‘I’ve got it,’ said Eddie, holding it in place. Nina tugged again. The thick flagstone lifted higher — and dust blew out from beneath it as a dark crack opened up. ‘It’s coming out!’ More effort, and he managed to slide the slab out of its resting place. Once freed, it did not take long to move clear.
Nina peered into the revealed opening. A vertical shaft dropped into darkness below, holes cut into one wall acting as a ladder. ‘This is it!’ she announced in awe. ‘We found the way into the Palace Without Entrance. Or rather,’ she went on, looking up at her husband, ‘you did, Eddie. You bypassed the puzzle — which means you actually out-thought King Solomon!’
Eddie grinned. ‘I always thought I was really wise. It’s just no one ever agreed with me!’
‘It’s very possible that nobody has been inside the palace since Solomon built it!’ said Ziff excitedly. ‘We have to get down there and see.’
‘Your attitude’s changed since we opened up the First Temple,’ Nina said, lightly teasing. ‘You weren’t in such a rush back then.’
‘What can I say? You have shown me the benefits of your… unique approach.’ The old man grinned. ‘But this is an incredible find. The First Temple had been lost, yes, but its existence was never in doubt. This, though? It is a legend brought to life!’
‘We’d better get some more gear, then,’ said Eddie. ‘Lights, for a start.’ He was about to call down to Fortune when he noticed something odd about the slab they had removed. ‘Hold on, look at this.’
He indicated the bottom of the square flag. Beneath the inches of pale stone was a layer of a dull grey material. ‘Is that lead?’ Nina asked. She tapped it with a crowbar. The soft metal dented with the contact. ‘It is.’
Ziff pointed into the entrance. ‘There is more here, on the inside.’ Beneath its lip was another line of grey, close to an inch thick. ‘It goes all the way around.’
Eddie drew back in alarm. ‘The place is lead-lined? It is fucking radioactive!’ Several of the others pulled away from the opening. ‘No wonder all the bloody trees are sick! We need to get out of here.’
Lydia shook her head. ‘A radiation source wouldn’t make that low-frequency noise.’
‘What are you, a nuclear physicist?’
She looked offended. ‘As a matter of fact, I did study physics at university.’
‘Oh, well, then I wholeheartedly apologise,’ he said with a sarcastic lack of contrition. ‘But King Solomon bricked up whatever’s down there inside a lead-lined palace because it killed off the people who lived around it! This whole place was called the City of the Damned, remember?’
‘There’s a way we can check,’ Lydia insisted. ‘Jay, put the camera’s lens cap on and point it down the hole, then shoot some footage.’
Rivero shot her a bewildered frown. ‘What good’ll that do?’
‘If there’s any dangerous radiation down there, the camera’s CCD will still pick it up even through the cap — it’ll show on the recording as static. We did an experiment using an old phone camera where we put tape over the lens and filmed a radiation source. It looks like snow.’
The cameraman was still unconvinced. ‘Wait, so you want me to poke my face into Chernobyl?’
‘If it really is radioactive down there, we’ve already been exposed to it,’ Nina pointed out. ‘And David and I have been closer to it than anyone else.’
‘Okay, then you shoot the footage!’
She impatiently held out her hands. ‘Give me the camera, then.’
The prospect of surrendering what was practically an inseparable appendage gave Rivero second thoughts. ‘No, no, it’s okay, I can do it,’ he muttered, sulkily attaching the lens cap and moving to the shaft. All the same, he held the camera at arm’s length as he pointed it into the darkness. ‘All right, five seconds — that better be long enough,’ he said, rapidly retreating.
The Sony had a small fold-out monitor. Everyone clustered around it as he reviewed the recording. ‘It just looks black,’ said Fisher, relieved.
Rivero paused playback, zooming in on the frame. Blocky digital artefacts became vaguely visible, but there was no sign of the snow Lydia had described. ‘I think it’s safe,’ she announced.
Expressions of relief echoed around the group. ‘Second kid’s still an option, then,’ Eddie said to Nina.
‘As if the first isn’t enough of a handful?’ she replied. ‘So why would Solomon have lined the roof with lead if not to keep radiation in?’
‘It would protect whatever is inside from water,’ suggested Ziff.
‘Only one way to find out.’ Nina went to the top of the shaft. ‘We have to go inside.’
With the help of the three porters, the team brought all the equipment needed to explore the palace’s interior to its entrance. ‘Okay,’ said Nina, ‘I think we’re ready. We should limit the number of people going inside to start with, though. Sorry,’ she added to her Congolese companions.
‘We don’t get to see the treasure?’ said Wemba, disappointed.
‘We don’t even know if there is any treasure,’ Ziff told him. ‘For all we know, the shaft could be blocked at the bottom.’
‘I could send the drone down to look,’ Howie suggested, patting the quadcopter’s case.
‘I’d rather get the first look with my own eyes, thanks,’ said Nina. ‘And why did you bring it with you at all? A drone won’t be much use indoors.’
‘You’d be surprised,’ Fisher said. He indicated the vaulted roof. ‘There could be a big open space underneath that. If there is, then the drone can fly up to the ceiling and get some great shots of the whole interior.’
‘Just remember that this is an archaeological expedition first and a photo opportunity second,’ Nina insisted. She donned a backpack, then shone a powerful flashlight into the darkness. The holes cut into the wall descended all the way to the bottom, which she estimated was at least twenty feet below the level of the palace’s main roof. ‘Long climb, but doesn’t look too hard.’
‘Someone should stay up here while we’re inside, just in case,’ Eddie said to Fortune.
‘You are expecting trouble?’ his friend asked.
‘No, but I want to be ready for it. If anybody gets hurt, we’ll need to get them out quickly — and our radios won’t work through walls this thick even if they weren’t lined with bloody lead. So we might have to shout up to you.’
‘Somebody will always be here on watch,’ Fortune assured him. He issued instructions to Paris and the porters, who descended the ladder.
Rivero had by now switched on his camera. ‘Nina, if you could give us a speech to camera about descending into the unknown?’ said Fisher as she put on a head-mounted light and prepared to enter the shaft.
The redhead gave him an impatient look. ‘I’m about to descend into the unknown,’ she said, before starting down the ladder. Eddie laughed as the director sighed in annoyance. ‘Okay, here I go.’
The initial climb was easy, boosting her confidence. She paused a few feet down to examine the underside of the entrance. There was no accumulated dirt or evidence of water damage; the slab had been tightly sealed. As Ziff had suggested, it was entirely plausible that it had not been opened since Solomon’s time.
She continued down the stone ladder until darkness surrounded her, then switched on her head torch. The beam followed her gaze, revealing that the stonework was cut with incredible precision. Again, she was reminded of the interior of the First Temple in Jerusalem.
The remainder of the descent was straightforward. Nina finally stepped down at the bottom. Fine dust crunched under her soles. More had accumulated within the lowest stone rungs, as if it had been blown from somewhere below. She turned to see a passageway with a thin layer of the same residue on its floor. Were there openings beyond to let in air from outside? None had been visible on the palace’s exterior…