Dorothy Mcintosh - The Witch of Babylon

We stood back while Shim, grunting with the effort, rolled the door to one side, revealing a second corridor. Here, the electric light ended. When Ward flicked on his jacklight a rat scurried into a fissure in the wall, its long, naked tail looking like a snake sliding into its hole. The stone walls here were rougher and the ceiling lower. The tunnel smelled of ancient spores and fungal growths, the scents of decay. A primitive trench had been cut along one side of the floor. Shim was forced to walk stooped over. We’d entered the underground city.

Farther along, the wall had been sanded smooth. A mosaic had been applied to it, considerably damaged but still intact. It was composed of Byzantine Christian symbols and themes, among them a prominent cross. Below it a square hole had been chipped out of the rock. I figured it had once served as a primitive altar. I knew that in Cappadocia, these settlements went back 3500 years to the Hittite empire and possibly even earlier. Over the centuries many cultures had used them, added on to them, left their own indelible mark. The labyrinth of rooms and halls provided an excellent defense system and could offer protection from sieges above ground for months. I thought I could see the carbon imprint of smoky torches that had once been fixed into these walls.

Eventually we came across several empty chambers. We halted at one of them and waited while Mazare carried the old man in and laid his body on the floor.

In the next chamber Ward pointed to a lioness carved in relief on the back wall. It was so well executed that when Ward played his light on the image, the lioness appeared to leap out of the rock face. The artist had deliberately used the natural contours of the rock to define the animal’s body. The lion reared on her hind legs, her open mouth displaying a row of ferocious teeth. On her stomach was a carefully depicted row of teats.

“That’s Phrygian,” Ward said, his excitement palpable. His mood had changed again. He seemed exultant now, as if the sight of the lion had confirmed all his hopes, and his previous bad temper had channeled into elation. I thought I could even detect a hopeful gleam in Lazarus’s dead eyes.

Nahum’s words came back to me. “Where is the den of lions?” Had I been wrong? Were we on the right track after all? If so, how did Nahum, a scribe living in Assyria, learn about the hidden tomb? I supposed it was possible he could have accompanied the Assyrian king on his campaign into Anatolia.

As we made our way down the corridor, Mazare spun around suddenly and motioned for us to stop. We’d arrived at two small rooms cut into the walls, facing each other. About a hundred feet ahead the passageway ended in a T-shaped intersection. Mazare whispered to Eris. “He wants us to turn off our lights,” she said. “The tomb is to the left.”

The lights clicked off, leaving us in total blackness. As our eyes adjusted, we could see a faint glimmer coming from the left branch of the intersection.

Mazare clicked his light back on and directed the beam toward the floor. He spoke again to Eris. “He’ll go up first,” she said. Ward directed all the others into the rooms but insisted I stand out in the passageway in plain sight. Ward and Eris got behind Shim in one of the rooms; Lazarus took the other. When I tried to force my way in, he pulled out his knife.

If Tomas was here after all and a hail of bullets came my way, all I could do to protect myself was flatten my body against a wall. Mazare inched along the left wall until he’d almost reached the arch of the intersection. He beckoned to me. I stayed put. Then he said something—“Come,” I thought. But I must have imagined it. He shrugged and holding his flashlight with one hand, dug into his pocket, pulled out his phone, and punched in a number.

For a second I wondered why he would try to make a call down here. In the next instant I realized what was about to happen and ran full tilt toward him.

Thirty

Ablinding flash lit up the corridor, followed by a long boom. I heard Ward yell in the second before the ceiling blew up. Moments later I was thrown face down on the floor. I tried to move but my left leg was caught under something. I twisted my upper body and feeling with my hand could tell that the object pinning me down was a coffee table–sized chunk of rock that had sheared off and dropped on me. My leg had been cradled by the trench and so hadn’t been smashed to smithereens when the rock fell. There was no pain and I could move my foot. I tried to grip the edge of the stone with both hands. But my position gave me little leverage and I couldn’t shift it even an inch.

I wasn’t able to see a thing. The rock dust was so thick I could barely breathe. I undid my shirt and tugged it off, wrapping it around my nose and mouth.

When we’d first entered the tunnel I’d tried to keep track of our direction and figured the passageway extended under the cliffs the old man’s house backed on to. That meant there was little chance anyone in the village would have heard the explosion. Eventually someone would venture into the tunnels and see the rockfall, but it would be far too late for me. Fate had already delivered so many low blows I’d lost count. And now, when I was finally free of my tormentors, I was condemned to die in this dusty hell.

Probably no more than ten minutes had passed, although it seemed much longer, when I heard the first sounds. A kind of groaning and babbling. I recognized the torturous attempts to speak that could only have come from Shim.

A dim light shone above me. Through the drifting dust I saw that the epicenter of the blast had occurred near the two small rooms. The force had been so strong, it had pulverized the rock. Stones the size of eggs up to small boulders jammed the passageway, extending up to a yawning hole in the roof. I couldn’t see how far back the pile of rubble went. Had I not run when I did, it would have buried me alive.

At the top of the rock pile a spray of stones shot out. I yelled at Shim to stop before another landslide hit me. More stones dropped but this time slowly, and eventually his meaty hand pushed through. He cleared a larger space and then his hand disappeared. Eris squeezed through the gap and clambered down the pile, soon followed by Ward. Both of them were covered with the yellowish rock dust.

There was no sign of Lazarus. Ward looked at me and said, “Now, that suits you, Madison, pinned like a dead insect to the floor.”

“How did you survive?”

“The main thrust of the rockfall hit the other room. It blocked us off too, but Shim could move a mountain if he wanted to.”

“Lift this thing off me. My leg’s caught.”

“In your dreams,” he said.

Somewhere along the line, I’d persuaded myself that I had some value to them, for what future agenda, I still didn’t know. Using me as a shield from Tomas and his men was no longer an issue. Ward knew he’d exhausted any information I could give him. That meant Laurel was history too. I closed my hand over a sharp piece of rock. I’d think of some reason to get Ward close and smash it into his head. If I was going to die down here, so would he.

Shim cleared a much larger space and squeezed through the pile of rocks. Ward shone his light in the direction of the entrance to the other room. I thought I could see a dark crack that may have been the outline of the doorway. While the other two stood back, Shim got to work pulling away the stones. Eris called out for Lazarus but received no response.

Shim managed to shift a huge slab, throwing it to one side like a feather pillow. A cry emerged from his throat and he fell back from the stomach-turning sight as if he’d been smacked. Lazarus’s head and shoulders were revealed, one side of his face caved in, the white bones of his skull exposed, his blood-smeared mouth open as if he’d just yawned. It was filled with rock dust. His knife blade had pierced the soft tissue under his jaw, the rockfall coming down with such force it had pushed the knife in up to its hilt.