The hole was just big enough for a person to crawl through. Its circumference was etched with gouges.
“Someone spent years creating this opportunity,” Sarah said. “I wonder if she was able to take advantage of it.”
John poked his head through the hole and shined his flashlight around. What he found on the other side was a spacious pipe; a long, cylindrical passageway made of carefully cut and fitted stones. Reemerging, he said, “It looks like some kind of canal or aqueduct.”
“Are you sure it’s not a sewer?” David asked.
John poked his head in again and sniffed. “Pretty sure; it doesn’t smell like shit.”
They each climbed through and stood on the dry, curved floor, their flashlights criss-crossing like searchlights, making elliptical pools on the polished stones.
“What the hell is this place?” David asked.
“I don’t know,” John answered. “But whatever it is, the Romans built it.”
“How can you tell?”
“Look.” He pointed at a brick on the wall, one that had been chiseled with letters and Roman numerals.
“What does it say?”
“It’s too faint to read, at least in this light. But I know Romans conquered Germany shortly after the death of Christ. And I know they quarried and cut stone from glacial deposits while they were here. Sarah, do you remember reading anything about Roman aqueducts in Rheinland-Pfalz?”
She shook her head. “Some roads have been identified in this area, and a defensive wall or two, but no mention of aqueducts, cisterns, or other water-related technology.”
“Then this is probably an important archeological find.”
“A find for someone else to find,” David said. “We’ve got higher priorities.”
From the other side of the hole, from far down the corridor, came the racket of scuffing shoes and excited voices.
“They’ll be here any second,” John said.
Sarah held a finger to her lips. “Shh!”
Above the approaching din, John could just hear the soft roar of running water.
“That would be the river,” David said. “We should be right next to it.”
Although Pfeffer could make out three chambers ahead of him, only one of them was lit. The flickering inside suggested candlelight. He slowed down, and a pair of men right behind him collided with his back.
Whoever had shot the dead man upstairs was still on the loose. And that person had either escaped with the stones or was still down here, looking for them. The former would mean Pfeffer had lost the race. The latter would mean an armed killer was now one of the obstacles. Pfeffer didn’t know which he preferred, but in either case, there was no reason to hurry. He held up his free hand to slow the others, then made sweeping, up-and-down motions with his arm to quiet them.
Once inside the illuminated chamber, he could hardly believe his eyes. The candles, welded to the tops of curved monoliths, appeared to have been burning for centuries. Of course that couldn’t have been the case; someone had to have just lit them, probably in the last hour. The walls and ceiling were covered with pagan images. Scattered in disarray on the floor were what looked like parts of a human skeleton, as well as clay amphorae with Michelangelo signets engraved on their bellies.
And then there was the prostrate woman, no doubt also dead. She was lying crumpled next to a low table that was covered with dust and clay fragments. On the floor next to her head was a crude bell.
The room quickly filled with townspeople who speculated wildly on what had happened.
“Someone obviously clobbered her with the bell.”
“No, the rope broke—look at how weak it is—and the bell fell on her head.”
“So she must have been the one ringing it. But why?”
“Why else? To call the other witches!”
Pfeffer spied the broken tile in the far wall and caught his breath. He looked at the clay fragments on the table and suddenly understood their meaning.
The prostrate woman abruptly sat up and rubbed her head.
“Look,” someone said, “she’s awake!”
The mound of rocks and hand-cut bricks that blocked the aqueduct was exactly what John’s flashlight had forecast from 100 meters away: the pipe had collapsed sometime in the past and the route was impassable. John nevertheless kicked a few bricks aside and tried to dislodge a boulder. The effort was pointless: there was no telling how deep the collapse extended; they would have to look for a way out in the other direction.
And going in the other direction meant passing the chambers, chambers now filled with angry townspeople.
“Why don’t we just go back the way we came?” David asked. “Into the bedroom, up the corridor, and out through the church? Just walk out like we have every right to do so? What have we got to lose?”
“We’re not residents of this town,” John answered, “and we don’t know how the residents will react when they see us climbing back through that hole. We have no business being down here. I’m not willing to take the chance.”
Sarah tapped the amphora cradled in her arm. “And we still have everything to lose.”
John turned and began trudging back down the pipe. He wondered how much power was left in his flashlight batteries. He wondered how they were going to get past the hole through which they had entered the aqueduct, a hole they had not bothered to cover after climbing through.
He wondered how, of all places on earth and all times in history, he’d ended up here and now.
It was all so undignified, Blumenfeld thought. She woke to find herself lying on a gritty floor, her skirt hoisted above her knees, part of it inexplicably ripped off, her nylons full of runs. A massive pain throbbing in her head.
Wide-eyed peasants encircling her.
“Help me up,” she said.
But the peasants just stood there, watching. Some wore pajamas. Some held candles they had removed from the monoliths. Most were armed with sticks and bats.
All of them stared. With that hollow gape, that primeval ogle, that dim countenance, the result of three centuries of inbreeding and superstition.
“Help me up.” She raised her arms.
A small, round-shouldered man pointed a shaky finger at the amethyst pendant hanging from her neck. “What the devil is that?”
Others inched closer. “Oh my God,” one said, “Erika was wearing one just like it.”
Blumenfeld groped around on the floor for her pistol but couldn’t find it. Strong arms grabbed her roughly and lifted her to a standing position. She swayed with dizziness. A thin young man forced his way to the front of the mob and stared at her chest in anguished horror. “That’s my daughter’s pendant!”
One of the townsmen tore the pendant from Blumenfeld’s neck and pushed her. Her feet made little hops and shuffles as she struggled to regain her balance. Someone behind her shoved her, and she fell against the altar.
She thought about trying to outrun them, and would have made an attempt if she weren’t wearing heels. And if she were in decent shape. And if there were some place, any place, to run.
The gun. Where’s the damn gun?
The townsmen clamped onto her arms and legs. She resisted by kicking, jerking, scratching at everyone within reach. But they were too powerful for her. They pushed her through the chamber entrance, then dragged her up the long corridor. Her knees scraped against the rock floor as she labored, and mostly failed, to stay on her feet. Blood trickled into her stockings, now hanging in tatters from her calves.
When one of the vigilantes asked where they were going, another reminded him there was a lamppost above the statue of the miner boy in the Marktplatz.
Another recalled that the lamppost was in the shape of a scaffold, with a sturdy pole jutting out like a branch from the main trunk.
Yet another was sure he had a coil of rope in his garage.
It was not so much the pain, or even her impending death, that Blumenfeld found herself regretting most. It was
the utterly undignified way it was all going to happen.
THIRTY-SIX
JOHN COULDN’T HELP MARVELING at the workmanship of the aqueduct, even as his mind raced to find a way out of it. The individual stones had been hand-cut to fit each adjacent one; the project must have employed many craftsmen and required years of effort. He swung his flashlight beam in broad arcs, admiring the symmetry and structural elegance.
David, he noticed, was more concerned with the symmetry and structural elegance of the pot Sarah was holding.
“Do you want me to carry that for you?” David asked.
“No, I’m fine, thanks.”
“It must be getting heavy.”
“When one arm gets tired, I shift it to the other.”
“But the other was grazed with a bullet.”
“Trust me, David, I’m fine.”
“Well, just let me know.”
“Thanks, I will.”
John held up his hand to hush them; they were approaching the hole in the bedroom wall. He aimed his flashlight down the aqueduct and abruptly came to a halt.
His flashlight revealed the figure of a man.
The man was short and stout, with a gut that spilled over his belt and a bulbous nose streaked with veins. John recognized him from mass; he had sat one pew back and had watched people rather than sunbeams. The man held a flashlight in one hand, but it was turned off. In the other hand was a snub-nose .38 revolver. It was aimed at John’s face.
Not knowing what else to say, John said, “Guten Abend.”
The man nodded. “Guten Abend.” Under different circumstances, the two might have shaken hands.
Out of the corner of his eye, John saw David’s right hand move toward his belt, where he had tucked the .45. But Sarah grabbed his arm and stopped him.
The man put his flashlight away and reached into his shirt pocket, removing something metallic. John shined his light on the object. It was a badge.
“Lower your flashlight,” the man said to John in German.
John did. “Sir, we’ll leave peacefully. We don’t want to cause any trouble.”
“Tell your girlfriend to put the pot on the ground.”
“It’s just a pot. We’ll reimburse the church its value. We have no issues with you.”
“Put the pot on the ground.”
“Sarah, he’s a cop, and he wants the pot. Set it on the ground next to your feet.”
“No!” David cried out. He stepped in front of Sarah.
The cop cocked his revolver. “Tell your friend to get out of the way.”
“He means business, David.”
“So do I. After all we’ve been through, I’m not just going to hand the stones over to some fat man in a tunnel.”
The fat man in the tunnel pointed his revolver slightly to the left of David’s head and fired. The sharp crack startled the three; John and David crouched and covered their heads with their arms.
Sarah remained standing upright. She calmly stepped around David and handed the pot to the cop.
“No!” David tried to stop her, but John grabbed and held him.
The cop accepted the pot with his free hand. He pointed down the aqueduct and said to John, “Keep going the way you were going. Don’t look back.” Then, still aiming his revolver at them, he climbed back through the hole into the bedroom chamber.
David tried to follow him, but John continued to hold him.
“How could you just give the thing up?” David yelled at Sarah. “Have you learned nothing at all in our time together?”
“David, he was going to shoot us. Or at least arrest us. It’s better to be alive and not have the stones than dead and not have the stones.”
“You gave them up too easily! What the hell’s the matter with you?”
“I value my life more than the stones.”
“Well, I value the stones more than your life, so I’m going after them.” He tried to break free from John’s grasp, but now Sarah held onto him as well.
“David, we’re not going to retrieve the stones by getting into a gunfight with a police officer,” John said. “Let’s move on and find another way out—before others get the idea to investigate this pipe.”
He and Sarah held David between them and pulled him down the aqueduct.
“But the stones!” David screamed. “The stones!”
Pfeffer couldn’t believe his luck. Taking the lost Tavernier stones from the young Americans had been like mugging a trio of quadriplegics. His tactic had been sound from the beginning: wait until someone found the treasure, then simply affect a transfer of ownership.
As he was leaving the bedroom chamber, several townsmen came running up, claiming they’d heard a gunshot. Pfeffer pointed at the hole in the wall. “More witches,” he said.
He hurried up the corridor, ready to show either his badge or his gun, whichever would seem appropriate to the occasion. No one challenged him. He knew he should put off opening the pot until he returned to his pension, but he didn’t want to wait that long. When he had climbed back up to the nave, he assessed the scene. Townspeople, including children, were milling around the church, acting as though the night’s events were part of a circus or carnival. He looked up at the balcony and saw that it was empty. So that’s where he went, choosing an out-of-the-way seat near the wishing well.
The lost Tavernier stones!
Cradling the amphora in his lap, he looked around to make sure no one was watching. It occurred to him once more that if he kept the stones, he was just as guilty as everyone else trying to steal them. The thought occurred to him, then it finished occurring to him. He lifted the clay lid.
The powerful aroma of red wine greeted him.
That’s natural, he thought. Wine had filled the amphora for three centuries before rocks took their place. He delicately inserted his hand and was surprised when his fingertips touched liquid.
They’d left the wine in the pot when they put the stones in? But why?
He sank his hand deeper until his fingers touched bottom. No stones.
He closed his eyes.
He reached for his revolver and stood up to return to the aqueduct, then paused and laughed. He sat back down. He shook his head and laughed again. He laughed at the irony of seeking one thing, finding another, and discovering that the second was the prize after all.
He laughed and laughed.
Zimmerman had watched as the old woman was dragged off. He’d stood in the corner of the main chamber, out of sight, and waited there until the mob settled down and thinned out. Then he’d conducted a systematic investigation of the room.
The clay shards on the altar were the only objects not tangled with cobwebs or blanketed with dust. The pot they once comprised had recently been broken. Since the only opportunity to do so in the last few hundred years was during the last few minutes, it was safe to assume the pot had contained the lost Tavernier stones.
It took a bit longer for Zimmerman to realize the pot had been hidden in the wall; that was the reason the tile was broken. He ran his finger around the edge of the hole, then reached inside, closed his fist upon the empty space, and pretended it grasped the treasure he had sought all his life.
In retrospect, the path had been simple: break a door, break a lid, break a tile. Take home the lost Tavernier stones. One in particular.
The Ahmadabad diamond was still nearby. Since it didn’t travel back up the steps to the church, it must have left the chambers by another route.
Zimmerman didn’t take long to find it.
Meanwhile, John arrived at the lower end of the aqueduct ahead of David and Sarah and discovered that it did indeed branch into the sewer system.
“Now it smells like shit,” he said.
The three entered a spacious cement drainage pipe and stepped gingerly over a shallow stream of sewage. Only a few yards down the pipe was a ladder leading up to a manhole cover. From the noise being made a few feet above them, John guessed they were under the Marktplatz.
At the base of the ladder, David said to Sarah, “Here, let me have your purse. I’ll help you climb up.”
Sarah hesitated, and the two stood there, eyeing each other. John stepped onto the first rung and asked, “What is it? What’s the matter?”
Suddenly David and Sarah pulled their guns, holding them outstretched at arm’s length and aimed at each other’s heads.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” John said. “What now?”
“Where did you get that gun?” David demanded.
“Same place you got yours; I found it on the floor, Mister Let-Me-Have-Your-Purse. As though you really want to help me up the ladder.”
“Why are you aiming it at my head?”
“Because you’re aiming at mine!” Sarah cried. “And I’ve had way too many guns pointed at me today already.”
“But you pulled yours first.”
“No, you did.”
David stepped closer. “So. Are you going to shoot, or what?”
“Only if you do.”
“What makes you think I intend to?”
“To get the stones.”
“Ah, so they are in your purse!”
“Of course they are. What did you think? That I would give them to Columbo?”
“You didn’t know Columbo was in the picture,” David said. “You hid the stones on your person to steal them from us. To keep them for yourself.”
“Actually, I put them in my purse, rather than the pot you gave me, to prevent you from stealing them from us.”
“You think I would do that?”
“Well, wouldn’t you make off with them if you could?”
“That’s not the point. The point is whether you think it of me.”
“Well, shit, David. If you would do it, why shouldn’t I think it?”
“Because I thought you loved me.”
His .45 revolver was still aimed at her forehead. The silencer of her 9mm was inches from the tip of his nose.
“The fact that I love you doesn’t change the fact that you’re a thief. It doesn’t mean I can trust you.”
The Tavernier Stones: A Novel Page 28