She climbed quickly, as sure-footed as a spider, setting her first piece of protection — a spring-loaded cam that she slipped into a two-inch wide vertical crack — about twenty feet up. Limestone, formed from the calcium carbonate shells of ancient sea creatures, was sort of like nature’s concrete, but even the hardest rock could crumble under stress. If Jade fell, the camming device was just as likely to be yanked out of the wall as it was to arrest her fall. Jade however seemed unconcerned, as if setting the anchors was merely a formality. Beyond that point, she was less frugal about the gear, putting a piece in place every five feet or so, but she moved with the same purposefulness that had brought her this far. Less than ten minutes after beginning the climb, she pulled herself into the cave opening and set a final anchor.
“I’m up,” she called out.
Professor turned to Shah again. “You think you can do what she just did?”
Shah nodded but without enthusiasm. “If I must.”
Jade’s plan had been for Professor to top rope Shah — maintaining tension of the belaying line so that if Shah slipped, the rope going up to the last anchor Jade had set would keep him from falling. It was the way most beginning climbers got their start, but Professor was having second thoughts about the plan. For one thing, Shah’s safety would depend on whether or not Jade’s anchor held fast. Climbing protection was generally reliable, but if Shah repeatedly lost his grip, the anchor could conceivably come loose.
Of course, the real reason he didn’t like the plan was that it would put Shah and Jade alone together in the cave.
“That’s what I thought. I’m going to go up first. That way, I can pull you up if I have to.” He did not bother giving Shah a crash-course in climbing techniques or how to belay from below, which meant that he would be climbing more or less without anyone to arrest him in the event of a fall, but he trusted his own abilities a lot more than he trusted Shah.
Shah’s hesitancy turned into something more like suspicion, but he nodded again. “Whatever you think best.”
Professor cinched the rope to Shah’s harness with a figure-eight knot. “When I give you the signal, start climbing. I’ll be pulling in the slack from up there, so you won’t be in any danger. Just pay attention to where I put my hands and feet and do the same. Got it?”
Another nod.
“Good.” Professor turned away and, using the anchored rope Jade had set like a thread to guide him through a maze, made the ascent in half the time it had taken her.
“You were right,” he said to her, grinning. “Piece of cake.
The recess was larger than it had looked from below, though it still looked more like a scalloped depression in the limestone than an actual cave. What might once have been the front porch of the mythical Vault now seemed more like a second story exit door with no attending staircase.
Jade shone a flashlight up into the darkest reaches of the niche, revealing a shadowy hole, like the opening to a chimney. It appeared to be just barely large enough to accommodate a person. “That passage leads to the entrance to the vault,” she said, grinning triumphantly. “Believe me now?”
Shah watched from below as Professor disappeared into the shadowy niche. His eyes followed the rope that dangled from the cave entrance, zigzagged through the anchors, and then reached out, like the tentacles of some mythical sea creature to snag hold of the carabiner attached to the front of his climbing harness. His heart was racing but this had nothing at all to do with the impending climb.
This was the moment he’d been waiting for. He hastened forward, standing as close to the wall as he could to remove himself from Professor’s line of sight, and took out his phone. He knew he had only a few seconds, but that was all he needed.
Although Jade had been very secretive about their ultimate location, she had revealed enough for him to set a plan in motion. He had assembled a new team of jihadists, college students from the Arab states and Pakistan, disgruntled immigrants from the Horn of Africa, even a young convert from Beverly Hills — the son of a geologist employed by an oil company, who had learned the Prophet’s wisdom during an extended stay in Yemen. Shah had been able to make all the preparations surreptitiously, sending text messages and posting to the chatrooms whenever an opportunity presented itself. Now, his team was ready. Only one thing was lacking.
He opened the text message app and hit the menu button marked: “Send my current location.”
He returned the phone to his pocket and took a step back from the wall, looking up expectantly, awaiting the signal to begin climbing.
Despite the unpleasantness at the airport, he bore no ill-will toward Jade Ihara or her friend — she called him Professor, but he seemed more like some kind of government agent, maybe a Special Forces soldier assigned to safeguard her. All Shah cared about was preserving the status quo. He genuinely hoped no one would be hurt, not even Jade’s antagonistic companion, but he would do whatever had to be done to make sure that no one ever had cause to question the legitimacy of Islam.
After a few minutes of waiting, he heard Professor call out to him. He waved back and then put his hands on the wall. Up close, it didn’t look so daunting. There were protuberances he could hang onto and cracks he could jam his fingers into. It was not that different than climbing a ladder, albeit a ladder where the rungs were randomly spaced and no bigger than a peanut. Or at least it seemed that way until he could no longer touch the ground with an outstretched foot. Then his heart began pounding again, and this time it had everything to do with the climb. He clutched at the wall, pressing himself flat against it, afraid to move, and almost immediately felt the rock slipping away beneath his fingertips.
A terrified but incoherent cry escaped his lips. Some part of him knew that it wouldn’t be a fatal fall, but it would hurt. He might even break a bone or—
He did not fall. The rope cinched to his harness pulled taut, arresting his downward plunge, and he banged against the wall, though not with enough force to cause injury.
“Find your holds,” Professor advised from above. “Three points of contact. It’s not that hard.”
“I can’t,” Shah gasped. “Let me down.”
“If that’s what you want.”
Shah thought he heard a note of mockery in the other man’s tone. The perceived insult, coupled with the knowledge that, if he did not make this climb, he would never know what lay inside the vault, was enough to help him regain his composure. “No!” he shouted. “No. I can do it.”
“That’s the spirit,” replied Professor. “Loosen up. If you keep hugging the wall like that, you’ll wear yourself out.”
Heeding that advice was easier said than done. A primal fear of falling kept him gripping every hold so tightly that the tendons in his forearms felt like they were about to snap. Nevertheless, the further he went up the wall, the more confident he felt. The earlier mishap had taught him to trust the rope, trust that even if he lost his grip again, he would not fall. When he reached the top, Professor extended a hand to him and pulled him the rest of the way up.
“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re a rock climber now.”
Shah was drenched in perspiration and it took him a moment to catch his breath, but he was smiling so broadly that his jaws hurt. “That was amazing. I wouldn’t mind trying that again sometime.”
“You’ll like rappelling down even more.”
Shah looked past him. “Where’s Jade?”
“Scouting ahead.” He pointed to the impenetrable darkness at the back of the cave.
As if on cue, a faint glow appeared there, growing brighter by the second as the light source moved closer and eventually filled the mouth of the passage that led deeper into the mountain. A moment later, Jade’s face appeared in the opening. She did not look happy.