The Minoan Cipher (A Matinicus “Matt” Hawkins Adventure Book 2) (46 page)

Using powerful kicks of their fins, they swam to the bottom of the sluiceway. Hawkins glanced at his depth gauge. Five feet. He tapped Calvin on the shoulder and began to swim toward the castle. Light from the castle walls filtered down from the surface providing enough visibility for them to see their way. At the same time, the glittering reflection would screen them from probing eyes.

The bags hindered their progress, but both men were strong swimmers. On land, Hawkins walked with a slight limp. Underwater, he was as agile as a dolphin. They followed the sluiceway, which ended in the moat, as Abby had suggested. They swam across the moat to the foundation to look for the opening that would have carried water from the sluiceway into the castle. The wall was blank. Hawkins swam to his right for several feet, then doubled back in the opposite direction. Still no opening.

Had they got it wrong? He drew a question mark inside a square on the white wrist board. Cal nodded, then drew an arrow pointing up on his board. They were too low. Hawkins gave a few fin kicks.

His fingertips grazed the slimy stones until he felt a hard edge and followed it around four sides with his hand. The rectangular opening was around four feet wide and three feet high. He flicked on the flashlight attached to his other wrist.

The pencil thin beam picked out stone walls, a floor and a ceiling before fading into the murk. Hawkins had worried that the water pipe would be too small to navigate. He gave Calvin a thumb’s up signal and swam into the tunnel. If Abby had figured it correctly, the tunnel should lead to a cistern. He tried not to think that their entry strategy relied for the most part on guesswork, and the interpretation of lines drawn on an ancient document. If they hit a dead end and had to turn back, the consequences might be disastrous for Kalliste.

The clang of the Draeger against the tunnel ceiling brought him back into the moment. He swam with slight fluttering kicks, trying not to stir up the silt, his hands extended in front of him like Superman in flight. Hawkins didn’t normally suffer from claustrophobia, but he was aware that the tons of stone pressing down directly over his head were held in place by walls erected centuries before.

Turning his thoughts to Kalliste, he swam even faster.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

“It’s time to put your thespian skills to work,” Salazar said to Chad.

The men were standing in the cool, torch-lit interior of the three-towered building Salazar had called the Tripartite Shrine. They had entered the cathedral-like precincts after Kalliste was whisked through the doors. She was nowhere to be seen. There was only Chad, Salazar and his four bodyguards. Salazar snapped his fingers. One of his men handed Chad a folded white cloth.

“Put this on. It should be the right size,” Salazar said.

Chad shook out the cotton robe. The hem and the round collar were embroidered with blue axe designs. He pulled it over his head and down past his knees. The robe fit snugly over his clothes and the shoulder padding he’d used to imitate Salazar’s physique.

“Remove your mask,” Salazar ordered.

Chad tossed the balaclava to the man who’d given him the robe.

“The illusion must fool all the senses.” Salazar handed him a small bottle.

Chad took the top off the bottle and almost gagged. It was the same sickly-sweet cologne Salazar favored. He thought how satisfying it would be to smash the bottle into Salazar’s nose and drive splinters of bone into the man’s skull. His joy would be short-lived. The guards would cut him down before Salazar’s body hit the floor. He had learned the value of patience in Special Ops and later as a contract killer. He could wait.

He opened the bottle, patted cologne on his neck, and in his best imitation of Salazar’s silky voice, said, “Well, what do you think?”

Salazar stepped back, folded his arms and gazed at his double.

“Remarkable,” he said. “You will easily pass as me, especially in the dim light of the priestess sanctuary.” He handed Chad the ear plug that he had shown him back at the log cabin. “Slide this into your ear. You remember your instructions?”

“Sure. Twist the button and press it three times when the ceremony ends.”

“You forgot something.” Salazar barked an order to a man who stepped forward with the box that contained the bull’s head bomb. He reached inside the box for the rhyton and handled it to Chad. “You will place this on the altar and step aside. No one will pay any attention to you. All eyes will be watching the victim’s blood being drained into the rhyton.”

Chad made a face. “Do they really do that?”

Salazar’s liverish lips twisted into his reptilian smile. “The priestesses are what are known as Maenads, which means ‘raving ones’ in Greek. In their ecstatic frenzy they tear their victim to pieces and the life’s blood is passed around in communion. Don’t tell me you’re squeamish. You’ve seen people die before. As I recall, you helped a few into the afterlife.”

“Yeah, but I never drank anyone’s blood. If you’re going to bust up the party, why not do it
before
they do the sacrifice and have their snack?”

“These are dangerous people. I want to strike when the priestess and her followers are at the peak of their frenzy and will be most vulnerable. The victim is only a means to an end, and of no consequence in the greater scheme. She’s no different than any of the targets you’ve eliminated at my order.”

There’s a big difference
, Chad thought. His kills were always quick and clean. The death of Kalliste Kalchis was vital to Salazar for some reason, and that alone would make her worth saving.

“Okay, Mr. Salazar. I see where you’re going.”

“One more thing,” Salazar said. He removed an axe-shaped pendant from around his neck and looped the chain over Chad’s head.

“Keep this with you at all times in the Maze. If you remove it, the Daemons will see that you enjoy an even more unpleasant death than the sacrificial victim.”

Chad went to ask about the Daemons, but Salazar shushed him and cocked his head to listen. A faint piping sound floated up the stairway into the towered shrine.

“The procession has begun. Go down those stairs and into the antechamber to wait for the priestesses. Do as you’re instructed and you’ll be fine.”

He turned and strode from the shrine with his men. Chad listened to the eerie sound coming from the Maze. No going back now. He descended the stairway, moving slowly so he wouldn’t trip on the hem of his robe with a bomb in his hands. At the bottom of the stairs he paused and took a deep breath. Inhaling reminded him of how much he could use a joint. He squared his shoulders and went through the open entryway into a room around a hundred feet square. Scenes of bulls and acrobats and aquatic creatures decorated the turquoise-colored walls. He was facing a closed door. The flute music issued from two portals, one on his left; the other to his right. It was an atonal sound, off-key and without melody, and almost hurt his ears to listen to it.

The sound of flutes grew louder. Chad expected the musicians to enter the antechamber at any second, but the two creatures that emerged simultaneously through the doorways looked as if they were stepping out of a nightmare. The muscular, vaguely dog-like animals were identical in appearance. They had narrow muzzles and boney faces that were almost at Chad’s eye-level.

Each animal was at the end of a leather leash attached to a jeweled collar. The men holding the leashes had aquiline noses, their scalps were painted blue. They looked like clones of the men he and Hawkins had killed on the Cretan island of Spinalonga.

The leashes must have been for decorative purposes because the long, sharp teeth lining the open mouths of the animals looked as if they could snap tethers of chain. The men let the creatures approach Chad on both sides. He tensed, but the dogs merely poked the hem of his robe with their long snouts, then sat back on their haunches and grinned at him. He had passed the sight and sniff test.

Others were coming into the chamber. Behind the dog walkers were processions of four women, eight in all, walking in pairs. The women all had on long layered skirts made of overlapping material in blue, black and green. The short-sleeved tops they wore had necklines cut to the navel, exposing cleavage. The wide cloth belts wrapped around their waists emphasized the hips. Their hair was tucked up under flat, round caps.

These had to be the priestesses. They were in their twenties or thirties, Chad guessed, but their faces lacked the fresh allure that young women normally had at that age. Their hard features looked as if they had been chipped out of marble. Lush mouths were compressed into tight expressions that revealed no emotion. Heavy liner made the arc of their brows longer and more exaggerated so that their eyes looked larger than they were. The cheeks were rouged with make-up. Chad had spent enough time in drug-induced la-la land to know from their glazed, fixed expressions that the women were stoned out of their minds.

The leader of the procession was holding a clay vessel. Behind her marched a pair of priestesses who were playing flutes. The next pair of marchers held leafy boughs on their shoulders. They formed two lines and the music stopped. The priestess with the vessel stepped forward and offered it to Chad. Just follow instructions, Salazar said. He took the vessel and raised it to his lips. His first sip was tentative. Not bad. A little medicinal. Earthy, though, and slightly sweet. He took a second swallow and handed the vessel back.

Wham.

Chad had tried a lot of addictive substances, but nothing had ever acted with such
speed
. Not even speed. It felt as if someone had poured a glass of LSD directly into his brain. First came a flush of heat. He imagined his cheeks glowing red-hot. The hot flush passed and he felt a tingling from head to toe. He stared off at the wall. The colors glowed and pulsated. The painted figures seemed to move. The acrobats were vaulting between the horns of the bulls. The octopi and fish were dancing with each other.

His sense of hearing had become more acute. He could hear the swish of skirts and the soft padding of bare feet on the hard floor as the priestesses began to dance around him. He smiled as they morphed from humans into beautiful, whirling flowers.

The musicians started to play again. But the music that had been so awful when he first heard it was now beautiful. They chanted the same words again and again.

She is near. She must die.

The lead priestess was the most animated. She whirled around, her arms extended above her head. The circle of dancers moved faster and faster, the chanting louder. Chad was losing it. The chanting and music, the moving circle of glowing colors, the weird effects of the drugs—all were getting to him. He clutched the bull’s head closer so he wouldn’t drop it.

Then the lead priestess stopped dancing. The hands that had been flailing above her head dropped to waist level, palms down. She was facing the door. It was obviously the signal for the music and the dancing to stop. The priestesses had broken out of their circle. Their cheeks were still flushed from the orgiastic dance. At the head of each line was a blue-headed man holding a leash with a pit bull on steroids.

They formed lines on both sides again. With Chad in the middle carrying the bull’s head as if it were radioactive, they filed into the sanctuary of the high priestess.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Abby’s technical evaluation had been right on the mark when she said the water main would end in a cistern. Hawkins played the beam of his wrist light on the stone walls of the circular chamber, then he swam up until his head broke the surface. Calvin bobbed up beside him.

The cistern was around six feet across. He pulled himself up onto the low wall, then reached down to help Calvin with the bags. Once all their gear was out of the cistern, Calvin joined him at the edge of the pool.

Hawkins removed his mouthpiece and took a tentative sniff. “Air is musty and damp, but breathable,” he pronounced. He stood and walked around the cistern. “Getting Kalliste out this way could be a problem.”

“I’m thinking the same thing,” Calvin said. “We don’t know what shape Kalliste is in, but even if she’s okay, trying to muscle her back through that drainage pipe is not going to work.”

“Which means we stick with standard SEAL protocol. Get in one way and go out another.”

The cistern was at the center of a room around fifteen feet square that had only one doorway. They slipped the Draegers off their backs, leaving them with the spare unit they had brought for Kalliste, then peeled off their dry suits down to their camouflage uniforms. Calvin tied the drive-on rag around his head and Hawkins tucked his hair under his floppy hat. They picked up their gear bags and went through the doorway into a long, narrow room. There was a stone shelf along one wall with circular holes cut into it.

“Reminds me of the outhouse our family had, except ours was a one-holer,” Calvin said. “Guess the Minoans didn’t put a lot a value on privy-cy.”

“Looks that way, but I wasn’t
privy
to their thoughts.”

“Damn, Hawk, that was worse than mine.”

“Remember this moment the next time you feel the need to unleash your puns on a captive audience.”