Evidently Joachim was saving his breath for crawling.
Cursing, realizing he was more afraid of losing touch with the puzzle than he was of getting trapped underground, Lourds dropped into the grave, fell to his stomach, and entered the tunnel.
Stone Goose Apartments
Zeytinburnu District
Istanbul, Turkey
19 March 2010
Sevki sat on the edge of his chair and captured images of the men waiting round the Hagia Sophia. When he had them all, he turned to another monitor and cropped the images into headshots of the individuals, choosing full frontal and profile shots where he could find them. His software was exotic, a blend of high-tech government imaging programs equipped with a special code he added. When he didn’t have a full frontal or profile shot, he resampled the image, corrected the angle and had the program fill in the blank spots. It wasn’t perfect, but he’d found over the years that it was good enough.
Employers often hired him to cover payoffs and exchanges so they wouldn’t be surprised who was there. Or to get a record of who was there so they could exact revenge if necessary.
Once he had the images in the shape he wanted, he ran them through international identification systems he had hacked into. He knew he was probably going to burn one of the back doors he’d built into the system because he was dumping eight faces in at once. Someone was going to catch him this time. He only hoped he could get in and out with the information he needed before that happened.
While the programs ran, and he surveyed the connections to know when a protective firewall discovered his false identification, he stared at the church grounds. His thoughts ran rampant.
A scroll. Buried and lost for hundreds of years. How much is something like that worth? The question buzzed inside his mind, but he already knew the answer: enough to get killed over.
The communication he had with Cleena over the earwig was intermittent; it was interrupted by the surrounding rock and the other shielded communications within the area used by the men chasing her. The rasp of her breathing and the infrequent curses and yelps of pain let Sevki know she was still alive and still running.
The first face froze on the monitor as identification was made. In neat lines of script beneath the face, Sevki learned that the man was Corliss Baker, a Marine sergeant killed in action in Iraq six years ago. Baker had been recognized for several acts of bravery. Then the second man was identified. His name was Zachary Stillson. He’d also died in Iraq six years ago. Strangely enough, he had been killed in the same engagement that had taken the life of Corliss Baker. A third man, Henry Marstars, also a Marine, had died in that same battle.
A warning icon flashed onto the screen to let Sevki know he had alerted the gatekeepers at the other end of the hacked connection. He dumped a potpourri of foolies and false trails into the mix in case they had managed to tag him – which he considered doubtful – and fled the site.
When he settled back into his chair, he wasn’t surprised to learn he was drenched in sweat. Digging around in American military or corporate databases always left him like that. Those entities had a habit of hiring people as gifted as he was. No matter how curious or financially rewarding a cyber score could be, Sevki didn’t want to lose his home. He had worked hard to buy the building and he was happy there. But he was also a game player. A gauntlet had been thrown down by the ‘ghosts’ currently haunting the Hagia Sophia.
He continued monitoring the situation on the ground at the church, but he opened up a new window on another screen and began tracking down what he could about this military engagement in Iraq. He did love a conspiracy.
Crypt of the Elders
Hagia Sophia Underground
Istanbul, Turkey
19 March 2010
Sharp stones bit into Lourds’ knees and elbows as he crawled through the narrow tunnel. He held his hat in one hand because he couldn’t crawl while wearing it. He banged his head several times on the low roof. That chill clinging to the earth leached into his bones and tightened his muscles. He couldn’t see past the people in front of him and that worried him considerably. The tunnel wasn’t straight. Occasionally it dipped or rose, probably to avoid harder strata above or below. Scars of tools used by the men who had dug the tunnel lined the passageway.
He was certain he was bleeding from a score of small wounds but couldn’t be sure in the darkness. His strained breathing rasped in his ears and he wondered if the oxygen level was enough to sustain them all. Perhaps the efforts of so many people all at one time were charging the air with carbon dioxide and they would all suffocate before they reached the other end.
That’s the problem with being over-educated, he chided himself. You can always find something with which to scare yourself.
He kept crawling, forcing away the pain in his elbows and knees that felt like tiny teeth tearing into his flesh. He thought he heard the sounds of pursuit. The idea of the gunmen slithering through the tunnel behind him in the darkness filled him with fear that was even colder than the earth round him.
‘I think I can get through, sir.’
Eckart looked at the soldier nearest the rock fall. Through the hole they’d created, he saw only darkness. Either the people they were after had extinguished the lights or they’d abandoned their positions.
‘Do it,’ Eckart ordered. ‘Kill anything that moves.’
The man nodded and drew his pistol. ‘Including the professor?’
‘It’s dark down there. You don’t have time to decide who’s who.’
‘Yes, sir.’ With a pistol in one hand and a halogen flashlight in the other, the soldier dived headfirst through the opening in the fallen rock. He slid, feet spread wide to help control his descent, but he went in a rush and an avalanche of small stones rattled after him.
Tense and annoyed, Eckart waited and peered into the darkness.
‘The locals are coming up to speed,’ Mayfield warned over the headset. ‘Someone has called in an alert and claimed that shots have been fired in your twenty.’
‘Roger that,’ Eckart replied. ‘Topside and support, clear out. We’ll stay with this in an attempt to flush the professor.’ Webster wouldn’t be happy unless they came away with either the scroll or Lourds.
At the bottom of the rock slide, the point man got to his feet and shone his light around. The illumination shifted and changed, but no shots were fired. That was a bad sign.
‘Clear,’ the point man called up. ‘They’re not here.’
Eckart cursed and slid down feet first. At the bottom, he stood and moved to the other side of the room from the point man in case a trap had been laid. Desperate men did desperate things, and they still weren’t sure who the men were who accompanied Lourds.
The room looked like living quarters of some kind, but there was no electricity and no sign of running water. Eckart flicked his flashlight beam across the ceiling out of habit. Most people didn’t look up. Soldiers were trained to for urban assault. All he saw was the stone ceiling.
The rest of his unit slid into the room. They spread out without being told.
‘Door at the back.’ Eckart trained his flashlight on the dark rectangle in the wall.
‘On it.’ One of the soldiers stepped forward with his pistol at the ready. After a second, he swung inside the room. ‘All clear.’
‘Any other exits?’ Eckart asked.
‘Negative, sir. None that I see.’
‘Check for those you don’t see. Those people didn’t just vanish.’
‘Affirmative, sir.’
The point man halted beside a large rectangle in the floor. His flashlight illuminated a wooden coffin.
‘Sir,’ the point man called.
Eckart joined him, gazing briefly at the coffin, then into the open grave in the floor. ‘A rat hole?’
‘Yes, sir.’ The point man nodded. ‘That’s what it looks like.’