Paul Christopher - The Lucifer Gospel

She threw herself into the plane and scrambled to shut the door as Hilts climbed in beside her. He immediately began going through his preflight routine, reaching up to hit the button on the flap selector switch, then punching the air bottle valve between the seats and the fuel primer simultaneously. The radial engine started with a roar. He released the brake and pushed the throttle forward hard with his left hand, his right holding on to the steering column. The oversize propeller windmilled, seeming almost to suck them forward, the wall of the cliff directly in front of them.

“Aren’t you going to turn?!” Finn yelled, staring at the cliff less than two hundred yards away.

“Too slow! She turns like she’s sleepwalking!” he answered, pushing the throttle forward even harder. They raced across the hard-packed sand, the steamroller of the sandstorm coming up on Finn’s right, filling her entire field of vision.

“Are we going to make it?!”

“Think elevating thoughts!”

The helicopter came over the top of the cliff and swooped down directly in front of them. Finn could see a spurt of flame from the twin-barreled turret gun slung under the nose and suddenly the ground immediately in front of their little plane was torn to ribbons.

Hilts jerked the steering column hard to the right, slammed his foot down on the right rudder pedal and pushed the throttle forward as far as it would go. The plane swung to the right and leapt into the air, the Mil-24 sliding away to the left, heading directly into the oncoming wall of the howling storm. There was a sudden clattering sound from behind them and Finn felt as though a giant hand had grabbed the plane and shaken it. Then the sandstorm hit and they vanished into its hungry jaws.

They flew within the storm, blind, desperately climbing until they rose above the dark, roiling horror and came out into the sunlight. Below them the storm was like the surface of some black, awful sea, shot through with streaks of lightning.

“It really is a storm,” said Finn, staring down.

“Crazy things,” Hilts said and nodded, checking his instruments. “The friction of the sand causes the lightning. All sorts of magnetic disturbances as well.”

“Down there, you flew right at that helicopter. You didn’t turn.”

“This thing flies like stink, but it takes a lot to turn, and anyway, the Mil-24 was probably the least maneuverable chopper the Russians ever made. Fly at it and it has to swing around in a big circle. I knew we had the throttle to get up and over.”

“Knew?”

“Hoped.” Hilts grinned.

“Think elevating thoughts? That was the best you could come up with?”

“Better than kiss your ass good-bye,” said Hilts. “Which was the only other alternative.”

“What about the helicopter? Will they come after us?”

“No. They didn’t have enough time to get the elevation. That Nasif guy’s going to have to ride it out on the ground. Even then he might have to radio for help to get restarted.”

“So now what do we do? We can’t go back to the dig.”

“There’s an old oil airfield at Ayn al Ghazal. We can fuel up there and get across the border into Egypt.”

“And after that?”

“We’ll have to give that some thought. Cairo. The embassy. New passports. Maybe talk to your pal Mickey Hearts.”

“Or see if we can find out what Pedrazzi was up to.”

“Should have brought one of those copper urns with you,” said Hilts.

“I was distracted,” Finn answered. She dug into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out the old flat cigarette tin with the lounging woman on the lid. “All we’ve got is this.”

“And neither one of us smokes,” Hilts said. “Darn.” They were flying due east now, toward the distant border, away from the sandstorm and the threat of Nasif and his helicopter.

Finn shook the tin but there was no sound. For an empty tin it seemed heavy. Curious, she pried open the lid and was surprised to see a wadded piece of dusty linen inside. Hilts glanced across the narrow cockpit.

“Got something?”

“I’m not sure,” she said. “It looks like a handkerchief.”

“I’m taking us down under the radar,” said Hilts, gently easing the control stick forward. The plane responded instantly, swooping down toward the desert. “Wouldn’t want our friend calling in the cavalry on us.”

Finn unwrapped the cloth. There was a monogram in one corner, two letters entwined beneath a crest. “L.P. Lucio Pedrazzi. The crest is the same as the ring he was wearing.”

“He didn’t get that hole in the side of his head from a scorpion bite,” said Hilts. “A handgun from close range, more likely.”

“Murdered?”

“At a guess, yeah.”

“But according to you the only person with him was…”

“Pierre DeVaux, a monk,” Hilts completed.

“A monk with a pistol?”

“Agatha Christie would have loved it.”

Finn finished unwrapping the handkerchief. In the center of the fabric square a gold medallion gleamed. Staring up at Finn was the embossed malevolent face of a frowning Medusa, lips snarling, hair a mass of writhing snakes.

“A coin?” asked Hilts, looking at the object in her palm.

“A medallion.”

“What does it have written around the head?”

“The inscription is the same as the one of the stone coffin,” she said. “Hic Latito Lux Excito-Vox Luciferus. Here Lies Hidden the Bringer of Light: The Words of Lucifer.”

She turned the golden disk over. Engraved on the other side was the profile of a handsome face and another inscription.

“What does it say?”

“Legio III Africanus-Domus in Venosa est. Third African Legion, whose home is in Venosa,” she translated.

Hilts’s brow furrowed. “Where’s Venosa?”

Venosa is a town of some twelve thousand citizens scattered around a volcanic hilltop in the district of Basilicata, a small, out-of-the-way regione that lies roughly in the arch of Italy’s boot, bounded by the Gulf of Taranto to the south and the marble spine of the Apennine Mountains to the north. The architecture is bland, whitewashed stucco competing with beige stone and dusty, red-tiled roofs. Few tourists go there; it has none of the flavors of Tuscany or the grandeur of Rome, but once, a long time ago and under another name, it was one of the assembly points along the Appian Way for the great legions of Rome as they went out to conquer the world. Today it has a number of relatively unimportant churches, several sets of catacombs, a fort, and one good restaurant, Il Grifo, located in the center of town, just off the small central square.

Finn parked the little blue Fiat Panda in the cramped town square and switched off the engine. The only difference between the square and a utilitarian cobblestone parking lot was a medium-sized statue of an old Roman in a toga with a scroll in one hand and wearing an olive wreath on his half-bald head. Presumably this was the town’s best-known famous son, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known in literary history as the poet Horace. Finn was the one behind the wheel because she spoke the language fluently, having spent a year in Florence gathering research for her master’s thesis on the drawings of Michelangelo. It was also a practical way of dealing with the relentlessly chauvinistic polizia on the highways, who were always willing to give a pretty red-haired tourist a break; especially one who could say per favore and grazie with such a charming accent.

Finn popped open the door of the miniscule little vehicle.

“Stay here,” she instructed.

“Why?” asked Hilts, undoing his seat belt.

“In this country a woman asking questions by herself works better than if she’s with someone,” Finn answered. “Italian men are all the same-they think they were born to please women and that we’re all damsels in distress and desperate for a man’s attention. You’d be competition, at least in their minds.”