The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3

by Christopher Cartwright

  Billie’s piercing brown eyes, stared out at the dark outline of the Black Sea. “What we find tomorrow.”

  “And what will that be?” Jeremy persisted.

  “Answers.”

  “You don’t want to know the truth?”

  “Of course I do. I’m just not sure I’m going to like what I find.”

  Jeremy glanced at her. His eyes showed a certain amount of hope, as though he could finally persuade her to quit. “We don’t have to go there, you know?”

  She shook her head and smiled, as though the notion was absurd. “I’ve spent my whole life wondering about that temple. I don’t know if my grandfather was insane or a genius. If he was right about the temple, it’s going to change everything, for everyone. The whole world is going to need to hear the truth…”

  Jeremy took her left hand in his and squeezed it gently. It was a gentle show of almost fatherly affection. “It’s going to upset a lot of people. Some might not be very happy for you to hear the news.”

  Billie took a deep breath in. She watched it turn to mist as she exhaled. “Even so, the world has a right to know.”

  “Just be careful. Some might be willing to kill to protect such a secret.”

  She nodded in silence. She could think of many who would pay to protect such a secret. That was, if her grandfather had even been right, all along. They sat there, silently watching the lights of distant cities flicker, far below. Billie was glad Jeremy had decided to join her. He had been one of the few constants in her otherwise disjointed life.

  Born into a family of archeologists, she had traveled extensively throughout her childhood. Rarely staying long enough to settle into a school, she had often tagged along with whatever expedition her father and grandfather were involved in. Often, her only education came from homeschooling. Home being the remote tent or camp their expeditions occupied. Her father and Jeremy worked together on their first Doctorate, and so he seemed more like an uncle to her. He had even spent numerous hours trying to teach her geometry at one stage. And now, he would see the truth with her – whatever it might be.

  Jeremy stood up. “It’s late. I’m going to get some rest. Tomorrow, we’ll see what this was all really about.”

  “Goodnight.” She stood up and embraced him, giving him a gentle kiss on his cheek.

  Billie’s glance turned from the distant lights, to those stemming from the camp of a second climbing team, two thousand feet below. It was unusual for there to be another team on the mountain this far into winter. She recalled the warning Jeremy had given her – Some might be willing to kill to protect such a secret. She dismissed the thought. It was impossible for anyone else to have learned about the secret of the hidden temple.

  *

  They set out early the next morning. Lengthening the rope tether between them, Billie’s party set out east, along the steep face of the mountain. It was nearly eleven a.m. by the time she stopped and checked her GPS. The ground was thick with snow. She kept moving and stopped again. Billie kicked her crampons into the snow. It had been wind blasted so that it was hard as rock. She took another reading of her GPS.

  She watched as three, four, then five overhead satellites geo-synchronized, providing her position within a matter of feet. Billie carefully drove a peg into the icy wall and attached her climbing tether to it. She sat down and waited for the rest of the team to catch up.

  Jeremy asked, “What is it, my dear?”

  She said, “I don’t know. This is definitely the place, but I can’t see any sign of the temple.”

  He glanced around. The entire area was full of snow that had covered the region for centuries. “There’s nothing here. How much variance do you think there might be between where the light shined and where we are?”

  “None. The ancient people knew extensively about astrology, and would have been able to predict precisely where the sun would have shined during the sunrise of winter’s solstice.”

  “Then how close are we?”

  “No, you’re misunderstanding me, Jeremy. This is precisely where the sacred entrance must be.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Why do you seem so surprised?”

  “It just seems…”

  “Unremarkable – for the entrance to a temple containing the most important knowledge of the human race?”

  “Exactly.”

  “Even so, that’s what it is.”

  Billie began chipping away at the icy wall, using the back of her icepick. The rest of the party caught up, and together they took it in turns to attack the side of the mountain. Two hours later, they had dug a tunnel into the snow, nearly twelve feet deep.

  “You’re certain you have the right place?” Jeremy asked.

  “Yes.”

  “But there must be any number of variations in the sunrise since the ancient people set their gate.”

  Billie shook her head. “This is the right place…”

  “Then why haven’t we found any trace of it?”

  “I don’t know… we’ll have to keep digging…” she didn’t finish her sentence.

  Instead Ahmet came out of the tunnel. “I think we just struck something – and it’s made of metal.”

  *

  It took nearly three hours to clear away enough of the snow to open the ancient door. Billie told Ahmet and the guides to wait outside and guard the entrance. If any other climbers were to approach, they were to tell them the tunnel had been used as a snow-cave to camp in overnight.

  She examined the ancient door. It looked like it had been made out of solid iron. She tapped on it, and the metal resonated loudly – meaning that it was hollow behind the door. Her heart raced as she worked quickly with the acetylene blowtorch to melt the snow and ice surrounding it. She reached the edge of the door, where it met perfectly with rhyolite, the glassy volcanic stone. Billie ran her gloved hands along the edge, and stopped at a set of massive iron hinges. They were frozen solid. She focused the acetylene blowtorch gently over the top of them until the ice turned to liquid.

  She put the blowtorch down and ran her hands along the edge of the door again. It started to move. She stopped what she was doing and gently applied pressure to the ancient door. Again, it moved freely. Centuries of ice had protected the iron from oxidizing and turning to rust. She stopped pushing, as though she needed to savor the moment.

  Her eyes, dilated and piercing, focused on Jeremy. “It’s free. I think I can open it.”

  “This is it,” Jeremy said. “Moment of truth. Are you sure you want to know what lies behind this door?”

  Billie switched on her flashlight. “No, but I need to.”

  “Good luck.” He shined his light at the door.

  She pushed hard and the iron door moved inward. It slid easier than she expected. There was no creak as it opened. A strong scent of decay teased at her nostrils. It was distasteful but not overtly offensive. More like opening the lid to an antique box left sealed for centuries. It was the absence of life, yet a cold and solemn sense of what there once must have been. The only thing close to it she could remember was the first time she entered a sealed section of the King’s Chamber inside the Great Pyramid of Khufu near Giza. Billie shined her flashlight in horizontal swathes, revealing the entrance to a large obsidian vault.

  She’d never seen anything like it. The ebony colored, glassy volcanic stone had been carefully chipped away with rudimentary tools to form a large, vaulted room. The smooth walls reflected the light so powerfully that for an instant she thought someone was alive inside, shining their own flashlight out at her. She took a breath and paused.

  “Are you all right?” Jeremy asked.

  “I’m fine.” She took her first step inside. “I just got startled by the sight. It’s not quite what I was expecting.”

  Billie heard the echo of her voice as she walked toward the center of the room. She shined the flashlight around until she could gather a clear image of each end of the room and then stopped. She turned to face J
eremy and swallowed hard. Billie couldn’t believe what she was seeing. She felt her stomach cramp, and wore her heart in her throat as she spoke. “It’s empty. The Temple of Illumination’s been stripped bare!”

  *

  The place was completely deserted. Billie cursed loudly, like a teenager who’d only just discovered the length and breadth of the more colorful elements of the English language. After all these years of searching, and to get so close, only to discover it had been raided before she could reach her legacy, made it all more painful than had she never found the hidden temple at all.

  “Someone’s moved it!” she said. “I thought it was too easy to open the iron doors after all these years. Someone must have more recently discovered we were on the right track and broken inside to hide the evidence.”

  “The evidence?” he asked. “I wasn’t aware we were investigating a crime?”

  “I’m talking about the truth. You said yourself that there were many among us who would go to dire lengths to make certain it was never discovered.”

  “Or it was never here to begin?” Jeremy suggested.

  She breathed out a sigh. “No. It was here.”

  “Must have been raided years ago. There was nearly twenty feet of hardened snow above the gateway.”

  She nodded. “It could have been stolen at any stage in the past seventeen centuries since Gregory the Illuminator first sealed it. It was all for nothing!”

  “Some secrets are best left hidden,” Jeremy said. His voice was soft and sympathetic.

  She took a couple steps forward and stopped. “Wait. I see something.”

  Jeremy placed his hand firmly on her shoulder. His voice suddenly hard as his cold, steely gaze. “Are you sure you want to see it?”

  She shrugged his hand off her shoulder without saying a word, and moved to the back of the vaulted cavern. There was a small ledge near the end of the room. Carved out of the same piece of pitch black obsidian, the two ledges formed a visual illusion of the continuation of the floor.

  The closer she got to it she realized with certainty, that it formed a small canyon. There was part of a small handprint on the edge. It appeared dull, making it stand out compared to the gloss of the obsidian floor. At a glance, she guessed the owner had placed his or her hand into some sort of liquid. It was so dull and impossible to accurately determine without equipment.

  She peered over the edge. It was pitch dark. There was something that felt sinister about the scarred opening in the earth. Like some sort of evil abyss. She felt cold despite her thick mountaineering jacket. The dry almost musky smell seemed richer, too. She shined her flashlight into the chasm. At one end the light never reached the bottom. The crevasse simply swallowed the light indefinitely. She shined the flashlight in the other direction. This time the light reached the bottom. The crack had formed all the way through to the left of her and it appeared to have been unwilling to rip clear through the one to her right – the result was a second ledge, where the depth of the chasm was no more than twenty or thirty feet. She was close enough that she could clearly see the bottom as she shined the light across it.

  At the far end, where the chasm ceased, sitting with his back against the wall was the remains of a long since deceased mountain climber. The cold weather and high altitude had protected him from bacteria, and most of his bloating had been contained within his clothing. He almost looked lifelike from that distance. Billie had to climb down to see the man. She had to be sure. She owed that much to him after all – didn’t she?

  She felt Jeremy’s hand on her shoulder again. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  “It’s all right,” she said. “I always knew in my heart what we’d find.”

  She had a fair idea what she would find, but she needed confirmation. She moved to the right where the edge of the chasm stopped mysteriously at the base of the obsidian wall. It was as though the tectonic shift that had caused the scarred crack to form was unable to splinter the impervious obsidian room. It was as though some kind of higher power had forbidden it to do so.

  Billie studied the opening. The chasm was narrow enough that she could have comfortably stepped over it, yet wide enough for her to easily fit through. She carefully placed one hand on either side of the opening and slipped her legs inside until they found a foot-hold to support her. She focused the majority of her attention on each hand and leg individually as she progressed. Confident the dark stone wouldn’t crumble under her weight, she started to climb down.

  She glanced at Jeremy with a hardened resolve. Her brown eyes piercing and challenging. “Are you coming with me?”

  “Me?” He shook his head. “I’m afraid if I climbed down there I would never make it back up again.”

  She nodded. It wasn’t his place. He didn’t have to see it. The truth wasn’t his problem to solve. It was hers. Billie climbed down slowly. She made careful, purposeful movements. Testing each hand-hold and foot-hold as she climbed. A few minutes later she reached the first ledge.

  Billie carefully tested the strength of the ledge with her weight while bracing the walls with her hands. Confident the ground wasn’t going to fall away from under her, she flashed the light along the crevasse, until it reached the remains of the man. The body, well protected by the cold, was still intact. He could have been any other mountain climber, taking refuge on a ledge to catch his strength.

  She stopped right next to the body. Three small holes were visible in his jacket. She didn’t need to look closer to realize they were bullet holes. She shined the flashlight on his face. His swollen eyes protruded hideously from his face, like some sort of incarnation of an evil clown that would have fit well in a Stephen King novel. Despite the decayed remains, she recognized the face of the man staring back at her instantly.

  What were you involved in grandpa?

  A heavy golden chain hung from his neck. His frozen hand still clutched at the bottom of it, where a pendant or something had been grasped when he died. Billie carefully opened his hand to reveal an ivory crucifix inside. The upper section of the cross was carved intricately in the shape of a horseman, holding a bow and wearing a crown. The lower section was smooth and unimpressive. She’d seen the chain before, but the pendant that hung from it had always remained hidden beneath his shirt. She’d never known her grandpa to be religious. She started to search him for what she was really after, without giving the crucifix another thought – after all, the strength of one’s faith often raises quickly when facing death.

  She checked each of his pockets in his jacket, followed by his trousers. There was still nothing. She swore. How could he have lost it? She unzipped the climbing jacket and continued to rifle through it until she found his pocket-sized journal. Her grandfather always kept intricate notes during any expedition he was on. She kissed the journal. If he was killed for getting this close to the truth, he would have made a note of it.

  Billie shined her flashlight on the last entry. We’re getting close. Soon, the Four Horsemen will ride together and the Third Temple shall rise. She glanced at her grandfather’s crucifix again. It had a horseman made of ivory, carrying a sword and wearing a crown – the White Horseman – AKA the Conqueror.

  She bent down and slowly removed the ivory crucifix and horseman. Sorry grandpa. She once saw a painting called, Death on a Pale Horse at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts. She recalled it had some sort of biblical ties. Something about The Lamb of God opening the first four of the Seven Seals, which summoned forth four beings that rode out on white, red, black, and pale horses – Conquest, War, Famine, and Death.

  But there was no mention of the Third Temple…

  A moment later, she forgot about the Four Horsemen, because the ground beneath her started to vibrate, and the obsidian room above echoed the roar of thunder. Had there been another movement of the tectonic fault? She stared at the ground below. It was perfectly still. She tried to call out to Jeremy, but other sounds drowned out her voice – they were the sounds of gunshots.

/>   *

  The gunshots finally ceased, and were replaced with more sound of thunder. The shots might have caused an avalanche. She hung the crucifix around her neck. She placed her grandfather’s journal into her inside jacket pocket and zipped it shut. Whatever happened to her from here, she needed to know the truth. She studied the wall again, and prepared to climb out, before there was no longer an obsidian vault to climb to.

  “We’ve got company!” Jeremy shouted at her.

  “I’m on my way up.” She took one last look at her grandfather, tucked the crucifix into her climbing jacket and started to climb out.

  She reached the top of the crevasse and inside the obsidian vault. Her pulse was racing and she was breathing so hard that the muscles in her chest burned. She took a couple deep breaths in, and exhaled slowly. She could feel the lactic acid pounding the muscles of her arms and legs.

  Jeremy glanced at her. “Are you all right?”

  “Fine. What have we got?”

  “I don’t know yet. It must be the second climbing team we saw following us last night. Ahmet must have shot at them. Maybe it caused an avalanche. Ahmet’s well armed, and we have the high ground. They won’t reach us. Even so, we should get out while we still can.”

  “Of course,” she said, thankful that Jeremy had the foresight to arm their climbing team. At the time, she thought he was being overly dramatic, but now it was clear she was lucky to have his good counsel to rely on. “Just let me catch my breath.”

  “What did you find?” he asked.

  “My grandfather.”

  “I’m so sorry, my dear child.” He swallowed hard and held his breath for a moment. “As you know, there was a sudden storm. I pleaded with your grandfather to turn around. He refused. He was certain we were getting close. I came back down the mountain, and your grandfather continued. It turns out he reached it, but he mustn’t have had the strength to climb back down again.”