On the High Road to Oblivion

Chapter 11—The Secrets of the Rock

The inhabitants of Qasirkhan village were only slightly more interested in the quartet of foreigners than they were in the silhouette of the massive airship that had settled into place above nearby Alamut, which was to say, not at all. The women working in the fields, their faces covered by veils, did not look up from the their labors and the men squatting in small groups merely watched as Dodge and the others climbed out of Rahman’s car and in front of a building the Persian guide described as a “coffee house.” Only the village children seemed to notice them; as soon as they car doors opened, the young of Qasirkhan swarmed around them like flies. Rahman barked a few words in Farsi and the children retreated, but continued to observe them from a safe distance.

Dodge had been able to think of little else aside from the hovering mass in the sky as they finished their journey to the village that rested at the base of the mountain upon which Alamut had been built. Newcombe was almost certainly up there, separated from him by only a few hundred feet; the scientist might as well have been on another planet for all that Dodge could do anything to reach him.

Rahman stopped Dodge before they could enter the coffee house. “The women must remain outside.”

“Excuse me?” Nora said, indignantly.

Rahman made a placating gesture. “This village is very… traditional. The women still wear the hijab, even though Reza Shah has outlawed it. If you wish to have their cooperation, you would do well to respect their ways.”

Before Nora could offer further protest, Hurricane spoke up. “If it’s all the same, I think I’ll linger out here with the ladies.”

He took out a cheroot and fired it up, filling the air with fragrant smoke. Nora’s irritation gave way to a look of gratitude at the implicit expression of support. Anya seemed not to care at all.

Dodge followed Rahman inside, where three local men — one of them very old, if his leathery skin and long white beard were accurate indicators — were reclining at a low table. Dodge imitated his guide’s gesture of greeting and at a nod from the Persian, took a seat at the table. One of the younger local men decanted an amber colored liquid into two glasses and placed these in front of the new arrivals. As Rahman conversed with the old man, Dodge took a cautious sip and discovered that the beverage wasn’t coffee, but tea, flavored with honey and coriander seeds.

Rahman gestured to one of the old man’s companions — a black-haired, thickly-bearded man. “This is Dariush. He knows of many secret ways leading to the ruins. He will take us in the morning.”

Dodge glanced at the man, careful not to stare lest he commit some breach of local custom. “Would it be possible to go tonight, under the cover of darkness? Tell him we’d like to avoid being noticed by the people in the airship.”

Rahman delayed the message. Before he had even finished, Dariush broke into laughter and fired back a terse answer.

“What did he say?”

The interpreter’s face betrayed his own failure to understand the meaning behind the reply, but he translated nonetheless. “He says that won’t be a problem.”

Despite their initial aloofness, the village of Qasirkhan turned out that night for a feast to welcome the visitors. The fare was simple; locally grown vegetables and rice, flat bread baked on iron griddles, and a pair of goats, slaughtered and roasted to honor the guests. The congenial attitude went a long way in compensating for the greatly reduced comfort level. Even so, at the end of the night, Rahman explained that the women would have to sleep in a different house, and this separation did not sit well with Dodge and Hurricane, or with Nora, but there was no choice but to accept the arrangement.

Throughout the debate, Anya remained completely indifferent, and when a veiled woman beckoned her and Nora, she followed along without complaint. When the two women were shown to a small room where sleeping mats, pillows and blankets had been laid out, Anya promptly set her bag down in a corner, curled up on the nearest mat, and to all appearances, went right to sleep.

Dodge would have been suspicious, and kept an eye on her as long as he was physically able. Nora, however, had no cause for such vigilance.

Through eyes open only a sliver, Anya watched as the brunette studied her with a look of consternation, before shaking her head and reclining on the other mat. As soon as Nora turned down the oil lamp, Anya’s eyes opened wide, but she remained perfectly still, listening intently as her roommate tossed and turned, and then eventually became settled and began breathing rhythmically, faintly snoring. Anya lay that way for nearly two hours, observing Nora’s slumber in the almost total darkness.

Then, as quietly as a shadow, she got up, shouldered her bag, and stole out of the room. She crept through the house and found the exit door, opening it just wide enough to slip outside into the chilly mountain air.

In a matter of a few minutes, she reached the north end of the village, where she paused long enough to take a flashlight from her bag. The lens was covered with a piece of red glass, and while it offered little real illumination, it was enough for her to make her way toward the looming rock. She used the light sparingly, shining it on the path ahead only long enough to identify possible tripping hazards and then turning it off and advancing several steps in darkness before repeating the process.

Then, as she neared the cliff face, she spied a matching light floating in the darkness directly ahead. She flashed her own light toward it, flicking it on and off rapidly, until the signal was returned.

“Anya?”

The voice reached out to her through the darkness, and her heart leapt for joy. “I am here, my love.”

Although the figure was only a silhouette, limned in red light, she recognized him instantly, and hastened forward into his warm embrace. Their lips found each other’s and for a few moments they did nothing but kiss passionately. Finally, still holding her tight, he shifted in order to whisper in her ear: “I didn’t know if you would be here.”

“Nothing could keep me away from you.”

“Tell me. What has happened?”

Anya had surreptitiously made radio contact with her lover before returning to the secret valley to find Dodge, but from that moment forward, there had been no opportunity to send him a detailed report of her activities. He had promised to look for her as soon as the airship arrived at Alamut, but neither of them had imagined that she would find a way to make the meeting. With Dodge’s unwitting help, she had managed to do the impossible.

She briefly related the details of her journey, and told him of Dodge’s plan to explore a secret entrance in the morning. Her lover was pleased by this news. “I will return to Majestic. You stay with Dalton. With two different groups searching, the chances of success are doubled.”

Anya felt a pang of disappointment at the thought of having to leave him again. “And what if he finds the map first?”

“All the better. Dalton can blaze the trail and locate the prize.” His voice rose in a blaze of intensity as he spoke of their shared goal. “Go now, before they discover you are missing.”

She pulled him tight against her again. Part of her wanted to beg him to allow her to stay, but she knew his plan was for the best. As painful as it was to be apart from him, she knew that, when they were at long last victorious, nothing in the world would ever be able to stand in the way of their love.

Dodge awoke to the sound of someone singing. Or yelling. He couldn’t quite tell which, but the melodious unaccompanied voice insinuated into his dreams and brought him gradually to consciousness. The song went on for several minutes, with the foreign refrain becoming increasingly more complex. He finally sat up, and saw that Hurricane was already wide awake and ready for the day.

“Morning prayer,” the big man said, responding to the question that was evident in Dodge’s expression. “They pray five times a day, whenever the local holy man sounds off.”

“Well it beats cock-a-doodle-doo, but not by much.” Dodge rubbed his chin, feeling the stubble. Despite the breakneck pace of their travels, they had spent the last few nights in the relative luxury of hotels; the accommodations in rustic Qasirkhan were only slightly better than camping.

Nevertheless, after a quick breakfast of fresh fruit, bread and tea, the four travelers and their Iranian guide gathered near the coffee house, ready to begin their clandestine exploration of Alamut.

Dodge saw that they were not the only ones probing the secrets of the Rock. Two tiny shapes, barely visible against the azure backdrop, separated from the body of Barron’s massive airship and buzzed around like flies before finally settling to earth on the crest of the massif. Even though they were merely specks in the sky, Dodge knew that he was looking at the same Caviga autogyros he had seen in New York City a few days previously. It was yet another reminder of how close he was to Doc Newcombe, and how helpless he was to do anything to save his kidnapped friend.

Rahman arrived with Dariush a few minutes later, and the local man promptly gestured for them to follow him. Dodge was surprised when their course immediately veered away from the looming mountain, and toward the southern edge of the village.

Their destination looked at first glance like the ruins of a house; a knee-high wall of stacked river rocks forming a large square about thirty feet on each side. When they got closer though, Dodge saw that the wall surrounded a deep hole in the ground.

“This is the old cistern of Qasirkhan,” Rahman said, translating Dariush. “The villagers no longer use it. The wall was put up to prevent animals from falling in.”

Dariush stepped over the barrier and promptly descended the rough staircase that descended down into the dark pit. Dodge followed suit, switching on the flashlight that their local guide had advised him to bring.

The bottom of the old cistern was damp and musty smelling with seepage. Dodge noted a ragged opening in the earthen wall, almost completely blocked by another stack of river rocks. Dariush began removing stones until the opening was large enough to permit him to crawl through, which he promptly did.

Dodge went through next. He felt a rush of trepidation as he stuck his head and shoulders into the gap, shutting off what little light managed to reach down from above to illuminate the tunnel beyond. This wasn’t like the train tunnel in Pennsylvania; it was cramped, tomb-like, claustrophobic. He had the feeling that it might collapse at any time, sealing him forever in the earth’s embrace. He felt better once he was able to shine the flashlight into the passage, but not much. The rift had been carved out by time and the flow of water — forces which had little regard for structural integrity or efficient use of space.

As he dropped down into the tunnel, Dodge discovered another of its features that left him less than enthusiastic about the adventure: the floor of the passage was flooded with about six inches of water.

He heard a little groan behind him; Nora was experiencing the same apprehension he had felt. “Come on,” he said, managing to sound more confident than he felt. “It’s fine in here. Just watch your step.”

Anya and Rahman came through next, followed by Hurley, who had to clear away more of the barricade in order to squeeze through. Of the group, the big man grumbled the loudest, and for good reason; based on what Dodge could see of the passage, it was going to be a tight fit for his old friend.

Dariush waited until they were all inside, and then forged briskly ahead, setting a pace that left them scrambling to keep up.

Their path into the mountain followed a labyrinthine course, with dips that required them to wade through chilly waist-deep pools, and intersections with other water-carved tunnels. Dariush followed a route that was evidently etched in his memory. Dodge realized with growing anxiety that, if they became separated from their guide, they might spend an eternity wandering the subterranean passages. He took some small comfort in the fact that Hurricane was an unparalleled tracker. Unfortunately, in the tight quarters, there was no way to communicate his fears to the big man.

After about an hour of negotiating the cramped tunnels, their feet numb from immersion in the frigid water, they came to a much larger chamber that bore the unmistakable signs of human industry. The space was large, with a high ceiling spread out above the large pool in which they now stood. Against one wall, there was a carved walkway that skirted the edge of the pool and led to a crumbling staircase. The stone steps ended at a large symmetrical opening, likewise the work of human artifice.

Dariush paused to allow the group to catch up, and said a few words to Rahman who dutifully translated. “This is the waterworks of Alamut. In centuries past, there was a waterwheel here that lifted the water to that conduit.”

“So that’s how they got water up to the fortress,” Nora interjected.

“There are many more chambers like this going up the mountain, leading to the cistern.”

“Well that gets us to the ruins,” Dodge said. “But it doesn’t help us find what we came for. And Barron already has his men crawling all over the rock.”

Rahman relayed this to Dariush, then translated the answer. “There are also many other rooms — storehouses and the like — which can only be reached from the waterworks. Perhaps you will find what you seek there.”

Their guide promptly climbed onto the walkway and headed for the staircase. Before Dodge could follow, Hurricane took him aside.

“I was planning to leave some markers along our route, just in case,” he said. “But someone beat me to it. They weren’t obvious, but easy enough to spot if you’re looking. And they were pretty fresh. No more’n a few hours old.”

“Do you think Dariush came down and scouted the tunnels last night?”

“Maybe. But look there.” He pointed to the stairs where their guide’s wet footprints should have left an obvious trail to follow. Instead, the treads were dark with numerous foot-shaped damp impressions. “Somebody came through here, not too long ago. Maybe it’s nothing, but keep an eye open.”

Dodge felt a rush of adrenaline as he digested Hurricane’s warning. The big man had a sixth sense about danger, and Dodge knew from experience that when Hurley said there was reason to be alert, he was probably understating the situation.

The opening at the top of the staircase led to a smooth, gently sloping tunnel. It was nothing less than a giant pipe, and thankfully bone dry. A few hundred yards later they came to another chamber, with another staircase to a conduit leading back the other way.

They continued in this fashion through several similar chambers, until at last reaching one with a second opening that didn’t appear to be part of the waterworks. They followed Dariush through this passage and found themselves at the foot of a long staircase which ascended well beyond the reach of Dodge’s flashlight.

Dariush spoke a few words in Farsi, which Rahman translated. “The defenders of Alamut placed many traps. We must be very careful.”

Dodge swept the area with his light. The roof above them was not carved out of the mountain, but appeared to be made up of huge blocks of stone. A closer inspection showed that the blocks were held in place only by a few stone wedges, which if loosened, would drop the massive stones onto the staircase, crushing anyone underneath and effectively sealing off the passage.

Nora gave out a little yelp. “Traps?”

Dodge patted her on the shoulder. “Just stay close. And don’t touch anything.”

She gave a weak smile. “You don’t have to worry about this girl.”

“That’s the spirit.”

They ascended through a series of flights and landings — Dodge tried to count how many steps they climbed, but gave up after five hundred, with no end in sight. Each landing had an arched doorway leading presumably to some of the storerooms Dariush had spoken of, but their guide passed these by without explanation. Then, on the fifth landing, he changed course and entered the passage.

Beyond the door was a corridor lined with open doorways. Dodge shone his light into one, but saw only a few bits of debris on the otherwise bare floor. Dariush continued forward, finally stopping at the last opening, which faced back down the passage.

“This is the room where they found many things from the time when Alamut was great,” Rahman translated. “We may find the thing we seek here.”

Dariush stood aside and gestured for them to enter.

Dodge hesitated, recalling Hurricane’s appeal to caution. He turned to consult with his friend, but the big man wasn’t there.

Anya strode confidently into the room. Nora, not to be outdone, grabbed Dodge’s arm and dragged him along. “Come on.”

“Where’s—?”

Dodge was still looking back when he heard Nora gasp. Even as he brought his attention back to what lay ahead, he heard the sound of metal moving against metal — the all-too familiar sound of someone priming the mechanism of a gun — and knew that Hurley’s warning had been spot on.

Dariush had led them into an ambush.

The view from the crest of Alamut wasn’t that much different than what he had seen from through the windows in Majestic’s dining hall, but Newcombe had a new appreciation for the feel of solid ground under his feet.

He had been thinking a lot about solid ground lately.

He turned away from the vista, and resumed helping Fiona unpack gear from her autogyro. There was one piece of cargo he was particularly interested in: Barron’s resonance wave projector.

It had been necessary to partially disassemble the device for transport, but after days of studying the schematics, Newcombe was confident of his ability to restore it to working order. Strictly speaking, however, that was not his intention.

It took him only about half an hour to reassemble the device and mount it on a small wheeled platform. When he was done, he ventured into the ruins where Fiona, along with a few of Majestic’s crewmen she had conscripted for the planned excavation, was using survey equipment to pinpoint the area where she believed the library had once stood. The archaeologist looked ready for adventure in her crisp khaki safari suit and matching pith helmet. She looked up as he approached. “All finished?”

“Almost. I just have to calibrate it on a patch of solid rock.”

She directed to him to an area not far from where the autogyros now sat idle. Newcombe rolled the projector into place and then deployed the makeshift seismograph he had cobbled together from odds and ends in Barron’s laboratory.

“Okay, stand back. And be perfectly still.” He threw the switch and turned the projector on.

To all appearances, nothing happened. The ground did not vibrate, and it most certainly did not liquefy as the pieces of sandstone had during Barron’s demonstration. After about thirty seconds, Newcombe switched it off and turned to Fiona. “All set.”

“Brilliant,” she said, with sincere enthusiasm. If she was disappointed by the evident lack of spectacular results, she gave no indication. “Let’s go find ourselves a library.”

Working together, they rolled the projector over the uneven ground and into the ruins of Alamut castle. To call them ruins was generous. It was difficult to imagine what the fortress might have looked like in its heyday. The Mongols had almost completely razed it. Only the outline of the buildings was visible now; the foundation footings carved into the stone, showing where walls had once stood. Fiona had laid out strips of white engineers’ tape to form a search grid, and directed Newcombe to start in the nearest corner.

Newcombe set out the seismograph and switched the device on for half a minute. When it was turned off again, he beckoned Fiona to look at the reading on the seismograph drum. The graph showed a series of oscillating peaks. “This is the reading I took when I calibrated it,” he explained, pointing to a section of ink lines. “And this is from the section we just tested.”

“They look the same.”

“That’s because the composition of the ground is the same; solid rock in both places. The waves from the device cause the stone to vibrate, and the seismograph measures those vibrations. If there was a void underneath, from a tunnel or a chamber, the reading wouldn’t be the same. If it was close to the surface, there might not be any reading at all.”

Fiona appeared to be truly impressed. “This could revolutionize archaeology.”

It was for just such a purpose that Nikola Tesla had conceived the device, and Newcombe was pleased that, in its first practical use, the projector was being implemented as a tool for scientific exploration, and not as a weapon.

On the fourteenth test, in a grid about halfway down the second search lane, the device recorded the first deviating pattern. Based on the lack of vibrations recorded on the seismograph, Newcombe suspected that there might be a large void just a few feet down, but advised caution. He moved the next grid, and took another reading with the same results.

Fiona’s excitement gave way to impatience, but she stayed at a distance, pacing as Newcombe completed the lane and then started the next. Four squares in a row had shown evidence of empty space below the ruins, and that was good enough for the ambitious archaeologist. When the tests showed a void beneath the grid squares adjacent to the first four, Fiona intervened.

“I do love your machine, Findlay, but there’s only one way to know if it’s really doing us any good, and that’s to dig.” She turned to her labor party. “Grab your picks and shovels, chaps. Time to earn our pay.”

Newcombe peered at her through his borrowed spectacles and sighed. He admired her take-charge attitude, but she was making the classic mistake of working hard when she ought to be working smart. “If my calculations are correct, there’s a good three feet of solid sandstone between us and the void below. It will take you hours of digging just to break through, and a lot longer than that make an opening large enough to allow you to go inside.”

“That rather goes with the territory, unfortunately. So unless you’ve got a better idea, clear off so we can get to work.”

It was evident to Newcombe that the goodwill he had earned by employing the wave projector to narrow the search had already begun to evaporate. Nevertheless, he smiled. “I would have thought that by now, you would know that I always have a better idea.”

Four men, wearing loose turbans and attire similar to that worn by Dariush, stood at the corners of the room, brandishing rifles.

Dariush calmly stepped past the gunmen and barked an order.

Rahman started fearfully and rushed to the center of the room, his hands raised. Almost as an afterthought, he explained. “They want us to stand here.”

Dodge held Dariush’s stare. “What’s going on here?”

He knew his words would be meaningless to the Iranian villager, but he wasn’t about to cower.

Dariush snarled something and Dodge didn’t need to speak his language to know that he had just been told to shut up. Nora apparently wasn’t conversant in the unspoken language of threatening postures, and she chose that moment to look around the room. “Where’s Brian?”

Dariush’s eyes widened as he realized that he had lost one of the group along the way. He started to shout a warning to his confederates, but before the words could leave his mouth, the missing member of the party swept into the room like the storm that had become his nickname.

Hurley’s long arms stretched out and snared the turbans of the two gunmen closest to him. He slammed the men’s heads together, and the resounding crack of their skulls colliding echoed in the small space.

The remaining captors immediately turned their rifles toward the new arrival, but Hurley was faster. Even as the two unconscious men slumped to the floor, Hurricane drew the matching .50 caliber semi-automatic pistols from his concealed shoulder holsters, and fired both simultaneously.

The report was deafening, and even Dodge, who had heard the enormous hand-cannons fired before, involuntarily clapped his hands over his ears. The two gunmen however didn’t hear the shots, nor would they ever hear anything again.

Hurricane brought the pistols together and swung both barrels toward their treacherous guide, but Dariush had already fallen to the floor, covering his head with his hands. Dodge’s ears were ringing, but he thought he heard the prostrated man whimper, doubtless pleading for mercy.

Hurricane frowned, holstering his smoking guns as swiftly as he had drawn them, and then reached down, and with one hand, lifted the villager completely off the floor as easily as he might a rag doll. “Start talking,” Hurricane growled.

Dariush must have understood what sort of question had been asked, for he immediately started babbling in Farsi.

Rahman had sagged against the wall in bewilderment, aghast at the unexpected treachery and violence, but when Dariush started talking, he shook it off. “He says that someone hired them to take us prisoner. A foreigner who knew we were coming. They didn’t intend to harm us.”

Hurricane wasn’t impressed. “That’s what everyone says, right before they pull the trigger.” He shook Dariush. “Who?”

“Barron.” Nora said it like a curse.

“Impossible,” declared Anya. “He could not have known we were coming. My spy aboard his ship would have warned me.”

The helpless villager continued to whimper, and when Rahman pressed him for an answer to Hurley’s question, he claimed ignorance.

“He is part of a revolutionary group,” Rahman explained. “Trying to overthrow Reza Shah. He received his orders from someone else.”

“Revolutionaries.” Hurricane spat the word, glancing accusingly at Anya.

“Who gave him those orders?” Dodge asked.

Dariush pointed to one of the unmoving figures on the floor.

“Oh.” Hurricane regarded his quivering captive a moment longer, and then disdainfully dropped him.

Dodge saw Anya snatch up a discarded rifle, and almost without thinking, he grabbed one as well. A quick glance told him it was a Lee-Enfield Number 1 Mark III .303, standard issue for the British Army during the Great War. The weapon looked about that old, and appeared to have seen a lot of use. He turned to Hurley. “Now what?”

Hurricane shook his head. “This is a dead end. We should get out of here.”

“Do you think the village is safe?”

“I don’t see an alternative.”

Nora snapped her fingers. “The waterworks! We can sneak out through the cistern.”

Hurricane’s brow creased. “I’m not sure how that improves our situation, but at least we’d have the high ground. ‘Course, it also puts us on Barron’s doorstep.”

“One thing at a time,” Dodge said. “Let’s get out of here.”

Hurricane collected the rest of the arsenal belonging to their ill-fated would-be captors, and gave the rifles to Rahman and Nora, more to remove temptation from the cowering Dariush than because he felt they needed to be armed. Nora seemed more comfortable holding the weapon than the Iranian did.

Dodge shouldered his own rifle and led the way back to the stairwell. He was so intent on making the descent back to the waterworks that it took a few seconds for him to make sense of what he saw illuminated in the beam of his flashlight.

More than a dozen men, all wearing turbans that partially obscured their faces and armed with Lee-Enfield rifles, were rushing up from the depths.

Hurricane stepped forward and leveled his pistols at the advancing mob. The guns thundered and two attackers fell, but the rest dropped prone on the steps and began returning fire.

Dodge immediately saw that they were in an untenable position. Despite Hurricane’s deadly prowess, they were badly outnumbered. Even if all four of their captured rifles were brought into the battle, they would almost certainly suffer casualties, and that was an outcome he refused to accept. Dodge had already lost enough friends for one lifetime.

He shouted over his shoulder for the others to fall back, then grabbed Hurricane’s tree-trunk thick biceps and tried to drag his friend back to the landing and the relative safety of the storerooms. He could feel the recoil of the pistols traveling through the big man’s muscles, but after a moment Hurley relented and backed up the steps, firing out the last of his ammo as he went.

Dodge flashed his light down the stairs. With the lull in fire, the attackers were starting to move forward again, but Dodge already had a plan for dealing with that. He tossed the light to Hurricane. “Shine it at the ceiling!”

The big man did so without question. Dodge jammed the rifle stock in the pit of his shoulder, put his cheek to the rear sight, and drew a bead on his chosen target. Then, he squeezed the trigger.

The rifle bucked in his grip but the bullet flew true, striking the corner where the roof above the staircase met the carved rock wall. There was a puff of dust as the round obliterated the tiny stone wedge that held one of the ceiling blocks in place.

Too late, the advancing attackers realized what Dodge had done. A massive block, as big as a delivery truck, dropped down onto the stairs, crushing two of the men like cockroaches under a boot heel. The entire cavern seemed to reverberate with the impact, and from his vantage about thirty feet above, Dodge was buffeted by the shock wave.

As a cloud of dust and grit blew over them, Hurricane clapped Dodge on the shoulder. “Well done!”

The praise was premature, however. After only a momentary pause, the floor beneath them started shaking again. With a noise like an endless peal of thunder, the fallen block began to move, and as it slid down the stairs, the ever-intensifying tremor shook loose the wedges holding the other blocks in place, starting a cataclysmic chain reaction.

The ceiling fell like God’s dominoes. Every concussive blast shook the staircase, triggering more of the rigged deadfalls. The tumult rippled through the corridor leading to the storerooms. Enormous fissures appeared in the walls, floor and ceiling. Dodge feared the whole mountain might come crashing down, entombing them forever.

Guess I should have thought this through a little better.

He saw the others, partially obscured in the swirl of dust, reeling as the ground moved beneath their feet. “Get to the doorways! It’s safer there!”

He took his own advice, crawling to the nearest opening, and hoped that that wall would provide a little additional stability in the event that the ceiling here started to collapse as well. The walls continued to groan, but after a few more seconds, Dodge realized that the noise of stones crashing beyond the landing had ceased.

The air was thick with dust, and for a several minutes, Dodge didn’t dare move. He kept his face covered to avoid breathing the dust until the air cleared enough for him make out the shapes of his companions. “Is everyone all right?”

Hurricane’s voice cut through the gloom. “I’m still here. Miss Nora?”

“I’m okay,” Nora chirped. “Rahman is with me.”

Dodge ventured into the corridor and found the brunette and the expediter huddled in another of the doorways. They were covered in dust, but appeared otherwise unharmed. Anya emerged from another of the vacant storerooms, likewise no worse for wear.

Hurricane strode to the landing, but did not venture outside. He gave a heavy sigh. “Dodge, m’boy, you might want to take a look at this.”

Dodge hastened to join him, shining his light through the exit. He immediately understood why the big man had sounded so despondent. The landing was completely blocked; they were trapped.

Then, Nora’s voice reached out to him from the other end of the corridor. “Dodge! I think you need to see this.”

As soon as the ceiling had started to fall, Hiro Nakamura had given the order for his men to retreat. In the time it had taken for his interpreter to translate his command into Farsi, four of the revolutionary fighters had already been crushed out of existence. Nakamura did not linger to see if how many of the others heeded his advice. He spun on his heel and raced back down the steps.

When the clamor of the collapse was little more than a dull roar echoing down the tunnels, he stopped to assess the losses his small force had suffered. His concerns were strictly strategic in nature; the fate of the local rabble mattered to him only because he needed foot soldiers to accomplish his mission.

The alliance had been hastily struck. Nakamura’s status in the Aum River Society afforded him contacts with a number of criminal organizations in Europe and the Americas, and those connections led to other contacts, which had ultimately enabled him to enlist the help of a small but ambitious group of revolutionaries who hoped to overthrow the government of Reza Shah Pahlavi, a man they viewed as an usurper, even after a decade and a half on the throne. Nakamura cared little for their political ambitions, but he had vowed the full support of Imperial Japan in helping them pursue their aims. It was an easy promise to make; if Nakamura’s mission succeeded, making good on that promise would pose little hardship to the Empire of the Pacific.

He, along with his interpreter — Nakamura had to communicate with the man in English — and twenty revolutionaries had reached Qasirkhan only a few hours ahead of Dalton’s party. More promises had been made to get the help of the villagers, and Nakamura and his men had gone into the tunnels to lay the trap.

The kempeitai agent didn’t know what had gone wrong, but at least Dalton and the others would pose no further problem. Even if they had survived the collapse of the tunnel, they were now entombed, with thousands of tons of rock between them and the only exit.

Twelve of the revolutionaries made it out of the tunnel. All were battered and bruised, and two had suffered wounds that rendered them unable to walk or fight.

Nakamura pondered what to do next. An outright victory seemed unlikely, but winning the coming battle was not essential to accomplishing his mission.

“Well there’s a silver lining for you,” Hurley declared.

Dodge stared in disbelief at the rear wall of the storeroom where Dariush had brought them into the ambush. The traitorous villager was gone, evidently having crept away in the confusion, but no one bothered to mention his absence. Everyone’s attention was fixed on the wall, or rather on the section of it that had crumbled away.

The tremor had sent a spider web pattern of cracks through what they now realized was a thin layer of plaster, covering a wall that was not carved into the mountain as they had first assumed, but rather composed of bricks. The architects of the underground labyrinth had sealed up whatever lay beyond the wall, and disguised it to look like part of the mountain. A section had had fallen away, and Dodge’s flashlight revealed a much larger space beyond.

“Do you think this leads to another way out?” Nora asked.

“It had better.” Dodge experimentally pushed on the bricks just below the hole. The old mortar holding them in place crumbled away, and the bricks fell into the darkness beyond.

Hurricane nudged him aside. “Let me have a go at it. Knocking things down is my specialty.”

True to his word, in the space of only a few minutes, Hurley disassembled a portion of the wall large enough for them to walk through. The area beyond opened to another staircase going up, this one more cramped and thankfully not rigged for collapse. After a long, winding ascent, they emerged at the entrance to another large room, and as Dodge swept the area with his light he knew they had at last found what they were looking for.

The floor was covered in hundreds… perhaps thousands… of ceramic jars, arranged in neat rows with narrow aisles at regular intervals. The jars were sealed with a drizzle of lead solder, and attached to each was a tag of copper which had oxidized to a pale green. Dodge inspected the nearest jar; etched into the tag, barely visible now, were the delicately curving characters of what he assumed to be the Persian alphabet.

“We found it!” Nora gasped.

“We found the library,” Dodge said. “Finding what we came for is going to be like finding a needle in a haystack.”

“We’ve got nothing but time,” Hurricane opined. “I don’t see another way out of here.”

Dodge cast his light up and down the length of the room; there were no doors. “Maybe there’s another hidden passage that leads to the top. They had to have some way to get all this stuff down here.”

“I’ll start knocking on the walls and see what shakes loose.” Hurricane gestured to the collection. “I reckon that’ll be easier than trying to make sense of all that.”

As the big man started to move away, a strange humming filled Dodge’s head. For a few seconds, he dismissed it; between the noise of gunfire and the thunderous sound of the collapsing tunnel ceiling, his hearing still wasn’t quite back to normal. But then he realized that it wasn’t a sound at all, but rather a vibration, reverberating through his body like the beat of a bass drum.

He turned to Nora, and found her looking back at him with a confused expression. “I feel it, too,” she said. “Is it an earthquake?”

Before Dodge could answer, the jars on the floor started to rattle. “Get back!” He grabbed Nora’s arm and pulled her bodily toward the edge of the room, just as the ceiling started to fall.

This time, there was no crash of stone on stone, no thunderous tremor as tons of solid rock smashed down from above. Instead, there was only a hissing sound as sand poured down into the center of the library. The fired clay jars tumbled like bowling pins and were subsequently buried in a waist high pile. A cloud of fine dust filled the room, eclipsing the scant illumination of the flashlights, plunging them into darkness.

Through the miasma, Dodge heard the sound of conversation, distant and muffled, and not the familiar voices of his companions. There was a soft thud of something falling in the center of the room, and through the haze, he could just make out a rope hanging down into the sand heap, seemingly out of nowhere.

Not nowhere, Dodge realized. Though faint, he could make out light streaming in through a hole in the ceiling — a perfectly round hole — directly above the newly formed mound.

The rope started moving, squirming serpent-like, and suddenly there was another person in the secret library, expertly rappelling down the dangling line. The barely visible silhouette swept the room with a flashlight, and gave a triumphant cheer as the beam revealed the ceramic jars.

It’s a woman, Dodge thought. Then the light searched out the rest of the room, illuminating Dodge and Nora, and the woman spoke again. “Oh. Who the devil are you?”

Another figure descended the rope, with considerably less grace. The climber let go prematurely and tumbled backward down the sand pile. He sat up, rubbing his hands. “Ow! That burns!”

The voice was familiar, and Dodge finally put a name to it in the same instant that Hurricane called out: “Newton? Is that you?”