Текст книги "Crescent Dawn"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

Соавторы: Dirk Cussler,Clive Cussler
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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 32 страниц)

The parchment proved to be blank. But they soon saw it was protecting a smaller scroll rolled inside. It was a bamboo-colored papyrus leaf with a single column of script running down its center.

“This… this must be the Manifest,” Julie uttered quietly, her eyes locked on the ancient document.

“It appears to be written in some sort of ancient script,” Summer noted.

Julie stared at the lettering, finding it familiar. “It appears similar to Greek,” she said, “but it’s nothing that I’ve seen before.”

“That would most likely be Coptic Greek,” thundered a male voice behind them.

The women jumped at the unexpected assertion. Spinning their heads toward the door, they were shocked to find Ridley Bannister standing in the entry. He was dressed in a thickly padded black leather jacket and pants favored by dirt-track motorcycle racers. But neither woman noticed his unusual attire. Their attention was focused instead on the snub-nosed revolver he held in his hand, aimed squarely at their chests.

30

You are the one that attacked me in my hotel room,” Julie blurted, finally recognizing the leather outfit.

“Attack is rather a harsh description,” Bannister replied casually. “I prefer to think that we were just sharing research information.”

“Stealing, you mean,” Summer said.

Bannister shot her a hurt look. “Not at all,” he said. “Strictly borrowing. You’ll find that the diary has found a new home with the rest of Kitchener’s private papers upstairs.”

“Oh, a penitent thief,” Summer replied sarcastically.

Bannister ignored the cut.

“I must say, I am quite impressed with your sleuthing abilities,” he said, eyeing Julie. “The leather diary was a marvelous discovery, though the Earl’s comments were less than startling. But then identifying Sally on top of that. Quite an encore.”

“We weren’t quite as sloppy as you,” Summer remarked.

“Yes, well, I had limited time to peruse Emily Kitchener’s possessions. Be that as it may, a job well done. I searched ten years ago myself without such success.” He raised the pistol and motioned with it.

“Would you ladies be so kind as to move to the rear of this compartment? I’ll be needing to leave with the Manifest.”

“To borrow?” Julie asked.

“Not this time, I’m afraid,” Bannister replied with a sharklike smile.

Julie peered at the scroll before slowly stepping away.

“Tell us first. What is the significance of the Manifest?” she asked.

“Until it has been authenticated, no one can say for sure,” Bannister said, creeping over to retrieve the parchment with the papyrus inside. “It’s just an old document that some seem to think could rattle the theological powers that be.” He picked up the scroll with his free hand and gently placed it in an inside pocket of his jacket.

“Was Kitchener deliberately killed because of it?” Julie asked.

“I would assume so. But that’s one you’ll have to take up with the Church of England. It’s been nice chatting with you ladies,” he said, backpedaling toward the door, “but I’m afraid I have a plane to catch.”

He stepped out of the pantry and began closing the door behind him.

“Please don’t leave us in here,” Julie begged.

“Not to worry,” Bannister replied. “I’ll be sure and phone Aldrich in a day or so and let him know there’s a pair of lovely lasses locked in his basement. Good-bye.”

The door slammed shut with a whoosh followed by the sound of the dead bolt sliding home. Then Bannister flicked off the pantry’s lights, plunging it into blackness. He quietly crept upstairs to Aldrich’s quarters, stopping to replace the unloaded Webley pistol in a glass cabinet of Kitchener’s military artifacts, where he had borrowed it minutes before. Waiting until the lobby cleared, he slipped out of the manor unseen and quickly hopped upon his rented motorcycle.

Three hours later, he called the Lambeth Palace head of security from a phone at Heathrow Airport.

“Judkins, it’s Bannister.”

“Bannister,” the security man replied with an acid tongue. “I’ve been waiting for you to report. You’ve tracked this Goodyear woman?”

“Yes. She and the American have been down at Broome Park digging up Kitchener documents. Still there, as a matter of fact.”

“Are they going to prove problematic?”

“Well, they are a bit suspicious and have certainly been barking up the right tree.”

“But do they have anything damaging to us?” the security man asked impatiently.

“Oh, no,” Bannister replied, patting his chest pocket with a wide grin. “They have nothing. Nothing at all.”

31

The sealed pantry was as black as a cave. Summer placed a hand on the shelf for balance as she waited a moment for her eyes to adjust to the sudden darkness. But without a source of light, there was nothing to see. She remembered her cell phone and pulled it out of her pocket, the device emitting a dull blue glow.

“No phone signal down here, I’m afraid, but at least we’ve got a night-light,” she said.

Using the cell phone as a flashlight, she stepped to the door, pushing it first with her shoulder, then applying a few firm kicks with the heel of her foot. The thick door didn’t budge at all, and she knew that even a sumo wrestler wouldn’t have been able to snap off the heavy dead bolt. She eased back over to Julie, flashing the phone toward her to find a scared look on her face.

“I don’t like this one bit,” Julie said in a shaky voice. “I think I want to scream.”

“You know, Julie, that’s a good idea. Why don’t we?”

Summer tilted her head toward the ceiling and let out a loud scream. Julie immediately joined in, yelling repeatedly for help.

Muffled by the thick pantry door, the screams registered only faintly upstairs. The few guests who detected the faraway cries assumed it was somebody with an iPod cranked too high. The sound didn’t register at all in Aldrich’s aged ears.

The women took a short break, then tried yelling again. As more minutes ticked by without a response, they resigned themselves to the fact that they couldn’t be heard. The screaming had served as a release, though, helping to expel the anxiety of their imprisonment. Julie, in particular, seemed to regain the composure that she had been close to losing.

“I guess we might as well get comfortable if we’re going to be in here awhile,” she said, pulling a large box onto the floor and using it as a chair. “Do you think he’ll actually call Aldrich?” she asked somberly.

“I suspect so,” Summer replied. “He didn’t act like a trained killer, nor seem psychotic to me.” Deep down, she wasn’t so certain.

“Personally, I’d rather not wait for Aldrich,” she added. “Maybe there’s something in one of these boxes that can help us get out of here.”

Under the dim glow of her cell phone, she began cracking open some of the other boxes. But it became readily apparent that there was nothing but papers, clothes, and a few odd personal belongings packed away in the former pantry. Soon growing discouraged, she pulled a box down alongside Julie and took a seat.

“It would seem we have little more than a nice wardrobe to help us escape.”

“Well, at least we have something to wear in case we get cold,” Julie said. “Now, if only we had something to eat.”

“I’m afraid the pantry is bare in regards to food,” Summer replied. Then she thought for a moment, contemplating her own words. “Aldrich said that this was built as a secondary pantry, didn’t he?” she asked.

“Yes,” Julie confirmed. “And thank goodness for the rat-proofing.”

“Julie, do you know where the main kitchen is located in the manor?”

The researcher thought for a moment. “I’ve never set foot in it, but it’s located off the main dining hall, along the west side of the residence.”

Summer visualized the orientation of the estate. “We’re on the west side, aren’t we?”

“Yes.”

“So the kitchen would be located roughly above us?”

“Yes, that would be right. What are you driving at?”

Summer rose to her feet and circled the room, studying the walls behind the storage boxes with her cell-phone light. She slowly made her way to the rear of the pantry, examining a bank of four wooden cabinet doors now visible behind a stack of boxes. She passed the phone to Julie to hold for her.

“If you were Kitchener’s chef and you needed a sack of flour from the pantry, would you go lugging it through the house?” she asked, moving the stack of boxes aside. Then she reached up to the top two cabinet doors and tried to open them. But they were sealed shut.

“They’re faux doors,” Julie said, holding up the light while Summer dug her nails under the doors’ edges to no avail. “Try the bottom doors.”

Julie shoved a box on the floor aside so that Summer could try the lower doors. Tugging at the edges, she was surprised when both doors flew open effortlessly. Behind them appeared to be an empty black compartment.

“Move the light in,” Summer requested.

Julie shoved the cell phone past the doors, illuminating a large tray at the base of the compartment that was affixed to a rear rack. A pulley wheel was visible to one side with a tight loop of rope around it that then ascended past the upper cabinet. Julie turned the cell light upward, revealing a long vertical shaft.

“It’s a dumbwaiter,” Julie said. “Why, of course. How did you know?”

Summer shrugged her shoulders. “A lifelong aversion to doing things the hard way, I suppose.”

She surveyed the shelf for a moment. “It’s a little tight, but I think it will suffice as an elevator. I’m afraid I’m going to have to borrow that light back.”

“You can’t go up that thing,” Julie said. “You’ll break your neck.”

“No worries. I think I can just fit.”

Summer took the cell phone and corkscrewed her long legs into the opening, then wormed the rest of her body in until she sat cross-legged on the tray. A pair of frayed ropes dangled beside the pulley used to hoist the tray, but she dared not test her weight on them. Placing the phone in her lap, she instead surveyed a thin link of bicycle chain that spooled around the actual pulley. She then leaned her head back into the pantry.

“Wish me luck. Hopefully I’ll meet you at the front door in five minutes,” she told Julie.

“Do be careful.”

Summer grabbed the chain with both hands and pulled down hard. The tray immediately rose off its base, and Summer rose up into the chute. Julie quickly grabbed a boxful of clothes and emptied it on the base as a cushion, should Summer lose her grip and fall.

But the athletic young oceanographer didn’t fall. Summer was able to pull herself up ten feet before her hands and arm muscles began to weaken. She then found she could tilt the tray forward and wedge her feet against one side of the chute while pressing her back against the opposite side. Supporting her weight in this manner, she could temporarily free her hands from the biting edge of the pulley chain. Resting a few minutes, she then pulled herself up several more feet before pausing again.

She spotted the upper pulley just a few feet above her head and made one more effort to rise to the top. With her hands and arms aching, she muscled herself even with the pulley, scrunching her head beneath the top of the chute. The back side of a cabinet door appeared in front of her, and she quickly pushed on it with her feet. But the door didn’t budge.

She could feel her arms weakening as she pushed with her feet again, this time detecting a hairline movement to the door. She was positioned too high and close to the pulley to wedge herself against the chute for relief and she could feel her hold on the chain waning. Realizing she was seconds from losing her grip, she pushed herself backward as far as she could, then rocketed forward, jamming her feet against the door with all her might.

She heard a horrendous crash as the cabinet door burst open, sending a wave of bright light into the cavernous chute. Summer was momentarily blinded by the sudden change in light as she slid through the door, letting go of the chain as her momentum carried her across a smoothly polished surface.

Her vision clearing, she found herself lying on a large teak buffet. It sat in a small but brightly lit lounge that had been constructed from an original section of the manor’s kitchen. Summer was startled to see a half dozen elderly couples seated around the room having tea. They all silently stared at her as if she was an alien from Ursa Minor.

Slowly sliding off the buffet and onto her feet, she surveyed the source of the loud crash. Scattered about the floor were spoons, teacups, and saucers from a large formal tea set that had been sent flying when she kicked open the door.

Summer ruefully brushed herself off, hiding her grease-stained hands as she smiled at the collected gawkers.

“I do hate to miss teatime,” she said apologetically, then quickly scurried from the room.

She ran into Aldrich in the hall as he rushed toward the commotion and redirected him to help Julie. Together, they dashed down the stairs and unlocked the pantry door. A relieved Julie smiled at the sight of Summer.

“I heard a terrible crash. Is everything all right?” she asked.

“Yes,” Summer grinned, “but I might owe Aldrich a new tea set.”

“Poppycock!” the old man grunted. “Now, tell me again who locked you in here.”

Julie described Bannister and his motorcycle attire.

“Sounds like that fellow Baker,” Aldrich said. “Checked out this morning.”

“What do you know of him?” Summer asked.

“Not much, I’m afraid. Said he was a writer living in London who was down for a golf holiday. But I vaguely remember him visiting before, must be four or five years ago. I recall letting him into the archives. He’s quite knowledgeable about the Earl. In fact, he was the one who also inquired about Emily.”

Julie and Summer looked at each other knowingly, then Summer stepped back into the pantry.

“Would you like me to call the police?” Aldrich asked.

Julie thought for a moment. “No, I don’t suppose that will be necessary. He has what he came looking for, so I don’t think he’ll be bothering us again. Besides, I’m sure he gave you a phony name and address in London.”

“He’s going to get more than a piece of my mind if he shows up here again,” Aldrich huffed. “You poor dears. Please, come upstairs and have some tea.”

“Thank you, Aldrich. We’ll be right along.”

As Aldrich strutted off, Julie sat down on a Queen Anne bench beside some covered furniture and breathed heavily. Summer exited the pantry a second later, noting a paleness in Julie’s face.

“You all right?” Summer asked.

“Yes. Didn’t want to admit it, but I am a bit claustrophobic. I don’t care to experience that feeling again anytime soon.”

Summer turned and closed the heavy door behind her.

“No need for either of us to set foot in there again,” she said. “Where’s Aldrich?”

“He went upstairs to make us some tea.”

“I hope he can find some cups.”

Julie shook her head with a disappointed grimace.

“I can’t believe it. We had the clue to Kitchener’s death right in our hands and it was plucked away by that thief before we had the chance to figure out what it all meant.”

“Don’t look so depressed. All is not lost,” Summer replied consolingly.

“But we have so little left to go on. We’ll probably never find out the true meaning of the Manifest.”

“To quote Aldrich, poppycock,” Summer replied. “We’ve still got Sally,” she added, holding up the doll.

“What good is that?”

“Well, our friend may have stolen the left leg, but we’ve still got the right.”

She held the flayed doll toward Julie, yanking away a small piece of cotton stuffing. Peering inside, the historian could make out the tip of yet another scroll of paper, this one in the right leg.

She said nothing, her eyes ablaze, as Summer gently worked the object free from the doll’s interior. As Summer laid it on the bench and carefully unrolled it, they could both see that it was not a sheet of parchment or papyrus like the other scroll. Instead, it was simply a typewritten letter, with the heading “University of Cambridge Archaeology Department” emblazoned across the top.

32

“Divers are still down,” Gunn announced.

Standing on the bridge of the Aegean Explorer, he peered through a pair of binoculars at an empty Zodiac tied to a drop line that ran down to the Ottoman shipwreck. Every few seconds, he spotted a dual set of air bubbles breaking the surface a few feet from the buoyed line. Gunn swung the glasses past the Zodiac, refocusing the lenses on the large blue Italian yacht that was stationed close by. He noted curiously that its bow was facing him, which put the yacht perpendicular to the current. A partial glimpse of the rear deck showed some men scurrying about in activity, but Gunn’s view was quickly obscured by the vessel’s superstructure.

“Our nosy friend is still perusing the neighborhood,” he said.

“The Sultana?” Pitt said, having earlier deciphered the Italian yacht’s name.

“Yes. Looks like she’s crept a little closer to the wreck site.”

Pitt looked up from the chart table, where he was examining some documents.

“He must be rather hard up for entertainment.”

“I can’t figure out what he’s up to,” Gunn said, setting down the binoculars. “He’s got his side thrusters on, positioning himself crossways to the current.”

“Why don’t you call him on the radio and ask him?”

“The captain tried a number of friendly calls last night. Couldn’t even get a response.”

Gunn stepped over and took a seat at the table opposite Pitt. Lying on the table were two tiny ceramic canisters that had been recovered from the wreck site. Pitt was comparing the items with an archaeological assessment of a merchant ship excavated by famed underwater archaeologist George Bass.

“Any luck dating these?” Gunn asked, picking up one of the canisters and eyeing it closely.

“They’re very similar to some pottery found on a merchant ship that sank near Yassi Ada in the fourth century,” Pitt said, showing Gunn a photograph from the report.

“So Al’s Roman crown isn’t a phony?”

“No, it would appear legitimate. We’ve got an Ottoman-era wreck that for some reason is carrying Roman artifacts.”

“A nice find any way you slice it,” Gunn said. “I wonder where the items originated?”

“Dr. Zeibig is assessing some grain samples that were embedded in one of the potsherds, which may indicate the vessel’s point of origin. Of course, if you’d have let us uncover the rest of your monolith, we might already have an answer.”

“Oh no you don’t,” Gunn protested. “That’s my find, and Rod said I could recover it with him on our next dive. You just keep Al away from it. Which reminds me,” he said, looking at his watch. “Iverson and Tang should be back up anytime now.”

“Then I better go rouse Al,” Pitt said, rising from the table. “We’re scheduled for the next dive.”

“I think I saw him napping next to his new toy,” Gunn said.

“Yes, he’s been anxious to test-dive the Bullet.”

As Pitt made his way across the bridge, Gunn gave one last warning.

“Now, remember. You two keep your hands off my monolith,” he cried, waving a finger at Pitt as he departed.

Pitt retrieved a dive bag from his cabin, then stepped to the rear deck of the ship. In the shadow of a white, aerodynamically shaped submersible, he found Giordino napping on a rolled-up wet suit. Pitt’s approaching presence was enough to wake Giordino, and he cocked open a lazy eyelid.

“Time for another trip to my soggy royal yacht?” he asked.

“Yes, King Al. We’ve been assigned to examine grid C-2, which appears to be a ballast mound.”

“Ballast? How am I to add to my jewelry collection from the ballast mound?” Sitting up, he began slipping into his wet suit while Pitt unzipped his dive bag and followed suit. A few minutes later, Gunn came rushing up with a concerned look on his face.

“Dirk, the divers were due up ten minutes ago, but they’ve yet to surface.”

“They might be taking a cautious decompression stop,” Giordino suggested.

Pitt gazed toward the empty Zodiac moored a short distance away. Iverson and Tang, the two men in the water, were both environmental scientists who Pitt knew to be experienced divers.

“We’ll take the chase boat and have a look,” Pitt said. “Give us a hand, Rudi.”

Gunn helped lower a small rigid inflatable that was barely big enough to hold both men and their dive gear. Pitt quickly strapped on his tank, mask, and fins as Giordino started the outboard motor and drove them at full throttle toward the Zodiac. There was no sign of the two divers when they pulled alongside the larger inflatable boat.

The chase boat was still slowing when Pitt rolled over the side and into the water. He quickly swam over to the drop line, then descended alongside the rope. He expected to find the two men hanging on to the line ten or twenty feet beneath the surface in decompression, but they were nowhere to be seen. Pitt cleared his ears as he approached the fifty-foot mark, then kicked harder, pushing to reach the bottom. In the depths below, he could faintly make out the yellow aluminum excavation grid pegged into the sandy bottom. He flicked on an underwater flashlight as he approached the base of the drop line, where the visibility dimmed to a greenish murk.

He briefly searched the perimeter around the anchored line, then swam over the grid, following the length of the shipwreck. He hesitated as he crossed over the fourth grid box, noting that there was a large indentation in the sand where Gunn’s beloved stone monolith had previously rested. Scanning ahead, he spotted a blue object near the ballast pile. Thrusting his fins sharply, he quickly kicked over to the prone figure of one of the divers.

The body was wedged beneath the aluminum grid, with a number of ballast stones rolled onto the chest. A glance into the wide unblinking eyes behind the mask told Pitt that the NUMA scientist named Iverson was quite dead. Pitt searched the man’s equipment and noticed he seemed to be missing his regulator. A few yards away, Pitt spotted it on the seabed, a clean cut in the line indicating that it had been severed.

Pitt noticed a light above him and was thankful to make out the stout figure of Giordino descending upon him. Approaching within a few feet, Giordino motioned toward the body of Iverson. Pitt responded by shaking his head, then held up the severed regulator, showing where it had been cut. Giordino nodded, then pointed toward the stern of the wreck, and Pitt joined him in swimming aft.

They found the body of Tang drifting above the seafloor with a finned foot caught in the grid holding him anchored. He had drowned like Iverson, though he appeared to have flailed more wildly in his last moments of life. His mask, weight belt, and one fin had been torn away, and his severed regulator was visible in the nearby sand. Pitt drew his flashlight to the dead man’s face, revealing a large purple welt on the right cheekbone. The scientist had probably seen what happened to Iverson and tried to defend himself, Pitt thought. Only the assailants had been too powerful or too many. Pitt turned the light to the deep around them, but the waters were empty. The attackers had already returned to the Italian yacht.

Grabbing hold of Tang’s buoyancy compensator, he gave the corpse a tug upward as Giordino motioned that he would retrieve Iverson’s body. Pitt ascended slowly with his dead companion, kicking toward the drop line as he rose. Nearing the surface, he detected the low rumble of engines come to life. As the sound increased in intensity, he rightly figured that it was the yacht, throttling up, as it proceeded to flee the scene.

While Pitt’s hunch was correct, he never envisaged the yacht’s path. Rising to the surface, he realized too late that the engines’ roar had grown significantly louder and that a surface shadow was rapidly approaching. He broke the water alongside the Zodiac and chase boat, looking up to see the imposing hull of the yacht screaming toward him at high speed just twenty feet away. The large blue hull slapped against the surface while a fountain of white water sprayed from its churning propellers off the stern.

In an instant, the yacht burst upon the two small boats, instantly crushing the Zodiac with its battering hull and dicing propellers while batting the small chase boat across the waves like an insect. The demolished Zodiac quickly sank to the bottom as the yacht broke toward the horizon, surging like a bolt of lightning.

In the yacht’s wake, the drop-line buoy slowly found its way back to the surface after being pummeled to the depths. Cut free from its line, it bobbed gently amid a foaming boil of sea that was colored crimson with human blood.