The Armageddon Protocol

TWENTY-SIX

“This place gives me the creeps,” Zoey said with a visible shudder. “Maybe we should split and leave you three to it.” As she spoke they passed through the Crypt of the Sepulchral Lamp. This was the first monument ever constructed inside the catacombs, with walls lined with dozens of skulls and shin bones. The lamp was originally used by those quarrying the caves, but now it formed part of the macabre sculpture.

“Not a good idea,” Harry said. “Like it or not, you’re on the run with us now.”

“Great,” Zoey said with a sigh. “All I wanted was some help to get out of jail and now I’m a fugitive in a cave full of skeletons.”

“It’s not so bad,” Niko said.

“Not so bad?” Zoey gave him a look. “Are you kidding me, you schnook? We’re walking through a tunnel lined with human skulls and as far as the police of both France and Spain are concerned we’re accessories after the fact of a multiple murder. If that doesn’t freak you out then just what the hell would?”

“Well, once I was in Copenhagen Zoo and this little monkey pulled out his…”

“Forget it,” Zoey snapped. “I don’t want to know what’s lurking at the end of that sentence — ever…”

Now they were leaving behind the part of the catacombs seen by normal tourists and entering an even darker, colder world of underworld isolation — a world as far from the reality of Paris as was possible to imagine.

Harry turned to Liška. “Where next, Professor?”

“We need to go through here.”

Zoey followed the beam from Liška’s phone light with anxious eyes. “You mean through the sign that says No Entry to the Public?”

“Yes, I mean exactly that.”

Niko shook his head. “You had to ask.”

“I was frightened you were going to say something like that.”

“The weapon had to be well hidden,” Liška said coolly. “Leaving it lying around where thousands of tourists walk every week would not be very clever, would it?”

If what the professor had said back in his apartment was even vaguely true then Harry thought this was a good point, but as they moved deeper into the system even he was starting to get a little unnerved. It was true that this area was out of bounds to the thousands of annual tourists who descended into the Catacombs every year, but that didn’t mean it was untouched by humans.

This was the deepest part of the labyrinth for sure, but even here there was evidence of other people — mostly in the form of graffiti sprayed on the cave walls, or the occasional piece of litter left behind by what the locals called the cataphiles — those mad enough to crawl down out of the city and explore this mysterious and dangerous underworld.

The flashlight illuminated what looked like a smooth floor of black glass, but then they realized it was one of the many underground rock pools that the cataphiles liked to swim in on hot days. Above it, on the cave wall, was a giant black and white skull sprayed into the rough limestone in metallic paint. It looked back at them with a devilish grin.

“Fancy a dip?” Harry said, almost to himself.

“You first, niknak,” Zoey said, and then they heard the sound of shouting as the police closed in on them.

“We have no time to waste,” Liška said. “We go this way!”

They followed him around the rock pool and along a narrow tunnel which led off to the right. They reached what looked like another dead-end lined with yet more skulls and bones when Liška knelt down on the floor of the tunnel and began to clear away dust and dirt with his hands.

“It’s in here,” he said.

Harry and the others watched as the Czech revealed a small trap door hiding among the gravelly detritus in the bottom of the tunnel.

“If I can just…” Liška strained hard as he desperately tried the cavity pull handle on the trapdoor in the floor at the end of the tunnel. “It’s too heavy for me alone,” he said down among the skulls, arms and legs that surrounded them on all sides, packed into place to form a wall of human bones.

“Let me at it,” Harry said. “Take this.” He crouched down over the trapdoor and heaved as hard as he could but there was no movement. He turned to face Liška “How the hell did you get this thing open?”

“There were two of us,” he said absent-mindedly. “Me and Jean-Paul.”

Harry scanned the faces of Liška and Niko Weber. “So maybe if there were two or three of us right now we might be making more progress?”

“I have a very weak back,” Niko said apologetically.

“I wonder why,” Zoey muttered with a sideways glance at his belly.

“This is all muscle,” Niko said. “I work out.”

Zoey shook her head. “The only thing you work out is how to get out of going to the gym.”

Liška wiped the sweat from his forehead with a handkerchief from his pocket and walked over to Harry. Far above, all of Paris was frozen, and the catacombs were cold enough for them to see their breath in the air. Liška’s sweat was caused by fear, not heat, and now he stuffed the cloth back on his pocket and crouched beside the Englishman.

“You couldn’t have just put this in a safety deposit box?” Zoey said.

“Banks have an annoying habit of asking questions about what they’re storing for you,” Liška said. “So no.”

With a final pull the trapdoor swung open and sent a shower of dust bursting into their faces. Harry coughed the cloud of dust from his lungs and waved it out of his face as he took the first few steps below the trapdoor. The first things he saw were broken bones strewn on the flagstones and thick cobwebs hanging from the ceiling.

The others followed him, and they moved down the steps into a claustrophobic vault, now so far below the city they may as well be in another world. Shining the flashlight from side to side as their shoes crunched on the gravel, they finally reached the far wall.

Lucia tripped on a crack in the flagstone floor and fell into the wall, almost putting her hand through an old, desiccated skull as she tried to stop herself. She tried to scream but Harry stifled it with his hand. “Let’s try to keep this delightful little place just for us, shall we, darling?”

Before she could respond, Liška barged forward and pointed at an area in front of them in the wall of skulls. “There it is,” he said. “It’s in there, behind that skull.”

“How can you be sure?” Zoey said.

The Czech turned to her. “I have a good memory for skulls,” he said.

“And on the site of a hospital that used to treat victims of the Black Death,” Harry said. “I see you have sense of humor, Andrej.”

“That was not why I chose it,” he said flatly. “I already told you — my sister’s husband works for the Paris Musées and he helped me access it. He risked his job for me.”

Zoey shuddered and looked over her shoulder into the gloomy, damp darkness. “You sure don’t screw around when you hide something, Chekov. I’ll give you that.”

Liška pulled the broken rocks apart and made a small space just big enough for his arms to push into the hole. Harry watched as he struggled to locate the object for a few seconds, cursing as he tried to find it. Then his eyes lit up and he turned to the others. “I have it.”

“So get it out and we can split,” Zoey said.

“That’s a very good idea,” Lucia said, glancing at her watch. “It’s getting dark out there now and half the French police are searching the city for us.”

“Night gives us an advantage,” Harry said.

The Czech scientist gently pulled a metallic object from the hole in the vault’s wall with the care of a mother carrying a newborn baby. “This is it… it’s still here, thank God!”