by Gabriel Hunt
“Now, now. That wasn’t sporting.” Arif passed the stone to one of the men, who carried it from the chamber.
“As for your sister, Gabriel . . . I am afraid Khufu has grown quite fond of her. I seriously doubt he will let her leave his side. He has wanted an heir for some time. Do you happen to know if she is fertile?”
Gabriel rushed at him. But before he could reach Arif, Kemnebi stepped between them. He blocked Gabriel’s charge with one arm, lifting him off his feet and hurling him to the side. Gabriel landed on one of the skeletons in a clatter of breaking bones. He only hoped that none of them were his.
“Good-bye, Gabriel; Miss Ficatier.” Arif backed out of the chamber, followed by Kemnebi and the others. “The Alliance thanks you once again for your service,” he called from the other room. “Your contribution will not be forgotten.”
Gabriel jumped to his feet as he saw the wall begin rotating shut. But before he could reach it, Kemnebi gave the blocks of stone a huge shove—and kicked the two rucksacks out of the way. The wall slammed closed with a sound like a kettle drum booming.
Gabriel raced to the wall and began hammering against it with his fists. He pushed at it, kicked it. Nothing. It was locked firmly in place.
“Hey, Arif,” he shouted, “why don’t you pick up some treasure on the way out?”
He listened for the sound of a spear being triggered, but heard nothing. He wasn’t sure he would—with the wall as thick as it was, they probably hadn’t heard him shouting, either.
He returned to where Sammi stood, in the center of the room.
Was her flashlight dimmer than it had been? It was probably just an illusion, he knew; but before much longer it wouldn’t be. Darkness would come, and then thirst, and hunger, all steps along the path to becoming the two freshest skeletons on the chamber floor.
“I’m sorry, Sammi,” Gabriel said. “I wish I hadn’t dragged you into this.”
“You didn’t drag me anywhere. I made up my own mind every step of the way.” She laughed ruefully. “I wish I hadn’t come, but that doesn’t make it your fault.”
She began walking around the perimeter of the room, peering at each wall, then examining the floor, then looking up at the ceiling. She searched around the base of the cage and the track on which the pedestal had swung.
“What are you doing?” Gabriel said.
“What I do best,” she said. “Finding a way out.”
“We know the way out,” he said. “It’s the way we came in.”
“We know one way out. Since that way is no longer available to us, I am finding another.”
“Here’s the other,” Gabriel said, and pulled the compact pickax out of one of the rucksacks Kemnebi had kicked out of the way of the closing door. “It may take a while, but—”
“It’ll go faster if you bring that over here,” Sammi said.
She’d reached into the cage and pulled out the rotting fragments of cloth on which the Second Stone had rested. Pushing down on the bottom of the cage showed some give in the surface, like the bottom of a wrestling ring or a gymnastics mat. It wasn’t solid stone.
“Well, now, that’s interesting,” Gabriel said.
“Isn’t it?”
Gabriel leaned into the cage and started working at the bottom surface with the point of the ax. It was slow going, but after working through a layer of stone and a layer of some sort of dense batting below, he found what seemed to be a metal panel. The edges of the panel extended a good two inches beyond the stone in which the cage’s bars were embedded, but by prying with the ax and using the handle as a lever—
The center of the panel bowed and bent, and then the edge came free.
Gabriel heaved, bending the metal farther back.
Beneath it, darkness beckoned.
Gabriel shined his light down, revealing a set of narrow stone rungs carved into the rock.
“How did you know . . . ? What made you think there might be something under the cage?”
“Two reasons,” Sammi said. “First, there had to be some other room connected to this one—if nothing else, a place where the mechanism for generating and propelling the poison gas was located. Perhaps also a back door through which the Corsicans could keep an eye on the Stone without having to navigate the three traps themselves.”
“And the second reason?”
“My father was a magician, Gabriel. He used plenty of cages. He escaped from them. He taught me to escape from them. One thing I learned was, if you ever see a cage? There’s a good chance there’s something hidden under it.”
Chapter 24
Gabriel went down first. The crude ladder carved into the wall led to a chamber of roughly the same dimensions as the room above except that it was half the height. Gabriel crouched and shined his light up at the low ceiling. There was a rats’ nest of narrow metal pipes, one connected to each hole in the floor above, each tube winding its way back to a central unit that looked like an enormous cast-iron pot-bellied stove. The ceiling was reinforced by wooden beams, after the fashion of a mine shaft, and the air stank of sulfur, like a room in which a thousand matches had been struck.
Next to the foot of the ladder, Gabriel’s flashlight revealed a narrow tunnel leading off into the darkness. He called for Sammi to come.
The tunnel had a different smell, but no less unpleasant: it was dank and smelled of mildew and rot. And at every turn there were spiderwebs. Gabriel cut through them with the blade of the ax. Sammi shuddered as the torn edges of one brushed her cheek.
“So many webs,” she said.
“We’re underground,” Gabriel said. “It’s where spiders like to live.”
“Don’t tell me that,” she said.
“They’re generally harmless,” Gabriel said. “If you don’t bother them.” He brushed away another web that stretched from top to bottom in the narrow tunnel. In the beam of their lights, a few dozen tiny spiders scattered.
“Is it normal for there to be that many?”
“They’re babies,” Gabriel said. “Probably freshly hatched.” He swung the flashlight around from wall to wall. Another few dozen were on either wall. “Nothing to worry about.” Then he swung the light up.
The underside of the tunnel’s roof was a solid mass of crawling spiders, a herd of thousands—maybe tens of thousands—crawling quickly along the ceiling over their heads. They were much larger than the babies. Many were the size of quarters, some as big as half-dollars. They were moving in a way that reminded Gabriel of fire ants, crawling over one another in a desperate chaotic frenzy. And where the light struck them—
They began to drop.
Sammi screamed.
Even Gabriel emitted a startled cry and began slapping at his chest to brush them off.
But they kept coming. They were swarming the tunnel walls, ceiling, and floor.
Gabriel pushed Sammi ahead of him. “Run,” he said through clenched teeth; and they did, batting at their clothes and hair as they went, frantically brushing the spiders away.
The tunnel forked and the branch they took began sloping upward as they ran. The angle increased until they were almost climbing. It took a tremendous amount of strength in their legs to keep ascending at this pace—but if they’d needed an extra incentive, they had one, as some of the spiders had by now worked themselves inside their clothes and begun biting.
Sammi yelped with pain. Gabriel cursed and slapped at his skin.
They continued to climb, as fast as they were able. Gabriel lost track of how far they’d gone; it took him by surprise when they suddenly fetched up against the end of the tunnel. A dead end, sloping directly upward. Packed earth above their heads.
Gabriel struck at the barrier with the pickax. Dirt and rocks crumbled down, covering them. But the material was soft and easy to break through. Sammi continued to brush the spiders off her body and his while Gabriel dug vertically, climbing on the accumulated dirt as it piled up.
A large clod of earth came down, revealing a
n open hole—and sunlight.
He enlarged the hole with two more swings of the ax, then lifted Sammi bodily out of the hole. He followed and ripped off his shirt, panting from exertion and pain. She’d done the same, and he saw that her chest and back were covered with painful-looking welts and bites. The bugs they’d brought up with them dropped to the ground and fled back to the darkness of the hole.
“Madam! Are you all right?”
Gabriel turned to see the source of the voice—a middle-aged British matron in sandals and sunglasses, with a compact digital camera dangling from a strap around her wrist. A man stood beside her, goggling at Sammi, who grabbed up her shirt and held it in front of her.
“Yes . . . yes, I’m all right,” Sammi said, wincing. “Thank you.”
“Henry! Don’t stare!” The man stopped goggling, though he continued to sneak glances out of the corner of his eye.
Gabriel looked around. They were in the middle of the circle of menhirs—the Western Monument—at Filitosa.
“You were so right, sweetie,” he said, sweeping one arm around Sammi’s shoulders, “we were supposed to turn left. You two be careful—you do not want to get separated from your tour group.”
“Oh, dear,” the woman said as Gabriel led Sammi out of the circle. “Did you hear that, Henry?”
The staff at the Repository Museum dug out a first aid kit and used up two tubes of hydrocortisone cream on their bites. The spiders here were not poisonous, the agent assigned to them assured Gabriel. The bites would itch and be bothersome for a few days, but . . .
Where, the agent wanted to know, had they come across such a large nest of spiders?
Gabriel waved his hands and made up an answer that would send them off in the wrong direction entirely. Let them fumigate some other part of the grounds. Couldn’t hurt.
“Listen,” Gabriel said, “can I use your phone?”
“Of course,” the agent said. “Local call or long distance?”
“Long distance. New York.”
The agent handed over a cordless handset and pushed two buttons on it. The dial tone started buzzing.
Gabriel dialed the Foundation.
“Gabriel!” Michael said. “Where have you been? I’ve been trying to—”
“Not now, Michael. I can’t talk. I’ll tell you more when I can.” He glanced over at the museum agent. She was looking the other way, but it was clear she was still listening. “The object we discussed . . . it’s not there anymore. It’s on its way back to Amun and his crew.”
“In Marrakesh?” Michael said.
“Presumably.”
“I’ll try to reach Arif again—”
“You might not want to do that,” Gabriel said. “He’s the one who took it.”
Michael was silent. “Arif?”
“Yes,” Gabriel said. “Arif. And if you want some even better news, he says Lucy’s about to become a pharaoh’s bride.”
“Gabriel . . . you’ve got to do something.”
“I will. I just need you to do something for me first.”
“Anything.”
“Have Charlie ready to fly at Ajaccio in thirty minutes. Can you do that?”
“Of course.”
“And Michael?”
“Yes?”
“Tell him this one time it’s okay to take any risks he wants.”
Chapter 25
It was after midnight. The streets of Marrakesh were dark and empty, although there were candles flickering in some windows, the illumination of a few modern street lamps, and the light of stars in the moonless sky to make their surroundings visible. As in all cities, a few homeless people were curled up in doorways and alcoves, trying to steal an hour or two of sleep. No one else was on the street at this hour.
From the outside, the building that housed the Alliance of the Pharaohs was darker than most—the windows had been boarded up again, and to a casual observer it would have looked completely deserted. But with his ear pressed to the planks nailed over the doorway, Gabriel could hear sounds of movement inside.
Well, it had been too much to hope that they’d all have been asleep. But at least they probably wouldn’t be going in and out of the building too much at one AM.
He led Sammi into the dormant square, where shuttered stands stood darkly against the blue-black sky, looming like the menhirs in Corsica. They found their way silently to the back entrance of Nizan’s shop. One light was burning inside, and through a half-closed set of blinds they could see Nizan himself, seated at a desk, poring over a ledger.
Gabriel rechecked his Colt unnecessarily; it was fully loaded with six rounds and he had plenty of extras in a pouch on his belt. Sammi was armed as well, having obtained a Browning 9mm semi-automatic from Charlie. It was Foundation property, but the message from Michael seemed to have gotten across. Charlie had given her the gun and two spare magazines and showed her how to load them.
“Stick to the plan,” Gabriel said. “You stay on the ground floor and watch the tunnel entrance. I’ll head upstairs. Lucy’s the first priority. When I’ve got her, I’ll bring her down and you can get her the hell out of there.”
“I wish you’d come with us.”
“If I don’t take care of the Alliance now, we’ll all be watching over our shoulders for them for the rest of our lives. Which may not be very long.”
“I know,” Sammi said. “But I hate leaving you alone in there.”
“Well, you don’t have to worry about that,” Gabriel said. “The last thing I’ll be is alone.”
The couple crept toward Nizan’s. Keeping their backs to the wall and pistols in hand, they slipped in through the shop’s rear door.
Nizan’s eyes widened when he looked up and saw them. Gabriel’s Colt jabbed into his neck before he could set off any alarm.
“Not a sound,” Gabriel ordered.
Sammi picked up a spool of cord used to tie carpet rolls and swiftly bound Nizan’s wrists and ankles, her knots expert and tight. There’d be no working his way loose from these knots; even a seasoned escape artist would have had difficulty slipping them. Gabriel fashioned a gag out of a small strip of carpet and deposited Nizan on the washroom floor, then pushed two heavy rolls of carpet in front of the door so it couldn’t be opened.
With Nizan secured, they walked to the back room where the trap door was located. Gabriel threw back the carpet and dragged the door open. They went down the steps and into the tunnel, moving quickly. They reached the other building’s basement in less than two minutes. Gabriel cocked his head to listen at the foot of the stairs. There were no sounds from above. He climbed the steps and slowly raised the door an inch or two. A glance told him no one was in the pantry—but now he did hear voices, from the next room over.
Gabriel mouthed the word, “Quiet,” and gestured for Sammi to follow. They climbed out of the tunnel, taking care to make no sound and leaving the trap door open for a quick retreat.
Gabriel peered around a corner into the living room, then jerked back. Kemnebi was standing there, his broad back to Gabriel, lecturing two other Alliance men in Arabic. One of the other men said something back in what sounded to Gabriel like an apologetic tone. Kemnebi responded with no sympathy in his voice at all. Gabriel heard footsteps receding as the men walked out of the room.
He gestured to Sammi to remain by the door, and stepped into the living room.
Where he walked right into Kemnebi.
The other men had gone—but not him.
Kemnebi was startled, but just for a moment. He reacted with lightning speed, seizing Gabriel’s gun hand before he could pull the trigger of his Colt. Gabriel punched him as hard as he could with his other hand, landing a blow to Kemnebi’s solar plexus that would have felled most men. Kemnebi felt it—Gabriel could see it in his reaction—but he shook it off and kept squeezing Gabriel’s hand mercilessly.
Gabriel swung a knee up between Kemnebi’s legs, and that had more of an effect. The big man stumbled a few steps backward and be
nt over, struggling to catch his breath. Gabriel took the opportunity to deliver a second blow, this one a roundhouse to the side of his head. Kemnebi fell against a table, tipping it over and knocking all its contents to the ground.
Gabriel saw Sammi peer out from the pantry, a look of concern on her face. From upstairs came the sound of running footsteps.
“So much for stealth,” Gabriel said.
Sammi whipped out the Browning and took a bead on Kemnebi’s head. “Don’t move.”
“I’m going upstairs,” Gabriel said. “Can you handle him?”
“Yes,” she said, and pulled the trigger. A spray of blood stained the wall. Kemnebi slumped to the ground, dead.
“Jesus,” Gabriel said. “Remind me never to make you mad.”
“They’re not playing around,” Sammi said. “We can’t either.” But her hands were shaking.
Three men in three days. Gabriel tried to push the thought out of his mind. There’d be time for that sort of thinking later. Or there wouldn’t, if he let himself be distracted by it now.
He sprinted to the staircase and took the steps two at a time. One of the guards met him coming down as he and Gabriel both reached the first landing. The guard delivered a haymaker to Gabriel’s chin, which stunned Gabriel for a moment, but he dropped into a defensive crouch and shook off the blow. As the man came in for a second try, Gabriel blocked the punch with his forearm and gave one right back, slamming his knuckles into the man’s temple. The man collapsed against the staircase banister, which snapped under his weight. He fell screaming to the floor below.
Another guard appeared on the landing, but a pair of bullets from Gabriel’s Colt sent him scurrying back upstairs. Gabriel followed, shooting one more time, and then turned off at the landing for the third floor. He raced down the hall to Lucy’s room. It was shut and locked. He banged loudly on the wood with his fist. “Lucy? You in there?”
“Gabriel?” She didn’t sound normal.