by Chad Brecher
“Quiet,” Jonas urged as he held his index finger to his lips and directed the flashlight towards the opening above them. His eyes squinted and then popped open with alarm. He shot a severe look at Ellie. “You should have stayed upstairs!”
Jonas abruptly sprang up from a crouch and darted towards the stairs. He awkwardly leapt onto the first step of the stairs and stumbled upwards towards the opening. Having sensed the danger, Ellie followed closely behind, rushed to the bottom of the staircase, and peered upwards into the crypt above. She could see the heavy stone slab slowly levitate off the pile of wood.
Jonas thrust his hand up through the opening and planted the palm of his left hand flush against the undersurface of the stone. He froze as an inquisitive face studied them from the crypt.
The face was that of an elderly Asian man with black eyes and thickened, ruddy skin that appeared wind-burned. The man bent over with his hands on his knees and looked at Jonas and then Ellie with curiosity. When he finally spoke, it was in a heavily-accented English.
“And who do you think you are? Are you so deserving? This knowledge is not for you to possess.” The man shook his head with apparent disappointment, glanced back into the crypt, and muttered something in a foreign language. Ellie tried to place it. It sounded Chinese but she wasn’t certain. Ellie could make out a set of meaty fingers tightly gripping the edge of the perched stone slab. She followed the fingers back to a hulk-like form looming high above the hole. Ellie could only see up to the man’s massive, bearlike chest.
The Asian man nodded to the enormous figure, who responded by heaving the stone further up. The pieces of wood were released from the weight of the stone and tumbled down the stairs into the room below. Jonas instinctively pushed upwards with his hand. He released the flashlight, which bounced down the steps with a rattle. Jonas withdrew his gun. He brought his shoulder to bear against the undersurface of the stone, planted his feet, and attempted to direct the barrel of the pistol through the gap.
The Asian man leaned in and uttered a ghostly whisper. “Now this will be your tomb, too.” He nodded a final time to the figure holding up the stone.
“No!!!” Jonas shrieked and fruitlessly braced himself.
With a thunderous bang the stone fell, striking Jonas in the shoulder and sending him catapulting through the air and onto the ground below.
41
The thunderous crash of the stone falling echoed through the subterranean room. A thick cloud of dust wafted over Alex as he protectively flipped the lid on the box shut. The black dust coated the lenses of the flashlights, dimming the interior of the room. Somewhere in the fog, Alex could hear Ellie coughing uncontrollably. Clay crouched down beside Alex and shielded his nose and mouth with his shirt.
As the sound of the crash faded, Alex could hear groaning emanating from the corner of the room. Jonas rocked back and forth on his hips in a fetal position as he tightly clutched his left shoulder. His arm appeared unnaturally contorted. Clay scurried to the man’s side and helped prop him up against the wall. Jonas grimaced in pain as he breathed rapidly through clenched teeth.
“It’s dislocated. That bastard. He dislocated my shoulder.” Tears welled up in the corner of Jonas’s eyes.
“What do we do?” Clay asked with a look of horror.
“You’re the doctor,” Jonas barked back in pain.
“I’m not a clinician, I’m a researcher. I don’t know the first things about dislocations.” Clay frantically searched around the room for help. Alex shrugged. Ellie sighed and approached the two figures. She kneeled beside Jonas.
“I’ll have you know that I have dislocated my shoulder nearly fifteen times. I actually stopped counting. It became somewhat of a party trick back at University. Lie on your back,” she sighed.
Jonas looked at Ellie with uncertainty. Clay helped ease the injured man down on his back. Ellie gripped Jonas’ wrist and lifted his arm vertically in the air, causing Jonas to grunt in protest. She pushed the tip of her shoe against his chest and roughly pulled upwards. Jonas’s eyes opened wide and he growled in pain. With a swift motion, Ellie externally rotated his left shoulder, eliciting screams from the patient. A click reverberated through the room.
Jonas rocked back and forth, clutching his reduced shoulder, and whimpered pathetically. Ellie leaned in so her face was close to the injured man. “That felt good. How about for you? That was for Alex.” She poked Jonas in the chest with her finger and stood up. She climbed up the stairs, wedged her small frame against the stone slab, and pushed up, to no avail.
Jonas pulled himself up to a sitting position as Clay steadied him. He glared at Ellie before speaking. “I don’t want to state the obvious but we’re trapped down here. It’s not like we’re caught in the lift and we’re waiting for the firemen to come to rescue us. We are trapped as if no one is coming.” Ellie looked at Jonas and shivered. She detected something in his eyes that she had not seen before from him — fear and surprise.
Ellie turned back and waved at Clay. “Hey, Redmund. Over here.” The old man returned her gaze as if in a daze.
“Who were those guys? This doesn’t make any sense. If the Order wants Polo’s secret so bad, why would they lock us down here with it?”
Jonas began to speak and stopped.
Clay ran his fingers through his gray hair and came away with a fistful of dirt. “Agreed. It doesn’t make sense.”
“What if we yell?” Ellie pounded on the bottom of the stone. “Someone might hear us. Tourists…maybe that priest. Help! Help! We’re trapped down here!”
“Save your breath, girl,” Jonas spat out with venom. “Do you know how thick that stone is? Nobody is going to hear us.”
Ellie smacked the bottom of the stone a final time, with frustration. She sat on the steps and put her head in her hands. She could feel the ceiling and walls close in on her and she fought the tide of claustrophobia lapping at her. We’re trapped in here! That man said this will be our tomb and he is right! She abruptly lifted her head and fumbled for her bag. She plunged her hand into the bag and searched for her cell phone.
“What are you doing?” Clay inquired.
She ignored the old man, lifted the device out, and turned it on. The screen sprang to life.
No Service.
“Terrific,” Ellie concluded and slipped the phone back in her bag.
Ellie rose to her feet and approached Alex who had carefully removed the text. “Hey Alex, I hate to admit it, but Jonas is right. We’re in a bit of trouble here. Actually, a lot of trouble….” Her voice trailed off as her concerns momentarily drifted upon seeing the pages before her. “What is it?”
“I think it is a manuscript of Marco Polo’s Description of the World — Le Devisament Dou Monde.”
“Could it be?” Clay rushed to Alex’s side and kneeled beside him.
“Possibly.”
“Possibly, what?” Jonas stumbled over, still clutching his shoulder.
“The original Polo manuscript, that’s what!” Clay exclaimed. “It’s a thing of legend. I’ve been searching for it for ages.”
Clay nodded to Alex.
“OK. Here’s the deal. After the Polos returned once and for all to Venice from their extensive travels through the East, Marco Polo led a surprising low-key and monotonous life. In fact, there are very few records of the man in the historical archives of the city — strange for such a celebrated man. He resurfaces many years later as a commander of a Venetian galley that gets captured by the Genoans during a sea battle. Marco Polo is imprisoned in a Genoese jail where he meets Rustichello, a Pisan author known for his tales of chivalry who had been previously captured during another battle. While in prison, the two collaborated in the creation of the Description of the World.
“Here’s the mystery… the original manuscript vanished. As the handwritten versions of the Description of the World multiplied through the years, inevitably mistakes in transcription and translation were made — sections were accidentally, or i
ntentionally for that matter, omitted or elaborated upon. So much was potentially altered, no one can be certain what was actually in the original manuscript. Hell, nobody is even sure what language the original text was written in…until, perhaps now.”
They stared down at the text before them. The binding of the book was constructed from dark, brown leather. There was no writing on the front to identify what was inside. Alex flipped the manuscript open. Light brown calf-skin vellum lined the insides of the cover. Opposite the cover was a yellowed page of parchment with meticulously inked calligraphy.
“It’s in Franco-Italian or Franco-Venetian, a literary language that was popular during the time of Marco Polo. It says Description of the World, the Marvelous Journeys of the Greatest Traveler, the Noble Messer Polo, As Penned and Attested in 1298 from the Birth of Jesus Christ by Master Rustichello.” The flashlight Alex was holding began to dim and flicker, the words on the page faded into the darkness. Alex shook the flashlight and tapped it against the palm of his hand to no avail.
“Wonderful,” Jonas snorted. “Just wonderful. By my calculations we’re down to just two working flashlights and from the looks of them I wouldn’t be surprised if the batteries are from the Second World War.”
“We’d still have the lantern if you hadn’t thrown it at Alex and broke it,” Ellie shot back.
“We wouldn’t be locked down here if you stayed up there like I said! And by the way, I merely handed the lantern to him. It’s not my fault if he couldn’t hold onto it.”
Clay spoke up. “O.K., everyone needs to relax and take a deep breath. First things first: let’s try to conserve the batteries in the flashlights. We need to put our heads together and figure a way out of this predicament.”
“Predicament?” Jonas sputtered. “Predicament? That’s a bit of an understatement. We’re about to become a permanent part of this crypt.”
Ellie could feel her stomach churn — an odd gnawing of hunger and dismay. When was the last time she had eaten anything? She could not remember. Her fingertips tingled from the coldness of the crypt. She cupped her hands, brought them to her face, and exhaled hot air upon them. Rubbing her palms together, she hoped that the friction would restore warmth to her body. The cold dankness seemed to seep into her body, driving for the core, and making her bones ache. She could feel Alex’s arm reach across her shoulder and bring her close. The warmth of his body felt soothing as she leaned against his shoulder. She felt exhausted, drained of all energy.
“Alex, how are we going to get out of here?” She closed her eyes.
“I don’t know. We’ll think of something.”
As Ellie drifted off to sleep, she could hear Jonas mutter, “It would be ironic…that is, having to burn that manuscript to keep warm.”
No one laughed.
42
Tomar, Portugal
The man adjusted the cuffs of his shirt and looked out from his balcony overlooking the city. A servant silently pushed aside the veneer drapes undulating in the wind and placed a glass of sparkling water with a lemon wedge upon a round table beside the railing. The man turned around, sat down in a chair beside the table, and placed his cellular phone upon the crisp, starched white linen adorning the tabletop.
“Thank you, Manuel.”
The servant bowed slightly and retreated into the adjoining apartment, leaving the man to stare out at the rounded walls of the Convento de Cristo. Somewhere below, the buzz of a motorbike competed with the honk of a car.
The cellular phone began to vibrate and inched its way across the table towards the edge. The man took a drink of water, delicately placed the crystal glass back upon the table, and lifted the phone before it plunged off the side.
“Yes, Mr. Haasbroek.”
“My full team is positioned at the Church of San Procolo.”
“Yes.”
The South African seemed nervous. “They’re gone.”
“Gone, Mr. Haasbroek?”
“Vanished.”
“Vanished?”
“We’ve performed a search of the church. The priest is dead in his office, bludgeoned to death. The rest of the church is empty.”
“I thought you had surveillance?”
“I had a man monitoring the front of the church before we got there. They must have slipped out the back of the church before the rest of our team arrived.”
The line grew silent. Haasbroek coughed and began to speak.
“My surveillance asset did capture images of two people who came and went from the church before the team arrived. I am sending the images to you right now.”
The man looked down at the screen and could see a close up of two Asian men emerging from the church.
“You have disappointed me again.” The man sighed. The days of the warrior-priests were over. It pained him to outsource the muscle, especially when there was not much brain to match. The line grew silent again. The man tapped the side of the glass and watched as the bubbles clung desperately to the sides before releasing and beginning their float to the surface.
“Mr. Haasbroek, organize your team and wait. They will resurface, and when they do, be ready.”
“Sir, I do not wish to pry, but what are you not telling us. I’m sick of feeling like I’m part of some elaborate game.”
“Mr. Haasbroek, do not disappoint me again.” He disconnected the line and rose from the table. The pieces of the puzzle were all in play. He would need to confer with the rest of the Order.
The man pulled aside the curtains and entered the lavish apartment. How he enjoyed this small slice of heaven. It was a breath of fresh air from the enormity of his estates. He smiled at the Van Gogh and Picasso on the wall. They were divine after all. He did pay a steep price for them. Art theft was never cheap. But it was the unknown compendium piece to The Mona Lisa that always took his breath away. The blue sky was riveting and bold.
He paused and looked at the photo of the two Asian men on his phone.
Darkhad. Then the legends were true, after all.
43
Tap…Tap…Tap.
Ellie opened her eyes and was confronted by blackness. Disoriented, she found herself curled up with her head resting on her bag. Alex’s jacket was slung over her like a blanket. She craned her neck in the direction of the tapping noise and could see the yellow glow of a flashlight and shadows.
Ellie raised her body from the frigid tile and pushed herself to her feet. Her legs felt rubbery as she neared the light. She reached the far wall in the room and found Clay directing the beam of the flashlight against the wall as Jonas stood beside it with arms crossed.
“What’s going on?” Ellie asked groggily.
Alex ran his fingers along the jagged cracks and held his palm against a hole where several stones had fallen away. He could feel a cool breeze slip by his fingers. Lifting his foot, he drove the heel of his shoe into the wall and watched as a portion of the wall caved in, revealing a fist-sized hole. He peered back to see his three companions wide-mouthed.
“Did you know this all along?” Ellie asked.
“I had some suspicions. Verona is on the Via Gallica, an ancient Roman highway connecting the cities of Northern Italy. Off the Via Gallica are numerous Roman and Christian necropolises. It turns out that the city of Verona was built on such a necropolis. Something the priest said got me thinking. If my hunch is right, the Basilica of San Zeno and the Church of San Procolo were likely built over the Christian burial sites and if so there may be connecting catacombs. Grab our stuff, we’re going through this wall.”
Clay grinned slightly and mumbled under his breath. “He never ceases to amaze me.”
The light danced upon the broken stone as Alex wedged his body through the hole and wiggled his torso free. He dropped a short distance into the neighboring room with a thud and scrambled to his feet. The room was little more than a cavity, a tight space with a partially caved in sloped stone ceiling and crumbling walls. He trained the flashlight into a carved out void in t
he wall, housing broken bone fragments. The light startled a rodent who darted from the hole and scampered quietly away.
“Great, an even smaller room,” came from behind him.
Alex turned to see Jonas stick his head through the opening in the wall and pull himself into the room. Jonas squatted and turned back to assist Clay and then Ellie enter the room.
“This is cozy,” Jonas complained. The four found themselves uncomfortably pressed against each other. Ellie shimmied her body to avoid being pressed up against Jonas’s armpit, ducked under Alex’s arm, and wedged herself into a void. “It’s the first time I’ve been warm in hours.”
Alex trained the light on the far wall and found a rectangular opening near the floor. He dropped to his knees and explored the gap. The aperture was man-made, carved out of the stone wall. The light revealed a dark passageway not much larger than a crawlspace. A cool breeze escaped from the opening and ran through his hair like iced fingers.
“There’s an opening here. It’s not very big but we should fit.”
“It’s going to be tight.” Clay crouched down beside Alex and peered skeptically into the tunnel.
“We have no choice but to go forward.”
Alex slung his parcel bag over his shoulder until it rested against the small of his back. He subconsciously patted it for luck, hoping that the leather covered manuscript he had snuggly deposited for safe-keeping would finally emerge from its centuries-old grave. Dropping to his knees, he pushed the flashlight as far as he could into the tunnel. The walls were black and slimy. He slid his head into the space and squeezed the rest of his torso further in. Although he was only in a short distance, he suddenly felt fearfully alone — cut off from the rest of his team. Alex closed his eyes and fought the urge to scamper backwards like a crab. A faint howling noise rhythmically filled the passageway and the cold air stung his exposed face. Alex propped himself up on his elbows and lifted his body a short distance off the ground until the ceiling caused him to curve his neck downwards. He dug his shoes into the ground and pushed off. He propelled himself forward on his elbows, his hips twisting painfully with each movement. After a short distance, Alex contorted his neck and directed the beam of the flashlight back from where he came. He caught sight of Ellie’s ashen face wedged into the tunnel behind him.