“Who wants to go first?” he asked.
Frightened faces stared back at him. He shrugged. “I guess I’ll just show you all how it’s done.”
He hooked both hands around ropes and lowered himself on one of the rungs. He tested its stability.
“Careful there,” Miller said.
All eyes were on Liam Murphy. He looked up at the group again. “Let me go down three rungs then the next person can join. Just take the harness and strap it to your body, like I did, and you’ll be okay.”
Then his brown hair disappeared into the darkness below. He called a few minutes after. “Next? It’s perfectly okay down here, it’s just the smell. Fucking awful!”
Then he was gone out of sight.
Hung up faces checked each other. Frank Miller took a harness and started down. When he was out of sight, Ted Cooper took a harness too. He looked around the faces, glanced at Olivia, and said, “Let's do this for the lady.”
He stretched the harness over the hole at her.
“Come on, can’t leave you out here with these men.” He smiled. “Your turn.”
Olivia’s mouth dropped open. She bent her head, puzzled.
Peter Williams took the harness. “Give it to me you son of a—”
“Peter?” Olivia gave him a look. Then she reached for the harness again. “I’d really like to go now.”
She threw Ted Cooper a severe look as her feet caught the first rung.
—
Olivia’s Dictaphone went to her lips. “It is 1536 and I’m descending down a hatch. Below me is Frank Miller, Liam Murphy, and darkness, and who knows what else. It smells like old damp clothes. It smells like…” She hesitated.
There was a smell like damp clothes. A homely one, that which you get when clothes are left in the bin for too long when you take them out of the laundromat.
There was another smell, underneath the wet one. It was almost indistinguishable in the dark, rising warmth of the place below. She inhaled, just to see if some memory would come flying from somewhere to identify it.
There was only that sourness.
Ambient light all around her rose from the gloom, or maybe her eyes just got used to the dark. She felt a touch when she had gone after what seemed like a long time.
It was Frank Miller.
Olivia looked around her; they were two frightened frozen orbs in her face. She walked past Miller as the man called for the next person.
Into her recorder she spoke, “One after the other we are climbing down with ropes, like mountaineers. Only this time, we are descending, not ascending. What will we find down here?”
She kept the recorder away and touched cool concrete wall. She heard scratching sounds ahead of her. She hoped it was Liam Murphy.
It was. She saw the light of his torch zigzagging on the walls. They were in a long hallway. It stretched on for about ten yards before it broke left into darkness. Liam vanished in that direction.
Behind she heard more feet fall as others joined.
“Olivia?”
“Yeah,” she answered in a measured tone.
“Wait up,” said Peter’s voice.
She didn’t.
—
“What’s that smell?”
Anabia Nassif coughed repeatedly, doubled over. He retched, covering his nose with a napkin that had gone from white to brown. Victor Borodin slapped him on the back.
“Keep up,” he said.
“Smells like a taxidermist shop down here.”
They clustered in an enclosure that Liam Murphy found at the end of the long hallway. There was a metal door in front of them. Liam had tried it but it wouldn't budge, stiff with rust.
Itay Friedman threw himself against it. Dust fell in showers from the edges. The door stood.
“There’s something in there,” said Olivia.
Ted Cooper asked her how she knew that. The others looked at her.
Borodin said, “She’s right.”
Miller shone his torch at the door. There was a slight incline, a dent where Friedman’s shoulder had collided with it. The door looked so thick and it filled the frame such that it was not certain where the hinges were—if the useless handle wasn’t there, that was.
The billionaire tried the handle again. It too won’t move. Not even an inch.
“There is no echo,” Borodin said. He looked at Olivia, who nodded. “I think we are at the back of the complex. That makes this room something like a store or something. It’s probably filled with things, hence, no echoes when you hit it.”
“Except…” someone said.
They all turned at the voice. It was Nicolai. At his feet were two cases. He shrugged.
In broken English he said, “Except it is room for machines or weapons.”
Ted sneered, “It is a laboratory, for God’s sake. You don’t think they made guns and shells.”
“There’s only one way to find out.” Nicolai opened one of the cases at his feet. “We blow it and hope it doesn’t blow us back.”
“Are you crazy?” Ted capered. He laughed, glancing at the others.
“I don’t see that we have another choice,” Miller said.
The rest of the crew—except Ted—seemed to agree. They moved back down the way they had come. Nicolai went about setting up small explosives.
“Wait.”
Peter shined his torch at the ceiling. He ran the light across it, back to where the crew was standing away from the door. There were cracks in the concrete.
“How about that, we’d be buried down here for sure,” said Peter. “Look at those cracks.”
Nicolai groaned. “Shit.”
He looked at Frank Miller. “What do we do?”
“We hack it down then,” Miller said.
“Or we go back, there’s gotta be another way,” Friedman suggested.
“No, it’s going to take longer.” There was an urgency in Miller’s voice that wasn’t there before, and wariness in his eyes too.
Olivia noted it. She felt her hands around the walls again. Then she looked up at the concrete over them.
“It won’t fall,” she said in a small voice.
They turned to her. In Miller’s eyes there was a new light. He looked at her appreciatively.
“How do you know this?” Miller approached her.
“These walls are as old as the ceiling, right?”
“Yes,” Miller agreed.
She contracted her shoulders. “Well then the roof will hold. Those are reinforced concrete, the lines are stress cracks. They are all over the story buildings in the city.”
Miller turned to Nicolai. “Blow it!”
—
The soldiers felt the explosion, more than heard it.
They just ditched their snowmobiles behind a hill not far away and were making their progress on foot when the ground vibrated.
ThooM!
It was a single sound but the trained ears of the shoulders could tell that a bomb had just gone off. And it wasn’t hard to know where it happened. The leader flipped his goggles up to his forehead. He raised his fist. His men stopped.
They waited.
He scanned the horizon to see a blast, a mushroom of fire or smoke. None came. He brought his talkie to his mouth again.
“They are in, sir,” he transmitted.
There was a pause on the other side. The harsh voice came back.
“Stop them now!”
“Copy, sir.”
He waved his men forward. This time they marched low, but faster.
—
“Admiral, we have a problem, sir.”
Huebner was back in his quarters, alone, considering his options. The call from the soldiers was expected. The rich American was a resourceful man. He had come prepared. But the admiral did not expect that he would be dumb enough to try explosives, although now that he considered the man’s choice, he rather liked if that place caved in and killed them all.
He was waiting to hear such news wh
en his exec called in on the only line that now worked in the ship.
“What is it?” His voice grated like metal.
“We have company, two ships just turned back,” the exec reported. “I think they are coming to find us.”
“Let them come.”
His plan was bigger than Vasquez thought.
—
The explosion blew the door into the room beyond. As predicted by Olivia, the roof held. Covered in dust, coughing—Anabia Nassif vomited on Nicolai’s cases—they stumbled through the doorway into what turned out to be an engine room. Nicolai got halogen lights out of his case. The brilliance turned the room into day.
“I need water,” Nassif choked. “Somebody help me.”
Peter reached around the man where he crouched on the floor. “Come on, what you need is clean air.”
He dragged the biologist into the engine room where the rest of the crew now were.
“Find a door, or anything that might be important,” Miller said.
There was a humongous engine in the middle of the room. It was old, the steel components thick with stale oil, cobwebbed and laden with thick dust. The walls were lined with odd-looking, humongous pipes than ran the length of the walls. These were stainless steel. Itay Friedman ran his hand over the metals. He confided in Miller who happened beside him, “Such gold, imagine how much this would be worth.”
Miller nodded but it was obvious metals weren’t his interest now.
They found another door at the back. It wasn’t locked. Double doors that swing on whining hinges.
Borodin stood in front of it and waited for the rest.
Ted Cooper joined him.
“What do you think, Professor?” Borodin asked. His voice trembled.
Cooper whispered that he didn’t know.
“Do you wish you hadn’t come along?” Borodin said.
“I wish this place wasn’t here in the first place.”
The rest met them there. Somehow everyone dreaded what awaited them behind that door. If this was the engine room, pondered Olivia, then the next place would be what?
Miller pushed the door slowly.
Cooper whispered, “Here we go.”
—
The sour smell hit them; this time it was stronger.
The scene before them was like that out of a horror movie. What they found was a high ceilinged room. It looked like a mess hall. The place looked neat, the walls were painted a light green and the chairs and tables arranged properly.
It looked like the former occupants only just stepped out and should be expected back in a moment. Along the walls, close to the ceiling, there were what used to be windows but now dark with earth and ice. There was another double door at the far end, beyond that was darkness.
Olivia rubbed her arms. They felt clammy with cold and goosebumps. No member of the crew moved.
“It feels like we are violating, trespassing.” A shudder racked her body.
“Well…” Ted said.
Miller took a step forward. “We are here, let’s explore.”
They walked around the tables slowly, consciously taking care not to let their bodies touch anything. As though, if they did, the last occupants who sat in those chairs may just appear and… “What happened here?” Olivia asked the dank air.
“They just up and left,” answered Nicolai.
“Doesn’t feel like it,” Olivia disagreed. “If they left in a hurry, how come this place looks like they are still here?”
They all turned around to look at her. It was a spooky place, the whole of the complex. Faces white with fear and terror. The place conjured nightmares and Olivia hoped that they would not have to spend the night inside it.
“Maybe they are still here.”
It was Anabia Nassif. He was standing in the far right of the hall, looking at a blackboard hung on the wall. He stood so still that Miller had to call his name.
“Nassif?”
But the biologist wouldn’t respond. His eyes were glued to the blackboard. Olivia went to the man. From behind him she gawked. Her breath escaped her throat in hoarse exhalation.
“My God,” she muttered. “It looks so fresh, the chalk.”
They all gathered before the board but no one would touch it.
“Can we get out of here, please, before I lose my mind?” said Liam Murphy.
The man was shaken. Olivia brought her Dictaphone to her mouth and recorded.
—
They got the hell out, and then were looking down the throat of a long tunnel that disappeared into the darkness.
Someone moaned, “Aw what the hell.”
The crew stared in shock. The tunnel dipped into the ground at a steep degree. And it went out of sight. With a pained look on the face of the marine biologist he moaned, “Who designed these things?”
Frank Miller stepped forward, hoping not to slip and fall down the tunnel. He didn’t. He looked back at the rest. He smirked. “Haha, not that bad, huh.”
He then put on his torch. The glare was too dim to light the tunnel all the way. He shook the torchlight. No improvement. “Batteries.” He breathed.
“Guys let’s all put on our torches,” he said.
They all did but everyone’s batteries seem to be going out.
“But what’s down there?” Peter Williams worried. “We can’t just go down there if we can’t see.”
“It’s called an expedition for a reason, Nassif,” Ted scorned and joined Miller, his hands spread to steady himself. “Do what I do, you’ll be fine. Ms. Olivia, are you getting this? Photos, please.”
Eventually they all started down. Touching the walls Olivia noticed that the surface was gritty, as though the builders had sprinkled sand on mucilage. She couldn’t record their progress here, afraid that she might stumble without her hands spread out to hold on to the wall.
Halfway down Miller called out, “There’s a door.”
The procession slowed down. Each member shined his torch down the shaft at a steel door. Thankfully it was unlocked. Miller pushed it open and they entered a large hall. It was dark, empty, and that smell was here as well, very rancid.
The crew wandered around the empty hall. There was no indication whatsoever of what might have been the function of the place. Miller pointed his torch at the ceiling. Nothing but peeling white paint with brown stains in it stared down. The walls were smooth to the touch.
Olivia recorded; her opinion was that this was some assembly area since there were no chairs, nor tables or boards on the wall for meetings. The floor was hard, smooth concrete as well. It was dusty, and that’s all. No pieces of paper or any sign that people used this place.
German efficiency must have required that the scientists or workers mustered here, got accounted for, before ascending up the shaft to the mess hall for meals.
Peter loitered by her side. He said, “And why would they want them spending energy up that shaft to meals?”
Olivia shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe, to get them as hungry as possible—”
“And exhausted?”
She agreed. “Yeah, and that too.”
She noted that every time you studied the Nazi, you could not help but notice elements of cruelty in whatever they did.
Peter went off to the far wall. He chuckled. “Ho, ho, ho, guys, I found something on the wall here. It’s a…”
He went closer to examine a metal box the size of a regular switchboard. Hanging down from its side was a handle. The box looked very old too. Some paint still hung from it, like the peeling flesh of a burn victim. Written on it was the word Stromversorgung.
“It’s a switch, a power switch,” Peter announced. “It says 'electrical power supply'.”
He touched the handle. Frank Miller started telling him not to touch it but Peter was already throwing the switch up. And when he did the whole facility trembled. There was a tremendous hum that shook the ground. The walls came alive and the crew screamed in terror, hurdling together.
<
br /> Then the noise stopped. Birth vibration remained, a low humming in the walls.
“What the hell was that?” asked someone.
Nicolai spoke. “I think generators.”
“Diesel generators,” Borodin added. “The complex is coming to life. We should —”
Lights began coming on in the shaft behind them. Then the large hall illuminated suddenly with very bright fluorescent lights in the ceiling. Suddenly, the hall was bigger than it had appeared to them. And what they thought was dust in the wall was some white material. The walls were dark with blotches of soot, as though there had been a fire in there.
Victor Borodin crouched on the white material. He touched and smelt it.
“Some sort of dousing substance, I suppose,” he explained. “Maybe there was a fire accident.”
“Or they tried to burn the place down?” Olivia proposed.
“Or maybe that.”
Miller called, “Guys, there’s a vault door here.”
On the opposite wall, there was a giant spherical metal door, like the type in banks. They hadn’t seen it all this time on account of the soot and peeling paint. There was a recess in the middle of the metal door. It looked almost like a cross enclosed in a square. Each point of the cross touched its side of the square so that it looked like there were four smaller squares in the recess, and each square was moveable. Beside it was a box with a small screen and numbers. Miller touched the groove on the wall.
“Wow.”
“How do we open that?” Ted Cooper asked.
“I don’t know.”
—
Olivia went to the vault. She touched the symbol on the door. The cross evoked an image in her head. She wasn’t sure but during her research she had seen something that looked a lot like this. The men watched her, having learned that she was about the smartest of them all.
“It is not a cross,” she said.
She quickly searched in her bag and found her notebook. She opened the pages urgently. She stopped turning and started comparing a crude drawing she made of the cross in the swastika and the one on the metal door.
The similarity was striking.
The men crowded around her. They saw it too.
“Okay, it’s the goddamn swastika,” said Ted Cooper. “Now what, how does that open it, how do we open it?”
Hunt for the Holy Grail Page 12
