by Scott Hunter
Jackson cursed. “Sons of bitches have doubled back. How in hell did they know we were here?” He inspected his helmet; a burnt scar showed where a bullet had come close to finding its mark.
Dracup frowned. “’Tash. Give me the doll.”
Natasha handed Dracup the toy. His probing fingers found a small, round disk beneath the dress. As he carefully extracted it, it gave a faint red pulse. He held it up for Jackson to see. “That’s how.”
“Woah,” the marine whistled. “GPS tracking device.”
Cannon took up a position at the bend. “You all right, Jacko?” He glared at Jackson with an accusing look, clearly rattled that his CO had nearly had his head blown off.
Jackson was reloading. “I’m cool.”
“Where to?” Moran’s face was grim.
“Sure ain’t gonna be this way.” Cannon clipped off a couple of rounds.
Dracup bent and held Natasha gently by the shoulders. “’Tash. Is there a way out past your room? Can you remember where this passage leads?”
Natasha pursed her lips. “If you follow it all the way it comes out at the big stairway. All the corridors in this level do. Then you can climb up right to the top – if you want. To his chamber.”
The words sent a chill down Dracup’s spine. “You mean to the top of the ziggurat – the pyramid?”
“There’s a staircase. A big one.”
Moran was poring over the map. “She’s right – I think. Look.” He traced out Natasha’s suggested route.
Jackson nodded grimly, peering over Moran’s shoulder. “We’ll be out in the open a while –”
“We’ll be full of freakin’ holes if we stay here,” Cannon called back over another burst of fire. “Open sounds good from where I’m standing. Get going. I’ll cover you.”
Jackson nodded tersely. “Okay – two minutes only,” he told Cannon. “Then get the hell out of here.”
Dracup took Natasha’s arm and followed Jackson and Moran past the room where the woman – Ruth – lay stiffening in death. He wondered briefly what had happened to her. He also wondered at the absence of other Korumak. And then, remembering his encounter with Jassim, a thought occurred to him. He’s started to evacuate them. That’s why the place is deserted. But where would he take them?
The noise of gunfire faded as they raced along the passage, which instead of widening as he had supposed, grew more constricted as it turned sharply to the right towards what Moran had identified as the central stairwell. Dracup’s side was aching, his lungs straining for breath. Without warning the passage abruptly ended. Dracup stopped with an exclamation.
“It’s big, isn’t it?” Natasha smiled. “I told you.”
They were looking at a stairway, but a stairway of astonishing beauty. The steps glinted dully in the diffused light, gradually narrowing until they were lost to sight in the opaqueness of the roof.
“Up?” Moran cocked his head at Jackson.
“Looks like it,” Jackson agreed.
“Not that way, Daddy.” Natasha took Dracup’s hand and led him to the left of the stairway. “You can’t go up the wide stairs – that’s only for special ceremonies. You have to go up here. There’s no way in at the top of the big stairs.”
Jackson and Moran looked at each other. The policeman shrugged.
Dracup let Natasha lead him into another passage, lower and smaller than the one they had just emerged from.
“Here.” She stopped beside a heavy wooden door. It was ajar. Dracup pushed it open gingerly with his foot, revealing a stone staircase spiralling up to the distant apex of the ziggurat. He craned his neck.
I know what’s up there.
“Daddy! Come on.”
But I still don’t believe it.
Gunfire again, but closer. He hesitated, turned to the others. “What about Cannon?”
“He’ll be along soon,” Jackson said. “He always is.”
Dracup led them up.
Chapter 43
Dracup took a hesitant step onto the staircase. For the first time he felt like a trespasser. The stone was soft under his feet, warm. Machine gun fire echoed in the distance, a series of muffled rattles as Cannon returned the jihadi fire.
“Daddy! Hurry up.”
Dracup battled the strange feelings working inside him. He felt – unholy.
Moran was waiting a few steps behind, his ferret face set in determination, but with the ghost of some deeper emotion simmering beneath the surface.
He feels it too.
They went up. And up.
Moran spoke. “We must be near.” Dracup could hear the DCI’s laboured breath.
Jackson had pushed past. His voice came from somewhere ahead, around the next spiral. “Well I’ll be darned!”
The staircase ended at a blank wall. On the surface were imprinted a series of letters – cuneiform letters. Apart from these, nothing broke the smoothness of the stone.
Two short bursts of fire. Closer now. Cannon’s voice raised in defiance, somewhere down the stairwell.
Jackson managed a tense grin. “He gets real riled when folk shoot at him.”
“There must be a way in,” Dracup was muttering, running his palm over the markings.
“Ain’t no keyhole I can see,” Jackson said, “leastways, not a regular keyhole.”
“Exactly,” Dracup said. “But there is one. Somewhere.”
Moran was beside him. “They’re on the stairs.” There came another clattering burst of automatic fire confirming Moran’s statement.
Dracup concentrated on the lettering. It was set out in a grid format:
“Daddy. I’m scared.”
Dracup put his arm round Natasha’s shoulders and pulled her close.
It’s not going to end like this. Think, Dracup.
He tried to remember the symbols from Fish’s presentation. These markings looked nothing like the lettering the Americans had translated. But it was still recognisably cuneiform.
Jackson was backed against the wall, waiting. He turned his head sideways. Dracup saw the boy behind the soldier’s uniform, a young lad far from home and probably more scared than he’d care to admit.
“Reckon they shoulda fitted a keypad entry system, huh?” Jackson said with a forced grin.
In Dracup’s head the light bulb went on. “Jackson,” he said, “go on thinking like that and you’ll make General before the decade is out.” His heart was racing now that he knew what was set before him. Numbers. They’re numbers, you idiot, not letters.
Question was, what was the sequence? His fingers stroked the lines of script, willing them to reveal their secret. Come on, Theodore. One more time, for your granddaughter’s sake.
From below came another burst, then a cry. The silence was more frightening than the gunfire.
Jackson moistened his lips. “Cannon’s down.” His voice held a note of disbelief. “He’s down.”
“Daddy?” A tremor now in Natasha’s voice.
“We can hold them,” Moran said. “There’s only a narrow gap.”
First symbol. One character. Right, let’s follow old Occam again. Say that’s one. Count the little golf tees.
Moran fired his pistol, a single sharp report against Jackson’s tak tak tak.
“Stand in front of me, ’Tash.” He shielded the little girl with his body.
One. Five. Two. Six.
Despair clutched at him. No pattern.
Three. Seven. Four.
He played with the numbers in his head.
Order them: One, two, three, four, five, six, seven.
Jackson reloading again. A scream: Natasha. A man had appeared at the stair’s turn, ten metres below.
Bullets scudded around them. One buried itself in the wall. Dust flicked back into Dracup’s eye. He swore and grimaced, ducking down, bending over Natasha. He squinted through his good eye. The jihadi was taking the stairs two at a time. Moran shot him through the chest. He fell back, tumbling.
Jackson was ashe
n-faced, bleeding from his leg. “Shit.” Face twisted in pain, he levelled the rifle and helped the falling jihadi on his way with a quick burst.
“Be nice to get it open soon,” Moran said to Dracup.
The last two symbols:
Four fish... four plus nine, or... forty-nine?
With a jolt Dracup remembered Theodore’s inscribed wax tablet. Sliding the transcription from under his watchstrap he read: K. zig. – 7 by 7. Of course! Seven sevens. The ultimate expression of perfection. Adam was created a perfect being... according to scripture he didn’t stay that way, but in the beginning...
What combination of seven sevens? He looked down at Jackson, on his haunches, rifle between his knees, covering Moran as he fumbled a new magazine into place. Another spray of bullets, ricocheting around the top of the stairwell. Natasha covering her ears. Above them, the wall stretched away. Nowhere to climb. He pressed the first seven symbols in sequence. Nothing. Then again, but repeated seven times. Nothing. He banged the wall in frustration.
Right. Last chance saloon. He pressed the four and the nine from the last group together, slowly and deliberately, seven times. On the last press the squares on which the symbols were engraved sank silently into the wall.
He felt a vibration under his fingertips, a rumbling of tumblers. And the pattern parted in the centre, the wall peeling back like an orange skin. He bent, hands under Jackson’s armpits, Moran covering, slowly dragging the boy through the doorway.
Now what? How to close it?
Jackson groaned as Dracup propped him against the chamber wall. He turned to face the new room they had entered and felt his heart skip a beat. In the centre of the chamber was a long sarcophagus, black as onyx, raised up on a dais of solid gold. A clutch of bullets fizzed past his head. Moran was scrabbling at a lever inset into a small recess by the gaping doorway. Dracup shouted. It had to be the lock.
The door slid seamlessly together, like a closing mouth. Dracup had a fleeting impression of the jihadis, their faces contorted in hatred, racing towards them. And then they were sealed into the chamber with a final clunk of hidden weights and pulleys. Silence descended. Natasha was crying softly.
“It’s all right.” Dracup held her. “It’s going to be okay.”
Moran was tending to Jackson. The bullet had torn through his calf, leaving a ragged, flesh-tattered hole as it exited.
“I got some painkiller in my pocket,” he told Moran. “Ow! Jeez, that hurts.”
“It will,” Moran said matter-of-factly. He finished packing the wound with his handkerchief and strapped the marine’s leg tightly with his tie. “Keep it up. That’s it, elevated.”
Dracup approached the sarcophagus warily, felt the dry coolness of its lid. It was hard to see; there was some light, but –
Lights came on. Bright, dazzling. They tracked across the chamber and illuminated the sarcophagus. A harsh, electronic voice filled the room:
“Professor Dracup. And friends. You have entered the resting place of Adamah, or ‘Adam’ in your abbreviated vernacular. The chamber is sealed for a reason; namely, to aid the preservation process put into place millennia ago. This means, gentlemen – and young Natasha – that the oxygen is removed from the chamber when it is not in use. In the prophetic words of God himself, dust you are, and to dust you shall certainly return. Professor, your forty-eight hours are up.”
There was a soft click as the transmission was concluded. Already the chamber was warm, their breathing laboured in the confined space.
Moran wet his lips. Jackson’s head fell forward as loss of blood and fatigue caught up with him. Dracup began scouring the chamber. There was only the sarcophagus. No other object broke the simple contours of what had now become a death trap. Dracup walked around the sarcophagus, placed his hands on the lid and tried to lift. It wouldn’t budge.
Moran kicked the wall in frustration. “There’s nothing.” He laughed harshly. “Unless we open up the door again.”
“Not a good plan,” Dracup agreed. The jihadis wouldn’t be far away. He conducted a full inspection of the walls, feeling for any bump or protrusion. There was only the sarcophagus.
“Is he going to die?” Natasha was looking down at the slumped figure of Jackson.
Dracup shook his head. “No one’s going to die,” he told her. He felt a rising desperation, hoped it didn’t show in his face. From beyond the chamber, behind the door they had entered, came the sound of muffled thumping. They exchanged glances. The unspoken thought was the same: Would the jihadis crack the code? Death by gunshot wound or suffocation. It wasn’t a choice Dracup wanted to dwell on.
Moran was at the other end, beyond the sarcophagus. “Reckon this is an exit too?” He looked in vain for a corresponding lever.
Dracup was thinking about the shape of the ziggurat. Surely multiple stairways ran up to the apex? “Yes, there’s probably another stairwell through there. Maybe it’s only accessible from outside.”
“Great.” Moran leaned against the wall and took a deep breath. The air was stale now, their breathing shallow. Dracup felt a series of sharp constrictions in his chest. For a moment he thought he was having a heart attack, then the pains left him and were replaced by a growing tightness in his lungs. Natasha was sitting cross-legged, her face expressionless as she fought to inhale the oxygen her body craved. She looked at Dracup and tried to smile. He too sank to the floor, and raised an arm weakly towards his daughter.
I won’t let this happen.
Moran’s eyes were closed. Dracup crawled to Natasha. By the time he reached her she was unconscious. He leaned over and pressed his mouth to hers, forcing in the last breath from his own lungs. His head swam.
Breathe, please breathe.
But breathing was becoming his own imperative. A cloud was descending, a smoky darkness, but a darkness interspersed with vivid colour. His mind began to replay scenes from the past, as if a giant spool had been placed on some eternal tape deck and the play button had clicked on of its own volition. There was his childhood. The Indian sunrise. His marriage, a warm July afternoon in Surrey. The hospital and a newborn baby. Yvonne’s face, exhausted but radiant. Natasha’s first stumbling steps. The tears in his eyes as she articulated her first word. His appointment at Reading; his first student address. The campus on a windy November morning, student bicycles competing for space on the narrow campus pathways. Sara’s face in the lecture room, attentive, beautiful. Charles’ empty study, the house wrapped in blue and white police tape. He was falling into space from a tiny silver aeroplane. His hand clutched at and missed every handhold. He heard Charles’ voice clearly. Calling to him: “Hold on, Si. Just a while longer. Just a while –”
Dracup fought to remain conscious. He heard a faint scrabbling from Moran’s end of the chamber. Dracup forced his eyes open. Moran was spread-eagled on the floor. The scrabbling persisted, as if a family of mice was scratching at the wall, trying to find a way in.
Then the world exploded. A crush of hot air ballooned into the chamber, followed by flying debris from the wall itself. Something struck Dracup on the side of his forehead, drawing blood. Smoke trailed into the chamber in a white, acrid afterstorm. But he could breath. Just about. Dracup rolled over and drew a lungful of air laced with swirling smoke and dust; he transferred it into Natasha’s mouth. She coughed twice and was sick.
Dracup was elated. He turned his head and peered through the smoke. A powerful light shone into the chamber, silhouetting a lone figure standing in the debris where the wall had been. The attitude was unmistakable, as was the voice.
“Professor Dracup. If you’d like to step outside. Right this way, please.” James Potzner spoke as though he had arrived to welcome candidates for an interview or conduct a tour of some city museum. Dracup blinked. Behind Potzner’s tall shape he could see a supporting group of marines. They were positioned by the blown entrance, assault rifles raised, covering the interior of the chamber. He took stock of his surroundings. The force of the blast had
rolled him alongside Jackson, who lay in the same position against the wall, rifle propped up on his raised knees. The boy was breathing, but in shallow, gasping intervals. Moran was struggling to his feet, coughing and cursing. Natasha was on all fours, hair covering her face as she tried to get up.
“Quick as you can, please.” Potzner was standing by the sarcophagus. He swept a layer of dust and bits of rock from the lid with an impatient gesture.
Dracup helped Natasha to her feet. She had a small cut above her eyebrow from a rock splinter, but was otherwise unharmed. As his head began to clear he remembered the voice from the hidden speaker. Kadesh. He would surely be on his way.
As if in response to his thoughts the speaker crackled briefly, and Dracup froze in surprise at the unexpected voice. Farrell’s southern drawl filled the chamber:
“Professor and all? Get yourselves out of there as soon as – bad company on its way – south side. We can’t hold them – have to go – out.”
Dracup turned to Potzner, but before he could articulate his question he felt rather than heard the cuneiform door slide open behind him.
Potzner ducked behind the sarcophagus. Dracup spun around, reached for Natasha but grasped only the circulating dust. And then he became very still.
A tall, thin man stood in the doorway. His skin was dark, of Asian rather than African pigmentation. His bearing was aristocratic, an impression reinforced by the long nose and slim, refined hands. Hands that held a knife to Natasha’s throat.
Behind him were a group of armed men, the jihadis who had waited outside the chamber. But Dracup had eyes only for the thin, brown fingers and the silver of the blade that played slowly up and down Natasha’s exposed neck.
Kadesh’s first words were for the crouching Potzner. “You appear to have mislaid part of your escort, Mr Potzner. The stairway can be treacherous.”
