by Brett King
Next thing Rashmi Raja knew, she was facedown on the floor, but managing to stay conscious. She’d never fought anyone like him before. She was sure he’d never fought anyone like her. She reached for the war quoit in her side pocket, anxious to slice the man’s neck with its razor-sharp teeth.
Chapter 47
2:53 a.m.
The moment hushed to an absolute silence. Cori watched as Brynstone swung his backpack over one shoulder. Still holding the sledgehammer and a halogen light, he ducked through the wall, carrying so much emotional weight on his shoulders. The frustration. The doubt. The hope that a dark and lost corner of an aging catacomb held an answer that might return his daughter to him. He’d faced a situation like this once before, but his triumph had come at a terrible cost.
She waited a beat, then dipped her foot inside the opening, crouching a little to slip inside. More goose bumps rose on her arms as she passed through the false door. Brynstone’s stories about Egyptian gods crossing over from the land of the dead had found a place inside her mind, bringing the eerie feeling to life.
Inside, the gray scent of mildew filled her nostrils. Unlike Tut’s final resting place, the room was not crammed with jewels and priceless antiquities. Instead, it was suffocating and barren except for a massive sarcophagus in the center of the room. McHardy followed, taking cautious steps. Brynstone leaned the sledgehammer against a wall.
Suddenly, Cori shook her head, as if awakening from sleep. She had been so engrossed in deciphering the message on the door and getting in here that she had forgotten about the other woman.
“Rashmi,” she said to McHardy. “Where is she?”
“Outside. She needed fresh air.”
“Is she okay?”
“Trust me,” Brynstone assured, leaning over the sarcophagus. “She can take care of herself.”
Cori stood opposite him with the stone coffin between them. McHardy moved beside her. An enormous stone lid covered the sarcophagus. Linear A symbols spilled across its surface.
“‘Assembly of the damned,’” McHardy translated, tracing the words with his fingers.
“‘Open the closed,’” Cori muttered. “‘Discover the unknown. Pray for the cursed.’”
“What exactly does that mean?” McHardy asked.
“We saw it on the false door.”
McHardy added, “Before you smashed the bugger to pieces.”
Cori looked at Brynstone. He wasn’t listening. Instead, he stared at the back of the false door, his expression frozen with unblinking eyes.
What was he looking at? Following his gaze, she turned and stared in that direction.
Taking stiff, measured steps, Rashmi Raja climbed through the false door opening.
Not pausing, the woman made her way into the small chamber with them. She didn’t speak. Her eyes were wide with fear. Black hair snarled around her face. Dirt blemished her features. A smear of blood colored her nose and mouth.
Cori’s gaze dropped. She held her breath.
Rashmi Raja’s chest was draped with explosives.
Chapter 48
2:56 a.m.
Brynstone assessed the situation. It looked bad on all counts.
He raised his hand. “Rashmi, move away from the exit. Do it slowly.”
She shook her head. Her eyes looked bloodshot and there was swelling around her right eye. He had never before seen a hint of fear in the woman. Right now? She looked downright terrified.
He studied the explosives threaded into the brown mesh vest. She was rigged with about five pounds of C-4 as the main explosive along with three pounds of ammonium nitrate as an oxidizing agent, designed to make the explosives burn faster and hotter. Two receiving devices with antennae were strapped above each hip. A small monitor was centered in the web of explosives. The screen was black.
Cori came closer, standing beside Brynstone. McHardy, on the other hand, moved against the back wall, staying as far away as possible.
“They activated motion sensors when I stepped in here,” Raja said in a breathless voice. “If I move from the opening, they’ll trigger the explosives. They’re watching.”
“Who’s watching?”
“Them.”
Without moving her head, her eyes darted to the side. A small camera—infrared and night-vision capable—was mounted on each shoulder. She wore a headband with a round micro-camera centered on her forehead.
The explosives were laced into a circuit mechanism centered on her stomach. Brynstone guessed there was a collapsing circuit, making it harder to deactivate unless he snipped the correct wires in the correct sequence.
The thing that made him sweat? If she was wired with a double-trigger mechanism, it would mean someone else would need to help make the same cuts at the same time on the collapsing circuit wires. He could try it himself, but it would be risky under a time crunch. A second set of eyes could study the double circuitry, confirming that the right color wires were cut at the right time. Otherwise, it would eat up too much time matching colors and then making sure the wire cutters had been placed correctly.
If they tried anything like that, of course, the cameras would see it all.
Raja could tell what he was thinking. Swallowing hard, she said, “If you try to disable the explosives, they’ll trigger the detonator.”
Brynstone snarled. “I can—”
“No, John,” she interrupted. “They’re watching.”
“Who did this to you?”
“Some German guy. He attacked me.”
He’s here. Erich Metzger.
The name inspired rage, but Brynstone captured the emotion before it leaked into his facial expression. Too bad he couldn’t stop the assassin from contaminating his thoughts. Was Metzger on the other side of the false door?
Brynstone tried to peer around her. “He still here?”
“I don’t know.”
The screen came to life. Viktor Nebola’s round face appeared on the monitor, eyes twinkling. “You need to do a better job at dying, Dr. Brynstone. I thought we eliminated you back in Crete.”
“Where’s my daughter?”
“That’s the least of your concerns.”
Brynstone arched his neck. “Answer me, you son of a bitch.”
“Tough talk for a man locked inside a small chamber with explosives. Enough explosives, in fact, to blast this catacomb and two city blocks of Alexandria high into the sky.”
“That’s not gonna happen,” Brynstone said, calling his bluff. “You won’t risk losing what we find down here.”
“Open the lid on that sarcophagus. We’ll see what I do.”
“Want it opened?” Brynstone asked. “Come down here and do it yourself.”
“Erich Metzger told me you would say something like that. He gets you. God, you two could be brothers.”
Brynstone gritted his teeth.
“Open the lid,” Nebola ordered. “Do it now.”
Brynstone glanced down at the sarcophagus. He had seen other sarcophagi in the burial chamber on the second level. Down there, the corpse would have been slid through an opening on the side. This sarcophagus had a traditional stone cover. He started to budge it, but called to Cori and McHardy for help. The professor took his time coming over.
“Need to create a diversion,” Brynstone said in a low voice.
“Tell me what to do,” Cori whispered.
“If we could take out the lighting or the camera, that would help. It’ll take time to defuse the explosives.”
“Can you do that?”
“Done it before.”
Brynstone wanted time to brainstorm a new plan, playing out various scenarios in his mind. He had the necessary supplies in his pack to defuse the explosives wired to Raja’s vest, but he couldn’t try without Nebola seeing. His plays were limited. He needed a way out of thi
s mess. He was good at thinking three or four steps ahead of his opponent, but Nebola had cornered him. The positive contingencies were diminishing second by second.
Centuries ago, Brynstone knew, the last people to work in this small chamber had created a false door to conceal its secrets. As Raja watched, doing her best to remain still, they moved the massive lid from the sarcophagus.
A cloud of dust boiled into their faces as they pushed off the cover. He peered in, not certain what he would see in the sarcophagus. What he found took him by surprise. Seven mummified bodies were crammed inside the stone box, three stacked on top and four on the bottom.
McHardy made a comment.
Brynstone didn’t listen.
A body can mummify under many different circumstances, but he hadn’t expected it in here. The soft-tissue preservation was excellent, bringing to mind a mummified Italian friar he’d seen years before in the United States. He took a closer look at a body centered on top. The desiccated man stared with wide glazed eyes, his mouth gaping open and wisps of gray hair curling around his sunken neck. Beside him rested the charred remains of a Roman cavalry uniform. Had this armor belonged to Quintus, the Roman soldier who had inscribed the code on his helmet? A bound scroll rested on the chest plate. Was it the missing half of the Scintilla?
“Tell me what you see,” Nebola ordered.
“Too hard to describe,” Brynstone answered, looking up. “Turn off the motion sensors. Have Rashmi step forward. You need to see this for yourself.”
Chapter 49
3:04 a.m.
Viktor Nebola could see through Brynstone’s plan. Watching from cameras positioned on Rashmi Raja’s body, Nebola saw the shadowy chamber behind the false door. He saw the sarcophagus. And he saw Brynstone fighting to gain an advantage in an impossible situation.
A bank of monitors surrounded Nebola, networked to cameras that allowed him to see every movement in Kom el Shoqafa. He was stationed in a building adjacent to the catacombs, away from the blast zone of Metzger’s explosives. Even though Nebola held the upper hand, he had to use care with Brynstone. A high-ranking official in the Shadow Chapter was listening in on this conversation and his superior wouldn’t tolerate another mistake.
“Is my daddy okay?” Shayna Brynstone asked.
Nebola punched off the mic and turned to the child, who was seated farther down the table. She watched her father on a monitor.
“I’m trying to help him,” Nebola answered, making his voice as sickeningly sweet as possible. “Remember what I said? You need to be quiet. We don’t want Daddy to make a mistake.”
She nodded, her face forming a mixed expression.
“Good girl.”
To her credit, she hadn’t made a fuss. The child seemed intent on watching the monitor. He imagined she was thrilled to see her father.
“You hear me?” Brynstone called to the camera. “Better get close and see this.”
Nebola slitted his eyes and clenched his jaw. Brynstone was trying to maneuver Raja away from the hole in the false door. Wasn’t going to happen.
“Ms. Raja is not budging,” Nebola said into the mic. “Tell me what you have discovered, Dr. Brynstone. Describe it now.”
Brynstone wanted to keep this thing going. He negotiated with Nebola, the whole time planning to draw Raja farther away from the false door. For all of his brilliance, Math McHardy didn’t pick up on Brynstone’s plan. He did exactly as Nebola ordered. McHardy’s professorial instincts kicked in and he described what he saw inside the sarcophagus. Brynstone had never seen the man so cooperative. Apparently, the threat of explosives brought out his helpful side.
“We have seven bodies here,” McHardy began.
Oblivious to Brynstone’s irritation, he described each mummy in detail, as well as the Roman soldier’s armor.
“Tell me about the body inside the uniform,” Nebola said.
“The armor is empty. It appears blackened as if subjected to fire.” McHardy snatched the scroll and held it up. “Shall I translate this?”
“Do it,” Nebola ordered. “Bring it to the camera.”
“Don’t do it,” Brynstone said.
McHardy turned to him. “Look at the explosives, John. Do you think he will hesitate to use them?”
Brynstone thought back to how Nebola detonated explosives inside his own building in Crete. The man wouldn’t hesitate.
Seeing the answer in Brynstone’s eyes, McHardy moved to face the camera on Rashmi’s forehead. Brynstone frowned as the man unrolled the scroll.
A distant look fell over Raja’s eyes. Sweat beaded on her smooth forehead. She was tough, but this was a new challenge for her.
Brynstone glanced at the scroll. It was made from pieces of glued animal skin, and the words were written in Latin rather than Linear A symbols like on the helmet. Did it contain the Scintilla?
McHardy raised it for Nebola’s inspection. He translated with Brynstone reading over his shoulder.
The scroll identified the author as Quintus Messorius Gallienus. As a child, it seemed, he had been raised in Crete. His Minoan ancestors had passed down the Linear A language to his family. Growing up, he had learned the code long before inscribing it inside his helmet.
Just as he had written on the helmet, he told again here of how Josephus had resurrected him after his slaying at the hands of a pagan king. After returning from the dead, Quintus discovered his ability to heal others.
It came as an accident.
During a long nighttime march, a fellow soldier had toppled from a cliff and had fallen to his death. Climbing down, Quintus and another soldier had spied the body prone on a lower outcropping. Quintus had reached for the dead soldier’s wrist. At the same moment, he lost his footing. The soldier beside him had caught Quintus’s hand to steady him. Quintus watched in disbelief as the dead man returned to life and the man who had lived fell dead. At that moment, Quintus realized that his healing gift came with a terrible curse. In later years, he had used it once again to restore Nathan of Glastonbury to life while taking life from Joseph of Arimathea.
“Haunted over the death of Joseph at his hands,” McHardy said after reading the first passage, “Quintus came to see his gift as more of a curse than a blessing.”
There was more. A smaller second passage contained a brutal confession.
Back in the first century, Quintus described his journey to visit each of the Lost Ones, the people brought back from the dead using the Black and the White Chrisms. He had found them all, including Lazarus, going from village to village and region to region. He had stayed with them, dined with them, all the time learning how their lives had changed after returning from the dead. When he had learned all that he could from them, Quintus admitted, he had murdered them.
There was a silence. Even for Nebola, it took a minute to sink in.
“He killed them,” Brynstone said, looking down at the bodies. “Quintus killed all the people in this sarcophagus.”
“Aye. In his mind, the Lost Ones were an assembly of the damned, not fit to live a second time.”
“Seven serial homicides,” Brynstone said. “All committed nearly two thousand years ago. The Roman helmet we’ve been piecing together? It belonged to a serial killer.”
“Quintus felt cursed because the Black Chrism gave him a terrible gift,” Cori said. “But what about the people with the White Chrism, the ones like Lazarus? Why did he kill them, too?”
Brynstone wondered the same thing. After all, he had given Shay the White Chrism. How had it affected her? It was the question that had inspired him to search for the helmet pieces.
“It doesn’t say why he killed those brought back with the White Chrism, but he believed they were an unnatural threat somehow.” McHardy shook his head. “And it doesn’t say what happened to him. Quintus placed the bodies in this tomb. He laid down his armor. He wrote hi
s confession on this scroll and then he vanished into history.”
Staring at the bank of monitors, Nebola realized he didn’t trust Brynstone. Why should he? The man wanted nothing more than to get out and find his daughter and Metzger.
Nebola believed he could anticipate Brynstone’s actions. Before taking this assignment, he had consulted a man who had known Brynstone since childhood, the same man who had supervised this operation. Nebola had worked in the Shadow Chapter longer than this guy, but that didn’t matter—this man was a big-time player and he was now running the show. He had flown in to Alexandria to collect whatever Brynstone found in the catacomb. And he came to take the little girl.
Nebola heard the door close behind him. His supervisor from the Shadow Chapter was here.
Needing to talk to the guy, Nebola stared at the camera. “I’ll give you a minute to catch up with your daughter, Brynstone. After that, find the chrism formula. If you don’t, you won’t see her again.”
Leaning to the side, Nebola whispered to Shayna, who was seated in front of a monitor, “Your mic is live now.” He handed her a headset with an attached microphone. He adjusted a camera in her direction. “Talk to your father.”
The girl’s face brightened. “Daddy?” she squeaked. “It’s me. Can you hear me?”
Nebola eased out of his chair and walked away from the monitors toward the visitor, who was waiting for him at the door. Nebola had started working for the guy a few years ago, managing his operation to retrieve the helmet pieces and to abduct Shayna Brynstone. Despite a couple of blips, Nebola regarded it as a successful operation.
