The Tomb (Repairman Jack)

by Wilson, F. Paul

  The ship backed toward New Jersey until it cleared the wharf. Leaving the starboard engine in reverse, Kusum threw the port engine into neutral, and then into forward. The ship began to turn south. Kusum had searched long and hard to find this ship—few freighters this size had twin screws. But his patience had paid off. He now had a ship that could turn 360 degrees within its own length.

  When the prow had swung ninety degrees and was pointing toward the Battery, Kusum idled the engines. Had it been time to leave, he would have thrown both into forward and headed for the Narrows and the Atlantic Ocean beyond. If only he could! If only his duty here were done. Reluctantly, he put the starboard into forward and the port into reverse. The nose swung back toward the dock. Then he alternated forward and reverse for both until the ship eased back into its slip. Two blinks of the running lights and the rakoshi were leaping to the pier and securing the ship in place.

  Kusum allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. Yes, they were ready. It wouldn't be long before they left this obscene land forever.

  And Kusum would see to it that the rakoshi did not return empty-handed tomorrow night.

  Chapter Six

  West Bengal, India

  Saturday, July 25, 1857

  People were going to die today. Of that Sir Albert Westphalen had no doubt.

  And he might be one of them.

  Here, high up on this ledge, with the morning sun on his back and the mythical Temple-in-the-Hills with its walled courtyard spread out below, he wondered at his ability to carry his plans through to completion. The abstract scheme that had seemed so simple and direct in his office in Bharangpur had become something quite different in these forbidding hills under the cold light of dawn.

  His heart ground against his sternum as he lay on his belly and peered at the temple through his field glasses. He must have been daft to think this would work. How deep and cold was his desperation that it could lead him to this? Was he willing to risk his own death to save the family name?

  Westphalen glanced down at his men, all busy checking their gear and mounts. With their stubbly faces, their rumpled uniforms caked with dirt, dried sweat and rain, they certainly didn't look like Her Majesty's finest this morning. They seemed not to notice, however. And well they might not, for Westphalen knew how these men lived—like animals in cramped quarters with a score and ten of their fellows, sleeping on canvas sheets changed once a month and eating and washing out of the same tin pot.

  Barracks life brutalized the best of them, and when they had no enemy to fight they fought each other. The only thing they loved more than battle was liquor, and even now, when they should have been fortifying themselves with food, they were passing a bottle of raw spirits spiked with chopped capsicum. He could find no trace of his own disquiet in their faces; only anticipation of the battle and looting to come.

  Despite the growing warmth of the sun, he shivered—the aftereffect of a sleepless night spent huddled away from the rain under a rocky overhang? Or simple fear of what was to come? He had certainly had his fill of fear last night. While the men had slept fitfully, he had remained awake, sure that wild things skulked about in the darkness beyond the small fire they had built. Occasionally he had glimpsed yellow glints of light in the dark, like pairs of fireflies. The horses too must have sensed something, for they were skittish all night.

  But now it was day, and what was he to do?

  He turned back to the temple and studied it anew through his field glasses. It sat hunched in the center of its courtyard behind the wall, alone but for a compound of some sort to its left against the base of a rocky cliff. The temple's most striking feature was its blackness—not dull and muddy, but proud and gleaming, deep and shiny, as if it were made of solid onyx. An oddly shaped affair, boxlike with rounded corners. It seemed to have been made in layers, with each higher level dripping down over the ones below. The temple walls were ringed with friezes and studded along their length with gargoylelike figures, but Westphalen could make out no details from his present position. And atop it all was a huge obelisk, as black as the rest of the structure, pointing defiantly skyward.

  Westphalen wondered how—short of a daguerreotype—he would ever do justice to any description of the Temple-in-the-Hills. It was simply alien. It looked...it looked as if someone had driven a spike through an ornate block of licorice and left it out in the sun to melt.

  As he watched, the door in the wall swung open. A man, younger than Jaggernath but swathed in a similar dhoti, came out carrying a large urn on his shoulder. He walked to the far corner of the wall, emptied the liquid contents of the urn onto the ground, and returned to the compound.

  The door remained open behind him.

  No longer any reason to delay, and no way in hell or on earth to turn his men back now. Westphalen felt as if he had started a huge juggernaut on its way down an incline; he had been able to guide it at first, but now its momentum was such that it was out of his control.

  He clambered off the ledge and faced his men.

  "We shall advance at full gallop in a double column with lances at the ready. Tooke will lead one column and take it left around the temple after entering the courtyard; Russell will lead the other column to the right. If there is no immediate resistance, you will all dismount and ready your rifles. We will then search the grounds for any pandies that might be hiding within. Any questions?"

  The men shook their heads. They were more than ready—they were slavering for the fight. All they needed was someone to unleash them.

  "Mount up!" Westphalen said.

  The approach began orderly enough. Westphalen let the six lancers lead the way while he brought up the rear. The detail trotted up the path until they were in sight of the temple, then broke into a gallop as planned.

  But something happened on the road leading down to the wall. The men started to whoop and yell, whipping themselves and each other into a frenzy. Soon their lances were lowered and clamped under their arms in battle position as they leaned low over the necks of their mounts, bloodying

  their flanks as they spurred them to greater and greater speed. They had been told that a band of rebel sepoys was quartered beyond that wall; the lancers had to be ready to kill as soon as they cleared the gate. Westphalen alone knew that their only resistance would come from a handful of surprised and harmless Hindu priests.

  Only that knowledge allowed him to keep up with them. Nothing to worry about, he told himself as the wall drew nearer and nearer. Only a few unarmed priests in there. Nothing to worry about.

  He had a glimpse of bas-relief murals on the surrounding wall as he raced toward the gate, but his mind was too full of the uncertainty of what they might find on the other side to make any sense of them. He drew his saber and charged into the courtyard behind his howling lancers.

  Westphalen saw three priests standing in front of the temple, all unarmed. They ran forward waving their hands in the air in what appeared to be an attempt to shoo the soldiers away.

  The lancers never hesitated. Three of them fanned out on the run and drove their lances through the priests. They then circled the temple and came to a halt at its front entrance where they dismounted, dropping their lances and pulling Enfields from their saddle boots.

  Westphalen remained mounted. He realized that made him an easy target, but felt more secure with his horse under him, able to wheel and gallop out the gate should something go wrong.

  During a brief lull Westphalen directed the men toward the temple entrance. They were almost to the steps when the svamin counterattacked from two directions. With shrill cries of rage, a half dozen or so charged out from the temple; more than twice that number rushed from the compound. The former were armed with whips and pikes, the latter with curved swords much like sepoy talwars.

  It was not a battle—it was a slaughter. Westphalen almost felt sorry for the priests. The soldiers first took aim at the closer group emerging from the temple. The Enfields left only one priest standing after the
first volley; he ran around their flank to join the other group which had slowed its advance after seeing the results of the withering fire. From his saddle, Westphalen directed his men to retreat to the steps of the black temple where the light weight and rapid reloading capacity of the Enfield allowed them second and third volleys that left only two priests standing. Hunter and Malleson picked up their lances, remounted, and ran down the survivors.

  And then it was over.

  Westphalen sat numb and silent in his saddle as he let his gaze roam the courtyard. So easy. So final. So quick. More than a score of bodies lay sprawled in the morning sun, their blood pooling and soaking into the sand as India's omnipresent opportunists, the flies, began to gather. Some of the bodies were curled into limp parodies of sleep, others, still transfixed by lances, looked like insects pinned to a board.

  He glanced down at his pristine blade. He had bloodied neither his hands nor his sword. Somehow that left feeling innocent of what had just happened all around him.

  "Don't look like pandies to me," Tooke was saying as he rolled a corpse over onto its back with his foot.

  "Never mind them," Westphalen said, dismounting at last. "Check inside and see if there's any more hiding around."

  He ached to explore the temple, but not until it had been scouted by a few of the men.

  After watching Tooke and Russell disappear into the darkness within, he sheathed his sword and took a moment to inspect the temple close up. Not made of stone as he had originally thought, but of solid ebony, cut and worked and polished to a gloss. He could not find a square inch anywhere on its surface that had not been decorated with carvings.

  The friezes were the most striking—four-foot-high belts of illustration girding each level up to the spire. He tried to follow one from the right of the temple door. The crudely stylized art made whatever story it was telling impossible to follow. But the violence depicted was inescapable. Every few feet…killings and dismemberments and demonlike creatures devouring the flesh.

  He felt a chill despite the growing heat of the day. What sort of a place had he invaded?

  A cry from within the temple cut off further speculation. Tooke's voice, telling everyone he'd found something.

  Westphalen led the rest of the men inside.

  Cool within, and very dark. Oil lamps set on pedestals along the ebony walls gave scant, flickering illumination. He had the impression of cyclopean sculptures rising against the black walls all around him, but could make out only an occasional highlight where pinpoints of light gleamed from a shiny surface. After seeing the friezes outside, he was quite content to let the details remain in shadow.

  He turned his thoughts to other matters more immediately pressing. He wondered if Tooke and Russell had found the jewels. His mind raced over various strategies he would have to employ to keep what he needed for himself. For all he knew, he might need it all.

  But the two scouts had found no jewels. Instead, they had found a man. He was seated in one of two chairs high on a dais in the center of the temple. Four oil lamps, each set on a pedestal placed every ninety degrees around the dais, lit the scene.

  An enormous statue made of the same black wood as the temple rose behind the priest. It was a four-armed woman, naked but for an ornate headdress and a garland of human skulls. She was smiling, protruding her pointed tongue between her filed teeth. One hand held a sword, another a severed human head; the third and fourth hands were empty.

  Westphalen had seen this deity before, but as a book-sized drawing—not as a giant. He knew her name.

  Kali.

  With difficulty, Westphalen tore his gaze away from the statue and brought it to bear on the priest. He had typical Indian coloring and features but was a little heavier than most of his fellow countrymen. With his receding hairline he looked like a Buddha dressed in a white robe. He showed no trace of fear.

  "I been talking to 'im, captain," Tooke said, "but 'e aint' been—”

  "I was merely waiting;" the priest suddenly said in deep tones that resonated through the temple, "for someone worth speaking to. Whom am I addressing, please?"

  "Captain Sir Albert Westphalen."

  "Welcome to the temple of Kali, Captain."

  Westphalen heard no hint of welcome in his voice.

  His eye was caught by the priest's necklace—an intricate thing, silvery, inscribed with strange script, a pair of yellow stones with black centers spaced by two links at the front.

  "So, you speak English, do you?" he said for want of something better.

  This priest—the high priest of the temple, no doubt—unsettled him with his icy calm and penetrating gaze.

  "Yes. When it appeared that the British were determined to make my country a colony, I decided it might be a useful language to know."

  Westphalen put down his anger at the smug arrogance of this heathen and concentrated on the matter at hand. He wanted to find the jewels and leave this place.

  "We know you are hiding rebel sepoys here. Where are they?"

  "There are no sepoys here. Only devotees of Kali."

  "Then what about this?" It was Tooke, standing by a row of waist-high urns. He had slashed through the waxy fabric that sealed the mouth of the nearest one and now held up his dripping knife. "Oil! Enough for a year. And there's sacks of rice over there. More than any twenty 'devotees' need!"

  The high priest never looked in Tooke's direction. It was as if the soldier didn't exist.

  "Well?" Westphalen said at last. "What about the rice and oil?"

  "Merely stocking in provisions against the turmoil of the times, captain," the high priest said blandly. "One never knows when supplies might be cut off."

  "If you won't reveal the whereabouts of the rebels, I shall be forced to order my men to search the temple from top to bottom. This will cause needless destruction."

  "That will not be necessary, captain."

  Westphalen and his men jumped at the sound of the woman's voice. As he watched, she seemed to take form out of the darkness behind the statue of Kali. She was shorter than the high priest, but well proportioned. She too wore a robe of pure white.

  The high priest rattled something in a heathen tongue as she joined him on the dais; the woman replied in kind.

  "What did they say?" Westphalen said to anyone who was listening.

  Tooke replied: "He asked about the children; she said they were safe."

  For the first time, the priest admitted Tooke's existence by looking at him, nothing more.

  "What you seek, Captain Westphalen," the woman said quickly, "lies beneath our feet. The only way to it is through that grate."

  She pointed to a spot beyond the rows of oil urns and sacks of rice. Tooke hopped over them and knelt down.

  "Here it is! But"—he jumped to his feet again—"whoosh! The stink!"

  Westphalen pointed to the soldier nearest him. "Hunter! Watch those two. If they try to escape, shoot them!"

  Hunter nodded and aimed his Enfield at the pair on the dais. Westphalen joined the rest of the men at the grate.

  It was square, perhaps ten feet on a side, made of heavy iron bars crisscrossing about six inches apart. Damp air, reeking of putrefaction, wafted up through the opening from the impenetrable darkness below.

  Westphalen sent Malleson for one of the lamps from the dais. When it was brought to him, he dropped it through the grate. Its copper body rang against the bare stone floor fifteen feet below as it bounced and landed on its side. The flame sputtered and almost died, then wavered to life again. The brightening light flickered off the smooth stone surfaces on three sides of the well. A dark, arched opening gaped in the wall opposite them.

  They looked down into what appeared to be the terminus of a subterranean passage.

  And there in the two corners flanking the tunnel mouth stood small urns filled with colored stones—some green, some red, and some crystal clear.

  Westphalen experienced an instant of vertigo. He had to lean forward against the grate
to keep himself from collapsing.

  Saved!

  He quickly glanced around at his men. They had seen the urns, too. Accommodations would have to be made. If those urns were full of jewels, there would be plenty for all. But first they had to get them up here.

  He began barking orders: Malleson was sent out to the horses for a rope; the remaining four were told to spread out around the grate and lift it off. They bent to it, strained until their faces reddened in the light filtering up from below, but could not budge it.

  Westphalen was about to return to the dais and threaten the priest when he noticed simple sliding bolts securing the grate to rings in the stone floor at two of the corners; on the far side along one edge was a row of hinges.

  As Westphalen freed the bolts it occurred to him how odd it was to lock up a treasure with such simple devices. But his mind was too full of the sight of those jewels below to dwell for long on bolts. .

  They raised the grate and propped it open with an Enfield. Malleson arrived with the rope then. At Westphalen's direction he tied it to one of the temple's support columns and tossed it into the opening. Westphalen was about to ask for a volunteer when Tooke squatted on the rim.

  "Me father was a jeweler's assistant," he announced. "I'll tell ye if there be anything down there to get excited about."

  He grasped the rope and began to slide down. Westphalen watched Tooke reach the floor and fairly leap upon the nearest urn. He grabbed a handful of stones and brought them over to the sputtering lamp. He righted it, then poured the stones from one hand to the other in the light.

  "They're real!" he shouted. "B'God, they're real!"

  Westphalen was speechless for a moment. Everything was going to be all right. He could go back to England, settle his debts, and never, never gamble again.