“What, just climb down and dive the rest? Are you insane? You have no idea what to expect down there!” Hellen said.
“What’s to expect? The little mermaid? A great white shark? Aquaman? Come on, I’m just going to check it out.”
“There are great whites in the Mediterranean, you know,” Hellen said. “I heard it on the news just the other day.”
But Tom wasn’t listening. He took his waterproof flashlight and descended several steps until he reached the water. Palffy and Hellen stood on the edge, looking down at him hopefully.
“See you soon!”
Tom mock-saluted and dived into the water, which was surprisingly warm and clear. He used his flashlight to light the way and was surprised at how swiftly he was able to progress. The space between the stone steps was wide enough and he kept going deeper and deeper until, about fifteen feet down, he reached the bottom. He saw two shafts leading off horizontally, to the southeast and the northwest. If his orientation was right, one of them had to lead to the sea and the other back under the center of Valletta.
Tom chose the northwest passage and swam onward. It rapidly became narrower and narrower until he had to squeeze through, and he was glad that claustrophobia had never been an issue for him. Then it widened again, and just as he was thinking of turning back, he saw a reflection above him, caused by the flashlight. He knew what it was: an air pocket that had formed in the passageway. He surfaced and gulped a few breaths of air. Unable to see how far the passage continued, he decided to turn back. Once again, he had to pass through the narrow stretch, but from this side it seemed more difficult than the first time through. His trousers caught and he scraped his thigh. Parts of the wall broke off as he went through.
I hope it doesn’t all come down on top of me, Tom thought as he pushed clear of the narrow point.
The salt water burned his grazed thigh like fire and if he wasn’t mistaken, the water had taken on a pink tinge as well. He thought of Hellen’s shark story, but knew there was no chance of that in the flooded corridors. He decided to surface and report back to Hellen and Palffy.
“There are two passages down there,” he called up breathlessly. “Both are flooded. I swam into one of them, but I couldn’t see how far it went and don’t think I could have got much further without scuba gear. I’m going to take a look at the other one.”
Tom breathed deeply in and out a few times. Then, without waiting for a response from Palffy and Hellen, he swam down again. This time he took the other passage, which was much wider than the first. He swam a few yards straight ahead and was surprised to see steps coming down into the water from above, all the way to the floor of the passage. It looked as if a stairway here also led up to a room that was not completely flooded. He followed the stairs upward and emerged in a small, circular chamber with a column—again made of red marble—at its center. The column was about three feet in height and topped by a stone slab on which a black chest lay, its sides decorated with rubies in the shape of a Maltese cross.
Tom grabbed the chest and swam with it back to the original shaft. It had been several months since his last dive training. He was out of practice, and hauling the chest slowed him down. He felt the pressure building in his lungs, his need for air. His lungs began to burn as he swam up through the spiral staircase. When he finally broke the surface, he felt like he’d been punched in the gut—not because he’d run out of air, but at the sight of Guerra and two other men holding their automatic weapons to Hellen and Palffy’s heads.
55
The catacombs of Valletta
“Thank you for doing the dirty work for us, Señor Wagner.” Guerra’s arrogant laughter echoed across the chamber, but at least he had pronounced Tom’s name correctly.
Tom briefly thought about diving again, but knew there was no way out. He wouldn’t be able to escape, and Hellen and Palffy would still be in Guerra’s hands. Slowly, he ascended the steps. One of Guerra’s men took the chest from him and pushed him over to join Hellen and Palffy. The second man kept the three of them covered with his machine pistol, while Guerra trained his on Tom’s head. Guerra seemed to be enjoying himself, standing there like a gangster out of Grand Theft Auto.
Guerra turned away from Tom and began to examine the chest.
“It looks brand-new,” Tom whispered to Hellen.
“I know. That puzzles me, too.”
Impatiently, Guerra tried everything he could to get it open, even bashing it with the butt of his pistol. Hellen couldn’t suppress a smile. Palffy pointed to the place where the chest would normally have a lock. But there was no lock, just another one of the now-familiar recesses.
“Hellen, your amulet,” Palffy said nervously and pointed to the notch, a twin of the one on the black marble orb.
Hellen, aghast, could only glare at Palffy. She could not believe he had opened his mouth and blurted out the words. Palffy slapped his hand over his mouth in mortification, but it was too late: Guerra grinned and nodded his thanks. He walked toward Hellen.
“An amulet?” he asked. “Where have you hidden that?”
He jabbed his gun into her temple and with the other hand began to unbutton her blouse. The amulet appeared, but Guerra seemed to like what he was doing, because he opened Hellen’s blouse further than necessary. He stroked the amulet, at the same time caressing Hellen’s naked skin under the blouse. He grinned diabolically.
“Get your filthy hands off of her!” Tom snarled. He tensed, ready to throw himself at Guerra. But the guns pointed at him kept him in check. Guerra slowly moved his hand under the amulet, hefted it briefly in his hand, then snatched it from Hellen’s neck, breaking the chain. His eyes moved from the amulet in his hand to the chest. Hellen took a quick backward step, closed her blouse again angrily, and folded her arms.
Guerra ignored her. He was still staring at the amulet, and gradually realized what Palffy had meant. He placed the amulet into the notch on the chest. Click. Guerra turned the amulet first clockwise, then counterclockwise. There was the sound of a bolt sliding in a lock. Everyone held their breath. Slowly, Guerra lifted the lid. Everyone peered into the chest, which was lined with red velvet. Inside gleamed a magnificent short sword. Like the chest itself, it was in immaculate condition. Hellen looked at the Preti fresco. The sword in the chest looked exactly like the sword that Saint Peter held in the painting.
“The Sword of Saint Peter. The sacred weapon touched by Jesus Christ himself, and which has been said ever since to carry indescribable power,” Count Palffy murmured, his voice trancelike as he slowly approached the chest. He gazed down into it and lifted out the sword. Neither Guerra nor either of his men moved to stop him. They kept Tom and Hellen in their sights. The fact that Palffy held the sword in his hand, staring at it with a look somewhere between rapture and delirium, didn’t seem to bother them in the slightest. Palffy looked up from the sword and smiled.
“Good work, Guerra,” Palffy said, patting him on the back.
It took a few seconds for Tom and Hellen to realize what was going on. Tom was the first to recover himself.
“You son of a bitch. You’re all in this together?”
It took Hellen a little longer. She wanted to scream at Palffy, shout “Why?”, claw his eyes out all at once. But she could do none of it. She stood as if frozen in place, realizing that her mentor had been playing her for a fool for years. Not just her, but Blue Shield and UNESCO as well.
“Don’t look at me like that, Hellen.” Palffy handed the sword to Guerra, who put it back in the chest and locked it away again. He passed the amulet to Palffy.
“I will look after this for you, and honor it,” Palffy said to Hellen as he slipped the amulet into his jacket pocket.
Hellen finally found her voice again. “But why, Nikolaus? Why?”
“My dear, it would take too long to explain everything to you now, and you wouldn’t understand it anyway. This is just one piece of a very, very big puzzle. It is not about the sword or the other relics.�
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“Then what is it about?” Hellen snapped.
“It is about putting some things in our world back in their rightful place. It is about saving our culture.” Palffy looked away.
“Saving our culture?” Tom said. “By hiring mercenaries to steal artifacts and create chaos? By sowing fear and insecurity across Europe?”
“You have hit the proverbial nail on the head, Tom. You see how easily fear is brought into the world? How easily people today are manipulated? All one has to do is fly a couple of planes into the Twin Towers, or steal a few Christian artifacts, manipulate the media a little, and wait until the idiot mob on social media joins in. The panic follows naturally.”
Palffy’s voice sounded cold.
Hellen shook her head. “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Nikolaus.”
“We are fighting a new Crusade. If we continue the way we are, European culture will perish. In a few years, Europe will have more mosques than churches, and nobody is doing anything to stop it. Our democratic system is broken. Europe is divided. And all we do is sit back and watch as Islam infiltrates us.”
“Is that what this is about? You staged all this to pin it on Muslims? You’re a sick man.” Tom was stunned.
“No. I am the only one not sick. Europe simply needs a strong hand to put a stop to it, someone who will ensure that our culture is preserved, that we do not degenerate into one gigantic kebab joint.”
“And you want to be that strong hand?” Hellen laughed contemptuously.
“Not alone, of course . . . see, I knew you would not understand. And honestly, I do not have the time, or the inclination, to explain it to you.” Palffy looked at his watch and turned to Guerra. “We have more important things to take care of now.”
“Project Cornet,” Guerra said quietly.
Palffy nodded and looked at Guerra eagerly. “The final realization of our plan. Get started. You do not have much time. By noon tomorrow, the world will look very different.”
Suddenly, a rumble sounded from the opening in the middle of the chamber. Frighteningly powerful, it resounded throughout the room. Palffy tapped his watch.
“Time for us to leave. The spring tide is rising. Soon everything here will be under water.” He looked first at Guerra and then at the other two men. “You know what to do.”
Palffy turned to leave, paying no more attention to Hellen or Tom. Tom could only watch as one of Guerra’s men attached explosive charges at the entrance to the chamber. Guerra took two pairs of handcuffs from his bag. He forced Tom and Hellen over to one of the four marble columns and had them face each other on opposite sides of it. He cuffed Tom’s left hand to Hellen’s right and did the same on the other side. Tom looked up at the pillar. He could see immediately that there was no escape. Guerra laughed.
“No need to check the column, Wagner. You won’t get out of here alive.”
Guerra looked over the handcuffs one last time, then at the man with the explosives.
“All set?”
The man nodded and set the timer.
“They say there is no crueler way to die than drowning.” Guerra’s tone was chillingly casual. “No form of torture comes even remotely close to the despair people experience when they drown. The only downside is that I can’t stay to watch.”
Guerra and his henchmen left the chamber.
56
The catacombs of Valletta
Hellen looked at Tom, blank despair etched on her face.
“We’re going to die here, Tom,” she said, trembling.
“I was about to say ‘over my dead body,’ but I can see how that would be inappropriate.”
“How can you crack jokes now? How the hell do we get out of here?”
Just then the chamber was shaken by the detonation of the explosive charges. Tom was impressed: the guys were certainly good at their job. The blast had brought down the exit but had left the rest of the chamber undamaged. As far as he could judge from where he was, it would be impossible to clear the rubble to get to higher ground.
“Oh God, Tom, the room is starting to fill with water. The spring tide . . .”
Water shot upwards into the chamber from the opening in its center. In a few seconds the floor was covered, and moments later Tom and Hellen were already ankle-deep.
“Okay, here’s the plan,” Tom said. “We wait for the room to fill with water, which will float us up. When we’re high enough, we can lift our hands over the top of the column and we’re free.”
“Free? My God, Tom, we won’t be free!” Hellen was starting to sound panicked. “We’ll still be trapped in a room that’s filling with water. We’ll drown!”
“No we won’t. We’re going to dive down. The chest with the sword was in a chamber that wasn’t flooded, and I don’t think the tide had ever filled it. It must be higher than this one. It was dry as dust, and nothing suggested that it had ever been under water.”
By now, the tide had reached their hips. Hellen tried to stay calm, but fear was overwhelming her.
“‘You think?’ But what if you’re wrong, what if it does get flooded? What do we do then? We’re handcuffed together. We’ll never get out of here alive. God, Tom, I don’t want to die.”
“Slow your breathing, Hellen. We take this one step at a time. We solve one problem and then we focus on the next. If we try to solve everything at once, it’s not going to work. I know it’s not easy, but you need to stay calm now. Step one is to tread water and to get high enough to get our hands over the top of this column. Step two, we dive down the well and swim to the chamber where the chest was. We rest there and plan our next step.”
Hellen was not enthusiastic, but she had no choice. She admired Tom’s stubborn composure. It gave her the faintest glimmer of hope that they could make it, though the water was literally up to their necks by now.
“Come on, Hellen. From now on we tread water until we get to the top.”
The column was actually wider at the top because of the brazier set on top of it. Tom hoped that the brazier was not firmly attached, otherwise they would have a very difficult time of it.
“We have to try to push the brazier off. On three, we lift it up and tilt it to the left.”
Hellen lifted her right hand and, although their situation was deadly serious, Tom had to laugh. “That whole left-right thing is still hard for you, isn’t it?”
“Shut up, smart guy, and let’s get on with it,” Hellen yelped back.
“Okay, on three: one, two, three.” They both pushed up as hard as they could. With a dull crunch, the heavy bowl detached from the column, tilted to the side, and instantly sank into the clear water.
Their joy was short-lived, however. They were coughing and swallowing too much water. Little waves were forming in the chamber, forcing Tom and Hellen to gasp for breath before they were even ready to dive. Hellen’s legs were already starting to burn from treading water, and she hoped she would be able to hold out. The water pushed them higher, and they were soon able to lift their hands over the top of the column and free themselves.
“Okay, first problem solved.” Tom pressed himself closer to Hellen.
“What are you doing? This is no time to get romantic.”
“Believe me, that’s the last thing on my mind, but we have to stay close and coordinate our movements or we’re not going to get anywhere. I’ll set the rhythm.” He took a short break. “Remember when we waltzed at the Opera Ball? That worked out fine.”
Hellen nodded.
“Three deep breaths, and then we dive.” Tom shouted to make himself understood over the rush of water. “Down the spiral staircase as quick as we can, then to the right. It’s only a few yards until the passage leads up again. But before that, there’s one more thing. I’ve got two glow sticks in the right pocket of my cargo pants. We’ll need them to help us find our bearings.”
Their hands moved down and found the glow sticks, and together they cracked them. A pale glow appeared, and each of them to
ok a stick.
“Ready?” Tom said.
Hellen nodded, although she felt anything but ready. They dove. Once inside the shaft, they were able to pull themselves quickly down the projecting stone steps; when they reached the bottom, they took the passage to the right and swam on. It took them a few strokes to find a rhythm, but they made faster progress than Tom had expected. The light sticks helped immensely, and after a few yards Tom could already see the steps in front of him. He prayed that he was right about the chamber being dry. They swam up the stairs. Tom’s head appeared first, and Hellen’s followed. Gasping for breath, they hoisted themselves up the last few stairs and dropped to the floor, exhausted.
“You see? That wasn’t so hard,” Tom said calmly, wiping the water off his face.
He gave Hellen a few moments to recover as he watched the water level. They were lucky: the water was not rising here at all.
“Okay. What’s next?” Though they were far from safe, Hellen’s sense of achievement had given her new strength.
“First, we have to get out of these handcuffs. To do that, you have to get to the fly of my pants,” Tom said as if it were obvious.
“I have to what?” Hellen said, thinking she had heard wrong.
“Relax. I broke the tag on the zipper, and replaced it with a paper clip,” he said with a grin.
“And we can use the paper clip to open the handcuffs,” Hellen said, brightening.
“That’s the idea. So go on—you ought to remember where it is.”
Hellen smiled and shook her head, but their lives were still in danger, and she hesitated only for a second. She reached down, found the zipper and began unthreading the paper clip. Her hands trembled.
“You never used to be this nervous,” Tom said. He couldn’t help himself.
“You are such an idiot,” Hellen scolded. A few seconds later she held the paper clip triumphantly in her hand.
Tom took the paper clip and in two minutes had opened the locks on both pairs of handcuffs. He stowed them in his cargo pants; you never knew when a pair of cuffs might come in handy. He eyed the glow sticks, which were slowly starting to dim. Hellen leaned against the wall and closed her eyes for a few seconds to recover her strength.
The Sacred Weapon: A Tom Wagner Adventure Page 20
