‘Why?’
‘Because this is a holy place, and because the scroll is not here.’
Lourds knew the last was intended as a goad but he ignored it. He hadn’t told any of them that the Joy Scroll was within the room. He just hoped he was right concerning his other suspicion.
The grade in the tunnel angled more steeply downwards. Lourds stepped carefully now as he descended. He thought he felt impressions that might once have been steps carved into the solid stone. The centre of the passageway was bowed slightly, as it was more worn in the middle.
‘Everyone in the Brotherhood.’
‘Do they come here?’
‘No one is allowed here. Until today, no woman has ever been in this passageway.’
‘Not even Olympia?’
‘Not even my sister.’
‘Joachim was even better at keeping secrets than I expected,’ Olympia said. ‘I didn’t know he was part of the Brotherhood until a couple of months ago.’
‘How are the brothers chosen for the order?’ Lourds asked.
‘Usually it passes from father to son,’ Joachim answered. ‘Occasionally a nephew must be brought in, or an older monk may pass his knowledge on to a grandson.’
‘Your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘Another big secret keeper,’ Olympia said.
‘Our father began telling me about the Brotherhood when I was just a child,’ Joachim said. ‘I loved the stories and the idea of being part of something so secret and so important. As I grew older, I also grew more serious about my responsibilities.’ He paused.
‘What if we find out it is?’
Joachim halted in front of a bare wall. His flashlight beam bounced off the stones and highlighted his features. He looked grim.
‘As I told you before, Professor Lourds, as long as the world is safe, we are not too late. The Joy Scroll still exists. It is out there and we have to find it.’
Lourds shone his beam over the blank wall. He searched for signs of crevices or cracks, but there were none that he could see.
‘Another door, I suppose?’ he asked.
‘Not exactly.’ Joachim knelt and pressed against certain stones set into the floor.
In the next moment, a section of the floor receded a few inches. Joachim hooked his fingers into the gap and pulled. Stone ground as the hidden door slid out of the way.
The glare of the gathered flashlights revealed the stone steps going downwards. Joachim led the way.
Crypt of the Elders
Hagia Sophia Underground
Istanbul, Turkey
19 March 2010
The stone steps had the same grooved wear as the passageway earlier. In this case, though, the steps were steeper and shorter. Lourds struggled to keep his balance as he went down. The staircase also corkscrewed and filled his head with thoughts of premature burial. He forced himself to focus on the curiosity and certainty that had brought him to this place.
‘Is it getting hard to breathe?’ Cleena asked.
‘The air contains more moisture,’ Lourds told her. ‘Just take normal breaths and you’ll be fine.’ But the confined space was getting to him as well.
Finally, they came to the end of the torturous corkscrew staircase and stepped into a square room. The discomfort Lourds felt was extinguished as soon as he laid his eyes upon the library shelves that covered one wall. Dusty journals filled the shelves in neat rows.
Unbidden, drawn by his excitement, Lourds approached the shelves. He shone the flashlight along
‘Those are the journals of the Elders who occupied this room all their lives,’ Joachim said.
‘How far back do they go?’ Lourds asked hoarsely.
Joachim came to stand beside him. ‘To the beginning.’
‘Of the church?’ If that was the case, the shelves contained at least sixteen hundred years of history.
‘To the time of John on Patmos Island.’
That knowledge halted Lourds for a moment as he realized how much information lay practically at his fingertips.
‘May I?’ He gestured to the shelves.
‘Those books don’t tell us the whereabouts of the Joy Scroll.’
Without a word, Olympia stepped close and took down one of the books. She handled it gently, as if it might disintegrate.
‘You had these down here all this time, Joachim?’ Her voice was hushed and tight with awe. ‘Do you know what I would have given to have been able to study these? Do you know the information that is probably contained within these books?’
‘The brothers only wrote benedictions to God,’ Joachim replied. ‘Father didn’t ask me to be a librarian. He asked me to keep the Joy Scroll safe. The monks didn’t bother themselves with the secular world.’
‘That doesn’t matter.’ Carefully, Olympia leafed through the book. ‘Any contact they had with the world
‘That’s why archaeologists are now studying the literature of the past.’ Lourds crossed over to stand behind Olympia. ‘Until the last few years, the study of novels and poetry and the like for historical detail hadn’t been recognized as a hard science.’
‘Look at this, Thomas.’ Olympia kept turning pages and her fascination grew.
Lourds felt the same way, and his mind was totally captivated by the neat lines of script that crawled across the pages. The volume Olympia held was written in Ancient Greek and detailed a day trip around Patmos Island by a new monk.
‘Can you imagine the wealth of knowledge contained within these pages?’ Olympia asked in hushed tones.
‘I can.’ Lourds glanced over his shoulder at Joachim. ‘Are there any journals here written by John of Patmos?’
‘No.’ Joachim’s voice was short. ‘Professor Lourds, I have to remind you that we came here to find the Joy Scroll. We cannot afford to waste time. You already know others are searching for it as well.’
Frustrated, Lourds swallowed his curiosity. ‘Perhaps there’s something in these books you have missed. If we could find the volumes that were written by the monks during the time of Constantine, maybe we could learn more about the scroll’s location.’
Reluctantly, Lourds nodded.
‘The stone is over here.’ Joachim directed his flashlight to a corner of the room.
Despite the bright halogen beam, Lourds had a hard time spotting the engraving on the stone. The work was skilled and delicate, done by a true craftsman. If Joachim had not pointed out the stone, if the light had not fallen just so, he would never have noticed it. The curiosity about his hypothesis grew strong enough to draw him from the library shelves, filled with the thoughts of the men who had followed John of Patmos’s final instructions.
The fate of the world, Lourds reminded himself, steeling himself to walk away. In the end, he didn’t think the situation would be anything so weighty, but the possibility of finding a document written by one of Christ’s twelve apostles was a magical elixir that made his blood sing. He crossed the room, took off his backpack and stored it next to the wall, then knelt in front of the stone. He ran his fingers across the engraving. The depth was no more than a fraction of an inch, hardly noticeable. He reached into his backpack and took out a pad of paper and writing utensils. A skilled stonemason had built the wall. The stones were of uneven size, but they’d been carefully mortared together. Lourds ran his hand along the wall and
‘A lot of time went into the construction of this place,’ he commented.
‘After the brothers took their vows to protect the Joy Scroll, they didn’t leave here.’ Joachim knelt next to Lourds.
‘That’s a hefty price to pay.’
‘I know.’
‘Have you given any thought to what you’re going to do if – when – we find the Joy Scroll?’
‘Protect it.’
‘Even if it means spending the rest of your life locked away from the world in a room like this?’
Joachim didn’t hesitate. ‘Even if that were so.’
Lourds fitted a
blank piece of paper over the stone.
‘What are you doing?’ Joachim asked.
‘Taking a rubbing.’ Lourds selected a piece of charcoal from his kit and began gently rubbing it over the paper. The engraving on the stone started coming to life immediately.
‘Why?’
‘To match it against the one in the book. Have you done that?’
Joachim was silent for a moment, then shook his head. ‘I haven’t. We already have a copy of the rubbing and it told us nothing.’
‘Does Qayin know where this stone is?’
‘No, he doesn’t. And if he did, what would it matter?’
Joachim took the book.
‘Hold the book so the page with the rubbing hangs down by itself,’ Lourds instructed. Joachim did so. By that time the others had all come around to watch what he was doing. Lourds folded the new rubbing so that it fitted over the one in the book. Then he held his flashlight behind the papers so that both were illuminated. When he had them lined up, they matched exactly.
He grinned. ‘Looks like the same stone to me.’
‘That wasn’t necessary.’
Lourds rummaged in his backpack for a digital camera. ‘Of course it was. Empirical evidence is always important. Especially when you’re saving the world.’
‘You still don’t believe.’
‘Have you stopped to think that maybe I’m able to read that language because I’m not a believer? I’m not looking for the same things you are. I don’t have preconceived notions about what we’re supposed to find and how we’re supposed to find it. I’ve got a more open mind about what we’re looking for.’
Joachim didn’t say anything.
‘One thing I do believe is that I’m going to get you the answers that you haven’t had in over eight hundred years. Now hold that flashlight on this stone for me.’
‘More empirical evidence?’
Finished with the camera, Lourds replaced it in the backpack. ‘Now I’m going to need you to use some of that faith you so readily claim to have.’ He took a small pry bar from an outside pocket of the backpack.
‘What are you going to do?’ Joachim demanded.
Lourds pointed with the pry bar. ‘I’m going to take that stone out of the wall.’ Hardly had the words left his mouth than Joachim hit him in the face with a balled fist. Pain exploded in Lourds’ face as he sailed backward.
Deep in the passageway now, Colonel Anthony Eckart stood still and studied the terrain through the night-vision goggles he wore. So far there was still no sign of Lourds or the others. Eckart’s gut clenched and ached in anticipation. He couldn’t wait to meet the redheaded woman close up and personal. The men he had lost at the university had been good men, in no way friends, but good soldiers were hard to come by.
‘Mayfield, do you have a reading on our position?’ Eckart asked.
‘Affirmative, sir. I’ve rerouted the overland support teams to you. They’re almost directly overhead.’
‘Near the church?’
‘That’s affirmative. I’m reading your position under the church now.’
Eckart gazed at the blank walls. ‘What’s under here?’
‘It is. Do you have any idea where our target is headed?’
‘Negative. Like I said, there are a lot of tunnels down there. On multiple levels as well. Some of them cross over or under without touching any other tunnels.’
Eckart thought about that. Back in the early days of war, tunnels had been important defensive and offensive measures. Tunnels enabled large groups of warriors to either vanish or appear somewhere else on a battlefield. Sappers were specially trained troops that dug under castle walls and other fortifications to tunnel in or bring down the walls. Ammo and supply routes ran underground as well, as did paths for retreating.
‘It’s got to be something to do with the church,’ Mayfield said. ‘That church has had treasures in the past. Maybe there’s something like that hidden down there.’
‘All right,’ Eckart said, ‘the GPS reads us five by five?’
‘Affirmative. And I’m keeping an eye on your back door.’
Eckart sent his point man back into motion. The group moved out like a well-oiled machine.
Only a few minutes later, they came to a fork in the tunnel. Eckart waved one of his men forward. The man used a latent thermographic scanner to pick up the heat signature left by the people they followed.
A short distance further on, they came to another fork. This time the scanner didn’t pick up the trail.
‘What’s wrong?’ Eckart asked as the soldier turned and checked the readings again.
‘I’m not getting the readings any more, sir.’
‘You said we were practically on top of them.’
‘Yes, sir. We were. Actually, we still are.’ The soldier looked at the wall next to them. ‘The readings show that they walked right into this wall.’
‘Or through it.’ Eckart pushed on the wall, but it felt solid. ‘Mayfield.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Do you still have our position?’
‘Affirmative.’
‘Do you see a tunnel along the north wall?’
Only the popping crackle of the stressed signal sounded for a moment. ‘No, sir. According to the maps I’m looking at, nothing is there.’
‘Well, the maps are evidently wrong because these people didn’t just vanish into thin air.’ Eckart shone his light on the floor.
There were no scrapes or scuff marks on the floor, nothing to indicate the presence of a door that opened outward.
If not outward, then inward, he reasoned. He reached into his chest pack med kit and took out a
Some of the white powder slid gracefully through a carefully mortised crack that hadn’t been visible to his naked eye. In bright sunlight he might have seen it, but not in the eternal darkness of the passageway. He studied the wall again. There was nothing there to indicate the presence of the hidden door.
He got to his feet and called for his demolitions expert. Maybe Eckart didn’t know all the tricks or the secret word to get through the door, but there was always another way to make an entrance.
‘Joachim! What are you doing?’
Stunned and hurt, Lourds watched Olympia grab hold of her brother’s arm and haul him backwards before he could strike again.
‘I’m protecting this place,’ Joachim snarled, his angry features looming out of the darkness, ‘as I promised our father I would do.’
‘You can’t just hit him like that!’ Olympia protested.
Actually, Lourds thought that Joachim could hit him like that any time he chose to. Lourds wasn’t eager to repeat the encounter. He sat up gingerly and worked his jaw. He tasted blood.
‘I guess you’re not very big on the trust part,’ Lourds said.
‘Well,’ Lourds replied, ‘with all of us crammed in here like sardines, it didn’t seem very likely that I was going to be able to get the stone out of the wall without him seeing me do it. I thought it would be better to tell him what I was going to do.’
‘Why would you want to take the stone out of the wall?’
‘This can’t be allowed,’ Joachim protested. ‘This is the crypt of the Elders. This is where those men gave their lives to protect the secret that John of Patmos entrusted to our order.’
‘To ensure the safety of the world,’ Lourds said in a bored tone. Joachim took a step towards him. Lourds took a step back and bounced off the wall behind him.
‘Non-believer!’ Joachim accused.
‘You’re the one with belief problems, not me. I believe the answer to the location of the Joy Scroll is behind that rock.’
Silence filled the chamber.
For the first time, Lourds noticed that Cleena had moved towards him. Her hand rested on her hip, but he knew it was only inches away from the pistol she carried.
‘Joachim,’ one of the other monks said, ‘perhaps we should listen to the professor. After all, he was able to decipher
the text when we could not.’
His pride stung, Lourds responded, ‘I read about the Joy Scroll. I deciphered that language.’
‘Qayin knows about the Joy Scroll as well. For all we know, Qayin told you about it when he had you captive.’
‘That didn’t happen,’ Cleena said. ‘I was there with him every minute. Qayin didn’t mention the Joy Scroll.’
‘You were also his kidnapper,’ Joachim said angrily.
Cleena shrugged without concern. ‘I was just one of many that day. And, as I recall, you were awfully quick to reach us after Qayin had us.’
‘This room should remain undefiled,’ Joachim said. ‘Those Elders need to have their final resting places respected.’
‘Their final resting places?’ Lourds repeated.
Joachim pointed to the floor. For the first time, Lourds noticed the nine rectangles made of different coloured stone set into the floor.
‘After their deaths,’ Joachim said, ‘when it was once more safe to return to this place, the Brotherhood returned and buried the Elders.’
‘In the floor?’
‘Yes. Saints are buried in churches. This is hallowed ground.’
‘Where were the other monks buried?’
‘In cemeteries. But these men were special. Their passing could not go unmarked.’
‘You said nothing about removing the stone earlier.’
Nodding, Lourds agreed. ‘I didn’t. Because I thought you would have this kind of reaction.’ He touched his bruised face gingerly.
‘Why do you think there’s something behind that stone?’ the other monk asked.
‘According to all of you, the Elders were the only ones who knew where the Joy Scroll was kept,’ Lourds said.
The monk nodded.
‘During the sack of Constantinople in 1204, the monks knew they could be found out and their secret stolen,’ Lourds said. ‘They were aware no one else knew where the Joy Scroll was. So they had to leave behind a message. In this room.’
‘The stone,’ Olympia said.
‘Exactly.’ Lourds wiped more blood from his mouth. ‘One of the monks inscribed that stone with the message you couldn’t read while they were in here slowly dying.’
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