Addison Cooke and the Tomb of the Khan

by Jonathan W. Stokes

  “Have a pleasant afternoon.”

  The guards watched him leave. The short triad slowly lowered the apple from over his head, staring after Addison in befuddlement. The skinny triad obediently kept the two eggs covering his eyes until the large triad smacked him on the back of the head.

  Addison strolled around the far side of the church, admiring the Nestorian architecture and tipping his cap to an incense vendor. When he reached the narrow alley behind the ancient building, he heard a whisper just over his head.

  “Up here!” Raj and Eddie reached their hands from the empty shell of a shattered stained-glass window. Addison gripped their wrists and they pulled him inside.

  Chapter Fourteen

  The Nestorian Church

  ADDISON TOUCHED DOWN IN the nave of the ancient church, its wooden pews long since rotted into the dust of centuries. Yellow light lanced the shadows where mice and voles built their cities in the cracks of crumbling masonry. The great domed roof of the apse was crumpled inward like a fallen soufflé, its time-faded painted angels vanishing into the past.

  Molly shushed Addison before he could comment on the décor. “Listen!” she hissed. Madame Feng’s purring voice wafted down from the rafters, the staccato tap of her high heels strutting along the belfry high above. Molly could also make out Aunt Delia and Uncle Nigel’s voices as the pair paced across the roof. “They’re okay!”

  “Excellent,” Addison whispered. “Now let’s move quickly, before we’re spotted inside this church.” He cracked open his pocket notebook and reread Sir Frederick’s clue. “‘Know ye your Templar vows. Visit the sick and say a mass for the dead.’”

  Grains of sand and masonry cascaded from the ceiling as Madame Feng’s triads clambered around on the roof. Addison cast a nervous glance upward. “Pretend there’s a tornado. That’s how badly we need to find the basement.”

  The group split up, scouring the stone-tiled nave for any sign of a staircase, a ladder, or even a ventilation shaft.

  “Who were the Templars?” asked Molly, checking the pulpit for trapdoors.

  “A secret order of knights from the Middle Ages,” said Raj. “They were once so powerful, they controlled entire governments and pulled the strings of power throughout Europe.”

  Everyone looked at Raj in surprise. History was more Addison’s domain.

  “I love secret organizations.” Raj shrugged. “Freemasons, Skull and Bones, the Illuminati . . . I would join any of those groups if I knew how to get invited.”

  “So what happened to these Templars?” asked Molly.

  “They grew too powerful. The governments of Europe hunted them down and killed them off.”

  “Are any left? Can you still join?”

  “They were driven extinct centuries ago.”

  The group froze as the handles turned on the front doors of the church. We’re going to be driven extinct now, thought Addison. The doors swung open. The group fled behind the main altar and ducked into the sacristy.

  “It’s a dead end,” Molly whispered.

  Triad voices echoed from the church nave, drawing closer.

  Addison searched the narrow sacristy. Candlesticks, crosses, and a curious collection of cricket carcasses. At the far end of the room stood a locked door. It was not the door that caught his eye. It was the Latin inscription carved into the masonry above the door: Hospes.

  “Hospital,” Addison whispered. “This is it.” He pressed a hand against the heavy oak door. “‘Know ye your Templar vows. Visit the sick.’ This is where Sir Frederick stayed.”

  The triad voices sounded closer, along with the tread of heavy boots.

  “I can use my lock-picking set!” Raj dropped to his knees and unshouldered his pack in one fluid motion. He riffled through tourniquets, razor wire, bear spray, a vial of battery acid, and what appeared to be a snakeskin.

  “We could just use the keys,” said Addison, producing a ring of rusted iron keys from his blazer pocket.

  “Where did you get those?”

  “Nicked them from the door guard when I straightened his lapels.”

  The triads’ shouts reverberated in the domed chapel just a few feet away. Addison quickly fed each key into the lock of the hospes door until he found the one that fit. Biting his lip with concentration, he carefully pushed the door inward, slowing each time he sensed an impending squeak. His team slipped quietly through and closed the door with a soft click just as the triads stormed into the sacristy.

  Addison’s group found themselves in the hospital ward of the ancient church. The low-ceilinged hallway was lined with brass braziers filled with sandalwood ashes long since grown cold. Nestorian monks in brown cassocks tied with hemp-rope belts had once bustled along this corridor, tending their patients in the adjoining rooms.

  Addison, Molly, Eddie, and Raj split up to search the rooms in the hospital ward and met up at the far end of the hallway.

  “Anyone happen to discover an eight-hundred-year-old clue?” asked Addison.

  “I found an eight-hundred-year-old spiderweb,” said Eddie, blinking and waving his hands spastically in front of his face.

  “I found a fully intact mouse skeleton,” said Raj, beaming.

  “I found something,” said Molly, waving them into the last windowless cell in the ward. She pointed to a low wooden door, just big enough for a man to crawl through. Unfortunately, it was shut tight.

  Addison read the inscription above the door. “‘In perpetuum.’” He broke out in a smile. “Excellent work, young relative. ‘Know ye your Templar vows. Visit the sick and say a mass for the dead . . .’” He turned to face the group. “In perpetuum is what Christians write outside a cemetery.”

  “Great,” said Eddie. “Can’t we go anywhere without visiting a cemetery?”

  “Eddie, our whole mission is to find the Khan’s grave, so you might as well get used to the idea of visiting cemeteries.”

  A harsh pounding boomed across the hospital ward. Triads were smashing down the hospes door. “Only one way out for us,” said Addison. He drew his stolen key ring and opened the tiny door.

  The team ducked into the low chamber. Addison hoped his eyes would adjust to the gloom, but it was pitch-black.

  “I have a military-grade flashlight,” said Raj, rustling around in his backpack. “Fully waterproof, one thousand candlepower, and good for up to seventy-two hours. Cave divers use this very model. Nothing can beat it.” There were a few clicks and scratches in the darkness, but no light.

  “Well, where is it, already?” asked Molly.

  “I forgot the batteries.”

  Addison fished his own flashlight from his messenger bag. In the total darkness, his penlight seemed as bright as a rising sun.

  The team followed its glow down a sheer flight of narrow steps, curving into the earth like the threads of a screw. The spiraling staircase opened onto a low hallway carved into the sandy bedrock. Dozens of wooden caskets lay stacked on shelves hollowed into the rock.

  “Look at all these coffins,” said Raj, his eyes gleaming in the frail light.

  “I guess their hospital wasn’t very good,” said Molly.

  Eddie glanced nervously around the room. “Addison, if I see one single skeleton down here, I’m going to have a bone to pick with you.”

  Addison stepped to the center of the chamber, scanning the walls for any secret message, passage, package, or clue.

  “What’s our next move?” asked Molly. She kept a careful ear craned to hear if Madame Feng’s triads discovered the door to the burial chamber.

  “We visited the sick and the dead,” said Addison. “The next line of the clue says, ‘Pray for our sign and ye will know the way to the Tartar’s land.’” He stroked his chin as he’d seen his Uncle Nigel do. The burial chamber ended in a round chapel carved into the end of the tunnel. Ornate rugs and tapestri
es had long since decayed into the earth, leaving nothing but dust. All that was left in the chapel was a cedarwood altar and an iron cross.

  Raj tugged at the cross and searched behind the altar but found nothing.

  Addison got down on his knees and joined his hands before him. “We’ve followed Sir Frederick’s instructions to the letter. The last step is to pray for a sign to the Tartar’s land. C’mon, everyone kneel.”

  Molly frowned. “You don’t really think this will work, do you?”

  “It couldn’t hurt.”

  Molly couldn’t think of a better alternative. She, Raj, and Eddie knelt beside Addison and clasped their hands together in prayer.

  “Anyone getting anything?” asked Addison after a minute.

  “Hungry,” said Eddie.

  “We’re missing something.” Addison closed his eyes in concentration. “‘Pray for our sign and ye will know the way . . .’”

  “It’s not just any sign,” said Molly. “Sir Frederick specifically says, pray for our sign.”

  “You’re right.” Addison’s eyes flicked open. “The Templar sign.” He took the flashlight from Molly and bowed low before the cross, as if praying. And there, near the ground below the altar, he saw it. The Templar symbol from Sir Frederick’s shield was carved into the stone wall. “Raj, a little help.”

  He and Raj dragged the heavy cedar altar away from the rock. “Careful,” said Addison, setting the altar down. “It’s an antique.”

  They squatted low to examine the Templar symbol: an open eye surrounded by rays of spreading light. Addison flipped open his butterfly knife and scratched at the mortar latticework of the stone wall. Flakes of dry mortar crumbled loose. Soon he and Raj had pried the Templar stone from the wall. Raj became fixated on the task and quickly removed a second and third rock as well. They felt the cool draft of a hidden chamber. A few stones later and they had opened a tunnel large enough to squeeze through.

  “Dibs,” said Molly, taking Addison’s flashlight in her teeth and climbing in headfirst.

  “Will there be booby traps?” asked Eddie.

  “Absolutely not,” Addison assured him. “Remember, Sir Frederick was only in this hospital a week or two. He didn’t have time to build anything too elaborate. I predict whatever is in this chamber will be extremely safe.”

  Eddie narrowed his eyes suspiciously, but followed Addison, Raj, and Molly through the hole in the wall. They crawled on all fours for a few feet before the tunnel dropped steeply downward. Slipping and sliding on skittering rocks, they scrambled for footholds. The chute descended thirty feet before opening into a massive chamber with tunnels branching in all directions.

  “Wow,” said Eddie, brushing himself off and rising to his feet. “Sir Frederick must have been a fast worker.”

  Addison wiped dirt from his knees, careful to preserve the carefully ironed creases of his slacks. “I don’t think so.” He shook his head in amazement. “I think this took centuries.”

  Molly played the flashlight around the gloom. Hundreds of caskets lay stacked in nooks in the walls—floor to ceiling—as far as the eye could see in the darkness.

  “More dead people?” asked Eddie, astonished at his poor luck.

  “That small crypt upstairs was just a decoy,” said Addison. “I’ll bet the monks hid the real catacombs down here to protect them from grave robbers.”

  Raj pulled his toothpick from his chest pocket and tucked it in the corner of his mouth. “How did they squeeze all these coffins down Sir Frederick’s tiny chute?”

  “There may be other entrances,” said Addison, peering down the closest tunnel. “Though they could all be sealed off by now.”

  “There must be thousands of bodies down here,” Eddie said, his voice tremulous in the stifling dark.

  “Let’s say the church buried a hundred people a year,” said Molly, doing the math. “That’s ten thousand people every century.”

  Eddie shivered.

  “We’ve got to keep moving,” said Addison. “The triads could be right behind us.”

  Molly shined the flashlight down one tunnel and then another. “Each path looks the same. We go too far, we may get lost.”

  “We’ll leave a thread of Ariadne,” said Addison. “Like Theseus when he faced the Minotaur.”

  “You’ve lost me,” said Molly.

  “I think he might be having a stroke,” Eddie agreed.

  “A stroke of genius,” said Addison. “C’mon, don’t you know your Greek mythology? A long thread is how you find your way out of a labyrinth. Raj, how many feet of fishing line do you have?”

  “A six-hundred-foot spool,” Raj answered immediately. “That’s standard for deep-sea bluefin tuna fishing.”

  Raj’s answer seemed to beg more questions than it answered—namely, why Raj saw fit to travel to the Gobi Desert while fully equipped for deep-sea fishing. Still, Addison knew better than to lick a gift horse in the mouth. Or was it look a gift horse in the mouth? Either way, Addison had no time for horse’s mouths at the moment, so he tied Raj’s fishing line to a heavy stone and unspooled the reel behind them as they stepped warily down the first chamber.

  When it dead-ended, they looped back and tried a side chamber, taking a left and a right through the maze. Wrapping around a hairpin turn, Eddie snagged his foot on a trip wire and tumbled to the ground. An awful grinding sound cut the darkness. Raj and Addison yanked Eddie backward as a one-ton rock plummeted into place, sealing off the passage.

  The giant crash echoed into the darkness long after Eddie’s heart had decided it was safe to start beating again. “Addison, you said no booby traps!”

  “I say a lot of things. It’s not my fault there’s a booby trap!”

  “I have other friends in school,” said Eddie, brushing off his hands. “And when I hang out with them, I am almost never crushed to death by booby traps.”

  Addison surveyed the massive stone blocking their path. “It doesn’t make sense,” he declared. “Whoever built this booby trap, it wasn’t Sir Frederick. He was only here a short time, and he would have been half dead from an arrow wound.”

  “So who set the trap?” asked Eddie.

  Before Addison could offer a theory, Molly shushed him. The distinctive purr of Madame Feng’s voice carried along the echoing walls of the stone tunnels, followed by the low grunts of triads.

  “They’ll have a hard time catching us in this maze,” said Eddie hopefully. “Not even we know where we are.”

  “We’ll be easy to find,” said Molly, holding up Raj’s fishing line. “We’re leaving a trail everywhere we go.”

  “Well, we can’t ditch the thread,” said Addison. “We need to be able to make a fast exit.” He frowned, thinking. “Sir Frederick wanted a fellow Templar knight to find his clues. So which direction would a Templar knight go?”

  “The Templar symbol,” said Molly. “The rays of the sun go in all directions, but the eye is at the center.”

  Addison took his flashlight back from Molly and shined it down the passageway, illuminating the next thirty feet. “You think all these passageways meet in the center, like the spokes of a wheel?”

  Molly shrugged. “It’s just an idea.”

  Addison heard triad voices down the tunnel behind him. “Well, it’s the best idea we’ve got.” He set off down the corridor. Every time a smaller tunnel branched left, Addison chose the larger tunnel branching right. The tubes grew progressively bigger. Every so often, Raj would point out a trip wire and they would step carefully over it. At last they arrived at a large junction where all the passageways met in a central terminal. “Not too shabby, Mo.”

  Molly was not one to rest on her laurels. She was already scanning the mica-speckled walls. “There it is—an eye scratched into the stone!”

  Addison pointed his flashlight at a staring eye carved into the side
of a pillar. “The eye is looking this way,” he said, pointing to the opposite wall. He crossed to a casket nestled in a rocky nook. “It’s level with this coffin. C’mon, quickly!”

  Raj was at Addison’s side, heaving at the coffin’s sealed lid. Addison wedged his butterfly knife under the wooden planks and pried upward. The long-rusted nails squeaked, splitting from the ancient timber.

  “There could be a dead person in there!” said Eddie, astonished to see how quickly his friends had turned into grave robbers.

  Raj gripped the coffin lid and put his back into it, deadlifting with all his strength. He was only five foot two and ninety pounds. With a creak and a groan, the lid yielded to Raj’s willpower. Raj overbalanced and toppled over.

  Addison set the wooden lid on its side. When he cast the flashlight beam inside the musty casket, his breath caught in his throat. He stared reverently into the coffin, his expression filled with wonder.

  “Who is it?” asked Eddie.

  “What is it?” asked Molly.

  “The sword of Sir Frederick,” said Addison. “Hidden for eight hundred years.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  The Crusader’s Sword

  ADDISON PASSED HIS FLASHLIGHT back to Molly. He clasped the hilt of the crusader’s long sword in both hands and hefted it out of the coffin. The blade flickered and gleamed in the light.

  “High-carbon steel,” said Raj, his eyes wide in the darkness. “The twin fullers add strength to the blade.”

  The two-handed grip was nearly a foot long to the tang, and the blade was another four feet on top of that. All told, the heavy sword was nearly as tall as Addison. He set it down on the ground to examine it carefully under Molly’s light. The front was unadorned, so he turned the sword over on its back. He spotted a few stanzas of Old French carved into the withered leather hilt. “The next clue.” He grinned.

  Madame Feng’s voice grew suddenly louder as she turned a corner in the maze, her stiletto heels clicking closer down the rocky tunnels.