The Atlantis Code

CHAPTER 24

What does it mean?” Murani asked as he played his flashlight beam over the stone that captivated the linguistics professor’s attention.

“I don’t know,” Lourds replied.

Their words floated into the emptiness of the cave and echoed back.

“It’s the same as the one that was on the wall, right?” Murani’s impatience grew. He was on dangerous ground now. The Swiss Guardsmen recognized the authority of the Society of Quirinus for the moment, but their paths were divergent, and Murani knew it. They would balk at killing Lourds, Sebastian, and the others. The guards who had watched Sebastian were already ripe for rebellion. Murani would not suffer them to live.

But that was why he’d brought Gallardo and his people to the dig site. Perhaps Lieutenant Sbordoni and his men would follow orders, including murder, but many of the Swiss Guard that had been on-site at the dig wouldn’t.

Murani would deal with that complication when the time came. For now, he needed Lourds to spill his knowledge. It would be his last opportunity to do so, Murani swore.

“It’s the same,” Lourds confirmed.

“The last wall was fake.”

“I don’t think this one is,” Lourds said.

Murani gestured to Gallardo. The man slammed his rifle butt against the stone wall. The metal struck fire and broke loose a few stone chips.

The loud clank echoed within the chamber.

“Solid,” Gallardo grunted.

Lourds cocked his head and listened.

Murani supposed he was listening to the echoes but didn’t know why. The professor surprised the cardinal. He’d truly expected the man to be begging for his life by now. Instead, Lourds seemed to be more fascinated than ever by what was going on.

For himself, it was all Murani could do to keep his anticipation in check. He’d been thinking about the Book of Knowledge for years since he’d first discovered the existence of the five instruments in the book that the other members of the Society of Quirinus hadn’t found in their own archives.

He took a fresh grip on the pistol he carried. The weapon felt awkward in his hand, but he knew enough about it to use it. And he knew enough about himself to know that he would use it if he felt he had to.

For a moment, he wondered if Lourds were stalling. If he was—

“Hit the wall again,” Lourds said. His eyes never left the wall.

“Hit it yourself,” Gallardo replied.

Impatient, probably wondering if he’d thrown in with the wrong person, Lieutenant Sbordoni struck the wall with his rifle. Again, the sound echoed through the cavern.

“This place is like a soundstage,” Leslie said.

The moment she said that, Murani remembered that it had reminded him of that as well. Or an antechamber in a church.

“Once more,” Lourds directed.

Sbordoni struck the wall again.

“Hit another area.”

The lieutenant drew back his rifle and did it again.

This time Murani heard the double-cadence of the sound also. The cave amplified it so well that the sound was discernible.

“Help me.” Lourds shone his flashlight over the wall. “There has to be an artifact here somewhere. A release lever or something.”

“Why?” Murani asked.

“There’s trapped space behind this wall,” Lourds said.

“Another cave?”

Lourds shook his head as he felt along the lines of the engraving. “There’s not that much space. This sounds like a void.”

“No more than a few inches,” Sbordoni said. The Swiss Guard lieutenant searched as well. “Do you think it’s hidden in the picture?”

“Step back. Give me as much light on the engraving as you can.” Lourds stepped back also.

All of them stood in silence for a time. As they did, they heard a gentle susurration against the stone.

“What’s that?” Gallardo asked.

“It’s the sea,” Father Sebastian said. His voice was scratchy and rough from the blow Gallardo had dealt him. “The stone walls of the caves are the only barrier that keep the Atlantic Ocean from filling this place up. Break through, and you’ll drown us all.”

That sobering thought made many of the Swiss Guardsmen nervous. Gallardo and his men didn’t seem to appreciate their circumstances either.

“The walls will hold,” Murani said. “He’s just trying to scare you.”

But he knew the scare tactic was working. These men lacked the faith in God and in the mission that he had.

“Have any of you seen this picture before?” Lourds asked.

“I have,” Murani answered. “It was like the one in the book in the archives.”

“Did you bring it?”

“No.”

Lourds looked disappointed. “It would have been good to have something to match this one against.” He studied the wall, and Murani could see that he was totally absorbed by the problem, forgetting all about the threats to his life.

Amazed by Lourds’s preoccupation, Murani searched for any differences in the image. It looked the same as the one in the book.

Except there was one difference.

“The book,” Murani said. “The book in the First Son’s hand.”

“What about it?” Lourds stepped closer to examine the book.

“In the picture that I saw, it was closed, not open.”

Lourds touched the book with a forefinger. “I need a knife.” He held a hand out.

“No way,” Gallardo said. “You’re a captive, not a guest.”

“Give him the knife,” Murani ordered. “You have your rifle. What’s he going to do with a knife against your sharpshooters?”

Gallardo handed over a lock-back knife with a five-inch blade.

Lourds opened the knife and started scratching at the outline of the book. Without warning, the blade slid into the engraved line. Smiling, Lourds shoved the knife forward.

Something within the wall clicked. The sound echoed throughout the chamber. Then angry grinding started behind the wall, and filled the cave with noise.

Abruptly, the cave wall recessed and revealed hidden demarcations that dust had filled. The wall slid back six inches, then slid again to the left.

Behind the wall was another engraving. This one showed the five instruments again. They were in a different order this time.

Below the engravings of the instruments were ten squares. Lourds pressed one of the squares. Something ratcheted in the wall, and almost immediately a loud, musical bong! filled the chamber.

Lourds was already on the move with his flashlight in hand as he strode into the darkness. “Press that button once more.”

Murani waved at Sbordoni to follow Lourds and told Gallardo to press the square again.

The bong! pealed again.

Lourds altered his direction and shone the flashlight overhead. “Again,” he yelled as the echoes died away.

Bong!

Murani heard the noise almost directly overhead. His flashlight beam trailed Lourds’s up against the cave roof.

“Again,” Lourds called.

This time Murani saw the hammer strike the stalactite above. The hammer was compact and looked like it had been made of bone. A gold wire connected to it ran up into a hole in the cave ceiling.

“Again.”

The hammer moved and struck the stalactite.

Bong!

“Press another button,” Lourds directed.

Bong!

The noise set off another brief pursuit that resulted in the discovery of another bone hammer operated by gold wire.

“The cavern,” Lourds said in disbelief as he directed his flashlight around. “It’s been turned into a musical instrument.”

Natasha oversteered the pickup drastically in the darkness. The vehicle hurtled down the grade. She watched the odometer and ticked off the tenths of a kilometer as they rolled around.

“Watch it!” Gary yelled hoarsely.

Too late, she saw the cave wall rush up at them out of the darkness. Natasha pulled hard to avoid it, but the pickup’s tires slid across the slick stone floor. The proximity of the Atlantic filled the air with humidity. In time, she knew, it would cause changes in the cave system and might even kill off some of the bacteria and fungus that grew there naturally.

The pickup slammed against the wall with bone-jarring force. For a moment Natasha thought she’d gotten stuck for good. The rear tires spun on the stone as they clawed for purchase.

The headlights of their pursuers got closer.

Then the tires caught, and they shot forward again.

Gary cursed and pushed the broken glass out of the window. More of it had spilled across his lap.

“Thinking maybe you should have stayed behind now?” Natasha asked.

“Maybe a little more than I was,” Gary admitted. “But I have to warn you, I was really not wanting to come to begin with. Starting with that attack back in Alexandria.”

Natasha smiled grimly at that. She pressed her foot harder on the accelerator. The pickup shot forward again.

Only a short distance farther on, the cave widened again. This time Natasha recognized the cave as the one that had been on television so much. It was the cave before the one where all the crypts had been found.

A quick glance ahead told her they’d exhausted all their room to run. She hit the brakes and cut the wheel. She slewed sideways as the rubber lost traction again. Before she could stop, the pickup slammed into a parked earthmover. Her head hit the back of the pickup cab, and she almost blacked out.

The scent of gasoline filled the cab.

Not all cars blow up, Natasha told herself. That’s only in American movies.

But she also knew that enough of them blew up to warrant a hasty evacuation. She’d seen that happen in Moscow. Besides that, the men chasing them were almost on top of them.

She grabbed Gary’s shoulder and shook him. “Get out!”

Gary looked at her. Blood dripped from a cut over one eye. “I thought we were dead.”

“Not yet.” Natasha threw her weight against the door and forced it open. She clambered out and filled her hands with pistols as the other vehicles bore down on her.

They’re construction workers, she reminded herself. They’re just trying to do their job. They’re not Gallardo or his men. They’re not the ones who killed Yuliya. She had to make herself remember that.

Gary couldn’t get out on his side and had to climb out on hers. He swayed unsteadily as he took cover among the construction equipment.

Bullets tore into the pickup and drew Natasha’s attention to three Swiss Guards standing post near a mobile building. The building and the guards stood out in the darkness of the cave due to the lighting strung around them.

Natasha grabbed Gary and shoved him under one of the earthmovers as they took cover. She cursed mentally. She and Chernovsky had been stuck in some tight places in Moscow over the years, but this wasn’t looking good at all.

Then she noticed the steady drip of gasoline pooling beneath the pickup. With the all the metal and the stone floor, it was a safe wager that a spark would be struck soon.

The construction workers managed to pull to a stop, but as soon as they did bullets from the Swiss Guard chopped some of them down and sent the others into hiding.

“Okay,” Gary said, “they’re bad guys.”

It was always about choices, Natasha thought. There was no reason to fire on the construction workers unless the stakes had been raised. She considered Lourds briefly and wondered how much trouble he was in.

Then one of the stray bullets scraped the ground nearby and caught the gasoline pool on fire. It blazed immediately.

“Move!” Natasha ordered. She butted Gary into motion with her head and rushed him toward the other side of the earthmover just as the flames under the pickup twisted up and ignited the gas tank.

The explosion wasn’t so big as the ones on television, but the concussive wave knocked her down and sent fiery debris in all directions.

Natasha scrabbled upright again and kept moving. She reminded herself to use her peripheral vision and not try to look at the Swiss Guards straight on. Too many hiding places had been given away by the gleam of an eye. She popped up on the other side of the earthmover and pointed her left pistol long enough to squeeze off three shots.

At least one of them hit the charging Swiss Guard in the face and knocked him from his feet. The two others took cover.

As she held her position, her nose and throat burning from the smoke pooling against the cave ceiling, Natasha saw one of the Swiss Guards break cover and throw a grenade against the mobile building.

The grenade turned out to be an incendiary one. It went off with a bamf! that carried to Natasha’s ears. Immediately flames clawed up the side of the building.

“There are people in that building!” Gary yelled.

Natasha glanced at the windows and saw the men’s faces pressed against the glass.

“They’re locked in,” Gary yelled.

“I know.”

“We can’t let them burn.”

“I know. Let me think.”

But there wasn’t time for thinking, and Natasha knew it. There were still two armed—

Gary broke cover at once and ran for the building. One of the Swiss Guards stood up and shot him. Even as Gary fell, Natasha targeted the man in the darkness by marking his muzzle flashes. She fired several shots and didn’t stop until the man fell out of the darkness to the ground.

Shoe leather scraped on stone behind her. Knowing she’d been flanked by the other man, she ducked. A bullet caught her hip and sent her sprawling.

Lourds’s subsequent exploration of the buttons revealed that each of them was connected to a bone hammer. He studied the stalactites enough to see that each of them had been carefully shaped. The cave was no longer growing, so the stalactites hadn’t changed in thousands of years.

“I’ve seen something like this,” Lourds said as he stood once more in front of the engraving showing the First Son. “There’s a cave system in Luray, Virginia. Luray Caverns. It has what’s called the Great Stalacpipe Organ, but it’s based on one of the oldest musical instruments we’ve ever found: a lithophone. Normally lithophones are made up of stone bars of different lengths. Or wood.”

“Like a xylophone,” Murani said.

Lourds nodded. “Exactly. However, the Great Stalacpipe Organ was constructed using the same design. It uses electricity to power the clappers. They play the huge organ and actually sell records of songs they make.”

“But why is this here?”

Lourds shone his light at the symbols under the buttons. “Believe it or not, but I think it’s an alarm code. If you trigger the right sequence, maybe the Book of Knowledge will be revealed.”

“What happens if you trigger the wrong sequence?” Gallardo asked.

“You mean, what if there’s a trap?” Lourds asked. The possibility hadn’t occurred to him. He’d been mesmerized by the whole setup.

“Yes.”

“Then we’re hosed,” Lourds said.

Gallardo didn’t look happy.

“The trick is to not get hosed.” Lourds studied the wall and thought about everything he’d learned. “The Keepers believed the instruments were the key to opening the ‘Drowned Land.’ The inscriptions on the walls outside said the key was in five parts.”

“I thought that was just the clue to the hidden room,” Murani said.

“Maybe there’s more,” Lourds suggested. “Let’s have another look at them.”

Murani sent Sbordoni to retrieve the instruments. When they were brought back, everyone examined them again. The susurration of the sea sounded outside the rock walls and echoed within the chambers.

Without warning, Father Sebastian ducked forward and evaded the Swiss Guards for a moment. He stomped the drum and shattered it to pieces before the Swiss Guards got him under control again.

“Don’t help him!” Father Sebastian shouted at Lourds and the Guards. “He intends to use the Book of Knowledge! If he does, he’ll bring God’s wrath down on us again!”

Murani pointed his pistol at the priest. There was no doubt he was going to kill the man.

Lourds shifted his weight and caught Murani’s wrist just in time to yank the cardinal’s arm up. When he fired, the bullet ricocheted from the ceiling above.

Gallardo hit Lourds hard enough to drive him to his knees. Pain exploded inside his head, and the coppery taste of blood filled his mouth. He tried to get to his feet, but he was rubbery-legged.

By the time Murani brought the pistol back down, three of the Swiss Guards stood in front of Father Sebastian and created a wall of living flesh protecting him.

“No,” one of the guards said, the one with the scar on his face. “There’s not going to be a murder here in this place. We’re here to do the work of the Society of Quirinus. If we find the Book of Knowledge, it needs to be locked away.”

Murani said nothing, but Lourds could see that he wasn’t happy. The Swiss Guards were dividing among themselves. Two groups had started to form, one that stood with Father Sebastian, the other that aligned themselves with Murani.

Lourds was stuck between them, and it was the wrong place to be. He looked down at the drum to check to see if it was salvageable. The instrument was a tangle of broken pottery and leather cords. Thankfully the shards had broken into big pieces. He thought he might be able to reassemble the fragments. Even better yet, the inscription with the two languages looked salvageable.

Then he saw an inscription inside a drum shard, a series of lines with marks drawn on them.

“What is that?” Murani knelt down beside Lourds.

“I think,” Lourds said, fascinated, “it’s a musical score, maybe a diatonic scale. The ancient Greeks worked with music theory. They called it genera and developed three primary types. The diatonic was used for the major scales and church modes, so it was also called the Gregorian mode.”

“Could it be the key the inscription was talking about?”

“I don’t know. It’s possible that—” Before Lourds could say anything more, Murani shattered the bell.

Lourds almost cried at the artifact’s loss.

But the inscription inside was clear.

The shards had to be pieced together to reveal the musical score. Murani broke the cymbal, pipe, and flute in quick succession. So much history, gone forever. But inside each of them, inscriptions revealed a musical score.

“They go in order, right?” Murani asked. “As they’re shown on the engraving?”

“Who knows? Maybe.”

Murani arranged the score on the ground and ran through the buttons again. Then he began to play.

The cave came alive with the sound of music. Excitement filled Lourds. The beautiful notes took away some of his fear. Leslie joined him, standing beside him as the echoes of the music filled the space. She took his hand in hers. She held on tightly.

For a moment after the last note was played, nothing happened. Then an explosion was followed by a rattle of gunfire. Everyone turned back in the direction of the caves they’d come through, looking to see where the sound originated.

In the next moment, the two factions of Swiss Guards separated even further. The had rifles pointed at each other. It seemed each side was willing to kill — or to die — for their cause.

Then stones ground out in the center of the cave and jerked their attention back in that direction. The grumbling, rumbling noise filled the cavern as it echoed and re-echoed.

As Lourds watched, the cavern floor irised open at the center. Cunningly wrought stone teeth retracted and revealed a pit. A golden glow dawned inside the darkness.

Lourds started forward immediately. Leslie hung on to his hand and followed.

Murani hastened past Lourds, though, and reached the pit first. He aimed his flashlight, then the pistol, into the pit.

Surprising himself, Lourds hesitated a little as the thought of an Old Testament demon or lurking evil hit him. You don’t believe in things like that, he reminded himself. But here, with all the evil surrounding him, with all the impossibilities he’d uncovered so far, he suddenly found he could believe in anything. He took a tighter grip on Leslie’s hand as he approached the pit.

Liquid fire burned Gary’s side as he took a breath. For a moment there after the bullet had struck him, he’d forgotten how to breathe. That had scared him more than he’d ever been scared in his life. And that was saying something, because there had been several close calls since he and Leslie had hooked up with Lourds and Natasha.

Get up, you great wanker! Them people are going to burn to death while you lay about!

Painfully, fearful of another bullet striking him because he still heard gunfire echoing in the cavern, Gary forced himself to his feet. He felt light-headed, but he managed — and that surprised the hell out of him.

He concentrated on breathing and walking. It turned out to be more of a lurch, actually, but he made it work for him. He felt the heat coming off the mobile building as he neared it.

Men had already broken the glass out of the windows, but there wasn’t enough room to squeeze through to safety. They screamed at him in frustration.

Increased dizziness clawed at Gary’s mind. He felt the darkness eating away at the edges and waiting to consume him.

The harsh, flat cracks of more gunshots sounded behind him.

Are we winning? he wondered. Even he couldn’t see how they would prevail.

When he reached the building, he almost had to turn back from the heat. Instead, he made himself reach for the door. Someone had wedged a crowbar into the door to block escape. He grabbed it. The heated metal scorched his hand, but he held on just long enough to yank it free. Then he threw it to one side.

The men poured out of the mobile building. Two of them grabbed him up under the arms and carried him away from the fire. All of them spoke Italian, and Gary couldn’t understand most of what they were saying.

Somewhere in there, just as it was starting to dawn on him that he’d been a hero and gotten shot for his trouble, Gary fell into unconsciousness.

Steps carved into the side of the pit tunnel led down into darkness. Even though Lourds added his flashlight beam to Murani’s, the darkness didn’t retreat enough to reveal what was held below.

The glow seemed concentrated down in the bottom of the pit.

Murani pointed his pistol at Lourds.

“You first,” the cardinal commanded.

Lourds thought about objecting and knew it wouldn’t do any good. But that was only a small part of why he started down the steps. The other part, the larger part, was that he had to see what was there.

If the Atlanteans, or whatever they’d called themselves, had taken the time and trouble to hide the Book of Knowledge in such an elaborate place as this, what else could be hidden there?

The smart thing to do was lower a light into the yawning abyss and see what pitfalls — literally — lay ahead. But Lourds knew that neither he nor Murani were willing to wait long enough for a cautious examination of the site.

One of these days that curiosity of yours is going to get you killed, Lourds chided himself.

The pit was colder than the room above. The sea gurgling against the rock was louder as well. Lourds couldn’t help thinking how far below the ocean’s surface they were at the moment. It had to be 250 or 300 feet at least. And it was two miles back to the cave entrance.

The steps were cut narrow and shallow. There was barely enough room for Lourds to walk down. He hadn’t seen any bodies of the Atlanteans, but he was willing to bet they’d been small people.

Footsteps rasped behind Lourds. When he stopped and looked up, he found Leslie behind him.

“It might not be safe down here,” he said.

“It’s not safe out there,” she replied.

“I suppose it isn’t.”

“I couldn’t let you go alone.”

Lourds gave her a small smile. She could have, and they both knew it. He was willing to wager that her curiosity pushed at her as sure as his propelled him.

“Let’s hope that coming down here was the smart thing to do.” He turned and headed back down into the darkness.

A door lay at the end of the steps. It wasn’t locked, and it opened inward easily at Lourds’s touch. The air inside the room was stale and musty, but it carried odors that suddenly made the professor’s heart beat faster and chase away the remaining fear in his head.

“Do you smell that?” Lourds asked excitedly as he went forward with more confidence. He knew those scents immediately, and he’d know them till his dying day.

“What? The dust?”

“Parchment,” Lourds said. “Ink. Lots of it.”

He shone the flashlight inside the room and was astounded to see rows of books. They stood neatly ranked on shelves on the walls as well as in free-standing shelves that occupied the floor space.

Lourds walked to the nearest shelf and plucked a book from the row. The book was bound in a leatherlike material, but it wasn’t leather, at least not any leather that Lourds knew about. Leather wouldn’t have held up for thousands of years without showing some kind of aging. This book—all the books — looked as though they’d just been written.

Lourds balanced the book, bound in bright blue, on his left forearm and opened it with his left hand. He held the flashlight in his right. It was hard doing that with his hands cuffed. Symbols like the ones he’d decrypted on the musical instruments filled the crisp white pages.

He shone the flashlight around the room again. There were hundreds — perhaps thousands—of books on the shelves. The titles hinted at histories, biographies, sciences, and mathematics.

“My god,” Lourds said softly. “It’s a library.”

“Is that all you see?” Leslie sounded distracted. “Look at this!”

Lourds followed the line of her flashlight beam as Murani, Gallardo, and the others entered the room.

Drawn by the beauty before her, Leslie reached out her manacled hands to touch the amber figurine standing at the end of one of the shelves. Light glinted from the polished surface and fired the veins of its matrix with gold.

The figurine stood almost four feet tall and displayed a man holding the model of a solar system in his hand. Six planets of different sizes orbited the sun.

“They had the solar system as sun-centric,” Lourds said. “They were thousands of years ahead of everyone. And the size ratio looks right, too.” Wonder overcame him as he looked at the rest of the books.

“That’s a big deal?” Leslie asked. “I thought everyone knew the planets revolved around the sun.”

“No. In fact, the Church locked up Galileo for heresy for saying as much.”

“You’re kidding.”

Lourds couldn’t believe she didn’t know that. “No, I’m not kidding.”

“Astronomy’s never been my thing,” Leslie admitted.

Like a child in a candy store, Lourds passed through the aisles and sought out titles he could decipher. “Have you any idea of the knowledge that might have hidden here all these years? Do you know what kind of strides might have been possible in the world if other cultures had possessed this knowledge?”

“I’m assuming that all these old books are a big deal.”

“A very big deal,” Lourds said. His head was spinning with possibilities. It made him think of everything that had been lost at the Library of Alexandria. A world of ancient knowledge… here… at his fingertips. He was overcome with wonder.

“Lourds,” Murani called out impatiently.

Lourds turned and was hit in the eyes with a bright flashlight beam. He raised his cuffed hands. “What?”

“Where’s the Book of Knowledge?” Murani demanded.

“I don’t know. It must be here somewhere.”

“Here,” Leslie called.

Lourds tracked her voice through the stacks. The others converged on her as well.

As soon as the construction workers fled the mobile building, Natasha knew the surviving Swiss Guard’s game plan had altered from offense to defense. He’d also made the mistake of allowing her to get her hands on the second man she’d killed.

She put her pistols away and took up the dead man’s rifle and ammo bandolier. She slung the bandolier across her shoulders and checked the magazine in the rifle. It was nearly full.

It was good having real weapons again.

Calmly, knowing her opponent had only two avenues open to him, Natasha hunkered down in the shadows by an earthmover and waited. She hated not being able to go to Gary. He was unconscious, unmoving on the cold stone of the cavern floor. A few of the men had started for him, though. She hoped Gary was still alive. She hoped those he’d saved would save him.

The Swiss Guard broke cover and ran for the construction workers’ vehicles. He’d opted for saving his own neck instead of trying to join his comrades in the caves farther on.

Natasha shouldered her weapon, led the man just a little, and squeezed the trigger. The round caught him in the neck just under the protective Kevlar helmet. The shot knocked him down. He didn’t move again.

Satisfied that the cave was clear, Natasha ran to Gary’s side. The construction men scattered away from her, obviously intimidated by the rifle she carried. Many of them headed for the vehicles and started to leave.

The rise and fall of Gary’s chest let her know he was still alive.

Natasha looked up at one of the men. “You,” she ordered in her cop voice.

“Me?” The man looked scared.

“My friend saved your life,” Natasha said. “I want you to save his.”

“Of course.” The man called to another, and together they lifted Gary from the ground.

“Carefully,” Natasha said.

The man nodded and headed toward one of the vehicles. He called out to the driver, and the truck pulled over to them.

The men handed Gary into willing hands, then clambered aboard themselves.

Natasha watched them go. In less than a minute, the cavern had been evacuated. She turned her attention back to the caves ahead just as World War III seemed to open up.

Leslie stood at the far end of the room next to a glass case under a mosaic of colored pebbles. The mosaic showed the First Son standing on a meadow top holding out His arms to call men and women from a dark forest filled with demons and ugly beasts.

Lourds read the symbols beneath the mosaic out loud. “ ‘May we all be called back home again soon.’ ”

A box of pure beaten gold sat on a small table. There was a note. Lourds shone his flashlight on it and read it quietly.

“Can you translate that?” Murani demanded.

“Yes.”

“Then do it.”

The note was short and to the point. “ ‘Here lies the Book of Knowledge. We took it from God’s First Son, who came to the Garden to shepherd us. We pray that God forgives us of our sins.

“ ‘When the Tower fell after we built it to ascend into Heaven, hard times followed. We warred with ourselves because we no longer had a common language. Only a few of us were able to learn this tongue again. We swore that we would never teach it to anyone. But the book is God’s, and there will always be those who assume they can be as powerful as God.

“ ‘They are wrong.

“ ‘After we sank into the sea, only a few of us remained within the caves. Already we’re growing sick with a mysterious malady which has followed us into the depths.’ ”

“Can a sickness survive this long?” Gallardo asked.

“No,” Murani said. “Besides, you have other problems to worry about.”

“More than likely any bacteria or viruses succumbed to barotrauma,” Lourds said.

“What’s that?” Gallardo asked suspiciously.

“Given that these chambers are dry, and that some of the people survived — at least for a time — the caves became a huge hyperbaric chamber. That is to say, the oxygen in the caves became more pressurized. Any time you dive below one hundred twenty feet for an extended length of time, the same thing happens. That’s why divers have to decompress and come up slowly. Or they have to use a decompression chamber, also called a hyperbaric chamber. Barotrauma results from pressure changes inside the body that don’t equalize during a dive.”

“I take it you knew a woman who was into diving,” Leslie said sourly.

Lourds couldn’t for the life of him figure out how Leslie could even possibly imagine being jealous under the circumstances. But there was no doubt she was. He’d seen it — and dealt with it — far too often. And, actually, she was right: He’d dated a woman who had been a diving instructor. A very beautiful, articulate diving instructor in Greece.

“They got sick from being underwater,” Gallardo said.

“Yes. Men have attempted to live underwater in different places — such as Jacques Cousteau’s Conshelf habitats, Sealab, and Aquarius. Dealing with saturation diving, and that’s what the survivors were subjected to in a sense, can cause aseptic bone necrosis, the loss of blood to bones. Possibly the arms and legs became gangrenous.” Lourds was silent for a moment. “It would have been a painful, hideous death.”

“Is there anything further in the note?” Murani asked.

Lourds resumed reading. “ ‘I know that I won’t live much longer, possibly only a few days, but I want to leave this warning for any who find this Book. God willing, the island will never rise again and our sins will remain buried in the ocean. But I have learned that God will do as He wishes.

“ ‘So if you have found this Book, if you can read my message, which is written in the old language that God took from us, heed my warning: Do not read the Book. Put it in a safe place until God returns for it and takes this burden from us once more.’

“It’s signed, Ethan, the Historian,” Lourds finished.

“Back away from the Book.” Murani waved his pistol.

Reluctantly, Lourds gave ground.

Murani put the pistol in a pocket of his robe. He approached the box, removed the lid, and reached inside. When he pulled out the Book, Lourds was truly surprised that the cardinal didn’t burst into flame or vaporize on contact.

The Book of Knowledge was far smaller than Lourds would have guessed such a volume would be. Surely nothing that important would be — or could be — contained in such small dimensions. It might have been twelve inches wide by twenty inches tall, and no more than three inches thick.

How could all God’s knowledge be contained in such a book?

Trembling, Murani opened the Book. At first, the page looked blank. Then it filled with symbols. They appeared so quickly that Lourds felt certain he just hadn’t seen them at first.

Murani stared at the text. He looked angry, frustrated, and dumb-founded. He glanced up at Lourds and held the Book out.

“Read this,” the cardinal commanded.

Lourds did, but the symbols played tricks on his eyes. They seemed to move and weave, and it was hard to hold them still.

“ ‘Know you that this is the Book of God, and that His Word is holy and without—’ ”

Murani snapped the Book closed. “You’re going to teach me this language, Professor Lourds. The fact that I can’t read it myself is the only thing keeping you alive at this moment.”

Lourds couldn’t think of anything to say to that.

“Gallardo, stay with him,” Murani ordered. “Lieutenant Sbordoni, we need to see if we can get back out of here.”

Lourds gave a last look at the books as he was forced up the steps. He hated leaving them. He wanted to look at more of them. But Gallardo put a hand in the middle of his back and shoved again. Lourds barely prevented himself from falling.

Back in the Chamber of Chords, the détente between the two factions of Swiss Guards had reached critical mass. Lourds knew that in a glance from the way Father Sebastian stood protected within one of the groups.

“Cardinal Murani,” Sebastian said, “you need to turn the Book of Knowledge over to me.”

Murani looked belligerent. “And if I refuse?”

“Then we’ll take it from you,” one of the Swiss Guards, the one with the cleft chin, said. “I’d rather not do that.”

“Thank you, Martin,” Sebastian said. “God knows His own.”

“You serve the Society of Quirinus,” Murani said to the Guard. “You’re supposed to help me.”

“To recover the Book for safekeeping, yes. But not so that you can read it,” Martin said. “That Book has done enough damage. It should be put away where it can’t do any more harm.”

“This Book can strengthen the Church,” Murani said. “It can bring us closer to God.”

“No. It will bring God’s wrath down on us,” Sebastian said. He held his hand out. “Give me the Book, Cardinal Murani.” He paused. “Please, Stefano, before your zealousness brings about the end of us all.”

For a moment, Lourds thought Murani might honor the request. Then the cardinal took out his pistol and shot Sebastian before the Swiss Guards around him could close ranks.

That touched off the bloodbath that had been waiting to explode.

When the bullets started flying, Lourds ducked away from Gallardo, who started firing as well. Staying as low as he could, Lourds ran for Leslie and grabbed her by the arm. He ran down the incline to the pit where the library was hidden. It was the safest place he could think of to wait out the gun battle. Swiss Guardsmen dropped all around him.

Murani opened the Book again, and his face — even amid the gunfire — was triumphant.

The cavern filled with noise; then it swelled with it as the cacophony exploded in echoes that doubled and redoubled the auditory assault. Lourds felt the ground tremble beneath his feet and froze beside a tall stalagmite that offered brief shelter from the storm of bullets.

“What is it?” Leslie asked. “Earthquake?”

“No,” Lourds replied. “Harmonic vibration. The cavern is an acoustic chamber designed to pick up and magnify sounds.”

The susurration of water all around them grew louder.

A sinking feeling manifested in Lourds’s stomach. “No,” he whispered. “I think whenever Murani opens that Book, he sets off something even he can’t control.”

Horrendous crackling filled the air and momentarily drowned out the gunfire. Then the walls fissured and split. The hungry sea lying outside the stone walls sprayed inside with enough force to knock men down.

Water covered the cavern floor, then sluiced toward the waiting hole in the center of the cave.

“No!” Lourds shouted hoarsely. He started to go toward the pit, but Leslie grabbed him and held him back.

“There’s nothing you can do!” Leslie screamed. “We’ve got to get out of here!”

After everything he’d been through, after everything he’d survived, Lourds could only watch helplessly. Exhausted, he dropped to his knees as the water level swirled and became a whirl pool that drained directly into the library.

Leslie pulled at him. “Come on! Get up! Get up or we’re going to die down here!”

Lourds forced himself to his feet and staggered into a run for the cave entrance. Ahead, the survivors of the gun battle were in full flight as well, but several of them still fought.

Even as he ran, Lourds was grimly aware that the water level was rising too fast. With every step he took, he trod deeper and deeper in water. He leaped and vaulted dead bodies as he held on to Leslie’s hand.

She screamed in terror.

“Save your breath,” Lourds told her. “We can make it out of here, but not if you can’t run.” He was lying. With the way the water was rising, he didn’t think either of them would survive. They’d be drowned like rats.

Ahead of them, Murani stopped and pointed back at Lourds. Water swirled around the cardinal’s waist. Although Lourds couldn’t hear the man over the gurgling rush of water, he knew the cardinal was commanding his men to get him.

The bearded Sbordoni and three of his men turned and ran back toward Lourds with Murani.

Lourds cursed and nearly fell as a tidal sweep of water slammed into his back and shoulders and toppled him from his feet. The salt brine stung his eyes and nose. Panic filled him for a moment as his feet slid out from under him. Then he found solid footing again and forced himself forward and above the water line.

Sbordoni, the other Swiss Guards, and Murani were there to receive him. They grabbed him roughly and yanked him into the next cave filled with the wall carvings.

All of it, Lourds thought in shocked dismay. It’s all going to be lost. He barely noticed the pain of the handcuffs biting into his flesh or the strain his captor put on his shoulder sockets by yanking on him.

Then he thought of Leslie.

Glancing over his shoulder, he was horrified to see that the men had left her behind. She was struggling in the water and was making almost no headway. The water crept up her body.

Lourds put his feet on the ground and tried to pull away from the man who was dragging him.

“Stop!” the man ordered.

“You can’t just leave her!” Lourds bellowed. “She needs help!”

“You’re an idiot!” Sbordoni yelled. “If you go back there, you’re going to die!”

Lourds continued fighting. Then the Swiss Guard officer slammed the rifle butt into his head and nearly knocked him out. Lourds’s legs went limp and slid out from under him. The man continued dragging him through the water, his once jaunty goatee now limp in the general flood.

Lourds tried to concentrate, but his thoughts swam inside his aching head. He finally got his legs working again and set his feet once more. Sbordoni ground to a halt and spun around with his rifle butt raised again.

Lourds struggled to shield himself, certain he’d be knocked unconscious this time. Instead, the guardsman stiffened suddenly and sank down. Lourds caught only a glimpse of the hole in the back of the man’s head before the guard disappeared underwater.

“Lourds!”

Recognizing Natasha’s voice, Lourds searched for her. He couldn’t see her anywhere. There were too many hiding places amid the wall of rocks.

“Get him!” Murani screamed at the other two Swiss Guards.

The men started for Lourds, but both went down, neat bullet holes in their foreheads, before they reached him.

Murani, the Book of Knowledge tucked up under his arm, drew his pistol and pointed it at Lourds. Before Lourds could move, a harsh crack sounded, and Murani pirouetted and dropped into the water.

The Book! Lourds thought. Then he turned back to Leslie. Somehow he’d managed to hang on to the flashlight. She was barely staying above water as she swam amid the roiling sea.

“Hold your hands up!” Natasha cried out.

Lourds held his hands up without thinking. He concentrated on how he was supposed to save Leslie when it didn’t look like he was even going to be able to save himself. He kept the flashlight trained on the young woman.

His hands jerked suddenly, then came apart when the chain between the cuffs shattered. The sound of a rifle shot echoed within the chamber.

“Go!” Natasha said. “Save her!”

Lourds plunged into the water and swam against the inrushing water. It was hard to do that and keep the flashlight trained on Leslie. He hoped that she used it as a beacon to find him.

Gallardo moved quickly through the darkness. He knew he had to get to the surface, but he had one more mission to accomplish first, one last score to settle here. He’d managed to locate the Russian woman when she’d killed the Swiss Guards trying to get the professor. She was in between him and the exit. He could delay a few crucial seconds for killing such a tempting target. It would be a pleasure to end her. Wading through chest-high water, pistol clenched in one hand as he navigated toward the rock wall where he’d last seen her, Gallardo fought the water and surged forward.

He came up behind her. The other cave had lights strung, and he used that light to skyline her against the rock wall. He took deliberate aim at the back of her head.

Then, when the muzzle flash illuminated her features, Gallardo realized she hadn’t been facing away from him. She’d been looking right at him.

Indescribable pain tore through Gallardo’s chest and heart. He tried to squeeze the trigger of his pistol, but his hands no longer worked. His arms dropped to his sides as he fought to stagger away.

His heart had stopped. He felt the dead silence inside his chest.

Then the woman was on him. Her face was as hard as stone.

“You killed my sister, you bastard,” she said.

Gallardo saw one last muzzle flash, felt his head snap back, then he saw and felt nothing.

Lourds found Leslie in the raging waters and grabbed her handcuff chain the way the Swiss Guard had held his. “Hold on,” he spluttered through the water. His feet barely found purchase on the stone floor now, but he kept pushing them forward. He swam when he had to.

Slowly, his heart pounding frantically and his breath coming in ragged tears, he discovered he was making headway against the rising water. Either the pressure was equalizing or the larger cavern was taking much longer to fill.

He had no doubt that the library had already drowned.

He tried not to think about that. Instead, he focused on the lighted mouth of the next cave. Water had already invaded there, too, but there were still a few vehicles the construction crew had left behind.

His throat, nose, and lungs burned as he finally reached solid ground. He pushed against the rock and hauled himself and Leslie from the water. It helped when she could reach bottom. Together they kept moving through waist-high water.

He began to believe they might manage to make it out alive after all.

Then, like one of the undead in the old monster movies Lourds had loved as a child, Murani rose from the water in front of him. The priest’s left shoulder was matted with blood, but he held a pistol steady in his right hand.

“Stop,” Murani ordered.

Lourds waited for Natasha to shoot the man, but no shot was forthcoming. Murani shifted the pistol toward Leslie, and Lourds knew the cardinal was going to kill her, then take him prisoner.

A shot sounded from somewhere along the wall of carved images behind them.

Leaping forward, Lourds grabbed Murani’s hand, then lowered his shoulder and drove the man back against the wall in a move that was highly illegal in soccer but one which Lourds had employed before when a game turned rough. Murani tried to knee him, but Lourds shifted and took the blow on the inside of his thigh.

The Book of Knowledge tumbled free of Murani’s robes. It splashed into the water and started to sink.

Before he could think, Lourds released his hold on Murani’s gun hand and reached for the Book. He seized it in the water before it could disappear.

“No!” Leslie shouted. “Thomas, look out!” She ran toward them, barely making headway through the water.

Half-turned, Lourds saw the pistol aimed at his head and Murani’s face a mask of rage just behind and above it. There was no way the cardinal could miss at such close range.

On instinct, Lourds lifted the Book of Knowledge as a shield. The muzzle flash lit up the cave for a moment, and he felt the impact of the bullet against the Book. Lourds expected the bullet to tear through the Book easily and strike him.

But it didn’t.

Holding on to the Book with his left hand, Lourds reached for Murani with his right. Instead of fighting, though, the cardinal slumped down bonelessly into the water. A bullet hole was centered neatly between his eyes.

Not believing what had just happened, Lourds watched Murani’s corpse float away. When he turned the Book of Knowledge over, Lourds didn’t even find so much as a scuff mark.

“Did you see that?” Lourds asked Leslie as she reached him. “The bullet ricocheted.”

“We’ve got to get out of here.” Leslie pulled at him gently. “Come on.”

Lourds ran his hand over the Book’s cover. There wasn’t a blemish or a divot to mark where the bullet had struck it, but he knew it had.

Natasha joined them. Blood spotted her face, but Lourds knew it wasn’t hers.

“Gallardo is dead,” Natasha declared. “My sister has been avenged.”

Lourds nodded, but his attention was on the Book. If the bullet hadn’t harmed the Book, was it waterproof as well? He opened the Book and found pages wet but unharmed. The symbols floated across the page, and he started to translate automatically.

“No.” Leslie closed the Book of Knowledge. “Not this one. Read a million other books. A billion other books. But not this one.”

Slowly, reluctantly, Lourds accepted that. Together, they turned and ran into the next cave as the water continued to rise.