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Six hours later, Maddock and Bones were back in the Fiat, heading east out of Sofia. Corey and Slava stayed behind, but would be providing real-time technical support via the same high-speed wireless data connection they had used the previous night. In the event that the police came calling, investigating their connection with the item that had been stolen from the museum, Slava would also, hopefully, be able to deflect suspicion and provide them all—including the absent Riddle—with an alibi. The possibility that they might be investigated was one reason that Maddock had decided to bring along the cup, which was still hidden away in his backpack. He also knew that it might contain clues that would only make sense once they reached their destination.
Maddock didn’t really expect the search to bear fruit, but since they still had more than twelve hours before the kidnappers were supposed to make contact, it seemed prudent to check out Prohodna Cave before surrendering the cup, if only to cross the possibility off the list.
The drive took just over an hour and a half, much of it on a wide, four-lane divided highway that wended through forested hills. The skies remained overcast and on several occasions the windshield was spattered with drizzle. Four lanes eventually gave way to two, but traffic was light and they made good time. A wooden sign in the shape of a curving arrow, perched atop what looked like a stone chimney, signaled that they had arrived at their destination.
“Busy place,” Bones remarked as they pulled off the pavement onto a muddy track that curled south around the base of a low hill that they had just driven over. The track ended at a parking area which was crowded with tour vans.
“Slava said it was a popular destination,” Maddock replied. He also recalled her saying that the cave’s popularity made it an unlikely place to hide a treasure, but sometimes the best place to hide something was in plain sight.
After setting up their chest-mounted GoPros and establishing a data connection with Corey, they followed the rest of the arriving tourists down a path that disappeared into dense foliage. The trail descended as it skirted along the base of an overhanging limestone cliff which seemed to close in from both directions. Maddock surmised that they were at the bottom of what had, in prehistoric times, been an enormous sinkhole. When they rounded a corner and the arched opening came into view, Bones let out a low whistle. “That’s a big ass hole.”
Maddock gave him a sidelong glance. “Let’s try to keep it family friendly, okay?”
Bones was not wrong about the size of the entrance, however. From bottom to top, it was at least a hundred feet.
“This is actually the small entrance to Prohodna,” supplied Slava, still playing tour-guide, albeit remotely. “‘Prohodna’ means ‘passage,’ or literally, ‘walkthrough.’ The cave is a natural tunnel, almost three hundred meters long, through the hill. The large entrance is on the other end of the cave.”
“We’ll probably lose the signal once we go inside,” Maddock said. “We’ll do a slow sweep with the GoPros, and then upload the footage to you when we come out. Slava, is there anything else we absolutely need to know about this place?”
Slava seemed to ponder the question for a few seconds, then said, “An American movie was filmed here—one of the Expendables movies. I don’t recall which one.”
Bones snapped his fingers. “That’s why it looks familiar. It was the one where Van Damme was the bad guy.” He turned to Maddock. “Was that the second or third?”
Maddock shrugged. “I haven’t seen them.”
Bones rolled his eyes. “What, do they only show Hallmark Channel at the nursing home?”
“Come to think of it” Maddock continued, “I actually started watching one of them, but when Ronda Rousey showed up in that red dress, Angel made me turn it off.”
“Ah,” Bones said, nodding in understanding. “Gotcha.”
Angel—Angela Bonebrake—was Bones’ sister, and Maddock’s ex-fiancé. She was also a successful mixed-martial arts fighter like Rousey had been.
The interior of the cave was no less awe-inspiring. There was no sense of claustrophobia here, not like in the manmade passage of the Tsarichina excavation. Instead, it was like being in a cathedral. After moving inside just a few steps, Maddock beheld the formation that had made the cave famous and inspired its alternate name. Directly overhead, the limestone ceiling was perforated by a pair of enormous holes—easily forty or fifty feet long—that were shaped exactly like eyes. Water trickled from the corners like tears, and streamed down the cave wall to collect in puddles on the floor. On a clear day, with the sun overhead, the eyes would probably have blazed with near-supernatural intensity.
Maddock and Bones moved slowly through the immense chamber, inspecting every square inch of the cavern while their GoPros recorded everything for future perusal. While the domed ceiling overhead was relatively smooth and open, the floor was covered with sand and strewn with half-buried boulders, some larger than houses, forming a veritable maze through which they had to move slowly. To their left, a natural staircase, worn smooth in places by the feet of thousands of visitors, rose halfway up the wall, to a point almost directly beneath the hollow eyes. The wall to the right was mostly smooth, and upon it was a painted icon of a bearded figure that Maddock assumed represented Jesus. There were many small caves and recesses, but most were easily accessible and any treasure hidden within would have long ago been discovered and removed.
As he negotiated deeper into the maze of boulders, Maddock lost sight of both the entrance and the eyes, but he soon beheld the opening at the opposite end of the cave, what Slava had called “the large entrance,” a scallop-like opening into the passage which rose well over a hundred feet above the craggy floor.
Suddenly, a scream pierced the stillness. Adrenaline jolted through Maddock, putting him instantly in “fight” mode. His stance widened, and every muscle in his body went tense, ready for action. He pivoted left, right, left again, seeking the source of the blood-curdling cry, which was growing louder with each passing millisecond, but the acoustics of the enormous cave made it impossible to pinpoint a location. From the corner of his eye, he saw Bones, similarly on alert, running to join him.
And then his eyes were drawn to movement outside the cave—a body falling like a meteor from somewhere above the entrance. Maddock quickly looked away to at least spare himself the sight of the terminal impact, and braced himself for the inevitable wet crunch.
But the expected splat did not happen. Instead, the protracted scream turned into something else—a cross between a whoop of elation and manic laughter.
Maddock risked a look and was astonished to see that the “body” had never quite reached the ground. In fact, it—or rather “she,” for he could see clearly now that it was a young woman with a long brunette ponytail whipping around her head—was now “falling” up, rising back into the air like a yo-yo on a string. The simile was apt, for there was a string involved, or more precisely, a cord.
The rising figure vanished beyond the upper edge of the entrance, but then a moment later, fell once more into view, and now Maddock could clearly see the thick black belt around the woman’s ankles, and the long yellow bungee cord to which it was attached.
“Friggin’ thrill seekers,” Bones muttered, shaking his head.
Maddock drew in a deep breath, willing his heart rate to return to normal. All he could think to say was, “Yeah.”
Bones sighed and turned to face him. “See anything worth checking out in there?”
“A few possibilities. Let’s get out in the open and upload to Corey. Maybe he’ll see something we missed.”
As they moved out from under the overhanging entrance to the cave, the woman, still hooting with glee at having survived her low-risk leap into the unknown, was being lowered slowly to the ground. A small crowd had gathered—fit-looking, college-aged men and women, attired in clingy Lycra outfits similar to what the bungee jumper was wearing.
“What do you know?” Bones remarked. “Must be a comic book convention nearby. That’s some pretty lame cosplay, though.”
“I was thinking Cirque Du Soleil,” said Maddock.
Bones shook his head. “No, these guys look like nerds, not freaks. Not enough skin or goofy make-up.”
What they looked like, at least to Maddock, was a group of adventure tourists, a supposition that was supported by the dozen or so mountain bikes parked nearby.
The young woman was unhooked from the bungee cord and helped to her feet, at which point the thick elastic cord began snaking back up the cliff to a spot high above the cave entrance. Several more people were gathered there, presumably waiting their turn. As Maddock stared up at them, an idea began to take shape.
“You know, maybe we need a different perspective,” he said.
Bones gave him a sidelong glance. “What have you got in mind?”
“The inscription said to look for the treasure where God watches over you. Maybe we need to try looking at the cave through God’s eyes. Up there.”
Bones followed Maddock’s gaze up to the crest overhead, and then nodded. “Not bad.” He then turned and hiked over to join the Lycra-clad crowd. “Hola, chicas! Who can tell me how to get up there?”
––––––––
The Lycra brigade turned out to be a group of German eco-tourists mountain-biking cross country from Sofia to Varna on the Black Sea coast—a journey of over four hundred miles, which would take more than two weeks, allowing for various diversions along the way. Bungee jumping from above the large entrance to the Eyes of God Cave was one such diversion.
One of the tourists, a buxom blonde named Ilsa, was particularly helpful. After pointing them toward the trail leading up to the top of the cliff, she invited Bones and Maddock to follow her on Instagram.
As they made their way along the poorly maintained trail up to the top of the hill, where the remaining members of Ilsa’s group were queued up and awaiting their turn to take the plunge, they were able to re-establish contact with Corey. Maddock quickly outlined their plan to get a top-down view of the cave.
“That’s a good idea,” Corey said. “If nothing else, it will give you something to do while the video is uploading. It will take a while to transfer everything.”
“That’s fine. Just tell us how to get to the eyes from here.”
“Okay, let me look that up on Google Earth... It looks like they’re due south of your position. About a hundred and twenty-five yards.” He laughed, and added, “Don’t fall in.”
Corey’s warning might have only been half-serious, but evidently the Bulgarian authorities were unconcerned about the risk. There were no barriers surrounding the formation—not even a guard rail. The terrain surrounding the twin almond-shaped holes was craggy and irregular, and dotted with sparse vegetation. The formation was at least a hundred feet across measured from the outer corners, which were conspicuously—and probably not coincidentally—oriented from east to west, but only about thirty feet wide. A natural bridge, just wide enough for a person to walk over, ran between the ‘eyes.’
After a quick check to make sure that nobody was around to see them, Maddock and Bones approached the north edge of the western eye.
The view from above was surreal, but did not immediately reveal anything they had not seen from below. Both men stared down into the depths of the cavern for several seconds before Bones broke the silence. “You see anything?”
“No. I’ve got an idea, though.”
Maddock scooted back from the edge, unslung his backpack, and after another quick look around to ensure privacy, removed the cup. He rotated it so that the eye sockets of the skull were aligned with the twin holes, and then peered over them at the inscription and the odd pattern of lines in the bowl. After committing it to memory, he returned his gaze to the opening and began looking for anything on the cavern floor that remotely resembled the interior of the cup. After nearly two full minutes of looking, he got up and moved down to the east eye. When the change in perspective yielded no better results, he crossed the bridge and tried again from the southern side of each eye.
Finally, he shook his head. “Nothing. Either we’re misinterpreting the inscription and the treasure is somewhere else, or—”
“Or there is no treasure,” Bones finished.
Maddock nodded. “Aside from what we found at Tsarichina.” He rocked back on his haunches and sighed in disappointment. “Well, I guess it was always a longshot. Maybe we should just focus on getting Max back safely.”
He was returning the cup to his pack when Bones hissed an urgent warning. “We’ve got company.”
Fearing that someone was coming to investigate them, Maddock hastily zipped the pack shut and slung it over one shoulder. As he did, two men stepped out of the woods to the north.
His initial concern that the men might be park rangers or police officers coming to scold them for trespassing was allayed when he saw that the men were wearing ordinary street clothes, but his relief was short-lived. The two men didn’t look like wide-eyed tourists. Both were light-skinned and stocky. One looked to be in his mid-twenties, and wore blue jeans and a red T-shirt that showed off muscular, tattooed arms. The other might have been his older brother. He wore a Navy-blue polo shirt, open at the throat to reveal a gold chain and cross pendant, and khaki slacks.
Maddock’s first thought was that they looked like wanna-be gangsters. Tough guys.
His second thought was, Uh, oh.