The Betrayed Series: Ultimate Omnibus Collection With EXCLUSIVE Post-Shiva Short Story (44 page)

“Who doesn’t look that traumatized after meeting Lochum?” Davidson added with a snort.

Lopez chuckled. “But that brunette with the rack? Ouch! She was so hot, she burnt a hole in my heart.”

Normally Brandt would have put a cork in their banter, but keeping oxygen in his lungs consumed his concentration. Still, the look he gave them must have been enough, because the private cleared his throat.

“Yeah, anyway, once we heard the student’s story we explored the dungeon, but we found the whole thing collapsed.”

Testing his newfound vigor, the sergeant tried to rise to his feet, but his balance lagged behind his will.

“Gotcha, Sarge,” Davidson said as he struggled to help Brandt to his feet against the rapidly rising water level.

“Water?”

Leading his shoulder, the private explained, “Yeah, we kind of need a refresher course in explosive devices near water mains.”

“Hey, we needed the pressure to blow through all that mud,” Lopez commented as he helped Svengurd up.

The tall soldier had a wild look in his eyes as his teeth chattered uncontrollably, not looking like a traitor at all.

Pushing the word out, Brandt said, “Evac.”

Lopez and Davidson looked at one another. Clearly neither wanted to be the first to give the bad news.

“What?” Svengurd croaked.

“It’s a ways. In about hip-height water.”

Brandt shrugged off Davidson’s help but tilted precariously, nearly dragged under by the building current.

“Yeah, obviously when we devised this plan you guys weren’t poisoned,” the private said as he steadied Brandt again.

“Shot,” Svengurd said, sticking his arm out.

The corporal was right. They would never make it without more go-juice. Brandt offered his vein as well. “Another.”

Lopez backed away from them. “You guys are both tachy already. And you want more?”

The sergeant gritted his teeth. “Now.”

Davidson pulled up Brandt’s sleeve. “You heard the man.”

The second injection became crystalline fire in his vein. The pain seared his lungs and his brain screamed, but Brandt gained his balance. After the shot, Svengurd flailed so badly that Lopez had to contain him, but within seconds, the tall corporal stood on his own.

“Go,” Brandt commanded.

Wet cement was easier to walk through than the surging mud as they made their way back into the dungeon, then Davidson led them down a one of the side tunnels.

“This isn’t the …” was all Brandt could get out before he stumbled.

“Trust us, it is!” Lopez yelled out over the rising water, draping Brandt’s arm over his shoulder.

With the assist, they made it through the last bit of tunnel and sloshed onto a rocky shore. Collapsing to the ground, he rolled over onto his back. Utterly and completely exhausted. An electrocution one day and poisoning the next surpassed even his sense of duty. If Tok didn’t have Rebecca in his mute grasp, Brandt would have thrown in the towel.

“Come on,” Davidson urged.

“Can’t walk any farther,” Brandt admitted.

“No worries.” The private pointed to an inlet. “We’ve got a boat.”

Boat? When did they get a boat?

No matter. Lopez fired up the engine and brought the vessel around to a small dock. Svengurd had to nearly be carried on, but Brandt managed to climb aboard with only a little help from Davidson.

“We might have broken in, but I’m telling you the Istanbul International Boat Show is worth the price of admission. Just listen to this baby!” Hitting the throttle, Lopez gunned them onto an underground river.

“This is a tributary to the Bosphorus!” Davidson yelled over the roar of the engine. “Turns out all Roman dungeons were built on rivers so they could dump the bodies!”

“The grad students were scared shitless but pretty knowledgeable,” Lopez added.

Davidson turned to Brandt. “Any idea where Monroe or Lochum are?”

“Knot,” Svengurd answered before Brandt got out his reply.

Lopez threw a glance to Davidson, “Told you.”

“Where to, then?” the private asked Brandt.

Looking over, he found Svengurd slumped in his seat, nearly unconscious. Brandt could feel the poison dimming his mind as well. But he knew something, didn’t he? Something the archaeologist said. A direction.

“Walker…”

Davidson waited, hanging on his every breath.

“Rebecca… find… Prince…”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” the private said, but Lopez whooped.

“I do!” The corporal eagerly pointed to his pack. “Get the map, get it!”

Davidson grabbed the tattered tourist guide, unfolding it as Lopez concentrated on slaloming through the snaking waterway.

“Look on grid C-7.”

The private frowned. “In the club district?”

“Okay, maybe D-7.”

Brandt tried to focus on the slick paper, but his eyes blurred. Even Davidson seemed to have trouble making heads or tails of Lopez’s excitement. “That’s in the middle of the Sea of Marmara.”

“Exactly! Look at the small chain of islands in the middle.”

“The Prince Islands,” Davidson read. “The Sultans used to banish naughty princes there.”

“But…” was all Brandt could get out before his lips refused to obey.

Distantly he heard Lopez shout, “He’s falling overboard! Grab him!”

CHAPTER 26

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Island in the Sea of Marmara

The knife blade whined shrilly as it was drawn across the whetstone, yet again. Rebecca inwardly cringed but tried not to reveal what effect Tok’s not-so-subtle show of force had on her. Didn’t he realize she couldn’t be more of a wreck? His constant reminder that torture was but a hairsbreadth away threatened to dissolve her into tears.

But Lochum barely seemed to notice that their lives were in immediate jeopardy as he poured over the Damascus Papyrus. When the initial scan of the bones revealed no clues, he had retreated to Flavian’s historical account of the fall of Jerusalem. Engrossed, the professor didn’t seem to notice Tok’s eyes study his bent form, assessing, deciding his worth.

As the dark-skinned man’s shoulders drew up, firming his stance, Rebecca knew his patience grew thin. The force with which he ground the blade against the stone became more and more firm. Soon he might tire of sharpening it and decide to actually use it.

Trying to refocus, Rebecca bent over a shattered bone fragment from Magdalene’s skeleton. Under any other circumstance, she would have been ecstatic to study the scripture that transformed one of history’s most maligned figures into a woman deeply moved by her savior and integral to the events leading to the Crucifixion.

However, Rebecca was once again struck by the glaring omission of any account of the Crucifixion itself. The years, months, days, and even hours up to the cruel punishment were painstakingly detailed, yet the bones were devoid of the actual suffering itself.

She had taken precious time to review the other bones, but came to the same conclusion. The Crucifixion was absent. There wasn’t a single account of the act. Not a one. Rebecca could only assume the Knot had saved that honor for Christ’s bones alone. Which wasn’t too helpful as she pieced together a millennia-old mystery with a knife to her throat, literally.

Almost to prove her point, a blade whistled past her ear, cutting off a lock of hair before it sank into the wall. Rattled, Rebecca turned to find Tok balancing another knife on his fingertip.

A silent warning to find clues and find them fast.

But spread out all around her were three skeletons with a wealth of information that would take even dozens of scholars weeks to sort through. Didn’t Tok realize the impossible task he had set for them? Of course the bastard did. He just didn’t care. Which made him all the more dangerous.

What a minute. Why did they bring John’s bones back here if they had tried to blow them up in Paris? “If these skeletons are so precious, why did you bomb the Tower’s ossuary?”

Instantly she regretted her question as Tok’s dark eyes surveyed her lips. He signed slowly enough so that she could read his fingers. Petir had disappeared up the darkened stairs well over an hour ago.

“The Knot is but a tangling of threads, not without their frayed ends.”

Rebecca squinted. Was he implying that the Knot was nothing more than a collection of sects? And that some of these sects were beyond the Knot’s control? If that were true, than Tok and his compatriots were not as all seeing as he had led them to believe. No wonder they needed her and Lochum’s help.

The dark-haired man must have sensed the shift in her mood for he began spinning the dreaded whetstone again. “Perhaps you should concern yourself more with your own precarious hold than the Knot’s politics.”

As he went back to sharpening his blade, Rebecca turned to Magdalene’s relic, but with a more heightened sense of purpose. She might be his prisoner, but she was his Oracle. He needed her, but she certainly did not need him.

Quickly, Rebecca allowed the bone’s topography to help her add punctuation to the ancient Greek letters. Her brain on autopilot, she smoothly correlated the tiny fissures into punctuation marks, assimilating the Greek into individual words, then transcribing it into English, so it took her a few moments to recognize what she had just scribbled down. It was a list.

Mary, James, John the Baptist, Magdalene, Ruth, John the Beloved…

It wasn’t just any list, but
the
list. The identities of the thirty.

They were the original conspirators. The threads that made up the Knot.

Most of the names she recognized, but a few she didn’t. Ameil and Titus, for instance. She noticed that Judas wasn’t mentioned which seemed odd, given all the other references to him on the relics. But no matter, what she held in her hands was the definitive roster of those who sought to hide Christ from the world. A list of sects that carried down the ages, much like the Knot.

“Lochum, look,” she called to the other side of the room, but his eyes were locked in study of the Damascus Papyrus. “It’s important,” she added, but he seemed oblivious.

Rebecca brought the metatarsal bone along with her translation over to him and set them down right on top of the Papyrus.

“What do you think you are doing?” he asked, startled.

Good. At least she had roused him from his obsession. “Trying to get you to look at the list of all those involved. The thirty.”

Finally intrigued, Lochum scanned the document once, then again, but ultimately shoved the tiny bone away. “It is immaterial.”

“Are you crazy?”

“It tells us the ‘who,’ not the ‘where.’”

Rebecca tried to keep the frustration from her voice. She could not speak plainly, not with Tok so close. “But isn’t that knowledge just as important? If we can figure out which one is the ‘man without contempt,’ we might be able to divine where he took them.”

But her logic was wasted, as the professor pressed his nose against the magnifying glass only a few inches above the Papyrus.

After decades of insisting that the Damascus document held all the answers to Christ, the professor seemed determined to prove himself right. His study of the document seemed more a reunion between two long-lost lovers than professional interest.

Glancing over, Rebecca found Tok scrutinizing Lochum as intently as the professor was studying the Papyrus. So even though she knew Magdalene’s remains were important, Rebecca pulled up a stool next to her old professor.

“So what’ve you got?”

As Lochum began describing his discoveries, Rebecca made sure to carefully fold the list and slip it inside her pocket. If there was one thing she had learned throughout this ordeal, it was to trust her instincts.

* * *

Tok watched the two doctors. They were distinct entities, yet when combined, they became something altogether different. Lochum brought the drive and the scope, whereas Monroe contributed restraint and focus. When separated they had floundered. But now united, they sparked as flint to stone. His plan was proven a singular success.

Studying Monroe over this journey, Tok realized the doctor functioned best when put under strain. Hers was a lazy intellect only brought to its full potential when death lingered. So he had carefully and meticulously kept the woman on edge, providing just enough stimulation to maintain her forward momentum. And by keeping Monroe edgy, Tok fueled the professor as well.

“No, no, no!” Lochum bellowed.

But Monroe stood toe-to-toe with the older man. “Archibald! Can’t you make room that there can be another interpretation?”

“Why should I? Listen to Flavian! In his recollections of Jerusalem’s fall he states, ‘All those before had not the right of it. Not even the Magyars, etc. etc… They besmirched such hallowing and did not know of the contempt during the flight and did not witness the mask of horror descend upon Jerusalem.’”

The woman shook her head. “Damn it, read the entire passage.” Pushing him aside, she picked up the Papyrus. “‘Not even the Magyars such, nor the Thracian, nor yet the Gallians. For all the glory of the Etruscans they besmirched…’”

Monroe stopped, clearly thinking she had made her point, yet it was obvious that Lochum could not follow her logic. Frustrated at his lack of understanding, she indicated to each name in turn. “The Magyars? Come on, we’ve been to Magyar-land.”

The professor’s features pinched. “Budapest. The pool found under the brothers’ deer.”

The legend of the godlike stag along with the passage from John’s bone leapt to Tok’s mind. Is that how they found James? A new respect for the doctors took hold. Would he have been able to divine such?

“Want to take a stab at Thracian?”

Lochum’s face hardened. “They are the people of ancient Turkey.”

Especially the region straddling the Bosphorus
, Tok thought, but did not articulate. Flavian was clearly referring to Istanbul.

“And the Gallians arose in the area of France, in particular Paris,” Lochum added quickly, before Monroe could taunt him again.

The doctor turned to Tok. “Paris, Budapest, Istanbul. I believe that’s a list of the Knot’s greatest hits. Isn’t it?”

Tok did not respond. He could not respond and not because Petir was upstairs arranging transportation. No, even with his mentor, he would not have been able to convey his thoughts. Instead, Tok stood fixed in his position. So rigid he could not even nod.