The Atlantis Code (59 page)

“What’s that?” Gallardo asked.

“It’s the sea,” Father Sebastian said. His voice was scratchy and rough from the blow Gallardo had dealt him. “The stone walls of the caves are the only barrier that keep the Atlantic Ocean from filling this place up. Break through, and you’ll drown us all.”

That sobering thought made many of the Swiss Guardsmen nervous. Gallardo and his men didn’t seem to appreciate their circumstances either.

“The walls will hold,” Murani said. “He’s just trying to scare you.”

But he knew the scare tactic was working. These men lacked the faith in God and in the mission that he had.

“Have any of you seen this picture before?” Lourds asked.

“I have,” Murani answered. “It was like the one in the book in the archives.”

“Did you bring it?”

“No.”

Lourds looked disappointed. “It would have been good to have something to match this one against.” He studied the wall, and Murani could see that he was totally absorbed by the problem, forgetting all about the threats to his life.

Amazed by Lourds’s preoccupation, Murani searched for any differences in the image. It looked the same as the one in the book.

Except there was one difference.

“The book,” Murani said. “The book in the First Son’s hand.”

“What about it?” Lourds stepped closer to examine the book.

“In the picture that I saw, it was closed, not open.”

Lourds touched the book with a forefinger. “I need a knife.” He held a hand out.

“No way,” Gallardo said. “You’re a captive, not a guest.”

“Give him the knife,” Murani ordered. “You have your rifle. What’s he going to do with a knife against your sharpshooters?”

Gallardo handed over a lock-back knife with a five-inch blade.

Lourds opened the knife and started scratching at the outline of the book. Without warning, the blade slid into the engraved line. Smiling, Lourds shoved the knife forward.

Something within the wall clicked. The sound echoed throughout the chamber. Then angry grinding started behind the wall, and filled the cave with noise.

Abruptly, the cave wall recessed and revealed hidden demarcations that dust had filled. The wall slid back six inches, then slid again to the left.

Behind the wall was another engraving. This one showed the five instruments again. They were in a different order this time.

Below the engravings of the instruments were ten squares. Lourds pressed one of the squares. Something ratcheted in the wall, and almost immediately a loud, musical
bong!
filled the chamber.

Lourds was already on the move with his flashlight in hand as he strode into the darkness. “Press that button once more.”

Murani waved at Sbordoni to follow Lourds and told Gallardo to press the square again.

The
bong!
pealed again.

Lourds altered his direction and shone the flashlight overhead. “Again,” he yelled as the echoes died away.

Bong!

Murani heard the noise almost directly overhead. His flashlight beam trailed Lourds’s up against the cave roof.

“Again,” Lourds called.

This time Murani saw the hammer strike the stalactite above. The hammer was compact and looked like it had been made of bone. A gold wire connected to it ran up into a hole in the cave ceiling.

“Again.”

The hammer moved and struck the stalactite.

Bong!

“Press another button,” Lourds directed.

Bong!

The noise set off another brief pursuit that resulted in the discovery of another bone hammer operated by gold wire.

“The cavern,” Lourds said in disbelief as he directed his flashlight around. “It’s been turned into a musical instrument.”

Natasha oversteered the pickup drastically in the darkness. The vehicle hurtled down the grade. She watched the odometer and ticked off the tenths of a kilometer as they rolled around.

“Watch it!” Gary yelled hoarsely.

Too late, she saw the cave wall rush up at them out of the darkness. Natasha pulled hard to avoid it, but the pickup’s tires slid across the slick stone floor. The proximity of the Atlantic filled the air with humidity. In time, she knew, it would cause changes in the cave system and might even kill off some of the bacteria and fungus that grew there naturally.

The pickup slammed against the wall with bone-jarring force. For a moment Natasha thought she’d gotten stuck for good. The rear tires spun on the stone as they clawed for purchase.

The headlights of their pursuers got closer.

Then the tires caught, and they shot forward again.

Gary cursed and pushed the broken glass out of the window. More of it had spilled across his lap.

“Thinking maybe you should have stayed behind now?” Natasha asked.

“Maybe a little more than I was,” Gary admitted. “But I have to warn you, I was
really
not wanting to come to begin with. Starting with that attack back in Alexandria.”

Natasha smiled grimly at that. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator. The pickup shot forward again.

Only a short distance farther on, the cave widened again. This time Natasha recognized the cave as the one that had been on television so much. It was the cave before the one where all the crypts had been found.

A quick glance ahead told her they’d exhausted all their room to run. She hit the brakes and cut the wheel. She slewed sideways as the rubber lost traction again. Before she could stop, the pickup slammed into a parked earthmover. Her head hit the back of the pickup cab, and she almost blacked out.

The scent of gasoline filled the cab.

Not all cars blow up
, Natasha told herself.
That’s only in American movies.

But she also knew that enough of them blew up to warrant a hasty evacuation. She’d seen that happen in Moscow. Besides that, the men chasing them were almost on top of them.

She grabbed Gary’s shoulder and shook him. “Get out!”

Gary looked at her. Blood dripped from a cut over one eye. “I thought we were dead.”

“Not yet.” Natasha threw her weight against the door and forced it open. She clambered out and filled her hands with pistols as the other vehicles bore down on her.

They’re construction workers
, she reminded herself.
They’re just trying to do their job. They’re not Gallardo or his men. They’re not the ones who killed Yuliya.
She had to make herself remember that.

Gary couldn’t get out on his side and had to climb out on hers. He swayed unsteadily as he took cover among the construction equipment.

Bullets tore into the pickup and drew Natasha’s attention to three Swiss Guards standing post near a mobile building. The building and the guards stood out in the darkness of the cave due to the lighting strung around them.

Natasha grabbed Gary and shoved him under one of the earthmovers as they took cover. She cursed mentally. She and Chernovsky had been stuck in some tight places in Moscow over the years, but this wasn’t looking good at all.

Then she noticed the steady drip of gasoline pooling beneath the pickup. With the all the metal and the stone floor, it was a safe wager that a spark would be struck soon.

The construction workers managed to pull to a stop, but as soon as they did bullets from the Swiss Guard chopped some of them down and sent the others into hiding.

“Okay,” Gary said, “they’re bad guys.”

It was always about choices, Natasha thought. There was no reason to fire on the construction workers unless the stakes had been raised. She considered Lourds briefly and wondered how much trouble he was in.

Then one of the stray bullets scraped the ground nearby and caught the gasoline pool on fire. It blazed immediately.

“Move!” Natasha ordered. She butted Gary into motion with her head and rushed him toward the other side of the earthmover just as the flames under the pickup twisted up and ignited the gas tank.

The explosion wasn’t so big as the ones on television, but the concussive wave knocked her down and sent fiery debris in all directions.

Natasha scrabbled upright again and kept moving. She reminded herself to use her peripheral vision and not try to look at the Swiss Guards straight on. Too many hiding places had been given away by the gleam of an eye. She popped up on the other side of the earthmover and pointed her left pistol long enough to squeeze off three shots.

At least one of them hit the charging Swiss Guard in the face and knocked him from his feet. The two others took cover.

As she held her position, her nose and throat burning from the smoke pooling against the cave ceiling, Natasha saw one of the Swiss Guards break cover and throw a grenade against the mobile building.

The grenade turned out to be an incendiary one. It went off with a
bamf!
that carried to Natasha’s ears. Immediately flames clawed up the side of the building.

“There are people in that building!” Gary yelled.

Natasha glanced at the windows and saw the men’s faces pressed against the glass.

“They’re locked in,” Gary yelled.

“I know.”

“We can’t let them burn.”

“I know. Let me think.”

But there wasn’t time for thinking, and Natasha knew it. There were still two armed—

Gary broke cover at once and ran for the building. One of the Swiss Guards stood up and shot him. Even as Gary fell, Natasha targeted the man in the darkness by marking his muzzle flashes. She fired several shots and didn’t stop until the man fell out of the darkness to the ground.

Shoe leather scraped on stone behind her. Knowing she’d been flanked by the other man, she ducked. A bullet caught her hip and sent her sprawling.

Lourds’s subsequent exploration of the buttons revealed that each of them was connected to a bone hammer. He studied the stalactites enough to see that each of them had been carefully shaped. The cave was no longer growing, so the stalactites hadn’t changed in thousands of years.

“I’ve seen something like this,” Lourds said as he stood once more in front of the engraving showing the First Son. “There’s a cave system in Luray, Virginia. Luray Caverns. It has what’s called the Great Stalacpipe Organ, but it’s based on one of the oldest musical instruments we’ve ever found: a lithophone. Normally lithophones are made up of stone bars of different lengths. Or wood.”

“Like a xylophone,” Murani said.

Lourds nodded. “Exactly. However, the Great Stalacpipe Organ was constructed using the same design. It uses electricity to power the clappers. They play the huge organ and actually sell records of songs they make.”

“But why is this here?”

Lourds shone his light at the symbols under the buttons. “Believe it or not, but I think it’s an alarm code. If you trigger the right sequence, maybe the Book of Knowledge will be revealed.”

“What happens if you trigger the wrong sequence?” Gallardo asked.

“You mean, what if there’s a trap?” Lourds asked. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He’d been mesmerized by the whole setup.

“Yes.”

“Then we’re hosed,” Lourds said.

Gallardo didn’t look happy.

“The trick is to not get hosed.” Lourds studied the wall and thought about everything he’d learned. “The Keepers believed the instruments were the key to opening the ‘Drowned Land.’ The inscriptions on the walls outside said the key was in five parts.”

“I thought that was just the clue to the hidden room,” Murani said.

“Maybe there’s more,” Lourds suggested. “Let’s have another look at them.”

Murani sent Sbordoni to retrieve the instruments. When they were brought back, everyone examined them again. The susurration of the sea sounded outside the rock walls and echoed within the chambers.

Without warning, Father Sebastian ducked forward and evaded the Swiss Guards for a moment. He stomped the drum and shattered it to pieces before the Swiss Guards got him under control again.

“Don’t help him!” Father Sebastian shouted at Lourds and the Guards. “He intends to use the Book of Knowledge! If he does, he’ll bring God’s wrath down on us again!”

Murani pointed his pistol at the priest. There was no doubt he was going to kill the man.

Lourds shifted his weight and caught Murani’s wrist just in time to yank the cardinal’s arm up. When he fired, the bullet ricocheted from the ceiling above.

Gallardo hit Lourds hard enough to drive him to his knees. Pain exploded inside his head, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He tried to get to his feet, but he was rubbery-legged.

By the time Murani brought the pistol back down, three of the Swiss Guards stood in front of Father Sebastian and created a wall of living flesh protecting him.

“No,” one of the guards said, the one with the scar on his face. “There’s not going to be a murder here in this place. We’re here to do the work of the Society of Quirinus. If we find the Book of Knowledge, it needs to be locked away.”