“Veronica, look at this,” Simon said, claiming her attention. He’d cleaned off the center of the door, uncovering a carved indentation. Veronica took the Eye from her dive bag and held it up. The indentation was the exact shape and size of the Eye of Artemis.
He gave her a go-ahead nod, his eyes bright, even in the partial illumination from the dive lantern.
Carefully, Veronica set the stone into the carved niche. It almost snapped into place. A perfect fit.
Nothing happened.
Both stepped back. “Now what?” Veronica said, hands on her hips and head cocked. “Shouldn’t it do something?”
As if on cue, the crystal centerpiece of the Eye began to glow, scattering a silver light over the chamber.
The hair on Veronica’s neck rose. The glow intensified, brightening to an almost unbearable level, the silver light washing out all shadows. Veronica’s eyes watered, and she shielded them with her arm but refused to shut them. She had to see what she could. Whatever was happening, it wasn’t what she would classify as normal. Not even close.
When she thought she couldn’t take any more, the light pulsed twice, then faded.
She lowered her arm. “Is it over?”
On the tail of her question, the light increased again and she shielded her eyes again. Instead of silver, the light was a deep yellow-gold. And with the new light came sound. A great rumbling as if the very earth opened up.
The reverberations grew louder, almost deafening, and small pebbles fell from the ceiling above them. Veronica flattened herself against the rock wall, shielding her head with her arms. Simon did the same.
There was the sound of breaking glass. The cave went dark.
In tense silence, they waited for the phenomena to either stop or kill them.
The rumbling stopped. They were in total darkness. Total silence. With no idea of what they would see when they turned on their spare lanterns.
“You okay?” Simon clicked on the secondary light from his weight belt.
She felt fine other than the fact her pulse raced so fast she thought she might have a heart attack. “Yeah. You?” She took a deep breath and willed herself to calm down.
“I’m good, but what the hell was that about?”
Veronica unhooked her underwater flashlight from her belt. Turning it on, she blinked her eyes to adjust them. She pointed the light toward the door. “Look.”
During the noise and light show, the giant silver crystal had slid backward on some kind of track. Veronica shone her light into the dark opening, revealing not the crypt they expected but a corridor that led downward, into the island’s depth.
From what she could tell, there were steps carved into the rock, flanked by Doric columns every ten feet or so. The earliest and simplest of the Grecian columns, they were distinguished by their plain, twenty-sided shaft and were generally considered to be masculine in design due to their strong, straight lines and overall thickness.
It looked dark but harmless enough.
But she was betting it was anything but that.
“You thinking what I’m thinking?” Simon asked, his voice at her shoulder.
“That we better watch our step?” Veronica answered. “No one takes this much trouble to hide something and then leaves the main pathway free and clear.”
“The question is how many traps and how lethal?”
He paused. “We should check the codex again.”
Veronica rolled her eyes. “Don’t you think that one of us would remember if there was mention of booby traps?”
She stepped over the threshold and into the corridor.
“Dammit, Veronica, what are you thinking!” Simon tried to yank her back out, but she evaded his grasp and stepped out of his reach.
“Wait,” she commanded.
Both held their breath, waiting for a potential trap to spring, but there was only silence. The ground didn’t open up and the ceiling didn’t come crashing down. The rock surrounding Veronica remained solid. “So far, so good.”
Simon stepped over the threshold. “That was about the dumbest thing I’ve ever seen you do.”
“Someone had to go first.” It was a bit reckless, but they also didn’t have the time to watch every footstep. Who knew how long it would be before Michael and Deacon figured out their ruse? Once that happened, it would be best to have the Stone and be back in New York.
“I get that, but we’re partners. We do this together. Not with you acting the cowboy and taking unnecessary chances,” Simon said, the muscles bunching in his neck and shoulders the only physical indication of his tension.
“Okay,” she acquiesced, knowing she’d say the same thing if the situation were reversed.
His jaw relaxed a fraction and he directed his light down the stairs.
The tunnel was wide enough for a single person to traverse, and he edged past her to examine the backside of the entrance stone. “There isn’t an indentation for the Eye on this side. What do you think? Do we leave the Eye where it is or take it?”
Out of experience, Veronica hated to leave the door behind them open, but it was also doubtful that anyone would happen to drop by a cavern that was under water the majority of the day. Plus, if they removed the Eye, it was possible that the door would close, sealing them in. “Leave it.”
He nodded his agreement. “I think so, too. Let’s go.”
“Carefully,” she said.
Simon raised a dark eyebrow. “You’re telling me?”
She raised her own in response, then gave him a gentle shove forward. Tanks still on their backs, each carrying their fins and goggles and with Simon’s briefcase banging between his thigh and the wall, they walked single file down the carved steps with Simon leading.
Twenty feet down, the corridor turned ninety degrees. Twenty feet after that, it turned again, making their descent a slow squared spiral.
Veronica stopped to examine the columns that lined the corridor and wondered who carved it. Was it the priestess? Did they employ workers?
“Veronica,” Simon called before he turned another corner.
This was not the situation to lose sight of each other, and she hurried forward as they continued downward.
And still no booby trap.
“This is too easy,” Veronica said, her voice echoing down the space in front of them and bounding back.
“I was thinking the same thing,” Simon replied. “If someone wanted to kill an intruder, I wish they’d get it over—”
He stopped in midstep.
Veronica stopped as well, a chill racing up her spine. “What’s wrong?”
He didn’t move. Didn’t turn. Didn’t flinch. Just stood there as still as a statue. “The step sank down. I think it’s the trap we were talking about.”
This was bad. Very, very bad. “Fuck me,” she muttered.
“What?” Simon said.
“Nothing.” She replied, already scanning the walls with her light, searching for a lever.
“Anything?” Simon asked.
She shook her head and realized he couldn’t see her. “No.” She edged closer to him, testing the stones before placing her weight on it. “Think you could come back toward me?”
He shook his head. “Not a good idea. We don’t know which way the trap will spring or what form it’ll take.” He unbuckled the strap that held his tank on and slid the straps down his arms. “Take this.”
“Why?”
“In case.”
“In case what?” Her voice rose as she understood where the conversation was leading. He was going to sacrifice himself.
His right arm strained with the weight of the tank.
He continued. “I used to work for the government, you should know that.”
“What?” Where did that come from?
“Government training. You asked me where I earned my ‘Boy Scout’ badges. The C.I.A. recruited me, but after a few years—”
“Shut up.” She crossed her arms, suddenly very aware of
what he was doing. He was tying up loose ends. Voicing his last regrets. Coming clean.
Whatever lame cliché one wanted to use, it came down to the fact that he expected to die at any moment.
She’d have none of it. “Cut the noble crap and let’s focus on saving your lame ass.”
“Lame ass?”
“Very.” What did he think she’d do? Let him die?
His arm started to shake, straining with the weight of the tank. “I’m telling you my past. You wanted to know what I was holding back? This is it.”
She wished she could reach out, but she didn’t dare touch him. Her nerves were strained almost to their limit and if she felt him beneath her fingertips, she might break. “Tell me after we’re done here. And you might want to put the tank back on before you drop it.”
He surprised her and moved the tank to his back. “We’ll talk about this later.”
“Damn right,” she agreed. She couldn’t see his face, but she would bet money that his right eyebrow was raised in that oh-so-familiar way.
She loved that quirk that told her he thought she was full of it or that she’d managed to surprise him.
She wanted to see it again.
She was not going to lose him. Not like this. “Lean toward the wall,” she said.
“What are you doing?” His head turned but he didn’t shift all the way around.
“Looking around.”
He tried to protest, but she was already slipping past him with a wide-legged step, being careful not to knock him off the step that triggered the trap or add her own weight to it. If the switch to turn off the trap wasn’t here, then it had to be farther down the corridor.
She passed him and shone her light down the corridor.
“Let it go.” Simon’s voice had an edge she’d never heard before. She turned her light on him, and in his eyes was fear, but not for himself. For her.
“I can’t” she said, and moved forward. Her light found the blades five feet away and lodged in the ceiling. Side by side and sickle-shaped, they would slice Simon to ribbons.
Standing on her toes, she got as close as she could, but it was too high for her to reach. The light reflected off the blades.
“What’s that?” Simon asked.
“Knives. Big ones.” She squinted, trying to find a better perspective, “They go too far up into the ceiling, but I can’t tell how far.”
“Great, I’ll be sliced into steak tartare,” he said. “Any ground clearance once they swing?”
“I doubt it.” She ran a hand over her damp hair and came back with handful of dry sand. “What the…?” She looked up, squinting when sand hit her eyes. There was a steady stream coming from the center of the blades.
A counter-balance.
Her stomach rolled, and she swallowed hard as she realized what it meant. When the sand ran out, so was Simon’s time.
She should tell him. Should. But didn’t. He might try something stupid. Something heroic.
“Veronica, go down to the Temple,” Simon said, his voice concerned, but she sensed it was more for her and less for his own fate. “You might find something there to use as a wedge to keep the knives from dropping.”
“That’s not an option,” she responded.
He shone his light on his face and managed a grim smile. “I promise, I won’t go anywhere.”
He’d risked freedom in Istanbul to wait for her, and now he asked her to abandon him? She shook her head.
“Veronica, go. This is the only way. As long as I don’t move, it’ll be fine,” he assured her.
She blinked back unexpected tears. She didn’t know how much sand had to fall before the blades were triggered, but her gut told her if she went to the Temple, he would be dead by the time she returned.
There had to be another way. All traps, no matter how lethal, were capable of being turned off.
She had to believe that.
The codex weighed heavily in her dive bag, and she rested her hand against it. If she had time…but she didn’t. There was no time for a search. Only action.
“This is our expedition,” Veronica answered, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I won’t go without you.” And she set off down the corridor, light weaving as she looked for something, anything, that might help them.
“Please don’t let there be another trap,” she prayed under her breath. “Please.”
Behind her, Simon yelled at her to get to the Temple. She ignored him. Turning the corner, she passed another column and ran her light from top to bottom. It was carved with symbols, and one of them was an arrow on the column base—the same one that was on the map.
She didn’t believe in coincidence. Dropping to her knees, she pressed it. Punched it. Nothing happened.
She scanned the other carvings. There was a circle in the base as well. The symbol for the Stone? She tried to manipulate it.
Still nothing.
Simon didn’t have time for games. Where was the key? She took three steps down and stopped. She jumped to her feet and headed for the next column down the corridor but stopped before she traveled three feet. Wait. The arrow was on the base of the column? Doric columns didn’t have bases. Ionic? Sure. Corinthian. You bet.
But not Doric.
She shed light on the other columns farther down the corridor. All were baseless unlike the one with the arrow.
Perhaps that was the key. It had to be!
She turned back, running the few feet. “Come on,” she muttered. She pressed the arrow again with the same result. Nothing. Veronica growled in frustration and skimmed the base with her hands, hoping for a button. A lever. Anything that might stop the knives. “I know you’re here. Where are you?” she muttered.
She started to press all the carvings on the column, but they didn’t move. She shrieked in frustration.
“Veronica?” Simon called out. “Are you hurt?”
“Fine! I’m fine!” There had to be a trick. Something she was missing. The answer had something to do with the map since it had both symbols. But the Eye was still jammed in the door, and without the Eye, the map was inaccessible.
Fist clenched, she hit her thigh in frustration. “Damn it, think!” She’d spent hours looking at that map. Hours. She unclenched her fist.
She could do this.
Shutting her eyes, she slowed her breathing and tried to visualize it. The shape of the island. The pattern of the crystal fractures. The arrow and the circle, overlapping each other to show the location of the cave.
Overlapping.
A loud scraping echoed past her.
“Veronica, something’s happening!” Simon’s shouted.
Time’s up. Wrapping her arms around the column, she pressed both symbols at once. “Please.” They slid inward.
The scraping stopped, and for a moment, she thought her heart would do the same.
A moment later, Simon was at her side, dropping to his knees and pulling her into his arms. “Are you okay? I heard you scream.”
She stared at him in stunned surprise. “Am I okay? I swear, of all the stupid—”
He silenced her with his mouth, his lips crushing hers. “You’re welcome” was all she managed to get out as he kissed her harder.
After marking the wall with the silver greasepaint so they wouldn’t miss the trigger step on the way back, they made their way as fast and safely as possible down the stairs to what they hoped was Thalassa’s Tomb. Two turns. No tomb. No booby trap. The third turn. More nothing. On the fourth, she ran into Simon’s back with a thud. “You could warn me….”
She saw that the corridor had ended, opening out into another cavern.
And what a cavern. Thirty feet across and another thirty in height, it glittered with granite and flashed of white limestone. Water dripped from the ceiling, echoing through the cavern.
Carved into the walls was a temple.
Veronica knew her mouth hung open and it didn’t matter. There were no words big enough to describe the feeling. E
ven without the Stone, this was the find of a lifetime.
Walking down the last twenty steps, they made their way across the short, ten-foot courtyard and to the steps that led into the Temple. Veronica swung her light across their path. There were tide pools in the few crevices that dotted the area. No large animals from what she could see. Some anemones, limpets and barnacles, and watermarks on the wall, but that was enough to frighten her. “Simon, this cave floods during the tide.”
“I noticed them too. I’d also bet money that when the tide comes in, the outer door will close, even with the Eye in it,” he said, taking it one step further.
“Another trap,” Veronica said. “They knew that someday, someone would find this place, and when they did…” She didn’t finish the thought. Didn’t need to when the reality was sharp as a knife. “We should hurry.”
They came to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. The Temple wasn’t as grand as the Temple to Artemis on Ephesus, but being intact and perfect, it didn’t need to be.
The columns surrounding the Temple were Ionic style, as opposed to the corridor’s Doric columns. The Ionic columns had longer flutes, giving them an almost feminine feel, which seemed appropriate for a Temple to Artemis.
The frieze above the entrance was carved with reliefs. If she was reading it correctly, the reliefs told a story. A young woman stood in a small boat with a bigger vessel bearing down on her, and she had a knife in her hands, pointed at her breast. Thalassa. Next, what could only be Artemis, lifting Thalassa’s body and giving her to her maidens.
Finally, Thalassa being laid to rest, the maidens at her feet, mourning her.
“Incredible.” Veronica whispered, awed by the tale.
“Yeah,” Simon replied. “Ready?”
She slipped the knife from the sheath strapped to her thigh. “Yes.”
He pulled out his as well.
In tandem, they walked up the steps. Like most temples, this one was rectangular, but longer than Veronica originally thought. A statue stood in the center of the room.
Sheathing their knives, they walked to it. What would normally be a statue of a Greek god or goddess was replaced with something far more important and once, Veronica was sure, far more real.
The Midas Trap Page 23
