Juan Gómez-Jurado - Contract with God aka The Moses Expedition

The best treasure of all.

Kyra was carrying several planks of wood that Gordon Durwin and Ezra Levine were using to shore up the walls of the tunnel to prevent a cave-in. It was to be ten feet wide and eight feet high. The professor and David Pappas had argued for several hours about the dimensions.

‘It’ll take us twice as long! Do you think this is archaeology, Pappas? It’s a damned rescue operation, and we have a limited amount of time, in case you haven’t noticed!’

‘If we don’t make it wide enough we won’t be able to get the earth out of the tunnel easily, the excavator will bang against the walls and the whole thing will cave in on us. That’s assuming we don’t hit the rock base of the cliff, in which case the net result of all this effort will be to lose two more days.’

‘To hell with you, Pappas, and your Master’s from Harvard.’

In the end David had won and the tunnel measured ten feet by eight.

Kyra absentmindedly brushed a beetle from her hair as she made her way to the far end of the tunnel, where Robert Frick was struggling with the wall of earth in front of him. Meanwhile, Tommy Eichberg was loading the conveyor belt that ran along the floor of the tunnel and ended a foot and a half from the platform, throwing a steady cloud of dust over the canyon floor. The mountain of earth that had been excavated from the side of the hill was now nearly as high as the tunnel opening.

‘Hello, Kyra,’ Eichberg greeted her. He sounded tired. ‘Have you seen Hanley? He was supposed to take over from me.’

‘He’s below trying to rig up some electric lights. Soon we won’t be able to see anything in here.’

They had dug almost twenty-five feet into the side of the mountain, and by two o’clock in the afternoon the daylight no longer reached the back of the tunnel, making it nearly impossible to work. Eichberg cursed out loud.

‘Am I going to have to keep shovelling like this for another hour? Bullshit,’ he said, throwing his spade down.

‘Don’t go, Tommy. If you leave, Frick can’t continue either.’

‘Well, you take over, Kyra. I have to take a piss.’

Without another word, he left.

Kyra looked at the ground. Shovelling earth on to the conveyor was a horrible job. You were constantly bending down, you had to do everything quickly, and keep an eye on the arm of the excavator to make sure it didn’t hit you. But she didn’t want to imagine what the professor would say if they took a break for an hour. He’d blame her, as usual. Kyra was secretly convinced that Forester hated her.

Maybe he resented my involvement with Stowe Erling. Maybe he would like to have been in Stowe’s place. Dirty old man. I wish you were in his place right now , she thought as she bent down to pick up the shovel.

‘Look out back there!’

Frick had reversed the excavator a little and the cabin almost slammed into Kyra’s head.

‘Be careful!’

‘I warned you, beautiful. I’m sorry.’

Kyra made a face at the machine because it was impossible to get angry with Frick. The big-boned operator was vile-tempered, cursed constantly, and farted while he worked. He was a human being in every sense of the word, a real person. Kyra appreciated that most of all, especially when she compared him to the pale imitations of life that were Forrester’s assistants.

The Ass-kissers’ Club, Stowe called them. He had wanted nothing to do with them.

She began to shovel debris onto the conveyor belt. In a little while they’d have to add another section to the belt as the tunnel went deeper into the mountain.

‘Hey, Gordon, Ezra! Quit shoring up and bring another section for the conveyor, please.’

Gordon Durwin and Ezra Levine mechanically obeyed her command. Like everyone else, they felt they had already reached the limits of their endurance.

As useless as tits on a frog, as my grandfather would’ve said. But we’re so close; I can taste the hors d’oeuvres at the welcoming reception in the Jerusalem museum. One more shovelful and I’ll be keeping all the journalists at bay. Another shovelful and Mr I’m-working-late-with-my-secretary will have to look up to me for once. I swear to God.

Durwin and Levine were carrying another section for the conveyor. The machinery was made up of a dozen flat sausages about a foot and a half long, connected by an electrical cable. They were no more than rollers with a strong plastic band around them, but they displaced a large quantity of material per hour.

Kyra dug her shovel in one more time, just so the two men would have to hold the heavy conveyor section a little longer. The shovel made a loud, metallic, clanking sound.

For a second, an image of a freshly opened tomb flashed through Kyra’s brain.

After that the ground tilted. Kyra lost her balance and Durwin and Levine tripped, losing their hold on the section, which fell against Kyra’s head. The young woman screamed, but it was not a scream of terror. It was a scream of surprise and fear.

The ground moved again. The two men disappeared from Kyra’s side like two children sledding down a hill. Perhaps they shouted, but she didn’t hear them, nor did she hear the huge chunks of earth splitting off from the walls and hitting the ground with a dull thud. Nor did she feel the sharp rock that fell from the ceiling and left her temple a bloody mess; nor hear the crumpling metal of the mini-excavator, which went crashing down from the platform and hit rocks thirty feet below.

Kyra wasn’t aware of anything because her five senses were focused on her fingertips, or, more precisely, on the four and a half inches of cable that she was using to help her cling on to the conveyor module, which had fallen almost parallel to the edge of the precipice.

She tried to kick her legs to find a hold but it was useless. Her arms were on the edge of the chasm and the ground was beginning to cede under her weight. The sweat on her hands meant Kyra couldn’t hold on and the four and a half inches of cable became three and a half. Another slip, another pull of gravity, and now there were barely two inches of cable left.

In one of those weird tricks of the human mind, Kyra cursed having made Durwin and Levine wait a little longer than necessary. If they had left the section lying against the tunnel wall the cable wouldn’t have got caught up under the conveyor’s steel rollers.

Finally, the cable disappeared and Kyra fell into the darkness.

AL MUDAWWARA DESERT, JORDAN

Tuesday, 18 July 2006. 2:07 p.m.

‘Several people are dead.’

‘Who?’

‘Larsen, Durwin, Levine and Frick.’

‘Shit no, not Levine. They pulled him out alive.’

‘The doctor’s up there.’

‘Are you sure?’

‘I’m fucking telling you.’

‘What happened? Another bomb?’

‘It was a cave-in. Nothing mysterious.’

‘It was sabotage, I swear. Sabotage.’

A circle of pained faces gathered around the platform. There was anxious whispering as Pappas came out of the entrance to the tunnel, followed by Professor Forrester. Behind them were the Gottlieb brothers who, due to their skill at abseiling, had been appointed by Dekker to rescue any possible survivors.

The German twins were carrying out the first body on a stretcher covered by a blanket.

‘It’s Durwin; I recognise his boots.’

The professor approached the group.

‘There’s been a collapse due to a natural cavity in the earth that we hadn’t reckoned with. The speed at which we dug the tunnel didn’t allow us to…’ He stopped, unable to continue.

I guess that’s the closest he’ll come to admitting a mistake , thought Andrea as she stood in the middle of the group. She had her camera in her hand, ready to take photos, but when she found out what had happened she put the lens cap back on.