The Holy Grail (Sam Reilly Book 13)

by Christopher Cartwright

  “I read the article. That seems to make sense to me. What don’t you get?”

  “If the water was higher when they built it, why then, is the labyrinth we’re going to nearly a hundred feet below us?”

  Genevieve grinned. “That’s because the labyrinth we’re going to was constructed a lot earlier.”

  “How much earlier?”

  “About twenty thousand years to be exact.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Tom swam out a hundred feet, to where the water depth dropped dramatically. He dipped his head into the icy water. The White Sea was crisp with visibility extending all the way to the bottom some sixty feet away.

  He glanced at the GPS reading on his dive computer.

  They were right above the entrance. Back in 1975 a secret investigative team from the CIA tracked a group of suspected bioterrorists to the island, which was how the ancient labyrinth became known to the US Defense Department. That much made sense to Tom. What he didn’t understand was how a group of civilians had located the ancient labyrinth in the first place – and more importantly, how they had managed to keep it a secret for so many years.

  “You ready to dive?” he asked.

  “Good to go,” Genevieve replied.

  Tom released some air from his buoyancy control device – BCD for short – and began his descent. After a few feet he started to swallow, allowing the air within his middle ear to equalize and avoid the pressure build up known as a “squeeze.” There had been a time when he had to consciously do this every ten or so feet, but as the years went by and he started to count his dives in their thousands, the process came as naturally to him as breathing.

  At thirty feet, he heard the high-pitched whine of a two-stroke motor.

  His gaze drifted upward.

  A rubber Zodiac raced by – toward the Bolshoi Zayatsky Island.

  Genevieve caught the direction of his gaze. “They might be tourists.”

  Tom swallowed. “And they might not be.”

  “We’ve been in the water for less than ten minutes. No one knew where we were going. We didn’t lodge any flight plans. It’s impossible to think the CIA has had an elite team stationed here since 1975, just waiting for someone else to show up.”

  Tom continued his descent toward the entrance of the ancient labyrinth. “They might not be ours.”

  “You think someone else has been watching the island?” Genevieve asked. There was no fear in her voice, but plenty of intrigue and curiosity.

  “I don’t know.”

  Tom checked the bathymetric map on his dive pad, looking for the key identifying marks that would lead them to the labyrinth’s entrance.

  He kicked his fins, diving deeper as he followed the natural contour of the island’s submerged shelf. At eighty feet he spotted what he was looking for.

  Three large boulders. Each one roughly the height of an adult and shaped like an irregular sphere. They might have been naturally formed that way, or they may have been painstakingly chiseled and then rolled down into the water. Heck, if what Genevieve had told him was correct, and this ancient labyrinth was built somewhere in the vicinity of twenty thousand years ago, the White Sea would have been shallow enough that the entire entrance was out of the water.

  Whatever the case may be, one of the stones definitely didn’t belong there.

  It was made of obsidian.

  The rest of the stones were predominantly Jotnian sediments – a group of Precambrian rocks more specifically assigned to the Mesoproterozoic Era – predominantly a white quartz-rich sandstone or shale, with the silty seabed a mixture of mica and clay.

  The result was a pitch black sphere on a bed of white stones.

  Tom studied the out of place piece of obsidian. The entire surrounding geology of the White Sea was Jotnian sediments – and that meant no volcanic stone nearby.

  Someone had gone to great efforts to shift the large piece of black volcanic rock to this location. Obsidian was used by a number of civilizations since the dawn of the Stone Age for a variety of purposes. The igneous rock was valued in Stone Age cultures because, like flint, it could be fractured to produce sharp blades or arrowheads. Like all glass and some other types of naturally occurring rocks, obsidian breaks with a characteristic conchoidal fracture. It was also polished to create early mirrors.

  But the fact remained; only one group of people ever went to the effort of moving large amounts of obsidian stone for building purposes – the Master Builders.

  Tom stared at the stone, as though it might reveal the correlation between Ben Gellie, the ancient Russian cult, and the Master Builders.

  Modern archaeologists, he recalled, have developed a relative dating system called obsidian hydration dating, to calculate the age of obsidian artifacts.

  He wondered what such a reading would say about the door – if that indeed was the dark sphere’s purpose.

  “Well?” Tom asked. “What do you think?”

  “You want to know if we have the right place?”

  “Yeah.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.”

  Tom allowed some air into his BCD until he reached neutral buoyancy. He stopped next to the dark sphere, placing his hands in a precise location, two thirds of the way toward the eastern edge.

  He increased the pressure.

  Nothing happened.

  “What gives?” Tom asks.

  “Try the opposite end of the door,” Genevieve suggested.

  Tom set up his hand positions, gently pushed inward, and felt the massive stone give way without any resistance.

  The stone swiveled inward.

  Revealing a clear tunnel of obsidian.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Tom switched on his flashlight and swam through the opening.

  Genevieve waited on the outside in case something went wrong with the mechanism. It was thousands of years old, after all.

  Inside, Tom placed his hands in the exact same position on the sphere, this time closing the door completely from the inside. He took a deep breath, concentrated, and found the same strange grooved indentation on the opposite side of the door.

  He repeated the process and the door swiveled open once more.

  “We’re good,” Tom said. “Let’s see where it leads.”

  “All right.” Genevieve glanced up above, where the Zodiac had cut the engine. “Right on time. It looks like we might have company.”

  Tom followed her gaze.

  There were already divers entering the water.

  “How do you want to play this?” he asked. “Inside the tunnel or out?”

  “Inside. We can keep any number of them at bay inside the tunnel. Out here and outnumbered, we’re more likely to get surrounded.”

  “Agreed.”

  They swam through the opening and Tom quickly closed the ancient door.

  Inside, the tunnel headed upward until it reached a dry landing space. He focused the beam of his flashlight down the tunnel. It looked slightly curved, like it was part of a spiral. Tom glanced at his dive computer. It had an inbuilt Air Quality Particle Counting Meter – the same sort of thing a miner might carry that detects oxygen and carbon dioxide levels, as well as the presence of any number of toxic chemicals or gases. The reading showed seventy-eight percent nitrogen, twenty-one percent oxygen and zero point zero four percent carbon dioxide – or roughly the equivalent ratios found in the normal, breathable, atmosphere. Last, the computer was showing no chemical, radiological, or biological threats.

  Tom broke the suction on his full faced dive mask. “The air’s safe.”

  Genevieve followed suit, removing her weight belt, dive tank, and flippers. “Good. I really wasn’t all that keen on walking to the center of the labyrinth with our SCUBA gear.”

  They removed their MP5 submachineguns.

  The weapons were used by elite forces around the world specifically for their reliability after water submersion. One could leave a loaded MP5 in a 44-gallon drum
of water for a month, come back, pick it up and fire all thirty rounds without a single misfire.

  Tom set the ambidextrous selector to F – for fully automatic.

  And waited for their enemies to come.

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  They waited a full hour.

  Tom felt his heart race. His breathing was uneven, his concentration fixed, and his jaw set. He and Genevieve had their MP5 submachineguns ready to fire. But the obsidian door never opened.

  She said, “Looks like they’re not coming.”

  Tom considered that and shrugged. “Or they’re waiting us out?”

  Genevieve lowered her MP5. “Or they’re waiting us out. Either way, we need to keep going.”

  “Agreed.”

  With their diving equipment dumped on the dry ledge of the tunnel, they made their way toward the center of the labyrinth.

  The obsidian passageway meandered in an alternating series of curves, forming adjoining spirals. Tom shined the beam of his flashlight in both directions, checking for signs of other people. There were none. For all he knew, they were the first to enter the labyrinth since 1975. His eyes searched the mysterious ebony colored, glassy walls of the tunnel for any sign or purpose – they were entirely blank.

  He checked his compass.

  They were heading in a generally northern direction.

  Tom and Genevieve continued for another twenty minutes. All the time the tunnel seemed to keep curving inward to the left, before it angled sharply to the right, opening up to a new spiral. He glanced at his compass again. They were headed south, but that didn’t matter. They were in a labyrinth. He’d seen plenty of labyrinths since he was kid. It didn’t matter what direction you were heading. The path could turn back on itself and turn around again.

  He put down the compass.

  There was no need for it. Unlike a maze which had complex branching multicursal paths to choose from and was designed to disorient and confuse its users, a labyrinth, by definition was unicursal with a single path to the center, and one entrance that doubled as an exit. A labyrinth was unambiguous with no navigational challenge.

  His mind returned to the oldest purpose of a labyrinth – to protect something of value at its center.

  A would-be thief might attempt to steal a prize at the center, but it would be extremely difficult to try and escape from it, because the entire process takes so much time.

  It was nearly thirty minutes before they reached the center of the labyrinth.

  Tom rounded the end of the spiral, which then turned in the opposite direction like one giant horseshoe, before opening up to a large domed vault – not a vault, a perfect sphere – with a diameter of fifty feet.

  An obsidian bridge stretched across the room, revealing the levels of the sphere below. A single set of obsidian stairs led all the way from the base to the ceiling in an ascending spiral that hugged the natural curvature of the spherical room.

  Tom and Genevieve stepped onto the bridge.

  He ran his eyes across the empty walls, sweeping them with the beam of his flashlight in giant swathes from end to end. The light reflected vividly off the walls like a giant mirror.

  Tom scrunched up his face, tasting the disappointment, spreading his hands. “I don’t get it. Elise told you the place was left in its original form after the raid in 1975…”

  “But it’s clearly been wiped clean.”

  The ground beneath them dropped suddenly with a jolt, maybe an inch or two. Not much. Their weight appeared to have caused it to descend. He listened to a series of mechanical cogs grinding together as the bridge continued its descent.

  They glanced at each other. Stay or go?

  “Stay,” Tom said, defiantly.

  “Okay, we stay,” Genevieve replied, cradling her MP5 in defense.

  The obsidian bridge slowly made its way to the bottom of the sphere. At the epicenter of the sphere, a pedestal now rose in contrast to the bridge, eventually coming to rest at a height of approximately three feet.

  Nothing happened for two or three seconds.

  There was a distinctive clicking sound and everything changed.

  Something flashed in Tom’s eyes. He shook his head and tried to blink away the incredulity of his vision.

  His eyes narrowed and he swallowed hard. “What the hell is that?”

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The sphere filled with a blue unnatural glow.

  Tom had seen the same technology used in one of the previous Master Builder temples. The weighted pedestal had triggered some sort of UV light, which now projected across the walls of the entire sphere, causing thousands of ancient markings to phosphoresce in a myriad of colors. Pictographs came alive in hues of blue, green, purple, and red.

  Genevieve’s eyes were already raking the strange language. She squinted as she examined the closest pictograph. There was a slight furrow in her forehead, but she remained silent.

  “What is it?” Tom asked.

  “I can’t read this.”

  “But you grew up in Russia. I thought you could read the language?”

  “I can,” she said, glancing at another set of unusual writings. “But this isn’t Russian.”

  “It isn’t?”

  “Now.”

  Tom ran his hands through his hair. “Okay, but Elise definitely said it was a Russian terrorist cult that was working in here, making no reference to the Master Builders.”

  “That’s right,” Genevieve confirmed. “Elise said the writings were definitely Russian.”

  Tom knew Elise didn’t make mistakes. She was robotic in her accuracy. She dealt pedantically with exact names, events, figures, and locations. Therefore, the terrorist group was Russian and they were making written notes in the Russian language.

  Ergo, all they needed to do was find those notes.

  Tom let out a sigh. “All right, so let’s find it then.”

  All in total, it took another fifteen minutes to locate the mess of garbled Russian text. It was made using local quartz, which etched the writings into the softer obsidian. That explained why they hadn’t picked it up at first. The fluorescent pictographs and ancient texts – presumably written by the Master Builders – stood out in the UV light, whereas the white etchings became more concealed.

  The various styles of texts spiraled their way up the sphere with the lower levels all pictographs, followed by the indecipherable codex of the Master Builders, and eventually, along the upper sections were Russian scripts etched and superimposed on the original ancient language. The entire sphere was speckled with the various texts, with one exception – roughly two thirds of the way along the ceiling was a small section, maybe a few feet in diameter that appeared conspicuously vacant.

  Tom asked, “What do you think happened there?”

  Genevieve shrugged. She wasn’t an archeologist and was never fond of guessing. “Beats me. Maybe they finished their project? Who knows.”

  “Okay. Where do you want to start?”

  “There!” She fixed the beam of her flashlight on a space about halfway up the wall of the sphere. “That’s the lowest section with any Russian text. So, let’s start at the beginning.”

  Tom nodded. It seemed like the best plan.

  Genevieve climbed the first eleven steps up the spiral staircase. She studied the inscription. A wry smile formed on her supple lips. “That’s strange.”

  Tom kept his eyes focused on the tunnel through which they had entered. The last thing he wanted was to get caught off guard. “What?”

  “The first note refers to something called the Phoenix Plague.”

  “Okay,” Tom said, still not really following. “Does it say what that is?”

  “No, but it does make a reference to recommencing the project and then a date – 1434 – two years before the Solovetsky monastery was built!”

  “That can’t be a coincidence.”

  “No, but I can’t see the connection yet, either.”

  Tom suppressed a
smile. “I don’t suppose any of the terrorists were connected to the monastery?”

  She shook her head. “Not that we know of.”

  “All right, let’s keep going.”

  Genevieve nodded and climbed a few more stairs to the next note. Tom left her to make her own notes. There were a lot of markings throughout the sphere and if they stopped to discuss each one of them it might increase the difficulty of an already time-consuming process. Better, he figured, that she made her translations and then they sat down together to discuss their meaning.

  While she worked, Tom carefully made a digital recording of the entire sphere. He had no doubt that Sam or Elise would be able to find some sort of useful information from the Master Builder’s texts.

  Directly above him he spotted a small, almost round section of ceiling with no words on it. He kept his flashlight focused on the blank space and said, “Hey Genevieve, what do you make of this?”

  She looked across from where she was on the staircase and said, “Maybe they ran out of things to write about? Who knows, the Master Builders were a people from long ago. Sam and Elise profess to understand them, but I certainly don’t.”

  “All right, I’ll take some more pictures, see what Sam and Elise think of it once they get a chance.”

  Genevieve fixed her flashlight up toward the upper section of the dome. “There’s some more Russian text there, but I can’t get close enough to read it.”

  Tom glanced at the twin obsidian stairwells. One on each side of the sphere, each one leading the way from the base to the ceiling in an opposite direction, ascending like a spiral that hugged the natural curvature of the spherical room, right up to the apex.

  There were fine marks throughout the dome which suggested something had scraped along the wall at one time or another.

  Were there another set of stairs?”

  The two staircases were joined by the base of the obsidian orb at the center of the sphere. Tom studied the strange pedestal for a moment.