The Sam Reilly Collection Volume 3

by Christopher Cartwright

  His secret no longer seemed important to him. He wanted nothing more than to die, but even that seemed too easy a way out for him. So, he continued as he had always done, striving to survive through any means he could.

  Without a family to support him, that means had recently taken him to the Gateway to the Underworld – a massive crater in the frozen heart of Siberia.

  The old man took another step closer. His disfigured foot hurt like hell. It always had, but recently the combination of age and cold seemed to worsen it tremendously. He slowed his pace as he got closer to the dreaded place. He’d been three years old when the massive crater first made its appearance, and in the nearly fifty years since, he and everyone he knew had believed it was evil, the gateway to the underworld.

  Each year, it had claimed more and more of the surrounding land, devouring all vegetation in its path. Those who lived in the closest village of Ese-Khayya, in East Siberia, knew it to be a living, breathing monster from hell. It was growing rapidly, and the foreign scientists who came to study it during the summer months said nothing would stop it. Its very nature meant that it would grow faster and faster each year – until the end of the world.

  He forced himself to smile.

  It had been decades since he’d viewed the place and much had changed in that time. He grew up in the nearby village of Ese-Khayya. Born to a poor family of the local Yakutian tribe that barely eked out a living in the frozen north, he’d dreamed of one day leaving this place.

  As a teen, he’d thought it might be a dinosaur egg, or even an intact skeleton. His imagination was captured by the great lizards for several years. Now an old man of 52, he knew that the secrets of the monstrous crater were more likely to be mammals from 4000-5000 years ago. Perhaps a musk ox or mammoth. One year, the thawing permafrost had disgorged a horse from what the scientists called the Pleistocene. He’d even heard that the walls of the crater showed bands of forests like those that covered the land now, indicating it had once been warmer here.

  Already it was warmer in summer than it had been during his youth. Somehow, in a way he didn’t quite understand, the melting and caving in of the crater meant that it would continue to be warmer each year. He couldn’t wait for that. His bones craved a place where he didn’t freeze for nine months of the year. It was time to put aside the superstitions that had kept him from entering the crater all these decades. This would be the summer he either found a treasure that would allow him to leave this place, or die trying.

  The half of him that clung to the stories he’d been told all his life fully expected to die trying. Either the earth would open and swallow him as it had done when others went to explore the crater, or the denizens of the underworld would capture him and carry him away. But even that was better than to endure another winter here.

  He plodded along beside his oxcart. The crater was only three miles from the village, but no roads went there. His route skirted hills and crossed streams from the closest road, forcing him to spend a night under a canvas in the cart. Today he would gain the edge of the crater, and God help him with whatever came next. He was getting too old to spend a freezing night with no more than canvas to shelter him.

  An hour or two after dawn, he stopped his ox and cautiously approached the edge of the crater. The unstable soil, mixed with frozen moisture, was vulnerable to crumbling. The edges tended to collapse, which was what kept the monstrous gash growing ever deeper and wider. No one knew how deep it would go, but the scientists had said it would likely eat through the entire hillside before it stopped or even slowed. Each year, the more surface that was exposed, the more the crater outgassed the carbon dioxide trapped in the frozen water. That in turn, they said, warmed the area, thawing it more, causing it to collapse more, and warming it more. It seemed to the old man that such a cycle would never end, until the hole reached the very center of Earth, Truly he believed the fiery center to be hell itself.

  He drew a deep breath and paused to look around for perhaps the last time in his life before he would descend into the crater. The landscape was filled with thick vegetation. Dense forests of Dahurian Larch stretched to the horizon in the north. Siberian Pine and deciduous forests composed of birch and poplar species lined the Batagayka tributary of the river Yana to the south. It was beautiful in its own stark way, and he understood that it was only because of the warming of the earth in general that he had these forests to view. Only a small percentage of the trees were older than he was. Some of the scientists had said it was because of deforestation when he was a baby that the crater appeared in the first place.

  He didn’t know. All he knew was that now, only two weeks past summer solstice, was his last chance before winter set in again and it was too cold to make the overnight trip. And that the crater into which he was about to descend was dangerous, treacherous, and his only chance of making a better life for himself. With that final look around, he sighed and picked his way carefully down the steep cliff face, occasionally slipping and reaching in vain for something to slow his slide into hell.

  The interior of the crater looked a little like melting blobs of ice cream. Vegetation couldn’t take hold before the fragile soil collapsed under it. Steep hills inside dotted the lower reaches of the two hundred and seventy-eight feet of depth. Once inside, he despaired of finding anything because the landscape was so broken. Nevertheless, he walked slowly around the nearest wall, examining the surface of the cliff face closely for any hint of a fossil or frozen carcass.

  He became so focused on not missing anything that he didn’t watch where he set his feet. He’d just seen something he wanted to examine more closely when the ground below him shifted and collapsed, throwing him to the side. He staggered, trying to catch his balance, and in the process, twisted his ankle painfully. A thrill of fear went through him. No one would come looking for him if he couldn’t climb out of this place.

  Just once I wish something would go right.

  He sat down right where he was, on the cold, damp ground, and allowed himself to feel sorry for himself for just a few moments. Only a few moments, though, because he knew he’d have to rescue himself.

  To make matters worse, a strange, stinging precipitation began to fall. He huddled miserably by the giant roots of an upturned conifer tree, until he noticed that the downfall pelting him wasn’t moisture at all. Dozens of tiny, clear stones lay near him. He picked one up and held it gingerly between his fingers, bringing it close to his eyes. The stone was minuscule, but very pretty. It sparkled in the weak sunlight.

  No sooner than the old man observed that, he looked up. The sky was a clear blue expanse, with the small stones still falling…out of nowhere. When several hit his face, he hastily looked down again. He caught his breath and carefully examined the stones.

  Could these be… diamonds?

  The idea made him gasp. Was it really this simple? He wished for his fortune to turn, and suddenly he was showered with diamonds?

  The old man staggered to his feet and started to dance a joyful jig, thinking better of it when his weight fell on his injured ankle. Without pausing to analyze the why and how of the windfall, he fell to his knees again and began scooping up dozens of the tiny stones. No one in the village would believe this!

  On second thought, he shouldn’t tell anyone. No, these stones could be dangerous to his health if anyone else knew about them. He felt a prickle on the back of his neck, imagining he was observed. He huddled over his small pile of diamonds and looked up. There… in the bushes at the edge of a crater, he imagined he saw movement. A moment later, a rustle of noise above the ping, ping, ping of the stones gave him even more evidence that someone was watching.

  His attention was snagged by a larger ping close by. He whipped his head toward the sound and was stunned by the sight of a much larger stone lying on the ground about a meter away. He scrambled toward it and snatched it up. He opened his hand, with the stone resting in the center of his palm. He’d never seen one, but he knew beyond a doubt,
this was a diamond. A flawless diamond, bigger he thought, than a normal diamond. All his dreams were about to come true.

  He placed the diamond reverently in his watchpocket, a place that had never seen a watch deposited. Then he scooted back to the little pile of smaller stones he’d collected and stuffed two handfuls into his jacket pockets. Fearful that the watcher was human rather than animal, he didn’t want to stay where he was vulnerable to attack. Instead, he searched for a way to climb out of the crater.

  It was difficult going with the cliff sides crumbling half the time, but he finally gained the top several meters away from where he’d left his ox. The patient animal still stood there, munching on what vegetation it could reach. He turned the ox and pointed back toward the village. This time he would walk through the night if he had to. His find was too precious to wait longer than necessary.

  He’d walked for several hours when he encountered the path he’d taken away from the road. It led through a particularly dense area of larch forest. He was watching his footing, loathe to turn his ankle again, when a noise made him look up and his heart skipped a beat.

  Twenty feet ahead, a man stood quietly in the path. He looked young and heavily overweight. The stranger stepped forward to greet him. The old man instantly thought uneasily of the treasure in his pockets.

  The stranger greeted him through dark, hooded eyes. Examining him with the wry curiosity of a scientist assessing a primitive creature. The man had striking features—very pale skin, even for this region, and intensely dark eyes. There was intelligence in those eyes, and pain behind them, too. Something else was there as well. The old man couldn’t put his finger on it.

  Was it triumph?

  The stranger gritted his teeth and stared at him with eyes so dark they appeared almost black, with tiny specks of gold, like the devil.

  The old man felt his chest constrict at the sight. He closed his eyes as though it might protect him from his past. There was only one person he’d ever met with such eyes, and that person had died a long time ago.

  The man fixed his penetrating gaze at him and said, “Pressure! Everything of value in this world requires pressure to achieve its potential!”

  When the old man opened them again, the stranger was gone.

  A few minutes later, he heard the deep, guttural sound of a large diesel engine starting up. He stepped through the thick vegetation, and caught the glimpse of an oversized, Russian quarry truck. On the back of it, was a large dish – the sort found on a microwave tower.

  He sat down and watched the truck disappear to the north.

  There was something about the stranger. He looked familiar, yet distant too… he stared at the overweight man and shook his head. It was impossible. There were similarities, but more differences, too.

  He shook his head. It was impossible. Besides, he didn’t believe in ghosts.

  Yet he was still unable to shake the feeling they’d met before…

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Philip S. W. Goldson International Airport, Belize

  The Gulfstream G550 taxied along the blacktop, gently easing to a stop at the end of the runway. Ilya glanced out the window and watched as a commercial jet passed overhead. A moment later, he heard the roar of the Gulfstream’s twin Rolls-Royce engines and the luxury jet bounded down the runway, before defying the effects of gravity at a steep incline.

  He rested back into the Italian leather and closed his eyes.

  A computer search for Sam Reilly had identified that he was going to be diving at the Belize Great Hole free diving competition. It should have been a breeze, but there were complications. The man simply wasn’t that easy to kill. Everyone could be killed, but he’d gone about it the wrong way. He wanted to make it look like an accident. Sam wasn’t the sort of guy who had accidents. Ilya knew that now. Next time he would simply walk straight up to the guy and shoot him.

  His mind returned to the way Sam had tried to disable the seaplane, so it would crash. It had been an invigorating experience. It wasn’t the first time the man had nearly killed him, either. A week ago, Sam had trapped him inside the Aleutian Portal.

  The thought of death made him recall how close he’d come to drowning as a kid. He and his brother fell through a sheet of ice on a lake in Siberia. His brother had died, but he was rescued and resuscitated by someone working below the ice. That’s how he came to meet Leo Botkin. One of the most powerful and dangerous men on earth.

  The experience had changed his life. Not only did he lose his brother, but it had made him stronger and tougher, mentally and physically. There was a certain comfort in knowing that death was not so bad. It was only in life that you experienced pain – it had made him far more callous and capable as an assassin.

  The Gulfstream banked gently, and his cellphone rang.

  He answered it immediately. “Yes?”

  It was Leo Botkin. “Do you want to tell me why I had to send you my private jet?”

  Ilya sighed. “There were complications.”

  “Is it done?”

  “No.”

  “Why not?”

  Ilya looked out the window, at the turquoise water intermingled with a series of shallow reefs below. “There were complications.”

  “That doesn’t normally stop you from doing what I ask.” Botkin’s voice was cold and hard.

  “You don’t normally ask me to kill Sam Reilly.”

  “When will you finish the job?”

  “I’ll start tomorrow. I can’t find anything about where he is right now, but I will.” The Gulfstream straightened up, and Ilya rested his feet on the soft leather chaise. “Any idea what he was doing at the Great Blue Hole?”

  “You said he was entering some sort of free-diving competition.”

  “Sure, but why?”

  “He likes diving. Why not?” Botkin asked.

  Ilya sighed at the obvious discrepancy. “Sam Reilly’s got the Death Stone. He’s a smart guy. By now he must know what the future holds. Time’s running out. He’s got one chance to survive.”

  “So?”

  “What the hell was he doing here looking like he’s on vacation?”

  “Beats me?”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Your guess is as good as mine. When you work it out, let me know.”

  Ilya knew he was lying, but had learned long ago that Leo Botkin let you know precisely what he wanted you to know and nothing more.

  “Okay.”

  Botkin’s voice took a dangerous tone. “Do you have any idea what’s at stake here if he works out what to do with the stones?”

  “I know,” Ilya confirmed. “Don’t worry, he won’t be around long enough to work it out.”

  “You’d better hope not”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Onboard the Maria Helena – Coast of Belize

  The darkroom was positioned on the lowest deck of the Maria Helena, toward the bow and below the waterline. The steel hull and purpose-built door barred any light from entering. In the days before Global Shipping had purchased the vessel and reconditioned her from an Ice-breaker to a Salvage and Rescue ship, the room had been used by its previous occupants to develop film – in the times before digital cameras, when photos needed to be developed and every shot counted. Now, the room was set up with a range of lights across the UV spectrum that could be used to examine artifacts or antiques.

  Under the soft red light, Billie stared at the ancient stone tablet.

  Stolen from the temple hidden within the sandstone quartz caves beneath the Tepui Mountains, it had already revealed a number of secrets. She’d already discovered that it was an ancient map leading to all twenty-two of the remaining temples, but so far, there was nothing she could do to interpret it.

  The colors visible by unaided human eyes are controlled by the wavelength of light vitality. Unlike some insects, people can just view the spectrum from red to violet. Other invisible colors exist above and below this spectrum. The color above red is called i
nfrared, the same as they used in their night-vision goggles to access the Tepui Mountains at night. The color below violet is called ultraviolet. Ultraviolet light will make fluorescent or luminous pigments fluoresce, emanating visible light.

  It was inside the ultraviolet color range that she hoped to find some hidden clue left by the ancient Master Builders.

  There were four main types of ultraviolet light, each one separated into categories based on their wavelength. Unaided, human eyes can view violet light between four hundred and fifty and four hundred nanometers. To see light in the wavelength spectrum of four hundred to three hundred and twenty, also known as ultraviolet A, long wave, light, one needed the assistance of a black light. Moving further down into a range of three hundred and twenty to two hundred and eighty, ultraviolet B is highly harmful to one’s skin, yet small exposures are vital for the production of vitamin D3 that allows the human body to absorb calcium in the bowel. At the lowest end of the spectrum, medium wave length light and two hundred and eighty to one hundred nanometers, the short wavelength light was considered germicidal, and used in medical practices or food-processing to eliminate any bacteria.

  Billie switched on the handheld black light wand.

  Electricity passed through the small tube loaded with inert gas and a small amount of mercury. Now energized, the mercury molecules radiated energy as light photons. Some of these were visible, but most of the photons produced were inside the ultraviolet B wavelength range. Since UV light waves are invisible to the human eye, the black light wand needed to change this energy into visible light, by covering the outside of the tube with phosphor.

  Black lights have been used for many years for a variety of purposes, ranging from antique inspection through forgeries, crime scenes, and mineral identification. Various chemical properties end up noticeably evident when exposed to black light. Current paint will incandesce or sparkle when exposed to black light while older paints won’t. This can be used to determine if a painted material is an antique, or a newer reproduction, or a modification of the original. Many banknotes from around the world incorporate fluorescent colors, which sparkle under exposure to black light. To enable fluorescence, dye is infused with luminous solids that emit a specific colored gleam when exposed to UV light. In geology, a few minerals show photoluminescence, meaning they glow when introduced to a black light. Minerals such as opal, fluorite, willemite, calcite, dolomite, apatite and quartz all glow under black light.