The Shroud of Heaven (25 page)

“But Pierre knows about it.” Her tone was insistent. Her curiosity, now aroused, would not be satisfied with a brush-off. “He used it to get you out here. What’s the connection?”

“I don’t know. To be perfectly honest, all I know is what you probably overheard. There may or may not be a group of people out there with a particular interest in artifacts with religious significance. I’d like to find them, and there’s reason to believe that they may have already discovered what we were looking for.” Despite the deepening twilight, Kismet found that he could see the ruins of the temple in the distance off to his left. “Only we couldn’t prove it today.”

“So if it can’t be proved, what does it mean? That this treasure vault doesn’t really exist? Or that is was never really discovered?”

“Well, no. All we really determined was that there has been no significant change in the soil around the temple mound to a depth of thirty meters. If the vault exists there, it must be deeper than that. And if Saddam’s engineers found it, they must have gone in by a different route—” His fingers abruptly tightened on the railing. “Damn!”

His sudden exclamation caught her off guard and she jumped back a step, breaking the subtle physical contact. “I’m sorry—”

He shook his head, self-deprecatorily. “I can’t believe I didn’t see it.”

“What? What are you talking about?”

He drew in a deep breath, willing himself to relax. “I first learned about this from a man who was involved in the project to rebuild the old city. He claimed to have been there when a discovery was made at the Marduk temple. But there hasn’t been any work done there.”

“So he lied?”

Kismet shook his head. “No. Don’t you see? He wasn’t working on the temple site at all when he made his discovery. He was doing something else…some kind of excavation that inadvertently uncovered the vault. It had to have been deep, because we didn’t detect any sort of cavity, but somewhere under that ruin is a tunnel leading to a secret chamber underneath the Esagila.”

“Then where’s the entrance?”

“That’s what we have to figure out. We assumed that after the discovery, the engineers simply filled in the hole, but if the discovery of the vault was incidental, then the excavation was an end in itself.”

Marie blinked uncomprehending. “What end?”

“We’ll know that when we find the entrance.” He peered once more into the darkness, as if doing so might reveal what hours of patient surveying had not. “It would have to be very well hidden. The UNMOVIC team scoured this place for underground bunkers and buried weapons caches.”

“Could he have used the rebuilt ruins to conceal the excavation?”

“Maybe, but that wouldn’t really permit free access to the tunnel.” Kismet shook his head, as if to clear away cobwebs. “Let’s try to think about this logically. We know there’s a tunnel down there. We know that it runs under the ruins of the temple and that it’s very deep. We also know that Saddam managed to build it in complete secrecy and a thorough search of the area didn’t uncover it. So, where didn’t the UN inspectors look?”

“In the river?” Marie ventured.

Kismet’s gaze involuntarily swung toward the ribbon of water passing below their vantage. “I don’t know. This whole country has been under satellite surveillance for most of the last decade. I doubt an undertaking that on that scale would have gone unnoticed. Still, you may have something there. The inspectors probably wouldn’t have looked in submerged areas, so water would be an excellent camouflage…”

As his words trailed off, they both looked down at the courtyard three stories below. The square basin of the swimming pool was a shadowy void in the ornate terrazzo floor. Marie spoke first. “Surely not.”

“Only one way to find out.” Kismet spun on his heel and raced into the palace.

He had no difficulty navigating the corridors back to the ornate stairway and quickly descended to the main floor. He could hear Marie’s footsteps tapping out a rhythm but no one else seemed to be moving in the main hall of the palace. She caught up with him a few moments later as a shortage of choices forced him to rein in his eagerness.

“What’s wrong?” she asked as she reached his side.

“That pool was just off this wall, right?” He gestured toward a broad expanse, decorated with antique swords and a gaudy mural which looked as though it might have been inspired by a pulp fantasy novel from the 1920s.

“I think so.” She glanced back up the stairs to see if the descent had somehow turned them around. “Yes, that’s where it is.”

“Well, it looks like we can’t get there from here.”

Her gaze swung back to the wall and she instantly understood. Its entire breadth was solid. There were no doors or windows to the outside. “Perhaps you have to go through one of the adjoining rooms.”

“I don’t think so.” The apparent setback had not blunted his enthusiasm. “Something tells me that we’re not supposed to be able to find that pool.”

“I’m not sure I follow you.”

“It’s like a secret room. From the outside, say with satellite reconnaissance or a flyby, you would see an ordinary swimming pool. Nothing too suspicious about that. But there’s always a chance that a closer inspection will reveal its true purpose, so it was designed to be inaccessible from within the palace. My guess is that we’ll have the same trouble outside. I’d even bet that it doesn’t appear on the floor plan.”

“So how do we reach it?”

He scratched his chin thoughtfully. “Well, there has to be some way to get to it, but I’m in favor of the direct approach.”

“Which is?”

He flashed a grin, then headed back up the stairs, returning to the balcony. In the moments since their departure, the night sky had deepened to the extent that the floor of the courtyard below was no longer clearly discernible. He nevertheless peered down into the darkness, leaning out over the balustrade to get a better look at what lay directly below. After a moment, he turned to Marie. “I’ll be right back.”

Without further explanation, he climbed up onto the stone railing and lowered himself out into the open. His initial moment of bravado faltered as the gravity of the situation quite literally asserted itself, but he forced away the instinctive reaction and surrendered himself to the drop. By first dangling from the lip of the balcony, he was able to reduce the distance between his feet and the terrace below to just over four meters. At nearly twice his own height, it was not an insignificant distance. The drop he had taken from a similar overlook at the museum had been only three meters and the landing surface had been softer, if somewhat thornier. Still, that leap had been in extremis, whereas this occasion allowed for a more cautious approach. Steeling his courage, he let go.

He flexed his knees before landing and threw himself forward into a roll as soon as his feet made contact. A twinge of pain shot through his lower extremities, followed by a more pronounced hurt in his shoulder as he slammed onto the hard tile surface. Mindful that he was being observed—and by a woman for whom he could not deny a certain attraction—he jumped to his feet, disdaining the multiple aches that were starting to flare up all over his battered body.

“Are you okay?” Marie whispered her question, although there seemed to be no reason for stealth.

“Piece of cake,” he called back.

“Should I come down?”

Something about the question struck him as odd. His brief experience in Marie’s company had not conveyed the impression of a woman who embraced difficulty. After a day of languishing in the semi-tropical environment that pervaded the ruins, her sudden interest struck him as out of character. She now seemed almost eager to jump off the balcony into the darkness. “No,” he answered, certain his concerns were unfounded. “Wait up there for me. I won’t be a minute, and besides, I might need your help to get out of here.”

The slick terrazzo mosaic reflected gleams of moonlight, but not enough to show any detail. To better investigate the courtyard, Kismet took out his MagLite and pierced the veil of darkness. His earlier assumption, namely that the pool area was completely isolated from the house, was quickly proved correct. There were several faux windows lining the wall that bordered the courtyard, but a close inspection showed bare masonry under the dark glass. He continued along the perimeter of the pool deck, looking for other points of egress. A three-meter high wall, topped with wrought-iron spears surrounded the pool on the remaining three sides, but on one corner near the palace, the wall was interrupted by an arched gateway. An iron barrier, like a portcullis, stretched across the opening and was secured by a heavy chain and padlock.

“I guess he didn’t want anyone crashing his pool parties,” called Kismet, quickly detailing the results of his initial survey. “I’m going to check out the pool now.”

He played his light toward the murky reservoir. It was impossible to distinguish the bottom through the accumulation of moss and algae, but given the relative smallness of the square basin, Kismet concluded that it was probably no more than two meters deep and currently half-filled. The muck covering the surface offered no further clue as to how the pool might conceal an entrance to his hypothetical tunnel, but the smooth walls, though discolored, caught his eye. Unlike the ornate mosaic work on the pool deck, the vertical concrete faces were strictly utilitarian, finished only with a coat of white sealant, now almost uniformly stained by rings of dead algae and numerous irregular dark streaks that looked curiously like tire skid marks. The pool’s period of disrepair seemed to go back further than the start of hostilities.

Kismet noted that the corners were set at right angles. Most swimming pools utilized rounded corners with smooth seamless joints. It stood to reason that the bottom of the pool was likewise squared at the corners and Kismet tried to draw a mental picture of what it might look like when empty. He was now certain that the swimming pool concealed the entrance to a subterranean passageway, but there remained one more crucial piece of the puzzle: a means of opening that secret door.

Stepping away from the edge, he returned the beam to the outer perimeter and began scrutinizing the walls and the false windows for some sort of control mechanism, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He was not overly disturbed by the lack of discovery; the efforts at concealing the doorway would have been poorly served if the doorknob were so obvious to spot.

Marie seemed to understand what he was looking for. “Perhaps it uses a remote control unit, like a garage door opener.”

He pondered the suggestion. “Think about this from their point of view. Radio signals can be detected and intercepted. For that matter, any kind of electrically operated system would be detectable. They would have tried to eliminate any elements that might attract unwanted attention.”

“What does that leave us?”

“A simple mechanical system.” He glanced back at the pool. “Or hydraulics.”

Although he had looked past them several times, the four decorative statues guarding the corners of the basin seized his attention. The life-sized stone carvings—two lions and two water buffalo—were incongruous with the general decor of the area. Though it was easy to dismiss their presence as one more example of Saddam’s eclectic sense of style, Kismet decided to take a closer look.

The nearest lion’s torso straddled a single stone tile, roughly two meters in length. The rectangular surface appeared to have been laid as a pedestal for the sculpture, but none of the lion’s feet were touching it. Kismet knelt and shined his light around the edges of the tile and found that the slab was not held in place by mortar. Inspired by this discovery, he set down the flashlight and used both hands to give the statue a shove.

With surprisingly little resistance, the stone lion moved. Like the slab it guarded, the statue was not anchored in place. Kismet pushed from different angles until all four of the figure’s feet were on the rectangular tile.

Nothing happened.

“We’re missing something,” he declared after a moment of waiting. “But I think we’re on the right track.”

“What makes you think that?” asked Marie from the darkness above.

“This lion has Teflon pads under its feet. It was designed to be moved around without damaging the tile beneath. I think the four statues are counter-weights. If I can figure out the correct sequence, it should open the door.”

“But where is the door?”

“It’s in the pool…under the water.” He briefly illuminated the other statues, lingering on the horned likenesses of the water buffalo. “Could it be that simple?”

He returned the lion to its original position, then moved to the next sculpted figure, a representation of the domesticated river bovine once common in the marshes of southern Mesopotamia before dam construction dried up the swamps. Kismet was not surprised to see that the buffalo’s feet were already positioned on a similar stone tile. After a moment’s exertion, he shifted the statue away from the slab.

From deep beneath his feet, there was a groaning noise and a faint tremor. The rectangular stone seemed to waver in the beam of his flashlight, but there was no dramatic movement and after a few seconds the noise from below ceased. Encouraged nonetheless, Kismet crossed to the opposite corner where the remaining water buffalo was stationed, and likewise pushed it from its perch.

The groaning resumed instantly, followed a moment later by the sound of rushing water. Kismet checked the level of the pool and was not surprised to see that it had been completely drained in a matter of seconds. As the last few drops vanished into drains located along the perimeter of the pool bottom, the groaning noise changed into the scrape of stone sliding against stone. The stone on which the water buffalo statues now stood abruptly rose into the air, revealing that the slabs were merely the caps to twin pillars of concrete. As the columns rose from the deck, the bottom of the pool rose also. Movement ceased only when it drew level with the edge of the pool.

“It’s a hydraulic lift,” declared Kismet, a hint of amazement creeping into his voice. “They built an elevator in the swimming pool.”