The Adventures Of Indiana Jones (54 page)

He was about to climb into the hole when Elsa touched him on the shoulder. “Ladies first, Indiana Jones. Please lower me down.”

Indy tipped his fedora, impressed by the woman’s spirit. She sat down, swung her legs over the lip of the hole, then dropped her head back and looked up at him. “Ready?” she asked.

“Ready,” he said.

She lifted her arms above her head. He gripped her hands, and she pushed away from the edge. For a second or two she hung in the center of the blackness; then Indy slowly lowered her until she told him to let go. He did and heard her drop to the floor an instant later.

Indy glanced over his shoulder at Brody. “Keep an eye on things, Marcus.”

Brody nodded. “I’ll put the tile back in place so we don’t attract any attention.”

“Good idea.” He reached in his pocket for the Grail diary and removed the folded piece of paper. He stuffed it in his shirt, then passed the diary to Brody. “Take care of this for me.”

“Will do.”

Indy glanced down the hole, then back to Brody. “Be back soon. I hope.”

He dropped down into the hole, and the tile slid back in place. Instantly the darkness collapsed around him. Overhead, he heard a clatter of footsteps. What the hell was Brody doing, taking dance lessons?

“Elsa?” he whispered.

Her cigarette lighter flicked on; the tiny yellow flame looked like some sort of weird, glowing insect. He blinked and saw her peering at him.

“Did you hear that?” he asked.

“What?”

He glanced up, torn between going back and moving on. Maybe a librarian or the police had found Brody messing around with the tile. If they went back up now, they might never get another chance to look for the knight and the second marker. “Nothing, I guess.”

He took the lighter from Elsa. “Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

It was cool and still, and the air smelled like wet socks. They moved along a stone-walled corridor as Indy sheltered the lighter’s flame with his palm. It didn’t offer much light, and every now and then he had to look slightly to the right or the left of the flame to see what lay ahead of them.

He stopped and gazed a moment toward a niche carved in the wall. He took a couple steps closer, at first not believing what he saw in the flickering light. He held the lighter slightly to one side and peered ahead, directly at a leering skull attached to blackened skeletal remains that were covered in rotting strips of linen.

“I think we’ve found a catacomb,” Elsa said from behind him. “There’s another one of these guys on the other wall.”

Indy looked over his shoulder. “Nice. Let’s keep going. I don’t think either of these fine fellows is our fabled knight.”

They moved on, passing several similar burial sites before Elsa pointed to symbols carved on the wall near one of the skeletons.

“Look at this,” she said. “Pagan symbols. Fourth or fifth century.”

Indy held the lighter up and stepped closer to examine the markings. “Right. About six hundred years before the Crusades.”

“The Christians would have dug their own passages and burial chambers centuries later,” Elsa added.

He knew she was right and told her so. “If a knight from the First Crusade is entombed down here, that’s where we’ll find him.” They moved on down the tunnel. “We’re on a crusade, too, aren’t we?” Elsa’s voice was hushed and sincere.

Funny, he thought. She took this Grail stuff as seriously as his father did. “I guess we are. You could say that.” He paused. “Hold my hand.”

“Why?”

She didn’t sound very enthusiastic, he thought, but what the hell. “I don’t want to fall.”

She laughed, and her fingers brushed his, and Indy clasped her hand.

The passageway wound to their left for another hundred yards or so, then opened into a section of the catacombs that was wider and wetter. They were soon slogging through ankle-deep water that was dark and slimy.

Indy noticed the water percolating in spots. He dipped his fingers into it and rubbed them together. “Petroleum. I could sink a well down here and retire.”

“Indy, look.” Elsa pointed to another marking on the wall. “A menorah. During the tenth century a large Jewish ghetto formed in Venice.”

“I guess that means we’re headed in the right direction.”

Elsa stopped in front of another carved symbol. “I don’t recognize this one.”

Indy perused the wall and knew instantly what the etching depicted. He had not only seen it before but had pursued what it represented halfway around the globe, barely escaping death a handful of times.

“That’s the Ark of the Covenant.”

“Are you sure?”

He glanced over at her, a slight smile forming on his lips. “Pretty sure.”

They continued deeper into the catacombs. The passageway narrowed. The water rose to their knees. Indy stopped. He heard a thrashing in the water and a squealing sound. He held up the lighter.

“Rats.”

Two, three, four of them. No big deal. As soon as he had discounted them, he saw a couple more, then others. There were dozens of them diving from ledges into the water. He cautiously stepped ahead and saw the water churning with rats. He recalculated. There were hundreds, maybe thousands, of them pouring into the passageway.

He was getting worried.

He looked over at Elsa. Shadows and light danced across her face; her expression was one of disgust, not squeamishness, for which he was grateful. The last thing he needed was a woman who would faint at the sight of a rat. He suggested they climb up onto the ledge, and she readily agreed.

The outcropping of rock was just wide enough for them to gain footing. It was wet and slippery, and they inched forward holding hands, their backs flat against the wall. Below them the river of squealing rats rushed by, and occasionally Indy booted a few from the ledge. At least it wasn’t snakes. Ever since he had fallen into a vat of snakes as a kid, he had had an aversion to them. A couple of years ago, during his search for the Ark of the Covenant, he had been trapped in a den of snakes and still had nightmares about that experience.

Adrenaline surged through him as he sidled along the ledge. Danger was a two-sided experience: apprehension on one side, thrills on the other. He squeezed Elsa’s hand and smiled to himself. If he had to be prowling through slimy, rat-infested catacombs, he couldn’t think of a better choice of companion than Elsa Schneider. She was bright, lovely, and didn’t seem to be any more disturbed about their tenuous circumstances than he was. He liked that. Besides, he knew the shared experience was bonding them together, and he thoroughly enjoyed the thought of what might develop—provided they survived the excursion.

Encounters with beautiful women in exotic, dangerous circumstances were hardly everyday experiences in his profession. They never rated mention in his university lectures. But maybe someday he’d write a book and turn his more interesting encounters in the field into an eye-opening adventure tale.

The passageway turned and opened into an expansive chamber that was flooded with black, briny water but appeared devoid of rats. Their eyes had adjusted to the darkness, and Indy no longer needed the lighter. They paused a moment, gazing in silence toward the center of the cavern. Jutting up above the water on a stone platform were several ancient caskets. An “island altar,” Indy thought.

They waded toward the coffins, the putrid water deepening with every step. It was up to their knees, and they were still fifty feet away.

“Be careful,” Indy said. “Stay behind me. The bottom’s slippery.”

As soon as he said it, he lost his footing and fell to his knees. “See what I mean?” He stood up, smiled sheepishly, then took another step forward, and instantly the water rose to his chest.

“It’s only water. C’mon.”

They carefully moved ahead, the water remaining at Indy’s chest and Elsa’s shoulders. “If this gets any deeper,” Elsa warned him, “I’m climbing on your back.”

“Yeah. Fine. But whose back am I going to climb on?”

When they reached the center of the chamber, they crawled onto the elevated platform and immediately forgot about the water and the rats. The two scholars began examining the ancient, ornately carved caskets, which were made of oak and held together by straps of etched brass.

“It must be one of these,” Indy said.

“This one,” Elsa said.

Indy nodded. He wasn’t sure she was right, but she seemed confident about her choice.

“Do you doubt me? Look at the artistry of the carvings and the scrollwork. This is the work of men who believed that devotion to God and to beauty were one and the same,” she said, placing her hands gently on the coffin.

Indy leaned over and strained to open the lid. Elsa joined him. The top groaned as it slowly rose. Then suddenly it slid away from the coffin and banged against the stone platform.

He peered down and saw a rusted suit of armor and an intricately carved shield. The hood of the helmet was turned up, and inside it, the hollow eyes of a skull stared up at him.

“This is the knight,” Elsa proclaimed. “Look at the engraving on the shield. It’s the same as Donovan’s Grail tablet.”

Indy was elated. He clasped her arm, and the words spilled out of him. “The shield is the second marker. We found it.”

“I just wish he was here now to see this.”

“Who, Donovan?”

“No, of course not. Your father. He would be so thrilled.”

He glanced around the chamber and tried to imagine his father here. He couldn’t. Libraries were his idea of an excursion.

“Yeah, thrilled to death.”

He leaned over the coffin and brushed away the dust and corrosion from the knight’s shield. Despite Indy’s enthusiasm, the past and his difficult relationship with his father were never far from his mind.

“He never would have made it by those rats. He hates rats. He’s scared to death of ’em.” He recalled an incident from his childhood. “Believe me, I know. We had one in the basement once, and guess who had to go down there and kill it? Yours truly, and I was only six.”

Indy reached into his shirt and took out the paper impression of the Grail tablet. He unfolded it and laid it over the shield. The portion missing from the tablet was there on the shield. “A perfect match. We’ve got it.”

“Where did that come from?”

“Trade secret.”

“Oh, I thought we were partners.”

She sounded miffed, and Indy, who had started making a rubbing of the missing portion of the Grail tablet, paused long enough to glance up and smile.

“No offense, Elsa. But we just met.” He went back to work on the rubbing.

“This is no time for professional rivalry, Dr. Jones. Your father is missing. Quite possibly in serious danger, and here . . .”

Indy’s head snapped up. “Hold it.” It wasn’t what she said that had made him shout at her.

He looked around, tilted his head, listening. Something was wrong. He heard a distant squealing. It was getting louder, closer. Rats again.

Then he saw the glow of firelight dancing across the walls of the catacombs. A moment later he saw the rats. Thousands of them squirmed through the narrow passage, stampeded into the chamber, and headed toward the stone platform.

Within seconds the rats washed over the platform and caskets, a squirming, squealing tidal wave. Then Indy saw what they were scurrying to escape. An enormous fireball roared around the corner—it was feeding on the oil slick and depleting the oxygen, an elemental monster devouring everything in its path. It was spreading across the chamber and heading toward them.

Elsa screamed.

Indy stuffed the rubbing from the shield inside his shirt, then braced his back against the altar and toppled the coffin with his feet. It crashed against the stone platform and splashed into the water. It sank, then bobbed to the surface.

“Jump,” Indy shouted.

For a second Elsa didn’t move. Indy grabbed her hand and yanked her along after him. They struck the water, inches from the bobbing, overturned coffin. Fingers of flame licked across the surface, sizzling masses of shrieking rats.

Indy grabbed on to the coffin. “Get under it. Quick. Air pockets.”

When Elsa hesitated, Indy fit his palm over her head, dunked her, and dragged her under the coffin. She surfaced in the air pocket, sputtering and coughing, clawing her hair from her eyes so she could see. She gasped as she found herself face-to-face with the ghastly, decomposed skull of the Grail knight, whose armor had remained attached to the coffin.

Indy popped up next to her, grimaced at the skull, then struggled to detach the corpse. He jerked it from the coffin, pushed it down. However, there were air pockets in the armor, and the grisly skull popped to the surface and stared blindly at them.

“Get lost.” Indy struck the top of the head with his fist, like a hammer, and pounded it back down. This time it slowly sank beneath them. He kicked the armor and it drifted away.

The heat rose. Hundreds of rats scrambled across the top of the coffin. The scratching of their claws and their relentless squealing created a deafening din. The coffin rocked back and forth and started to sink beneath the weight of the rats. Some of them surfaced inside the coffin, still chattering, squealing.

“Indy. My God.”

Elsa swatted at a rat that was swimming toward her, then swatted another that had scrambled onto her shoulder from behind. The rats seemed to be everywhere, and there was no end to them. They were panicked and biting at anything near them.

Indy punched one rat after another on the snout as they neared him. Above them, sawdust rained as the rats above desperately tried to burrow through the top of the coffin. One rat dropped through a hole. Several more followed, plopping down on them.

Some of the rats were on fire and hissed as they struck the water. The stench of burned hair and flesh filled the coffin. The heat of the fire pressed down on them, sucking greedily at the air, gobbling it up. Indy coughed and knuckled an eye.

Elsa screamed as she was bitten.

It can’t last much longer. It can’t, Indy was trying to convince himself.

“The coffin’s on fire,” Elsa yelled above the shriek of rats.

“There go the rats,” Indy said as nonchalantly as possible. But he knew their situation was desperate. “Can you swim?”