The Shroud Key

by Vincent Zandri

  “Exactly what are you looking for, Andre?” Anya asks.

  “A small patch or area that is inconsistent with the others. It might be a rough patch of stone, or the tiniest of protrusions or indentations that, if you weren’t looking for it, you might never know was there.”

  “It’s all so smooth,” I say.

  “That’s the deceiving part,” Andre says, slowly moving his fingertips over the rock. “You wouldn’t think to look for anything here other than what it appears to be. A sarcophagus carved in granite and that’s all.”

  Anya and I stand in silence while we watch him work.

  Until his fingers suddenly stop.

  “That’s it,” he says. “That has got to be it.”

  “What is it?” Anya says, pointing her light to a spot in which his index finger has stopped moving.

  I feel my heartbeat pick up. I might be a writer now, but the sandhog in me has never gone away.

  “This is a trigger for a counterweight,” Andre says. Then, turning his head to me over his shoulder. “Chase, would you happen to have a coin?”

  I dig into my pocket, pull out a single Egyptian pound, hand it to Andre. He takes the coin and gently slips it into a slot that I would never have located with my naked eye. Turing the coin counter-clock-wise, he leans back.

  “Get back everyone. I’m not sure what’s going to happen. Watch for something to drop from the ceiling or the walls. A weight of some kind or even a heavy block.”

  I hear a distinct click that echoes inside the chamber. Quickly Andre takes to his feet, jumps out of the tomb. Together, the three of us eye the bottom of the tomb as it begins to tremble. The trembling is accompanied by a rock grinding on rock sound as the bottom of the tomb begins to slowly drop down revealing an open space beneath it. At the same time, behind us, a small portion of the chamber’s ceiling opens up. It begins to rain sand and gravel down onto the floor. The counterweight is revealed.

  “My God,” Anya states, her wide eyes glued to the moving rock.

  “Exactly,” I say.

  The entire right side of the tomb’s bottom slab then drops and stops.

  “Look,” Andre announces. “It’s a ramp.”

  “For climbing down inside,” I add, stating the obvious.

  I shine the light into the newly formed opening. It’s a tunnel not unlike the ones we’ve already descended into the tomb, only narrower. Tighter. Far shorter, too.

  “Who’s going first?” Anya asks.

  “I’ll do it,” Andre says.

  I take hold of his arm.

  “Not a chance, Professor,” I say. “There’s some kind of booby trap waiting for us down there, better that I deal with it. You’re the scientist. I’m the hired muscle.”

  “You put it that way, Chase old man,” he smiles. “Be my guest.”

  “Easy, Renaissance Man,” Anya interjects. “Bravery will get you good and killed.”

  “So will stupidity,” I say.

  Setting my posterior onto the sarcophagus wall, I swing my booted feet over the side and set them down onto the angled stone.

  “Watch my back,” I say.

  Pointing the Maglite into the ancient unknown, I enter into the tunnel.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  Because of the angle and the smooth flatness of the stone, I am forced to descend the ten foot long ramp and the cramped, twenty-plus feet of descending tunnel it accesses from down on my ass until I come to a stone floor. That’s when I turn and look back up at two faces looking down upon me.

  “Anya,” I say. “Send down a rope, and the hammer drill.”

  She does it, sliding both items down the ramp.

  Forced to crawl back up the tunnel, I take hold of the cordless hammer drill with one hand, grab hold of the rope with the other. Because this half ton of perfectly engineered stone ramp operates like a well-balanced see-saw, I can easily move it up and down with only my pinky finger if I so choose. It means that if the guards invade the tomb, I can easily seal the entry back up.

  The equipment in hand, I once more make my way back down the tunnel and prepare myself for entering into the unknown chamber. But first things first. The place is pitch dark. Setting the tools down, I pull the Maglite from my pant waist, shine the bright light on the chamber’s interior, careful to look for anything that might cause my immediate injury and/or death.

  I find it right away.

  Shining the light down at me feet, I can see that the area of stone I am walking on can’t be more than three feet wide. If I were to take another step, I would drop immediately into a pit. I shine the light into the pit, poke my head over the edge. I can’t see bottom so much as something that appears to be in motion and at the same time reflects the light. Like an underground stream or river. Like I’ve already mentioned, I’ve heard legends of the pyramids being constructed over underground aquifers, but I’ve never actually seen evidence of them. Until now. It also explains how the 1978 Vatican team might have gained access to the secret crypt. Not through the Mankaure sarcophagus’s secret trap door, in which they would have upset the counter-weight, but instead by having entered through the pit that accesses the underground river. All that would have been required of them was to scale the pit’s stone walls like an expert rock climber scaling a cliff.

  As far as I can tell, the room is perfectly circular; almost tube-like. There’s a solid stone ceiling that’s maybe ten feet overhead. The walls are also solid, other than a small, square-shaped opening located directly across the pit from me. I can only assume this is the narrow shaft designed thousands of years ago to capture the sun as it rises during the dawn. If that’s the case, there must be a place located on the circular wall directly opposite it which will accept the ancient mirror I presently have stored in my trouser pocket along with the cross I stole off the Vatican soldier back in Florence. Shining the light on the portion of wall to my left, I locate the precise section of indented wall. Pulling the mirror from my pocket, I fit one piece into the space, and then set the second broken piece into the space beside it. It fits together like two missing puzzle pieces, and as exactly and tightly as the blocks in the Third Pyramid’s limestone walls.

  My heart pounds.

  “Professor,” I yell up into the tunnel. “This is it. This is the crypt. Down here.”

  “How do you know?” he shouts.

  I tell him about the sun shaft, the mirror, the indented space on the wall.

  “I’m coming down,” he says.

  A minute and a half later, he and Anya are standing beside me.

  “This is incredible,” she says, her wide eyes gazing upon the secret room. “We’re the first modern humans to set our eyes on this place.”

  “Not really,” I say. “A group of Vatican soldiers stood here only thirty-five years ago.”

  The truth I speak of does nothing to deflate her sense of wonder.

  Andre is already consumed with reading the hieroglyphs on the walls.

  “Look,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a small child. “This image here. The fertility image.” He points to a male phallus that is erect and discharging semen in a long steady flow. Inscribed beside it is a replica of a sperm cell. “See what’s happening here? This is a microscopic image of a basic sperm cell. Yet the first recorded microscopic sighting of sperm wasn’t documented until the age of Galileo in the early sixteen hundreds.”

  “So what’s that prove?” I ask.

  “That the ancient Egyptians, including Mankaure, may have been assisted by beings from another world over three to five thousand years ago.”

  “Aliens,” I joke. “Thought you were a scientist, Professor?”

  He gives me a look.

  “How would you explain this, Chase?”

  Anya runs her hands along the inscribed image.

  “He’s right, Chase. How could the ancient Egyptians know what a sperm cell looks like much less devise the engineering to make this pyramid? To make these secret shafts? The engineer
ing is perfect even by today’s standards.”

  “Perhaps the pyramids were designed by an advanced ancient civilization which has since disappeared,” I suggest. “Atlantians, maybe. It would also explain the construction of the Mayan pyramids, and Macchu Picchu.”

  “And look at this,” Andre goes on. He’s reading the glyphs that inscribe the wrap-around wall with the same ease that I would apply in reading a newspaper. “See this here. It’s the sun god Ra, looming over the head of Menkaure’s body as Anubis the jackal prepares his body for mummification.” His finger not on Anubis or Ra, but on a figure above them … a figure in the sky. “Notice the ovular-like shape, and how it’s spitting out something that looks like fire from beneath it.”

  I take a good look, going so far as to shine my light on it.

  “I guess that could be a spaceship, Professor,” I say, not without giggle. “Maybe it’s the heavens opening up for the newly dead Pharaoh. Or maybe it’s just some silly, artsy, scribble-work.”

  “Maybe,” Andre admits, taking a step or two back, but careful not to go over the edge. “One thing is for certain. That sarcophagus upstairs wasn’t intended as the final resting place of Menkaure. The ancient Egyptians wished for him to be buried right here. Down inside this secret crypt.”

  “Not so secret crypt,” I say. “Remember, the Vatican knows all about it.”

  He shakes his head.

  “How they discovered it and were able to keep it a secret for three, almost four decades is mind boggling to me.”

  “I think there’s quite a bit the Vatican knows about ancient civilizations. Especially about the things that could threaten to destroy their two-thousand year reign as the most popular religion on earth.”

  Another glance at my watch.

  “How long until the dawn?” Andre says.

  “Maybe another fifteen minutes.”

  “You think we have that kind of time?” Anya asks.

  “Not sure we’ve got much of a choice but to wait it out,” I say. “I did my best to make sure whoever comes our way will, at the very least, be slowed down.”

  “I don’t want to know what you’ve done, Ren Man,” Anya says.

  I might enjoy a good laugh over her comment if the explosion from the tripped RPG doesn’t rock the Third Pyramid.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  “Hell was that?” Andre, wide eyed, biting down on his bottom lip.

  “Welcoming party I left for the guards up at the tomb entrance.”

  “They’re gonna find us, kill us, and take the bones, take over the world,” Anya laments. Her face has turned pale from anxiety.

  “Not if they don’t know how to find us,” I reassure her. But it’s like spitting in the ocean.

  I enter back into the tunnel, climb back up to the ramp and, gripping its edge with my right hand, push it back into place. The fit is so precise, so perfectly designed, it actually seals itself together. I have no doubt that from up inside the burial chamber, the empty tomb will appear to be just that … an empty tomb.

  But I also know that eventually, the bandits will uncover the secret of the tomb and uncover the secret chamber. After all, the sand that supported the counterweight is there on the chamber floor as evidence. Without a proper counterweight, all it will take is for someone to simply push down on the sarcophagus floor to make it fly back open.

  Once more joining the others, I check my watch.

  “We don’t have a lot of time,” I say. “Dawn should be here within a minute.”

  With all eyes focused on the shaft opening located directly across the open pit, we wait.

  “Kill the flashlights,” I say. “And press your backs up against the wall. As tightly as you can. You never know what can happen when the sun hits the mirror.”

  “This is it, Chase,” Andre says, that same boy-like excitement in his voice. “The moment I’ve been waiting for, for more years than I care to count.”

  I feel a set of fingers slipping themselves into the palm of my hand.

  Anya.

  I take her hand, hold it tightly. Then, something miraculous happens. The long, narrow, stone shaft begins to fill with light like a test tube filling with blood. Not a bright light at first, but a faint glow. It’s as if the narrow shaft were an old fashioned light bulb filament beginning to get its glow on. The red/orange light quickly begins to intensify however, becoming brighter and brighter until the now bright white light shoots out from the shaft like a laser beam from a ray gun. The concentrated narrow beam then shoots across the room and collides with the mirror embedded into the stone wall beside us, causing yet another bright beam to bounce off of it at a forty-five degree angle to reveal the precise location of the secret chamber.

  The chamber that will more than likely contain the mortal remains of Jesus.

  We waste no time.

  Andre makes his way carefully past Anya and me and goes to the location of the chamber. Like he did earlier with the tomb, he uses his fingers to feel along the wall.

  He turns.

  “Chase,” he says. “The hammer drill.”

  Just like old times…The sandhog is about to get dirty again…

  I gather up the cordless tool outside the entry to the tunnel, bring it to Andre. At his direction, I press the chisel end in the very spot indicated by his extended index finger, and let her rip. It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort for the five-by-five foot piece of false stone-and-mortar wall to crumble, revealing a small crypt.

  “The wall must have been carefully reconstructed by the Vatican team in ‘78,” Andre explains. “I would have missed it entirely if not for the mirror.”

  He forces his way in, shining the flashlight inside the cramped space.

  “What do you see?” shouts Anya from behind me.

  I poke my head inside, shine the Maglite onto the floor.

  “There, Professor,” I say. “On the floor. In the very back.”

  “I see it,” he says. “Get in here, Chase.”

  Crouching, I shove my way inside. The closer I come to the box I can see that it’s been wrapped in a shroud made of cloth. In the decades since it’s been placed here, the shroud has become ratty and moth eaten. Andre drops to his knees, removes the cloth to reveal a red metal strongbox, not unlike the kind of security deposit box you might find inside a bank vault in Switzerland. Wrapped around the box’s length and width is a section of chain that’s been padlocked. The chain fits so tightly to the locked strongbox, I can’t even get a finger under it.

  “We need something to break the chain,” Andre says.

  “I could put a bullet into the padlock. But even then, we’re not getting into that box without the help of a pro.”

  Then, a noise. The sound of a rock-on-rock seal breaking. Followed by the heavy bang and thud.

  “The ramp’s been lowered,” Anya says.

  “No time for messing with the padlock,” I insist. “Andre, we have to go.”

  “Where to?” he says, standing.

  “Good question,” I say, stuffing the thin end of the Maglite into my pant-waist.

  There’s nothing in front of us other than solid wall. Already I can make out the heavy, jack-booted footsteps from the bandits descending the stone, trap-door ramp. I look down, make out the faint sound of running water.

  “There,” I say. “We go there.”

  “How?” Anya says.

  The guards are shouting. Shouting at us to stop. Automatic weapons being cocked.

  “We jump,” I say.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  We stand at the edge of the pit.

  “You two go first,” I say, pulling my weapon, firing three rounds up into the ramp tunnel. “I’ll hold them back.”

  Andre is holding the box tightly in his arms as if it’s a live child and not the bones of a man dead two-thousand years. A most important man. The most important man to have ever lived.

  Shots are fired from the tunnel, the rounds ricocheting and sparking off the sto
ne wall opposite us. More screaming. More stomping of footsteps. I return the fire.

  “We have to do this, Professor. Do it now. Or we’re dead anyway!”

  While keeping my gun poised on the bandits, I glance over my shoulder to see Andre set the box onto the stone floor.

  “You take the box, Chase,” he says. “I’ll take my wife.”

  Despite this rapidly closing door, I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness and even envy, as Anya and her ex-husband take hold of one another’s hands and go over the edge. But I don’t have time for sentiment as I empty the remainder of the clip into the charging guards and, re-holstering the weapon, pick up the box, cradle it tightly in my arms.

  As several shots whizz past my head and careen off the wall opposite me, I stare down into a watery pit, the darkness of which is now broken by two separate white Maglites. I have no idea if the man and the woman who belong to those Maglites are dead or still alive. But then what choice do I have but to jump?

  Stepping off the edge, Jesus and I fall.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  I land inside a deep pool of cold water. Shockingly cold. Water, no doubt, that comes directly from a Nile feeder. With the box still gripped firmly in my arms, I find myself spinning. Round and round like a vinyl record on an old fashioned turntable. I yell out for Anya and Andre, silently praying to whatever God is up there that they landed safely.

  When the word “Here!” echoes off the cave-walls I breathe a sigh of relief. But the relief is short-lived. The spinning is becoming more rapid, more forceful. I am beginning to feel myself being sucked into a whirlpool.

  “Professor! Anya!” I call. “You okay?”

  “Yes, we’re okay,” he responds.

  “Okay,” Anya follows.

  “Listen carefully,” I go on. “We are going to be sucked under. I can only assume that there is a blow hole of some sort and that we will be spit out of it. Don’t fight it. Just hold your breath and hang on. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, we understand!” Andre assures.

  I manage to catch a quick glimpse of them as they near the center of the whirlpool. They are gripped in one another’s arms, their mouths open, barely perched above the foamy water’s surface like a starlings begging for food. I try and keep a wide eye on them, until just like that, they disappear beneath the water’s surface.