Sam glanced at the stone structures. There were drain-holes at their base. “An old washroom?”
“Yes,” Sadik confirmed.
Sam grinned as he studied Sadik’s eyes. They were a dark brown color. His face appeared open and honest. A certain level of anticipation was evident, as though the man was waiting in expectation of being rewarded for his discovery.
Or had Sadik led Tom and him into a trap?
Sam glanced around the room. The entrance consisted of a gigantic rolling stone door that could seal the city from the inside. It seemed out of place to go to the effort to build such a defense system in order to protect a washroom and a dead end.
Maybe there was once more to this room, than now meets the eye?
In his cargo pocket, Sam felt for the handgun he’d stolen from their attackers. A Glock 31. The waterproof handgun had no safety, and could be fired in an instant, if Sadik had led him into a trap. He listened deeply for the sound of pursuers approaching, but none came.
Still waiting, Sam glanced at the walls for any evidence of the Master Builders being involved. He didn’t believe for a minute that they had been involved in the construction of Derinkuyu. The walls were too simple. Carved out by using rudimentary tools, the edges were rounded, as opposed to sharp, purposeful lines.
His deep blue eyes focused on Sadik. “I don’t see anything. Where did you find the wooden signpost?”
Sadik pointed to the end of the room, where a small well opened into complete darkness. “It was floating in there.”
Sam focused his flashlight inside the well. The light reached an area ten or so feet below, and reflected back from the stilled water. “Where does that lead to?”
“Nowhere,” Sadik said, looking blankly. “It’s just a well.”
Sam squinted, trying to see how deep the water went. “Sure. But where does it draw water from?”
“I don’t know. An ancient subterranean river, I suppose. Why?”
“Does the water level ever fluctuate?”
Sadik thought about it for a moment. “Rarely. Once or twice in the past twenty-five years since I’ve been working here.”
“Could it be possible that there were more levels below us?” Sam asked.
“And that the river below swelled and flooded it?” Sadik considered. “It’s an unlikely possibility. No one’s ever tried to find out as far as I know. It’s clearly just a well. Like the rest of the city, it leads to a subterranean river that once supplied the city. A person can barely fit inside, so I don’t think it was ever intended to be anything but a well. What were you thinking of doing, bringing SCUBA equipment to dive it?”
Sam smiled. “Actually, that’s exactly what I was thinking.”
Chapter Six
It was another twenty-four hours before Sam managed to get the dive equipment flown into Cappadocia. A further twenty hours passed before he and Tom carted it down into the Derinkuyu washroom. During that time, they opened the contents of their attacker’s backpack. It held a flashlight attachment for the Glock, along with four additional magazines, each loaded with fifteen rounds. Sam and Tom split the magazines and Sam pocketed the Glock’s flashlight.
At seven p.m. and two hours after the tourist section of Derinkuyu closed, Sam finally laid out the equipment needed to explore the well. Permanent lighting had been set up, so the small cavern was lit up like an office. Next to him, Tom began constructing a winching tower, the sort of aluminum frame used by rescuers to winch injured people out of canyons and off cliff tops. It quickly formed a tripod shaped structure with a series of pulleys on top.
Sam carefully checked his dive equipment. He’d brought two tanks. Unlike ordinary twin mounted dive tanks, these would fit singly, with one in front of his chest and the other behind. Each tank had its own regulator, and clipped on for easy removal. They were the common set he used when cave-diving in shallow water, where he needed to squeeze through tight spaces. He could take them off and feed them through a tight space in front of his own body, if he had to. His fins were compact and rigid. Instead of the typical rubber ankle strap, he used a spring heeled strap.
Sam carefully lowered the dive tanks into the water below and then tied off to the rope. Tom double checked his SCUBA equipment as Sam connected his carabiner from his harness to the end of a second rope, which ran through a pulley system. The plan was to remain attached to the rope throughout the entire dive. That way, if the subterranean river’s current was stronger than expected he could make two hard pulls on the rope, and Tom would winch him back.
Sam met Tom’s eyes. “Are you happy with it?”
Tom took up the rope’s slack with a gentle downward pressure. “I’d be a lot happier if I was coming with you. We both know how much trouble you get yourself into when I’m not around.”
“I wish you were coming, too.” Sam’s eyes darted toward Sadik. “But I still don’t trust him not to leave us down there, if we both go together.”
“I don’t either,” Tom said.
“Then I’m good to go.”
Sam rested back into his harness until he felt the rope take his weight over the top of the well. It was narrow, but easily wide enough to take his solid frame without risk of becoming stuck inside. Not enough, though, that he could have carried the dive tanks on him while he descended. Not that it mattered to him he could easily attach them once he was out of the well.
Two thirds of the way down Sam switched on his flashlight. He carried a total of three with him on any cave dive, or wreck dive. One to use, and two for backups. He shined below, where it penetrated the crystal clear, stilled water.
His thin wetsuit felt painfully inadequate against the cold water as his legs touched the water. Tom stopped his descent, while Sam, found the two dive tanks and their regulators. He increased the air in his winged buoyancy control device, until he was neutrally buoyant. The benefit of the winged system was that as he breathed air in, it drew air out of the winged air seals, meaning that the overall displacement of water remained the same while breathing – allowing him to remain neutrally buoyant throughout the dive.
Sam fixed his mask so that it formed a perfect seal, placed a regulator in his mouth and placed a hand on his head to form an all okay signal for Tom. A moment later, he began his descent into a world of permanent darkness.
The round vertical shaft of the well continued for fifteen feet before opening to an enormous underground cistern. He swallowed a couple times until his ears equalized, and then glanced around his new environment. Sam guessed the original occupants of Derinkuyu were concerned about the subterranean river becoming dry, so had constructed a massive cistern to hold enough water to last a prolonged siege for months if not years. The only other option was that it wasn’t attached to any underground river, and instead was simply a large holding cell. The second option was unlikely, given Sadik’s reference to the occasional significant change in water levels. Either way, he’d find out soon enough.
Sam quickly and efficiently slipped into his dive tanks. He moved his flashlight around in slow clockwise swathes, sending out a powerful beam of light in a thirty degree arc. The flashlight never reached the end of the cavern. Every twenty or so feet, a vertical stone pillar reached from the ground to the ceiling, as though the original builders knew precisely how much the volcanic stone could take, before it needed to be propped up with structural support.
Sam corrected his buoyancy until he was completely neutral and then fixed his flashlight against the stony ceiling. He didn’t move at all. The water was still, or if not, very close to it. He checked his depth gauge. He was in eighteen feet of water, and was carrying two full tanks of air. He would probably start to feel the adverse effects of hypothermia before he ran out of air. Even so, he hoped the cistern wasn’t as big as it looked. He tugged on the rope firmly, once – sending a message to Tom to loosen the slack, so he could commence the exploration.
He kicked his fins and headed to the south. A couple minutes later he reached
the opening of another well above him. It was narrow and impossible to climb without equipment. He continued to the south, finding a total of four wells before reaching the end of the room, approximately five hundred feet away. Sam made a note on his dive slate, and then returned to the starting point.
He followed the same process to the east and west, finding the shape of the cistern far narrower than he expected. Possibly two hundred feet wide at most. Sam found three more openings to wells, but none he could access without ropes from above.
Sam checked his dive time. He’d been submerged for nearly forty minutes. The water was cold, but he was maintaining his body temperature better than he’d expected. He decided to have a quick look to the north before returning to the bathhouse to warm up and prepare for another dive.
Roughly fifty feet out, he found the opening to a well. He ran the beam of his flashlight over it and stopped. This one had a vertical staircase dug into its edge. Sam unclipped each of his dive tanks, so they were trailing about seven feet behind, as he ascended the well. There was no light coming from above, giving him hope that he’d discovered a hidden chamber, once occupied by a Master Builder. He broke the surface of the well and removed the regulator from his mouth.
He climbed the vertical shaft nearly eighty feet before reaching an opening. An unlocked cover protected those above from falling into the opening. Sam briefly searched the area with his flashlight. He was at a crossroad in the underground city. Behind him, the tunnel had been intentionally blocked by the looks of it. Bricks had been laid with mortar to form a barrier to the south, which appeared oddly anachronistic with the tunnels carved by hand.
Sam disconnected his carabiner and attached it to the iron grate that covered the ventilation shaft where he’d just climbed up. He quickly searched the two tunnels to the east and west. They were short, and opened to large and empty storerooms. He walked a couple hundred feet down to the north, where the tunnel appeared to continue unhindered.
He turned around and returned to the ventilation shaft. From what he’d learned about Derinkuyu, some of the escape tunnels went for miles upon miles. As much as he wanted to know where it went, Sam decided to return to the water. This was the wrong place. No matter how much the river had flooded, it never would have reached eighty feet high, where it could wash anything away from the storerooms. Tom would be starting to worry about his dive time if he didn’t return soon. It was most likely Sadik would know about it, anyway.
Sam quickly reattached his harness to the rope and carabiner. He descended the ventilation shaft, placed the regulator in his mouth and returned to the dark world below. He checked his watch. He’d been gone for nearly an hour and thirty minutes. Tom would be starting to get edgy. He should have returned, but instead he decided to swim north, just a little further. It was a bad decision, or an extremely good one, depending on the way you wanted to look at it.
He continued swimming for another two hundred feet and stopped. A set of stairs, chiseled into the soft volcanic tuft, rose straight out of the water about thirty feet away. Sadik had already told him that he didn’t know where Derinkuyu drew its water supply, but if any of the known tunnels led to the water through a set of stairs, he would have known for certain. That meant, Sam had found a hidden grotto.
He began swimming toward the steps. He could see where the water broke the surface, but there was something else in that direction, too. He focused the powerful beam of his flashlight at it and stopped – because looking right back at him were the vacant eyes of another SCUBA diver.
Chapter Seven
It took a moment for Sam to recognize what he was looking at. He felt his pulse pound in the back of his head. He took several quick, shallow breaths. Anxiety and panic crept up upon him in an instant. His first instinct was to back away, and escape as quick as possible. But there was no reason to, because the wraith that was staring at him couldn’t harm a soul – it was already dead.
Sam caught his breath and purposefully slowed his breathing. He quickly scanned the surrounding area with his flashlight in a three hundred and sixty degree arc. There was no one else, living, nearby. Sam studied the diver. He was wearing neoprene and twin dive tanks, leaving no air bubbles visible. The diver’s eyes were still visible behind his mask, and stared vacantly at Sam – as though he was trying to warn him of some unknown horror.
Sam glanced at the man’s dive tanks. It was impossible to think that even a moderately experienced diver would drown with twin tanks in such shallow water. He should have had hours to find an opening, and there had been a number of them, so what went wrong? Sam’s eyes stopped at the edge of the multiple dive lines running off the twin tanks. Every one of the regulator lines had been sliced through. The poor wretch had his air source taken from him and left to drown.
The body didn’t even look bloated. If he had to guess, the man had been killed in the past few days, at most. Sam briefly forgot about the stairs and quickly swam back to the well from which he’d been lowered.
He removed his dive tanks and surfaced. “Tom, you up there?”
“I’m here, you okay?” Tom replied, in his cheerful voice.
“I’m fine, bring me up.”
Sam reached the top of the well and detached his carabiner from the end of the rope. He removed the top half of his wetsuit and started to dry himself. He felt colder than he was. He glanced at Sadik, who appeared uncomfortable, but he said nothing.
Sadik asked, “Is everything okay?”
Sam turned his gaze to focus on the short man with icy steel eyes. “No. Nothing’s all right. You lied to us, and now I want to know why.”
Sadik said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about?”
Sam looked directly into Sadik’s eyes. There was fear, but also a world of confusion. “You tell me, or I swear to you, I’ll throw you down the well.”
Sadik turned his gaze furtively at the well’s entrance. He spoke in barely a whisper. “What did you see down there?”
“I found the remains of another person, searching for the rest of the writings you found.”
Chapter Eight
Sam watched for Sadik’s response.
“You found someone’s remains?” Sadik asked.
“Yes and given you told me no one had ever been down the well, you can imagine my surprise.”
“But… but… the body could have been there for centuries?” Sadik tried to spit the words out as though they were vile and unfair. “You can’t judge me for this!”
Sam glanced at Tom who now appeared wide awake. He wasn’t quite grinning, but something about his face gave the impression he was happy to watch someone else suffer for what had been done to Billie. Sam returned his focus to Sadik. “I’m afraid the person who died did so no later than the past day or two.”
“The last day or two?” Sadik asked.
“Not an hour longer than that,” Sam confirmed.
Sadik gritted his teeth. “He said no one was going to get hurt, so long as I cooperated with him.”
“Who did?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know his real name,” Sadik said. “He was tall. He had a thick cleft chin and the most intimidating purple eyes I’ve ever seen. He said no one was to find the chamber, whatever the heck that is. Said it was supposed to remain hidden until the rise of the Third Temple.”
“The Third Temple?” Sam asked. “What’s the Third Temple?”
“I have no idea. You were supposed to come here and tell me all the answers about this strange piece of writing. Instead, all I’m getting is threats and more questions. You tell me what the Third Temple is?”
“All right, all right,” Sam said. “What were you supposed to do?”
Sadik swallowed hard. “I was supposed to bring you here. Wait until you deciphered the ancient text inside the hidden chamber. Once I was convinced I had learned everything there was to know about the writings, he said he would return.”
“When?”
“I told him it would take a
t least three days until you’d have your equipment to dive.”
“Then what?” Sam persisted.
“He didn’t say. All he said was that he’d be here to take care of it then, and I could go free. I’m sorry.”
Sam wasn’t sure that he believed him. He looked at Tom. “Go check out the surrounding tunnels. Make sure we’re still on our own.”
Tom nodded and left the room. His face more lively than Sam had seen it since their search for Billie had become dry.
“Don’t you see?” Sadik said. “You need to get out of here now, while you still can.”
“We came here to find answers, and I don’t plan to be pushed around by a bully.”
“You haven’t met this bully. Your friend looked almost eager to meet the man, but he should be frightened.”
“Tom?” Sam’s upper lip curled into the faintest of smiles. “Have you seen the size of him? He’s two hundred and sixty pounds of solid muscle. He really doesn’t frighten very easily.”
“He hasn’t met this man.”
Sam studied Sadik’s face. There was a genuine fear, but there was also relief as though a giant weight had been lifted off of him. A burden to betray someone he had no intention of harming. With the truth out, he was able to speak freely again.
“What name did this man give you?”
“He said his name was Famine.”
Sam thought about it. “Any clue what the name might be in reference to?”
“Like I said, I have no idea and didn’t ask. He didn’t strike me as the sort of person who liked answering a lot of questions about his past.”
“All right,” Sam listened at the entrance to the washroom for the sound of anyone approaching. His eyes met Sadik’s. He scrutinized him once more. “Have there been any major famines in recent or old history?”
The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3 Page 11