“Keep a lookout,” he said to Tommy as he ducked into the archway, shaded from the bright morning sun.
“Yeah. Probably don’t want to get busted breaking into a Buddhist holy site.” Tommy muttered the words as he turned his back to the entrance and watched the area.
Sean grabbed the padlock that hung from the latch. The iron door looked to be over a hundred years old, but that was just a guess based on the corrosion of the metal. The lock was a blackened hunk of metal that had seen better days. Little speckles of rust dotted the loop and lock housing. He spied the opening in the lock’s base, analyzing which component of his lock-picking tool he should use. The decision made, he flipped out a thin blade no larger than the prong of a fork and pulled out a removable metal pick from the other end.
Holding the lock carefully with two fingers, Sean inserted the pick and the blade. It took three tries before he finally heard the mechanism click. He twisted the tools to the left, and the lock slackened. He unhooked the padlock, set it on the floor next to the wall, and grasped the iron latch. When he turned it, it squeaked alarmingly. Sean winced and glanced back at Tommy, who had heard the noise but kept surveying the immediate area for any witnesses.
A click came from inside the heavy door, telling Sean it was free. He leaned into it with his shoulder and cautiously pushed. Surprisingly, the door swung open easily and didn’t creak nearly as loudly as the latch had. A wall of cool, musty air greeted him when he stepped inside. He took a quick inventory of his surroundings.
The walls curved inward until they formed a dome at the top. Each stone was placed perfectly in line with the ones above and below it, creating a flush, smooth surface. A shrine to the Buddha sat in the center. A stone sculpture of the smiling man with arms hovering over crossed legs sat amid an array of burning candles, flowers, and bronze vases. The sculpture sat atop a stone box that had been carved from a separate piece of rock.
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.
17
“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?”