As promised, he found a series of notches that descended to the floor below. Unfortunately, they were more worn than he had hoped, having eroded considerably over the centuries. Any shallower, and there would be no way for him to get a toehold.
He made a mental note to bring climbing gear on their next visit — if there was a next visit — because climbing thirty feet in both directions on the strength of his fingertips was a daunting prospect. He glanced at Sarah, wondering how she felt about the notches. ‘You’re the expert. What do you think?’
Sarah grinned and leaped off the ledge, catching herself on the first rung. From there she scurried down the wall like a gecko, as if her hands and feet could actually stick to the surface of the rock. For her, the depth of the notches posed no challenge at all.
Cobb knew she had skills, but seeing her in action gave him a new appreciation of her abilities. Unfortunately, it also served as a tough act to follow.
She looked up at him from the safety of the chamber floor. ‘Your turn.’
He grimaced with determination as he slid off the ledge. His fingers strained and the toes of his boots dug into the rock, but the wall held firm under his weight. Methodically he lowered himself down the row of notches. His descent was nowhere as graceful as Sarah’s, but it was equally effective.
‘That was fun,’ he said at the bottom, though his tone suggested it was anything but. He took a moment to catch his breath. ‘You find a passageway?’
‘Nope. I found two.’ She shined her light to the north, revealing two entrances that stood side by side. ‘Which one should we take?’
Jasmine studied the map and relayed her thoughts. ‘Actually, I think they go to the same cistern. I think it’s one tunnel that was reinforced in the middle, cutting it in half.’
Cobb stepped toward the right as Sarah headed toward the left.
She smiled. ‘See you on the other side.’
‘Yeah, that’s not ominous at all.’
Fortunately, her prediction came true moments later when they entered a cistern that looked remarkably similar to the one they had just left. Same stone pillars. Same magnificent arches. Same ominous sense that it might collapse at any moment. In fact, the only noticeable difference was that the next set of passageways was not ahead of them, but on opposite sides of the room: one to the left and one to the right.
Sarah shined her light at the first tunnel, then spun toward the second, then back to the first. ‘Call me crazy, but I don’t think these go to the same place.’
Cobb glanced at her. ‘Thanks, Josh.’
Sarah laughed at the remark.
‘I heard that,’ McNutt grumbled in the café.
Jasmine’s mood was not as playful. ‘And neither one takes you in the right direction. You want to push north. Those tunnels take you east and west.’
Cobb motioned toward the east. ‘No worries. We’ll see where this goes, then we’ll come back and explore the other one.’
Sarah glanced at him. ‘Why not split up? We’ll cover more ground that way.’
Cobb shook his head. ‘I’m not worried about covering ground. I’m worried about covering each other. If we find trouble down here, we stand a better chance of dealing with it together.’
‘Exactly what kind of trouble do you expect to find down here? Mole men? Sewer rats? Overgrown goldfish?’
He stood his ground. ‘Whatever we find, we’ll confront it together.’
She shrugged and followed him through the east tunnel.
18
Jasmine stared at the computer screen, conflicted by the video feeds of the underground water system. As a historian, every cistern was a work of art. They were glorious feats of engineering that she couldn’t wait to see in person. She wanted to touch the stonework, to feel the texture on her fingers, to document it for future generations.
But as a navigator, the system was infuriating.
The tunnels never seemed to go in the direction that she wanted. Some chambers were built with east — west corridors; others went north — south. Furthermore, not all of the tunnels were built at the bottom of the cisterns. As the height and depth of the rooms continually changed, so did their path. Sometimes a second-level passageway in one cistern ended up on the third level of the next. This forced Cobb and Sarah to climb up and down ancient stone ladders as they made their way through the system.
Worse still, several tunnels led to dead ends. These sections, which had been blocked by cave-ins and/or safety fences, had forced Cobb and Sarah to double back and choose new routes on multiple occasions. It was fine with them — they understood the benefit of a thorough exploration, even if it meant retracing their steps — but Jasmine was discouraged by their progress. It seemed like every time they approached the possible location of Caesar’s Well an obstacle got in their way.
After a while, she wondered if there was a reason why.
As they pushed deeper, they found fewer and fewer northbound tunnels. They also noted that the width of each section was narrowing. In the beginning, there were five interconnected chambers, each an acre or more in area. The next grouping of cisterns was comprised of four chambers. The one north of that only had three. The system was funneling them toward a single destination.
Entering the last chamber, they knew something was different.
It wasn’t the first time they had seen pools of water in the system. Runoff from the various drainage grates that dotted the ceiling had mixed with groundwater, settling in the low spots throughout the system. At times Cobb and Sarah had trudged through corridors that were filled above their ankles. The chambers themselves, however, were relatively dry, at least until now. Here it appeared that gravity had pulled the excess moisture from all the other chambers to the lowest area of the network.
This wasn’t the shallow puddles of the other rooms.
This was substantial flooding.
Cobb shined his flashlight at the chamber. ‘Are you getting this? It appears that the lowest level of the cistern is completely underwater.’
On the boat, Garcia checked the GPS readings. The units Cobb and Sarah were using weren’t the standard consumer-grade models that anyone could buy off the shelf. They were high-end, military-issue devices that provided a lot more than coordinates.
Garcia nodded in understanding. ‘According to the altimeter, you’re now sixty feet below sea level. It’s the deepest you’ve been so far.’
Cobb stared at the small lake at the base of the chamber and wondered how many millions of dollars had gone into the technology that had given him proof of what he had figured out on his own. ‘Thanks. Keep me posted.’
‘Will do, chief.’
Lurking in the shadows, Sarah stared at Cobb. The more she was around him, the more she admired his style. Instead of embarrassing Garcia and pointing out his analytical grasp of the obvious, Cobb had made him feel like a hero, as if he had contributed an important piece of information at a crucial time. It didn’t take much — only four simple words — but she knew it would pay dividends in the days ahead.
Loyalty, after all, had to be earned.
Cobb turned and glanced at Sarah. If there had been more light, he might have seen her blushing. ‘What are you doing back there?’
‘Waiting.’
‘For what?’
She shined her light in his eyes. ‘For you.’
‘For me?’ he asked, confused.
‘Yeah… to make a decision.’
‘On?’
‘Where to go next. And I suggest you hurry up because this place is falling down.’
To prove her point, she pointed her flashlight at the walls above, and he quickly noticed the poor condition of the chamber. While the other rooms gave the sense that they could fall at any moment, here it had actually started to happen. The stones in the pillars and the arch supports were cracked and crumbling. And there were chunks missing from the ceiling. They had no way of knowing if the damage had been caused naturally by floods, earthquakes, or drainage, or if it was the result of construction in the city above. One thing was certain: the years had taken their toll on this chamber.
An uneasy feeling twisted in Cobb’s gut. He wasn’t one for omens, but he had a bad feeling about this place. ‘Let’s keep moving.’
‘Good idea,’ she said.
But their choices were limited. They had just entered through the passageway from the south, and their only other option was at the far side of the cistern. Despite the danger, Jasmine urged them to head that way because the tunnel would take them closer to Caesar’s Well. That is, if the city’s blueprints were accurate.
Because of the treacherous footing, it took a few minutes to make their way down the path, over the water, around the crumbling stone pillars, and into the final passageway. The tunnel took them north through the foundation of the ancient city for another hundred feet or so before they were presented with a final challenge.
One that Jasmine didn’t expect.
‘What the hell is that?’ she shrieked.
In the café, McNutt winced in wide-eyed pain as Jasmine’s voice reverberated throughout his head. He would have gladly ripped out his own tooth if it meant avoiding another shout like that. He glanced around the room, searching for anyone with the look of an oral surgeon. ‘Someone wanna tell me what’s going on?’
‘We can’t go any further,’ she answered.
‘Why?’ McNutt mumbled.
‘We hit a wall,’ Cobb explained.
It wasn’t a figure of speech. The final tunnel was blocked by an actual wall. Not a pile of rubble with a safety fence, or an ancient wall made of stone.
This bastard was made of brick.
Cobb leaned into the barricade, then kicked it, hoping that he could force his way through. But it held firm, not giving an inch. ‘It’s solid.’
Jasmine hadn’t even considered the wall’s strength. She was more concerned about its substance. ‘Why is it made of brick? Does it look new?’
Cobb pounded on it with the back of his hand. ‘Not particularly. Don’t get me wrong: it’s much newer than the cisterns themselves, but this wall has been here a while. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s older than I am.’
‘No way,’ Sarah teased, ‘it can’t be that old. They didn’t have tools when you were a kid. They didn’t have fire.’
‘Ouch,’ Cobb said.
‘Nothing but caves, and clubs, and woolly mammoths.’
‘Those suckers were tasty,’ he said with a smile.
‘Yum.’
He playfully pushed her away. ‘Hector, can you—’
‘Already on it,’ Garcia blurted as he pounded away on his keyboard. Having already hacked the city planning office, he had access to everything on their system. He quickly scanned through page after page of construction logs, hoping to spot something that would help them determine the age of the brick wall. ‘Hang on… here it is.’
The others listened as he summarized what he had found.
‘There was a survey conducted to determine the structural integrity of the tunnel… engineers found evidence of erosion and other deficiencies… the decision was made to eliminate access to the deeper underground areas… sealed by means of a wall… okay, right here: a brick wall, constructed by the city engineers by mandate of the city council, approved on September the first, 1939, and erected immediately thereafter.’
Sarah had to laugh. ‘So much for having a modern map. Then again, I guess anything less than a century old is modern by Egyptian standards.’
‘September the first, 1939,’ Garcia mumbled. ‘Why do I know that date?’
Cobb answered as he glanced around the tunnel. ‘You probably learned it at school. The invasion of Poland marked the start of World War Two.’
‘Oh yeah. Hitler. I’m not a fan.’
Sarah glanced at Cobb. ‘What are you looking for?’
He pointed toward the south. ‘Back in the cisterns, remember the ductwork we saw in some of the rooms? I couldn’t figure it out, but now I know what it was. Air vents.’
‘Why?’ Sarah asked.
‘The war,’ he explained. ‘Someone realized that these giant chambers could protect them from air raids, so they added a ventilation system and turned this place into a giant bomb shelter. The vents would provide fresh air and eliminate carbon dioxide. Plus, they’d have fresh water from the cisterns.’
‘That’s ingenious,’ Sarah admitted. ‘There’s enough space down here for hundreds of people. Maybe even thousands.’
Cobb nodded. ‘Space is good. So why block off the rest of the system?’
Sarah kicked the brick wall. ‘We’re going to have to get through here to find out. Anyone have any ideas?’
McNutt coughed and cleared his throat.
Cobb smiled. ‘That you, Josh?’
McNutt coughed again.
Sarah laughed. ‘Hey hillbilly — you know you can just pull out your cell phone and pretend that you’re talking to somebody. You know that, right?’
McNutt swore under his breath.
It was a thought that hadn’t occurred to him.