The Crusader's gold jh-2

by David Gibbins

  “Try.” Jack sounded exhausted, his voice barely a whisper.

  Maria paused, muttered a few words to herself, then read it out loud. “Only Ulf, Finn and Halldor are left. The Scraelings have taken the outer chamber. Thor protect us. Hann til ragnaroks.”

  Jack felt stripped of emotion, too drained to respond. All he could do was reach out and touch the dripping stone.

  “Maybe Harald himself scratched this, his last act before the Toltecs were upon him,” Maria said. “It was Stamford Bridge all over again, only this time it truly was the end.” She looked back at the spectral shapes on the platform behind her, then towards the blackness in the water where Loki had disappeared. She gave an involuntary shiver. “They got as far as they humanly could, right to the entrance of the underworld.”

  “I can feel what they felt,” Jack murmured. “We’re on the edge of the spirit world here, the very boundary. Something wants me to go down that passageway, to follow Loki. It’s like a malign force drawing me in, willing me to frame the challenge. I feel as close to Harald here as I’ve ever felt, really close.” Jack looked around at the flickering shadows on the cavern walls, then shook himself and raised Loki’s air tank from where it had been left by the edge of the water, attaching it to Maria’s back. “And I know this is not a place we want to be.”

  “It’s not over yet,” Maria said.

  “You’ve got plenty of air. There’s a line of lights back to the entrance. Piece of cake. I’ll be right behind you.”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  Jack gave her shoulder straps a final tug. He splashed water on his face to rub off the black mess and sat down beside her. Maria began to talk, slowly at first, hesitantly, then in full flow, as if she were telling something she had never told before but had rehearsed countless times in her mind. Over the next few minutes Jack heard a story more awful than he could ever have imagined, a story that made the monsters of the underworld seem as potent as they had to the Vikings, that seemed to shape the lurking malevolence of this place into a force too evil to leave unchallenged.

  Twenty minutes later Jack heaved himself out of the well-hole into the painted chamber. Costas squatted in front of him, breathless after operating the winch. Maria sat dripping on the stone floor a few metres away. Despite the heat she was shivering slightly, and Costas passed her a towel and an IMU jacket along with a bottle of water. As soon as he saw she was safe, Jack swivelled round and addressed Costas.

  “What’s our status?”

  “The Mexicans are here,” Costas panted. “Two guys in a jeep about ten minutes ago. They’re judiciales, plain-clothed guys. Pretty unsavoury if you ask me. They said a helicopter is on its way. Apparently all this tract is Reksnys’ territory, but we’re well away from his main compound. It doesn’t look like he trusted any of his own security people to be out here. A few locals live in the jungle, Maya, but they’re on our side. As soon as more police arrive and the Lynx returns from Seaquest II with a full security team, we can relax. Ben’s doing a wide perimeter sweep as we talk.”

  Jack jerked his head towards the hole. “You probably gathered our friend Loki won’t be joining us.”

  Costas raised his eyebrows. “Permanently?”

  “He’s gone for a cave-diving endurance record. Without air.”

  “The Toltec underworld,” Costas said quietly. “Not a place I’d want to spend eternity.”

  Jack drew Costas aside and huddled with him in the gloom at the rear of the chamber, talking intently. Costas occasionally looked at Maria, his expression increasingly grim. After a few minutes Jack gestured for her to join them. Costas passed her something wrapped in a cloth, which she checked and quickly concealed inside her jacket.

  Jeremy suddenly appeared at the entrance, breathless and frantic. “Quick. For God’s sake. Reksnys has escaped. He’s got a local kid. He’s threatening to kill him.”

  “How the hell…”

  “The Mexican police cut him loose, then they both vanished, did a runner.”

  “Shit.”

  There was a sudden commotion outside and Reksnys appeared, pushing a boy of about five, the distraught parents pleading in Spanish behind him. Jeremy forced them back out and Reksnys marched in holding a leather belt round the boy’s neck. He paraded in front of them, his head held high and sneering, then dragged the boy like an animal to the centre of the chamber.

  “I can break his little neck in a second. Just like that.” He snapped the fingers of his free hand. He seemed to forget his audience, and spoke with almost childish glee. Suddenly he looked around. “Where’s my son?”

  “Went for a swim.”

  Reksnys failed to take in what Costas had said, and drew the boy towards him. “?Como te llamas?”

  The boy was too terror-stricken to reply.

  Reksnys jerked the boy up towards his face. “?Como te llamas?”

  The boy whispered tearfully, “Daniel.”

  “Daniel.” Reksnys let the boy drop and then jerked him back against him, the belt held tight around his neck. “Interesting name for a Maya. When I was his age, I knew some little boys with that name. Daniel, Doron, Menachem. And there were some little girls with them too. But not for long.” Reksnys sneered again, then eyed Maria suspiciously as she detached herself from the others and took a few steps to the wall, to the place where she had recovered consciousness after her nightmare trip from Iona. She stood facing Reksnys, her legs slightly apart.

  “I think,” she said, “you once found it a lot easier using this.”

  Slowly, deliberately, she raised the Luger and aimed it at Reksnys’ head, both hands clasping the butt, her left index finger brushing the trigger.

  Jeremy stared at Maria, shocked.

  Reksnys sneered again. “You don’t know how to use that.”

  She flipped down the safety catch on the left side of the frame. “Oh yes I do.”

  “It’s not loaded.”

  “Jack?” Maria said, not moving her eyes.

  Jack pulled out a small box with the words NINE MILLIMETRE PARABELLUM printed on one side and showed the half-empty interior. “We found these in your pocket,” he said. “Remember?”

  Reksnys was contemptuous. “Put the gun down or the boy dies.”

  Maria began to recite words she had memorized when she was a child. “Operational Situation Report USSR, Number 129a,” she said quietly. “Einsatzgruppe D. Location: Nikolayev, Ukraine. Addendum to Report Number 129 concerning the activity of the Einsatzkommandos in freeing places of Jews and finishing off partisan groups. SS-Sturmbannfuhrer Andrius Reksnys personally executed 341 Jews. Revised total for the last two weeks: 32,108.”

  There was a stunned silence. Maria kept the Luger levelled at Reksnys’ head. He remained stock still, staring at her with cold loathing, the belt taut and shimmering against the boy’s neck.

  “May the fourteenth, 1943,” Maria continued. “A beautiful spring morning. The flowers were up everywhere, the birds singing. The last in line in front of the ditch were a young family, a father and a pregnant mother and four small children. Do you remember? Your father let you finish the little ones.”

  “Impossible.” Reksnys spat out the word, looking conspiratorially at the others. “This woman is mad. There were no witnesses. There never were.”

  “It was your first batch,” Maria continued matter-of-factly. “You were not very experienced with the Luger. Three days later the youngest child crawled out from among the bodies, a bullet lodged in her skull. A sweet little girl, weeping and helpless in the spring sunshine.” Tears were coursing down Maria’s cheeks, but her voice was unwavering. “A German Wehrmacht soldier found her, took pity on her. She stayed with his unit all the way back to Berlin, looked after by the Germans, men disgusted by what the SS had done. When they were all killed in action she was rescued by a British soldier. Years later she married a Spanish diplomat, had a daughter of her own. Last spring I took her back to Nikolayev, to lie once again in that lovely meadow,
to be with her brothers and sisters, her beloved mama and papa. She said they had been missing her, had been desperate to find and protect her.” Maria swallowed hard, blinking away the tears but staring unflinchingly down the barrel. “That little girl was my mother.”

  “Nonsense.” Reksnys jerked the boy towards him, his eyes flitting to and fro, his voice suddenly demented and high-pitched. “Don’t believe a word she says. She is a Jew.”

  The room was deathly silent. Reksnys suddenly looked unnerved, began to shake, his face pale and dripping sweat. He pushed the boy away. Jack grabbed him and bundled him towards the entranceway. Reksnys staggered and then stood upright, attempting to regain his composure. “You have the boy.” He passed his shaking hands over his hair, greasing it back. He was struggling to make his voice seem normal again, to sound conciliatory. “Now is the time to end this nonsense. You have what you want. The police will never pin anything on me. We can all walk away. Where is my son?”

  “On a one-way trip to hell,” Costas said.

  “Where is my son?” Reksnys was uncomprehending, his eyes bloodshot and staring, panic-stricken. There was another silence, and he looked frantically from one face to another, then staggered sideways. “No.”

  Maria aimed down the barrel, slowly, deliberately, all the time keeping it levelled at his head. Her voice was cold, clinical. “Kneel down. Face the wall.”

  Reksnys lost all control. He fell to his knees, his lips shaking, his eyes transfixed with terror. A dark patch appeared on his trousers and spread down his legs. “No. I beg you. Not this.”

  “I am a Jew.” Maria spoke quietly.

  There was a deafening crack. Reksnys’ head snapped backwards and he fell on the floor, convulsing. A gush of blood arched out. For a moment he was conscious, his eyes wide open, his legs jerking horribly. Then he was still. The spatter of blood on the wall began to drip down, rivulets of crimson that picked out the faded colours of the sacrifical scene, trickling to join the blood pooling on the floor below.

  Reksnys began to move again. They stared aghast. He seemed to be convulsing, jerking like a rag doll, moving towards Maria. She dropped the gun and collapsed, seemingly paralysed. Jack grabbed her, pulling her away. Suddenly the ground shook violently. Jack could barely register what was happening. Then he remembered. Chichen Itza. The earth tremor a few days before. Reksnys hadn’t come alive again. Earthquake. A crack appeared in the wall, tearing apart the painting. An ear-splitting cacophony rumbled up from the cavern below. Jack was aware of a frantic rush to the entrance, of dragging Maria outside, of seeing the waters rise in a great surge behind him and recede back into the cavernous hole that was left where the temple had been.

  Later he watched as Maria opened her eyes. He saw the water dripping on her face; saw sunlight streaming in through the tangled canopy above, heard birds screeching. He breathed in deep, savouring the draught of cool, clean air that followed the rain. He thought of Maria’s mother, of O’Connor.

  It was over.

  21

  It’s twenty-three metres from the edge of the platform to the water surface, give or take a few centimetres. We’ll need to rig a pretty elaborate gantry to get the machinery operational.”

  “If they could do it in the 1950s, we can do it now. I’ll trust your ingenuity.”

  “As it happens, I’ve designed just the thing.”

  Costas pulled out a large blueprint from a cardboard tube and unrolled it on the hot limestone, pinning down one corner with the laser rangefinder he had been holding. Jack resigned himself to a detailed technical exposition, but then was saved by the appearance of Jeremy and Maria at the end of the processional way.

  “Lunch.” Jeremy vaulted down the rock carrying a cooler, then ducked under the tarpaulin they had rigged against the sun. It had been two full days since the storm had abated, and the air still felt cleansed and fresh, but that morning the heat had returned with a vengeance and the humidity was stifling.

  Jeremy opened the cooler and laid out the food and drink on the table as Jack came up. Costas was grumbling to himself but gave up at the sight of food and rolled up his blueprint. They sat down, with Maria leaning on the rock behind them.

  “What have you got for me this time?” Costas said. “Some Toltec delicacy? Pickled human heart perhaps?”

  Jeremy spoke between mouthfuls. “Nope. Just good old Mexican.” He turned to Jack. “Tourists back this afternoon.” He swallowed, and took a swig of water. “The tremor that hit us in the jungle barely even registered here, so they think it’s safe. Too damn hot to work here anyway.” He tore off another chunk of bread and gestured at the deep pit of the Well of Sacrifice, below the platform where Jack and Costas had been standing. “We really going to do this?”

  “Later this year,” Jack said. “I’m sure there’s some fabulous stuff still down there.”

  “I’ve got it all worked out.” Costas was gleaming with sweat under his panama hat, his mouth full of food. “Come over when you’ve finished and I’ll show you.”

  “I’d love to see Harald’s last stand, the stuff you guys found,” Jeremy said. “Back in the other cenote.”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack murmured. “The entrance is blocked by hundreds of tons of stone, and in the other direction you’d be fighting an impossible current. We’ve found Harald’s last battle, his Ragnarok, and that’s enough. Something tells me I’d be pushing my battle-luck to go back there again.”

  “It’s a dark place.” Maria shivered. “You don’t want to go there.”

  “It’s just a bunch of stalagmites anyway,” Costas said.

  Jeremy peered dubiously at the green surface of the sinkhole in front of them. “If you’re thinking of sending me down into this one as an alternative, count me out. This place spooks me enough as it is.”

  “You can at least come along on the expedition as food-bearer.”

  “Maria?” Jeremy craned his neck over the table to look at her. “The Hereford library, I mean. Can I have leaves of absence in my contract?”

  Maria put down her water bottle and gave a tired smile. Jack had been watching her carefully from the other side of the table. She had been asleep or resting almost the entire time since Reksnys’ death. The medical team on Seaquest II had treated the abrasion on her face, which was now covered in white gauze. There would be no scar, which would have been an appalling legacy. Psychologically was another matter. Jack knew from his own experience that the loss of O’Connor would hit her hardest when she was back on home turf, with time to reflect. And two days before, Maria had stood with a gun aimed at the head of the man who had ordered that murder and who had traumatised her long before she had met O’Connor. Jack had seen her in a new light since she had revealed the terrible truth of her family’s past. He had met her mother years ago, when he and Maria were students together, had assumed she was Sephardic like Maria’s father, had never guessed. Like many Holocaust survivors, her mother had found some way of locking the horror away in her memory, had only let it overwhelm her when she knew she was dying. It explained Maria’s strength, but also her restlessness, her reluctance to commit herself to anyone. Exposing a trauma she had internalised all her life would change her. The showdown with Reksnys had brought some measure of closure, bringing her own blood feud to an end, but it had been a shocking experience and had taken its toll on her. Fortunately the Mexican police had been all too happy to change sides when they saw who was winning, and Maria had been hailed a hero for saving the little boy’s life. Only Jack and Costas and Jeremy had witnessed the final scene.

  Maria gazed at Jeremy. “The job’s got your name on it, but any more time with these IMU guys and you’ll be hooked for good.” She gave him another tired smile and then looked across at Jack. “What’s the latest on the menorah?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the symmetry of history,” Jack replied.

  Costas gave an alarmed look and straightened himself. “Oh no. Philosophy. Time I got back to my blueprints.�
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  “No. Wait. It’s important, maybe the key to the whole story.” Costas sat down heavily while Jack marshalled his thoughts. “It came to me when I saw that painting of the Toltec procession to the Well of Sacrifice, so incredibly similar to the Roman procession a thousand years before on the Arch of Titus. Think of all the different places we know the menorah has been, all the different cultures. The supreme symbol of the Jewish people, second only to the Ark of the Covenant. Then it’s snatched by the Roman emperors and becomes a prestige item for them as well. Then the Byzantines. Then Harald Hardrada and the Vikings. Each time it could have been melted down, but it wasn’t. For the Romans it was a symbol of conquest, of superiority. For the Byzantines it was one of the hoarded treasures that linked them back to the old Rome, to the old virtues. For Harald Hardrada it was a symbol of his personal prowess and then became something more mystical, almost a talisman. By then its original Jewish significance was lost, but it still had almost supernatural meaning, the power to shape men’s destinies.”

  Costas had been listening intently. “The Fourth Crusade, the sack of Constantinople,” he said. “That’s it. All that stuff we were looking for, the ancient works of art. Some of it had prestige value like you said, transformed into a different culture. The Horses of St. Mark’s in Venice, originally an ancient sculpture but then the symbol of a medieval city-state, something its makers could never have dreamed possible.”

  “You get my drift.”

  “And the other stuff, the works of art ditched in the Golden Horn. No prestige value.”

  “Or symbolism that was dangerous, unwanted. For the Crusaders, like the Vatican, the symbolic power of the menorah had come full circle, back to its Jewish origins. That’s why we thought there was a chance of finding it in the Golden Horn.”

  “So after the Vikings we move on to the Toltecs,” Costas said. “I see what you’re driving at.”

  “The Toltecs were big on symbols of victory, symbols of prowess and dominance,” Jack said. “Really big. Just look at the architecture of this place, the sculpture. And they loved their gold. Maybe they didn’t offer the menorah to the gods at the end of that procession but stashed it away, something to be brought out only for the most sacred ceremonies. Think about the emperor Vespasian a thousand years before, the triumphal procession in the Roman Forum. Like the Toltecs he sacrificed his prisoners of war, the Jewish captives. He could have sacrificed their treasure too, melted it down to make a king’s ransom in coin. Instead he locked it away in the Temple of Peace.”