Several minutes of puffing and panting later, Zaugg cursed and kicked the side of it with his boot. “Verdammt!”
“That’s not very respectful,” Lea whispered.
“I wonder if this place puts a curse on everyone who enters it, like Tutankhamen’s tomb did?” Ryan asked casually.
‘Silence!” Zaugg shouted. “Baumann, place a charge on the sarcophagus and get that lid off, now!”
Hawke watched the former German Special Forces man place a couple of modest charges around the lid of the sarcophagus before ordering everyone back behind the safety of some boulders.
Zaugg watched with zeal as Baumann blew the charges and the tomb filled with a fine grey dust and the smell of burned explosives.
“Grobel! To the tomb, now. Tell me what is inside.”
Grobel was hesitant, but Zaugg’s Uzi helped him make the decision to go. He walked slowly over to the shattered tomb and held his glow-stick over the lid as he peered inside.
Hawke and the others watched him in the settling dust, their flashlights illuminating him from a safe distance as he craned his neck over the giant sarcophagus.
“It’s safe!” he called back. “There’s a lot of rubble inside, and dust, but…”
Zaugg clambered to his feet and pushed Baumann roughly out of his way as he moved forward to the sarcophagus. Hawke watched him closely as he too leaned over the edge beside Grobel. He lowered his hands inside and began to rummage around inside, muttering to himself incoherently.
For a moment he simply stared into the dusty sarcophagus, then turned away, wide-eyed with either fear or amazement.
Then the split in the far wall began to grow in size, and small pieces of rock started to crumble out of it. The trickle of water doubled in size and began to flow out into the tomb like a small river.
“It’s a trap!” Baumann said. “The whole bay is above us — we’ll all be drowned.”
Zaugg looked coolly at the rushing water and then back to the sarcophagus. For a moment, a sort of desolation shadowed his face, but then his eyes were lit with a new idea, and an evil, frozen smile began to dance on his lips.
“Baumann, get the men to start loading everything in this cave back to the trucks. We cannot risk being here any longer. Everything goes back to the mountain in Switzerland. I do not want a single penny left in here, not one single gem or coin! And start with the contents of the sarcophagus, is that understood?”
Baumann understood, and moments later the men loaded the contents of the tomb into smaller boxes and walked them through the drained tunnel and back along the complex to Zaugg’s fleet of trucks. Slowly the water began to pour down the wall and collect on the tomb’s floor.
“I have a bad feeling about this,” Reaper said. “I need a cigarette.”
As the men emptied the tomb, Zaugg began to grow more and more anxious, peering into other chests and boxes littered around the sarcophagus’s base with increased concern. “Wo ist die Karte?” he said, quietly at first, and then screaming at the top of his lungs with his arms outstretched in supplication. “Poseidon, wo ist Ihre Karte?!”
Hawke leaned closer to Ryan. “I’m guessing that means ‘map’, am I right?”
“You are indeed. He’s asking Poseidon where his map is.”
“A bloody map?” Hawke muttered. “It took me long enough to accept he was guarding the secret of eternal life in his tomb, and now you’re telling me Zaugg was just looking for a map all along?”
Ryan nodded his head. “Looks that way.”
“That means it could be anywhere in the world.”
“Not that you will ever find it,” Baumann said. He smacked Hawke in the back with the butt of his rifle and knocked him into the dirt on the floor. “Because you’re all going to be dead in a few minutes. Now get up.”
As Hawke clambered to his feet, Baumann’s men walked over with more rope and cable-ties.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Hawke watched the last of the treasure disappear down the tunnel, followed by a soaking wet Dietmar Grobel, his terrifying reputation diminished somewhat by his new sodden demeanor. It was hard to look intimidating when you were dripping with sea water and cave slime.
Zaugg wasted no time in ordering his men to tie them up and start blocking them into the tomb by placing boulders in the entrance tunnel. Having failed to deal with the problem on board the Thalassa he seemed much more determined to end their challenge to his quest this time around.
Several men, led by Heinrich Baumann, roughly bound their arms behind their backs, cutting into their flesh with the careless application of plastic cable-ties, and then tying them back to back in pairs with short lengths of rope.
Hawke watched uneasily as Baumann fitted the C4 explosives to the wall a few inches above where the water from the bay above their heads was pouring through the slit. He went about his work methodically, enjoying every step of the process as he secured the explosives and set the radio antennae up.
Zaugg proudly explained to them what was about to unfold in the last few moments of their lives. “When that tomb wall blows, thousands of tons of seawater will explode through the hole and fill this cave in a few short minutes,” Zaugg said with undisguised pleasure. “And that will end all evidence of this tomb, as well as bringing your irritating existence to a swift and permanent conclusion.”
“Why don’t you untie me so we can sort this out man to man, Zaugg?’ Hawke was baiting him, trying to make him lose his cool. “Or are you not man enough for that?”
“My dear fellow, men of my social rank do not brawl in public with men like you.”
“I’ll let you throw the first punch, Zaugg. I’ll even let you tie one hand behind my back.”
Zaugg frowned, his cold eyes sparkling with a menace Hawke had never seen before. “You seem remarkably composed for a man so close to death,” he said calmly. “Was it Plato who once said, No one knows whether death, which people fear to be the greatest evil, may not be the greatest good? I shall never know, because I will be immortal soon enough. On this one matter you will beat me to the answer!”
“Cheerfulness in the face of adversity, Zaugg! That’s the commando’s way.”
“Really? That’s the commando’s way?” Scarlet said. “This is why I joined the army.”
“Pfft, the army,” Hart said.
Zaugg ordered the last of his men from the flooding tomb. “Besides, I will take an insurance policy in the form of the wonderful Miss Donovan.”
Baumann dragged Lea to her feet and held the muzzle of his submachine gun in her ribs.
“I never felt we really got to know each other on the Thalassa — may I call you Lea?” Zaugg said, gently stroking the side of her face with his bony fingers. “Perhaps, with a little encouragement you will learn to be more accommodating?”
With her hands restrained by the cable-ties, Lea’s only way of reacting to Zaugg’s repulsive touch was to spit in his face, which she did with violent accuracy.
Zaugg wiped the spit from his eye and stared at it in his hand. “In that case,” he said slowly, “perhaps your personality is better suited to Baumann here.”
Baumann grabbed Lea and dragged her through the tunnel entrance as the last boulders were pushed into place.
Zaugg laughed and stepped jauntily from the tomb, the last of the light receding into the tunnel with him as he took the glow-stick to light his own way to safety. Then the final boulder was pushed in the entrance, blocking their way and sealing them in the tomb.
“Your girl makes a bit of a habit of getting kidnapped, doesn’t she?” Scarlet said.