King Solomon's Tomb

by Preston W Child

  He rubbed shoulders with people as he strode, took note of the faces of the men and women without looking. He came out on the other side where there was a broad street at the back of the church. There was the rusty exit gate.

  He tried it, saw the padlock was broken, derided the church silently for being lax in their security, and then walked in.

  —

  Andrew Gilmore was missing.

  No one has seen him since dawn arrived. Neither had they seen Lawrence Diggs too. In the middle of the room, there was a pile of clothing. It had been supplied by the monks of the monastery of the Lazarists.

  Olivia had spoken truthfully with them—half honestly, yes—about what was happening at the church nearby. She had only confirmed their suspicion, they said. Word had gone around that the church in Rome was stepping in to restore order.

  They asked Olivia to let them know whatever was needed to accomplish the task ahead of her team. She had told them then that she and her friends were working for the interest of the church.

  The lead monk, a man with a wide midriff, bald head, and shy-mannered named Joshua, said, "The church used to be a holy place but is now defiled. It hurts to see that not even the holy ones among us could keep the evil out. We are the evil we fight against."

  Then after a moment's thought, he added, "Do you seek as well, the contents of the tomb of Solomon?"

  Taken aback, but careful not to show her surprise, she asked in turn, "Why would we be interested in its contents? After all, it is home to a long-dead king."

  Joshua smiled.

  "Do you suppose the church would keep a dead body in there? Why do we have cemeteries?"

  "You know what's inside of it?"

  "Why, it is common knowledge."

  "I doubt it very much, Joshua."

  He leaned closer, frowned, and asked, "Why is that?"

  "It just doesn't make sense—"

  "It's not supposed to. That's how you keep a secret for hundreds of years; you take the sense out of it; you make it illogical. It is like the Holy Grail, the Templars gold. And now Solomon's tomb."

  Olivia felt the cold hands of fear suddenly grasp her heart. She looked back at the team busying about the room, and the other monks helping out with the clothes that fit. Some of the cloaks were so big they'd be needing resizing. This monk seemed to know more than he's letting on. And dangerously so.

  He nodded. "You don't think just because we are monks and priests that we are dumb and unfamiliar with happenings in the outside world. We know who you are, Olivia. But we know you didn't do the things the TV said you did. We want to protect the church too. But does the church realize the times are changing?"

  "What are you talking about?"

  "I'm talking about Solomon's tomb. What if it's not just a wise man's lair?"

  "Then we wouldn't be here in the first place."

  Joshua nodded slowly to show he got Olivia's drift and was flowing with her. Olivia told him to wait a second. She went to her bag and brought back the red book Rodriguez had sent to her from Brazil.

  When he saw it, Joshua said, "The Treasures of Solomon."

  "You know this book?"

  "I have seen it a couple of times, never read it." Then he leaned closer to Olivia. "And I don't trust it too. Have you heard of the Order of the Hand?"

  So many Orders, I can't keep up. She shook her head. "No. What are they?"

  "Walk with me, please."

  Olivia followed. The monastery was a maze of walkways and archways. They walked through a hallway; very cool air blew past Olivia's face. Joshua explained that the monastery was once a branch of the city's artificial aquifer.

  They walked up two flights of steps and up to one of the flat roofs of the monastery.

  Andrew was sitting in a monk's pose there. His back was so straight, his eyes closed, legs crossed. Diggs was on the other side too. He was practicing some form of martial arts.

  Olivia looked at Joshua.

  "What is the Order of the Hand?" she asked again.

  "They were created by the church to clean up the mess made by its clergy, the cardinals especially. And all such misbehavior by any of her representatives."

  "Who created it?"

  "The history is foggy, ambiguous. Some said the Templars did, others say Pope Paul the fifth, others say Gregory the fifteenth. No one knows for sure. It was outlawed by Pope Clemente the tenth some years after. But the Order quickly emerged again upon the proliferation of corrupt clergy. In time, they didn't just clean the church's misdoings; they collected the treasures that the church taught they were custodians of. Especially the treasures of the kings. They wrote this book in the 1700s to document all these treasures."

  "So, Solomon's treasures are still alive somewhere? There are treasures in the tomb?"

  "That I don't know. What I do know is they will come. The Order will come. And they can be heavy-handed, I assure you."

  Olivia's heart felt lighter. The puzzles were unraveling. The question that remained to be answered was: How did Rodriguez come about this book?

  Joshua most have read Olivia's thought. He was staring at her. "The man who gave you this book is a member of the Hand."

  Olivia frowned. "He can't be."

  "Why?"

  "He's Peruvian. He's—"

  "The first headquarters of the Hand was in Peru. The branch is still there as we speak."

  Damn, she thought. This is too much. She turned around to see Andre was getting up. Diggs was bowing to an imaginary opponent and coming over as well.

  Joshua, the monk, bowed, then shook hands with him.

  "Are we ready?" asked Andrew.

  Olivia said they were.

  "Are you ready?" she asked both men.

  They walked past her without a word.

  —

  The numbers were converging. The Hacker felt it. The air pulsed with the energy of the convergence. He was standing under the church, in a tunnel that used to be one of the watercourses of the city, one of the many aqueducts. They were all dry now. The city got her water from localized wells or through the Water Works Inc.

  He looked up the short step that would take him to the top. Few people knew about these exits. They weren't even in the blueprints available to the public. And for a good reason. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher hid one of the most important hoards of the Christian world.

  For the first time in his career as a killer—one that spanned 15 years now—he was afraid. He hadn't been fearful since that day in the schoolyard when he beat the last bully who looked at him wrong.

  It was such a long time ago he almost couldn't recall what fear felt like.

  He had fought two men twice. And they had both walked away alive on both occasions.

  "You are going soft, Roy," Emilio had said, and he had almost snapped the man's head off his useless neck. He had nearly done it; he wished now that he had.

  Now Hirsh had found him. He flexed his abdomen under the black Kevlar, which was, in turn, covered by his black jacket. He felt the throb of a deep scar there. Hirsh had given him that scar. He had sunk a blade into Roy—the Hacker—in a fight he barely escaped from. Hirsh was the second-best killer on the list. The unkillable.

  Hirsh joined Interpol so he can have an official reason to kill him. Now he was here. He was here for him.

  That means the Hacker's cover was blown. Someone has found the truth about the old man in Brazil, or the airplane crash in Miami.

  He took two slow breaths and climbed the steps. He felt heavy, weighed down by the weapons strapped all over him and by the Kevlar.

  —

  Hirsh was waiting on the roof, practicing deep breathing with his eyes closed

  From there, he saw the shimmer in the chamber of Solomon's tomb. He saw everything, even the ones that were supposed to be hidden. Whoever did the trick was a professional.

  Solomon's tomb was in the hall but hidden by the sunlight that's supposed to illuminate it.

  He smiled.
<
br />   Whatever was going to go down in this church will happen here, he thought.

  —

  Evening approached, the sun got bloody, and darkness would soon be born in the eastern skies.

  Joshua, the monk, had gone into the Church of the Holy Sepulcher earlier. There, he sat on the pew. He had a phone with him with which he would alert Olivia's team if the men of the Hand showed up.

  But what Joshua the monk didn't tell Olivia was that even he couldn't tell what the men of the Hand looked like, or whether they were women for that matter.

  So, when the church doors creaked open in the afternoon, and four people walked in, he thought they were tourists. Because quite frankly, they did appear like tourists.

  Then five more people joined them, among these were women. Some carried backpacks; others just carried cameras, phones which they employed in taking pictures of what interested them. They spoke English, all of them. There were Asians among them.

  One of them, a female, waved at Joshua across the pews. Her eyes compressed into two slits, and her little rows of teeth brightened in a smile.

  No, they can't be the Hand. Asians? Never.

  Joshua fingered the phone in his hand. His hand sweated. The closest he's come to violence was when he slaughtered chickens for the kitchen on weekends when he did the cooking.

  And even that was extreme violence in his valuation.

  So, when he saw these tourist-looking people, his worry, and curiosity, quickly fizzled away. Maybe the Order of the Hand changed their mind.

  Maybe not.

  —

  Olivia was getting worried. She started pacing when the clock in the monastery clanged the hour of three. They were ready. But they couldn't move.

  The team was strung up.

  Anabia and Liam had taken off their monk cloaks. Tami had gone to lay down again, did a marathon telephone conversation with her detective boyfriend back in Cusco, Peru. Borodin read an engineering periodical.

  Miller had conducted three transactions in the past two hours too. The rest of the crew just sat, stood, and listed around. Andrew and Diggs were like sculptures in the room.

  Olivia shed her jacket. She started dialing Joshua.

  "What's happening in there?"

  "Nothing yet."

  Olivia frowned. She asked if no one has come into the church at all.

  "Well, just tourists," said the monk.

  Olivia thought he did not sound convincing. So, she asked one more time if the monk could maybe walk around. Could the Hand have come in, and he was not aware of it?

  The monk was about to say he doubted it when he noticed something odd had happened behind him. The raucous tourists have suddenly quieted. He turned back and saw they had vanished.

  "What…"

  "Joshua?"

  "The tourists are gone…" he mumbled. "They were back there just now—"

  Olivia put her phone away.

  She looked at her team and said, "They are here."

  —

  Since the Order operated under strict secrecy, Olivia was hoping that she and her team could go in pretending that they were part of the emissary.

  There were two police cars posting guard on the street opposite, obviously watching the church. And how come they didn't stop the tourists from going in? Olivia wondered.

  She walked faster. (Except the Order of the Hand have just gone in the church pretending to be tourists.) In which case the police were in on it. Or not.

  The team split in two.

  Olivia, Miller, Liam, and Anabia had the keys from Henderson and his friends. They were followed by Andrew and Diggs.

  Reno, Tami, and Borodin stayed back to provide backup if needed. A getaway car was waiting at the monastery of the Lazarists.

  Paul Talbot had still not contacted the team…

  —

  …Because he was in the church already.

  Paul Talbot had walked into the church at about the same time the group of tourists came. One of the cops in the car had given him a nod as he stepped out of his car.

  He looked at that cop, and he knew everything he needed to know. First, he went into the hall of Solomon's tomb. He scanned the place; the tomb was still gone. Good.

  He left that place and walked around the church. He walked past a monk who was in his way out of the main church. He seemed in such a rush. Talbot's eyes followed the fleeing monk curiously as he went up the small flight of steps and the corridor until he went out of sight.

  He wrinkled his nose: monks and their strange ways.

  Talbot took a seat in the middle of the church. He took a moment to gaze at the life-sized cross at the head of the altar. The bloodied Christ was up there the last time Talbot was there. That image kept up the dying appearance every goddamn time.

  He sat and crossed his legs.

  He, too, wasn't a religious man, so he said out loud, "Hello Jesus, how's it coming…"

  —

  The cop in the car brought his radio to his mouth and spoke into it.

  "She's here."

  The man he spoke to replied, "Good job…"

  When they arrived inside the church, they split again. Diggs and Andrew would find Emilio Batolini. Olivia, Liam, Miller, and Anabia would wait in the hall of the tomb.

  —

  Outside, Reno, Tami, and Borodin arrived in a rented van that was supposed to supply poultry to the monastery of the Lazarists. They parked a little distance from the police cars. From here, they watched the church.

  Emilio Batolini arrived in a taxi.

  Borodin said into his radio, "Bogey is hot."

  —

  Liam frowned at Olivia. "Bogey?"

  "Emilio is here," she said.

  Anabia asked him if he wasn't listening when the code was rehearsed. Liam said he did but didn't favor bogey for Emilio.

  "That's a name fit for Andrew or Diggs," he whispered to Anabia.

  Diggs's voice filtered in, "I heard that."

  "Me too," said Andrew.

  Olivia said over the radio, "Everyone, it's on. Keep your eyes sharp."

  There was a sharp hiss in the reception. The sharpness of the frequency was interrupted by static, and then it was gone.

  "Hello, Olivia," came a voice Olivia had never heard before.

  She frowned and glanced at Miller. He shrugged; he removed his earphone and checked it.

  "Talbot?"

  "Yeah, that's me. How are you all doing this fine evening?"

  "Where's Emilio?"

  "He's on his way as we speak. Gear up, ladies and gentlemen. Let's get this paper."

  He went off.

  "How's he able to do that?" Liam whispered.

  They were in the hall of the Entombment. It was a vast place with an upper chamber connected by a flight of steps by the entrance itself. The wall on one side was covered with a large fresco design of Christ being taken down from the church and prepared for burial. Chandeliers shaped like flower vases hung from the low ceiling on one side, they illuminated the hallway. The team rushed from there up the steps to the upper chamber. From there, they could spot anyone going into the chambers of the tombs at the other half of the church.

  And here they waited for Emilio Batolini.

  —

  Andrew Gilmore and Lawrence Diggs had gotten to the point in the past few days where they could communicate without words.

  Brothers in arms, they stepped into the hall of Solomon's tomb and smelled someone who had been there before them.

  Andrew looked up at the roof, up in the dome, but Diggs glanced at the archway into Sheba's hall.

  The moment was frozen in time.

  A man was sitting in the circular slat of the dome, his feet dangling over the side, and his lips drawn over his teeth in a childish smile.

  And down below, Diggs was staring into the eyes of death that couldn't kill him the first two times.

  Will he be taken now?

  —

  Back in the main church, Emilio
Batolini sat behind Paul Talbot.

  "Don't turn around."

  Talbot raised his eyebrows. "Why?"

  "We are not alone," Emilio growled.

  But they needn't keep up their pretense. The men and women of the Order of the Hand were already in the main church. They were as pissed at Andrew and Diggs.

  —

  11

  There were five of them. Their clothes gave them away. Not that Emilio had seen them before. Or they even believed they were real. The stories about them were as scanty as the need for their services over the years.

  They were dressed as monks. The difference was that they covered their heads with hoods, their cloaks were black, and bulk around their bodies he was sure was weapons.

  He'd heard they had adopted modern methods of conflict since the beginning of the 19th century.

  The one that addressed them—Emilio and Talbot—was female. She was Asian. Just some moments ago, this one had gleefully greeted a scouting monk, her eyes had dimmed, and her cheeks had dimpled deeply.

  Now her eyes were fierce charcoals, and her lips blood red with lipstick. Her hair was so black, it was almost green.

  "Former cardinal Emilio Batolini, good evening. The Order of the Hand sends its greetings," said the woman in a thin voice.

  Emilio nodded crustily.

  She glanced at Talbot. "Paul Talbot, former CIA chief stationed in Rome, the Order sends its regards."

  "Nice to meet you, girl."

  The woman's face was so smooth and glassy she could have had extensive augmentations, but it wasn't likely. Talbot found her attractive and would have asked for a simple dinner if the circumstances were different.

  She scowled at Talbot and turned attention back to Emilio.

  "Mr. Emilio Batolini, your key, please."

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  The girl's lips parted slightly in a smile, but her eyes weren't touched, but Talbot was touched. Deeply the mound that was vaguely visible between the collar of her cloak.

  "It has been brought to the church's knowledge that you have one of the five keys that unlocks Solomon's tomb. Hand it over, please. We are cleaning house."

  She spread a small palm.

  Emilio looked at the hand and sighed. He sat back and put his hand around his head; Talbot turned to look at the former cardinal. A small smile was dancing on his big lips.