On the other side of the church, they quickly found the small fenced-in patch of lawn with the misshapen headstone, topped by an Orthodox cross. The inscription on the headstone was badly eroded and difficult to read. In front of the grave, a narrow stairway led down into the crypt, which lay directly beneath the patch of grass. The narrow stairway looked like the kind leading into those narrow wading basins for cooling off in a sauna, but without the water.
Hellen’s excitement grew. She glanced at her watch—they were in good time. They had fifteen minutes to get to the end of the secret passage. She was supposed to meet Tom there, ideally with Father Lazarev.
“Wait here and keep the local priest off our backs, just in case he gets curious,” Hellen said to Father Fjodor. She started down the stairs.
Father Fjodor nodded and said, “Don’t worry about him.”
“And call us on the radio if you see anything suspicious,” Arthur added. Father Fjodor nodded again.
Hellen used one of the large keys to open the old ironclad wooden door and the barred gate behind it while Arthur held his lamp for her to see. The gate swung outward with a creak, and Hellen entered the bare, desolate crypt. The entrance was very low and she had to duck.
“I pictured something more spectacular, actually,” Arthur said as he looked around the tiny ten-foot-square room. “The Imperial Crypt in Vienna’s in a different league altogether.” The ceiling was only about six feet high. A simple rectangular sarcophagus stood against the wall on the left, the Sheremetev family coat of arms in gold relief on the flat, modest lid.
Opposite the entrance was a small white shelf on which a few candles stood, and above the shelf hung an austere-looking cross with a figure of Jesus. Hellen shone her flashlight into every corner of the small chamber, Arthur close behind her.
“That must be it,” she said, as the beam of light came to rest on the cross. She stepped closer and examined it carefully. The cross was not simply suspended from a hook, but seemed to be affixed directly to the wall. She shook at it cautiously and tried to turn it. It gave, and she was able to turn it ninety degrees to the left. There was a scraping sound and a click, and dust suddenly trickled from the corner of the ceiling above the cross. The wall had moved a fraction of an inch.
“Help me,” she said to Arthur, and they braced themselves against the wall and heaved with all their might. At first with difficulty, and then more easily, they were able to push the wall almost three feet inward.
Out of breath, they paused. Hellen shone her light down what looked like an endless passage to the right. She clicked off the mute button on her headset.
“We’re in position.”
She took out the pistol Tom had insisted she carry, and she and Arthur entered the dark tunnel leading beneath the castle.
47
Free fall over Sheremetev Castle
His last parachute course and his last jump had been a long time ago. But it was like riding a bike—you pull the ripcord and float to the ground. Piece of cake, Tom thought. But to minimize the risk of being a sitting duck, he had to wait until the last possible moment to open the chute. Gagarin had explained what kind of parachute it was and at what altitude he had to pull the ripcord. But had he said five hundred feet or eight hundred feet? The Russian’s accent had been strong and hard to understand. Five hundred feet—Tom was sure of it. He glanced at the altimeter on his wrist. He was falling at 160 feet per second. Still twenty seconds to go. He hoped that gun-crazy Gagarin had packed the thing properly—if not, there’d be no time for the reserve chute. Tom smiled. This was the kind of buzz that an adrenaline junkie like him lived for—plummeting earthward at more than 12o miles per hour, a smile on his face.
He plunged through a few scraps of cloud, then he saw it directly below in all its glory: Sheremetev Castle. The full moon washed the historic red brick structure and the entire estate in a picturesque, mysterious light. Moonlight was less than ideal for an operation like this, but time was tight and there was no other choice. They had to chance it.
They had studied the plans of the castle and the satellite images carefully. The three-day-old recordings from the satellite feed would have to do.
“What do you mean, your Pentagon ‘acquaintance’ can’t organize a live stream for you? Tom, I’m disappointed,” Hellen had teased. After analyzing everything they had, they all agreed that Father Lazarev was most likely being held at the top of the castle tower.
Tom pulled the ripcord and was very happy to see the parachute open exactly as it should. The crowd goes wild, he thought as he steered toward the tower, on the southeast side of the building. The landing would not be easy. The tower was only about sixteen feet square from battlement to battlement, and just to complicate things an antenna rose twenty feet into the sky, right in the middle.
The coast looked clear: no guards on the roof. From the satellite images, they knew that most of them were patrolling the high electric fence on the boundary, with a few more on guard at the edge of the forest. No one reckoned with an intruder from above, and Tom and the team had finally decided on a combined assault: Tom by parachute, Hellen and Arthur going through the tunnel Hellen had discovered in the old plans.
Tom landed adroitly behind the battlements, quickly hauling in the parachute the moment it collapsed.
“The Eagle has landed,” he joked, his throat mike transmitting his words clearly to the others.
“Nineteen seventy-six. British war film. Michael Caine, Donald Sutherland, Robert Duvall,” he heard his grandfather rattle off instantly on the radio.
“You’ve still got it, Grandpop,” said Tom, as he shrugged off the parachute harness and tossed the goggles aside.
“Je vous demande pardon?”
“It’s a game they play,” Hellen explained. “Just ignore them.”
Tom focused on the job at hand. With a lockpick, he soon had the door into the tower open.
“Radio silence for now. I’m going in.”
With the P-90 raised and ready, Tom carefully opened the door and crept down the steep stairway, which creaked and groaned with every step he took. Ducking below the railing, he followed the stairs along the wall and around a corner, descending into the only room in the tower. He paused on every step and listened. Nothing.
He peered down through the wooden railing into the room below. The moonlight filtering in through three narrow windows cast a feeble glow, and Tom could make out a dark figure on a chair in the center of the room. The creaking of the steps seemed deafening, but nothing moved below. He crept on.
As he drew closer, he could hear the low groans of the priest tied to the chair.
“Father Lazarev?” Tom whispered, approaching the old man cautiously. The priest seemed half-dead already.
“Get away from me. I have nothing more to say to you,” Father Lazarev said without looking up, his voice little more than a whisper. His body was slumped forward, and his arms and legs were bound to the chair with cable ties. Blood and sweat dripped from his ravaged face.
“I found the priest. He’s alive!” Tom announced on the radio.
“Thank God for that,” said Arthur, his relief was almost palpable.
“Father Lazarev,” Tom whispered, crouching in front of the man. He lifted the priest’s head carefully, and the old man finally opened his eyes and looked at him.
“Aren’t you a little young for a killer?” he said.
“My name’s Tom Wagner. I’m here to get you out.”
“Who are you?”
“I’m here with your son and Arthur Prey.”
Spirit and life returned suddenly to the aging, frail body.
“Arthur’s alive? He’s here?”
“Yes. I’m his grandson, Tom.” He sliced through the cable ties binding the priest’s arms. Father Lazarev lifted a hand and stroked Tom’s cheek.
“Tom,” the priest said, with more strength now. “Your grandfather has told me a lot about you.”
“All good, I hope,”
Tom said with a smile as he helped Father Lazarev onto his feet. The old man’s strength was gradually returning. Tom’s arrival had given him new hope. Suddenly, the old man grasped Tom by the shoulder and looked at him with wide-open eyes.
“The casket! The casket is here! We have to find it.”
“What, the casket my grandfather told me—” Tom did not get to finish his question. Voices and footsteps were approaching—someone was climbing the narrow spiral staircase from below. They were trapped.
48
Secret passage between the Church of the Archangel Michael and Sheremetev Castle
The passage was low, narrow and rat-infested. Hellen screwed up her face as the damp stench of the tunnel filled her nose. The glare of their lights sent most of the rats scurrying away, but an occasional squeak meant they had stepped on a tail by accident. After about fifty yards, they reached an intersection.
“We have to turn right,” Hellen said to Arthur, following close behind. “Then it’s two hundred and fifty yards south. That should take us beneath the outbuildings and the ruins of the old wall.”
They turned right and followed the passage for a minute in silence. The floor was getting wetter and wetter the closer they got to the castle—and the Volga. Apparently, this part of the tunnel flooded when the river rose high enough.
“So, why—”
But that was as far as Arthur got. Hellen’s index finger shot up and she shook her head vehemently, cutting him off. “Grandpop, I’m sorry, but this is neither the time nor the place.”
They fell silent again and moved on. Two minutes later, they were directly beneath the gated entrance to the castle. Hellen felt her tension growing. They were approaching the lion’s den. A guard could be lurking behind any stone or corner. Hellen checked that the safety on her pistol was off and a round was chambered.
Near the next intersection was a spiral staircase in a corner, leading upward. Hellen shone her flashlight up the stairs—after half a turn it ended at a rusted iron door, secured with a heavy iron chain. “No one’s been up or down here for years,” she said softly to Arthur.
“That’s good,” Arthur replied. “That means that probably no one here even knows about these passages.”
Hellen nodded and followed the passage onward in the direction of the castle. When they reached the end, they stopped—and she and Arthur exchanged a worried look.
49
Sheremetev Castle, Yurino
A low pop, pop—pop, pop was the only sound the silenced P-90 made. Father Lazarev looked up in horror at the two dead bodies. Moments earlier, Tom had asked the priest to sit down just as he had been when he found him, while Tom himself had taken cover beneath the stairway leading to the roof. From there he could watch the stairs coming up from below. When the two thugs entered the room, one of them flicked on the light. Bare bulbs dangling from the walls illuminated the room, and at the same instant, two shots apiece from the P-90 took the men out. They had no chance at all.
Tom usually avoided going straight for the kill, but there and then he had no other choice. He couldn’t risk one of them raising the alarm. Tom returned to Father Lazarev, who looked up at him, appalled at what had just happened.
“Sorry, Father. There was no other way,” he whispered. Father Lazarev crossed himself and Tom helped him back to his feet. “We have to go. Your son is waiting outside. We have to get to the cellar without being seen. That’s our way out.”
“Tom,” the priest said, looking at him intently. “We have to find the casket. When they showed it to me, I feared the worst. I thought they’d murdered your grandfather to get it.”
“Grandpop’s fine. He’s down in the cellar as we speak. I’m taking you down to him. The most important thing now is to get you to safety.”
The priest nodded and together they made their way slowly down the narrow and seemingly endless spiral staircase from the tower. Tom took the lead, submachine gun at the ready, with Father Lazarev just behind, supporting himself on Tom’s shoulder. The old priest was in excellent health for his age, but days of interrogation, torture and sitting had taken their toll, pushing him to his limits. They stopped at the foot of the stairs and Tom looked around.
“The stairs to the cellar are at the end of this corridor,” he whispered, pointing to the right. “Can you make it?”
The priest nodded confidently and nudged Tom to go on. Suddenly, a door swung open in front of them, and Tom almost ran into it. He and Father Lazarev froze. Tom slowly lowered the P-90, and when the door swung closed again, he leapt on the back of the man who had just come through it. With a sleeper hold, he sent him silently to dreamland.
Father Lazarev nodded approvingly. He much preferred this method. Tom looked at a sign on the door and pressed his ear against it for a moment. Then he opened it carefully and dragged the man he now recognized as Qadir back into the room he’d just exited.
“Next time, wash your hands after you’ve been to the bathroom.” Tom patted Qadir on the cheek and quickly searched him. All he found was a radio. Tom noted the channel it was switched to, then turned it off. Then he and the priest left the room and hurried along the corridor and down the wide spiral stairway to the cellar. Tom was not expecting to encounter anyone else down there, but suddenly, close to the bottom, they heard a sound.
50
Secret passage beneath Sheremetev Castle
Hellen shook the old iron gate, but it would not budge. All she managed to do was rattle the chain. The padlock was rusted solid—there was no way they would be able to pick it. The moisture down there had been eating at the metal for several decades. Short of brute force, Hellen could see no way to get through.
She heard footsteps and shut off her flashlight when she saw a cone of light appear around a corner in the distance. She quickly signaled to Arthur to take cover, and they pressed themselves into niches in the walls on the left and right of the passage. They held their breath. The steps drew closer.
“Tom, where are you?” Hellen whispered into her headset.
“Right here,” he said, and Hellen could hardly contain a squeal of delight when she saw him on the other side of the iron gate.
Hellen and Arthur stepped out of the shadows to meet him, a broad grin on his face. Behind him, Father Lazarev stepped into the light.
“Artjom!”
Arthur pressed himself against the gate as the two old friends tried to hug through the bars.
“I feared the worst,” Father Lazarev said.
“I’m so sorry. I couldn’t protect the casket,” said Arthur, sadness in his voice.
“Can we put this reunion on hold for a few minutes?” Tom said as he examined the chain and the iron bars.
“How do you want to open the lock? It’s rusted solid,” Hellen said. She too had recovered her composure.
Tom took a small glass bottle with a spray top out of his pocket and looked at Hellen in anticipation. “I found this in Gagarin’s workshop. I’ve always wanted to try this stuff. Better step back,” he said, and he shooed everyone away from the gate. Then he sprayed the liquid generously onto two links of the chain and put the bottle back in his pocket.
“It’s aqua regia,” he explained. “Three parts hydrochloric acid to one part nitric acid.”
All eyes were now on the chain, which hissed and bubbled and smoked. After a short while, the two links had been eaten away almost completely. Tom struck the chain with the butt of the P-90 and it fell to the floor. Arthur and Father Lazarev could throw their arms around each other at last, and Hellen punched Tom in the ribs.
“Don’t ever scare me like that again,” she said. Then she hugged him fleetingly and, just as quickly, let go again. Tom herded all of them back into the passage and waved them on. They had to get away from there as fast as they could.
But Father Lazarev would not move. “We still have to get the casket,” he said, pointing back up to the castle.
“Why does the casket matter so much? I’ve been wondering
about it ever since you gave it to me,” Arthur asked.
“I can’t tell you. But it is vital that I get it back,” the priest said, his voice deadly serios.
“Does it have to do with Kitezh?” Hellen asked directly, and the priest paled.
“Kit . . . how . . .?” Words failed him.
“From your son. Long story,” Hellen said. The priest’s expression darkened, but he nodded in confirmation. “Kitezh is in danger,” Hellen continued. “And not just from the men here. In less than 24 hours, an earthquake is going to level the entire area around the lake. And Kitezh, if it even exists, will sink forever.”
The last remaining color in Father Lazarev’s face now vanished completely. “Oh, it exists, but—”
“Stop!” Tom cut him off. “We’re still in the enemy camp. We do not have the time to discuss this now. Any second now, they’re going to discover that you’re AWOL,” Tom said, pointing to Father Lazarev, “and then all hell’s going to break loose.” He urged them forward. But Lazarev would not be moved.
“The casket holds the key to Kitezh,” he said. That got their attention. Tom, Hellen and Arthur looked at him in shock. Seconds passed.
“Okay,” Tom said. “New plan. You get the hell out of here, fast. I’ll get the box.” He looked at Father Lazarev. “Where is it?”
“I believe I overheard them say that someone called the Welshman has it,” the priest replied.
The Invisible City (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 3) Page 12