The Shroud Key (26 page)

My heart pounds.

“Professor,” I yell up into the tunnel. “This is it. This is the crypt. Down here.”

“How do you know?” he shouts.

I tell him about the sun shaft, the mirror, the indented space on the wall.

“I’m coming down,” he says.

A minute and a half later, he and Anya are standing beside me.

“This is incredible,” she says, her wide eyes gazing upon the secret room. “We’re the first modern humans to set our eyes on this place.”

“Not really,” I say. “A group of Vatican soldiers stood here only thirty-five years ago.”

The truth I speak of does nothing to deflate her sense of wonder.

Andre is already consumed with reading the hieroglyphs on the walls.

“Look,” he says with all the enthusiasm of a small child. “This image here. The fertility image.” He points to a male phallus that is erect and discharging semen in a long steady flow. Inscribed beside it is a replica of a sperm cell. “See what’s happening here? This is a microscopic image of a basic sperm cell. Yet the first recorded microscopic sighting of sperm wasn’t documented until the age of Galileo in the early sixteen hundreds.”

“So what’s that prove?” I ask.

“That the ancient Egyptians, including Mankaure, may have been assisted by beings from another world over three to five thousand years ago.”

“Aliens,” I joke. “Thought you were a scientist, Professor?”

He gives me a look.

“How would you explain this, Chase?”

Anya runs her hands along the inscribed image.

“He’s right, Chase. How could the ancient Egyptians know what a sperm cell looks like much less devise the engineering to make this pyramid? To make these secret shafts? The engineering is perfect even by today’s standards.”

“Perhaps the pyramids were designed by an advanced ancient civilization which has since disappeared,” I suggest. “Atlantians, maybe. It would also explain the construction of the Mayan pyramids, and Macchu Picchu.”

“And look at this,” Andre goes on. He’s reading the glyphs that inscribe the wrap-around wall with the same ease that I would apply in reading a newspaper. “See this here. It’s the sun god Ra, looming over the head of Menkaure’s body as Anubis the jackal prepares his body for mummification.” His finger not on Anubis or Ra, but on a figure above them … a figure in the sky. “Notice the ovular-like shape, and how it’s spitting out something that looks like fire from beneath it.”

I take a good look, going so far as to shine my light on it.

“I guess that could be a spaceship, Professor,” I say, not without giggle. “Maybe it’s the heavens opening up for the newly dead Pharaoh. Or maybe it’s just some silly, artsy, scribble-work.”

“Maybe,” Andre admits, taking a step or two back, but careful not to go over the edge. “One thing is for certain. That sarcophagus upstairs wasn’t intended as the final resting place of Menkaure. The ancient Egyptians wished for him to be buried right here. Down inside this secret crypt.”

“Not so secret crypt,” I say. “Remember, the Vatican knows all about it.”

He shakes his head.

“How they discovered it and were able to keep it a secret for three, almost four decades is mind boggling to me.”

“I think there’s quite a bit the Vatican knows about ancient civilizations. Especially about the things that could threaten to destroy their two-thousand year reign as the most popular religion on earth.”

Another glance at my watch.

“How long until the dawn?” Andre says.

“Maybe another fifteen minutes.”

“You think we have that kind of time?” Anya asks.

“Not sure we’ve got much of a choice but to wait it out,” I say. “I did my best to make sure whoever comes our way will, at the very least, be slowed down.”

“I don’t want to know what you’ve done, Ren Man,” Anya says.

I might enjoy a good laugh over her comment if the explosion from the tripped RPG doesn’t rock the Third Pyramid.

CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

“Hell was that?” Andre, wide eyed, biting down on his bottom lip.

“Welcoming party I left for the guards up at the tomb entrance.”

“They’re gonna find us, kill us, and take the bones, take over the world,” Anya laments. Her face has turned pale from anxiety.

“Not if they don’t know how to find us,” I reassure her. But it’s like spitting in the ocean.

I enter back into the tunnel, climb back up to the ramp and, gripping its edge with my right hand, push it back into place. The fit is so precise, so perfectly designed, it actually seals itself together. I have no doubt that from up inside the burial chamber, the empty tomb will appear to be just that … an empty tomb.

But I also know that eventually, the bandits will uncover the secret of the tomb and uncover the secret chamber. After all, the sand that supported the counterweight is there on the chamber floor as evidence. Without a proper counterweight, all it will take is for someone to simply push down on the sarcophagus floor to make it fly back open.

Once more joining the others, I check my watch.

“We don’t have a lot of time,” I say. “Dawn should be here within a minute.”

With all eyes focused on the shaft opening located directly across the open pit, we wait.

“Kill the flashlights,” I say. “And press your backs up against the wall. As tightly as you can. You never know what can happen when the sun hits the mirror.”

“This is it, Chase,” Andre says, that same boy-like excitement in his voice. “The moment I’ve been waiting for, for more years than I care to count.”

I feel a set of fingers slipping themselves into the palm of my hand.

Anya.

I take her hand, hold it tightly. Then, something miraculous happens. The long, narrow, stone shaft begins to fill with light like a test tube filling with blood. Not a bright light at first, but a faint glow. It’s as if the narrow shaft were an old fashioned light bulb filament beginning to get its glow on. The red/orange light quickly begins to intensify however, becoming brighter and brighter until the now bright white light shoots out from the shaft like a laser beam from a ray gun. The concentrated narrow beam then shoots across the room and collides with the mirror embedded into the stone wall beside us, causing yet another bright beam to bounce off of it at a forty-five degree angle to reveal the precise location of the secret chamber.

The chamber that will more than likely contain the mortal remains of Jesus.

We waste no time.

Andre makes his way carefully past Anya and me and goes to the location of the chamber. Like he did earlier with the tomb, he uses his fingers to feel along the wall.

He turns.

“Chase,” he says. “The hammer drill.”

Just like old times…The sandhog is about to get dirty again…

I gather up the cordless tool outside the entry to the tunnel, bring it to Andre. At his direction, I press the chisel end in the very spot indicated by his extended index finger, and let her rip. It doesn’t take a whole lot of effort for the five-by-five foot piece of false stone-and-mortar wall to crumble, revealing a small crypt.

“The wall must have been carefully reconstructed by the Vatican team in ‘78,” Andre explains. “I would have missed it entirely if not for the mirror.”

He forces his way in, shining the flashlight inside the cramped space.

“What do you see?” shouts Anya from behind me.

I poke my head inside, shine the Maglite onto the floor.

“There, Professor,” I say. “On the floor. In the very back.”

“I see it,” he says. “Get in here, Chase.”

Crouching, I shove my way inside. The closer I come to the box I can see that it’s been wrapped in a shroud made of cloth. In the decades since it’s been placed here, the shroud has become ratty and moth eaten. Andre drops to his knees, removes the cloth to reveal a red metal strongbox, not unlike the kind of security deposit box you might find inside a bank vault in Switzerland. Wrapped around the box’s length and width is a section of chain that’s been padlocked. The chain fits so tightly to the locked strongbox, I can’t even get a finger under it.

“We need something to break the chain,” Andre says.

“I could put a bullet into the padlock. But even then, we’re not getting into that box without the help of a pro.”

Then, a noise. The sound of a rock-on-rock seal breaking. Followed by the heavy bang and thud.

“The ramp’s been lowered,” Anya says.

“No time for messing with the padlock,” I insist. “Andre, we have to go.”

“Where to?” he says, standing.

“Good question,” I say, stuffing the thin end of the Maglite into my pant-waist.

There’s nothing in front of us other than solid wall. Already I can make out the heavy, jack-booted footsteps from the bandits descending the stone, trap-door ramp. I look down, make out the faint sound of running water.

“There,” I say. “We go there.”

“How?” Anya says.

The guards are shouting. Shouting at us to stop. Automatic weapons being cocked.

“We jump,” I say.

CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

We stand at the edge of the pit.

“You two go first,” I say, pulling my weapon, firing three rounds up into the ramp tunnel. “I’ll hold them back.”

Andre is holding the box tightly in his arms as if it’s a live child and not the bones of a man dead two-thousand years. A most important man. The most important man to have ever lived.

Shots are fired from the tunnel, the rounds ricocheting and sparking off the stone wall opposite us. More screaming. More stomping of footsteps. I return the fire.

“We have to do this, Professor. Do it now. Or we’re dead anyway!”

While keeping my gun poised on the bandits, I glance over my shoulder to see Andre set the box onto the stone floor.

“You take the box, Chase,” he says. “I’ll take my wife.”

Despite this rapidly closing door, I can’t help but feel a twinge of sadness and even envy, as Anya and her ex-husband take hold of one another’s hands and go over the edge. But I don’t have time for sentiment as I empty the remainder of the clip into the charging guards and, re-holstering the weapon, pick up the box, cradle it tightly in my arms.

As several shots whizz past my head and careen off the wall opposite me, I stare down into a watery pit, the darkness of which is now broken by two separate white Maglites. I have no idea if the man and the woman who belong to those Maglites are dead or still alive. But then what choice do I have but to jump?

Stepping off the edge, Jesus and I fall.