by Sam Christer
It’s a big old chunk of a thing, its bark riddled with ridges, gnarls and knots where branches have been lopped off.
The tree is a sign.
A sign of nature.
It must have symbolic connections to Cybele and Mother Nature.
He remembers that the last time he was around trees was when he was in the field above the catacombs, where Guilio painstakingly used the scalene pendant to locate the position of the entrance to the Cybelene chambers.
He grabs the rucksack and searches inside for the pendant.
Only when he’s emptied everything does he see it tied to one of the straps.
Now he can’t remember exactly how Guilio used it.
Did the eunuch start with the shortest side in the right-hand corner of the field, or with one of the longer sides?
Tom digs out the spool of fishing twine and decides to start with the shortest, so that the pendant leans in towards the centre of the wood.
Suddenly he’s all fingers and thumbs. He needs something to mark the lines with. Something to hold the other end.
And he needs something to cut the twine with.
He doesn’t have any of those things.
He looks again in the rucksack.
He daren’t use the nail gun on the wood. The impact could trigger some kind of trap.
But maybe, if he’s careful, he could use the nails and tap them in gently.
He frees several from the magazine and grabs the carpet knife to cut the twine and score lines.
He pictures Guilio in the field and gambles that he started bottom right with the scalene pendant long edge down and shortest edge up.
He replicates the actions on both ends of the wood and sees where the lines meet.
Bingo.
He runs his fingers along the bark where the line is and finds a sliver of silver set in the wood. A silver-lined groove big enough to take the shortest edge of the pendant.
He pauses.
What if there’s more than one?
What if he puts the pendant in, turns it and discovers it’s part of a sequence that has a time limit?
But what sequence?
What on earth could it be?
Tom stares at the huge chunk of tree and starts to drive himself mad. He has to come up with something.
And quick.
He searches the wood with his fingers. There’s a chance he’ll get lucky and spot something.
He stops again. He’s being stupid. If there’s a sequence, he has to understand it, not just come across it.
He tells himself to slow down.
Stay calm.
Think logically.
He grabs another couple of nails and cuts more twine.
After several false starts, he turns his thinking upside down.
Literally.
He holds the pendant upside down in the furthest top left-hand corner of the wood. He runs a line from here all the way down until it crosses the plotted lines made from the bottom right-hand point.
Bullseye.
He finds another silver-lined slot. It’s below and to the left of the first one.
He tries not to get excited.
He moves the pendant to the top right and inwards and runs another line down to the centre.
Perfect.
He stands back and admires his ingenuity.
The three silver-lined slots mark the point of their own scalene triangle.
More importantly, there’s a sequence, and it involves all three slots, but what is it?
Does it run clockwise, starting from the highest – the first slot he discovered?
Alternatively – because the second one he found is sited to the left of the first – does it run anticlockwise?
He can’t decide.
Beyond the wall, he hears a bang. A short noise, like a loud whip cracking or a car backfiring.
Could this be an exit into the street?
Could Guilio have got his bearings hopelessly wrong and a new danger is approaching?
Decision time.
Tom slips the tightest-angled corner of the pendant into the first lock. It takes a heavy push to get it in, and he’s frightened it will break.
But it doesn’t.
It makes a satisfying click.
Tom turns it.
It clicks again.
But what next?
He looks at the second slot.
To the left – or to the right?
Beyond the wall, he hears another bang.
Then another.
It’s gunfire.
Tom goes with his instinct.
He jams the pendant into the left-hand slot and turns it anticlockwise.
135
The huge temple doors are turning black.
But they’re not burning.
Valentina can’t believe it.
Why doesn’t the wood catch fire?
She guesses it’s to do with the age and strength of the oak. The fact that the flames from the torch are just not powerful enough to set it ablaze.
Maybe she’s being impatient.
She places the torch on the floor, where the two doors meet.
It has no effect.
Snapping point.
She pulls out the Glock and heads towards the pulpit.
If she can’t burn their way out, perhaps she can blast them out.
The old woman is still there.
Hands on the glass, scowling down at Valentina.
Well, screw her.
Valentina swings the pistol up and lets off a shot.
The glass doesn’t even splinter.
It’s like throwing pebbles at the windscreen of a truck.
She lets off another two shots, grouping them near the first.
The crone smiles.
It would take a SAM missile to blow the glass, and both women know it.
But Valentina’s not giving up.
She gathers more torches from the walls and stacks them by the door.
At least the flies don’t like the smoke, or the flames.
She hugs the child close to her and reassures her again. ‘We’ll get out, Sweetheart, don’t worry. I promised you. Any minute now, we’ll be out of here.’ She kisses her cheek and hugs her again.
At the far end of the temple, a hidden door slides open.
Five of Mater’s most trusted guards enter.
Sweetheart sees them and silently screams.
Only when she points at the armed men wearing scarlet hoods and robes does Valentina realise the full extent of the trouble they’re in.
136
The second lock pops as sweetly as the third.
Tom’s heart is all but in his mouth as he completes the sequence by plunging the pendant into the third and final slot.
He twists it and hears a satisfying click.
He gives the front of the big tree a shove.
It doesn’t move.
He can’t believe it!
He’s sure he got everything right.
He pushes again.
This time a large section falls away. There’s an almighty crash. A cloud of dust billows up on the other side of the passageway.
Tom squeezes through the gap.
The unmistakable crack of gunfire echoes towards him.
Twenty metres away there are flames.
More shots ring out.
Through the smoke, Tom sees walls and doors.
The gunfire is coming from where the fire is.
It has to be Valentina.
He runs towards the flames and takes a kick at the doors.
They bounce but don’t break open.
He takes another run.
A harder jump.
They still don’t move.
Tom’s eyes fall on the three statues of Cybele forming a centrepiece a little further from him.
He dislodges one and picks it up in a bear hug.
It’s as heavy as a truck, and the weight is killing his damaged shoulder.
&
nbsp; He grits his teeth and ignores the pain. He hoists the heavy statue so he can hold it like a Scotsman tossing a caber.
He charges the flaming doors.
Cybele’s stone head breaks off on impact.
Tom shifts all his weight behind the base.
The doors burst open.
137
Valentina pushes Sweetheart behind her and drops the first of the Galli with a body shot.
Two other guards are coming up fast behind him and another two are spreading wide to outflank her.
The front two open fire.
A marble pillar soaks up their shots.
Valentina fires around it. Two rounds to the right, three to the left.
One of the bullets wings a guard in his leg. He falls clutching his upper thigh and screams like a trapped pig.
Valentina sees Sweetheart standing open-mouthed behind her.
She pulls her tight behind the pillar, while blindly pumping off an arc of covering shots.
More gunfire rips into the marble by her face.
She sinks to the floor – sniper level – and scans the smoke and swirling flies for the remaining three gunmen.
The doors crash open behind her.
She wheels around and is about to let off a volley of shots when Tom sprawls on to the temple floor.
She spins back round, knowing that his intrusion will also have distracted her attackers.
Two of them are rushing her.
Blunderers.
Her trained soldier’s hand pumps out four shots, two apiece.
They drop like flies.
Something for the flesh-eaters to snack on later.
Three down – two still to go.
But she can’t see them.
Tom grabs Sweetheart and carries her out of the room, her feet wriggling in the air.
Outside the burning door he pulls up quickly.
He’s face to face with Mater.
A gleaming ancient sword is raised in her right hand.
It slashes downwards.
Tom swings Sweetheart out of the way.
The sword nicks the top of his right hip.
He turns to face the blade.
When she makes the next swipe, he’ll move back a pace and disarm her.
He never gets his chance.
A burst of automatic gunfire rakes Mater’s legs.
Tom turns.
Three black-uniformed soldiers are rushing towards him, sub-machine guns still spilling smoke. He guesses they’ve overwhelmed the Galli guards at farm level and worked their way down.
He lifts Sweetheart into his arms and covers her eyes. Just the sight of the troops in combat gear is enough to terrify her.
Lorenzo Silvestri recognises Tom from the intel he’s been given. ‘Where’s Valentina?’
‘In there.’ Tom holds Sweetheart tight to his chest and points to the temple.
Lorenzo and one of his team don’t break stride as they rush the room.
The third soldier peels away to attend to Mater. He glances at her, then shouts into his radio for paramedics.
The bullets have shattered her kneecaps.
Within seconds, more troops appear.
From inside the temple comes the ripping sound of rapid gunfire.
Tom kneels, and tries to reassure Sweetheart that she’s going to be safe. ‘Don’t be frightened. These soldiers are good men. Whatever horrible things have happened to you, it’s all over now. All over.’
And it is.
Lorenzo Silvestri walks back through the charred and splintered double doors, smoke swirling behind him, his sub-machine gun slung low.
He smiles at Tom and steps aside.
Valentina is a pace behind.
Her face is covered in blood. Her hair is messier than it’s ever been. But to Tom she looks wonderful.
By the time she sees him, he is already next to her and holding her.
They kiss and cling to each other as though the world has just begun. And in a way, it has.
They hold on tight and become aware of a strange feeling, one not at all linked to their emotions.
Tiny hands are wrapped around both their legs.
Hands that are holding them every bit as tightly as they’re holding each other.
138
Paramedics patch up the wounded.
Valentina’s face looks worse than it feels. Her lips are split and bloated. There’s a cut on her cheek that thankfully doesn’t need stitches and some jaw ache that she knows will disappear once she’s had a bath and opened her second bottle of red wine.
Tom’s in slightly worse condition.
Now that the action’s died down, his shoulder is a mass of pain, and he’s enormously grateful for the big syringe of morphine a paramedic is squeezing into him.
Mater is being stretchered away with a tourniquet around one of her legs, while another paramedic works frantically on her shattered kneecaps.
Valentina diverts Sweetheart’s attention while soldiers pass by carrying a body bag out of the temple.
There are more to come.
Valentina killed four of them. Lorenzo’s men finished off the fifth.
She sits on the floor with her back to the temple wall, puts her arms around Sweetheart and pulls her up on her knee. ‘It’s all over, baby. This is the last time you’ll ever see this stinking place.’ She strokes her hair and the child rests her head on Valentina’s blood-soaked chest.
Tom buttons up his shirt as he walks over to Lorenzo. ‘There’s a man trapped further down the tunnel.’ He points to the hole in the wall that he came through. ‘I think he’s dead. There’s some kind of pit back there with a lion in it.’
Lorenzo looks sceptical. ‘Un leone?’
‘It’s a long story.’ Tom tucks his shirt into his trousers, which one-handed is harder than he’s ever imagined. ‘There were two of them. We only managed to kill one.’
Lorenzo nods to the darkness ahead. ‘Show us.’
Tom leads the way. ‘This is the route we came in by. I was told there might be some kind of booby traps, and the floor seems to be one of them.’
They climb through the hole in the gallery wall. ‘Best stay close to the middle. The section of floor that I was on just flipped. It’s on some sort of rocker mechanism.’
Lorenzo and his team reach the edge of the pit and peer in.
A guttural growl rumbles up from the fetid hole.
Seemingly without any instructions, the team springs into action.
One soldier produces a coil of zip-wire and attaches it to his colleague’s belt. The second man slides a light on to his machine gun and drops into the pit.
Within seconds there’s a burst of gunfire.
Tom guesses the animal’s dead.
The zip-line hangs slack around the belt of the soldier standing beside Tom. From below there are the sounds of rocks being moved.
A full minute elapses before the shout comes up: ‘È morto. L’uomo è morto.’
Tom knows what it means.
He was right.
Guilio is dead.
He crosses himself and remembers the young man’s bravery, an act of courage that saved his own life.
He turns to Lorenzo. ‘I’d like to go down. Is that okay?’
The major looks at him questioningly. ‘With that shoulder?’
‘Your medics have given me so much stuff, I won’t feel pain until the start of the third millennium.’
Lorenzo sizes him up. The Major is tall, but Tom’s even taller and broader. He motions to one of his men. ‘Give me another zip.’
It hits his hands quicker than Tom’s seen pitchers throw a baseball.
Lorenzo clips it to his own belt and turns back to Tom. ‘Take this line holder and wrap it around your waist, then we’ll lower you down this tilted floor; that way there’s no big sudden drop to jar you.’ He throws the line over to Tom and shouts into the hole: ‘The civilian’s coming down; give him some light and help him through the last p
art of the drop.’
Tom moves into position and Lorenzo instructs another soldier to help him take the weight.
‘Okay! Let’s ease him down.’
It seems strange to Tom to be sliding down the same section of ground that almost cost him his life.
The soldier’s light nearly blinds him as he looks down. He glances away and sees the lion that Guilio killed.
The soldier’s hands guide Tom’s feet past piles of rubble and on to the bottom of the pit. ‘Okay!’ the officer shouts up to Lorenzo.
Tom sees what’s left of Guilio’s corpse.
His head has been chewed off. His arms and legs bitten away.
Tom feels like being sick.
He forces himself to kneel beside the mutilated torso. A man who in his mind is a martyr in the truest sense of the word.
He places his hand over Guilio’s heart and recites an adaptation of the twenty-third psalm: ‘The Lord is your Shepherd and now you shall not want. He led you down the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake, and though you walked through the valley of the shadow of death you feared no evil. Now our sweet Jesus will prepare a table for you in the presence of your enemies. He will anoint your head with oil and ensure your cup is eternally full. He will perpetually be at your side and will restore your soul. He will grant you the right to dwell in his house for ever. Amen.’
The soldier with Tom makes the sign of the cross and then helps the American to his feet.
‘Grazie.’ As Tom thanks him, he spots a shrine to Cybele set in the wall.
The sculpture of her is the same as the one he saw in the catalogue at Galleria Borghese. She is holding an open book.
The Tenth Book?
‘Can you shine your light over there?’
The soldier points his MP5 at the marble.
Tom has a hunch.
More than a hunch.
He takes Guilio’s scalene pendant from his pocket and tilts his head so that he considers the rectangle of the book as though it was horizontal rather vertical.
He remembers how he moved the slab of tree that blocked the end of the gallery.
There was a hidden triangle of key slots sunk in the middle of the bark.
He runs his fingers over the two marble pages.
Each line of the book is carved deeply, and there is lavish Latin writing engraved all over them.
He looks again.
