The Mystery of Yamashita's Map (37 page)

Joe ignored the professor’s peculiar comment. In fact, he was ignoring everything that the people around him were saying (apart from Kono, who wasn’t saying anything, just looking around him in confusion). He was far more transfixed on something in the middle of the huge chamber, and he marched towards it, leaving Lisa studying the flag with her uncle.

The object taking centre stage in this unusual room was even stranger than the flags. It resembled a large bell, but it wasn’t like any bell Joe had ever seen. It was huge, black, and it looked like it hailed from a completely different time, a completely different world. It could easily fit a man inside it, perhaps even two or three.

Most telling of all, however, was the symbol engraved into its side, which was as worrying as it was recognisable.

‘Is that a swastika?’ Joe almost laughed – it just wasn’t something you expected to find underneath a monastery in Hong Kong.

‘Indeed it is,’ answered the professor, stepping up for a closer look. The bell really was quite incredible, and on further inspection, the professor realised that it wasn’t just one bell, but two. ‘Look at this! It’s a structure within a structure.’

Lisa came over from the flag, standing in between the professor and Joe. Kono also shuffled over, eager not to miss out on anything.

‘What do you mean?’ Lisa asked, staring at the mysterious object. ‘What’s the point of it? Is it just for decoration?’

The professor shook his head. ‘No, I don’t think so. It looks like it moves.’ He inched closer to the bell, pointing at the space between the two structures. ‘See here, I’d bet that the inside structure spins clockwise and the outside one spins anti-clockwise.’

‘What happens if you’re standing between the two?’ queried Joe, looking like he didn’t really want to know the answer.

The professor didn’t have one for him anyway; he just shrugged as he moved even closer, staring at the red stains on the inside wall of the bell.

‘Is it blood?’ Lisa questioned, feeling rather squeamish at the thought it could be.   

The professor’s brow furrowed as he squinted through his glasses ‘How odd. I can’t really say without doing a lab test, but somehow it reminds me of the type of stains red mercury would leave.’

‘Red mercury?’ Lisa responded, ‘I’ve never heard of it’

Her uncle had that familiar look on his face whenever he was perplexed, ‘Well as far as I know it’s purely theoretical and doesn’t really exist. No one has ever actually proved there is such a thing. ’ He paused as if to come to terms with what he was saying. ‘There were rumours that red mercury had massive destructive properties and could be used in atomic weapons.’

‘And you think these stains were made by red mercury?’ A hint of disbelief was clear by the tone of Lisa’s voice.

The professor stood back from the bell and straightened his back, he had spent too long bending over scrutinizing the red stains, the backache an unpleasant reminder he was no longer in the prime of his youth.

‘You’re correct Lisa, it can’t be red mercury.’ The professor seemed reluctant to let his theory go. ‘Maybe red mercury is a code for some other type of material?’ he mused.

Lisa gave him one of her non-verbal communication looks that was telling him not to continue this conversation about red mercury.

For the first time since they’d gone down there, Kono spoke. ‘What’s that?’ He moved over to two panels that were inside the bell.

It was hard to see from where Lisa was standing, but there was something wedged in between them, and she could just about make it out. ‘Is it a piece of paper or parchment?’

Kono reached for it, dislodging an old document, faded with time. ‘It’s… it’s…’ Kono was looking at it, frowning, as if trying to find the right word.

The professor leaned over his shoulder, peering down at the ancient paper. ‘It looks like a contract.’ He moved round and took it out of Kono’s hands, scanning it briefly and trying to get the gist of the document. It was some sort of agreement between something called the ‘Black Eagle Trust Fund’ and the American government, signed by someone named John. His surname started with ‘McC’ but the rest was illegible. The paper also sported the Great Seal of the United States.

‘Oh.’

‘What is it, Uncle?’ Lisa knew that look, and it wasn’t a good one. Butterflies had already started flittering around her stomach.

The professor looked up. His mind trying to comprehend, to make sense of everything he had seen. He was always one step ahead when coming to conclusions.

‘I think we should leave this alone. In fact, we should all go. Right this instant. Something went on here and its better if we don’t know what it was.’

Now really intrigued, Joe came over to look at the document the professor was holding in his shaking hands. ‘Why? What is it?’

The professor thrust the paper at Joe. ‘I’m not one hundred percent sure, you understand, but I’ve heard stories of this Black Eagle Trust Fund. It was supposed to have been set up to fund covert operations by the American government. It was so secret, however, that even the U.S. President wouldn’t have known about it.’

‘What about Yamashita’s gold? Would that have been used by the Black Eagle Trust?’ Lisa was staring into the distance, thinking of the gold bars they’d just stacked in the other room.

The professor nodded. ‘More than likely.’

Kono – who had been inspecting the bell while the others discussed the contract – moved towards them, but as he slipped through the space between the inner and the outer bell walls, his massive frame crashed against one of the panels.

An ear-splitting screech echoed around the chamber, a sound so loud that Lisa and the professor had to cover their ears, backing away from the bell as if that would somehow help, even though the sound was seemingly coming from all around them.

Just at that moment, Joe noticed movement in the corner of his eye – the bell was in motion. He watched for a second as the inside of the bell began to spin clockwise, and without thinking, he rushed in to try and help Kono get out.

Just as he grabbed him, the outer wall also began to rotate, this time spinning anti-clockwise, just as the professor had said.

‘Joe!’

‘Watch out!’

The voices of Lisa and her uncle rang out in the chamber, but they were soon swallowed up by the sound of the bell, which was still shrieking as if it were somehow in pain.

The screech then turned into a loud humming noise, making everyone’s heads ache and the walls of the chamber actually vibrate. It got louder and louder, the intensity of the sound making Lisa feel like her head was going to explode.

Then, there was a huge, red flash, followed by silence. A dim humming sound could just about be heard, but it was nothing compared to the noise from before.

Lisa ran to the bell, afraid of what she might see, but needing to see it anyway. Visions of Joe and Kono, both dead and draped over each other, swam into her thoughts.

There was nothing.

She wasn’t looking at the bodies of her friends; she wasn’t looking at anything. Joe and Kono had gone. Disappeared. Vanished.

‘Uncle! Where are they? What happened? Where’s Joe?’ Lisa’s voice was hysterical, her heart pounding as she desperately looked over every inch of the bell.

‘My God.’

The tone of the professor’s voice made her stop and look over at him. He was staring at the bell, an expression of wonder on his face. Wonder and fear. At that moment, Lisa thought that it was the worst possible combination of expressions in the world. ‘Uncle? What is it?’

‘Die Glocke.’

Lisa walked over to him, grabbing his arm frantically. ‘What are you saying? I don’t understand!’ Tears were forming in her eyes now, and she thought back to Joe’s tear-stained face that she’d been standing in front of just minutes ago. It all seemed completely unreal.

The professor focused on Lisa, the glazed look in his eyes now gone. ‘The Bell. As soon as I saw the swastika, it occurred to me, of course, but I didn’t really think it could be true.’

Lisa was getting angry now, impatient and annoyed that she had no idea what the professor was talking about. ‘Uncle, please! What do you know?’ If he had some information about the bell, maybe they could find out what happened to Joe.

The professor looked over his niece’s shoulder, although whether he was looking at the bell itself or into the distance as he recalled the information, Lisa wasn’t sure. ‘Die Glocke was a secret Nazi experiment in the 1940s. There are many rumours, of course, but it was thought that the Germans were investigating perpetual motion, time travel and reanimation.’ The professor’s mind raced as he considered all the possibilities that were beginning to form in his brain. ‘Where did the Nazi’s get this technology?’    

Lisa looked at her uncle as if he’d gone mad.

‘Quite extraordinary, really, that they were researching all this back in the forties!’

Lisa was about to ask about Joe again, to tell her Uncle that she didn’t care about what the Germans were experimenting with over seventy years ago… that she just wanted Joe back, when she suddenly felt very, very sick.

One second later, the professor fell forwards, grabbing onto Lisa’s sleeve. ‘No…’ His eyes were wide, his forehead covered in sweat.

‘Uncle? Uncle!’ Lisa was about to drag him out of the room – away from that awful bell, whatever it was – when she too felt her knees give way beneath her. It was as if all of her strength had suddenly been zapped from her body.

Her mind still on Joe and what on earth had become of him, she fell to the ground, her uncle tumbling down next to her. ‘What’s happening to us?’ Her voice came out low and quiet, like a whisper. It was all the energy she could muster.

The professor opened his mouth and swallowed a couple of times. It looked like it took a lot of effort. ‘I… believe… I think we may be suffering… from some sort of radiation.’ He looked over at the bell, the pain of moving his head obvious on his face. ‘We’ve been exposed.’

Lisa groaned as she rested her head back on the floor of the chamber – her skull suddenly felt as if it weighed a hundred pounds.

Turning so that she could see her uncle – who also was now completely horizontal on the stone slabs – she took every inch of strength she had and reached out for his hand, entwining her fingers through his.

Resting on the cool hard ground, she closed her eyes, exhausted.

The dull hum of the bell was all she could hear as she muttered just one word.

‘Joe…’
 

Chapter Twenty-one

‘Mr. Joe?’

Kono’s deep voice boomed through Joe’s skull, which was already throbbing from the force of… what, exactly? Suddenly coming to his senses, Joe sat up, narrowly avoiding bashing his head into the Japanese gangster’s arm.

‘Are you OK?’

Hearing Kono worry about his welfare was still a little strange to Joe; after all, it wasn’t that long ago they were having a near-fatal stand-off in the jungle. Even stranger than that, however, was the current situation they found themselves in.

‘Ask me again in a few minutes.’ Joe looked around him, trying to clear his head enough to take in his surroundings. At first, he’d thought they were in a small, dark room, like a sort of mausoleum maybe – a cheery thought. However, as his eyes adjusted to the gloom, he realised they were in the bell-like structure under the monastery.

Memories of the last few minutes started resurfacing then, and the relief that washed over him when he realised where he was almost made him laugh out loud. ‘Lisa?’ He stood up – carefully, he was still a bit wobbly – and made his way out of the bell and into the chamber.

Joe stopped abruptly, only vaguely aware that Kono had also stood up and had proceeded to walk straight into the back of him.

There were no huge black flags adorning the walls, and Lisa and the professor were nowhere to be seen.

They weren’t in the chamber.

Joe took another step, looking around the room – which had no discerning features or pieces of furniture, nothing in fact, except for the bell – before settling his gaze on Kono. ‘What the hell just happened? This isn’t the secret room under the monastery!’