The Jerusalem Creed: A Sean Wyatt Thriller (13 page)

Sean allowed himself a feeling of smug relief. The flickering candles that cast an eerie yellowish light on the walls meant that the priest had been in recently, which meant he wouldn’t return for at least a few more hours.

He moved around the circular room, passing a rug that had been rolled up and placed against the wall. No other furniture or items of interest were lying around. When he reached the backside of the statue, Sean stopped and scratched his head. There was nothing here.

He scanned the walls first then the floor, desperately searching for anything that might give them a clue: a symbol, a word, a hieroglyph. But there was nothing.

A second before he was about to walk around to the entrance and tell Tommy to have a look around, he noticed something in a peculiar place. He stepped closer to the statue’s back and kneeled down to get a closer look. It was almost unnoticeable at first. How he’d seen it in the first place was a minor miracle. A tiny circle had been carved into the back of the stone box. Inside the circle was a familiar emblem.

The Star of David.

Yogyakarta

“Tommy,” Sean hissed through the stupa’s entryway. His friend spun around with a look of concern carved onto his face. “Get in here.” Sean waved his hand frantically, motioning for Tommy to look at what he’d found.

Tommy took a hesitant glance around and then hurried inside.

“Close the door behind you,” Sean ordered. Tommy spun around and did as told before scurrying around the statue to where Sean stood anxiously waiting.

“What?”

Sean answered by pointing at the tiny emblem on the back of the box. “Does that seem out of place in Indonesia to you?”

Tommy’s smile beamed. “It certainly does,” he said with a satisfied nod. “And look at that,” he pointed at the seams that ran alongside the outer edge of the box. “Looks like we’re going to need the nail claw after all.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Yeah, I knew you were going to say that.” He got down on his knees again and set the rucksack at the statue’s base. His hand reached into the bag to retrieve the yellow nail claw and immediately went to work on prying the drawer from its slot.

At first, it wouldn’t budge. The tip of the nail remover was almost too thick to fit into the tiny slit between the shelf and the rest of the box. Sean tried both sides and then the top. It took a few minutes, but he was finally able to get the drawer to move a few millimeters.

“It’s in there tight,” he said, grunting while he worked.

“Well, it’s been there for a few thousand years, so you know…” Tommy’s smart aleck response would have normally caused Sean to laugh if he wasn’t in the middle of a painstaking effort.

The tool created a big enough gap that Sean was able to jam half the shaft inside and use the upper lip of the box to leverage it. He pushed hard, and the object slid out, stone grinding on stone as it moved. A short burst of musty air shot past their faces, tickling their hair. Sean sighed and took a long breath, straightening his back to stretch it.

Tommy drew close and got down on both knees. They stared at the drawer with shocked faces. Sean took a deep breath and let it out slowly, putting his hands on his hips. The two turned their heads toward each other and then back to the drawer.

It was empty. All that was inside were some characters chiseled hastily into the stone.

Tommy frowned and fished the paintbrush from the rucksack. He carefully dusted the bottom surface of the stone drawer, making the ancient characters a little easier to see.

“Is that Sudanese?” Sean asked. He thought he was correct in his assumption, but it was one of those rare languages like old Gaelic. Not many people spoke it or understood how to read it.

“I think so,” Tommy said, pulling his phone out of a cargo pocket. He took a picture and tapped the screen a few times before putting it back. “But just to be safe, we’ll let Tara and Alex have a look. Since neither of us can speak or read whatever this is, might be faster to just let them look it up.”

“Good idea.” Sean glanced over at the door, realizing they’d left it unwatched for more than a couple of minutes.

His feet started carrying him that way as Tommy continued to kneel by the base of the statue and gaze at the engraving. “I wonder why it’s empty, though. I mean, this has to be the place, right?”

“Yeah,” Sean said, only half hearing his friend’s question.

“There wouldn’t be a Davidic star on this drawer if it was the wrong place. You think someone stole it?”

Sean didn’t answer this time. He reached the iron door and pulled it back a few inches. He leaned around the edge and peeked through the crack.

“Sean? I said, do you think someone stole it? I don’t see any signs of robbery. Other than the few chips you just took off, it looks like the thing’s been left intact ever since it was put here.”

Out in the open on the temple roof, Sean’s eyes darted from one stupa to the next, alert to a danger he wasn’t sure was there. He swallowed and waited. If someone was out there, they weren’t stupid. They were biding their time until the Americans came out.

There
. Near the wall, he could see through the holes of a dome, someone crouching. The person was in casual, touristy clothes, but he was holding something typical tourists didn’t: a gun.

Sean looked around the rest of the space, not expecting to see anyone else, more to give the effect that he’d not noticed the person hiding beyond one of the stupas. He eased the door closed and spun around quickly.

“We have to get out of here,” he hissed urgently.

Tommy popped up from behind the statue, an expression of sudden concern on his face. “What? Why?”

Sean cast him a look that told him he should know better than to ask.

The realization hit Tommy a second later. “Right. Trouble. How many are there?”

“Don’t know.” Sean shook his head once. “I only saw one out there, but you can bet there are more.”

Tommy’s look of concern grew visibly worse. “How did they know we were here? No one knows we’re here except the kids. And we know they didn’t say anything to anyone.”

“The fact is that someone followed us here.” In his mind, Sean beat himself up for not seeing the tail. Over the years, people had become better and better at the art of tailing a target, often using two, three, and sometimes four decoys to throw off an alert driver. Things had changed rapidly over the last decade and were much more advanced than spycraft of the 1950s.

“How are we going to get out of here?” Tommy asked, realizing immediately after saying it that he wasn’t being helpful.

Sean calmly, but swiftly, stepped to the front of the statue, knocking over a few of the candles. He picked up a heavy bronze vase and carried it back over to the door. He set it down and wedged the base of it between the bottom of the door and the threshold. A couple of firm kicks jammed it into place. Sean stood up and pulled on the door latch. It didn’t budge.

He turned around and stalked back over to where Tommy was standing, watching his friend work.

“That’s great, but it doesn’t exactly help us get out of here.”

“No,” Sean agreed. “But it buys us some time.”

“Time to do what?”

Sean bent over and grabbed the pistol out of his ankle holster. He checked the magazine again and made sure a round was in the chamber. Tommy copied his friend’s procedure. They inched their way backward to the rear of the statue, keeping their eyes on the door.

When they were safely behind it, Tommy realized something that he’d blown off a few minutes ago.

“A draft,” he said vaguely.

“What?” Sean held his weapon at the ready next to his chin.

“When you pulled out that drawer,” Tommy pointed his barrel at the drawer sitting by the statue’s base, “a draft of stale, cool air shot out from it. I can still feel a little of it right now.” He crouched down and put his free hand out over the dark cavity beyond the dislodged drawer.

Sure enough, a stream of gentle, cool air trickled over his skin. He looked up at Sean, who was peering into the crevasse, then back down again. “Where do you think it goes?”

Sean stole a glance over at the door. “Doesn’t matter. We don’t have another option. In ten minutes, they could come through that door. They’ll cut us down in no time. We were lucky in Israel. We got the drop on those guys. That’s not going to happen here.”

Tommy stood up. “Okay, but how do we get in there?”

Sean kneeled down on one knee and ran his finger along the bottom edge of the statue’s platform. “This thing isn’t built into the floor. It’s just resting on top of it. We’ll need to move it to be able to fit through the hole.”

“Oh, I see. So we’re just going to desecrate a place that Buddhists consider holy.”

Sean caught his sarcasm but ignored it. “We’re not going to hurt it. Just move it a little. Look, no disrespect to Buddhists, but it’s just a representation of Buddha. It isn’t actually him. Trust me, they’ll be able to move it back.”

“What if we break it?”

“We aren’t going to break anything. Jeez.” Sean was exasperated. He appreciated Tommy’s love for history. Sean had similar feelings on the subject. But at the moment, survival took precedent over everything else. “Just help me move this thing.”

Sean stood up behind the statue and started pushing on the back of the head and waist. Tommy joined him on the other side and mimicked his friend’s efforts.

“Just so we’re on the same page, we’re trying to shimmy this thing back and forth until it slides over a bit. That sound about right?”

“Yep,” Sean nodded.

The heavy statue barely moved at first, only sliding an inch along the ground as the two men pushed and pulled. Leaning against the heavy stone, the two tried rocking it back and forth, grunting harder with each moment’s exertion. Their work gained momentum but not the way they’d planned. The bottom of the statue lifted higher and higher, first on the front, then on the back, and again on the other side. Each rocking motion created a loud thud that resonated off the domed walls.

“Sean,” Tommy’s voice filled with concern, “I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s going to fall over.”

“Almost there,” Sean said between breaths. “It’ll be fine.”

The two gave one last heave, and the statue slid forward but caught on the bottom front edge of the base. Gravity and momentum did the rest and the Buddha toppled over headfirst. It slammed into the floor with a loud crash. The sculpture’s head snapped off and rolled over to the far wall. One of the arms broke free and lay on the floor amid a cloud of debris and dust.

“Not going to break it, huh?” Tommy gazed at the sight regretfully. “You think they’re going to be able to just fix that?” He pointed with an outstretched hand.

Sean stared at the mess. “That was not what I had planned.”

“You think?”

“Look, we’ll write them a check or something. We have to move.”

“That’s a priceless piece of history we just destroyed.” Tommy’s hands were held out wide.

“I know, buddy. I promise. That wasn’t what I had in mind but if we stick around here we’re dead. Now please, help me move this base.”

Tommy shook his head but did as requested. The two bent down, put their fingers under the lip of the stone box, and pulled hard, using their legs to do most of the lifting. The heavy object didn’t put up as much of a fight as the statue, and toppled over after their first effort. It teetered over and stopped when the top hit the underside of the statue.

Where the box had been, a large hole opened up in the floor. The dank air wafted up into the chamber. Sean grabbed one of the two flashlights out of the rucksack and handed it to Tommy before taking the other for himself. The two flipped on the beams and pointed the lights down.

The area below was a dark passageway, surrounded on all sides by the stonework of the temple. Old cobwebs decorated the edges of the hole and corners of the corridor.

“The good news is that it’s not a long drop down. Maybe eight feet at the most.”

Sean’s words did little to comfort Tommy, who was clearly reluctant about the idea. “You sure about this?”

Something struck the iron door on the other side of the room. It sounded like a bullet.

“They’re testing the door’s strength,” Sean said. “Bullets won’t get through it, but they’ll get past my little wedge within five minutes. The tunnel is our only choice.”

Tommy looked back over at the door and then back down into the hole.

“You know you’ve been in worse places, buddy,” Sean said reassuringly.

“I hope you’re right.”

Tommy crouched down, grabbed the lip of the cavity, and lowered himself into the passageway.

Sean took one last glance over at the doorway. Something hit it hard. They were trying to barge through. In a few minutes, they would succeed. He just hoped the passageway didn’t lead to a dead end, literally and figuratively.

He bent down, put the end of his flashlight in his mouth, and gripped it with his teeth. Then he took hold of the edge of the hole and dropped into the darkness.