Inquisition

by David Gibbins

  Costas had been edging ahead and turned round to see what was going on, looking at Jack. “You okay?”

  Jack put his hands on his knees, leaning back against the rock. “Just give me a moment.” He shut his eyes, and tried to steady his breathing. Since heading for this mountain, he had nearly lost his cool with his daughter, the person he loved more than anyone else in the world, and now he had frightened a teenage boy. “We’ve lost Juan. He’s taken off back up the tunnel. I don’t think we’ll see him again, and I don’t blame him.”

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have taken his lighter. Maybe he needed it to placate the god.”

  “I know where the treasure is. He showed me just now.”

  “I didn’t hear him say anything.”

  “He pointed and gestured. I’m sure he meant in the water, and out the other side. It must be a sump.”

  Costas aimed his light at the water, seeing the reflection of the carved image above it. “Looks like the entrance to the underworld.”

  “Thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

  “Down here, I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

  Jack caught up with him and they both edged forward, making their way around boulders and jumbles of rock, listening intently for any further signs of imminent collapse. Jack felt as if they were walking through a latticework of rock stretched across a giant sinkhole, liable to be swept down and crushed at any moment. They were only meters away from the pool, and it looked like liquid jet, its surface impenetrable to light. Across the pool to the left was another sump, possibly part of the same underwater cavern, but it was definitely the one ahead of them that Juan had pointed toward. Jack eased off his backpack, sensing another presence. Something was not right.

  Suddenly there was a violent commotion beside him. An arm wrapped around his throat and he felt a muzzle pressed against his neck, then a voice snarled into his ear, one from his nightmares, of chains and torture and the rushing fall into the abyss.

  “Jack Howard. We meet again.”

  22

  Jack stared at the man who had spoken, astonished. “Hernandes,” he said. “How the hell can you be here? You went down with that boat in the Caribbean.”

  The man affected a smile, took off his gloves, and pulled up the dust mask that had been dangling from his neck. The two men who were with him remained as they were, one with his pistol against Jack’s neck and the other behind Costas. “You are forgiven for not being observant. You were, after all, wearing a blindfold at the time, and trussed up in the hold of the vessel. I took a Zodiac back to the island soon after the boat left. A pressing matter had come up, and I arranged for you to be looked after on your arrival in Colombia by these two colleagues of mine. As it happened, the weather proved more of an adversary than our captain had imagined. Much more extraordinary is that you survived.”

  “Nothing extraordinary about it,” Costas said, pushing back against the man holding a pistol to his head. “You don’t know Jack Howard.”

  “Oh, but I do. I know he has a daughter, Rebecca, whom he adores. And friends such as you that he unaccountably admires. Jack Howard has his weaknesses.”

  Hernandes nodded, and the two men who were holding them pulled off their backpacks and holsters and began to frisk them, the one behind Costas producing the dynamite from his pocket and tossing it aside. “Planning to start a small war, were we?” Hernandes sneered.

  “Seeing you, I don’t think any weapons will be needed at all,” Costas said.

  Hernandes nodded again, and the man behind Costas punched him hard in the kidneys, pulling his arms back as he doubled over and putting a cable tie around his wrists. “I think we have little need of you, other than as a hostage. It is Dr. Howard I want to talk to.”

  “Where is the boy?” Jack said. “You and I have nothing to talk about until you show him to me.”

  “He has proved most helpful,” Hernandes said. “You are probably wondering how I come to be here. It was easy enough picking up your trail once we realized that you had somehow survived the storm. Your Embraer jet flying from Jamaica to Colombia was the first clue, and monitoring air-traffic control told us that your destination from there was Bolivia. Once you had arrived and set off on the road from the airport, and we could then see your route into the mountains, I knew that there could only be one plausible destination, one that would have been obvious for someone seeking to hide something in the seventeenth century as well. Where better to conceal what he was carrying than in the place where it might confront evil itself, at one of the entrances to the underworld. We had followed your Embraer to Bolivia by private aircraft, and then took a helicopter to Potosi to be here ahead of you, arriving late yesterday. Our contact here had already located a boy who might take us into the mine, who knew it intimately. And here we are.”

  Hernandes nodded again, and the man holding the pistol to Jack’s neck reached out with his other hand and pulled Pedro from behind a rock. He was badly bruised around one eye, and had clearly been crying. Jack tried to keep his cool, knowing that he had to play for time, to seek the best opportunity to strike back. He turned to Hernandes. “Release the boy, and I’ll give you what you want.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “The greatest lost treasure of Christendom. The Holy Chalice, the relic sought by your organization since the time of the Roman Empire. A treasure that I know lies within meters of us now, but that you will need me to find.”

  “And how is that?”

  Jack gestured toward the pool. “Because only I have the equipment and the skill to reach it.”

  Hernandes said nothing for a moment, then nodded slowly. “The boy can go. But if you don’t surface from that water holding what I want, my man here will blow a very large hole in your friend Costas’s head.”

  “Let me talk to the boy.”

  Hernandes nodded again, and Jack crouched down in front of him. “Pedro, do you understand English?”

  “Sí, señor.”

  “You must go to your friend Juan, who is waiting for you outside the mine. You must go with him far away, running as fast as you can, away from this mountain. Do you understand?”

  “Sí, señor. I understand. Juan and I must go as far as we can, running away.”

  “Good. Go now.”

  Pedro hurried up the passageway out of sight, and Jack turned to confront Hernandes again. “All right. I have a miniature air cylinder for this helmet in my backpack. You will need to let me get at it.”

  Hernandes stepped back, and Jack leaned over his backpack, extracted the cylinder, and screwed the valve into the aperture below the visor. The helmet had a built-in regulator, and the cylinder would allow perhaps ten minutes of air, no more. He opened the valve to test it, hearing it hiss as he sucked on the mouthpiece. He looked over at Hernandes. “I’ll need the other one too, the one my friend is carrying in his pack. This one alone will not give me enough air.”

  Hernandes grunted, and the man holding Costas kicked the pack forward. As Jack reached over toward Costas, their eyes made momentary contact and he nodded almost imperceptibly to the right, toward the far side of the pool, hoping that Costas would catch his meaning. Jack had noticed that there might be another exit point from the sump on that side, one that he might conceivably reach out of sight once he had gone in and then use to surface back in the cavern unexpectedly. Costas would have guessed that Jack didn’t want the second cylinder because he was planning a longer dive. A few weeks earlier, Jack had watched him use the miniature cylinder to demonstrate to a class at IMU the effect of cracking open a diving tank when full, showing how shockingly loud it could be. And Costas had lightning-quick reflexes, the ability to respond to a diversion faster than anyone else Jack had come across. He just prayed that after all these years he knew his friend well enough to gauge what he was thinking, that they were both fine-tuned to the smallest signs in each other’s demeanor and behavior, an intimacy of knowledge that came from being divers together and
depending on each other for survival.

  Jack shoved the second cylinder into his side pocket and walked down to the water’s edge, looking into it but seeing only the reflection of the carving of the god, and his own image. He stepped in, advancing carefully as the bottom sloped down, and then switched his light to high beam, panning it round as he slipped under the surface. Close to the bottom he could see rocks, a continuation of the path that had once been the final few meters of the tunnel they had been following from the mine entrance. The water was filled with a dark haze that he realized must be minerals that had leached out from the surrounding ore. He was swimming in silver, literally immersed in the essence of the place, in what had driven so many to come here and work themselves to death. It was a peculiar, unnerving sensation, not something that made him feel good. He just wanted to find what they had come for, and to make it with Costas out of the mountain alive.

  His regulator hissed and the bubbles from the exhaust rose over the front of his visor. The system had been designed for exactly this purpose, to allow IMU teams exploring caves a few minutes of air to get through a sump; he just had to hope that he had interpreted Juan’s gesture correctly and that the passage came up abruptly on the other side. Reaching his arms ahead, he felt an overhang and pulled himself under it. Whoever had come through here with that precious package three hundred and thirty years ago had been small and lithe, better able to get through the opening than him.

  He was completely under the overhang now, but there was no clear way forward. The passage had been blocked; that same person had sealed it up with stones after coming back out. He felt along it and realized that he might be able to prise them out. He began pulling at one in the center, loosening it and dragging it away, and then the others came away more easily. He realized that he had been breathing hard and would be depleting his air supply. His plan depended on the other cylinder remaining unused, having the full force of its pressure available for when he resurfaced. He prayed that this was it, that the place he was seeking was just beyond.

  He pulled himself through, breaking surface moments later. Beyond the sump there was no continuation of the tunnel, only a solid wall of rock. The miners who had come this far had clearly reached the end of the seam, and had abandoned the place without widening the passage any further. With that image of the god outside putting off all who ventured into the cavern from trying to go any farther, this would have been a perfect place to hide a treasure. He could see how the miners to whom Father Vieira ministered might have led him here, and helped him seal up a treasure that would be doubly secure under the dreaded gaze of their god.

  And then he saw it. Sitting in a hacked-out niche was an ancient leather bag, looking almost fossilized, the folds in the leather cracked and blackened. He put down his light and picked up the bag, feeling the weight, seeing the shape. There was only one thing he wanted now, the confirmation, and he saw it as soon as he turned the bag around: the outline of a Christian fish incised on the leather with the letters alpha and omega on either side. He had found it. He thought of where this package had been, of the Roman soldier Proselius in the catacombs, of Samuel Pepys in Tangier, of Port Royal, and of the baleful shadow of the Inquisition hanging over it, something that today he would do everything he could to see extinguished once and for all.

  He had no time to ponder anymore, just to act. He had to hope that the overhang that had been blocked up at this end would be open at the other side of the cavern, that he would be able to get through while he still had some air left. He panned his light in that direction, getting a sense of the route, and then left it wedged in a cleft beneath the niche, hoping that Hernandes would see the smudge of light through the water and assume that he was still there. He took the leather bag with him, holding it close to his chest with one hand while he felt his way forward with the other. The flashlight was still giving enough light to see the rock around him, and when he reached the far side of the cavern he dropped down, praying that he had been right. He saw light coming through, a glow that could only come from the lights of the men in the cavern. He dropped down farther, seeing that he would have no trouble getting through. This could work.

  He quickly found a place to leave the bag, moving some stones around to keep it secure, and then hovered under the overhang, making sure that his exhaust bubbles rose out of sight of the chamber. He was only about three meters deep, but it was still enough for an ascent with full lungs to cause an embolism, so he would need to expel as much air as he could before doing so. He would need to do that under the overhang, and hope that the residual volume still in his lungs would give him enough time to swim underwater to the edge of the pool without blacking out, holding the second cylinder in his hands ready to crack once he hit the surface. After that, it was in the lap of the gods. He just hoped that Costas would be able to react in time. This would be their only chance, and what happened in those first few seconds would be critical to whether they lived or died.

  He calmed himself as much as he could, taking slow breaths, already sensing the cylinder emptying. He brought out the second cylinder, holding it ready in his left hand, and then took five deep breaths before exhaling hard and spitting out the mouthpiece. He swam forward slowly from under the overhang, using rocks on the bottom to pull himself along, taking care not to move too quickly and cause ripples. The reflection of lights on the surface of the water helped him to see the bottom more clearly. After about a minute he reached a point where it began to slope up, and he looked to the surface, seeing that he was in standing depth. He needed to be as close as possible to the edge of the pool, and yet not risk being seen. He was feeling the need to breathe now, an urgency that normally he would have tolerated for longer but that now, in his depleted state from inhaling the poor air in the mine, might push him quickly to blackout. He saw a cleft in the rock, and drew his feet slowly up to it, giving him a secure hold for when he made his move. He held the cylinder tightly with his left hand and clasped his right hand around the knob of the valve, staring at it, his mind blank. It was now or never.

  He erupted to the surface, twisted the knob hard anticlockwise, and threw the cylinder into the chamber toward the men, flinching at the deafening shriek as the air escaped. The next few seconds seemed to happen in slow motion. Costas slammed his elbow into the man behind him, and then slipped down to reach the pistol that fell from his hand. He fired blindly, his hands still tied behind him, but his first round hit the man in the head and took him down immediately, and one of the others hit the second man in the shoulder and knocked him back into the rocks. At the same time, Jack surged out of the water and leaped on Hernandes, bringing him to the floor just as the man in the rocks fired in his direction. He reached for the holster containing Hernandes’s Beretta and fired as fast as he could in the direction of the man, seeing eruptions of blood as the bullets found their mark. Then he thrust the muzzle into Hernandes’s throat, putting his other arm in a half-nelson around the man’s neck.

  He looked over at Costas, who was on the ground, pushing his helmet back into place, but not visibly harmed. “You okay?”

  “Roger that,” Costas replied. “Apart from a slight ringing in the ears. Nice one, by the way. Your little diversion.”

  “Our two friends?”

  “Both down. Permanently.”

  “Is your binding off?”

  “Just done it. Some good sharp rocks in this place. Jack, we need to get out of here. That little fireworks display will have shaken this place up a bit and might not go down too well with old Smokey the Bandit. I think he might be about to wreak his vengeance. Who knows how much more it will take for the mine to collapse.”

  As if on cue, an ominous rumble came up from the depths of the mountain. Suddenly the ground shook violently and Hernandes leaped up, catching Jack off guard but also losing his balance, slipping and falling into the scree beside the path. A massive slab of rock disengaged from the roof and plummeted down, shattering into boulder-sized chunks as it hit
the ground. One of them fell with a sickening crash on Hernandes’s legs, and he howled in pain. “My legs!” he screamed, his arms flailing. “Get me out of here!”

  Jack ignored him, and went back to the edge of the water. “I’ve got to get something.”

  “Make it quick, Jack,” Costas said. “That isn’t the last we’ll hear from Smokey. I’ve got a bad feeling about this place.”

  Jack slid into the water, his headlamp still on and swam back toward the overhang. He held his breath and dived down, seeing the bag where he had left it among the rocks, mesmerized by the image of it in the light, thinking of the countless adventurers and romantics who had dreamed of such a moment. He thought too of where such artifacts should be, and how sometimes they were best left undisturbed. This time, though, was different. The evil in this mountain could not be allowed to cast a shadow on it any more; not some supernatural evil, but the evil that men do, the evil that was the real monster lurking in the darkness of such places where human endeavor had gone so badly wrong.

  Moments later he was out of the water, and the package was securely in his bag. Hernandes was delirious with pain, and Jack had no interest in showing him what he had found. He had no wish to exult in the discovery, or show that he had won the day. He wanted the man and everything he represented extinguished as soon as possible, but not before he had told him why. He put on his backpack, and watched Costas do the same and then pick up the three sticks of dynamite.

  “Good to go, Jack?”

  Jack swiveled around to show him the new bulge in his own backpack. “Got what we came for. We’re done here.”

  Costas took out the lighter he had borrowed from Juan. “I think it might be time to light this place up.”

  Jack nodded grimly. “And to finish the job I thought I’d finished in the Caribbean Sea two days ago.”