy had ever seen, the great ceiling of the Sistine Chapel paling in comparison. Even illuminated by the electric bulbs set along the walls, Holliday knew that he was only seeing half of what was there, the rest lost in permanent shadow. Heaven only knew how the artists had created such an enormous spectacle; it defied the imagination. It was magnificent.
Steps had been cut into the stone down into the great bowl of the chamber floor, and terraces of frozen lava rode up against the curving walls in lapping waves. Here and there around the base of the cavern Holliday could see the shadows that marked other lava tubes running through the caldera’s foundation.
On one of the shelf-like terraces closest to them there were a number of iron chests that looked hundreds of years old, and stacked beside them, almost incredibly, were piles of what could only be iron spears, their flanged points still visible. In the middle of all this was a long, zinc-topped table and an assortment of power tools. It was like a rough version of Raffi Wanounou’s lab in Jerusalem.
Sitting under a magnifying lamp on a pair of padded pedestals in the middle of the table was a sword, the perfect mate to the one Holliday had discovered in Henry’s secret drawer. On a second table, set at right angles to the first, was another table, this one holding a large, plain terra-cotta amphora, a delicately shaped clay container about five feet long and used until the late Middle Ages for transporting wine.
On the far left in the darkest corner of the cathedral-like cavern was something that looked like the blackened skeleton of some enormous sea monster, claw upheld, dark spine broken, and huge bony rib cage revealed. It lay partially on its side along a sloping ledge of flowstone that oozed into the shadows. It took Holliday a second, but he managed to decipher the image: it was a shipwreck, perhaps a hundred feet long and thirty wide, the planking long since rotted away, leaving only the stark outline of the hull.
Rodrigues gestured toward the wreck. “All that is left of the Wanderfalke, the Peregrine Falcon, Roger de Flor’s flagship, loaded with the great treasure from the Temple of Solomon, Saladin’s gift to the Templar Order and to the world, brought here by a Castilian knight named Fernan Ruiz de Castro. The sword on the table belonged to him. It is Aos, the Sword of the East.”
“De Flor knew about this place?” Holliday asked. He stepped over to the table and bent down, examining the ancient weapon.
“By my estimation this cavern has known human occupation for at least ten thousand years,” said Rodrigues. “There are paintings in the back of the chamber clearly showing the European cave lion, which lived during the Upper Pleistocene Era, probably contemporary with the last ice age. The illustrations of some of the Phoenician ships predate Christ by at least a thousand years. The Phoenicians certainly knew of this place, perhaps the Vikings, as well. One of de Flor’s captains discovered the island when his ship was blown off course. The sea entrance to the cave was much larger then, and there was a much easier landfall. From the evidence I have seen there was some sort of seismic activity in the sixteen hundreds, and a large section of the entrance collapsed, making it almost invisible. There could have been no better place to hide the treasure.”
“You keep on talking about treasure,” said Peggy. “But I don’t see any.”
Rodrigues went to the second table and put his hand on the terra-cotta wine jar under examination. It was sealed around its upper end with some dark, resinous substance.
“This is the treasure,” said the ex-priest softly.
“Wine?” Peggy laughed. “We’ve traveled halfway round the world and back, putting our lives in jeopardy for a big bottle of wine?”
“No,” said Rodrigues gently. “You’ve traveled halfway around the world and back putting your lives in jeopardy for this.”
He picked up a small, rubber mallet from the worktable and brought it down hard on the side of the amphora. The jar shattered, pieces of brittle clay dropping to the zinc surface of the table. Half a dozen gleaming cylinders of pure, butter-colored gold tumbled out, each one about ten inches long and three inches in diameter. The cylinders, like the wine jar, were sealed with resin at one end. Rodrigues picked up one of the tubular objects.
“A scroll from the ancient royal library at Alexandria, saved by the military commander Amr ibn al-As, not destroyed by him during his conquest of Egypt in the sixth century—a story, by the way, that Saladin was quick to quash, since Amr ibn al-As was a contemporary of Muhammad and many of the works in Alexandria were in contravention of the Koran and thus should have been destroyed under strict Muslim law.”
Rodrigues shrugged, shifting the gold cylinder into his other hand. “Perhaps an unknown work by Homer? One of the Greek tragedies by Euripides? Mathematics from Archimedes? A map to the secret location of Imhotep’s fabulous tomb? The way to King Solomon’s Mines? A treatise on medicine by the first true doctor, Aesculapius?” He paused. “The Holy Church’s greatest fear is in this place—I have seen the evidence myself—the Lost Gospels of the Apostles from their own mouths, in Aramaic, not handed down through centuries of translations each with their own interpretation. Somewhere hidden there might well be the most sacred and dangerous of them all—the Gospel of Christ himself.”
He shook his head. “No wonder the Vatican and the Sodalitium Pianum would have you dead, and me, as well. News of this place would shake St. Peter’s Basilica to its very foundation.” The ex-priest lifted his broad shoulders once again.
“Who knows what else lies here? I have been working at this for more than fifty years and have only barely scratched the surface; others were here before me, as well.
“It is not just the Library of Alexandria that was hidden in Jerusalem. Hadrian’s library is here, as well, the Library of Pergamon in Athens, the texts from the Villa of the Papyri in Herculaneum, long thought to have been destroyed in the eruption of Vesuvius, all of them are here and more. It is the wisdom of the world, nothing less, wrapped in skins of gold, all of it.”
“There are more scrolls then?” Holliday asked, excited. “More amphorae?”
“Thousands,” answered Rodrigues. “Enough to fill the hold of the Wanderfalke and its sister ship Tempel Rose, the Temple Rose. Ten thousand, perhaps more; I’ve never bothered to count. De Flor was a well-known trader in wine out of La Rochelle and the Levant; what better and safer way to move such a treasure about than hidden in clay casks? Even in crusader times they knew that gold was inert and would be the safest form of transport; that is why they had a smelter at Castle Pelerin. The scrolls have remained intact for the better part of a millennium. The ones still to be examined wait in the lava tunnels that you see around the cave. The rest are in the good hands of friends of the Order.”
“Order?” Holliday said. “You mean the Templars?”
“Of course,” said Rodrigues. “As I said to you, there have been White Templars and Black since the beginning. We couldn’t let all this great knowledge fall into the wrong hands. That’s why your uncle joined us.”
“Grandpa was a Templar?” Peggy asked. “He knew about all this?”
“Yes,” nodded Rodrigues. “That is why he hid the sword.” The ex-priest turned to Holliday. “To protect and pass the secret on to you if you proved yourself worthy of the task.” He turned back to Peggy. “And you, as well.”
Suddenly the dim lights in the huge cavern flickered. Almost instinctively Holliday’s hand reached out and swept up the old sword from its pedestal mounts. With his other hand he wrenched the Czech automatic from its holster and thumbed off the safety. Then the lights flickered again and finally went out. Utter darkness fell.
33
The lights came on again almost immediately.
“What the hell?” Peggy said.
“A crude approximation of an alarm,” said Rodrigues, hefting the shotgun. “Apparently my fireworks didn’t disable all our visitors. They’re almost here. We have to leave. Now.”
“We could stay and fight,” said Peggy.
“No. He’s right. They’ve got automatic weapons; we’ve got a shotgun and a pistol. Time to bug out.”
“This way,” said Rodrigues. He bent down and picked up a battery-powered lantern from beneath the table with the shattered wine jar and headed across the cavern toward one of the lava-tube entrances. As they climbed the ascending layers of petrified lava Holliday saw a flicker of movement out of the corner of his eye and turned.
“Go!” he commanded. On the far side of the cavern one of Kellerman’s men appeared, a squat weapon in his hands and a set of American Technologies lightweight night-vision goggles balanced on his forehead. Holliday saw a red beam flash across the cavern from the man’s weapon: a fire-and-forget laser scope. He didn’t wait to see the man’s elected target, or take the time to aim his own weapon; at this range it would be futile. He simply aimed high and squeezed the trigger of the Czech pistol, spraying the entire clip of twelve rounds in the enemy’s general direction. Delay was the objective now, not accuracy. The inside of the cavern rang with shattering echoes as he emptied the gun. The man got off one shot and ducked away. Behind Holliday there was a grunt of pain and surprise. He turned. Rodrigues had been hit, blood blossoming on his shirt, low on his right side. Hopefully no more than a flesh wound. He sagged against the smooth wall of the cave by the entrance to a lava tube. Peggy took the big flashlight and the shotgun from his hands, supporting him under one arm.
“Into the tunnel, as fast as you can,” the ex-priest moaned.
Holliday tossed away the empty gun, transferred the sword into his right hand, and ran up the last few levels to take Rodrigues by the other arm. Together he and Peggy helped him into the relative safety of the lava tube. Behind them there was the sound of ringing automatic fire. More than one weapon. Kellerman’s people had arrived in force.
“Twenty paces into the tunnel. The generator,” grunted Rodrigues. “Be careful,” he warned.
Holliday and Peggy eased the wounded man forward, the tunnel barely wide enough to allow them passage, the ceiling low above their heads. Ahead of them they could hear the roar of the diesel generator, the fumes souring the air slightly. Holliday could also feel a slight movement of the air across his face. Fresh air.
At twenty paces there was a widening of the tunnel, man-made, and a deep, square-cut little chamber on the left. Inside the tiny room there was a bright yellow six-thousand-watt Yamaha diesel generator chugging quietly and a hundred gallon tank of kerosene. A length of PVC tubing led up into a narrow crack in the ceiling, carrying most of the fumes away.
“The switch,” managed Rodrigues.
Holliday found the switch on the side of the generator and threw it. The sound of the generator stopped in mid-cycle, and the lights went off. It might slow their pursuers for a moment, but with the active infrared goggles it wouldn’t stop them. Peggy switched on the battery-powered lamp. A cone of light bloomed, showing the way ahead.
“Another ten paces,” muttered the ex-priest. He coughed and dark, coffee-ground blood poured over his lips and down his chin. Not a flesh wound then, noted Holliday. The man was bleeding internally. He needed medical attention, and quickly.
“What about ten paces?” Holliday asked urgently, helping Rodrigues down the tunnel. Their pursuers couldn’t be much more than a minute or two behind them.
“Trip wire. Fishing line,” the ex-priest managed, coughing again and doubling over.
They stepped forward carefully, Peggy shining the light ahead, keeping the beam down, illuminating the base of the tunnel. Holliday, supporting Rodrigues, now came up behind her.
Fifty feet farther on the light caught a length of taut, black fishing line stretched across the tunnel, calf-high, invisible unless you were looking for it.
“Where is it?” Holliday asked.
“Up,” muttered Rodrigues.
Peggy swept the light up toward the ceiling. The trip wire led upward, threaded through blackened eyebolts, to a small hole in the roof about eight inches across. In the hole were two round, olive-green metal objects, each about four inches in diameter. Holliday recognized them instantly: OZM-72 antipersonnel mines, the Russian version of the American M16 “Bouncing Betty” he’d used in Vietnam and the Yugoslavian PROM-1’s he’d seen during the Bosnian War. Triggered on the ground, the device would bound into the air to waist height before exploding. In the case of these two mines they would fire downward into the lava tube. Each of the OZM’s carried a charge of slightly more than a pound of cast high explosive. The slaughter in the lava tube would be horrifying. On ignition anything for a hundred feet in either direction would be shredded into hamburger.
“Help him over the trip wire,” said Holliday.
Together he and Peggy managed to get the failing ex-priest over the deadly thread. They headed on, hurrying now more than ever, trying to put distance between themselves and the hideous booby trap behind them. A dozen yards along the tube, the passage suddenly veered sharply to the right and began heading upward at a steep angle. Holliday could feel a rush of cool air on his face now, and in the distance he thought he heard the sound of thunder. Somewhere above them yesterday’s storm was returning.
Around them the lava tube was changing; as they neared the surface the walls
of the tunnel began to close in. The smooth floor felt slick with mud, and the walls were coated with heavy bacterial slime. It was getting harder and harder to get Rodrigues to keep walking, his coughing increasing with each step, his legs dragging, and his body beginning to shake uncontrollably as he went into shock. Holliday knew the signs. He wasn’t going to last much longer.
“Pocket,” moaned the dying man. “Book. Take it.”
“Later,” soothed Holliday. “There’ll be time for that later.”
“Now!” Rodrigues demanded with authority.
Still moving forward Holliday fumbled in Rodrigues’s back pockets and found a small leather-bound notebook at least half an inch thick. It looked very old. Holliday stuffed it into the pocket of his jacket and carried on. The ground began to rise even more steeply, and their knees bent with exertion. Rodrigues was almost deadweight now. Ahead Holliday thought he saw a crack of light.
Christopher, Paul - Templar 01 Page 28