‘Surely they couldn’t abseil down?’ Petrie wondered.
‘Or climb down the cable?’
‘Let’s get out of here.’
The tunnel was broad and flat and the torchlight showed a spray of water about two hundred yards ahead of them. Freya led the way towards it at a brisk trot. The end of the tunnel was marked by a black metal railing with a red and white lifebelt attached to a long coil of rope. They found themselves inside a much larger, natural tunnel, about thirty feet wide and as high. Water below them was surging, tumbling, roaring along this channel; Petrie felt the ground vibrating. Their torches made rainbows in the cold spray, but showed only that the subterranean river curved out of sight on either side of them, piling up steeply at the corner.
Petrie said, ‘The Styx,’ but his voice was lost in the roar.
He felt an urgent tug on his arm. Freya was pointing to a flight of stone steps on the left, going down to a concrete path running alongside the river. Just before they took them, he glanced back. It might just have been the dark adaption, but the light shining down the elevator shaft seemed stronger.
‘Tyson’s entrance is two sixty metres along,’ Petrie shouted.
‘I can’t judge distances.’ In the torchlight, Freya’s face was glistening wet. ‘I’m relying on you.’
Petrie said, ‘Hell. I was relying on you.’
They hurried along, gripping the handrail. Here and there the river was almost level with the concrete path, and in some places they had to wade knee-deep, the force of the water threatening to knock them off their feet.
‘The water level must be up,’ Freya shouted. She was shivering.
‘And it’s rising.’ Petrie didn’t try to hide the fear.
After two hundred metres the path seemed to dip into the water. Their torches picked out the railing for another twenty yards or so before it, too, vanished under the waves.
He looked along the tunnel wall, searching for footholds. About fifty metres ahead, his helmet light picked out a natural recess about seven metres above the river.
‘What do you think?’ he shouted. ‘Tyson’s Wormhole?’
‘There’s nothing else. We’ll have to swim for it, try to grab that ledge in passing. Think you can do it?’
Petrie was appalled. ‘You’re mad. What if we miss?’
‘We drown.’ The river was thundering round the corner, heading for an uncertain destination.
‘I can’t swim,’ Petrie confessed.
‘You idiot! Why didn’t you say so at the castle?’ She turned away from him, her light scanning the recess and the smooth tunnel wall. Then: ‘Go back for the lifebelt. And be quick.’
Petrie waded back along the path. Without question, the river had risen, and the concrete was now almost wholly under water. To Petrie, the journey seemed to take an hour. He climbed the steps, gasping. To his horror, he saw that a light was still shining down the shaft but that it was much brighter than before. And it was swaying rhythmically, as if it was attached to a descending human. Hastily, he hoisted the lifebelt on his shoulder and put the coil of rope in the crook of his elbow. With a last fearful look at the light he ran back down the steps.
By the time he reached Freya the water was up to her chest and she was gripping the handrail, under the surface, with both hands. She was shivering violently and Petrie thought she looked ready to faint.
‘They’re coming.’
‘Put your arms and head into that,’ she ordered in a shaking voice. Petrie obliged. ‘Wait until I’m on the ledge and then float. Let’s hope the rope’s long enough.’
‘What if it’s not?’
She ignored the question, tying the end of the rope crudely round her waist before wading along the path. In a moment she was caught up in the surge and bobbed along, seemingly helpless in the flow of freezing water. More than once her torchlight shone underwater, but then she was climbing on to the ledge and waving at Petrie.
The next ten seconds were amongst the most frightening in his life, but Freya was pulling the rope in as fast as the distance between them was shortening and he found himself gasping and spluttering face-down on a big slab of rock.
Freya was saying, ‘Look!’ Set in the natural recess about seven metres diagonally up was a gnarled pillar of rock, vaguely resembling a faceless woman wrapped in a shawl or cloak. ‘The Madonna!’
With an effort, Petrie got to his knees, his clothes heavy with icy water. Freya was already skimming up the smooth rockface instinctively, like a spider. Water was pouring off her clothes. Petrie couldn’t see what she was gripping but forced himself to follow. He found he could hardly grip the rock for shaking. He inched his way along, the torrent roaring angrily below. Once he glanced down and saw that the ledge was no longer below him: the helmet light showed only swift churning water.
Freya was shouting something. It took all his nerve to look up. He had passed under the Madonna, but now he was only a few metres from the recess. He warily edged towards it; and then Freya was gripping him by the elbow and at last he was being pulled behind the pillar of rock.
The recess went in about five metres, and their lights showed that it narrowed to a crack about six feet wide and barely a foot high. Over it, someone — it could only have been Tyson — had scraped a T.
She pointed triumphantly. ‘We’ve found it! The Wormhole!’
The beam from Petrie’s helmet lamp shook from side to side. ‘I’ll never get into that.’
Freya was looking up the river. ‘Douse your light. Quickly.’
The first time it might have been an illusion, but not the second. Far upstream, torchlight had reflected briefly off the swirling waves of the Styx.
33
Rapunzel
Bull was taking time off for the Iraqi crisis and she had three hours at the most.
There was a harsh cry and she almost jumped with fright. A large, long-legged pink bird with a yellow head fluttered past at eye-level and settled on a palm frond about six feet away, eyeing her curiously. Hazel Baxendale began to wonder if the Baltimore aquarium, even in the depths of the Baltimore winter, had been such a good idea.
She stepped carefully past the bird and carried on through a winding path, surrounded by lush greenery. An emerald-green iguana blocked her way. She moved respectfully past it and, a little further on, sat down on a wooden bench.
The tropical house was hot. And humid. Hazel draped her synthetic fur coat over the back of the bench, but kept her sunglasses on. She waited.
The MIT engineer, Professor Gene Killman, was first to arrive. He was overweight, bald, with a gaudy yellow tie and dark glasses. He was licking his thin lips nervously, and looking around. He was almost comically furtive. The President’s Science Adviser rubbed her forehead in despair and groaned inwardly. The man spotted her, looked around again, and sidled up to the bench, sitting down without once looking at her.
Something rustled in a tree. A small creature with long golden fur peered at them. ‘What the hell is that?’ she said.
‘They call it a tamarin, ma’am. Cute, isn’t it? So many have been taken for pets that it’s now an endangered species.’
The Harvard philosopher, a small, cheerful, grey-haired woman in her forties, appeared a few minutes later and sat down on the other side of Hazel. The woman was dressed for the winter, in a heavy coat and scarf. It was ninety degrees hot and ninety per cent humid, but the philosopher kept her winter clothes wrapped round her. Just looking at her put the Science Adviser in a sweat.
Hazel said, ‘Rosa Clements, meet Gene Killman.’ There was an exchange of cautious nods. ‘I’d like to emphasise again that this discussion is off-the-record and highly confidential. You won’t understand what’s behind it and all I can tell you is that it involves a matter of national security. Don’t tell a living soul that I’ve approached you for advice, not even your partners. Especially not your partners.’