“Ah, there you are,” Grissom said. “Mr. Hunt, I believe you’ve already met my son Julian.”
Chapter 8
Julian shoved Noboru forward, sending him stumbling toward Gabriel and Joyce. Gabriel reached out and caught him before he could fall.
“They came up behind me,” Noboru began.
“It’s all right,” Gabriel said. He glanced at Grissom’s men. With so many guns drawn and pointed their way, there was no chance of running. Certainly Noboru couldn’t, not with his arms tied behind his back.
Gabriel watched Julian walk over to his father. At six feet, he towered over the elder Grissom.
“It was in one of the suitcases,” Julian said. He reached inside his cargo vest and pulled out the Star.
Grissom snatched it out of his son’s hand and held it up so that it gleamed in the sunlight. “The Star of Arnuwanda,” he murmured. “Oh, you have saved me a great deal of time and effort indeed.”
“How did you find us?” Joyce demanded.
Grissom handed the Star back to Julian. “It wasn’t difficult. We knew where you were staying, but you’d already left the guesthouse by the time we got there. The old woman there was distinctly unhelpful, but in spite of that we were able to follow your trail here.”
Joyce blanched. “Merpati…”
“Was that her name?” Edgar Grissom said. “Remarkable woman, really. Took three bullets before she finally stopped swinging that damned shovel.”
Joyce took a step toward Grissom, but suddenly five guns were aimed at her. Gabriel stuck out his arm to block her, shaking his head. Joyce clenched her jaw and stepped back.
Grissom walked toward them, flanked by his men. “Tie them up,” he ordered.
The four gunmen came forward, surrounding them. One reached into Gabriel’s holster and pulled out his Colt, while the others yanked his and Joyce’s arms behind their backs and knotted lengths of rope around their wrists.
Julian and his father inspected the door excavated from the hillside. Grissom ran a hand over the metal. “Iron,” he said. “The Hittite Empire was always ahead of its time. They were working with iron as early as the fourteenth century B.C., almost two hundred years before the rest of the ancient world.” He turned to Joyce. “But that wasn’t all that set them apart, eh, Ms. Wingard? There is also the little matter of the Spearhead. The power of the storm, harnessed and ready to be wielded like a broom to sweep their enemies from the face of the earth.”
“So that’s what you’re after,” Joyce said. “Destruction.”
“A weapon so powerful no army can stand against it?” Grissom replied. “Oh yes, Ms. Wingard, I want that very, very much. Julian, the key.”
Julian reached into his collar and lifted the Death’s Head Key, still on its leather strap, from around his neck. He passed it to Grissom, who bent forward to inspect the lock in the door. He blew at it, picked out the dirt that clogged it and lined up the three blades of the Death’s Head Key with the lock’s triple keyway. Before he could slide it in, the key jumped out of his hand and sank by itself into the lock. Grissom looked at Julian. “Magnetized?” He gripped the key’s skull-shaped bow and struggled to turn it in the ancient lock, his face turning red with effort. As he completed a single rotation, a loud click echoed from the door, and it began to scrape open on its hinges, swinging toward Grissom. He stepped back to give it room. Dirt rained from the seams between the door and its frame. The old, rusty hinges groaned, squeaked and cracked under the pressure of being pushed open again by some ancient mechanism after thousands of years.
“The first Eye of Teshub,” Grissom said. “Thrown with its brothers into the wind by the storm god himself, separated from the others and given to the earth. Isn’t that how the legend goes, Ms. Wingard?”
Joyce glared at him.
“Bring them forward,” Grissom ordered his men. “They should see this. After all, it was their hard work that led us to this glorious moment.”
The gunmen shoved Gabriel, Joyce and Noboru up to the doorway. Julian caught Gabriel by the shoulder as he passed. “Nice scar,” he said, nodding toward the mark of stitches on Gabriel’s cheek.
From inside the doorway, dusty, stale air swirled out of the darkness. Grissom coughed, pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and covered his nose and mouth with it. He gestured impatiently at Julian, who handed him a flashlight. Grissom switched it on as the opening door finally ground to a halt. He pointed the beam into the darkness, illuminating the cobwebs that hung in the corners of the doorway. Beyond was only empty space, until Grissom lowered the beam and revealed a flight of stone steps leading down. He folded the handkerchief back into his pocket and walked toward the doorway.
One of Grissom’s men pushed Gabriel again, the gun pressed to his spine. He stepped into the darkness, watching Grissom’s flashlight beam bob down the steps ahead of him. Gabriel carefully descended the stairs. The air inside the crypt was stifling and oppressive. The stone steps were covered in loose dirt and grit, making it tricky to find his footing. Cobwebs hung everywhere, tickling his face and sticking to his hair. Behind him, he heard Joyce stumble and one of the gunmen bark angrily at her to keep moving.
At the bottom of the steps was a long corridor. Grissom had stopped in the middle and was shining his flashlight along the walls. Six alcoves had been carved into the walls, and inside each was a skeleton, the bones brown with rot and age. Their jaws hung open—the ones that still had their jaws attached—and their bodies were twisted into frightful positions, their hands curled into claws. Hittite warriors, Gabriel guessed from the rusted, crumbling armor hanging off the bones. They’d been buried alive with the Eye to stand as eternal guardians, most likely dying from asphyxiation long before starvation set in. While the door wasn’t a perfect airtight seal, the fact that these millennia-old skeletons weren’t piles of dust was evidence enough of how little air had gotten inside once it was closed.
A cemetery in the jungle, Gabriel thought. Joyce had been on the right track. Only the cemetery in question was two stories underground.
The corridor ended in a large archway that was draped with a gossamer film of long-abandoned webs. Beyond, Gabriel could just make out a shimmering green light playing along the stone wall of the next chamber. Grissom led the way with Julian at his side, tearing the webs open as if he were parting curtains. The gunman behind Gabriel prodded him to follow. He glanced back at Joyce and Noboru to make sure they were all right. Noboru looked stoic, unwilling to show their captors any emotion: no fear, no anger. Joyce, however, did look angry. Furious. Gabriel knew what she was feeling. This was supposed to be her find, her moment of triumph. She’d worked hard for it, put her life on the line for it, only to see it snatched away by a couple of thugs with guns. Gabriel glared at the back of Julian’s head. Oh yes, he knew exactly what she was feeling.
As they filed into the chamber beyond the arch, Gabriel took in their surroundings. To one side of the chamber was a stone pedestal that looked like a natural formation, a stalagmite with its sides and top smoothed flat by ancient tools. On top of the pedestal was a stone carving of a hand, rising up on a thick wrist. Nestled in the grip of its fingers was an enormous, octagonal emerald. The jewel was flat and wide like a saucer, with a circumference roughly the size of a softball. Where everything around it was corroded, rotted or covered in dust, the emerald looked as clean and polished as the day it had been cut. It seemed to be lit from within by a natural iridescence, sending green light gleaming against the walls and illuminating the paintings there. Gabriel recognized the faded art as scenes from the myths of Teshub: the storm god riding a chariot pulled by two bulls, wrestling the sea serpent Hedammu, slaying the dragon Illuyanka, battling the stone god Ulikummis, sitting on a throne beside the sun goddess Arinna and their son Sarruma. And one final image: Teshub hurling what appeared to be three separate thunderbolts away from a horde of angry-looking men in traditional Hittite armor. The scattering of the Three Eyes.