Two Graves

75

COLONEL SOUZA, HEARING THE GASP, SPUN AND FIXED his light on the soldier. The man clutched the heavy blade in his own hand, staring at it with an expression of sheer amazement, before folding slowly to the ground.

“Take cover!” said Pendergast, dropping to a crouch.

Souza staggered up against the wall while Pendergast probed the passage with his light, examining the walls, the ceilings, the dark cells and rotten doors. Tendrils of mist drifted through the tunnel, illuminated in the thin beam. There was nothing but silence and the drip of water. The light played over the chained skeleton, a single wisp of long black hair still attached to its cranium.

“Nossa Senhora,” the colonel whispered, turning to Pendergast, their gazes meeting. Once again he found himself disconcerted by those pale eyes, which seemed almost to shine in the dark. He could feel his lower lip trembling, and he struggled to suppress it. He could not think, not yet, of how badly he had failed in this mission. His son, Thiago, had said nothing—nothing—since the disaster. He couldn’t bring himself to meet the gaze of his son… but he could feel it. Yes, he could feel the pressure of the youth’s eyes, the fear and censure, against the back of his neck, as if it were a tangible thing.

Crouching there, waiting for he did not know what, having no idea what they could possibly do now, he saw Pendergast move, reach out, and touch his fallen soldier’s neck at the pulse. He waited a moment, then glanced over at the colonel with a faint shake of the head. It felt like another thrust of the knife. To lose these men, so many good men… but he couldn’t contemplate that now.

Pendergast gently removed the bloody knife from the soldier’s dead hand and examined it before sliding it into his own belt. Souza could see it was an old Nazi knife—an Eickhorn hewer—a heavy, thick blade, not easy to throw, but massive enough to split the breastbone on its way to the heart.

Again the colonel listened and again was surprised, even astonished, that he could neither hear nor see anything out there in the darkness. It was as if the knife had simply materialized in the man’s chest.

No one said anything. There was a moment of stasis, and then Pendergast cautiously rose, breaking the terrible spell. Motioning the remaining men to follow him, he continued down the tunnel. The colonel covered the rear with his son, neither one looking at the other. He had somehow ceded command to this civilian, but he could not collect his wits sufficiently to reassert his role. With four men against a fortress of trained Nazi fighters, what could possibly come next? Once again, he pushed these terrible thoughts from his mind. Did Pendergast have a plan? The gringo was so silent, so strange.

The tunnel began to slope downward and the air became increasingly fetid, foul smelling, the floor covered with water that gradually deepened as the slope continued, forcing them to wade. The mists thickened and their breath added more fog to the already-supersaturated air. The sound of their movement through the water echoed softly in the tunnel. At a certain point Pendergast gestured for a halt, and they stood in the tainted air, listening, but could hear no sound of anyone moving through the water behind them.

Still the tunnel continued, the water deepening. Dead, bloated insects floated on the surface scum, and on several occasions they passed human skeletons chained or partially walled into alcoves, dating back to the Spanish era, the bones eaten by time. Once a fat, white water moccasin glided by, paying them no attention.

Soon they came to a circular chamber, a confluence of tunnels. The water was now waist-deep. Here they paused while Pendergast appeared to examine the water for signs of a current, shining his light down and dropping a piece of thread onto the surface. But the thread just left a dimple; there was no movement, none at all, to indicate which direction they should go.

As Pendergast was about to turn away, the colonel saw the thread give a sudden spin; at the same time, the beam of his flashlight, penetrating the murky water, picked up a faint blur.

“Watch out!” he shouted, as simultaneously a cry came from the soldier behind him—Thiago. The colonel spun around, swinging his light frantically, but Thiago had vanished into the water. There was a violent thrashing below the surface, which ended almost as suddenly as it began. The colonel staggered over to where the murky water was still swirling; his flashlight revealed something under the water, rising, rising… A form surfaced, a dark cloudy stain spreading out from its neck, staining the water.

“Meu filho!” the colonel cried, seizing the body. “Thiago! Meu filho!” He turned the body of his son over and with an inarticulate cry lifted it, horror-struck as the head flopped back, the throat cut to the bone, the eyes staring wide. “Bastardos!” he screamed, dropping the body and lifting his rifle, his vision clouded with rage. He let fly a blast on full automatic, aiming into the darkness and sweeping it around, firing crazily into the water. The other soldier panicked as well, backing up and firing his weapon into the miasmic darkness.

“Bastardos!” Souza screamed again.

“Enough,” Pendergast said, not loudly, but in a steel voice. “Stop.”

The colonel, feeling the cold grip of the man’s hand on his shoulder, came to a jerking halt. He was shaking all over. “My son,” he said in despair.

“He’s playing with us,” said Pendergast. “We’ve got to find a way out.”

“He?” the colonel cried. “Who is he? Who is this man?” He felt another rage take hold and he screamed into the darkness: “Who are you? Quem é você?”

Pendergast did not answer. He pointed to the last soldier. “You. Bring up the rear.” He turned back to the colonel. “Stay next to me. We must keep moving.”

Souza followed Pendergast down a tunnel, chosen for reasons he did not know nor any longer care about. The American moved fast through the water, almost like a shark, slipping along, the colonel struggling to keep up. He saw Pendergast remove a grenade and yank out the pin, keeping it clenched in his hand, the spoon lever depressed.

They continued on until they reached another confluence of tunnels; another danger zone. And then all of a sudden, to the colonel’s surprise, Pendergast turned and threw the grenade back down the tunnel they had just emerged from.

“Down!” he cried.

They threw themselves into the water as the explosion came, blasting down the tunnel in a wall of spray like a water cannon. After it passed, they could hear the echoes of it continuing to rumble this way and that through the labyrinthine passages.

Pendergast pointed to a tunnel.

“How do you know this is the way out?” the colonel gasped.

“It is the one without an echo,” came the murmured reply.

The water deepened, but a stone walkway soon appeared partway along the tunnel wall, with stone steps leading up. Pendergast had chosen correctly: this was a route out, an old tunnel no doubt leading to the lake, a secret water passageway in and out of the fortress.

“Agora eu esto satisfeito…” A voice came suddenly out of the mists, echoing, distorted, horrible.

The colonel dropped, turned, and fired almost without thought, a truncated burst cut off as his magazine emptied. He continued depressing the trigger, screaming, “Who’s there? Who is it?” His trembling voice echoed away among the mists.

The only reply was the single report of a gun out of the darkness; a brief flash of light; and the last of his soldiers dropped back into the water with a low gargling sound.

Pendergast crouched next to the colonel, using the stone quay as cover, his silvery eyes piercing the darkness.

Souza fumbled out the magazine, dropped it into the water, grabbed another from his rucksack, and with shaking hands tried to affix it into place. Pendergast reached over, placing a steadying hand on the gun as Souza finally got the magazine in place.

“Save your ammo,” he said quietly. “This is what he wants.”

“Os fantasmas?” said the colonel, shaking all over.

“Unfortunately, it’s real.”

With this enigmatic answer, Pendergast scrambled up the stone steps, the colonel stumbling after him, slipping as he climbed the slimy stairs to the narrow walkway, running along it and taking cover in an alcove.

“Agora eu esto satisfeito…” came the voice again out of the miasma, the sound like an ice pick into the colonel’s ear. In the tunnel it was impossible to tell the direction; it came from everywhere and nowhere at once, a low but curiously penetrating voice.

“What does that mean?” Pendergast whispered.

“How horrible… it means ‘satisfaction, fulfillment…’ ” Souza choked, his mind whirling. He could hardly come to grips with what had happened, what was still happening. It was a nightmare beyond anything he could have imagined.

“We’ve got to keep moving, Colonel.”

Something about the agent’s cool voice steadied him a little. Gripping his M16, Souza rose and followed Pendergast’s fleeting form down the passage. They passed side pipes and tunnels, some of which were spewing black water.

Low laughter followed them. The colonel could not stand it. He felt everything crumbling again; his world was destroyed—and now this. How was this happening? Who was this devil?

“Você está satisfeito, Coronel?” came the voice, closer in the mists. Are you satisfied, Colonel?

It was as if the world suddenly flew away. Colonel Souza spun with a roar and ran back in the direction of the voice, a sound coming from his throat that wasn’t entirely human, a bestial scream of rage, his finger locked on the trigger, the weapon on full automatic, the muzzle sweeping back and forth, the thirty-round magazine emptying into the mist.

A sudden silence fell as the magazine ran out. Souza stopped, almost as if waking up; stopped and waited, waited for the end, which he suddenly wanted more than anything else he had ever wanted in his life.