by Nigel Seed
“I see, tell me the code word again.”
“Cromwell.”
“Right then, if you have finished your tea I need your help with something. Bring the mugs with you and follow me.”
They followed the vicar into the vestry again. He took the mugs from them and placed them carefully in a small sink, they had not noticed before, behind a curtain. He pointed at the large and beautifully carved oak wall cupboard that housed the parish records.
“If you could pull that a couple of feet from the wall I’ll show you something interesting about this church.”
The three engineers heaved the heavy cupboard away from the wall. Behind it there was a wall of blank stones that had obviously been there since the church was built. The vicar squeezed into the gap between the wall and the cupboard.
“Now, let me see if I can remember this,” he said, as he placed his hands on two stones, which were separated by about half a meter of other unremarkable stones.
He pressed and nothing happened. He adjusted his position and pressed again, the strain showing in his flushed face. The stones sank into the wall with a scraping sound, followed by a heavy clunk and a louder scraping noise, as the wall moved back a couple of inches on one side and a crack opened at the other.
“There you are, gentlemen, the door to Cromwell. It hinges to the left, if you push on the right hand side.”
He moved out of the way, to let the others move in.
“Ivan, I think this one is yours,” said Jim. “Same rules as before, move slowly and check everywhere. We don’t want any of the surprises we’ve found before.”
Ivan moved forward and pressed on the right hand side, of the newly revealed door. It swung grudgingly open with a grating of stone on stone. Ivan continued pushing until the door had swung back as far as it was able to go. He peered inside, to find a narrow opening with stone stairs leading down under the main church.
“It looks bloody tight in here, but at least it looks properly built.”
The vicar leaned around the oak cupboard and offered Ivan a flashlight he had retrieved from one of the drawers. Ivan took it and peered once again into the opening.
He sat back on his heels. “Thanks Padre, that’s going to help. It really is dark in there. Right then, if I yell come after me, otherwise stay out of the way in case I have to get out in a hurry.”
He squeezed his wide shoulders around the turn and started down the narrow stone staircase. He took one step at a time, checking carefully for trip wires or anything else that might trigger a trap. Fourteen steps down, he found himself at the bottom of the staircase in a small foyer, facing a heavy wooden door with a black, iron latch. The latch was stiff with age, but gave in to the force of Ivan’s hand and clunked upwards. He pressed gently against the door and with a protest of rusty hinges, it swung slowly inwards. There were no cables or wires, attached to the door to set off any devices. As far as he could tell the floor was solid. He stepped through.
As Ivan made his slow way down the narrow passage, Jim turned to the vicar.
“So how did you become a Guardian?”
“Guardian? What’s that?”
“You don’t know what’s down there, do you?”
“No idea. When I took over this parish the retiring priest sat me down and made me promise that if anyone ever came here, with the password Cromwell, I was to open that door for them. He made me promise that I would never set foot on those stairs and then he showed me which stones to press. That’s the first time that cupboard has moved away from the wall in all my time here.”
Jim wondered what had happened to the group over the years that had left this cache with no Guardians. They would probably never know who to thank for their faithful service. Sighing, he stood and returned to the head of the hidden staircase. He peered around the corner and looked down to where Ivan had disappeared, into the gloom. He could just see a glow from the flashlight moving slowly.
“Ivan! Are you OK down there?”
“Fine boss! Just checking for any surprise packages from the old boys!”
Jim looked around the vestry of the small church. It was not ancient and would probably have raised little interest from an invading army. He shook his head. He had to admire the men of the Auxiliary Units. They had proven to be highly adept at hiding their precious charge.
Ivan reappeared, covered in dust and sweating.
“It’s bloody stuffy down there. I don’t think that door has been opened in a very long time. Just came up for a breather and to let some air get down there.”
“What have you found so far?”
“Not much yet. At the bottom of the stairs is a small room with a door in the left hand wall. I got that open without much trouble and it leads into another passage. This one is a bit longer though still narrow and the floor slopes down gently. At the far end there is another old wooden door and opening that is my next step.”
“Obviously there have been no booby traps, up to now, but don’t get complacent, eh?”
“And, Ivan,” said Geordie, with a big grin, “check the corners.”
“I wouldn’t forget that one. But as you say, boss, so far nothing. I wonder if this group relied on concealment more than the others? And maybe they didn’t want to damage this church with explosives?”
“Maybe, but don’t rely on that. These guys have proven to be pretty ruthless in guarding the material so far.”
Ivan nodded and went across to the small sink behind the curtain. He drank a mug of cold water and swilled his face to clear the dust.
“Time I got back to work,” he said, stepping back to the oak cupboard and vanishing behind it. They could hear him grunting slightly as he eased his large frame through the entry door and onto the staircase.
Chapter 48
Down in the crypt, Ivan made his way carefully back to the second wooden door, still checking to make sure he had not missed any hidden surprises. His break up the stairs had allowed the air to freshen, but not much. It still smelled musty and old. He stood in front of the door and ran his flashlight beam around the edges. He checked the heavy metal latch and then got down on his knees to look under the door. Seeing nothing worrying, he stood again and operated the latch mechanism. Once again, the heavy metal was reluctant to move after so many years, but eventually gave in to the force that the Welshman applied.
Gently, very gently, he swung the door inwards, checking for any sign of a trap. With the door now fully open, he checked again before stepping through into yet another passageway. With his nerves tingling, he moved forward. If he had not been on edge and anticipating trouble, he might not have felt the slight movement as the stone slab beneath his boot dropped a little as he stepped on to it.
Seeing that the passageway before him had a bend in it, he flung himself forward and dodged around the corner, expecting the blast of a grenade followed by the flying metal fragments at any second. Turning the corner, he flattened himself against the wall and waited for the explosion. There was nothing. He slowly straightened up and dared to breathe again before muttering some choice swear words, under his breath.
As he turned to look at the part of the passage he was now in, he heard the unmistakeable sound of a moving stone grinding against another. He nervously looked back in time to see a large block of stone crash down from the ceiling of the passage. Had he still been there he would have been crushed, if the mechanism of the stone trap had not deteriorated over time. He did not know what had slowed the stone’s fall, but he was mightily relieved that it had.
As the stone dust cleared he could see that the passage was comprehensively blocked by the thick blade of stone that had dropped. There was a gap at the top, to be sure, but nowhere near wide enough for him to wriggle through. He had never been claustrophobic, but trapped in this small space, he was beginning to reconsider that stance.
Rather than stand around bemoaning his fate, Ivan decided to do something useful. He turned back to consider the dogleg passage he had shelt
ered in. Once again he was facing a heavy wooden door with rusty iron fittings, that had once been painted black. He pressed the latch mechanism down and forced the old door open with his shoulder. It moved reluctantly until it was wide enough for him to slip past. As he stepped into the gap he heard Geordie’s voice behind him.
“Ivan! Are you OK?”
“Yes, I’m fine. The block missed me. All I have is a mouthful of granite dust.”
“Can you get back out? It looks pretty tight from this side.”
“No chance. You’ll need to break it down. In the interim I’m going to carry on and see what else we have down here.”
“OK, I’ll see if I can scare up a sledgehammer or something. Don’t go away, will you?”
“Smartarse!”
Ivan heard Geordie chuckle as he moved back towards the vestry, then he carried on through the doorway. He stopped inside and used his flashlight to check for any other nasty surprises. Seeing nothing, he moved gingerly forward, paying close attention to the feel of the floor beneath his feet. Nothing moved as he reached yet another turn in the narrow, stone lined passage.
He peered around the corner and in the beam from his flashlight he could see a pile of wooden boxes of the type used to transport the gold. He could see that a couple of them had deteriorated over the years and fragments of wood lay on the floor. The larger boxes that might contain the artworks were nowhere in sight. They would have been difficult to maneuver through the passage he had traveled, if they were of any significant weight. He stepped forwards.
The boxes were stacked to the low ceiling. He shone his light and looked inside one that the end had fallen off. He could see the dull yellow glow of the gold reflected back at him. He looked around the storage room. It was a dead end. He was stuck in here until the other two smashed the granite blockage out of the way behind him. With nothing else to do he slid down the rough wall to sit on the floor to wait. He shone the flashlight around the small crates, considering how best to move them through the awkward passageway. Clearly the box handles could not be relied on.
He was still considering options when he spotted the slight anomaly in the dressed stone at the edge of his flashlight beam. He stood up stared at the ceiling in the blind end of the passage. Reaching up, he caught his fingers in the slight inconsistency and pulled out a piece of stone. Beneath it he could see a rusty metal ring dangling from a short length of cable that vanished into a crevice in the stonework. He pulled it and was rewarded by a square slab of stone popping upwards by about a finger width. He put the flashlight down on the gold stack, then pushed up on the slab with both hands.
As the stone slab rose slowly he could see the roof beams of the church above him and a wooden pew, to the side. Placing one foot on a gold box, he pushed himself up. Luckily he had chosen a sound one and his head and shoulders emerged in to the church between two pews. He scrambled out and looked around. He was alone, but could hear voices from the vestry. Walking quietly along the threadbare carpet of the main aisle, he approached the vestry door and peeped in.
Geordie and Jim sat with their backs against the wall while the vicar sat on the straight-backed wooden chair. They were planning how to get him out of the tomb that had appeared and trapped him.
“I suppose explosives would do the job, but the damage to the church would be a worry,” said the vicar.
Geordie coughed. “A more immediate worry would be the damage done to Ivan in that enclosed space. The pressure wave would certainly rupture his eardrums and might even rupture his lungs. Either way, he would not be a happy camper.”
“A pneumatic power tool might do the job, but it would take a lot of time to get the equipment here and to set it up,” said Jim, “plus the noise and dust in that enclosed space would be fairly grim for Ivan.”
“So we are back to muscle and a fourteen pound sledge hammer to break up the granite. We can probably get one through the gap to Ivan so we could be working from two sides, but it’s still a bloody long job and not easy to get a swing in that enclosed space.”
Ivan said quietly, “Or we could rub a magic lantern and create another exit for him to climb out of.”
The three men spun towards the door. Ivan was gratified to see all three jaws drop open. Jim was the first to recover and he scrambled to his feet. He gripped Ivan’s shoulders. “I should have known you’d pull some kind of stunt. How the hell did you get out?”
“Nice to see you too, boss. Glad to see you were worried about me. Any chance of another mug of that tea, vicar? My throat’s coated in granite dust from the surprise our pals left behind.”
Geordie gripped Ivan’s arm as the vicar put the kettle on. The relief on his face obvious. “Looks like they’d been watching some old movie about the pharaoh’s tomb when they came up with falling stone doors.”
“Luckily for me it didn’t drop instantly or I would have been up a certain smelly creek without a paddle, down there.”
Jim, still smiling broadly, said, “So is there anything of interest down there? And how the hell did you get yourself out?”
“Let me get this tea down to clear my throat and I’ll show you the other entrance.” He looked at the vicar’s back, then whispered. “And yes, the gold is down there. The new door should also make it a lot easier to retrieve too.”
Chapter 49
With the pews moved out of the way for access, the clever counterweight system under the slab became obvious. Getting in and out of the gold chamber was far simpler than struggling through the narrow passage would have been. Now they were faced with the problem of retrieving the gold and keeping it secure while they did so. Geordie sat by the main door of the church with a loaded pistol in his pocket while Ivan walked up the hill, behind the village, to see if there was an Army unit in residence at Westdown Camp that could provide a truck.
Jim heaved the stone slab back into place so that the floor of the church showed no sign of being disturbed, except for the screwdriver he left in place to allow it to be opened from above. He walked outside to the churchyard to make a call on his mobile phone. As he settled down on a gravestone and opened the phone, it rang. It was Helen.
“Jim, is this a good time? I have an interesting idea for you.”
“Always a good time for you. What’s your idea?”
“You remember you told me that there might have been another vehicle at the bank that granddad has forgotten? I have been trying to get him to recall, but with no luck. I think you might be right, he has been telling that tale so long it has become fixed in his mind and he can’t go back and think about it another way.”
“Sounds possible, but how does that help?”
“I was watching a TV show this morning in the kitchen while I made lunch and they had a hypnotherapist on who was talking about getting people to revisit old memories.”
“I don’t think having your granddad bark like a dog or remember he was Cleopatra in a previous life is going to help much.”
“I’m not talking about some stage hypnotist. This is a recognized method of helping people to recall things they have suppressed. Apparently it can help in the case of major trauma. Is it worth a try?”
“Anything is worth a try if it gives me an excuse to come down and see you. How do we get hold of one of these people?”
“I’ll sort that out, I have a friend studying neurology who might help, you just tell me when you can get down here. Anyway, you need to collect that gold bar from me. Granddad was quite excited by it.”
“I’m in Tilshead, in the middle of something interesting right now. I’ll come back to you as soon as I have sorted some things out.”
“I’ll look forward to it.”
Jim closed the phone down and sat thoughtfully, on the cold stone grave marker for a few moments. Could it work? With no other clues it had to be worth a try. He pulled himself together and opened his phone again. With the team leader’s number on speed dial he was soon in touch with the SAS section that had been so much help at
their last two sites. He knew these men were effective and trustworthy plus, by using them again, he kept the secret to the minimum number of people.
Within two hours the yellow and white Augusta 109 helicopter from Hereford was landing outside Westdown Camp, on the hill overlooking the village. In the middle of a military training area, army uniform would not excite any comment, so the four men in camouflage strolled down into the village and then to the church. They wore nondescript berets rather than the distinctive ones used by the SAS, so the only sign that they were unusual was the non-standard weapons they carried.
They strolled up to the door of the church and wandered in. Geordie had been watching them approach and so swung the door wide for them to enter. Jim walked down the aisle to meet them.
The team leader spoke first. “Hello, sir. Got your laborers here again. Anything interesting for us this time? A nice nuclear booby trap perhaps?”
“Sorry, nothing so dramatic. This group relied on gravity rather than explosives for their booby traps. I’ll show you what I mean in a minute. The good news is that we will be mostly working inside the church so no cold drizzle to contend with. Plus, the vicar makes a very good mug of tea if you ask him nicely.”
“Right then, where do we start?”
“If one of your team can relieve Geordie on watch, he can give us a hand with hauling the material out of its hiding place. Ivan has arranged a truck from the camp and he will bring that in to the graveyard as soon as we are ready to start loading it. So our first job is to get the stuff out and stacked by the door. Then the truck is here for the minimum time to avoid getting the village people curious.”
Jim led the way to the slab in the church floor and helped Geordie to raise it. As he did so the vicar walked out of the vestry and along the aisle towards them. Jim straightened and looked at the slightly florid face approaching him.
“Sorry, reverend, I’m going to have to ask you to stay in the vestry for a bit while we deal with this.”