The Last Gospel (50 page)

‘Do you think you can do it?’ Helena said. ‘Move it, I mean? Yereva and I couldn’t.’

‘Only one way to find out.’ Jack passed her the headlamp, then motioned to Costas. They each put their hands under a corner of the block. ‘We’ll have to try to rock it out,’ Jack said. ‘Gently does it. Towards you first.’ They heaved, and the block budged. Costas yelped in pain. ‘You okay?’ Jack said. Costas drew out one hand, shaking and blowing on it, and grimaced. He slid it back in under the block, which was now a few centimetres out of the wall. ‘Again,’ he said. They pushed back and forth another half a dozen times, each time pulling it out further. It came surprisingly easily. They shifted position so they were facing each other, both hands under the stone. ‘Heave,’ Jack said. With one hand under the outer edge of the block they each moved their other hand back fractionally every time the stone came forward, keeping close to the wall. Helena pulled up a pair of short wooden planks she had found beside the railing outside the chapel, positioning them under the stone. ‘Okay. This is it,’ Jack said. ‘Let’s try to take it out a good metre. Careful of your back.’ They both straightened up as much as they could, looking each other in the eye, and nodded. In one swift movement they heaved the block out from the wall and placed it on the planks. They withdrew their hands, shaking them and exhaling forcefully. ‘Right,’ Jack panted, looking at the hole where the block had been. ‘What have we got?’

Helena was already peering into the space, holding Jack’s headlamp as far in as she could reach. ‘It goes in about five metres, then there’s another wall, rock-cut by the look of it,’ she said. ‘Then the tunnel seems to veer down, to the right.’ She knelt back up, and passed the light to Jack. ‘If it’s a cistern in there, it could be underwater,’ she said. ‘We’re in the deepest accessible place under the Holy Sepulchre, and it’s been raining a lot over the past few days. What now?’

Jack looked at Costas, who looked back at him, his face expressionless.

‘Jack, we had a deal,’ Costas said. ‘No more underground places.’

‘You’re off the hook this time. Too narrow for you.’

‘Are you okay with this?’ Costas said, looking hard at Jack. ‘I mean, going in alone?’

Jack peered into the space. ‘I don’t think I’m walking away from this one.’

‘No, you’re not.’

Jack opened the straps on the lamp and slipped it over his head, then picked up his khaki bag and pushed it as far ahead as he could into the hole.

‘His lucky bag,’ Costas said to Helena. ‘He never goes anywhere without it.’

Helena glanced back nervously at the entrance to the chapel. ‘Make it quick,’ she said. ‘We need to get out of here soon.’ She looked at Jack, then touched his arm. ‘
Domine iumius
,’ she murmured. ‘Godspeed.’

 

Moments later Jack was inside the space where the stone block had been, inching his way forward on his stomach, stretched out with his bag ahead of him. The entrance into the wall lay only a few metres back, but already he felt completely isolated, away from the chapel behind him, part of another space he could see ahead in the beam from his headlamp. He remembered Herculaneum, the extraordinary feeling of stepping back in time as they entered the lost library. He felt it here too, part of the same continuum, as if he had edged back further, close to the beginning of the story that had led Claudius to be in that villa. He felt strangely comforted by the old stone, cocooned by it, his usual anxieties gone. Helena’s last words kept running through his head, the two words of Latin, and he found himself murmuring them, a low chant that helped to keep him focused. He pulled himself forward, trying to keep his elbows from scraping on the rock. There was now no light at all visible from the entrance behind his feet. He paused, sweeping his headlamp around the walls. To his right was masonry, clearly a continuation of the first-century wall with the graffito, at right angles to it. To his left and above him was bedrock, scored and cut by quarry marks, so old that they seemed almost part of the natural geology, as if the ancient imprint of man had become just another process of erosion and transformation that had gone into shaping this place.

Ahead of him the tunnel ended abruptly where Helena had spotted the quarry wall, and he could see where it joined a space to the right. He pushed his bag into the corner and angled his body around, squeezing into the opening. It was tight, and the sharp edges of the rock ripped his shirt. He pulled himself through, wincing where the rock caught him. He was in a larger space now, enough to crouch on his hands and knees. To his right, the masonry wall of the entrance tunnel continued at right angles, at least five courses of large stone blocks. His face was only inches from it, and he saw that it was the same stone as the wall outside with the ship graffito, only here the surface was unworn, fresh. He realized that the crawlspace had taken him along the sides of a rectilinear structure built up against the quarry face, and that he was now behind it, inside a cavity that the structure concealed. He turned to the left, towards the quarry face. The rest of the stone was natural, bedrock. Above him were large rectilinear cuttings, where blocks had been chiselled out. Below that he saw a narrow opening into a rock-cut chamber, its ceiling and the upper few feet of the sides visible. Inside he could see that it was filled with water, a black pool that glistened in his headlamp. He crawled over to the edge and peered in. It looked bottomless, like the cistern he had seen beyond the railing on the way into the Chapel of St Vartan.

There was just enough room to maneouvre, and he struggled on to his back, kicking off his boots and stripping off his clothes. He crawled back to the edge of the pool, his headlamp still on, and slipped into the water. It was icy cold, but felt instantly cleansing. For a moment he floated motionless on the surface, face down, eyes shut. Then he looked. Without a mask the image was blurry, and his eyes smarted with the cold. But the water was crystal clear, and he could see the beam from his headlamp dancing off rock, revealing walls and corners. He was floating above a deep cutting, at least four metres deep, rectilinear. He twisted sideways for more air, then put his face under again. As the beam swept down he saw a wide opening in the side of the chamber, cut into the rock in the direction of the quarry face. The opening was arched above and flat below, forming a shelf, wide enough for two to lie side by side. He ducked his head down and stared into the cutting, but was blinded by a dazzling sheen of light that reflected off the polished surface of the shelf. He remained there, staring into the speckly radiance, registering nothing, his mind frozen.

This was no water cistern
.

He came up for air, then quickly looked down again. Out of nowhere he had an image of Elizabeth, then of Helena, and for a split second he thought he saw something, a trick of the light perhaps, a reflection of his own form floating over the edge of the shelf. He jerked his head upwards, gasping for air, and his headlamp slipped off, spiralling down out of reach through the water. He blinked hard, then looked down again. The shelf was lost in darkness, and all he could see was the bottom of the pool where the light had fallen, a blurry image of shadows and light. He took another breath, then arched his back and dived, pulling himself down with strong strokes, relishing the freedom of being underwater again, where he belonged.

Then he saw it.

A stone cylinder resting on the bottom, white, just like ones he had seen before, in an ancient library under a volcano, a library once owned by a Roman emperor who had come here to the Holy Land to seek salvation in the words of one who had dwelt beside the Sea of Galilee.

Then he realized.

Everett had found the tomb
.

He reached down.

J
ack crawled back to the entrance of the tunnel where he and Costas had removed the stone block, pushing his bag ahead of him. He dropped it on the floor of the chapel, then stretched his hands down and used them to walk himself out. He had still been dripping wet when he put his clothes back on, but he hardly noticed the cold and damp. All he could think about now was getting out and to safety. He looked around. The candles in the chapel were still lit, but there was nobody to be seen. ‘Costas?’ he said, his voice echoing back down the tunnel. ‘Helena?’ There was no reply. He squatted down, putting the strap of his bag over his neck. He shook his hair and wiped his face. Maybe they had gone back to the first chamber, to the Chapel of St Helena. He checked his watch. Twenty minutes to go. He prayed that Morgan had made it. He clutched his bag. Whatever happened now, the world would know.

He got up and walked cautiously towards the chapel entrance, then out into the passageway. He wiped his face again with the back of his hand, and saw how grimy he was. Ahead of him was the grated door into the Chapel of St Helena, wide open. He could see the candlelight flickering over the central columns of the chapel, and in the gloom at the back the steps that led up to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. He took a few steps forward, then stopped. Something was wrong. Then he heard a sound, out of place, metallic.
The sound of a gun cocking
. So this was it. He braced himself, his heart pounding. He had no choice now. There was only one way out. He walked slowly into the chapel.

‘Dr Howard. We meet again.’

The voice was instantly familiar, with the hint of an east European accent. It was the voice of a man from another underground place two days before, a man Jack had only seen in shadow. He suddenly felt a cold grip in the pit of his stomach.
Helena had been right
. Jack said nothing, but made his way cautiously over the irregular stone floor, keeping his eyes averted from the candles to accustom them to the gloom. The figure stood in front of him, in the shadows again, beside the chapel altar and a statue of a woman holding a cross: St Helena. Jack stood still, his feet apart, glancing from side to side, trying to discern others in the darkness.

‘Show them to me,’ he snarled.

There was a pause, then a sound of fingers clicking, and someone in a dishevelled monk’s robe was pushed forward, tripping and falling heavily on one elbow. It was Yereva, her face bruised and swollen. ‘I didn’t say anything, Helena,’ she blurted out, peering into the darkness behind her. ‘They followed me.’ Then Jack saw the silencer of a pistol rammed into her neck, and she was yanked back into the shadows.

‘You see, we knew where you were all along,’ the man said to Jack, his face obscured. ‘We have eyes and ears everywhere. Many willing brethren.’ Jack saw him click his fingers again. Another figure was pushed out from the shadows, a bearded man wearing an episcopal robe, a bishop, clutching an ornate Armenian cross to his chest. Jack saw the silencer thrust out of the darkness towards the man, who looked imploringly at Jack, twisting sideways. Jack looked back towards the man in the shadows, and snorted. ‘One of your willing brethren?’ he said.

The bishop spoke rapidly in his own language, beseechingly. The man in the shadows turned on him, his voice low, vicious. He said something in Latin. The bishop stopped talking, stood rooted to the spot, then started shaking, weeping.

‘You see?’ the man said, turning to Jack. ‘Everyone is willing, who serves our cause.’

‘Show me them,’ Jack snarled again.

The man spoke into the darkness to one side, in Italian. ‘
Pronto
,’ he said. The fingers snapped again. There was a tussle, and a grunted exclamation. Costas was suddenly pushed into the candlelight, tripping and then standing upright, a strip of duct tape over his mouth and his hands tied behind his back. He was breathing stentoriously, sucking in the air through his blocked sinuses, his chest heaving. Jack could see a silencer behind his neck, and the dark outline of a figure behind. A man with his arm in a cast. Jack’s mind was working overtime.
Their assailant in Rome
. Costas caught sight of Jack, his eyes wide, desperate.

‘Take off the tape,’ Jack snarled. ‘He can’t breathe.’

‘He has nothing further to say,’ the figure by the altar said. ‘And nor do you.’

Jack suddenly knew, with cold certainty. This was no longer a sanctuary. It was an execution chamber. He glanced at his watch. Only ten minutes to go. He needed to string it out. ‘I take it that little affray out in the streets was no coincidence,’ he said. ‘The knifings by the Wailing Wall, the curfew, the power cut.’

‘It served our purpose,’ the man said. ‘And it has always been easy to infiltrate extremist groups, on both sides.’

‘When we met before, you said you wanted an end to it.’

‘I needed to convince you.’

‘You told us the truth about the
concilium
, about Claudius and the last gospel.’

‘I needed to convince you. Enough for you to carry on your quest, to bring us to this place. You have served our purpose well. From Narcissus we knew that Pliny had taken what Claudius gave him to Rome, and that Claudius had visited the tomb in London. The rest was your work. The Getty Villa, the nunnery at Santa Paula, here. It was not difficult to follow. Your young American colleague trusts his friends too much. Not that it need concern him now.’