The Shroud Key (13 page)

She grins, almost sadly.

“I’m carrying his child,” she reveals.

She closes the door, locks it. For a brief moment we are bathed in a darkness so thick, I cannot make out Anya who crouches only inches from me. Then a light comes on. Correction … A series of caged light fixtures that are mounted to the concrete wall and that seem to run the length of the tunnel.

“Next stop, Cairo,” I say to Anya.

She begins the climb down the narrow staircase. I can’t help but think about Natalia’s words. About praying without knowing it. About believing in something for which I have no proof. About having faith, even if I question my belief in God.

My heart in my throat and apparently, my soul beside it, I make the climb down the concrete stairs.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Once down the stairs, it’s a straight shot through a narrow, low-ceilinged tunnel. The dimly lit tunnel runs for maybe a half mile before it ends at another staircase, this one shaped like a corkscrew that wraps around a concrete pilaster. When we reach the top, we face yet another steel door. The door is not only closed, it bears no opener.

Anya turns to me, her smooth, tan face beginning to show the first signs of physical stress. Judging by the newly formed creases around her almond-shaped eyes.

“What now?” she inquires.

“Try knocking,” I suggest.

“Knock,” she says. “That’s your solution? Just knock like we’re asking the next door neighbor if we can borrow some sugar?”

“Got a better idea, sweetness?”

Raising up her right arm, she makes a fist with her hand and wraps on the door with her knuckles. Three solid knocks. She’s right. It’s as if she were paying a visit to her next door neighbor. The bone against hollow metal echoes in the vertical stairwell.

We wait for a long few seconds. Until we hear the sound of deadbolts being released.

Anya steps back, so that her back is pressed against me. It’s not a bad feeling having her so close to me. So close I can feel my heart beating against her body.

The door opens.

The bearded, late-middle-aged man standing inside the open door is short and somewhat round. He’s wearing loose dungarees, work boots and a work shirt with an apron draped over it, like a butcher might wear. But this apron is not stained with blood.

“Come with me,” he demands.

Without a word we follow him up yet another, shorter set of stairs until we come to a set of Bilco basement doors that have already been opened. The man climbs through first with us on his tail. When we come to the top, I can see that we’re not inside a butcher shop, but a working news stand that’s part of a larger three-roomed shack.

The man quickly closes the egress doors and padlocks them. He then covers them over with a thick rug.

“Help me with something,” he orders in broken English while taking his place on the opposite end of a large wooden harvest table.

I grab hold of the opposite side of the table and together we lift it and set in onto the rug. The table has some food on it. Some meats and cheeses, along with a bottle of red wine.

He tells us to eat something.

“What’s your name?” I ask.

“Call me, Carlo,” he says. “I will be escorting you to the airport. Your flight leaves for Cairo in two hours.”

In my head, I’m recalling the guns I left behind under the dumpster. I tell Carlo about them.

“Don’t worry,” he says. “We will pick them up and hold onto them for you.”

“What do I do for weaponry in Cario?”

“You will be greeted by a man right outside your gate. His name is Sameh. He will be your fixer and your confident. He will take care of everything. Do you understand?”

I nod.

“Thank you.”

He smiles.

“Don’t thank me. I am getting paid for my services as are you. Thank your friend, Checco.”

Anya turns to me.

“Checco’s quite the character,” she comments. “He certainly knows how to spend my dead dad’s money, doesn’t he?”

“Wait until you get his bill,” I say turning to her. Then, turning back to Carlo. “Is there somewhere we can change out of these holy clothes?”

In my mind I’m picturing the lug-soled boots, dark Levis work shit, and leather bomber I lugged with me in my satchel. No doubt Anya is dying to ditch the nun’s habit.

He nods to a room off the back.

“You first,” I say to Anya.

In the meantime, I pour a glass of wine, and eat some cheese. The first food I’ve consumed in many hours. Carlo excuses himself while he tends to some customers demanding train tickets out in front of the newsstand. I sip the wine and try to make sense of this whole thing. As far as we know, Manion is somewhere Egypt. In the desert outside of Cairo, digging in a location on behalf a wealthy Muslim Brotherhood kidnapper that is almost certainly a wrong location. My guess is that Manion knows he’s digging in the wrong place and that he’s simply stalling the inevitable: The moment when his kidnappers get so frustrated with him, they put a bullet in his head.

But I’ve been commandeered by the Florence Polizia to locate Manion before that happens. Nowhere in my present job description does it call for my locating the Holy Grail—the true bones of Jesus. But the problem is this: It’s in my blood to go after the bones. I am digger by trade, but I am hunter also. Denying my chance at the bones is like asking me not to breathe. Without even realizing it at the time, I had a chance to go after the bones once before, and blew it. Now a second chance has fallen into my lap.

But then, I’m not a cold hearted greedy son of a bitch either.

My religiously devout parents raised me better than that. I’ve promised to locate Manion and I will do so. But once that mission is accomplished, I’m going after the bones. If Manion and his ex-wife wish to accompany me, all the better. I might be able to deduce the location of the bones via the blueprint I pulled off the shroud. But I have no idea what to expect once we get to the site. No idea what to look out for, be it booby traps, natural obstacles, or certain death itself. One thing is for sure, no matter where they lay, the bones won’t simply be there for the taking. We will have to work for them. Work for them harder than we’ve ever worked in our lives. That will take strength, but it will also take courage and brains. That’s why I need Manion, and that’s why I need him alive.

Anya emerges from out of the back room. She’s back to her black jeans, lace-up boots, and leather jacket over a simple black T-shirt. She is as beautiful as the night is long. She takes my hand.

“Better get dressed, Ren Man,” she says. “We’ll be leaving soon.”

I lean in, kiss her on the mouth. She tastes sweet, her lips as soft as my melting heart.

“You’re falling in love,” I say.

“Bite your tongue. I’m not that easy. But then, unlike you, I’m not that hard either.”

I hold back a laugh on my way to the back room.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

We’re transported by car under the cover of darkness to the Turin International Airport and soon we are airborne for the four hour trip to Cairo. We land just as dawn is arriving on the new day and the sun is rising bright orange over the desert, melting the coolness that no doubt settled in over the night and replacing it with a heavy, laden heat.

As promised we are greeted outside the baggage claim doors by a young man named Sameh. The tall, muscular, black-haired man doesn’t greet us with secrecy like one might expect. Instead he holds up a white cardboard sign with the name CHASE written on it in thick black Sharpie.

So much for keeping our heads safely under the local radar…

After sharing some quick greetings, Anya and I follow our contact out of the airport and into the heat of the early morning. Seating us in the back of his white sedan, we head out into Cairo’s notoriously heavy traffic. To say the traffic is thick here is like saying the Sinai desert contains some sand. Traffic is everywhere and it is non-stop. It seems to take on a life of its own, like a mechanical river of moving metal parts, choking smoke, and noise. It’s so chaotic, dense, and even dangerous, that Sameh uses his horn not to draw attention of someone he wants out of the way or someone who is about to run into him, but for communicating specific messages. One beep for “How’s it going?” Two long beeps for “Wake up, you’re about to smash into me.” One long extended beep for “Move or by the grace of Allah, I will run you down!” This isn’t my first trip to Cairo. My first trip goes back all the way to the mid 1970s when I was just a boy and my father was sandhogging for some university archaeologists who were working on the Theban Mapping Project in the Valley of the Kings. So I’ve learned the road ropes by now.

As we crawl along, Sameh peers at us through the mirror.

“I have secured a hotel for you. The Kings Hotel. Very close to Giza.”

I know the place since I’ve stayed there a half dozen times before. An old time hotel better suited for journalists, adventurers, and private antiquities collectors who deal only in cash and who prefer to keep to themselves. No questions asked. It also houses one of the only remaining bars in an ever increasingly militantly Muslim Cairo.

“Private antiquities collectors?” Anya poses.

“Treasure hunters,” I say. Then, “What about a weapon, Sameh?”

“I have all of that covered, naturally. Plus a laptop computer….Checco filled me in on everything required of my services.”

Anya leans into me, whispers into my ear. “Every time I hear that name, I picture piles of one-hundred dollar bills going up in smoke.”

“But it’s money well burnt,” I whisper back.

I think about the photos we’ve taken of the shroud. How important it will be to match the small blueprint up with a detailed plan of one of the three Giza pyramid interiors, should I be able to locate just such an interior plan. And it’s possible I know just the place to find one.

“Why aren’t we headed to Giza right now?” Anya asks, setting her hand on mine.

“It’s important that I see a man first,” I insist. “A man whom I’ve worked with on occasion when digging in and around Cairo for various clients. A man named Amun. If anyone knows about a dig being sponsored by the Muslim Brotherhood using a kidnapped American as the lead archaeologist, it will be Amun. He might be one of the sleaziest men I know, but he will prove instrumental in our finding your husband. There’s a lot of desert out there. Anything else is just entering into a wild goose chase.”

But what I also know is that he will help me with finding the exact location of the bones should the blueprint pulled from the shroud turn out to be authentic.

Anya removes her hand.

“I’m just anxious is all,” she says. “I’ll be able to breathe better once we find Andre.”

She looks out the window onto the stream of cars and trucks, their beds filled with people, crates of chickens and other live and not so live cargo. In between the vehicles, boys and men scoot around on motorbikes. Some people take a chance on running in between the moving cars, Chinese made pickups, and Jeeps.

It takes almost an hour to drive the relatively short distance from the airport to Tahrir Square. Throughout history, this spot has been the ground-zero for demonstrations, revolutions and riots. Today is no exception. From my perch in Sameh’s shotgun seat, it looks like a war zone. There’s a throng of Arab protestors gathered around several consulates, including what I know to be the American facility. The men cover their faces with black cloth and they wear scarves over their heads. They look like bandits. Some are tossing rocks at the U.S. embassy gates and over brick walls which are covered in razor-sharp concertina wire. Some of the masked men grip AK47s, which they point towards the Arab sky, fingering live rounds into the air. In the near distance, a tall office building is blackened and still smoking from a fire. People are shouting and screaming.