Thieves Like Us 01 - Thieves Like Us

by Stephen Cole

  Look at her. How could someone like that be interested in someone like you?

  ‘Uh, Jonah?’ Tye asked again, looking up at him again with those incredible eyes. ‘The lake?’

  Go jump in it, Jonah told his nagging voice. It wasn’t like he really felt anything more for Tye than friendship.

  That would be crazy.

  ‘Moving swiftly on,’ he muttered. ‘OK, let’s see now … That’s Lake Prespa, yeah? That’s our point for Marlick, the elbow. Which makes that waterfall …’

  ‘Which waterfall?’

  ‘That waterfall, next to the bigger one further back,’ he pointed. ‘That must be Yed Posterior.’

  ‘Hey, geek!’ Motti yawned noisily, called from the cabin: ‘You talking about posteriors in there?’

  ‘Ha, ha!’ said Jonah. ‘Yed Posterior. It means “hand after”.’

  ‘Hey, Tye, you got a geek’s hand after your posterior!’ Motti called, and Patch sniggered beside him.

  ‘Just get ready for your jump,’ Tye yelled back at him.

  Up ahead was a distinctive red-black boulder, like a giant’s marble fallen from the sky and come to rest against some rocky foothills.

  If they’d gambled right and this really was the place, then that boulder would represent the brightest star of the constellation: Ophiuchus Alpha, also known as Ras Alhague.

  The head of the snake. The point of the pattern most easily accessible from land.

  And maybe – just maybe – the entrance to a hidden underworld, which contained the secret of eternal life.

  Motti was calmly slipping on a bulky coat and a parachute harness, getting ready to jump. Jonah watched the muscles in Tye’s smooth, slender arms tense and contract as she pulled up on the stick and the plane began to descend.

  With Motti dropped on target to scout the land, Tye set the plane down at a small industrial airport about forty miles away, a range of grey buildings like a poor imitation of the mountains spanning the skyline. Con worked a little magic with the airport officials; it might have been her fluent Greek or some mild mesmerism, but they accepted the group’s bogus business credentials and even arranged a hire car with which to explore the outlying district.

  Tye supposed they were going a little further than the officials might imagine. Con sat beside her in the 4×4, Jonah, Coldhardt and Patch in the back, as she rattled them over the rough terrain, up perilous tracks and down into ravines. Coldhardt had worked out a route that ought to be drivable, and Tye took it slowly. A punctured tyre, broken axle or sheared cable now could set them back hours – or even finish their journey for good.

  ‘Doesn’t look like anyone’s travelled this way before us, anyway,’ Jonah observed.

  ‘So our own tracks will stand out a mile,’ said Con.

  ‘We should have stolen quite a march on Samraj,’ said Coldhardt. ‘It’s a chance we’ll have to take.’

  No one spoke much as the tension slowly grew with the passing miles. Patch was looking green and clutching his stomach, his Game Boy Advance out of batteries. Con was sitting in the passenger seat hugging her knees and studying the map intently. She seemed to be having some tummy problems herself.

  Only Coldhardt looked serene, both eyes closed, mindless of the jolts and scrapes and the grinding of protesting gears.

  It took hours, but they finally reached their chosen rock by late afternoon. Tye untangled her aching fingers from the wheel and slumped back in her seat, accepting the thanks and praise of the others without comment.

  ‘From here it’s a hike on foot down into the gully,’ Coldhardt announced.

  She felt Jonah’s hand press down lightly on her shoulder for a moment as he led the exodus from the jeep. The muscles there felt like they’d locked together with the long tension.

  ‘Could you use a quick massage, sweets?’ Con asked her.

  ‘Thanks.’ Tye looked fleetingly at Jonah. He was staring out at the sky, a darkening blue now as it made its first overtures to the night.

  ‘It’s OK,’ Con said quietly as her hands kneaded Tye’s bruised and aching muscles. ‘I won’t be offended if you’d rather ask him.’

  Caught off-guard, Tye opened her mouth to make some retort – and found she couldn’t think of anything to say.

  ‘Hey!’ Motti’s voice carried distantly through the wilderness, instantly electrifying the silence. ‘Come down here, quick!’

  Con and Tye both jumped from the jeep and followed the others to the lip of the gully. Motti was the size of a termite far below, waving his arms in what seemed to be a mixture of welcome and warning.

  What had he discovered?

  Jonah watched Coldhardt as he led the way down to meet Motti, scrambling down the crumbling incline with a speed that belied his years. He supposed that adrenalin, a desire for revenge, and basic, dirty greed could come together to make quite an energy boost. Certainly they helped him make it safely down to the marshy plateau at the base of the gully.

  Coldhardt was breathing hard, his handsome features florid with exertion. But Jonah noticed that while a few anxious looks were passed, no one asked if he was all right. No one wanted to provoke his temper.

  Besides, what the hell were they going to do if he wasn’t?

  ‘You guys sure took your time,’ said Motti tetchily.

  Jonah shrugged. ‘Didn’t want to rush the expert at his work, did we?’

  ‘Motti,’ Coldhardt wheezed, ‘what have you found?’

  ‘I think I’ve sussed out an entrance,’ he said, losing some of his dour demeanour in his excitement. ‘About fifteen metres from the boulder, built into the base of those foothills. It’s just a crack, and it’s real silted up, but I reckon it’s our way in. Maybe there’s some kind of pulley mechanism behind it.’

  Patch looked suddenly alarmed. ‘Like the old crypt we did over in Lima?’

  Motti nodded. ‘So long as we can find the trigger mechanism, and if it’s still working after all this time –’

  ‘Please God, no swords this time,’ Patch muttered.

  ‘You must study the door for yourself,’ Coldhardt told him. ‘You are familiar with many of the ancient tricks of the trade.’

  ‘Well, on paper, yeah, but –’

  ‘C’mon, Cyclops,’ said Motti, wrapping an arm round his shoulders. ‘You know what they say – you ain’t worth the room till you crack your first tomb.’

  Patch allowed himself to be led away with all the enthusiasm of a condemned man going to the gallows.

  Jonah frowned. ‘There’ll really be locks and alarms and stuff on some old catacombs?’

  Coldhardt gave a ragged cough. ‘People have found many ways to protect their property through the ages, Jonah.’

  ‘What, the Indiana Jones stuff? Big stone ball tumbling through the tunnel? Hundreds of spears in the wall?’

  ‘On the whole, their precautions are a lot less spectacular but a whole lot nastier.’ He stretched and padded away, kicking his legs as if to shake the cramp out of them. Jonah watched him go, felt an unsettled feeling gathering like a cloud in the back of his mind.

  ‘Are you superstitious, Jonah?’ Tye asked.

  ‘Motti asked me that on my first night.’ He shook his head. ‘No. I’m not.’

  ‘Patch never used to be,’ said Con brightly, ‘until the crypt job. Now he sleeps with the lights on, did you –?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Jonah. ‘I know.’

  ‘So if you’re not superstitious, why do you sleep with the lights on?’ She smiled coyly. ‘Or was that just so I could find you in the night more easily, yes?’

  Jonah felt himself flushing. ‘I didn’t know you were coming – I mean, I was just – well, I –’

  Tye just laughed. ‘Guys, could you keep it to yourselves?’

  ‘Oh, Tye, nothing happened,’ Con said quickly, a mischievous look in her eyes. ‘Nothing much.’

  ‘Whatever.’ Tye shrugged, glanced back at Jonah. He looked away, embarrassed.

  Coldhardt walked back
to join them; with a few minutes’ rest he looked more like his old unflappable self. He glanced round, saw the look on Jonah’s face. ‘No last-minute nerves, I trust?’

  ‘He is fine,’ said Con. ‘Aren’t you?’

  ‘Fine,’ Jonah agreed.

  ‘Then let’s go join the others and see what we’re dealing with,’ said Tye, leaving them to trail behind after her.

  It would be night soon. Tye shivered a little, stared up at the darkening blue sky. Small violet clouds had gathered above as if spying on them. Her ears strained to catch the sound of distant engines, any sign that Samraj might be approaching.

  Patch and Motti had been poring over the old stone for some time. Coldhardt looked in and offered a measured comment or opinion every time they seemed to be flagging. Now they were starting to argue about how much force they should use to get inside.

  ‘We ain’t archaeologists,’ Motti was saying. ‘Screw the gentle touch. If that is a door it ain’t gonna give easily.’

  ‘It’s just some kind of plaster they slapped on to disguise the opening,’ Patch argued. ‘If we keep chipping away –’

  ‘It was slapped on, like, a thousand years ago! It’s hard as the stone. Now, time’s running out, and I say we blow it open.’

  ‘Well I say blow it out your arse!’ stormed Patch. ‘You don’t know what was hidden inside this door, Mot! Projectiles, gunpowder, poisoned sand – could be anything!’

  Motti held out his hands, a calming gesture. ‘OK, fine, so we lay charges in the surrounding rock.’

  ‘I don’t like it.’

  ‘I don’t like it either, Patch, but Motti’s right.’ Coldhardt looked at Motti. ‘Make it a small charge, hmm?’

  ‘Tell you what, then …’ Patch reached up to his glass eye and made to pluck it out. ‘I got a little gelignite in this one. Detonator cap is in the pupil.’

  ‘Leave that damn thing where it is!’ said Motti, cringing. ‘I got some plastic here. I’ll lay it round the frame, multiple detonation …’

  ‘Say the Inuit charm prayer first.’

  ‘I’m saying every prayer I know, man.’

  While Motti got busy, Patch wandered over and sat down beside Tye. ‘This place is bad news.’

  ‘Tell me about it,’ she said.

  ‘Got any more food?’

  She gestured to her rucksack. Patch dug himself out a half-chewed chicken leg and pulled off some scraps. Then he gestured over at Jonah and Con. ‘Those two had a row or something?’

  ‘Something.’

  Jonah was sitting alone on the scrubby grass, minding his own business. His back was turned to Con who lay half-reclined on a slab of rock, silhouetted against the sunset with artistic abandon.

  ‘She’s incredible,’ sighed Patch.

  Tye nodded. ‘Never ceases to amaze me.’

  Motti didn’t take long with the explosives. He uncoiled the detonator wire and motioned everyone to shelter behind Con’s plinth of rock.

  It was weird, having Coldhardt there amongst them. He ensured an air of respectful silence held sway, but Tye decided it was a mixed blessing. It spared her any more of Con’s small talk, but left her with too much time on her hands to mull over what had – or hadn’t – been said.

  Truth was, she would never have put Jonah and Con together. But then, if Con had come on to him, why the hell would he resist? She could reel in anyone, as she’d proved to Tye on a fairly regular basis. Jonah was no different.

  And she couldn’t help feeling disappointed about that.

  ‘Here we go, people,’ said Motti, hurrying to join them.

  The explosion was crazily loud, the rumbles of the after-echoes mingling with the clatter of distant birds taking flight.

  ‘Well, that’ll bring the park rangers running,’ muttered Jonah.

  Motti was back on his feet and running to see before the smoke had even cleared. As he ran into the grey wisps, he whooped.

  ‘We got us a doorway!’ he yelled. ‘It’s solid stone, five-sided.’

  ‘That’s a warning in itself,’ snapped Coldhardt. ‘Echoes of the pentagram.’

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Jonah.

  ‘Five-pointed star,’ Con told him. ‘Occult symbol.’

  ‘Black magic, you mean?’

  ‘With me, Patch.’ Coldhardt strode off into the clearing smoke, Patch at his heels, and Tye quickly followed them.

  There was something about the crude, thick outline of the door in the blackened stone that sent an instinctive shiver down her back. Coldhardt was showing some circular impressions in the rock to Motti and Patch, who were nodding like eager students. How could they be so casual about it all?

  She walked away, troubled. Growing up in Haiti, half the people had practised voodoo. Not the creepy, zombie undead stuff you got in horror films – almost all of them considered themselves Roman Catholics – they just believed they could commune with the lesser deities and messengers who travelled between God and the believer. Tye had turned her back on the spirits like she’d turned her back on so many things. But sometimes, normally in the darkest hours when sleep or rest seemed a thousand miles away, she liked to believe she could hear the whispers of kinder spirits.

  Right now, she could almost feel those whispers like a scratch deep in her ear, warning her that the door, and whatever lay beyond it, was evil.

  * * *

  Jonah knew there were more important things to worry about, but found he couldn’t help wishing Con had kept her big lip-glossed gob shut. He knew she’d used him to score a cheap, throwaway point against Tye, but she’d made it seem like a lot more had happened than actually did.

  The worst thing about it was that Tye probably didn’t give a damn – if he tried to explain what really happened, she’d think he was a freak. So instead an undefined awkwardness hung in the air between them like the smoke from Motti’s explosions.

  Jonah went over to join the guys by the door in the wall, where things seemed less complicated.

  Wrong again.

  ‘I believe that each of these circles in the rock is a cylinder, seen end-on,’ Coldhardt was explaining. ‘A kind of bolt securing the door, probably knocked through with a stone and hammer. One of them will open the door, the others are undoubtedly booby-trapped.’

  ‘So how do we know which to release?’ asked Jonah.

  ‘We don’t,’ said Motti. ‘Trust those dumb cultists to leave that part off the lekythos.’

  ‘Probably obvious if you’re one of them.’ Jonah pointed to the topmost bolt. ‘That bit of the Spartan cipher said something about the north. If it did include instructions about how to get in here, maybe they meant –’

  ‘We have no way of knowing that,’ said Coldhardt. ‘No, Patch, I’m afraid the call must be yours. Think of each bolt as a key in a kind of lock, turning tumblers and mechanisms within the stone.’

  ‘Except if you louse up, God only knows what’s gonna happen,’ said Motti quietly.

  ‘He won’t louse up,’ Tye insisted, as she and Con came over. Jonah noticed Con was crossing her fingers behind her back.

  Patch turned his stoic eye on the stone. ‘Square holes in the top of each circle. Probably for holding a tool of some kind, to get it to open …’ He started rummaging in his rucksack. ‘Reckon a big torque wrench might fit it.’

  ‘Start with the topmost bolt,’ Coldhardt suggested with a glance at Jonah. ‘It’s the only clue we’ve got.’

  ‘We’re starting to lose the light,’ said Jonah.

  ‘’S OK,’ said Patch as he carefully inserted the wrench and placed his ear cautiously against the stone. ‘I’m gonna close my eye anyway. Gotta think myself into the lock.’

  ‘Here comes the Jedi mind crap again,’ Motti said gruffly, but there was no disguising the concern on his face.

  ‘You guys better stand clear,’ Patch whispered.

  Coldhardt simply nodded, falling back to what he felt was a safe distance and gesturing that his children do the same.


  ‘This could take for ever, couldn’t it?’ said Jonah quietly. ‘Surely after all these centuries, that bolt’s going to be stiffer than a corpse’s –’

  There came a cold scrape as the stone cylinder shifted a little way into its housing. Jonah broke off, held his breath.

  ‘Craftsmanship,’ whispered Coldhardt, a rapt look on his craggy features.

  ‘Patch, man, can you feel anything through that rock?’ Motti whispered.

  ‘Only thing I can feel is a trickle down my leg,’ he joked. Another scrape. ‘Wait. No. That didn’t sound –’

  Everything kicked off at once.

  There was a rasping shunk as some ancient mechanism activated behind the doorway. Patch twisted aside. The wrench flew from his hand. A stubby arrow burst out of the door, nearly skewered him as it shot through the air.

  Patch landed awkwardly, sprawled on his back. Motti was already on his feet, sprinting over to check on him.

  ‘Wait!’ Coldhardt shouted. ‘There could be a second trap!’

  ‘That’s why I’m going,’ Motti yelled back. The next second, Jonah found himself rushing to join him. Together they lifted the shell-shocked Patch and carried him awkwardly away.

  ‘I’m all right,’ gasped Patch, laughing weakly. ‘I’m OK. Didn’t get me. I felt something give inside the stone – guessed it wasn’t good.’

  Coldhardt regarded Jonah and Motti. ‘If I give you a command I expect you to obey. You would have achieved nothing by killing yourselves.’

  Motti nodded sullenly, then glared at Jonah. ‘So much for the “north” clue.’

  ‘Here’s the arrow,’ said Con, running back from the side of the gulley with the ancient projectile. ‘I think it’s gold.’

  Coldhardt took it from her. ‘Ebony shaft, gold head.’ He turned it carefully in his gloved hands. ‘Almost certainly poisoned. This alone must be worth a small fortune.’

  ‘Next time I’ll try to catch it,’ said Patch shakily. ‘How’d it fire through stone?’

  ‘I’ll bet it wasn’t real stone in that part of the door, just more of that plaster stuff,’ said Motti. ‘They must’ve sealed the hole back up each time an arrow went off.’