Indisputable Proof (18 page)

CHAPTER 31

September 13. Thursday – 12:06 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

“Any chance they’ll return?” Jade asked apprehensively after Diaz returned with a coil of rope they had hidden near the beach.

“Extremely doubtful,” Tolen responded.

Jade peered upward at the gargantuan mound of stone before them. It was as if the natural formation had sprouted from the sea. Like a giant lump of unmolded clay, it was pockmarked with massive indentations and jutting stone fingers casting eerie shadows on the grassy knoll below. “Wow, I knew this thing was big, but I had no idea the true size of it. It could take hours, even days, to examine the visible surface area, and that’s
if
we can even reach it at all.” Something caught her eye in the darkness, running up the side of the stone. “Are those...steps?”

“They’re hewn from the rock,” Tolen began. “I read they were carved long ago, possibly during the early Christian era, by hermits who took refuge here, including the Apostle John.”

“Let’s get on with it,” Diaz said, extracting a flashlight from his coat. He aimed the light to lead them to the base of the irregular stairs as he turned toward Jade. “Once again, we have no idea what we’re looking for, right?”

“I think it’s a safe assumption to say we need to find a tiny image of either gold or frankincense since we located myrrh at the Costa Rican tomb,” Jade responded.

Tolen, who had been carrying the rope, hoisted the coil and handed the rifle to Diaz. “Here, you carry this,” he said.

Diaz looped the harness over his shoulder and pitched the weapon on his back. He began to ascend the stone steps. Jade followed on Diaz’s heels. Tolen went last. They each carried a flashlight.

It was a precarious climb, especially in the dark with nothing to hold onto. They could only brace against the rock wall to the side as they went. The steps were fashioned from the rough stone, cut at different widths and lengths and were unevenly spaced. With a slight breeze swirling around the massive formation, Jade felt a twinge of vertigo as they climbed. The tang of briny air was constant.

She trained the light down, taking one step at a time, ensuring she had firm footing. At each step, she paused, raised the flashlight and examined the stone wall to the side, running her fingers over the craggy surface.

Jade felt a certain mystical aura surrounding this place. She was most likely traveling the same ancient staircase the Apostle John had once climbed. A mild shiver passed through her.

Of necessity, their pace was slow, deliberate, and purposeful. Jade and Diaz scanned the walls silently as they climbed. Tolen followed behind. Curiously, Jade noticed he was giving the stone façade only a cursory check.

Jade surmised that if they could find the appropriate image—which equated to finding a needle in a haystack—it was going to lead inside the Petra. She only hoped the clue was accessible and not on an obscure side of the Petra, which would require they somehow rappel down the massive rock formation. The thought of dangling by a rope in the dark brought a rise of anxiety. Based on the monumental effort which must have gone into creating the cathedral cave and the underground tunnels in Costa Rica, she doubted Joseph would have purposely sought the less arduous method. If there was one thing Dr. Jade Mollur had already learned about Joseph of Arimathea, it was that he did things on a grand scale with considerable forethought and planning.

“Did the Apostle John write the Book of Revelations on this rock?” Diaz called back.

“Not according to legend,” Tolen responded upward. “The Cave of the Apocalypse is northwest of here in the center of the island. John was said to live there between 95 and 97 AD. According to the Bible, that small cave is where John heard the voice of God, and the image of Jesus appeared before him. From these encounters, he wrote the Book of Revelations.”

“Yet,” Jade added, “it’s thought John also spent time on this Petra. It may have been a place of meditation or spiritual renewal.”

Spiritual renewal: the phrase sounded somewhat self-serving to Jade. For a moment, she considered how far they had already come on this quest. As resourceful as Dr. Phillip Cherrigan had been, she knew that she and Phillip would never have achieved the same degree of success in finding the stone jar in Central America and now, hopefully, the next stone jar here, all while averting death. While he was a brilliant academician, Phillip was not in the best physical shape. In more ways than she cared to admit, without Tolen’s and Diaz’s assistance, she certainly would not have made it this far.

They continued their slow trek upward. Three more steps and Jade ventured another look back. Instead of inspecting the wall, Tolen was now using his light to trace a line on both sides of the stair steps and farther out on the rocky wall. She wondered if he was really hoping to see a tiny carved image from such a distance.

Farther and farther they climbed until they were within sight of the summit.

Jade frowned. Again she looked at Tolen, who had his flashlight beam moving away from them on a horizontal line across the ragged stone wall.

“There,” he said. “See that flat shelf along the wall?”

“You see an image?” Jade asked.

Diaz had also turned to look downward toward Tolen’s flashlight beam.

“No,” Tolen paused. He looked out over the moonlit bay reflectively. “We think the clue from the jar from Joseph of Arimathea’s tomb ties to the 64
th
listing in the Copper Scroll, right?”

Jade nodded.

“What does line 64 say?”

Jade thought for a moment. “I don’t recall it verbatim. It mentioned that the duplicate scroll with the detailed inventory of the other 63 treasures, including a more exact description of all the locations, would be found in a dry well at Kohlit.”

“Correct. The operative words being ‘dry well.’ ” With that, Tolen repositioned the coil of rope on his shoulder and, to Jade’s surprise, stepped out onto the thin ledge. He flattened himself against the wall and inched ahead. One misstep and he would tumble off the stone lip and plummet two and a half stories to the outcropping of rock at the base. Jade involuntarily held her breath as Tolen slid slowly away.

“Where are you going?” she yelled.

Tolen stopped and turned toward her as much as he could on the ledge. “In addition to the carved steps, hermits long ago cut a cistern out of this rock.”

The meaning instantly registered with Jade. “The cistern
is
a well!”

The shadowy figure of Tolen proceeded along the five-inch-thick ledge. Surprisingly, he had turned his flashlight off, proceeding by the glow of the moon. Without thinking of the implications, Jade found herself instinctively following him. Once on the narrow ledge, she froze. She closed her eyes and fought to control the panic.
Move slowly
, she willed herself, reopening her eyes. With a measured slide of her foot, she inched her way to the side then drew her other foot alongside. All the while, she pressed into the rough stone, trying to get a hold with her free hand while the other hand awkwardly gripped the flashlight. Jade reminded herself she had been an athlete; a gymnast capable of tumbling, flipping, and landing on a four-inch beam.
Move slowly and precisely
, she told herself again.

In similar fashion, she saw Diaz follow her. When he looked at her, she felt a kindred spirit. His stiff expression and vaulted brow suggested he was not enamored with crossing the narrow ledge either, yet both of them pressed on, following after Tolen, who moved unerringly with balanced precision.

After a nerve-wracking dozen feet of creeping along the brink of stone, a burst of wind caused Jade to pause, fearful she might lose her balance. She steadied herself, waiting for the stiff breeze to calm. The Mediterranean night air had warmed with the passing of the storm, and she felt perspiration gather on her forehead.

The light ahead drew her attention. Tolen had come to a stop and switched his flashlight back on. Thankfully, he was standing on a much thicker section of ledge that dipped inward into a wide crevice.

“Just a few more feet,” Tolen urged Jade, holding out his hand for hers. When she finally grabbed Samuel Tolen’s hand and felt his warm, firm grip, she knew that even if she had lost her balance, he would not have let her fall. Moments later, Diaz joined them on the small plateau. He stepped beside them with a sigh of relief and a face full of sweat.

Jade looked at the dark crevice and turned her flashlight on. The beam licked the stone ahead, splitting the walls to either side, and landed in a small alcove which came to a point. A natural stone roof pressed down over it. Only then did she notice that the small plateau they stood upon angled slightly downward, channeling into the alcove where a circular recess of undetermined depth had been cut in the stone floor.

Its design was apparent. The cistern had been engineered long ago so that when rainwater fell on the plateau, it funneled into the alcove, which was shaped like a wedge, and was captured in the deep hole. The stone roof prevented the water from evaporating in the direct sunlight: exceedingly functional and genius in its simplicity.

They entered the small alcove. Jade led the way. The stone surface was slick, and she moved carefully. All three had their flashlights on and, as if acting like a single mind, the three beams sought the depths of the circular recess when they arrived at the edge. The strong stench of stagnant water rose to greet them as they stood over the opening.

“It’s deep, and it stinks,” Diaz said, shucking off the rifle and laying it to the side.

Jade looked for the bottom of the well. Her light reflected off water at least a dozen feet down. The shaft was forged three feet in diameter and bored symmetrically from top to bottom.

“I’m going in,” Jade said. “Can you lower me by the rope?”

Tolen took the rope off his shoulder and unwound it. With a series of quick ties, he made a harness which he fitted over Jade’s torso and secured underneath her arms. Then, with a flashlight in her hand, Tolen and Diaz lowered Jade.

Not normally prone to claustrophobia, she felt an intense sense of confinement as she slipped below the plateau into the stone tunnel. The rope was painful, burning her underarms as it supported her. She tried to leverage her feet against the mottled wall to offset her weight but found that doing so impeded her descent. She decided to suspend her full weight against the rope and bear the pain in order to reach the bottom faster.

There was no way to know the depth of the pool at the base. When she finally reached it, she tentatively stretched a foot to the surface and found the water was only an inch and a half deep.

“I’m at the bottom! Give me some slack!” she yelled upward. Two dark faces stared down at her. “There’s hardly any water here.”

Diaz had been right about one thing. The smell was horrific. She removed the harness and turned in a circle, sloshing the water. She inspected the walls. The sides were rough and sharp, and she took care as she ran her fingers over the surface.

After exhausting her examination of the wall, she shined the flashlight at her feet and knelt. Quarters were cramped, and she maintained her balance only with great effort. She placed her hand below the surface of the water and touched the stone bottom. The thin layer of water was warmer than she had expected. She found the base to be smooth and curved at the edges where it met the walls, forming a shallow bowl. The only aberration was in the dead center: a set of concentric circles, a small one just inside a larger one, interlocking with a second, similar set of concentric circles. She was struck with a rush of excitement.

“I’ve found something! There’s an image at the base, and I think it’s supposed to be gold rings!”

CHAPTER 32

September 13. Thursday – 12:31 a.m. Isle of Patmos, Greece

It suddenly occurred to Jade they had nothing to use to break through the base. As if reading her mind, Tolen called down, “We’re lowering a hammer on the rope.”

She rose and shined the flashlight up to see the hammer secured in a knot coming slowly toward her, swinging from side to side. When it was in reach, she grabbed it, untying it from the rope. She started to ask where the hammer had come from, but she was sure she already knew the answer. Tolen was prepared for any situation.

Jade took the hammer by the handle and knelt back down. With her target as the exact center of the small base, it was difficult for her to get an angle from which to strike it. She scrunched against the wall, moving her feet out of the way, but then found herself nearly toppling into the other side. Next, she tried to straddle the center but found that to be awkward as well. No matter what angle she took in the compact area, she could not strike with enough force to do any damage. To complicate matters, every time she smacked the base, a spray of water shot into her eyes and onto her clothes.

“Jade, any progress?” Tolen’s voice rang down from above.

“No, it’s too bloody cramped in here to break through. I can’t get a good swing,” she said in disgust, wiping the pungent water from her face. “
Yuck
.”

There was a moment of silence before she heard, “I’m going to lower another tool down.”

“Little good it’ll probably do me,” Jade muttered to herself.

Moments later, the rope came down again dangling an object. Jade had trouble making out the odd shape through the scant light. When it neared, and she recognized what it was, she crinkled her face in confusion. She untied the knot and held the object away from her like a venomous snake. “What am I supposed to do with a gun?”

“Shoot at the floor,” Diaz said in his gritty voice.

“I’ve never shot a gun in my life,” Jade said, eyeing the weapon with consternation.

“I’ll walk you through it,” Tolen’s mellifluous voice called down. Unlike Diaz, his tone had a way of putting her at ease.

She drew a deep inhale of the rotten-smelling air, and then exhaled, looking down at the watery base. She had come this far and was not about to give up now.

“Okay,” she relented, “tell me what to do.”

“There’s a safety lever on the side. Slide it off.”

Jade found it and complied. “Got it.”

“Get in a stance with your feet as far away from the target area as possible without jeopardizing your balance. Aim the gun and squeeze the trigger gently but firmly to fire a round. Once you break through, you should be able to enlarge the opening with the hammer.”

Why does this feel like a bad idea?
Jade thought.

Nevertheless, she spread her feet apart. With one hand, she kept the flashlight directed down. With the other hand, she pointed the barrel of the pistol toward the rings. She had no idea how to aim the weapon accurately, so she squatted to within a foot of the surface of the water to ensure she hit the target. Anxious to get it over with, she closed her eyes tight, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger.

****

A deafening blast resonated up the stone shaft. Tolen heard a crunch, a crackle, and the pitter-patter of stone falling away. The glow from Jade’s flashlight vanished in the darkness.

“Jade?!” Tolen called down into the inky blackness. He aimed his flashlight into the deep cavity and saw the base was still intact, yet Jade was nowhere in sight.

“What happened to her?” Diaz asked, scurrying around the edge, using his flashlight to search out the shaft. “She’s gone!”

“So is the water,” Tolen remarked. He rose, turned, and spotted the rifle nearby on the ground. He quickly retrieved it and tied an end of the rope to the mid-section of the rifle. He lobbed the balance of the rope down the tunnel. Tolen laid the rifle across the middle of the hole. It extended beyond the opening by several inches on either side. He climbed in the hole, avoiding the rifle and holding the rope as he went. The rifle shifted slightly on the lip with his weight. “Stay here until I find out what happened.”

He lowered himself on the rope, hand over hand. His muscles strained under his own weight. With the flashlight in his pocket, the darkness was pervasive until Diaz caught him in his beam from above. Even so, Tolen was unable to get a clear view of what lay below. He gave up trying, instead focusing his energy and attention on reaching the bottom of the well as quickly as possible.

“Jade?” Tolen called out again as he went.

No response.

He looked up to see the dark head of Diaz looming above.

“Is she there?” Diaz yelled down.

“Give me a minute,” Tolen replied, clutching the rope and lowering himself the rest of the way. He suddenly felt solid stone at his feet, but instead of the base being horizontal, the surface was angled downward. He paused, found footing against the edges of the wall, and was able to hold the rope with one hand and remove the flashlight with his other hand.

When he turned the light on and shined it down, he was shocked by what he saw. The rest of the rope evaporated somewhere out of sight. The stone base was mostly gone. Only a lip around the edge where he had gained footing was still in place. Below that, a smooth wormhole tunnel corkscrewed out of sight. What had appeared as the well’s bottom from above was an optical illusion. In reality, it was the descending, curved walls of a continuing tunnel.

“Diaz,” he called upward, “when Jade shot the floor, it broke the entire base, and she must have collapsed through it. The tunnel continues down as a spiraling shaft. Unless it’s exceedingly long, we should have enough rope to make it down, and also have a way out. Come on down. Just be careful not to dislodge the rifle above.”

There were indistinguishable utterances. Then he heard Diaz above breathing heavily as he started down the rope.

“Jade!” Tolen yelled down the winding tunnel, cupping his hand to the side of his mouth.

He paused to listen. The only sound was Diaz working his way down the rope, panting from overhead.

Tolen was not going to wait. Jade was most likely incapacitated. He turned the flashlight off and deposited it into his pocket. Once again, he was mired in darkness. Tolen stepped down into the curved shaft while holding onto the rope. He moved into it backward, walking his hands down the rope as his feet, then his legs, made contact with the walls. Tolen was pleased to discover the walls were polished stone. Sliding down them would be the equivalent of going down a playground slide. Depending on if and where it emptied out, Jade might have survived. Then again, if the cave drained out into a deep recess…He didn’t want to think about it.

Tolen wormed his way down feet first on his stomach, using the rope to assist him. The angle of the corkscrewed walls was such that he was almost ready to let go of the rope completely and skirt his way down by keeping his hands and feet spread and in contact with the sides to brake as he slid. With the sleek walls, though, he was unsure if he could maintain the required pressure to avert a freefall, so he continued his blind descent as quickly as he could, using the rope as a guide. After several winding turns, he felt the rope jostle in his hands, pulling taut from above. This signaled that Diaz had reached the base and was following him down the twisting shaft.

Tolen lost track of the number of revolutions as the corkscrew shaft wound into the bowels of the Petra. He grew increasingly concerned that the rope, which was seventy-five-feet long, would run out before he reached the end.

When his feet no longer felt hard stone, he stopped. He had reached the end of the tunnel, and the end of the rope. A sweet musk rose to meet him. Tolen drew his knees to his chest and turned on his back, compacting his body. This allowed him to withdraw his flashlight from his pocket, while holding onto the rope with his other hand. He stretched his legs back out and shined the flashlight over his body to see where the spiraling shaft had ended.

The light failed to find a wall. Confused, Tolen directed the beam down and was thankful to see a brown, wrinkled floor three feet below. Jade was nowhere in sight, yet his visage was obscured by the angle. He pushed his way out of the tunnel and carefully stood upright.

Jade was crumpled at the base of the wall. He had nearly stepped on her.

Anxiously, he knelt down beside her and touched her wrist. Thankfully, he felt a strong pulse.

“Jade?” he said, laying a hand on her back. Her face was pressed to the rumpled floor, which Tolen realized was a bed of sticks and dried leaves. She roused, sat up in a daze, and brushed the natural debris from the side of her cheek.

“Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah. I remember...falling,” she stammered, pushing her dark bangs out of her eyes. “Where are we?”

“At the end of a secondary tunnel, deep inside the Petra. It appears we’re in another cavern,” he said, helping her to her feet. Leaves and twigs clung to her clothes and her bare skin. She took a moment to brush them off.

“The floor is covered in dried debris which cushioned your fall and may have saved your life.”

“Tolen, did you find Jade?” Diaz’s voice echoed down through the wormhole.

“Yes, she’s safe.” Tolen reached down and found his pistol among the branches. He latched the safety back on and reholstered it.

A few seconds later, Diaz popped out of the hole, turning his body awkwardly to reach the floor, nearly falling.

“What is this place?” Jade mused, turning her flashlight about the round room.

“Hell,” Diaz scoffed, rising beside her.

The circular room was rather small. It had a domed ceiling adorned with a mosaic of vibrant colors, artwork as impressive as the cathedral cave in Costa Rica. A dozen carved pilasters ran up the walls, equally spaced around the room. Thankfully, there was no water to contend with here. Beyond that, the chamber was reminiscent of the Costa Rican cave, except on a smaller scale, and with pilasters instead of the niche altars.

Jade shined her flashlight on the nearest pilaster and drew in a sharp breath. “Look at the faces.”

The pilaster was a mass of distraught and tortured expressions formed with such precision that Tolen could see rivulets of sweat running down some of the cheeks. Fused faces were elongated, twisted in agony. It was as if they had all just experienced some cataclysmic torment which was so horrifying, so painful, they had lost their minds.

“That’s disturbing,” Diaz remarked.

Tolen turned his flashlight to the floor and began walking. The dry twigs and branches snapped crisply with the weight of each step, and he got the distinct impression he was moving across thick padding. He stopped and tried to locate the true floor. Even after kicking close to six inches of debris aside, all Tolen found were more layers of thin, brittle sticks and dried, rotting leaves. There was no telling how much natural debris coated the austere cave floor. Oddly, the smell of decaying wood and rot remained tinged with an unusual musky fragrance.

Three beams of light lanced about the cavern. Except for the debris lining the floor and the pilasters nestled against the walls, the room was empty. Tolen spotted a fissure in the far side of the room which sliced up to the ceiling. A gap of at least two feet led into total darkness.

“There,” he called to the others, focusing his light on it.

The threesome approached the vertical crevice. It was jagged and crusty; lichen caked at the edges. Jade shined her flashlight inside, where a long, dark corridor stretched into the distance. Unlike the underground chamber in Costa Rica, this hallway had a warren of doorways carved on both sides; at least ten, maybe more. The ground coating of dried twigs, leaves, and small limbs continued into the passageway.

“We must be under the Petra. This corridor might even extend under the bay,” Jade remarked. She slid through the crevice first, followed by Diaz, then Tolen. The ground continued to crunch sharply beneath their feet as they walked. Ahead, the openings to either side were staggered. The first one they came to was on the left and cut perfectly through four inches of stone. It was approximately the size and shape of a house doorway.

Jade turned her light into the room. They were met with a surprising sight.

The stone floor was clear and visible, and at least a foot below where they stood in the passageway. There was a narrow threshold across the entrance that reached up twelve inches and prevented the branches and twigs in the corridor from spilling into the room. The small enclosure was void, save for a six-foot-long, white, rectangular stone box that was perched low on a gray, stone pedestal in the center of the room. It was fitted on top with a lid which overhung by no more than an inch on all sides.

“What is that?” Diaz asked.

“I…I think it’s a coffin,” Jade said.

Tolen thought the same thing, yet he was having a hard time processing who might warrant such a secretive and exclusive tomb, unless, perhaps…

They stepped down carefully into the room and walked up to the long stone box. There were no writings or markings on the top. Jade examined the barren sides. “There’s no indication
who
or
what
is inside.” She touched the surface. “It’s coarse. I think it’s made of limestone.”

Tolen looked at Diaz. The unspoken message was received. Diaz went to one end, Tolen to the other. They grabbed the thick stone lid and slowly slid it to the side. It scraped like fingernails on a chalkboard. They stopped after only a few seconds to peer into a six-inch gap where Jade held the flashlight in place. The two men crowded beside her. The smell that reached them was harsh.

Sure enough, they saw disarticulated human remains inside, replete with a skull lolled to the side, facing them. Tolen could tell by the pronounced, angular bone structure and narrow hips that it was a male.

Diaz leaned back and crossed himself. “Why do we keep disturbing the dead?”

“Any idea who this is?” Tolen asked Jade, disregarding Diaz’s comment.