Passage Graves (10 page)

Chapter 25

TUESDAY 2:47 a.m.

Stenness Basecamp

Orkney Island, Scotland

Thatcher leaned her head against the helicopter window. Below, a blanket of sheep congregated over the hills surrounding Stenness. Basecamp came into view, covered with NCEC bubble tents. Chain link fences kept the massive herd at bay. She unclipped her seatbelt and pulled on her soundsuit helmet as the chopper touched down on a small landing pad outside McLeod’s Bed’n’Breakfast.

“Sorry we had to fly you in,” Golke’s voice transmitted
through her headset.

She jumped out of the aircraft.

Golke gave her an awkward wave from outside the fence. He pushed away some of the sheep with his legs. “The sheep are flocking here,” he explained.

Thatcher smiled.
The Grecian had no idea he’d made a pun.

“N
o one can get in because of sheeps.” The poor guy struggled with English and was even more inarticulate around women.

Go
lke’s soundsuit made his face difficult to see, but she could imagine he was blushing.

She
looked out at the hundreds of sheep surrounding them. “Where did they come from?”

“All over the island
.”

He opened the gate, and
Thatcher followed him through the herd into the first tent. Moving was awkward. The soundsuit was designed for men. The outer shell was made of weighting laminar, a plate-like substance with a Stormtrooper look. The inner layers were a mix of cotton and foam rubber, designed to cushion noise. The material doubled in thickness around vital organs, making bending and walking agonizingly slow. The heavy helmet pressed down on her shoulder. It felt like she’d been lugging a heavy backpack around for hours.

“Do you need help?” Golke asked, slowing his pace.

He must have noticed her meandering gait. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d slept.

“
I’m fine.” She tried to focus.

“We can take
the gear off when we get down into basecamp.”

“Down?” she
wasn’t sure if she had heard him correctly. Since when was basecamp down?

“We measured
noise at the site,” he explained. “Lee moved us into the bunker. Whatever happened at Maeshowe isn’t over yet.”

Thatcher’s
heart fluttered with anxiety.

What the hell was going on?

She noticed someone had moved all the useless NCEC equipment against the walls of the medical tent. Empty gurneys were also pushed to one side of the room.

They entered the Quarantine Tent
.

She
reoriented to her surroundings. “Okay, so you’re using the old mine?”

Golke
stopped at the elevator door. It had been completely reconstructed. The lift was framed with opaque plastic paneling. A fancy pulley system with shiny new gears was exposed above the shaft. The motor cranked silently as opposed to the old noisy configuration. The narrow boxcar smoothly rose toward the surface.

“We fix
ed everything,” Golke said.

“I can see that.” Thatcher imagined his
face turning red as they made eye contact.

The lift reached the
top and the transparent door slid open. They stepped inside, and lights came on overhead, giving the translucent boxcar a strange bluish glow. The door slid shut and they lowered toward basecamp. The entire car was see-through. Thatcher noticed the shaft’s original cement girders were left in place, but reinforced with steel at each corner. Crossbeams had also been added, bolted horizontally across the tunnel every ten feet. She counted four x-shaped steel crossbeams and estimated they were at least forty feet below the surface.

The elevator touched down.
Golke pulled off his helmet, and Thatcher did the same.

The door retracted, revealing a long, narrow passage.
It was hardly recognizable as the tunnel where she had said goodbye to David a few days earlier. The underground structure was bolstered and sealed with the same opaque plastic used to construct the elevator. Halogen lights gleamed above the walkway, tinting the bunker with the same strange blue. It felt like they’d descended into some extraterrestrial spaceship. A panel of lockers lined the wall.

“Y
ou can leave that here.” Golke gestured at her soundsuit. He turned away to give her privacy.

Thatcher
took off her helmet and discarded the protective suit, stripping down to her clothes.

Golke stared intently at the wall.

It made her laugh. “Golke, it’s not like I’m naked.”

At the mention of ‘naked’, the back of his neck flushed brilliant red.

She rolled her eyes and stepped out of the soundsuit pants. “I’m ready.”

He tossed her suit into one of the lockers and then headed down the corridor.
“This is the morgue.” He thumbed to the right. “Lee had us put all the bodies here.”

She recognized the
morgue as the room where she had first met David. A temporary wall separated it from the corridor. It was transparent. Through it, she could see more gurneys—these were crowded with body bags.

“
Here is the equipment storage room.” Golke pointed to a room off to the left filled with racks and shelving. “The diagnostic instruments, computer hardware, and nutriments are here.”

Thatcher wrinkled her nose at the mention of their dehydrated, compact meals. Describing the inedible food as “nutriment” was a stretch.

“When will Hummer be back?” she asked as they reached the end of the corridor.

“0800…
” Golke gave her a wide smile, proud of the room he had put together. “I built the helm.”

The space was imp
ressive, large enough to fit a few hundred of the sheep grazing above ground. Along the eastern wall, plasma flat screens displayed images of Maeshowe. Marek and Donovon sat at the center of the room, facing the screens as they worked on their desktops. More rows of industrial shelves overfilled with sound equipment spanned the back half of the room.

“Hey
boss!” Marek called out.

Thatcher
smiled at him.

“Persona
l quarters are that way.” Golke pointed at an adjacent hallway that led to individual rooms. He nodded at two doorways on the opposite side of the helm. “The conference room and Hummer’s office are south.”

“Where are Lee and Bailey?” she asked.

Golke pointed at one of the flat screens. It showed a digital video feed of the hallway into personal quarters. Bailey and Lee were fixing the camera. “They’re wiring basecamp for security,” Golke said. “Nobody gets in or out now without Lee knowing.”

Thatcher noticed her image on one of the flat screens and frowned. “G
ood God.”

Golke shook his hea
d with equal enthusiasm.

“I don’t like it.” Lee leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

Thatcher ignored his defiant expression.

“Golke and Bailey can assist me,” she said.

The men glanced at each other across the basecamp conference table.

Why did they have to question everything?
It was so damn unnerving.

“We need to find something concrete
before Hummer returns,” she insisted. “At this point, any lead would be appreciated.”

Bailey
frowned. “We’re not the bleedin’ bomb squad. Why should we go back inside that thing?”

Thatcher had
concocted the plan on her way back to Stenness. She looked at Donovon. “If we departed at 0630, could you have radio support up by then?”

Donovon looked to Marek.

Marek had kept quiet during the entire meeting, steadily twiddling his thumbs. “No,” he said simply.

Thatcher sa
t forward. “Alright. When can you have it ready?”

Marek wouldn’t look her in the eye. “
I’m not comfortable with you going inside that grave. Now that we’ve registered noise, and we don’t know what the source is, we wait for Hummer. End of story.”

The other men shifted in their seats.

“We’ll be in soundsuits!” Thatcher tried to control the emotion in her voice. “We’ll take every precaution.”

Marek
shook his head. “We don’t know who or what is in there.”

“
If sound is coming out of Maeshowe,” she argued, “there has to be a device or something inside. We just missed it during our sweep the first time.”

“
I’m with Marek on this one,” Bailey said.

“It’s been four days
!” Thatcher bit her lip. “We have nothing!”

“
I agree with them,” Donovon sided with Marek and Bailey. He looked at Thatcher and then abashedly at the table. “…since there’s subsonic noise.”

Golke nodded
in agreement.

“Why does everything have to be a bloody debate?”
Thatcher tried to speak calmly. There had to be some way to convince them. If she were a man they’d never take issue with her decisions. “Hummer is on his way. I’d be more than willing to chuck it in if we had something to tell him, but we don’t. That’s unacceptable.”

“It’s not our fault you wasted your time in Cambridge,” Bailey countered.

Thatcher glowered at him. “If we find a device inside Maeshowe, we’ll request a more qualified team disable it.”

Marek shook his head, adamant.
“You’re not going in there.”

Lee seemed to be enjoying this.

Thatcher huffed. “Then what would you like us to do, Dr. Marek?”

“
Um, not send a woman into ground zero for starters,” he said.

The m
en craned their necks, sensing the wind up and the pitch.

Thatcher’s cheeks began to burn. A
ball of nausea burst open inside her stomach. She was used to opposition, but not from Marek.

“I’m going in,” she sai
d evenly. “Marek, have communications ready in two hours. That’s it then, sorted. Everyone is dismissed.”

Nobody moved.

Thatcher felt her confidence waver. If Marek didn’t support her, she had nothing. He was the glue that held everything together.

Lee sei
zed the opportunity. “Golke and Bailey, it’ll just be the two of you. Maeshowe’s no place for a woman.”

“What?” Bailey
barked. “Sure, send in the expendables.”

“Get to work
,” Lee ordered.

Thatcher could
n’t get a word in. Lee agreed to her idea but not without humiliating her. She stood as the men left the room. The floor moved under her feet. Dizzy, she grabbed the table for support. “Lee,” she said.

He
stopped short at the door.

“I
want to speak with you.” It took full concentration to control the wavering in her voice.

Lee met her glare.
He shut the door.

“What the hell was that?” she demanded.

“A judgment call,” he said. Disdain dripped from every word.

“I am in comm
and of this team!”

Lee looked away with a patronizing eye roll.
He didn’t need to say it. They both knew she was powerless.

“Listen to me,” she lowered her voice. “I don’t care what Hummer’s assigned you to do
here or how you fit into his pocket, but I am here to do my job and insubordination is unacceptable.” She smoothed down her jacket, frustrated by her inability to wipe the smug look off his face.

“You may outrank me in certain situations, but this is not one of them. Until Hummer says differently, Stenness is my jurisdiction whether you like it or not. I am going into that grave.”

Lee met her with a warlike glare.

She pursed her lips.

“No, you’re not.”

Thatcher held her breath. Her temples were throbbing. Lee was
calling her bluff. What the hell did she bring to the table? Her false bravado was a joke. She’d always known as much.

She had no response.

Lee turned on his heels and exited the room. As the door shut behind him, her stoicism crumbled. She slumped into a chair, took in a deep breath, and tried to stop trembling.

Chapter 26

TUESDAY 3:09 a.m.

9 Sheep Street, Northampton, England

The city stree
ts were empty. Setting his cane against the brick wall, Ian peered through the kebabish’s front windows and searched for a way inside. An alarm system blinked over the front door. Breaking in from the ground floor was not an option. A window on the second floor was broken and boarded up with plywood. The nails looked loose, and the board saturated with rot. He reached for a rusty drainpipe that ran down the side of the building and tried to pull his body up the wall. If he could get onto the ledge of the marquee, he could get inside. His fingers trembled under his weight. The pressure turned his bony knuckles white. There was no way he could do this.

You’re p
athetic
.

With a groan, he dropped back onto the pavement. He shook out his wiry
arms and searched for another point of entry. There had to be another way inside. He followed the alley beyond the corner of the restaurant. There were no openings on that side of the building. Even if he got upstairs, could he access the first floor?

H
e leaned against a garbage bin, defeated.

Epiphany
smacked him in the face.

Why not
drag the dumpster down the street and get on top of it?

The outcropping of brick separating
the first and second floors was at least a foot wide. Once on top, he’d have no problem getting through that plywood.

Ian b
lew into his hands. It was worth a try. He slid the bin across the cement to the front corner of the kebabish. His legs were already cramping. Forcing his body up and onto the bin, he blew into his hands once more, reached for top of the marquee, and grabbed the shelf. He could feel the particles of dirt and sticky pigeon droppings.

He closed his eyes.

He could do this.

Jumping, he caught the to
p of the sign with both hands. He hung there a moment, trying to focus all his energy on a single upward thrust. Swinging his body helped him gain momentum. He forced one knee over the top of the sign, and then pulled himself onto the ledge. His legs dangled over the cement. He shook out his arms.

Every muscle ached, b
ut he had done it. He scooted across the narrow overhang, then stood and balanced on the ledge. Gripping the brick surface of the building, he adjusted his weight, and kicked the piece of plywood. His foot easily knocked it into the building. He stood still for a moment, making sure no one had noticed.

The street was silent.

He squeezed through the frame and dropped onto the second floor. Using the street light, he could make out the shape of an open doorway across the room. He limped to the door and down a narrow hallway, his fingers probing the walls. A steep staircase led to the ground floor, where it stopped at a door. To his surprise, the door was unlocked.

The hinges creaked
as he opened it.

Ian stared
into the void of a windowless room. A meager flame immediately came into focus nearly fifteen feet below. Within the floor, hardly visible, was a large pit, and at the floor of the pit a candle vigil burned beside the eastern wall. As he stared more intently at the flame, the darkness around him deepened, making it harder to see his surroundings. He felt along the floor with his foot and reached the edge of the drop off. Broken cement crackled under his shoes. He followed the length of the perimeter. His toe hit the top of a metal ladder. He knelt beside it and found the top rung with his hands. A utility light hung over the top crossbar. He felt the switch on the side of the lamp and clicked it on.

Bright
240 volts burst across the room, filling the pit, illuminating the crudely exhumed rock walls. The mortar was dotted with blunt tool marks, punctures from an amateur’s hands. Whatever they were unearthing had been excavated privately, poorly, and in a hurry. A stone bench followed the border of the pit’s floor, wrapping along each wall and stopping at two unexposed door frames still closed off with dirt. Four columns supported each corner of the pit. The masonry of the room suggested it was medieval, 11th or 12th century. Growing up the son of a biblical archeologist had its perks. Behind the burning candle, a Torah ark cabinet of aged brass and ornately carved decaying wood stood upright against the eastern wall.

It was lined with
several cabinet doors—dozens if not hundreds of compartments defaced with dust. He climbed down the ladder and stood beside it. It was set along the wall closest to Jerusalem. Along the top of its grand mantle was a carving of the Ten Commandments. Its fragile doors hung slightly open on rusted, broken hinges. It was much younger than the rest of the room, only a few hundred years of age. Someone had placed this into the pit ruin for a purpose; the fixture was an anachronism that did not belong.

Was this what his father wanted him to find?

There were twenty columns and five rows of empty slotted, square partitions. Because the candlelight vigil flickered on the floor, it was certain there was something important inside. Starting at the top left corner, Ian searched each narrow compartment, running his fingers along each column, and then across the bottom of each row. He crouched and felt along the lowest panel.

The wood suddenly
gave way, pushing inward. When he removed pressure, the thin paneling dropped open, revealing four tiny hinges and a hidden inner-compartment one-eighth inch tall and eight inches long.

He
had to lie on his stomach to see inside, and even then it was too dark to be sure of anything. The utility light barely illuminated the thin opening. There was something there. Something placed carefully inside, a thin piece of vellum flat on its surface. He felt along the gap and caught the tip of something sharp.

“Ouch.” He pulled
back his hand. A pinprick of blood appeared on his finger.

He refocused
, squinting in the dim light. Almost imperceptible to the naked eye, a tiny fish hook came into view. It poked out ever so slightly from the niche. He pinched the hook between his forefinger and thumb. The hook was attached to the vellum. He pulled out the paper-thin fragment. It was the weight of fabric, and course and dry above his fingertips. There was Hebrew writing—

S
uddenly, someone grabbed him from behind. A blade pressed against his neck. The knife opened his skin, and a line of blood stained the white of his collar. He felt the man exhale on the back of his neck.

Ian
grabbed at the man’s wrists, struggling to push the knife away. His arms twitched with weakness. He could feel his artery pumping beneath the blade. A sudden stabbing pain shot up from his palm, like a flash of napalm from the center of his hand.

His attacker fell back
wards, screaming. The knife clattered to the floor.

Ian clutched
at his throat, trying to stop the bleeding. The smell of smoldering flesh met his nose. He lowered his injured hand, sputtering and gagging. Smoke fizzled from his palm. Glowing embers had burned through his bandage, blackening the fibers until the gauze fell off his hand. He stared in horror at the lesion.

At the center of his palm, t
he Hebrew message was on fire. The letters were engulfed in flames. The pain was horrifying, a racking agony that spread through Ian’s body until he was curled on the floor. Slowly, the flame died, flickering a crackling red until all that remained was a putrid boiling fluid. Under the charred skin, the letters were glowing.

He held his hand in agony. The
vellum had dropped to the floor.

His attacker
was stooped against the wall, groaning in equal agony and holding his arm where Ian’s wounded hand had gripped him. The symbols had burned into him as well, but backward and crooked, a direct stamp of the fiery words imprinted on Ian. The fingernail marks penetrated deeper and deeper into the tissue, in some places revealing the bone of his forearm.

The man scrambled
into the corner, cradling his smoldering flesh.

Ian
grabbed for the knife. He was trembling so violently he could barely hold it up.

“Belial,” the man stammered
. He had spittle on his lips, dripping into his thick beard. A kippah covered his head.

“
Crown Prince of Hell,” the Rabbi said.

The mark on Ian’s hand
suddenly became cold. The chill spread through his blood.

“Take it.” The
Rabbi gasped, nodding at the fragment of vellum on the floor. “The
Beb’ne Hoshekh
is meant for you.”