I began to choke and struggled to see through the gray screen of dust covering me. I was certain that the men in the other tunnels heard the noise. Time was now of the essence.
It was very hard to see inside the exposed area. Aside from the dust in the air, there was very little light coming through. I needed one of the lanterns strung up along the wall in the outside tunnel. I quickly went back and unhinged one. There was very little slack coming from the electrical cord but just enough to reach the entrance. I sat it down on the pile of stones from the faux wall and climbed over top of them.
There was now sufficient light in the chamber and the dust had thinned out enough to see. The chamber was a medium sized square room completely carved and painted like the others. It had what initially looked like a large stone altar in the center. The paintings on the walls were nothing like the other ones. There wasn't a blue sky or green grass. There were no trees or animals. This room held none of the harmonious aspects that the others had. This room was death. This room was Hell.
Instead of green grass and trees there were flames and smoke. There were things that looked like hallowed out dilapidated buildings engulfed with fire. Nothing was alive on the surface. All of the people were painted underground. They looked frantic, miserable and doomed. Everything was ugly and chaotic. Everyone was shrouded in despair. But there was one thing that immediately caught my eye. In the midst of all the chaos, the tree was there from the hallway painting and the snake was still in front of it. There was a nude man and woman there too. They appeared to be challenging the snake. On another wall, the man was engulfed by the snake and the woman appeared to be eating fruit from the tree. And in the final scene, everything was black and it appeared that the world had disappeared.
"HEY! You alright up there!" a voice called out from the stairwell below. It was one of the miners.
In a sudden panic, I ran over to the collapsed wall and shouted: "Yeah! Everything is fine!" But I knew it was only going to be a matter of minutes before someone found me. I began to scurry around the room: taking photos of the paintings and looking for anything that resembled a book. I checked out the stone altar and realized it wasn't an altar but a stone box. Could this be it? I had thought. Could this be where the Book of Thoth was hidden? There was some kind of relief carved on the lid but the light was coming from such a low angle I couldn't tell exactly what it was. I snapped off photos and the flash lit up the room long enough for me to get some kind of glimpse of the carving. It appeared to be a symbol: a ring or a circle. This has to be it!
Voices and footsteps echoed from the outside tunnel.
I ran my fingers along the edge of the lid and found where there was a small gap. Hoping that it was where the lid met the opening, I tried lifting up with all my strength. The lid was extremely heavy. I was able to lift it just about halfway before I had to set it back down. I unplugged the lantern, allowing the room to be engulfed in darkness.
The noise coming from the tunnel got louder. I heard a man shout out: "Fucking wall collapsed! Hello!? Is anyone in there!?" They couldn't see me through the dense blackness.
I bent down and placed my palms on the lifted edge and used my leg strength along with my arms to heave it upward. The lid lifted and then toppled off. It made a loud thud as it hit the ground. The sound reverberated off the room walls and down the tunnel. I silently cursed to myself as I tried to see inside the box, which was impossible in the dark, so I turned the lantern back on.
"Who's in there!?" a voice called out.
I wanted to answer but I couldn't. I think my lips moved but nothing came out. I stood there beside the box—paralyzed. I quickly realized that sitting before me wasn't a stone box containing the Book of Thoth but a sarcophagus containing a dead body.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
The cramped space of the luggage compartment was beginning to take its toll on Rebecca. She tried to stretch her legs in the limited space available, jamming them in the narrow crevices between trunks and bags. Her ankles and knees no longer had stabbing pains shooting through them but retained their dull ache. She eventually gave up on trying to find a more acceptable position and returned to the translation:
*******
"What the hell happened?" a miner shouted out.
Before me was a skeleton wearing what looked like royal clothing. For some reason I looked down to the hands and reached inside. I needed to see if the skeleton was clutching anything. I felt the dry brittle cloth and smooth bones that made up the right hand. I tried to feel underneath the skeleton in order to see if there was something buried. I felt all around the finger bones, hoping that it might be clutching something useful, and came across an object that was hard and cold. I tried to remove it but took the whole finger off instead.
"What are you doing?" a man shouted at me. He then started climbing over the rubble.
"There's a dead body in here!" I shouted back.
"A what?" the man said and stumbled to the ground.
I quickly shoved the finger into my pocket and felt around inside the sarcophagus once more. I didn't find anything else.
The miner regained his balance and stood up. "Did you say a dead body?"
"In there!" I shouted and pointed to the sarcophagus. "You need to radio this in!"
The worker turned on his flashlight and went over to the sarcophagus. "Holy shit!"
With little hesitation, I began taking pictures of everything: the paintings on the walls, the carved out words, the sarcophagus, and the lid. I then scrambled over the debris and through the crowd of workers curiously making their way inside. They must have heard the racket of noise. A couple of them actually helped me out so they could go inside.
I ran down the tunnel and around the corner, almost colliding into the heavy man whose helmet I was wearing.
"What the hell is going on?" he shouted.
"There's a body back there!" I said excitedly. "A skeleton!"
The man looked confused and then hurried off in the direction of the hidden chamber.
I made my way back into the very first chamber and found the rope ladder, and quickly climbed out of the room.
Outside the hill, I came across another group of guys running with thrill on their faces. Word traveled fast. They all turned toward me simultaneously and I shouted excitedly to them: "They found a coffin and a body in there!" The four men went rushing to the ladder and into the entrance, all of them chattering gleefully at the news.
My heart thumped wildly as I escaped the hill. I sprinted toward where I had cut the hole in the fence, the whole time begging for the finger, the photos, or the piece of metal to be something worth my effort. Dr. Theoman was wrong about the book being inside the hill; he was right about it being a pyramid, but wrong about the book. They were all wrong, I told myself.
When I reached the fence, I walked along it until I found the camera I was using as a marker. Then the counting began. I allowed my first opportunity at ten seconds to pass, opting for a more readiness on thirty . . . 25 . . . 26 . . . 27 . . . I squeezed through the fence, bag first, and ran for the trees . . . 33 . . . 34 . . . 35 . . . once I hit the tree line, I just kept going, all the way north and to the little street with its handful of houses. I had hoped Fejzo stayed where I told him and that everything was okay. It would have been terrible to make it all the way through the hill, only to be caught at the road.
As I made it to the houses, I found Fejzo's car parked exactly where it was supposed to be. I ran up to it and saw that he was sleeping behind the wheel. I flung open the door and startled the hell out of him. I told him: "Let's get the hell out of here."
"You're okay?" Fejzo asked, bewildered.
"I found a body!"
Fejzo looked confused. "A what?"
"Go! I'll tell you on the way out."
Fejzo turned the key and the car sprang to life. He already had it pointing in the right direction. He threw the car into drive and we sped off.
"Are people after you?" he asked ne
rvously.
I was pretty out of breath and sucking wind at that moment. "I don't think so; just get us out of here." I double checked to make sure I still had my camera and then reached into my pant pocket for the finger bone. I pulled it out and examined it with whatever moonlight coming through the car window. The piece of metal was a ring.
"What is that?!" Fejzo asked with sudden horror.
I gave him a brief recap, explaining everything, including the finger.
"Why did you take its finger?" Fejzo asked with horrible disgust.
"It wasn't my intention to take the whole finger. I just wanted the ring."
Fejzo fell nervously silent and drove erratically through Visoko. He couldn't believe I stole a finger. I looked down at the ring in my hands and noticed that it was plain gold and shaped like a snake eating its tail.
*******
Rebecca stopped reading. What was just described was exactly what one would find on a Ministry uniform—a snake eating its tail. Rebecca knew the name of the symbol, an ouroboros. According to her instructors at the Academy, the very first Minister created the ouroboros in order to symbolize the infinite reign of the Ministry and the constant rebirth of the Minister. The never-ending cycle as it was referred. And now it was making an appearance in the text as a ring on a skeleton's finger. What's its purpose? Rebecca wondered.
*******
There was nothing spectacular about the ring. It was nothing like the one Iah wore. "Shit," I said under my breath.
"What? What's wrong?" Fejzo asked.
"Nothing."
I then realized I needed to warn someone of what I had discovered. I needed to call Mr. Vermil. I pulled out the satellite phone and dialed his number. The phone rang a bunch of times before the line picked up. On the other end, I could hear a hasty voice say: "This is Benjamin."
"Mr. Vermil, this is William, I've got big news!"
"William, thank God . . . you're okay? What's going on?"
I laid it out for him. Everything. I started with my theory that the Bosnian government might be behind Dr. Theoman's murder, including what the hardware store clerk had said, and explained everything that was going on at the hill and inside of it. I told him how I witnessed the defacing of the interior walls and the unique writing carved into them.
Mr. Vermil took a second to take it all in before speaking again. "You didn't find a book?"
"No, just a ring that looks like a snake eating its tail." I then began describing it in greater detail: that there was a knob representing a head and two black spots making up eyes. Where the mouth would be was the connected piece of gold that made up the tail of the creature.
There was a short silence. "You said the workers were American? You're sure of that?"
"Very sure," I told him. I've heard my fair share of accents during the course of my career and I was certain that those workers were Americans.
After another long pause, Mr. Vermil finally said: "This is very troubling. This is very troubling indeed. And you're certain of this?"
"Yeah . . . I mean, I'm pretty positive."
There was a soft cough on the other end and a sigh. "William, I have troubling news of my own to give."
Whatever excitement I felt quickly fled. "What's wrong?"
"It's Dr. Theoman . . . he's not dead."
Before I had a chance to comprehend what was just said, the car suddenly came to a tire squealing halt in the middle of the highway.
I shouted: "What the hell was that?!"
Fejzo, who was trembling, looked at me with his eyes full of fright. He fumbled with unbuckling his seatbelt. I tried to ask: "What's wrong with you?" but Fejzo didn't answer. His seat belt swung away and he turned the car off. He removed the keys and opened the driver-side door. I watched in complete shock as he leapt out and began running down the road: into the infinite darkness behind.
Mr. Vermil was still on the line and asking: "What happened? What's wrong?"
I didn't know what to tell him. "Fejzo jumped out of the car."
"He what?!"
"He jumped out. He turned the car off and jumped out."
"Where are you?"
I looked around in the darkness but couldn't identify anything. "I'm not sure. In the middle of the highway."
"He left you in the middle of the highway?"
An eerie tingle swept over me as the seriousness of the situation sunk in. "This isn't good."
Mr. Vermil must have felt the same thing because he shouted: "William, get the hell out of there!"
Fejzo had sold me out.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The StreamWay rumbled as it began to slow again. Rebecca recalled that Sector 29 – District 1 was next on the list of stops. The timing was good anyway; she needed to catch her breath. She couldn't believe what she just read: Theoman isn't dead? Never in her life had she read something so strange, so intense.
The layover lasted only fifteen minutes. The luggage hold was opened and a few bags were removed, and then a few more were added—but nothing that compromised her position. Rebecca kept the d-reader off just to be safe. It wasn't until the StreamWay was moving again that she felt safe enough to return to reading the translation. She was excited to get back to it: to see what happened next, to see what had befallen William. It was sadistic—she knew it and she felt guilty about it—but she needed to know and so she read:
*******
I opened the car door and stepped outside. I couldn't see more than twenty yards in front of me in the pitch-blackness of the Bosnian countryside. My heart was pounding. Fejzo was nowhere. Up ahead, the headlight beams shone as well as the red glow from the taillights behind, both allowed me to see a little ways, but not far. My eyes quickly began to adjust to the darkness and I could see a field of orange ground made up of dead grass and dirt reflecting the moonlight to my left. To my right was a somewhat open field that was cut in half by a tree line that ended at the river. There was a chill in the air and a steady breeze teasing the skin on my face and hands. I tried to relax as I began to walk in the direction Fejzo had ran.
"William, are you there?" said Mr. Vermil suddenly.
I had temporarily forgotten I was still on the phone. "Yeah, I'm here."
"Get somewhere safe right now. You're in danger, get out of there."
"Go where? I'm in the middle of nowhere! I can't see shit!"
"Find somewhere!"
"Did you really just say Dr. Theoman isn't dead?"
"There's no time for that; get somewhere and hide!"
Out of nowhere, black figures materialized from the darkness and closed in all around me—human figures moving quickly.
I cursed and scrambled backward into a run. There were no sounds from behind, no shouting, no demands, no orders to stop—nothing. I turned to look back and saw four figures in fast pursuit. Their steps were silent and their movements were so swift that I could barely believe they were real at all. Keep running! I ordered my body. I could run like a greyhound, but God only knew when was the last time I needed to do a two hundred yard sprint. The only thing I focused on was pushing my legs to their fullest—like I used to do when I was an athlete.
As I ran through the field, a tree line formed out of the darkness and was within my grasp. The black figures were right behind me, trying to keep pace.
As I passed through the tree line and into another field, a much longer one, I stumbled over a lifted root and almost fell flat onto my face. Keep running! I told myself, but I had lost significant ground while trying to regain balance and my ankle filled with piercing pain. That's when a black hand extended out from the corner of my eye. I quickly changed direction and the black figure reaching for me tripped over my heels and tumbled to the ground.
Looking over my other shoulder, I saw the other three figures fan out. They were attempting to surround me. I shifted right again and tried to pick up the pace, but my ankle felt like it was going to give out. I then knew there were only two ways this would end. The first was gettin
g away. The second I wouldn't humor.
I was within thirty yards of the second tree line, and what appeared to be a river behind it, when I felt a heavy hand grab the back of my shirt. The entire weight of a human being came pulling downward and the front collar of my shirt rose up and wrapped tightly around my neck. I thought my legs were going to slide out with the retracting weight, but something else happened. There was a loud ripping sound and my shirt buttons tore free one by one, until my shirt came completely off. The attacker tumbled, but quickly regained his balance.
Into the river! I ordered my body as I felt a second pair of hands grasp hold of my under shirt. This time, instead of dropping to the ground and trying to pull me down, this one leapt onto my back. I was only fifteen or so feet away from the river—nothing was going to stop me.
The weight was enormous and I slowed considerably. The man's arms wrapped around my neck and were positioning to choke me down. I did the only thing I knew to do—the very thing taught to me in my Iraq survival course. I threw all of my weight and balance into my head and swooped downward toward the water. The attacker clinging to me went flipping over my right shoulder as we somersaulted into the river.
The water was freezing cold. The attacker had let go after we hit and sank about four feet. I did a complete flip under water and then popped up to the surface, as did the attacker. The black mask he was wearing was now off. His eyes were wild with anger.
It took me only a second to recognize whom those eyes belonged to: Gregory Hansen—one of the four GlobalLock Security Operatives from Iraq.
He lunged and I dropped down into the river. His hands groped for me; catching my hair. Instinctively I gave him an uppercut to the balls, which freed my hair but my left cheek caught a blow from his knee. I then began to kick and swim wildly toward the bottom until I was at the muddy ground of the river. The only problem was that Gregory Hansen was an ex-Navy Seal. All of GlobalLock's henchmen were ex-Special Forces.
The Sinner King: Book of Fire Page 23