Finn nodded silently, gritting her teeth. Even the memory of the sound they’d made was terrifying. She stayed well back from the opening.
“Now what?”
“We go in,” he said. “The wall collapsing will have scared them off.”
“What if there’s still some in there?”
“Step on them.”
Grinning, Hilts ducked his head and entered the cave. Swallowing hard, Finn went in after him.
Kicking in the old masonry had flooded the chamber with light. Originally it had obviously been no more than a small concave depression beneath the overhang, offering a respite from the beating rays of the sun. In some indeterminate past ancient tools had been used to deepen the declivity into an oven-shaped depression in the rocks. Once a secret repository for an ancient library, like the caves at Qumran on the shores of the Dead Sea, the chamber here had become a crypt in more modern times. Five mummified corpses, all still wearing the tattered remnants of their Long Range Desert Group uniforms, were huddled in one corner. Two were curled into whimpering fetal positions. One looked as though it had been frozen on hands and knees, half draped over an altarlike stone. Another was seated with its back against one wall, and the fifth was lying facedown, half covered by the rubble Hilts had kicked over it, one spindly, ropy arm gripping what appeared to be a verdigris-covered copper cylinder. The top of the cylinder was gone and the vase was empty. The back of the cave was a sloping pile of sand remaining after a collapse sometime in the distant past.
“The missing soldiers,” murmured Hilts. He bent down and began to carefully go through what was left of the uniform of the dried-out corpse clutching the copper vase. “Careful of the ordnance, some of it could still be live.” There were weapons scattered all around the cave, old Enfield rifles, a huge Lewis machine gun, a Thompson, and half a dozen or more Mills grenades.
“I wonder how they died,” said Finn. “It looks like it was sudden.”
Hilts shifted the leg of the dried-out corpse he was searching, revealing the desiccated shells of half a dozen creatures like the ones that had scuttled over Finn’s boots.
“Disturbed a nest of scorpions; maybe hundreds. It only takes one sting to kill you; they must have been hit dozens of times. Not a pleasant way to go.” He shrugged. “They wouldn’t have had much time except to die.”
Hilts pulled an old billfold out of an inner pocket of the man’s blouse and eased it open. The papery remains of the man’s organs lay like dust in the bony hollow of his rib cage.
“Anything interesting?” Finn asked.
“Bar chit from Shepherd’s Hotel, membership card to the Victory Club. Library pass for the Haddon Library, Cambridge.” He dug deeper into the wallet. “Here’s his ID card. Professor George Pocock, Strategic Operations Executive, Grey Pillars, Cairo. That was HQ, if I remember right.”
“The Haddon is the Cambridge Archaeology Faculty Library. That’s where my dad met my mom.”
“The Strategic Operations Executive were spies,” he said. “This guy wasn’t Long Range Desert Group at all.”
“An archaeologist and a spy, sent out to find Pedrazzi?”
“Looks that way.”
Hilts dropped the man’s wallet into the pocket of his fatigue jacket, paused long enough to take several pictures, and then stood up and went to the rear of the cave. Finn, suddenly feeling almost desperately claustrophobic, went to the entrance of the narrow cave and looked down into the little valley. Nothing had moved and nothing had changed in the warlike diorama laid out below except for the whirling sand billowed up by the freshening wind that was beginning to moan through the canyon. The sky overhead had gone from harsh metallic blue to an ugly saffron color, like an old bruise. The weather was changing. She turned to tell Hilts and saw that he had uncovered something. Faintly uneasy, she turned away and went to the rear of the cave, her eyes scanning the floor for any sign of movement. Reaching Hilts she saw that he had uncovered the top and side of a large stone box. It was rectangular, four feet high, three wide, and appeared to be about six feet long, its front end angled toward the entrance. Carved into the stone was something that looked like the head of Medusa, the hair a mass of writhing snakes. Around the head, like the letters on a coin, was a faint inscription, almost worn away.
“I can’t read it,” Hilts said.
Finn uncapped her canteen, poured water into her palm and swept her hand around the inscription with a quick wiping motion. The letters darkened, instantly readable.
“Neat,” said Hilts, admiringly. He read the words aloud: “Hic Latito Lux Excito-Vox Luciferus.” He shook his head. “Too bad I never took Latin in school.”
“I did,” said Finn. “My parents insisted. According to them nothing beat a classical education. Good for reading the inscriptions on important old buildings.”
“So what does it say?”
“Here Lies Hidden the Bringer of Light: The Words of Lucifer.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Hilts.
“Non ioco est,” she answered. “No joke.”
“Lucifer, as in the Lucifer?”
“Lucifer was a fairly common name in ancient Rome. It didn’t have the same negative connotation a few thousand years ago.”
“So some Roman named Lucifer is buried inside this thing?”
“His words, anyway.”
“Let’s see.”
Hilts used both hands to scoop the fall of sand away from the top of the box.
“We’re going to open it?”
“It looks to me like a lot of people went to a lot of trouble to find this thing, whatever it is. The least we can do is have a look.”
“What about Adamson and his pals?” Finn asked, frowning.
Hilts checked his watch.
“At least another half hour. We can be out of here long before that.”
It took another five minutes to clear all the sand away from the top of the stone box. When that was done Hilts took a ten-inch “pig sticker” spike bayonet from one of the abandoned Enfield rifles and hammered it with the palm of his hand into the faint crack between the box and its heavy top. He twisted slowly and the top slid fractionally to one side, releasing a puff of stale, dusty air. Together Hilts and Finn manhandled the top of the ossuary to one side and then let it slide down to the floor of the cave, leaning against the side of the stone box. Both of them peered inside.
Stuffed into the heavy stone coffin was the bent figure of a man. He was wearing pale green trousers, a long buttoned jacket the same color, and heavy boots. The face was a leathery brown, but except for a missing ear the general structure of the face was relatively intact. Perched askew on the hawklike nose was a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. The ear was missing because there was a ragged hole in the right temple big enough to put a fist inside. Part of the jaw was missing as well, showing off a mouthful of yellow teeth. The tongue had shrunken to a black lump. Lying between the legs of the naturally mummified corpse was a copper urn like the one being gripped by the dead man near the cave entrance. Finn reached into the box and took out the small vase. Like the one in the dead archaeologist’s hands, this one was empty. Hilts began going through the pockets of the brass-buttoned fatigue jacket the corpse was wearing.
“Looks like a uniform,” said Finn.
“It is,” Hilts answered. “Italian Desert Forces. No insignia or anything. No rank.”
“There’s a ring,” said Finn. Gingerly she lifted the right hand. A gold band still shone on the leathery hook of the index finger. It fell off into her palm. “There’s a crest engraved into it.”
“Five will get you ten it’s Pedrazzi. Hold on.”
“Find something?”
“He was a smoker.” Hilts grunted. “Lung cancer would have gotten him if somebody hadn’t blown his head off.” He tossed her a small faded cigarette tin. She could still see the enameled illustration of a reclining woman and the name Fatima.
Faintly, more a sense of vibration than a sound, Finn heard something in the distance, rising over the moaning of the wind.