The Crypt Trilogy Bundle

by Bill Thompson

  Edgar Cayce lived for a decade after the Penn archaeology team abandoned Piedras Negras. Several of his trances during that period yielded tantalizing clues as to the possible location of the Atlantean Hall of Records, in areas the archaeologists had named the “South Group” and the “Acropolis.” Referring to the records themselves, Cayce said a temple stood near their hiding place and that they were in a cave or crypt. If one believes Edgar Cayce – and many people do – it’s conceivable the people from Atlantis could have created a Hall of Records that’s been lost for centuries. The Maya could have found the ancient library and then erected the massive temples at Piedras Negras nearby.

  Continuing this theory, it’s not inconceivable that, after the Mayans also abandoned Piedras Negras, the Hall of Records once again vanished. The jungle is good at reclaiming the meager, futile efforts of men. Civilizations rose and fell, buildings disappeared into forests, and future generations forgot what the elders once had known.

  The ruins at Piedras Negras sat in isolation for seventy years after the Penn archaeologists left. The jungle overtook the ancient buildings, covering trails and stone steps with vines and undergrowth until nothing was visible except huge mounds rising through the trees. In the late 1990s a team from Brigham Young University was granted a five-year concession to explore the site. Five years sounds like a long time, but a “year” – one archaeological season in the intense Guatemalan jungle – is roughly three months long. Teams can only work during the times when it’s not constantly raining.

  Among the more traditional goals, the BYU explorers searched for evidence of the Hall of Records as Cayce had described it. They excavated while fighting off predators of various types, including human bandits who eventually contributed to a decision to cut the expedition short and return to Utah with a plethora of materials they found. Before they left they followed Cayce’s clues in an unsuccessful attempt to pinpoint the location of the Hall of Records.

  In the twenty-first century Piedras Negras remains remote, inaccessible and forbidding. Many still believe it holds the knowledge of the ages – information that will prove ancient people sailed around the world, educating primitive civilizations in sophisticated techniques.

  Only time will tell if the jungle gives up her secrets.

  Turn the page to read

  GHOST TRAIN:

  The Lost Gold of the Nazis

  The Crypt Trilogy: Book Three

  Go back to Contents

  GHOST TRAIN:

  The Lost Gold of the Nazis

  The Crypt Trilogy: Book Three

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this book to Dick McGrew, a man whom I came to admire greatly in the short five years I knew him. He was a savvy businessman, a great conversationalist and a frequent gin rummy winner even at age 89.

  I’ll miss our stimulating conversations, Dick. If there’s an information booth in Heaven, please find a way to let me know if aliens built the pyramids.

  ——

  I also want to honor the memory of the millions who perished in the Holocaust. Let these atrocities be forever etched in the hearts of mankind so they may never happen again.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  As always, I thank my beta readers Bob, Peggy, Jeff and Ryan. Thanks also to my wife Margie, who patiently listens to every word read aloud, a process critical to my reviewing.

  Author’s Note

  To keep things simple, I used U.S. dollars for most of the monetary transactions in this book.

  Prelude

  Piedras Negras, Guatemala

  One year ago

  Paul Silver lay trapped under a pedestal in a crypt filled with ancient technology. Although he didn’t know it, the archaeologist was in a similar predicament, ten feet away beneath a pile of rubble. Paul could move his hands and feet and he could see faint daylight above him. Clearly their last shot, meant to open the huge stone door that held them captive, had instead caused a massive cave-in.

  “Mark! Mark, can you hear me?”

  Paul thought he heard a muffled response but he wasn’t sure. He tried to dislodge himself using his hands but the heavy pedestal remained securely on his upper back, rendering him immobile.

  The pedestal’s manmade, he remembered as he looked at its perfectly square corners just inches above his head. Maybe I have a chance. Was I holding the wand when the ceiling collapsed? He couldn’t recall.

  When they first broke through the wall into the chamber full of ancient devices, he had commented on the pedestals’ precise corners, a dead giveaway that the heavy stands weren’t natural.

  He and Mark had spent the last two days trying to see if the cache of ancient, complicated devices sitting on pedestals in the remote cavern could help them escape their stone prison. Yesterday they had learned that one of the instruments, a little wand, was a teleportation device. It didn’t work on stone, so it didn’t remove the huge rock that blocked their escape. But it did move other things, manmade things. If he had it, he might be able to escape from underneath the pedestal that pinned him to the floor of the cave.

  He slowly worked his hand down his body along the sandy floor. The wand was nearly two feet long; if it were there he’d find it. It wasn’t on his right side but halfway down the left he felt something like a piece of PVC pipe.

  That’s it!

  The other day they’d aimed the wand’s beam at the flap of a rucksack. The piece of cloth had disappeared and then reappeared across the room where Mark had directed it. Paul couldn’t move the entire pedestal since the wand’s beam wasn’t wide enough to encompass all of it. But that didn’t matter. He only needed was to eliminate the part that lay on his chest.

  Since his upper body was on one side of the pedestal and his hands were on the other, he couldn’t see what he was doing. He remembered Mark’s having used both hands to twist the cylinder in opposite directions. With considerable effort he brought his hands together around the wand and turned it. He could see the gleam of its green beam as the wand activated.

  When they first found it, they’d wondered if the wand would transport people. Neither was willing to find out. They did know that the beam would move parts of things, so Paul was careful to keep it away from his body. He carefully pointed it upwards, prayed he had aimed correctly, took a deep breath and pressed a small knob on its side.

  Instantly he felt the release of pressure on his body. The section of the pedestal that had confined him was gone. Now he could see an enormous stone that had fallen from the ceiling. Now it was resting a foot above him, supported by the rest of the pedestal – the part he hadn’t zapped away. Apparently he’d hit it perfectly; if he’d been off by inches, the stone would have crushed him.

  Weak from days with meager rations and running on nothing but adrenalin, he scrambled out and saw Mark’s legs extending from a pile of rubble. Paul worked feverishly with his hands to scoop away dirt and rocks. Soon he had freed his friend’s body, but Mark was unconscious. Paul felt a weak pulse, so he quickly turned him over, cleared his mouth of some dirt and began CPR. Within seconds the archaeologist coughed, spat more soil and said weakly, “I guess we made it. If this is Heaven it sure is dirty.”

  They quickly assessed the situation. There was now a large hole in the ceiling twenty feet above through which shafts of sunlight flooded the cavern. It was tempting but virtually impossible, since they had no way to get up to it.

  “Oh my God,” Mark said, pointing. “Look at the door! We did it! We can get out!”

  When Mark had pulled the trigger of the strange gun-like apparatus, the goal had been to blast away enough of the rock door to allow them to escape. Although the ceiling had collapsed on them, they also got what they wanted. The top of the massive rock had been blown away. Now there was a tight space that looked like it had sufficient clearance for a person to squeeze through.

  When they reached the cavern on the other side they’d be able to walk out to the surface, but there was one potential problem. If the man who
had left them for dead had posted guards to keep looters away from the crypt, Paul and Mark would be killed the moment they crawled into the room.

  Knowing the risk, Paul volunteered to go first. “If you hear anything but an OK from me, fire the gun through the opening. Who knows what it might do to humans? It damned sure blew away a rock wall.”

  He climbed up and clawed his way through the narrow passage. Mark heard him yell, “No one’s here! Come on through!”

  ——

  Two months later

  Mark Linebarger left the crypt where he’d been working all morning and called Paul. It was time for their weekly catch-up meeting. “We’re making a lot of progress here,” he reported with the same exuberance Paul had heard in his voice for weeks.

  After extensive study, the archaeologist had become convinced that the artifacts in the crypt belonged to a highly advanced civilization thousands of years old, a civilization which might have been the fabled Atlantis. They had found a series of etched metal plates and Mark was convinced those held the key to everything. But he was stymied. Even when he used the university’s powerful, highly advanced computers, the strange markings remained an enigma. Mark was certain that someday they’d break the complex language on the plates. When that happened, they would learn everything about the mysterious crypt and a civilization that hid its technology here.

  As he worked from his townhouse in London’s West End, Paul listened to the news. He enjoyed Mark’s periodic updates from the Guatemalan jungle. The two of them had found strange and amazing objects in the crypt, and Paul was pleased that the archaeologist was now the spokesperson for the ongoing project. Paul shunned publicity for a variety of reasons; for him, simply having been part of the discovery was satisfaction enough. Mark was armed with plenty of funding, both from the university where he worked and from Paul himself. An extended concession from the government allowed him plenty of time to learn more about what the ancients had left behind.

  Paco Garcia, the wealthy criminal who’d left them for dead, was located by Guatemalan undercover agents in a condominium in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. Rather than dealing with the formalities of extradition, the agents chose a simpler method to bring him to justice. They whisked him away one night in a private jet. Now he was in a Guatemala City jail, facing charges of corruption and theft from the government. His attempts to keep the mysteries of Piedras Negras for himself had been foiled.

  Paul Silver had moved on, back to a world of finance and armchair adventure. In addition to the fantastic crypt, he had found something in that jungle that he believed would never enter his life again. He had allowed Hailey Knox to get into his heart. Then in an instant it was over, just like the few other times he’d let someone come too close.

  He would never, ever again get involved emotionally. He needed no one now. No one at all.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Bucharest, Romania

  Present day

  “How the hell long does it take an old man to die, for God’s sake?”

  “Shut up, Christina. He can hear you, for all you know.”

  “I’ve sat here for hours and I’m tired of waiting. I think I can move things along.” She grabbed hold of the frail, bruised skeleton lying in the bed and shook him violently. “Die, you old bastard!”

  The guard moved toward her but paused when Philippe jerked her back. He hissed, “Stop it, you idiot! It’ll happen soon enough on its own. He’s got broken bones already! Let him alone! Have a little compassion for once.”

  “Another hour. That’s all I’m going to give it.”

  “Really, darling? Then what? Do you intend to kill Grandfather?”

  Listening closely, the guard remained impassively by the door. He wondered the same thing and he was ready to move if he needed to.

  When Philippe saw her cruel smile, he knew she would have killed him for sure. Given where they were, it was impossible to pull off, but she’d have done it if she could. He was certain of that.

  The only movement from the old man was his faint breathing; things had been exactly like this since he’d fallen into a coma forty-eight hours ago. The inmate who’d savagely beaten him, a young murderer dying of HIV, had been in the hospital bed next to Nicu’s. The convict claimed he attacked because he was bored and thought it sounded like fun. Now Nicu Lepescu was clinging to life.

  Milosh Lepescu, the oldest of the grandchildren, stood on the opposite side of the bed from his siblings. He’d observed their bickering but said nothing. These three were the only remaining relatives of the one-hundred-five-year-old man who had birthed their father, Ciprian. The grandchildren were all he had left, and they were impatiently waiting for him to die.

  As more time passed, the girl became restless. With a huff, she struck her grandfather’s arm roughly and walked to the guard, who was desperately trying to mind his own business.

  “Let me out,” she demanded. He selected a key from a ring, unlocked the cell door, and she went out into the hallway. The door closed behind her with a metallic slam.

  Philippe left the old man’s hospital bed and walked to the barred window three feet away. He gazed idly at the ancient cobblestone street running just outside an electrified fence. Soon Christina returned, her breath reeking of cigarettes. She asked Milosh, “Any progress? Is he dead yet?”

  He ignored her, leaned close to the frail body and whispered words in Romanian, the only language the old man knew. He’d asked the same question a dozen times over the past two days, but the inert figure never responded.

  “Where is it, Grandfather? Where is the book?”

  Nicu suddenly opened his eyes wide. Milosh stepped back in shock; he’d never really expected his grandfather to hear him. And maybe the old man hadn’t. Maybe this was an involuntary action, simply part of the dying process.

  His lips opened and shut vigorously as he twisted his body, thrashing his arms in the air. He was trying to speak, but nothing would come out.

  “Grandfather! What is it?” Milosh yelled, the noise bringing Christina and Philippe rushing to the bed. The guard became alert instantly. He removed his walkie-talkie, prepared to call for help if necessary.

  Nicu exhaled a guttural whisper none could understand.

  “What’s he saying?” Christina yelled. She looked down at him. “What are you saying, you decrepit fool?” She reached out to hit him again, but Milosh pulled her arm back roughly.

  “Leave him alone,” he said, leaning close to his grandfather’s face.

  “What is it, dear Grandfather?” Milosh whispered soothingly into the old man’s ear.

  A bony, skeletal hand grabbed Milosh’s jacket, pulling him closer with a surprising last burst of strength.

  He barely opened his lips and softly uttered a single word – a word spoken so quietly Milosh wasn’t sure he heard it correctly.

  Apostol.

  Then his grip relaxed and his hands fell to his sides. After one hundred and five years and a tumultuous life filled with greed, hatred and malice toward his fellow man, the old Nazi went to claim his reward, whatever that was. Philippe took his wrist and held it for a moment. He felt no sadness, no remorse. He also felt no pulse. Nicu Lepescu was gone.

  Though no one voiced it, each of them had the same thought.

  How ironic that Grandfather died a prisoner just like the thousands of prisoners he had a hand in killing.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Two months earlier

  “Are you joking? Is this a prank call?”

  Mrs. Radu paused, struggling to compose herself. She had dreaded calling the old man’s grandchild, but it had to happen. She didn’t care so much what happened to Nicu himself except that she didn’t want to lose her comfortable job. She was well paid and the work was easy.

  “Mr. Lepescu, I assure you I am serious. Your grandfather was arrested for murder yesterday afternoon. He’s being held in the Bucharest jail, and you must come immediately!”

  Milosh didn’t believe it. His grandfather
hadn’t entered his mind in years. He didn’t even know Nicu still lived here in Bucharest. By now the old man must be – what – maybe a hundred?

  “I don’t believe you. Who are you, and how did you get this number?”

  “My name is Ana Radu. I’m his housekeeper. The building superintendent called me yesterday. He told me the police were at Mr. Lepescu’s apartment. I wasn’t here – Mr. Lepescu gave me the day off. As soon as I heard, I went over to his house, spoke to the officer there, and they told me he killed a drug dealer in the Ferentari. I got your number from Mr. Lepescu’s address book. I’m thankful it still works.”

  “Wait a minute. He killed somebody in the Ferentari? In the ghetto? This is bullshit. What’s a hundred-year-old man doing in the ghetto?”

  “He’s a hundred and five, Mr. Lepescu,” she replied, frustrated that he still didn’t believe her but aware how bizarre this must sound. “I have no idea what he was doing there. Adriana took him. She takes him everywhere. I know she’s behind this somehow.”

  “Jesus, lady. This is getting weirder by the minute. Who’s Adriana? Never mind. You know what, I’ve spent just about enough time on this nonsense. Try this on somebody more gullible.” He started to hang up; he was out of patience and her story was obviously an attempt to get him to wire money. These scams were going on all over Eastern Europe. They happened to have picked the wrong patsy this time. His grandfather was far, far too old to be hanging around in the most dangerous section of Bucharest.