Riptide (51 page)

As he reached for the acetylene cylinder, Neidelman paused to watch her for a moment, thinking it was time she winched the
bucket down into the chamber and began hauling the treasure to the surface. Then his eyes fell once again on the casket and
Magnusen was instantly forgotten.

He wrapped his fingers around the thick brass lock that held the box shut. It was an ugly piece of work, heavy-looking and
stamped with ducal seals, some of which Neidelman recognized as dating back to the fourteenth century. The seals were unbroken.
So Ockham never opened his greatest treasure,
he thought.
Strange.

That honor would be reserved for him.

Despite its size, the lock held the box shut loosely; using the blade of his penknife, he found he was able to lift the lid
a few millimeters. He removed the knife, lowered the lid, and again inspected the metal bands that were threaded through the
lock, determining the most efficient places to make his cuts.

Then he twisted the cylinder’s stopcock and struck the sparker: There was a small pop, and an intense pinpoint of white appeared
at the end of the nozzle. Everything seemed to be happening with glacial slowness, and for that he was grateful. Each moment,
each movement, gave him exquisite pleasure. It would take some time—perhaps fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty—before he could
free the casket from its bands and actually hold the sword in his hand. But he knew that he would remember every second as
long as he lived.

Carefully, he brought the flame to the metal.

H
atch lay in the bottom of the small stone well, half conscious, as if waking out of a dream. Above, he could hear rattling
as Streeter drew the collapsible ladder up the shaft. The dim beam of a flashlight briefly illuminated the groined ceiling,
forty feet overhead, of the chamber where Wopner had died. Then there was the sound of Streeter’s heavy boots walking back
down the narrow tunnel toward the ladder array, dying along with the light until silence and blackness fell upon him together.

For several minutes, he lay on the cold, damp stone. Perhaps it
was
a dream, after all, one of those ugly claustrophobic nightmares one woke from with infinite relief. Then he sat up, hitting
his head on the low overhang of ceiling. It was now pitch black, without even the faintest glimmer of light.

He lay down again. Streeter had left him without a word. The team leader hadn’t even bothered to bind his arms. Perhaps it
was to make his death look less suspicious. But deep down, Hatch knew that Streeter had no need to tie him up. There was no
way he could climb thirty feet up the slippery sides of the well back to the vaulted room. Two hours, maybe three, and the
treasure would be out of the pit and safely stowed aboard the
Griffin.
Then Neidelman would simply collapse the already weakened cofferdam. Water would rush back to flood the Pit, the tunnels
and chambers… The well…

Suddenly, Hatch felt his muscles spasm as he struggled to keep panic from washing his reason away. The effort exhausted him
and he lay gasping, trying to slow his pounding heart. The air in the hole was poor, and getting poorer.

He rolled away from the overhanging ceiling toward the base of the well, where he could sit up and rest his back against the
cold stone. He stared upward again, straining for the least hint of light. But there was only blackness. He considered standing,
but the very thought was exhausting and he lay down again. As he did so, his right hand slipped into a narrow cavity beneath
a heavy stone slab, closing over something cold, wet, and rigid.

And then the full horror of where he was flooded through him, startling him to full consciousness. He released Johnny’s bone
with an involuntary sob.

The air was cold, with a suffocating clamminess that cut through his soggy clothes and felt raw and thick in his throat. He
remembered that heavier gases, like carbon dioxide, sank. Perhaps the air would be a little better if he stood up.

He forced himself to his feet, hands against the side of the well for balance. Gradually, the buzzing in his head began to
fade. He tried to tell himself that nothing was hopeless. He would systematically explore the cavity with his hands, every
square inch. Johnny’s bones had ended up in this chamber, victim of Macallan’s fiendish engine of death. That meant the shore
tunnel had to be nearby. If he could figure out how Macallan’s trap worked, maybe he could find a way to escape.

Pressing his face against the slimy stone wall, he reached his hands as high above his head as he could. This was where he
would start, working his way down the stones systematically, quadrant by quadrant, until he had examined every reachable square
inch of the chamber. Lightly, like a blind man’s, his fingers explored every crevasse, every protuberance, probing, tapping,
listening for a hollow sound.

The first quadrant yielded nothing but smooth stones, well mortised. Lowering his hands, he went on to the next section. Five
minutes went by, then ten, and then he was on his hands and knees, feeling around the floor of the chamber.

He had scanned every reachable spot in the well—except the narrow crack along the floor into which his brother’s bones had
been pressed—and there was nothing, not a thing, that indicated an avenue of escape.

Breathing choppily, snorting the stale air into his nostrils, Hatch reached gingerly beneath the heavy stone. His hands encountered
the rotting baseball cap on his brother’s skull. He jerked back, heart thudding in his chest.

He stood again, face upward, striving for a breath of sweeter air. Johnny would expect him to do his god-damnedest to survive.

He yelled out for help; first tentatively, then more loudly. He tried to forget how empty the island was; tried to forget
Neidelman, preparing to open the casket; tried to forget everything except his cries for help.

As he yelled, pausing now and again for breath, some last hidden chink of armor loosened within him. The bad air, the blackness,
the peculiar smell of the Pit, the proximity of Johnny, all conspired to tear away the one remaining veil from that terrible
day, thirty-one years before. Suddenly, the buried memories burned their way back, and he was once again on his hands and
knees, match sputtering in his hand, as a strange dragging sound took Johnny away from him forever.

And there, in the thick dark, Hatch’s yells turned to screams.

W
hat is it?” Bonterre asked, her hand frozen on the Rad-meter.

Rankin held up his hand for silence. “Just a minute. Let me compensate for any trace radiation.” His head was mere inches
from the screen, bathed in an amber glow.

“Jesus,” he said quietly. “There it is, all right. No mistake, not this time. Both systems agree.”

“Roger—”

Rankin rolled back from the screen and ran one paw through his hair. “Look at that.”

Bonterre stared at the screen, a snarl of jittery lines underlaid by a large black stripe.

Rankin turned to her. “That black is a void underneath the Water Pit.”

“A void?”

“A huge cavern, probably filled with water. God knows how deep.”

“But—”

“I wasn’t able to get a clear reading before, because of all the water in the Pit. And then, I couldn’t get these sensors
to run in series. Until now.”

Bonterre frowned.

“Don’t you understand? It’s a
cavern!
We never bothered to look
deeper
than the Water Pit. The treasure chamber, the Pit itself—us, too, for Chrissake—we’re all sitting on top of a goddamn piercement
dome. This explains the faulting, the displacement, everything.”

“Is this something else built by Macallan?”

“No, no, it’s natural. Macallan
used
it. A piercement dome is a geological formation, an upfold in the earth’s crust.” He placed his hands together as if in prayer,
then pushed one of them toward the ceiling. “It splits the rock above it, creating a huge web of fractures and usually a vertical
crack—a pipe—that goes deep into the earth, sometimes several thousand feet. Those P-waves, that vibration earlier… something
was obviously happening in the dome, causing a resonance. It must be part of the same substructure that created the natural
tunnels Macallan—”

Bonterre jumped suddenly as the Radmeter in her hands chirped. As she stared, the blue shimmer on the screen turned yellow.

“Let me see that.” Rankin punched in a series of commands, his large fingers dwarfing the keypad. The top half of the small
screen cleared, then a message appeared, stark black letters against the screen:

Dangerous radiation levels detected
Specify desired measurement
(ionizations / joules / rads)
and rate
(seconds / minutes / hours)

Rankin hit a few more keys.

240.8 Rads/ hour
Fast neutron flux detected
General radiation contamination possible
Recommendation: Immediate evacuation

“Merde.
It’s too late.”

“Too late for what?”

“He’s opened the casket.”

As they watched, the message changed:

33.144 Rads/hour
Background levels hazardous
Recommendation: Standard containment procedures

“What happened?” Rankin asked.

“I do not know. Maybe he closed it again.”

“Let’s see if I can get a radiation signature on the source.” The geologist began typing again. Then he straightened up, still
staring at the little screen.

“Oh, Christ,” he muttered. “You won’t believe this.”

He was interrupted by a thump on the observation deck. The door flew open and Streeter stepped in.

“Hey, Lyle!” Rankin said before seeing the handgun.

Streeter looked from Rankin to Bonterre, then back again. “Come on,” he said, motioning the gun toward the door.

“Come on where?” Rankin began. “What’s with the gun?”

“We’re taking a little trip, just the three of us,” Streeter answered. He nodded in the direction of the observation porthole.

Bonterre slipped the Radmeter beneath her sweater.

“You mean, into the Pit?” Rankin asked incredulously.

“It’s dangerous as hell down there! The whole thing’s suspended over—”

Streeter placed the gun against the back of Rankin’s right hand and fired.

The sound of the explosion was shockingly loud in the confined space of Orthanc. Instinctively, Bonterre looked away for a
moment. Turning back, she saw Rankin on his knees, clutching his right hand. Thin streams of blood trickled between his fingers
and pattered to the metal floor.

“That leaves you one hand to hold on with,” Streeter says. “If you want to keep it, shut your hairy fucking mouth.”

Once again he motioned them toward the door and the observation platform beyond. With a gasp of pain, Rankin hauled himself
to his feet, looked from Streeter to the gun, then moved slowly to the door.

“Now you,” Streeter said, nodding at Bonterre. Slowly, making sure the Radmeter was secure beneath her sweater, she stood
up and began to follow Rankin.

“Be very careful,” Streeter said, cradling the gun. “It’s a long way down.”