by James Becker
Masters stepped back into the cave feeling drained. It was over. The crew inside the Hind could not have survived the impact — or the fire. There was nothing more for him to do.
* * *
Sitting in the rear seat of the Dhruv, Tembla watched the catastrophe unfold in front of him. He had to get out. The overwhelming tactical superiority afforded him by the presence of the Hind had gone, and he was suddenly uncomfortably aware that he was sitting in a thin-skinned and extremely vulnerable helicopter, and less than a hundred yards away was a group of mercenary soldiers armed with assault rifles.
‘Abort! Abort!’ he yelled. ‘Get us out of here now!’
The pilot reacted immediately, hauling up on the collective and swinging the aircraft in a tight climbing turn away from the cave, accelerating as hard as he could towards the edge of the valley.
Killian was standing open-mouthed, staring at the scene of devastation in front of him. Then he heard an escalating engine note from behind him and glanced back to see the Dhruv taking off.
He watched helplessly as the man who’d walked out of the cave — and then apparently surrendered — stood up and drew a pistol. Holding his weapon ready, he started to work his way across the slope towards him. Killian looked around, but there was nowhere to run, and nowhere to hide, a cliche come hideously to life. He raised his arms and waited.
But even as he watched the armed man approach, he smiled slightly. Whatever happened now, he was content. If the Lord God had not wanted him to be here, in this place and at this time, he would not be here. God clearly still had a task for him to complete. He closed his eyes. ‘Thy will be done, oh Lord,’ he prayed.
John Cross strode over to where Killian stood. ‘On the ground, face down, arms and legs wide apart,’ he ordered.
Killian obeyed, and Cross quickly and expertly searched him.
‘Who’s this?’ Nick Masters asked, walking across to them.
‘No idea, but he climbed out of that chopper that buggered off, so he must have something to do with whatever the hell this is all about. Maybe Donovan would like a word with him? Nice shooting, by the way.’
‘Thanks,’ Masters replied. He reached down, grabbed the recumbent figure by the collar and hauled him unceremoniously to his feet.
‘You speak English?’ Masters asked, and their captive nodded.
‘OK. We’re going down to the cave. You try to get away and I’ll shoot your legs from under you — you understand that?’
The man nodded again, and the short procession started making its way across the slope towards the dark shadow that delineated the cave entrance.
65
‘Masters!’ Donovan called out, as the mercenary soldier walked back into the cave. ‘Bronson’s got a gun. You’ve got to help me.’
Masters walked over to where Bronson was holding Donovan, the barrel of the semi-automatic pistol pressed into his neck.
‘Where did he get the gun?’ Donovan demanded.
‘I gave it to him,’ Masters said simply.
‘You did what? Why the hell did you do that?’
‘Because I’m a soldier, not a hired killer. That means I don’t shoot unarmed people whose only crime seems to be that they’re smarter than you are, Donovan.’
There was a commotion as Cross dragged in another man and slammed him against the wall.
‘Who are you?’ Cross demanded roughly, pushing his gun into the captive’s chest.
The man peered around in the gloom, his eyes adjusting slowly to the darkness, but didn’t reply.
‘Chris, it’s the priest,’ Angela said, standing up. Her voice carried clearly across the cave. ‘He was the one who tried to kill me.’
‘Did he now?’ Masters murmured. ‘Not exactly what I’d expect from a priest.’
‘My name is Father Michael Killian, and I am an ordained minister of the Church.’ The man’s voice was rough and hoarse. ‘Whatever I do, I am doing God’s work. I know you,’ he said, looking at Donovan, who was still being held by Bronson. ‘And if it’s the last thing I ever do, I’ll stop this appalling blasphemy you’ve been planning. That’s what I’ve been sent here to do.’
‘Sent by whom?’ Bronson asked.
‘By God Himself,’ Killian said, pride in his voice. ‘I am His messenger, and His agent.’
‘Gimme a break,’ Masters muttered.
‘This isn’t blasphemy, you lunatic,’ Donovan shouted. ‘This could be the greatest single advance in the history of medicine since the invention of anaesthetics or the discovery of antibiotics.’
‘And it’ll make you a multi-billionaire in the process. But I don’t suppose that’s influenced your decision in any way,’ Killian spat.
Masters looked from one man to the other, almost smiling at the vitriol. ‘Well, it doesn’t look to me like either of you is in any position to do much, one way or the other.’ He paused, then stepped across to the flat wall. ‘Let’s take a look at what we have here. This is the place you wanted to find, JJ?’
Donovan nodded, while Killian struggled furiously against Cross’s iron grip. ‘This is sacrilege, blasphemy.’
‘Can’t be both, can it?’ Masters remarked, studying the wall carefully. ‘Not both at the same time, I mean? And it’s interesting that you and your guys were quite happy to follow us here in that goddamned Hind and try to kill us all, but when it comes to opening up a tomb you come over all Old Testament. Sounds to me like you’re sending out a mixed message there.’
‘Your lives are irrelevant,’ Killian shouted. ‘What you’re trying to do here could damn your immortal soul for all eternity.’
‘That’s the kind of thing I mean,’ Masters said mildly. ‘Definitely Old Testament.’ He turned to Cross. ‘If that idiot says anything else, put a round through his stomach then throw him outside. He’s starting to give me a headache.’
‘Pleasure,’ Cross murmured. He swept Killian’s legs from under him and aimed his pistol downwards. ‘Just give me a reason,’ he said.
‘We think it slides,’ Angela said. She gave Killian a withering glare, then walked across to stand beside Masters. ‘Chris found grooves cut in the floor and ceiling.’ She pointed towards the edge of the stone wall.
‘Got it,’ Masters said. ‘So we need to lever on the left-hand side, I guess, to start it moving.’
‘There’s a crowbar on the floor by the wall,’ Bronson said, not loosening his grip on Donovan’s collar. ‘And if you look in my rucksack, Angela, you’ll find a couple of big screwdrivers as well.’
‘I like a man who comes prepared,’ Masters said, as Angela handed him the bag.
‘We were expecting some kind of tomb,’ she said, ‘not a wall made of solid stone. I don’t know if a crowbar’s going to be enough to shift that.’
‘They must have mounted it on rollers,’ Bronson said. ‘Nothing else makes sense. Once it’s started moving, it should be fairly easy to shift.’
‘Yeah, the trick is gonna be gettin’ it started.’ Masters gestured to Cross. ‘Here, John. You’re stronger than I am. I’ll watch the priest. You wanna try gettin’ this sucker open?’
As Cross picked up the crowbar and started tapping the stone wall, working out where to insert the end of the tool, Bronson looked at the expressions on the faces of the people in the cave. Donovan was quivering with what he guessed was a mixture of fury and anticipation, while Killian glowered with impotent anger against the far wall. Between them, Masters and Angela stood together, studying the stone wall with cool appraisal.
‘There’s a kind of notch just here,’ Cross said. ‘Reckon I can just about get the end of the wrecking bar into it.’
There was a metallic scraping sound as he rammed the end of the crowbar into the narrow gap he’d found in the rock, then a deep grunt as he heaved on the end of the tool.
‘Nothing,’ Cross said. ‘No movement at all. You sure there’s no lock or anything, nothing jamming it?’
‘There were some stones wedged under th
e right-hand side,’ Bronson offered, ‘but I thought I’d shifted all of them.’
Masters turned to look at Bronson. ‘Keep that pistol, but I think you might as well turn Donovan loose. He won’t cause you any trouble.’
Bronson released his grip gratefully, flexed his fingers and stood up. He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, then moved forward to stand beside Angela.
‘Just thinking about it from a mechanical point of view,’ he said, ‘it would make sense if they had done something else to lock the door in place. The last thing they would want would be for an earthquake to shake it open.’
He leaned forward and spent a few minutes running the tips of his fingers over the old stone. On the right-hand side of the door he felt something, and stepped back to see it from a distance.
‘Yes, that could be it,’ he murmured, pointing at a roughly oval-shaped mark on the stone about six feet off the ground. ‘That could be the end of a stone wedge, driven right through the door and then trimmed off flat on this side. It seems to be made of the same stone as the door itself, but the grain, or whatever the correct term is for the marks inside rock, goes the wrong way.’
He picked up the hammer and chisel, strode across to the stone wall, placed the end of the chisel against the oval mark and smashed the hammer on to it. Stone chips flew. He repeated the operation, and again bits of stone broke off and flew all around him. He stopped briefly and peered at the wall.
‘I’ve broken the end off,’ he said, ‘but now I can see that a hole was cut through the stone and this wedge driven into it.’
Bronson repositioned the chisel in the centre of the mark and hit it again. This time, very few chips of stone flew out, but the whole lump of stone that had been driven into the hole moved slightly inwards.
‘That’s more like it!’ he said triumphantly. He drew back the hammer and hit it again.
The chisel travelled almost all the way through the hole as the stone wedge vanished from sight. There was a hollow thud as it landed on the floor of the cave somewhere on the inside of the stone door.
‘Brilliant, Chris,’ Angela said, as he stepped back.
‘That looks like another one,’ Masters said, pointing at a spot about three feet off the ground and directly below the hole where Bronson had shifted the first stone wedge.
‘I’ll do it,’ Cross said, taking the hammer and chisel.
Bronson moved back to where Angela stood watching, when a sudden thought occurred to him.
‘Just a moment.’ He picked up his rucksack and pulled out a torch then walked across to the hole he’d revealed and shone the light inside the hidden chamber.
‘What can you see?’ Angela demanded.
‘Nothing very much,’ Bronson replied, ‘except maybe the stone of the wall opposite. But that wasn’t what I was looking for.’
‘So what were you checking out?’ Masters asked.
‘The hole itself,’ Bronson replied, turning away from the wall. ‘It’s tapered. It’s wider on the inside than the outside of the door.’
‘So?’ Masters asked.
But Angela had already grasped what he meant. ‘So you mean the stone wedges-’
‘Exactly,’ Bronson said. ‘The holes taper from the inside to the outside, so they must have been put in place from within the tomb itself. Unless there’s another way out of there, whoever drove those wedges into place is still in there, on the other side of that wall.’
66
‘Oh, God,’ Angela muttered, and even Masters looked a little pale.
‘Yeah, well, he’ll just be another stiff, won’t he?’ Cross muttered, and with a massive single blow of the hammer drove the second wedge completely through the door.
Immediately the whole stone wall shifted very slightly, a movement they heard rather than saw.
‘Looks like we could have lift-off,’ Cross said. He dropped the hammer and chisel and picked up the crowbar again. He slid one end into the hole he’d found before, and pulled as hard as he could on the other end. This time, the massive stone door moved perhaps half an inch to the right.
Cross changed the position of the crowbar slightly and pulled again. Within fifteen minutes, the three of them — Cross, Masters and Bronson — had moved the door as far as it would go to the right, so that the top edge was resting against another block of stone.
Masters glanced at Bronson and Angela. ‘Your privilege, if you want it,’ he said. ‘You’ve earned it.’
‘What about me?’ Donovan called out angrily from behind them.
‘You can wait your goddamned turn,’ Masters snapped.
‘Let me go first,’ Bronson said. He picked up his torch and stepped forward. But before he entered, he bent down and looked down at the channel in the stone floor that had been exposed by sliding the door over to one side.
‘I was right,’ he said. ‘They used stone rollers.’ Then he straightened up and walked into the inner chamber.
For perhaps two or three minutes the others watched the beam of the torch dancing around the inner chamber, fitfully illuminating the walls and floor and an oblong stone shape. Then Bronson reappeared.
‘It’s safe,’ he said, ‘and there’s at least one really old corpse in there, though he’s just bones and rags. We’ll need as much light as possible.’
Masters grabbed a couple of torches and followed Bronson and Angela inside.
All three of them paused just inside the inner chamber and looked around them.
‘Did you touch anything?’ Angela asked, sending the beam of her torch travelling around the small room.
‘Apart from the corpse, nothing at all.’
Directly in front of them was an oblong stone structure, the top made of large flat stone slabs, the sides from smaller, cubical stones, the whole thing standing about three feet tall, four feet wide and eight feet long, and at first sight apparently devoid of markings or decoration. But Bronson had spotted something.
‘There’s a mark on the middle slab,’ he said.
Angela walked forward to the stone structure, shining a torch directly at the carving. ‘It looks to me like an early Tibetan script, and I think the letters are probably Y and A.’
‘Yus Asaph,’ Bronson murmured.
But it wasn’t the marking on the slab that was holding anyone’s attention. At the foot of the structure, in what looked like the foetal position, lay the crumbling bones of a skeleton clad in a few wisps of cloth.
‘I think,’ Bronson said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silent room, ‘that he might have died on his knees and then fallen sideways.’
‘In prayer, you mean?’ Angela asked in a whisper.
‘Maybe.’
‘You think that’s what’s left of the guy who sealed the door?’ Masters asked.
Bronson nodded. ‘The bones are really fragile. I touched one of them and it just crumbled away to nothing.’
‘And what we’re looking for is in that stone thing at the back? The thing that looks a bit like a big altar?’
‘Probably,’ Angela said, sounding oddly subdued.
‘Right, then,’ Masters said briskly. ‘You can bet the Indian Army will be heading this way pretty soon, so we’d best get on with it. I’ll get Cross in here, and I suppose Donovan as well. After all, he paid for this little adventure.’
With Cross and Masters doing the shifting, removing the stone slabs from the top of the altar-like structure didn’t take long.
When the last one had been lifted off and stacked against the wall, they all stepped forward and peered into the cavity. As well as Bronson and Angela, Masters had allowed both Donovan and Killian to witness what he called ‘the unveiling’.
The stone cavity appeared to be just that, three low stone walls abutting the back wall of the inner chamber, and inside it was a large wooden box, much bigger than a conventional coffin.
‘Come on, then, get it open,’ Donovan demanded, some of his old bravado reasserting itself now he was n
o longer facing the direct threat of Bronson’s pistol.
Killian opened his mouth to say something, but noticed Cross watching him closely, and changed his mind.
‘I don’t think we should be doing this,’ Angela said suddenly.
‘Why not?’ Bronson asked.
‘I don’t mean we shouldn’t do it at all. It’s just that I think this should be done under controlled conditions, in a museum or laboratory somewhere.’
‘Not an option,’ Donovan snapped. ‘We’re in the middle of Kashmir. The sort of facilities you’re talking about don’t exist anywhere within a couple of hundred miles of here, and there might not be any even as close as that.’
‘But we don’t know what’s inside that box-’ Angela began.
‘I do,’ Donovan said. ‘A multi-billion-dollar resource for the genetics industry.’
‘All you can think about is money, about how you can exploit this situation for your own personal gain,’ Killian shouted, unable to keep silent any longer.
Cross waved his pistol again threateningly, and Killian lapsed into silence once more.
Masters looked at the tomb, then nodded, as if he’d just made a decision.
‘I’m not coming back here,’ he said, ‘and nor are my men, so we need to find out what the hell is inside this, and then leave. And, Donovan, if it’s what you believe it is, then we’ll be taking charge of it until you make the final payment. And the price has just gone up. If this really is a billion-dollar resource, like you just said, then I’m charging you five million for delivery, plus expenses.’
‘Agreed,’ Donovan muttered. ‘Just get on with it, will you?’
‘I still think we should wait,’ Angela said.
‘You’re out-voted, I’m afraid,’ Masters said. He turned to Cross. ‘Get the lid off that wooden box.’
