The countryside grew more rugged and less populated the higher the ambulance and its companion climbed. Dark piney woods crowded in on both sides. With the Mercedes close behind, the ambulance turned onto a dirt lane that was almost hidden by overgrowth.
The vehicles lurched along the cratered road for about a half mile. The road came to an abrupt end without warning. Silhouetted against the starry sky was a squat two-story structure. Baltazar got out of the Mercedes and breathed in the cool night air. The only sound was the moaning of the wind through empty rooms of the old Crusader castle. Baltazar soaked in its ancient aura, gaining strength by his proximity to the ruin that had housed his forebears.
The government had once tried to acquire the historic structure and turn it into a tourist attraction. The plan disintegrated after supporters received death threats, which was just as well for those who knew the fearsome history of the place. The locals still whispered about the unspeakable horrors associated with the moldering ruin.
Baltazar hadn’t visited the castle since the last offering to Ba’al. He remembered the stark defensive architecture of the building. It was built as a fortress originally. The roof was crenellated to provide shelter for defenders. The only openings in the otherwise blank façade were arrow slits for archers. But mostly, he remembered the Room.
He climbed a short set of stairs to the entrance. Using an antique key, he unlocked the door, which swung open with a mournful creak. The empty rooms were like refrigerators that kept out the heat of the day and preserved the cold. Baltazar called out to his men to bring the stretcher in and to place it in front of a fireplace big enough for a man to stand in.
There were six mercenaries, all culled from his security company. Their major attributes had been obedience, cruelty, and the ability to keep their mouths shut. He told them to take up guard posts. As soon as he was alone, he pressed a combination of stones on the mantle. The procedure unlocked a door hidden in the back of the fireplace.
He switched on an electric torch, ducked through the fireplace door, and descended a flight of stone stairs.
A miasma of air more foul than dragon’s breath flowed up from below. The musty tomblike odor carried memories of pain and terror and was heavy with an oily smell. But to Baltazar it was as sweet as perfume. He stopped to light a wooden torch in a wall sconce and used its flames to ignite wall torches that lined a short passageway. At the end of the corridor was a perfectly round room about a hundred feet in diameter.
Plaques set into the walls marked the ancestral resting place of scores of Baltazars who’d been buried in the castle before the family was forced to flee to Cyprus. Figures of Ba’al in the god’s various incarnations ringed the room.
In the center of the chamber was a bronze statue that resembled the stone one in the basement of his mansion in the United States. Like the other, it was a sitting figure whose arms were outstretched with the palms up. It was at least four times as large, sitting on a pedestal around six feet tall. Narrow stairways ran up both sides of the pedestal. The face on the smaller statue was almost benign compared to the visage of the larger one. It was more hideous than the ugliest gargoyle.
Baltazar climbed the stairs. He stood on a small platform behind the statue. The ancient priests took their post here, speaking into a voice tube that they had used to instill even more fear in their hapless victims.
He removed the family book from its bag and placed it on a ledge specially made to hold it. Reading the rituals from the book, he wrapped his fingers around a lever that protruded from between the shoulder blades of the seated figure. He pulled the lever down. There was a grating noise as a system of weights and pulleys came into play and doors slid open to reveal a circular pit in the floor directly in front of the statue.
He lifted the lever. The statue’s arms dropped down at the elbows and snapped up almost as quickly.
He descended the stairs and checked the pit with his light. It had been refilled with oil after the last time it had been used, when the family fortunes were on the wane and it had been necessary to make an offering to Ba’al.
A young Eastern European woman with no family had been lured to Cyprus with the promise of a well-paying job.
All was ready.
He went back for Carina. The bandaged figure on the stretcher stirred. Good, Baltazar thought. He wanted Carina to see the fate that awaited her. He undid the straps that held her on the stretcher and slung her over his shoulder fireman-style.
Baltazar heard a moan from Carina’s lips. She was coming to.
He smiled. Soon she would be in the loving arms of Ba’al.
Chapter 53
THE VOICE OF THE BRITISH TORNADO FB fighter pilot crackled over the intercom.
“Welcome to the beautiful island of Cyprus, birthplace of Aphrodite, goddess of love.”
Austin sat behind the pilot in the seat normally occupied by the supersonic plane’s weapons system operator. The plane made a circle over the British Air Force base near the old Roman city of Curium before it dropped out of the sky in a quick descent. As the jet’s landing gear thumped on the tarmac, Austin gazed out at the runway lights after the ninety-minute flight from England and wondered at how small the planet had become.
Hours earlier he had hitched a ride on a CIA helicopter to Albany. From there, an executive jet transported him to Andrews Air Force Base in Maryland, where the Blackbird was housed in a special hangar, and flown only at night.
The SR-71 had been developed as a long-range strategic reconnaissance aircraft that could fly at speeds of more than Mach 3.2 and reach an altitude of eighty-five thousand feet. The flattened fuselage, bluer than black, was more than one hundred feet long, excluding the five-foot-long nose probe. Two vertical stabilizers rose from the rear of the plane like twin shark fins. One of the 32,500-pound thrust engines could power an ocean liner.
Austin was given a high-protein meal of steak and eggs, a medical exam, and fitted out for a special suit similar to those used on the space shuttle. As he suited up, he breathed in pure oxygen to filter gases out of his body. A van took him to the barn where the plane was kept and he was buckled into a specially built passenger seat. The plane rendezvoused with a tanker seven minutes after taking off. Less than two hours later, it landed at a British RAF base in England.
Flagg had arranged for the fighter to transport Austin on the last leg of the trip because it would be less obvious than a U.S. Air Force plane in Cyprus, where the British had long maintained a military foothold.
A car drove out onto the tarmac and paced the fighter jet until it stopped. Three men dressed in black slacks, turtlenecks, and berets got out of the car to greet Austin as he climbed from the plane.
“Good evening, Mr. Austin,” said the group’s leader, a swarthy Greek American who identified himself as George. He said he had been brought in from Athens to rendezvous with agents from Cairo and Istanbul. A fourth man, who was attached to the American embassy in Nicosia, and was familiar with the island, had gone ahead to scout out the situation.
“Are you armed?” George said.
Austin patted a bulge in the front of his jacket. While Austin was flying to Maryland, Flagg had had someone from Langley pick up a change of clothes and the Bowen revolver from Austin’s boathouse and deliver it to Andrews.
George smiled. “I should have known better than to ask an ex–company man. But these might come in handy.” He handed Austin a pair of night vision goggles and a beret.
Austin was bundled into the Land Rover. An air force car escorted them to the exit, and a guard waved them through the gate. They traveled along a darkened highway at speeds of nearly a hundred miles an hour for a time before the driver braked and turned off onto a road that ascended into the mountains.
George handed Austin a satellite photo and a flashlight. The photo showed a perfectly square building whose remote mountain-top location was accessed by a single road.
George’s phone chirped. He listened for a few moments and clicked off. He turned to Austin. “A car and an ambulance just arrived at the castle.”