by Tom Wilde
Rhea’s warm body was up close with mine, and I felt her shiver slightly in the cold, dank air. Although I seriously doubted it was the chill that made her tremble; it was more like the anticipating moves of a cat about to pounce upon prey. I brought my head to her ear and mouthed the words, “Stay quiet, no matter what I do.” I then shifted over to the other side of the entrance to the vaulted chamber below. I fired up my gun’s flashlight, illuminating the room as I called out, “Ombra! Game’s up, you bastard!”
In the glare of the light I saw Ombra’s pale and neatly bearded face briefly as he looked up and then shielded his eyes from the beam. He and the man next to him were dressed in identical blue jumpsuits, now covered in bone-pale dust, and as they both stood, I was happy to see that neither man held a gun at the moment. In the bright beam of my light, I now saw that most of the chests had been broken open, exposing glittering contents within. It was an act of will to keep my focus on my enemies and not glance at the treasures revealed within the chamber, but I kept Ombra dead in my sights.
The bastard was smiling.
CHAPTER TEN
Ombra’s voice echoed through the chamber, amusement lightening the tone of his words as he said, “Monsieur Blake? Is that truly you? I would think that you would be dead by now.”
I tried out a laugh of my own. I didn’t sound entirely sane. “I was,” I replied. “Turns out the devil didn’t want me, so he sent me back to get you instead. Now, you and your boy there need to come up here slowly, hands in sight.”
“Where are the rest of my men?” Ombra asked.
“Sorry,” I called back. “They won’t be joining us.”
Ombra bowed his head. “I see,” he said, so low I almost didn’t hear it. Ombra’s confederate, a dark-haired young man with a beard, grimaced at this news, flashing a look of hatred in my direction. Ombra lifted his head, and I saw where the right side of his face was bruising up from where I’d smacked him with the bronze eagle hours before. He said to me, “I did not take you for such a killer, Mr. Blake. My mistake. One I will not make again. We have your wife, as you see.”
“And I’ve got a gun. Your move,” I called back.
Ombra nodded. He didn’t seem to be able to hold his right arm up as high as his left, a souvenir from the screwdriver I’d planted into his back. “So, Mr. Blake,” Ombra said. “How do you propose we resolve this impasse, eh?”
Ombra was acting way too calm, and it was making my hackles rise. “You and your boy there come up the stairs, hands raised. We’ll sort it out after that.”
Ombra tilted his head slightly to one side, and then said with a smile, “I do not think so, Mr. Blake.”
I didn’t like the tone of his voice; Ombra was playing like a man who had all the time in the world. I spared a glance at Caitlin, bound and sitting against a chest on the floor. Even at this distance, I could see the look in her large, expressive eyes as she flashed me a silent message, tilting her head toward Ombra and his man once, twice, thrice. Three—she was trying to tell me there were three of them.
The realization came right on the heels of the muted shots that were fired up from the darkness to the right of Ombra. I ducked back behind the edge of the opening as bullets cracked into the bones behind me, spraying me with sharp fragments. I heard Rhea swear, softly and venomously, in Japanese. Probably at me, I thought. Everything had gone dark when my finger left the button of my pistol’s flashlight, leaving nothing but the pale green glow from the chamber below. “Now what?” Rhea hissed.
As if in answer, the room below us exploded with a flash of light and a thunder that slapped my whole body, as if the jagged entrance was suddenly turned into the mouth of a giant cannon. I fell back, covering my head as a small rain of debris came down.
The ringing in my ears told me I wasn’t dead yet as I picked myself up and snapped the light of my gun back on, sweeping the inner room and seeing nothing but a cloud of ash-white fog reflected back. I rolled out onto the steep steps, almost sliding down to the ground while keeping my gun trained on the area where Ombra’s man had been when he fired at me. My eyes burned and my throat caught bitter motes out of the choking air. I heard the sounds of suppressed coughs coming from the ground behind me. My light found Caitlin huddled on the floor, ghost pale from the blast of powdery dust. Above me, I saw Rhea’s gun light send questing beams throughout the vaulted chamber, which even through the smoke I could now see was much larger than I first thought.
I took Caitlin’s arm and pulled her to a sitting position. Quick as I could, I pulled the tape from her mouth, which caused her to finally give vent to a series of heaving coughs. Rhea flew down the steps, her light shooting ahead as she moved into the end of the chamber where Ombra and his man had fled. “Stay down,” I told Caitlin, then followed up behind Rhea.
I could now see that the walls of this chamber were made of large, ash-white bricks, and had been sealed into a dead end. Rhea had made her way over to the far wall, where a hole large enough for a man to squeeze through had been blasted through the masonry. The bitter air in this end was thick with the smell of burnt explosives. Rhea flashed her light along the breach, then pulled back and announced, “They’re gone.” She stood up and played her light around the rounded chamber, her beam leaping from chest to chest as I heard her mutter to herself in Japanese.
“Blake!” Caitlin coughed. I did an about-face and came back to her, leaving Rhea on her own. “Hi, honey,” I said.
Her golden eyes flashed fire and she fiercely whispered, “You idiot! Are you trying to get yourself killed?”
I couldn’t have been more surprised at my greeting if she kicked me. “I thought I was rescuing you,” I quietly replied.
“We’ve got to get out of here, now!” she shot back. Just then, the light from Rhea’s gun locked on to Caitlin, and I froze; wherever the beam of light was aimed, so was the barrel of the pistol.
“You!” Rhea called out. “What did Ombra take from here?”
Caitlin’s eyes narrowed as she tried to see beyond the light splashed on her face. “What the hell is she doing here, Blake?” Caitlin said in a near growl.
“Temporary alliance,” I shot back from the side of my mouth, then I said more loudly, “Hey, point that thing somewhere else.”
From behind the glare I saw Rhea stalking toward us, the deadly beam of light never wavering from Caitlin as Rhea said, “Tell me now, what did Ombra and his men take from here?”
“They didn’t take anything,” Caitlin shouted back. “They never intended to take anything.”
Rhea’s voice was angry and dangerous as she said, “What are you talking about?”
In response, Caitlin pointed with her bound hands toward the center of the room. Rhea’s light flashed over and found a small, silver-colored briefcase, lying closed next to a discarded pry bar. “What’s that?” Rhea asked.
With a voice charged with quiet intensity, Caitlin announced, “It’s a bomb. And Ombra already set it to explode. If we don’t get out of here now, we’re dead.”
Everything froze for a moment in time, then without another word, Rhea turned and raced up the stairs and out of the chamber. “Blake,” Caitlin said. “Come on! We’ve got to move!”
I shook myself out of my shock-induced paralysis and went through my pockets for my utility tool, first finding Caitlin’s lipstick case instead. I handed my gun to Caitlin and she held the light pointing up as I fumbled the blade of my tool free and cut through the gummy tape binding her wrists and ankles. Caitlin then grabbed my hand. “Let’s go!” she commanded.
She led me as far as the stairs, and then I stopped cold, pulling my hand free of hers. “What are you doing?” she gasped. Most of the dust had settled, and through the greenish illumination from the light stick, now lying on the floor, I saw I was standing among all the open, inviting chests, filled with glistening treasure. I was inside a veritable Cave of Wonders, filled with unimaginable riches. Guarded by the silver dragon’s egg of a bomb.
/> “No goddamn fair!” I shouted. I was well trained in the area of explosives, mostly on how to make them from scratch, and I knew enough to realize that the most dangerous thing I could attempt would be to try and disarm the damn thing. There was nothing left to do but run for our lives. I just couldn’t force myself to leave empty-handed.
Caitlin kept calling my name as I raced over to the nearest chest and scooped up a handful of golden coins, dropping them into my pocket. I turned to run for the stairs, but spotted a small, rectangular wooden case on the floor, about the size of a thermos. It was the only box that looked small enough to carry. I almost stumbled as I grabbed it up, then ran toward Caitlin’s beckoning light. “Let’s go!” I shouted.
I banged the top of my head on the low tunnel entrance, blinded by the sudden lack of illumination when Caitlin turned away, then caught myself and hurried down the tunnel after her. In the bright beam of the handgun’s light the skulls in the corridor appeared to be grinning at me as I ran, mocking my attempts to escape the world of the dead.
We made it to the crossroads and saw the body of the man Rhea shot; his arm was outstretched and pointing in the direction we needed to go. We didn’t make it more than a dozen steps before the world exploded behind us, knocking us both flat to the dusty earth. I clapped my hands to my ears as a pile of old bones suddenly covered me, just as a powerful wind sucked all the air out of the tunnel. For a heartbeat, there was nothing, then the world turned red as a dragon blew its flaming breath overhead, the terrible heat scorching my back.
I couldn’t see, couldn’t hear, and couldn’t breathe. I was coughing in a vacuum until I felt the wind roar through the tunnel again. It took all the strength I had to raise myself up and out of the clinking pile of human rubble. There was an overpowering stench in the air, and my throat wanted to close itself up against the reek of burning human bones. My ears were ringing like they never had before, and my voice sounded distant as I called out for Caitlin. It was a shock to suddenly realize I could see down here. I turned my head back down the tunnel and saw a bright, flickering light coming from the crossroads, like the doorway to hell had just opened up around the corner.
As I stared into the flaming light, I thought of Ombra. The bitter, ashen taste in my mouth was nothing as I thought of how badly I had screwed up. All night long I’d thought I was in a winner-takes-all race for treasure, and never in a million years could I have imagined that Ombra and his men were out to utterly destroy what had been buried down here for the last two centuries. Except for the paltry few items I’d salvaged, the world would now never know just what my failure had cost.
I turned away and felt a cold, steady breeze against my face as I plowed through the scattered bones, looking for Caitlin. I found her just ahead of me, her arms and legs stirring as if she was waking from a nightmare. I tossed aside the bones that covered her like a brittle pile of sticks and helped her turn over. I found my lighter, and in the guttering flame Caitlin’s face was as pale as a frosted ghost. But she smiled. “Are we dead yet?” she whispered.
“I don’t think so,” I said, my own voice hollow in my ringing ears.
“What did you think you were doing back there?”
“Sorry. Treasure fever. You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.”
“Sure I did. Part of my job was to keep you alive. But do something like that again, and I’ll kill you myself.” Then she smiled again, and her hand ran gently down the side of my face. “Thank you. For coming after me. Now, help me up.”
I pulled us both free of the bone pile while my injured side kicked me a shot of pain in the process. I shielded the flame of my lighter from the air current and took a look around. Most of the bones had broken loose from the walls, and Caitlin and I were now calf-deep in ancient, brittle remains. Caitlin came up with the gun, and we had light again. I snapped my lighter shut and said, “Let’s get the hell out of here.”
I dug my wooden prize free and Caitlin and I headed back down the tunnel. It was slow going, shuffling along through the skeletal remnants. The air current through the narrow tunnel made a mournful moaning sound as Caitlin said, “Blake, I need to know something.”
“What?”
Without looking back at me, Caitlin said, “You’re not just a mild-mannered antiques expert, are you?”
I was about to give one of my standard, nonsensical answers, until I recalled how Caitlin’s associate, the Sam Smith I met in Paris earlier that night, told me that he had filmed me during all the excitement at Troyon’s apartment, an event that seemed like another lifetime ago. Caitlin was bound to see that for herself. “No,” I replied.
As quickly as I uttered the word, Caitlin swung the gun around until the light was squarely centered on my chest. “No more games, Blake, I need to know everything about you. Now.”
“Or?”
“Or I might be forced to kill you. We can’t take chances in my business. So talk, and tell me who you are, and who you really work for. Please.”
Her “please” sounded starkly sincere. I sighed, knowing that whatever came after this, my life would be changed forever. Again.
“Remember how you said you were happy I wasn’t a crook? Well, I’m afraid I’ve got disappointing news. I am.”
Caitlin’s voice was colder then the bone-strewn cave as she said, “Go on.”
“I’m not a drug smuggler, or a bank robber, or anything like that. But I am a thief. However, I only steal from people who’ve been dead at least a couple of hundred years.”
“So you’re a tomb robber?”
“That’s a polite way of putting it.”
“So that means the Argo Foundation—”
“Is exactly what they say they are,” I shot back quickly. “I use Nick Riley and his foundation as a cover. They don’t know what I do on the side, so to speak.”
“But that doesn’t explain—”
I interrupted her again, but this time by kicking up a pile of bones as I dove in for the gun. Taking on an armed opponent is all a matter of time and distance. It only takes a split second for a human brain to command a finger to pull a trigger, but in that time I can cover over twenty feet of space. Anyone who gets within my personal sphere of danger, if they don’t shoot me outright, will pay for their mistake.
I rushed Caitlin, sweeping my right arm down and my left hand up, catching her gun hand by the wrist and snapping the barrel up as I struck her elbow to bend her arm. The move tied us together, face-to-face in the darkness as the light on the pistol went out. “Wait,” I breathed.
Her reactions were good too. She stopped her attack response as she realized I’d stopped mine. I was wrapped in the most curiously intimate moment of my life, holding this woman close to me with a deadly weapon poised near both our heads. Even through the choking dust in the air, I could breathe in her scent. I could have stood there with her forever.
I slowly unclamped my hand from her wrist and eased back as the light from the gun flashed on, and then centered back on my chest. I held my hands out, palms upward as I said, “Trust has to start somewhere. I could have taken you out just now. But whatever else you may think of me, know this: I am never going to harm you. No matter what.”
The light on my chest wavered, reflecting the indecision on Caitlin’s part. She knew that I could have disarmed her, or worse, just now. Instead I returned the balance of power to her favor. Finally, she said, “All right, Blake. Truce for now. But when we get out of here, we’re going to have to talk.”
I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding in as I replied, “Why is it that whenever a woman says that, nothing good ever follows?”
“Funny,” she said as she turned and continued through the claustrophobic tunnel, “my third husband said the very same thing.”
I smiled. I knew that turning her back to me was her unspoken way of saying, “I’ll trust you, too.” For the moment, anyway. I followed behind her, our feet occasionally crunching the dry, brittle bones as if they were overs
ized autumn leaves. My thoughts were as black as the tunnel behind me as I thought over this day. I’d not only lost an unimaginable hidden treasure, but I blew my cover, to a government agent, no less. At least I was able to keep Nick Riley and Argo in the clear. For now.
As we picked our way through the narrow bone field, I asked, “So, do all of your government missions wind up like this?”
“No. Sometimes, they’re actually dangerous.”
I laughed, then had to stop to cough out a lungful of lime dust. When I could breathe again, Caitlin said, “The last thing Ombra said to me was: ‘Madame Rhea’s people are known to us, but yours are not. Therefore, you are to witness a most regrettable necessity. When we have finished, you will go and tell your people the treasure of Val de Grâce is no more, and that its destruction is on their heads.’ Do you know what he meant by that?”
I clutched my salvaged box tighter as I said, “The eagle contained a map to this place, a map of lost Napoleonic treasure. That’s the reason everyone died tonight. To keep whatever was buried down here a secret.”
Caitlin was silent for a moment, then said softly, “That’s horrible.”
Welcome to my world, I thought bitterly. We finally found our way to the narrow stone stairway leading out of the underworld catacombs. Caitlin and I stole up the steps, emerging from the broken marble floor into the sacristy. In the dim light as we escaped the tomb, Caitlin’s dust-covered figure looked like a marble statue of the goddess Athena come to life. We dusted ourselves off as best we could, but the limestone powder clung to our still-damp clothes like glue. I nodded to Caitlin and then pointed to the floor, which bore the ash-colored footprints from Rhea’s recent passage.
