The Doomsday Key (Sigma Force 6)

“Just inside! A vertical brick! Above the entrance! Yank it!”

Needing both hands to search, she flipped her lighter closed and twisted her body fully into the crypt. Feeling blindly along the entrance to the crypt, fingering the bricks, she found one that fit Gray’s description. She reached to the top, discovered a carved indentation to grip, and yanked hard.

A loud snap sounded.

The back wall of the crypt swung open. She spotted the panicked face of Rachel. Gray stood at her shoulder.

“Got locked in,” Gray said. “Get the others, but be careful of the fifth step. It seals the door.”

Behind Seichan, Wallace shone his flashlight at them. “You found the way in. Brilliant! Simply brilliant!”

After a minute of wrangling, they all made it safely down the stairs to the lower tunnel. A dark stone passageway headed steeply away.

Kowalski declined to join them, calling down from above. “You go on. I’ll wait for the umbrellas.”

Off to the side, Rachel spoke. “Look at this.” She pointed her flashlight at a thick bronze lever in the floor near the foot of the stairs. “I think it might be a release to unlock that secret door.”

“Must have been how Father Giovanni came and went,” Gray said. “Still, we should keep the exit jammed open just in case.”

As a precaution, he had lodged a loose chunk of headstone from the cemetery to hold open the doorway. Seichan respected his decision. She preferred keeping a back door open in case of trouble.

Wallace pointed his flashlight down the tunnel. “Medieval monks often crafted trapdoors and hidden rooms in their abbeys and monasteries. Places were riddled with secret passageways like this. It was one of their means of hiding from marauders. Additionally, the tunnels offered a way to spy on their guests. Knowledge proved to be as much of a defense in those hard times as any shield.”

“Then let’s go see what these monks were hiding down here,” Gray said and led the way.

The others followed. Seichan stayed at the rear.

The passageway dropped steeply, but it did not take long to reach the end. The tunnel opened into a domed space. There were no other exits.

“We must be directly under the ruins of the tower,” Gray said.

Wallace ran one hand along the wall. “No chisel or pick marks. It’s a natural cavern.”

But the professor’s eyes remained focused on the middle of the chamber. A massive sarcophagus rested in the center of the room. It stood waist high and looked like it was carved out of a single block of stone.

Beyond the casket, against the far wall, stood a Celtic cross.

As the others moved toward the sarcophagus, Seichan studied the cross. It was not as ornate as the others in the abbey cemetery. This one was stark and more crudely hewn, making it seem more ancient. The only decorations were a few spirals done in bas-relief, and the cross’s circular element had been scored into tiny blocks.

Dismissing the cross, the others had turned their attentions to the stone coffin resting on the floor. The sides were featureless, its lid secured in place.

“Could it be Lord Newborough’s resting place?” Rachel asked.

Wallace leaned a hand on the lid and ran his fingers over the rough side. “Too old. If Newborough’s down here, he’s most likely buried off in one of those other sealed crypts. This is someone else’s grave. Also, the sarcophagus is made out of bluestone, same as the region’s Neolithic standing stones. It must have been quarried somewhere on the mainland and shipped all the way here. Quite an undertaking. My guess is that this is the grave of one of those ancient ring-builders, possibly one of their royalty.”

Rachel spoke. “Like the Fomorian queen?”

“Yes, our dark goddess,” Wallace said, but he suddenly became distracted.

With a frown, he leaned down. He held his flashlight against the side of the sarcophagus and cast his light across its surface. His fingers ran along the stone. “It looks like there was once a carving here. Some type of decoration, maybe even writing. But someone ground it mostly off.”

His frown deepened at such desecration.

Gray glanced up. “If this dates back to the Neolithic period, the Church could have scrubbed away the original markings.”

“Aye. That would be like them. If something didn’t mesh with their dogma, it was often destroyed. Look what happened to the Mayan codices, a vast font of ancient knowledge. The Church deemed them to be the devil’s work, and all but a few were burned.”

Seichan recognized a contradiction and moved closer. “Then why didn’t they just destroy the sarcophagus? Why go to the trouble of scouring it clean?”

Wallace answered, “If it is a grave marker, they might have respected its interment. The Church, at the time, was not above its own superstitions. They might not have wanted to disturb the bones.”

Gray voiced his own interpretation. “Or maybe what was stored here had value to them.”

“Like the Doomsday key,” Rachel said.

Seichan ignored Rachel’s glance in her direction. She merely crossed her arms.

Gray bent down and examined the lid. “It looks like it was wax-sealed at one time.” He lifted his hands and rubbed flakes from his fingers. “But somebody broke that seal.”

“It had to be Father Giovanni,” Rachel said. “Look over here.” She had moved over to the old cross and pointed at the walls to either side.

Drawn in charcoal were notations and calculations done in a crisp modern hand. It looked like Father Giovanni had measured every dimension of the cross. He’d also drawn a perfect circle around it. More lines crisscrossed it in an unfathomable pattern. To Seichan, it had a vaguely arcane look.

What was Marco doing here?

Gray studied the cross. Seichan saw the calculations going on behind his expression. If anyone could find that key, it was this man.

Gray finally turned away. Seichan suspected that a part of his mind was still working on the mystery of the cross, but he pointed over to the sarcophagus.

“If Marco broke that seal, let’s see what he discovered.”

1:03 P.M.

It took all of them to shift the lid.

How had Father Giovanni done it on his own? Gray wondered as he braced his feet and shoved. Did he have help? Or did he haul down some tools?

Still, brute force proved sufficient. With a scrape of stone on stone, they pushed the top askew but kept the lid balanced on the top.

Gray shone his flashlight down into the interior of the sarcophagus. The hollow space was hewn out of the bluestone block. He had been expecting some moldering bones, but though there was room for a body, the sarcophagus was empty.