‘Here’s another one!’ a second soldier reported.
‘It can’t have been the Egyptian,’ snarled Rasche, striding ahead of the Nazi leader. ‘Someone else is here.’ He glared back at Leitz. ‘Your Iranian friends, perhaps?’
‘It’s not them,’ panted Kroll. ‘It’s Wilde. She survived the bridge explosion, then followed the clues on the fish, just like us. And she brought the Mossad with her.’
‘So where are they?’ asked Schneider, eyes darting nervously across the forest.
Kroll reached the arch, pausing to catch his breath as he pointed at the opening. ‘In there. Secure it,’ he ordered. ‘Quickly!’ Several soldiers ran into the shrine.
‘But there was nothing inside,’ said Rasche.
‘Nothing that we saw. But there must have been more to it.’
‘Then Banna lied to us. I’ll kill him when I find him!’
‘We’ll kill them all,’ Kroll growled. One of the soldiers hurried back out and saluted him. ‘What have you found?’
‘There’s a tunnel, mein Führer!’ the man said excitedly. ‘It wasn’t there before.’
‘Obviously it wasn’t there before, idiot,’ snapped Rasche. ‘Where does it go?’
‘Up into the mountain, sir. We couldn’t see the end.’
‘That’s where they’ve gone,’ said Kroll. ‘To find the spring — before we do.’
Schneider regarded the opening with alarm. ‘To take the water for themselves?’
‘No. To stop us taking it!’ He called out to his troops. ‘We are going to make an assault on the spring! Everyone ready weapons!’
‘How big is this tunnel?’ Rasche asked the soldier.
‘Only wide enough for one man at once, sir.’
The SS officer turned back to his commander. ‘We won’t stand a chance. Two or three men could hold off an entire Zugtrupp.’
‘Not necessarily,’ Kroll replied. ‘Leitz! The equipment you supplied; did you bring a thermal sight?’
‘If you asked for it, it’s here,’ Leitz replied.
‘Good. Then fit it to a rifle — if anyone puts their head around the end of that tunnel, blow it off!’
Nina made her way carefully down the ledge. It was just wide enough for her to walk normally, but she still kept her back against the wall, sidestepping as quickly as she dared. Her flashlight picked out the path ahead — but she paused as someone else’s light briefly flicked across the chasm.
Eddie stopped behind her. ‘Hang on, everyone,’ he called. ‘What is it?’
‘I saw something, over there.’ She redirected her torch. ‘On the other path…’
She fell silent as she saw it. As did the others.
‘What is that?’ Zane exclaimed, adding his own beam to Nina’s. Others followed suit to illuminate the entire object.
‘That,’ said Banna, astonished, ‘is a Phytoi.’
The lights danced over a statue carved from the rock face, a humanoid male over thirty feet tall. It was naked, but appeared entwined in vines and leaves. The sculpture had been hidden from their initial vantage point on the ledge by a fold in the cavern wall. The other route downwards crossed right in front of its chest, the great figure’s arms spread wide along the ledge. Bizarrely, instead of hands it had what resembled curved saw blades extending from its forearms.
Nina remembered the name. ‘It’s a creature from the Alexander Romance, isn’t it?’
‘Yes; plant men or forest men, according to different translations,’ Banna confirmed. ‘Alexander fought a tribe of them after conquering the Achaemenid Empire. They killed a hundred of his soldiers.’
‘Something to avoid, then,’ said Eddie. ‘Those arms — they look like they might swing out.’
‘You’re right,’ Nina said as she directed her light along one of the jagged limbs. ‘Could be a booby-trap.’
‘Then you were right about taking this path,’ said Zane.
‘I hope so. It doesn’t mean we won’t run into something ourselves, though.’
‘Find out soon,’ the Yorkshireman said, with a note of impatience. ‘We can’t stand around when there’s a bunch of Nazis coming after us.’
‘Okay, okay,’ she said, turning the light back to their route. ‘How long do you think we’ll have before—’
Gunfire erupted above.
‘About that long,’ said Eddie. ‘Arse!’
Nina turned unwillingly to hurry on down the narrow path. The unyielding stone wall brushed her right arm, nothing but darkness waiting below to her left.
The firing continued, the Mossad agents’ shots interspersed with more distant retorts and the whine of rounds ricocheting off stone — then a much louder boom made both Eddie and Zane look up in alarm. A cry came from one of the Israelis, followed by the sound of something crashing over the lip of the precipice. Zane snapped up his torch just in time to see one of his men flash through its beam. He plunged out of sight. A few seconds later, a faint thump reached the group.
The remaining man above shouted in Hebrew. ‘They’ve got a sniper rifle,’ Zane told Eddie, tight with anger.
‘They must have thermal sights,’ said the Englishman. ‘Get your other guy out of there.’ Zane yelled an order, then hurried after Nina and Eddie as they set off, even faster than before.
The American made her way around another crease in the rock — then slowed. ‘Careful, there’s a junction,’ she warned as Eddie came up behind her. The path split, the right-hand route continuing on around the chasm while the other doubled back, beginning a clockwise descent.
‘Which way?’ he asked. ‘Right again?’
‘What if it’s a trick?’ said Zane.
‘I don’t think so,’ Nina said, with what she hoped wasn’t misplaced confidence. ‘Alexander said always to follow the right path.’ She set off down it.
Zane looked up as the rest of the team descended after her. A light above told him that Arens was making rapid progress. But a rising tramp of boots also warned that the Nazis were closing. He shone his torch past Eddie and Nina at the route ahead. ‘There’s no cover — they’ll be able to snipe us from the top ledge.’
Nina traced the path with her own light. The Israeli was right: anyone at the entrance would have clear line of sight, unless… ‘No, keep going!’ she said. ‘We couldn’t see the statue until we were partway around, so if we go far enough, the wall will block us too!’
‘Unless they follow us,’ Eddie pointed out. ‘Maybe we should’ve gone the other way at that junction.’ He directed his torch along the alternative route. ‘Or maybe not!’
Nina looked across the chasm to see what he had found. Another section of the towering wall bore carvings, these of trees, rising sinuously up along the other ledge. Ominous holes dotted amongst them suggested that the petrified forest held secrets. ‘I definitely think we came the right way.’
Shouting in German. She looked up. They hadn’t yet gone far enough around the shaft for the upper ledge to be blocked from sight; lights flickered from it as the Nazis exited the tunnel. ‘They’re here,’ Zane warned. ‘Come on, faster!’
‘Sie sind hier unten!’ someone yelled. Torch beams swept from the high ledge, finding Arens as he scurried down the path, locking on—
Muzzle flashes erupted amongst the shafts of light. The chasm rang with the shrill crack of bullets hitting rock — then a scream as the Mossad agent was hit. He fell into the darkness below.
Galitz yelled an obscenity. He stopped to fire back up the shaft — forcing Haber behind him to halt as well. ‘No, keep moving!’ Eddie shouted. He, Nina and Banna were almost at the point where the towering fold in the cliff face would shield them.