The Crusader's gold jh-2

by David Gibbins

  Ever since receiving the email ultimatum Jack had known they would be on their own, that they would have to follow the word of Maria’s captors and trust to luck. Whatever was in store for them, it seemed a fair certainty that it involved diving. And with the route they were now taking, somewhere inland seemed likely. Cenotes, underground rivers. The rain was beginning to prey on Jack’s mind. With a storm like this, the floodwaters could be dangerously high, filling underground caverns with water. And this close to the sea, the freshwater currents that honeycombed the Yucatan could be treacherously strong, sucking the rainwater through the labyrinth of limestone channels and out to sea.

  The vehicle ground to a halt and Jack snapped back to reality. He was pulled out of the door and led across uneven ground, slipping and sliding on wet vegetation. The rain was torrential, pounding his senses. Then he was inside some kind of shelter, out of the rain but steaming hot. Costas bumped up behind him, and he heard their gear being offloaded. Then he was pushed forward again. His blindfold was ripped off, leaving him blinking and reeling. Duct tape was crudely slapped round his wrists. He was somewhere gloomy, candlelit. He saw Costas a few feet to his left, and a man in front of them. Jack immediately knew who it was. Pieter Reksnys was the spitting image of his father Andrius, the man Jack had seen in the photo of the SS Ahnenerbe team in Greenland, the picture Kangia had given Macleod.

  Kangia. The icefjord. It all seemed a million miles away, back beyond some boundary they had crossed to come here, to a place where hell and its demons suddenly seemed far more than just a medieval nightmare.

  Jack looked around. They were in a room, a stone chamber, maybe an old church. It was hot as a boiler-house, and Jack was dripping sweat. The ceiling was high, corbelled. There was a circular hole in the floor. The wall beside him was painted, vivid flickers of colour revealed in the candlelight.

  Then he saw Maria.

  He had tried to prepare himself, gazed at the emailed photograph before they left Seaquest II, but the reality was still shocking. She was sitting against the wall opposite the mural, groggy, swaying slightly, her legs drawn up and her wrists taped together. Her mouth was duct-taped. Her face was streaked and swollen, and her cheek had a raw welt across it. Their eyes met.

  Jack tried to control his anger. “Did he do that to you?”

  Maria looked at him imploringly, then shook her head, motioning to somewhere behind Jack. He turned round and saw the only other person in the room, the man who had picked them up from the beach. It had to be Loki. The same slicked-back hair, the spare, mean features, the washed-out eyes. Like father, like son. Loki grinned as he saw Jack looking at him, turned to the light, drew one finger hard down his cheek. Then Jack remembered O’Connor’s description. The scar.

  Costas had been staring aghast at Maria, and he suddenly lunged towards Loki. The response was terrifyingly supple, quick and fluid like a hunting animal. Loki had Costas in a half-nelson and was pulling his head up and sideways, raising him effortlessly off the floor despite Costas’ greater weight.

  “Release him.” Jack heard Reksnys’ voice for the first time, harsh, grating, an undefinable accent with a hint of east European. Loki obeyed his father and pushed Costas away. Jack stared at Loki. This was the ruthless killer described by O’Connor, an independent operator who relished working alone, yet he was totally subservient to his father. Rage was not his only weakness.

  Costas picked himself up, grimacing with distaste, wiping his shoulder where Loki had held him ostentatiously. Loki sneered and slunk back to lurk in the far corner of the chamber. Reksnys pulled out a pistol, instantly recognisable to Jack as a Nazi-era Luger, and aimed it at Maria’s legs.

  “First one knee, then the other. Then I work my way up.” His voice had an ugly edge to it. “Or you cease being foolish.”

  At first there was no reaction from Costas, then a surly nod. Maria had gone sheet white at the sight of the pistol, and was staring at it in a daze.

  Reksnys turned to Jack. “I want you to study that wall-painting. Closely.”

  Jack looked at him stone-faced. Then he looked at Maria, who nodded weakly, mumbling through the tape over her mouth, encouraging him. He gave Reksnys a look of contempt and then turned to the mural.

  It was two-dimensional, without depth. It had once been a dazzling explosion of colour, deep browns, reds and greens on a yellow and blue background. He immediately grasped the narrative sequence, the victors and the vanquished. To the right he saw a melee of boats, elaborately attired warriors with sloped foreheads, paddled vessels with symmetrical endposts. One vessel with a square sail, different warriors.

  A square sail.

  The next scene was a ferocious jungle battle. Some of the fighting was aboveground, some in a fast-flowing river, seemingly belowground. Mutilated bodies lay everywhere. The victors carried atlatls, spear-throwers, and square shields with the figure of a war god. They were led by an eagle-warrior, a muscular giant wearing an eagle mask with a staring eye, with wings on his back and huge tearing talons on his feet. His warriors wore jaguar-skin headdresses, anklets and wristlets, heavy jade necklaces and earrings. They fought with clubs, and fell on their victims with enraged, terrifying eyes. Their opponents had round, red shields, different headgear, different weapons.

  Jack peered at the weapons again, then looked at Maria out of the corner of his eye. She must have been transfixed by this scene, stared at it as she lay on the floor before they arrived. She must have seen what he had just seen. She nodded at him, almost imperceptibly. She had seen it. He turned back.

  Now he understood.

  Jack betrayed nothing in his expression. He moved on, to the left. Captives were on the ground, some lying on their backs, some kneeling. Some were shackled, men not attired as warriors, captured servants being led off as personal slaves by each of the victorious warriors. Jack thought of the Viking skeleton at L’Anse aux Meadows, of the man who had somehow made the trek three thousand miles north, who almost made it back to his own world. This was the nightmare he was escaping from.

  The next scene dominated the painting. Jack saw hideous images of death, of mutilation. On top of a terraced platform stood a priest-king, wearing the mask of the eagle-god. He was passing sentence on those taken in the battle. On the lower step were captives being tortured, having their fingernails ripped out. A few steps up a prisoner raised his hands in vain for mercy, and another was splayed on the steps, fainting, bleeding profusely from his fingers. At the top a priest plunged a knife into the chest of a victim, gouging out his heart, his soul ascending heavenward from the altar in a bloody trail. A severed head rested on a bed of leaves, and others tumbled in a cascade of blood down the steps. All around were fires, flaming pyres of incense. The ritual was not restricted to the hapless prisoners of war. Below a skull-faced deity, Toltec warriors offered their own blood from self-inflicted wounds, gushing out all over their bodies. On a stone table beside the king were three richly bedecked women, shaven-headed, being offered a bloodletting implement by a servant. One woman was drawing a thorn-studded rope through a hole in her tongue. Beside her a nobleman was doing the same, through his penis.

  Jack turned away. Reksnys leered at him, enjoying his reaction. “I found this building myself, years ago when I acquired this land,” he said. “It’s a jungle temple, a sacrificial chamber above a sacred cenote.” He jerked his head towards the dark hole in the centre of the floor. “I scoured this jungle for years, searching for just such a find. What I have come across is truly remarkable. We in the felag guessed at such a thing, but there was never any evidence.”

  “Evidence of what?” Jack said.

  Reksnys ignored him. “Our sources told us you were searching for the menorah.”

  “Sources,” Jack said derisively. “You mean you tortured it out of Father O’Connor.”

  “O’Connor was very helpful to us,” Reksnys replied, his voice suddenly shrill. “But not in the way you think. In the Vatican he had become less cautious. B
reaking into the Arch of Titus was one step too far. He had a superior who reported everything he did. We already knew about that woman.”

  He jerked his head towards Maria and then saw Jack’s half-smile and suddenly narrowed his eyes. “That information is useless to you now. It is of no consequence whether I tell it to you or not, and I only share the story of my discovery with you as a fellow archaeologist.”

  Jack looked from side to side. “I don’t see any other archaeologists here.”

  Reksnys affected not to hear him. “We heard you had reached as far as Greenland. Of course we knew about the longship in the ice, discovered by my father with the Ahnenerbe expedition in the 1930s. Shortly before he was murdered he told me the full story, how Kunzl had snatched the runestone from him and tried to kill him with his own SS dagger in the crevasse. Fortunately my father had a photographic memory and could reproduce the symbols for a runologist in our pay years later, after the war.”

  “I trust the photographic memory of all the women and children he murdered on the eastern front kept him awake at night,” Jack said icily.

  “Only counting them.” Reknys snorted, then carried on. “Something made me remember this little temple, something about the glimpse I had years ago of that battle scene, the appearance of the warriors from the sea. When I found it, the temple was swallowed in the jungle and filled with rubble. None of the local Maya will come near the place. Some nonsense about an eagle-god, the return of the king. I remembered Harald Hardrada, the menorah. The cherished dream of the felag. It was just possible. I cleared out the temple myself, stone by stone.” He looked childishly pleased with himself. “It has been a most satisfying hobby.”

  “Don’t play games with me,” Jack said coldly, looking back up. “This is more than just a hobby. It’s an obsession. And it’s illegal.”

  Reksnys scowled at Jack and snapped his fingers. Loki was on him in a flash, standing chest to chest with him, butting him back, the livid scar on his face turned towards him. Loki was clearly used to intimidating those weaker than himself, but Jack stood a full head taller and stared down at him contemptuously.

  “Enough.” Reksnys barked the command and Loki snarled, hands clenching and unclenching, his eyes turned to his father like a dog to its master. “Time for that later.” Loki sloped off, and Reksnys turned to the mural. “And now for the reason you are here.” He walked over and lifted the large wooden panel off the left-hand side of the wall, abutting the rubble. “There.”

  It was the final scene. A procession was leading away from the base of the temple. It was the only scene not soaked in blood, though the figures were even more garish, more extravagantly attired than before. Some were human, others supernatural. Musicians sang and beat time, with trumpets and gourd rattles. A turtle carapace split open to reveal a god, pouring liquid from a jar. Others emerged from the shell of a crab, the jaws of a serpent. Warriors and women weaved among rows of torch-holders. A jaguar ate a human heart. A company of mummers performed, writhing, snaking in and out, one dressed as a crocodile and another a crab, with giant pincers raised up high. A team of ball players with protective belts and kneepads jostled each other, one being led back towards the temple by a sacrificial priest. Above the procession were poles with human skulls skewered on them. Some were stripped bare, leering skulls like the sculptures at Chichen Itza. Others were more recent victims, with hair and flesh still on them. Yellow hair. Beards.

  In front of the pageant was a space which Reksnys had left covered by a protective cloth. But leading up to it was a line of white-robed women, with sloping foreheads and tied-back red hair, adorned with mountainous headdresses and green feathers from the sacred quetzal bird springing in hoops from their backs.

  It was a triumphal procession. Another image flashed through Jack’s mind, an image that seemed unbelievably far removed from the world of the Yucatan-the Arch of Titus in Rome. The procession through the Forum. The triumph of Vespasian over the Jews.

  He moved a few steps to his left, Loki’s eyes following him warily. The final depiction was still partly buried under rubble, but was clear enough. It was an abstract shape like a cauldron, its rim marking the end of the processional way. It was the jaws of the underworld, gigantic, gaping, hungry for sacrifice.

  Chichen Itza. The Cenote of Sacrifice.

  Reksnys moved up to the cloth and put his hand on the lower corner. “I believe that is where we are now. The underworld, the end of the procession. We all know who the vanquished are. I believe the victory procession ended where we are standing now, at the entrance to this cenote below us.” He spoke bullishly, with the utter conviction of the ignorant. Jack caught Maria’s eye again. This time she shook her head. Jack looked back. He realised there was nothing in the painting to identify the setting. It could have been one of dozens of Toltec ceremonial sites. The only connection Jack had with Chichen Itza was the runestone inscription from L’Anse aux Meadows. And that was unknown to Reksnys, safely under lock and key on board Seaquest II.

  “I uncovered what you are about to see a mere four days ago, just before the felag exacted its revenge on the one who had betrayed us. A happy coincidence for your colleague here.” Reksnys jerked his pistol towards Maria. “We knew your ship was in the Caribbean and guessed our paths were converging. I thought we might benefit from your expertise. It is the only reason my son did not practise his art on her as well.”

  Reksnys stood with his back to the wall, then with one quick movement lifted the cloth up.

  There was a stunned silence. Jack felt his jaw drop, then regained his composure. Something Maria had once said came to him, something from rabbinical lore.

  Drawn by the divine finger. Drawn by a finger of fire.

  It was the menorah.

  Seven branches, seven shafts of yellow shining as if they were aflame, shedding lustre like beams of light. At the head of the triumphal procession, raised in front of the Well of Sacrifice.

  Jack looked at Maria, who was staring at the image in a trance, as if she were gathering strength from it.

  Reksnys abruptly let the cloth drop back, concealing the image, and gave a coarse laugh. “Shocked?”

  “I noticed you didn’t look at it,” Jack said coldly. “Or couldn’t.”

  “I despise it. I have no wish to behold this object myself. It is a means to an end.” Reksnys nodded at Loki, who pulled Maria up and pushed her across to him. Reksnys kept her at arm’s distance, prodding her with the muzzle of the Luger, a look of distaste on his face. Then he shoved the gun in the small of her back, aimed down. “I know exactly how to do it. A slow, lingering death. Plenty of experience with her type.” He jerked his head towards the rebreathers and dive bags stacked beside the hole in the floor. He looked at Jack. “You are the world-famous underwater explorer, no?” His voice was mocking, sneering. “Now you and your friend will go down into the underworld and find what I desire.”

  19

  Jack hit the water with a resounding splash, the echo resonating off the walls of the cavern. Costas had preceded him and was already carrying out an underwater recce, the arc of light from his headlamp visible off to one side. Jack quickly released the carabiner on the rope and gave it a tug. The rope began to jerk upwards, and Jack followed the glint of metal from the carabiner as it rose up the thin shaft of light to the hole in the limestone ceiling almost twenty metres above. He and Costas had silently kitted up in the ancient chamber a few minutes before, donning the equipment Reksnys had ordered them to bring from Seaquest II. Jack had refused to divulge any of his thoughts about the wall-painting, and Maria had remained obstinately silent in the corner of the chamber even after the tape had been ripped away from her mouth.

  Jack was convinced that the scene with the menorah showed the Well of Sacrifice at Chichen Itza, not this place. Yet all the indications were that Reksnys was right to think that the tunnel ahead of them held some clue to Harald Hardrada’s last stand. The location of the temple above the cavern, the depiction of
the jungle battle with the river running beneath it, local Maya tradition.

  There had been no chance to make contact with the security team, who had been on standby since he and Costas had left in the Zodiac two hours before. Jack knew the Lynx was in the air somewhere offshore, but Ben could do nothing until Jack and Costas found some way of radioing in their co-ordinates and confirming that the situation with Maria was safe enough for an intervention. Jack had given Maria a reassuring look just before he donned his helmet, had been cool and collected as Loki had winched him down the hole. But his mind was in a tumult at the prospect of what might lie ahead, desperately running through the possibilities if they were to return empty-handed. At the moment the options were few, and they were not good.

  Costas’ voice came through the intercom. “There’s an underground river running through the bottom of this chamber, about eight metres beneath you. The current’s pretty vicious. Not exactly recommended cave diving conditions.”

  “Roger that,” Jack replied, floating on the surface and following the sweep of light below that marked Costas’ progress. He tested his buoyancy compensator and ran a systems check on the computer that controlled his gas supply. They were wearing semi-closed circuit rebreathers, variable mixed-gas systems that enabled them to go to greater depths than either pure oxygen or air would allow. It was a precaution, as they had no expectation that the cave system would exceed the thirty-metre maximum typical of the Yucatan cenotes.

  “Remind me about this calcium carbonate stuff,” Jack said.

  Costas surfaced beside him, inflating the buoyancy wings on his backpack and adjusting the intercom on his helmet. “Dissolved limestone,” he said. “During the Ice Age, everything here was above water. That’s when the stalagmites and stalactites that are now underwater formed. Then at the end of the Ice Age, the sea level rose and the caves flooded. Leave something above water in one of these caverns, and it’ll get encased in stone. Drop it in the water, and it’ll stay good as new. We’re in fresh water down to about fifteen metres, when you hit salt water.”