The Iron Tomb

by Peter Vegas

  Sam shook his head in disbelief. “Uncle Jasper, think you can keep your mind on the job? We’re in a bit of trouble here.”

  “Certainly, my boy.” Jasper laughed weakly. “But when we get out, remind me to send that lovely lady some flowers.” He threw in a wink, which seemed almost comical coming from a man in such bad shape. “Flowers, Sam, are the true way to a woman’s heart.”

  The talk of Jenny seemed to have cheered Jasper up, and Sam was glad about that, but he could tell his uncle was still trying to hide how much pain he was in.

  “From the seeds of our destruction grows our hope of escape,” repeated Jasper as he delved back into his bag. “I found this when I was in Alexandria.”

  Sam studied the cross section of the Panehesy. “You think the hole in the boiler room was how he got out?”

  Jasper nodded.

  “You had already worked this all out, hadn’t you?” said Sam.

  “Well, I have had a bit of time on my hands.”

  “Then, I need to get down there and check it out.”

  “Ah.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very confident ‘ah,’” Sam said.

  “No, it’s not, I’m afraid. Seventy-three years ago there was a stairwell that went from the top to the bottom of the ship. You can see it on the map. But it’s full of sand now. I know, because I checked when I was looking for a way down here. The smokestack would have been the same if the rain plate hadn’t been in place.”

  “So there’s no way down?”

  “No,” replied Jasper. “You’re going to have to make one.”

  23

  DEAD MAN’S PASSAGE

  SAM RETURNED TO THE UPPER deck and used one of the coils of rope on the wall to lower the acetylene torch down through the hole in the floor. Compared to the high-tech device the Short-Haired Man had used, Jasper’s unit was slow. Not so much a hot knife through butter as a blunt knife through wood. Clouds of yellow sparks lit up the space like fireworks set off in a closet, and as Sam worked behind the plastic mask he’d found next to the unit, he discovered that there was more to cutting plate steel than meets the eye. The finished hole made the one his uncle had cut look like a masterpiece.

  The ropes that had held the Ark’s crate in place were still secured to the floor, so Sam tossed one into the nasty-looking hole and prepared for the descent.

  “See ya soon,” he called to his uncle. There was no response. After his spirited conversation about Jenny from the museum, Jasper had gone downhill. He was about to pass out again, but Sam thought that might be for the best. Lying there, bathed in the yellow glow of the flashlight, his uncle looked like a corpse. Their discussion, combined with Jasper’s efforts to disguise the pain he was in, had taken a heavy toll. But even then, he had still tried to turn the situation into a lesson. He’d already worked out that Jason Verulam had escaped from the Panehesy; he could have simply blurted it out. Instead, he’d helped Sam reach that conclusion himself.

  That need to turn everything into a school lesson had always infuriated Sam, but standing there, by the edge of the crudely cut hole, he saw his uncle in a new light. It wasn’t that Jasper simply liked playing the role of teacher, Sam realized. Everything he did was born from a desire to help Sam learn to think for himself. To help him make his way in the world. That independent spirit that Sam prided himself on? His uncle had helped to nurture that. Sam had been joking when he told Jasper he had picked up a few things from him over the years, but he knew that statement was true. This adventure, the fact he had made it this far, was because of the training and teaching his uncle had given him. This was the gift his uncle had to offer, and he had done so willingly, for years, despite Sam’s lack of gratitude.

  Sam suddenly felt closer to his uncle than ever before. He wanted to run over and tell him how much he loved him, thank him for the years of attention and affection, but he didn’t. The thank-yous and apologies could wait until he and Jasper were free.

  Sam grabbed the thick hemp rope and slid down into the deepest depths of the Panehesy.

  * * *

  HE LANDED IN ANOTHER DARK hole, but knew it was different even before he switched on the flashlight. The stench of diesel fuel made him long for the musty, stale air of the cargo deck. The beam from his flashlight stabbed across the floor, exposing a room packed with the rusting carcasses of what had once been engines. Compared to the open expanse of the deck above, the space was cramped. Pipes lined each side of the room and disappeared through the wall. Sand spilling out through the open door hinted that the desert had already claimed the boiler room for itself, but when Sam looked closer, he saw that it hadn’t. He stepped into the room and saw that the sand was the work of men—and one of them was still there.

  The skeleton was wearing faded rags that had once been shorts, but the bones looked like they had been shrink-wrapped in brown plastic. If it had been hanging in a costume shop, Sam would have complained that the thing looked way too fake.

  But this was real. Seventy-three years in a temperature-controlled environment had mummified the body, Panehesy style. The flesh had melted away, leaving the skin to form a crispy brown layer over the bones. Sam stared at the body perched on its throne of sand, and it gazed back through the sunken hollows that had once contained eyes. There was a strange-looking pistol lying next to it. It was made of dull brass and had a short, wide barrel.

  There was so much sand in the room, it took a few seconds to locate the source. The canvas curtain was almost the same color as the wall. Sam pulled it back to reveal the manhole-sized gouge that had been made by the explosion. Another tattered piece of canvas had been laid across the bottom edge of the hole. Lying there, hanging out of the tunnel, it looked like a leathery tongue of some prehistoric monster. The Panehesy had failed to claim Sam; now the desert was inviting him in to try his luck there.

  As Sam looked around the boiler room that had become a burial chamber, his flashlight lit up a dusty red notebook sitting on the iron beam above the door. Sam took the book down and opened it. The faded handwriting was barley legible on the brittle yellow pages, but as Sam began reading, he realized he was holding the dairy of the man whose footsteps he was about to follow.

  June 17

  The explosion was no accident.

  I suspected this from the start, and a closer inspection, when we docked in Al Minya, confirmed my fears. A reminder, if needed, of the importance of this mission and the forces that plot to stop us.

  The Port Master has ordered us upstream to a mooring barge. One of the crew was behind the bomb. I have no way of knowing who, so I have off-loaded them all. Only Thomas has remained with me, but this means it will take more than one night to make the repairs we need to get us back to Alexandria safely.

  June 18

  A massive storm has hit us. I’ve never seen anything like it. A thick brown soup has enveloped the Panehesy, obscuring all vision. She is an old girl, and the bridge and officers’ quarters are of flimsy wooden construction. In this howling gale, they creak and groan under the high winds that batter us without reprieve. In an effort to find a little more peace, Thomas and I have retreated belowdecks. The only consolation of this horrific weather is that our enemies are as blinded as we are, and this works to ensure the success of my great deception.

  June 19

  It seems our move was timely. During the night I feared the Panehesy was breaking up, as the sound of splintering timber and smashing glass joined the hellish din made by the winds that raged around us. We survived, but with the day came the discovery that the entire structure above deck has been washed away by a sea of sand. This we can live without, but another casualty of the night was the water tank that stood at the back of the ship. All we have left to drink is the water that remained in the pipes. It filled two small bottles. Until now this storm has merely been inconvenient. If it goes on much longer, it could become a far greater threat.

  June 20

  The sun didn’t rise today. I thought perhap
s my watch was wrong, and then we discovered, to our horror, that the blackness outside the potholes is not night, but sand.

  The last of our food has gone, but it is our lack of water that hangs over us like the sword of Damocles. The storm still rages, albeit a little quieter now. But I fear this is not a sign that it is weakening, rather the deadening of the noise as the sand builds up around us.

  We are being buried alive.

  June 21

  A deathly silence greeted us when we awoke this morning. Is this a sign the storm has finished? We have no way of knowing. The door to the stairs that leads to the deck is blocked. The desert has sealed us in as surely as the lock on a cage.

  I see the panic in Thomas’s eyes even though he works to hide it. I hope I’m doing a better job than him.

  I can feel my sanity being sucked up like the air in here. How much is there? Will that be our undoing? No matter! To write of these things is as poisonous as thinking them. Our efforts must go into our escape.

  From the seeds of our destruction!

  I had placed some boards over the hole made by the explosion, and now it seems it is the only way out of this iron tomb. We can dig through sand and we have wood for shoring the tunnel, thanks to the crate in the rear cargo deck. What we don’t have is an abundance of time. So we will dig and dig and free ourselves from here. Or die trying.

  June 22

  We are at least 40 feet underground, but it has proved impossible to dig straight up. Our only hope is a tunnel that slopes up gradually to the surface. We work one-hour on, one-hour off. It means our progress is painfully slow, but in our weakened state this is all we can handle. I managed to drain the last dregs of water from the boiler. A rusty orange soup, it smells putrid and is bitter to the tongue, but if this sustains us even one day longer, then we accept it gratefully.

  Our tunnel is a crude affair, just wide enough for one. We take turns to dig while the other carries the sand back into the engine room in the canvas fire bucket.

  I tried to speculate with Thomas today as to which member of the crew was the traitor. He seemed uninterested in the conversation. He and I were the only two left on board who knew of the secret buried in the sands for over two and a half thousand years. Now we fight to avoid the same fate.

  June 23

  We are dying. Hour by hour. Neither of us speaks of it: In fact, we speak very little now. Thomas sits in silence, watching me write. He asked why I sit here scribbling obsessively. A link to normalcy? A chance to pour forth the words that no longer come from my swollen tongue? ’ Tis not death I fear. It is the idea that my knowledge will be buried here with me. If this iron tomb is to become my eternal resting place, then let me put here in writing that which has been passed from mouth to ear for centuries.

  That the Knights Templar discovered the Ark of the Covenant in the ruins of Solomon’s Temple has been the subject of speculation by many, and it is true. But this treasure was one of two they found.

  The other was knowledge.

  Knowledge that came from a story carved into the Ark. A story that told of heretic king Akhenaten, who stole the original Ark from its home in the heart of the Great Pyramid at Giza, and took it to his new city Amarna.

  A secret few worked to overthrow him and reclaim this treasure and the powers it possessed.

  Akhenaten, who the world came to know as Moses, fled to the desert with his followers, and it was here, history tells us, that the Ark was built. This was made possible only because his craftsmen had studied the original. And what happened to that? This was Akhenaten’s great deception. It was hidden in the very city he fled from—Amarna.

  This is the secret the Templars discovered. This knowledge, a sacred flame, kept alive in the shadows for hundreds of years. Protected from the descendants of Akhenaten’s enemies, who have always sought to reclaim the Ark for their own means.

  In Amarna, the Ark would lie still if it were not for the tides of war sweeping the planet and fears of the guardians of the flame that Akhenaten’s deception was about to be discovered.

  I was entrusted to remove this sacred object from its hiding place and now, having read the engravings on the original Ark, I have the next piece of this great story. It must not be lost, so if my journey in this mortal body ends here I must commit my knowledge to paper, lest it be lost forev———

  Thomas was the traitor, and now he is dead!

  He began pacing the room nervously as I wrote. It struck me as odd because we have little strength to waste.

  In his hands was the flare gun that we found on the bridge. He fingered it nervously. I understand now that he was building himself up to commit murder.

  He planned my death from the start. That I lived this long was only because he knew he needed help to build the tunnel.

  But now we are close to completion. Or perhaps Thomas was worried he might not have the strength to do away with me if he waited.

  This, I suspect, is the dilemma he wrestled with, and now, as his lifeless eyes stare at me from the other side of the room, it is the problem his brain can toy with for eternity.

  He came at me as I sat, head down over this journal. But for this flicker of shadows as he stepped in front of the lantern, I might never have looked up.

  That curiosity surely saved my life.

  Our struggle might have seemed comical to a bystander in the steel-walled cell. Two men, so weak, so near complete exhaustion, that we seemed to fight in slow motion.

  His blow glanced off my head, and he stumbled past me as I struggled to my feet. A deep gash had opened above my brow; my blood ran freely. It struck me as odd that it should pour with suck vigour from a body so close to death, but the salty liquid that ran down my face and across my lips surely altered the course of Thomas’s deed.

  There was no conscious thought on my part, only an animal hunger for nutrients in the scarlet gore that oozed from me. I suspect I made the most horrific sight for Thomas as I stood there pawing at my wound and licking the blood off my hands. He seemed transfixed or perhaps just too exhausted to move. Whatever the reason, his failure to capitalize on my distraction cost him dearly.

  Spurred on by the sustenance from my wound I grabbed one of the broken pieces of packing crate, pushed Thomas down with no greater effort than if he had been a small child. Then, with my crude sword at his throat, I demanded an explanation.

  He confessed to the riches he had been promised for betraying our mission.

  With this admission, he sealed his fate. I drove the wooden stake into the jugular vein and watched as his life force spilled out of him. As I sit here now, his blood still flows. A rich red pool, creeping out from his body across the floor toward the tunnel, and my salvation.

  June 24

  I hit rock today, but this may prove to be a blessing. Using the rock face for support I can build a shaft that goes straight up. This will surely save time.

  The work is slow. I am performing the tasks of two now. I can only clear a few buckets of sand before I must stop and ferry it back into the ship. If I don’t, I will find myself trapped, with no way forward or back. But my spirits have been l ifted. I have more energy now and can work with renewed sense of purpose.

  I have planned for my escape by constructing a cover for the tunnel. A gaping hole woul d attract unwanted attention. I must not lose sight of why I am here.

  Enough words for now. A few moments of sleep, then back to my hellish work.

  Sam felt guilty flicking though the pages of Jason Verulam’s diary. The story was intriguing, but the image of his uncle lying on the deck above him forced him back to his feet.

  Kneeling by the hole, Sam shined the flashlight into the old tunnel. The pieces of packing crate lining the walls and roof were rough and uneven. There were gaps between the wooden slats, and a couple of them had broken, leaving piles of sand blocking the narrow escape route. Sam needed something he could use to clear the way. The only object left in the room was the skeleton of Thomas. After a close
inspection Sam settled on a thighbone as the ideal tool to help him through the tunnel.

  He was wrong.

  24

  BACK FROM THE DEAD

  THE TUNNEL HAD COLLAPSED ON Sam. The desert had tried to claim him as one of its own, and he should have been dead, but he wasn’t. A matter of inches had saved his life.

  As the wood that was holding the roof came down, one piece had knocked him unconscious, but a few more fell in such a way that they formed a small protective area around his mouth. It was a tiny space, but enough to hold back the sand and save Sam from suffocation.

  He came to in complete blackness and tried to move his arms. One was trapped at his side, the other, holding the thighbone, had been stretched out in front of him when the collapse happened. He was like a swimmer frozen midstroke. He could move the arm in front, so he gently felt the area around him, forming a picture of his surroundings in his mind.

  The first thing he found were the shattered remains of his flashlight, but the good news was that the cave-in had been limited to the area he was in. The area ahead felt clear.

  Sam dug his fingers into the sand and tried to pull himself forward. His body slid a few inches before a sharp cracking sound filled the tiny chamber around him. Sam ducked his head and prepared for another avalanche of sand. When it didn’t come, he sank his claw-shaped hand into the sand and pulled again.

  Inch by inch Sam extracted himself from the tunnel’s death hold, always listening for the crack that would signal his doom. But it never came. Instead, his other arm slipped free and he was able to pull himself out of the debris. But as he crawled forward, he became aware of a new threat: the floor of the tunnel was sloping up sharply. Sam was still on his stomach, but the roof was only a few inches above his head. A seventy-three-year-old ceiling that was probably so fragile the lightest touch could bring it down.

  Sam had been so focused on getting free of the cave-in, his mind hadn’t given him time to stop to dwell on his situation—that he was trapped in the dark in a space no bigger than a coffin, God knows how far under the desert. But now, as he lay there sucking in the warm, fetid air, the panic demons came banging on his door with a vengeance, demanding to be let in, to be heard.