Solomon's Throne (43 page)

They spent the rest of the day photographing the throne, chairs, and the small pots of gold and gems that they found under the seat of the throne itself. Rei used her iPhone and a flashlight, and Mac and Gideon also did their best to illuminate the site for her. She also took copious notes and made detailed drawings, adding dimensions.

“I don’t know how they got this in here, or how Mr. Xavier will get it out,” she said.

“My guess is, there’s another way in. This cavern has other tunnels besides the one we came through. Father Eduardo found his way in because of the Templar’s journal, but the throne had been here long before the Templar found it. With the right supplies and safety equipment, they should be able to find the original entrance,” Gideon said.

Mac agreed. “Unless there was a rockslide a lot of years back, that stuff sure as hell didn’t come in through the waterfall. That rock face seemed solid to me. So there’s got to be a cave or mine entrance somewhere. This isn’t man made, so somehow the people who hid it here already knew about it.

“I wonder who it’ll belong to?” Rei mused. “India? Israel? It’s probably going to be a big mess.”

“Mr. Xavier’s big mess. We found it, but he can deal with it. I hope we get a bonus, though!” Gideon laughed.

They spent a final night in the cavern. The injured monk was able to drink some water, but he couldn’t swallow any of the dried food or thick preparations of the MREs. Rei mixed some nut paste into the water, making a very bitter drink, but at least he got some nutrition. By the morning, he was able to stand up unassisted, although he was very shaky.

After breakfast, they packed everything up, donned their backpacks, and headed down the tunnel. The young monks retrieved their own packs, and their hands were retied in front of them. Mac walked behind them with the gun, and Gideon and Rei helped the leader. Their progress was painfully slow, as the injured man needed frequent breaks.

At the end of the first day, they had gone barely half the distance they needed to travel to be able to exit in three days. Secured to a stalagmite, the monks ate and drank, still not speaking, even among themselves. The Quinns and Mac sat off to one side.

“We need to move faster,” Gideon said.

“How?” Rei asked. “He can’t go faster.”

“I think we’re going to have to leave him. We’ve got enough food and water to leave some here with him. If we get back to civilization quickly, we can have help for him sooner than we can get him out of here at this rate,” Gideon said.

“I agree,” Mac said. “We leave him food and water and a flashlight, with extra batteries. We can have someone back to him in four days if we bust it.”

Rei looked stricken at the thought of the man having to stay alone. But she saw that they were right, and slowly nodded.

The next morning Rei explained the situation to the monks in Portuguese. “We’ll send someone back, I promise. It will be faster this way.”

The leader nodded, but the two younger monks began to protest, “
Nao podemos confiar-los!
We can’t trust them!”

The leader looked for a long time at Rei, and then nodded again. “
Penso que podemos…
I think we can.”

“I will stay with you, father,” one of the young men said.

“Yes, Eli, that will be fine. Thank you.” He turned to Rei. “It appears that we have misjudged you. We have been searching for so long…” He closed his eyes. “I would like to tell you why.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

“O
ur brotherhood was started by
a distant grandson of Paul’s scribe Achalichus in the third century. He had become a priest, and was a secretary to a powerful bishop. By that time the Church had amassed much wealth, but there was a power struggle among those clergymen who sought personal wealth and those who sought the furtherance of the Church. When our founder realized what the significance of an old letter handed down without thought through generations, and that the letter undermined the entire claim to legitimacy of the pope’s, he gave it to the embattled Pope, who used to solidify power. He founded a secret order charged with the protection of the letter.” The monk seemed to draw strength from his story, but he still spoke slowly, softly.

“Why didn’t he just destroy it?” asked Rei.

“The letter was written by Saint Paul himself! No good Christian would dare destroy such a thing. But he saw that, if the contents of the letter were to become known, the influence of the church in Rome would be diminished by those seeking only to grow wealthy, not live by her teachings. He felt that he could not let that happen, and allocated funds to recruit a few young men already in training for religious life. They were given the name
Congratio a Achalichus
, the Society of Achalichus, and a charter similar to other monastic orders: chastity, poverty, allegiance to the Church. And the perpetual task of protecting the letter. When the Templars looted their monastery in the early thirteen hundreds they found the letter. Thus began our eight hundred year quest to return it. We have continued to be funded as a long lived, but small order. We do not demand much from the Vatican, and our small budget is never questioned. We try to do good works in our community outside of Lisbon, but we have become soldiers in recent decades under our late abbot, Lucius. As he got older he was increasingly obsessed with finding the letter and returning it to the Society’s protection.”

“But the letter was never made public. It might even have been destroyed, for all you knew. I don’t understand why you needed to get it back,” Rei said.

“I do not either, looking back. I have been in the Society since I was seventeen years old. Since his death, I am now Abbott myself. I never thought to question him, or his obsession. He knew about the Xavier family. It has apparently been passed from abbot to abbot that Father Eduardo became Joao Xavier. All of the sons of that family have been watched since he returned to Lisbon is 1689. His home was searched many times, as was his business, and all of the Xaviers’ homes and businesses since that time, to no avail. But the real obsession was the suggestion of treasure. A brother had written a letter in 1685 to the abbot, mailed to him from Goa, that the priest had disappeared. But when he reappeared as Joao Xavier, he had suddenly become wealthy. Our order knew of the Templars and their treasure hoards. The Templars were alive and well in Portugal long after they had been wiped out elsewhere.” The monk fell silent, eyes closed.

“So when you stole the letter and found the journal…” Rei prompted.

“When our abbot saw the journal, he became a fanatic. He said that God intended for our order to have the Throne. He disregarded the letter completely—the letter we had searched for all of these years. It had no importance to him in light of the Templar’s treasure.” He sighed. “I see now that he was insane, perhaps senile, but in such a small family of brothers, such things spread like wildfire. Suddenly we had a new quest, and we were to stop at nothing…
Nothing
… to accomplish it.” He closed his eyes and sighed deeply.

“What does that mean?” Rei asked.

“Lucius said it was a Crusade. That taking lives in pursuit of this holy object was justified. He wanted you dead… He wanted anyone or anything in our way eliminated. And we just went along. We did whatever he asked. We hacked into computer systems. We bribed people. We hurt people to get information… I can say that we have not, thank God, killed anyone, but I think we would have. I think
I
would have.” He sighed again. “Lucius is dead. While we were in Goa waiting for you the word came to us from the brothers still at our monastery that he had a massive stroke. I had already been appointed as his successor, so the ‘crusade’ became my own.”

“Why are you telling me this now?” Rei asked.

“Your men did not kill us. Lucius knew that your husband had been in the Army. We found out that your pilot had also been a soldier. He told us that it would come to us killing you before you could kill us, that you would have no mercy in your quest for the treasure. He said you would sweep everything out of your path. But I see now that that was his own mind at work…
He
would sweep everything from his path. But you and your men have shown us mercy, and did not kill us, although they most clearly could have done so. As I lay in such pain yesterday, God showed me all the wrong we have done. And for what? A treasure that does not, nor ever will, belong to us. We have been led astray for many years—young men who have been recruited into a small and isolated brotherhood because of our zeal, and told delusions of old men who have spent wasted years finding nothing.” He leaned his head back against the wall, exhausted, eyes closed.

The young monk who had been sitting next to the abbot, looked at him, his face anguished. “Father Thomas… is this true?”

Thomas didn’t open his eyes. He nodded, and sighed. “I believe so, my son. I believe so. We have been told, and we have believed, lies. We have sinned… While we wait here for our rescue, we will put ourselves into the hands of Almighty God and His judgment.”

The Quinns and Mac headed out first thing the next morning. Thomas had decreed that both of his men would stay with him, and adequate food and water had been left, along with two flashlights and a supply of batteries. They made good time going back, following the marks left by their ancient patron, and feeling the weight of the monks’ lives on their shoulders. They spent a restless night in the cave with the stalagmite, and kept a brisk pace from early morning on.

Arriving at the cave mouth at dusk, they decided to spend the night there so as not to risk descending the waterfall and hill in the dark. They awoke at first light, a slight but welcome sliver of sunshine coming though the crack. They squeezed through, one at a time, and carefully stepped out from the waterfall and onto the ledge. They decided to descend on that side of the falls, which took them almost two hours of angling back and forth. They were hot and sweaty by the time they reached the railroad tracks that crossed over the first ledge to the other side.

Rei looked up at the trestles. “Anybody know the train schedule?” she asked.

Mac looked at his watch. “I did a few days ago… I feel like the first train arrives here around ten, give or take.”

“What time is it now?” asked Gideon. His watch had been cracked in his rescue of Mac, which seemed eons ago.

“9:36,” Mac answered.

“So do we wait, or go for it?” Gideon asked.

“Wait!” Rei said.