The Cave
‘The keystone is exactly what that is. And now, you will give it to me.’
The stranger who had suddenly appeared in the cave spoke with a quiet firmness. His words were those of a man who felt his point made itself, without the need for gratuitous emphasis. He kept his gun levelled at the group. Since Emily Wess was the one with the keystone in her hands, he trained the barrel on her.
Chris’s military training immediately kicked in and he swivelled to take up a body position directly facing the unexpected visitor.
‘Who the fuck are you?’
‘A question with an answer that doesn’t matter,’ the man said dismissively. ‘All you need to know is that the keystone belongs to me, and I don’t intend on leaving without it.’
‘Belongs to you!’ Emily couldn’t restrain her exclamation. ‘This is a piece of history. It belongs to no one.’
The stranger’s features radiated his annoyance. ‘You scholars are all the same. Everything is so abstract, so general.’ The disgust he felt threatened to overwhelm him. ‘Let’s not belabour this. Hand it over. The keystone was not fashioned to sit forever in this cave, much less in some university library or museum – any more than were our most sacred texts. It has a purpose.’
The man’s words, sparse though they were, struck Michael.
‘Wait a minute, I know you.’ He leaned forward on one knee, still crouched with the others. ‘The rhetoric, the intensity. I recognize it from your letters to the museum. You’re Arthur Bell, the man who’s been asking for access to our manuscripts.’
The man twitched ever so slightly at the secular name. ‘I told you before, my identity is unimportant. Just give me the stone.’
But Michael was now certain. ‘You claimed you wanted those manuscripts for a “sacred purpose” too.’
All the muscles in Emily’s body tightened. The individual who stood before her was Arthur Bell, the man responsible for sending those who had killed Andrew. They may have pulled the trigger, but this was the man who had set them on their course. The connection between the events in Emily’s home and those in Michael’s office were now concrete, and the man she most wanted to stop was standing only feet away from her.
‘Arthur Bell . . .’ she whispered.
‘Old names are for old men,’ Bell finally assented, ‘not for men of spirit.’ He looked upset to be called by the name, as if it were a remnant of an identity he had long ago given up.
‘Give me the stone, woman.’ He glared at Emily. ‘You know all too well how far I’m willing to go for the liberation our holiest documents will bring.’ He drew in a long breath, his eyes absorbing the rays of light that danced over the stone’s surface. When they returned to Emily’s face, they were cold.
Emily stared at him, frightened but unmoving. She couldn’t hand over the stone, she had to delay him—
‘Dammit, the stone!’ Bell shouted. He held out a hand, expectantly. Emily tightened her clutch. They were cornered and there was little she could do, yet everything in her cried out to refuse. Cried out that this man could not win. Not again.
During the whole exchange between Emily, Michael and the stranger, Chris had kept silent. But silence, for the FBI agent, was anything but stillness. It was a tactical tool, to be played for advantage.
He could not get to his knife without being noticed – the sheath was on the hip closest to Bell and he would surely see any motion towards it. But there was another option. Chris had purchased a compact flare gun during their supply stop in Cairo, and the plastic pistol was tucked into his pack in case of emergency. The pack lay on Chris’s opposite side, shielded from the other man’s direct view. As Arthur Bell spoke with Emily and Michael, rarely removing his gaze from the keystone in Emily’s hand, Chris took advantage of his position at the periphery of the man’s vision and slowly, silently, moved his left hand towards the open pack beside him. Without a sound, he snaked his fingers through the loosely packed contents, until at last they came to grip the flare. It wasn’t enough to kill the stranger, but it would be more than adequate to shock the pompousness out of him and throw him off his feet, temporarily blinding him in the cave’s dark interior. Chris would do the rest himself.
Slowly, imperceptibly, he began to draw his hand out of the pack, fingers already in position around the flare gun’s handle and trigger. He only needed not to be seen – not until the last moment, when he would aim the flare at Arthur Bell’s face and fire.
‘Give me the keystone,’ Bell repeated. ‘Or do I need to make the precariousness of your position more obvious to you?’ His eyes were locked with Emily’s, and he seemed to realize the strength of her defiance. There was one way to deal with that. Bell swung his right hand a few degrees away from her, bringing the barrel of his Helwan to a point squarely between Michael’s eyes.
‘The stone, or your husband meets the same fate as your cousin.’ His face was determined. ‘I am not by nature a violent man, but do not think that I won’t resort to putting a bullet between your husband’s eyes if it is the only option with which you leave me.’
Michael tensed, and at last Emily’s resolve faltered.
‘No – don’t! I’ll give you the keystone.’
Bell smiled at the woman’s predictable weakness.
At Emily’s words, Chris drew his hand the final few inches towards the top of his rucksack. Positioned above his knuckles was one of the small water bottles he’d packed from the hike, and as he tried to manoeuvre the flare gun out from beneath it, the bottle suddenly toppled and fell to the ground.
The sound of plastic thumping onto stone and sand filled the cave.
Suddenly aware of Chris’s movement, and remembering the man was an ex-Navy FBI agent, Bell spun at him. Instinctively, he clamped down on his pistol’s trigger and fired a shot towards the noise.
The 9mm bullet struck Chris at 1,100 feet per second, slamming the muscular man back against the stone wall of the cave. His head met the rock with powerful force, and as the blood began to pour from the bullet wound, Chris’s clutch around the flare gun went slack. He dropped his torch with the impact of the shot, and before his head had fully bounced off the stone, he had gone limp. With a thud to match his large body mass, Chris Taylor collapsed to the floor.
Arthur Bell spun back to Emily, his patience now worn through. ‘You were saying?’ He reached out his hand again. This time, Emily did not hesitate. She leaned forward and placed the keystone into his waiting grasp.
Bell looked down at the object in his clutch, his eyes wide with wonder. He allowed himself only a moment’s gaze, however, before pocketing his prized possession and returning his stare to Emily and Michael.
‘Thank you for being so . . . cooperative. I wish I could leave you in peace, but at least I can assure you your suffering won’t be long. I wish your souls a good liberation.’
With that, Arthur Bell simply turned and disappeared into the darkness.
The shock of the encounter, and its sudden ending, left Michael and Emily momentarily stunned into a motionless silence. As he retreated through the cave’s front chamber, Arthur Bell’s footsteps seemed to echo through the space.
It was only the sound of a sudden, sputtering cough, followed by a long, slow wheeze that broke through their stasis. ‘Chris,’ Michael whispered. Lunging to Chris’s body near the cave’s far wall, he and Emily rushed to the aid of their fallen friend.
Chris’s form remained where it had fallen, motionless save for the faintest rise and fall of his chest, just discernible in the dim light. It was almost so slight as to deceive the senses, and they both strained to listen for the sound of breathing – each desiring confirmation that he was still with them.
Instead, their attention was repaid with a different sound.
The distinctive clank of metal against stone pierced the silence forcefully, its tone foreign to the cavernous quiet. Michael’s head shot up, Emily’s a split second later, just in time for the sound to be repeated, this time a little more vividly, more closely. Then again, and again, each ‘clank’ coming faster and faster upon the one before it, like an object bouncing against the stone floor and rattling to a halt.
‘Did something fall?’ Emily asked, straining to listen. The sounds began to overlap on themselves; then, almost as quickly as they had come, they stopped.
A cold terror suddenly gripped the pit of Michael’s stomach.
‘Oh hell, I don’t think so.’
‘Then what was that?’ Emily persisted, her face betraying her own fear.
Suddenly, a hand shot up from beneath them. Whether it was the sound or merely the fate of timing, Chris’s consciousness had returned to him and he grabbed at Michael’s chest, clutching his shirt. His eyes were glazed, but he concentrated them on Michael.
‘Get . . . down!’ he wheezed.
His friend’s command was all the confirmation Michael needed. Without a second thought he reached across to Emily, grabbing her forcefully by both shoulders. Without time to explain himself, he slammed her backwards onto the ground and threw his body on top of hers, wrapping his arms around her head and pressing his cheek over her face.
A moment later, the thunder came. With a percussive strength far stronger than the soft sandstone’s ability to resist it, the small hand grenade that Arthur Bell had retrieved from his pocket and tossed into the cave burst to life, bringing the walls of the chamber collapsing down into a heap of rubble.