As Cross picked up the crowbar and started tapping the stone wall, working out where to insert the end of the tool, Bronson looked at the expressions on the faces of the people in the cave. Donovan was quivering with what he guessed was a mixture of fury and anticipation, while Killian glowered with impotent anger against the far wall. Between them, Masters and Angela stood together, studying the stone wall with cool appraisal.
‘There’s a kind of notch just here,’ Cross said. ‘Reckon I can just about get the end of the wrecking bar into it.’
There was a metallic scraping sound as he rammed the end of the crowbar into the narrow gap he’d found in the rock, then a deep grunt as he heaved on the end of the tool.
‘Nothing,’ Cross said. ‘No movement at all. You sure there’s no lock or anything, nothing jamming it?’
‘There were some stones wedged under the right-hand side,’ Bronson offered, ‘but I thought I’d shifted all of them.’
Masters turned to look at Bronson. ‘Keep that pistol, but I think you might as well turn Donovan loose. He won’t cause you any trouble.’
Bronson released his grip gratefully, flexed his fingers and stood up. He tucked the pistol into the waistband of his trousers, then moved forward to stand beside Angela.
‘Just thinking about it from a mechanical point of view,’ he said, ‘it would make sense if they had done something else to lock the door in place. The last thing they would want would be for an earthquake to shake it open.’
He leaned forward and spent a few minutes running the tips of his fingers over the old stone. On the right-hand side of the door he felt something, and stepped back to see it from a distance.
‘Yes, that could be it,’ he murmured, pointing at a roughly oval-shaped mark on the stone about six feet off the ground. ‘That could be the end of a stone wedge, driven right through the door and then trimmed off flat on this side. It seems to be made of the same stone as the door itself, but the grain, or whatever the correct term is for the marks inside rock, goes the wrong way.’
He picked up the hammer and chisel, strode across to the stone wall, placed the end of the chisel against the oval mark and smashed the hammer on to it. Stone chips flew. He repeated the operation, and again bits of stone broke off and flew all around him. He stopped briefly and peered at the wall.
‘I’ve broken the end off,’ he said, ‘but now I can see that a hole was cut through the stone and this wedge driven into it.’
Bronson repositioned the chisel in the centre of the mark and hit it again. This time, very few chips of stone flew out, but the whole lump of stone that had been driven into the hole moved slightly inwards.
‘That’s more like it!’ he said triumphantly. He drew back the hammer and hit it again.
The chisel travelled almost all the way through the hole as the stone wedge vanished from sight. There was a hollow thud as it landed on the floor of the cave somewhere on the inside of the stone door.
‘Brilliant, Chris,’ Angela said, as he stepped back.
‘That looks like another one,’ Masters said, pointing at a spot about three feet off the ground and directly below the hole where Bronson had shifted the first stone wedge.
‘I’ll do it,’ Cross said, taking the hammer and chisel.
Bronson moved back to where Angela stood watching, when a sudden thought occurred to him.
‘Just a moment.’ He picked up his rucksack and pulled out a torch then walked across to the hole he’d revealed and shone the light inside the hidden chamber.
‘What can you see?’ Angela demanded.
‘Nothing very much,’ Bronson replied, ‘except maybe the stone of the wall opposite. But that wasn’t what I was looking for.’
‘So what were you checking out?’ Masters asked.
‘The hole itself,’ Bronson replied, turning away from the wall. ‘It’s tapered. It’s wider on the inside than the outside of the door.’
‘So?’ Masters asked.
But Angela had already grasped what he meant. ‘So you mean the stone wedges-’
‘Exactly,’ Bronson said. ‘The holes taper from the inside to the outside, so they must have been put in place from within the tomb itself. Unless there’s another way out of there, whoever drove those wedges into place is still in there, on the other side of that wall.’
66
‘Oh, God,’ Angela muttered, and even Masters looked a little pale.
‘Yeah, well, he’ll just be another stiff, won’t he?’ Cross muttered, and with a massive single blow of the hammer drove the second wedge completely through the door.
Immediately the whole stone wall shifted very slightly, a movement they heard rather than saw.
‘Looks like we could have lift-off,’ Cross said. He dropped the hammer and chisel and picked up the crowbar again. He slid one end into the hole he’d found before, and pulled as hard as he could on the other end. This time, the massive stone door moved perhaps half an inch to the right.
Cross changed the position of the crowbar slightly and pulled again. Within fifteen minutes, the three of them — Cross, Masters and Bronson — had moved the door as far as it would go to the right, so that the top edge was resting against another block of stone.
Masters glanced at Bronson and Angela. ‘Your privilege, if you want it,’ he said. ‘You’ve earned it.’
‘What about me?’ Donovan called out angrily from behind them.
‘You can wait your goddamned turn,’ Masters snapped.
‘Let me go first,’ Bronson said. He picked up his torch and stepped forward. But before he entered, he bent down and looked down at the channel in the stone floor that had been exposed by sliding the door over to one side.
‘I was right,’ he said. ‘They used stone rollers.’ Then he straightened up and walked into the inner chamber.
For perhaps two or three minutes the others watched the beam of the torch dancing around the inner chamber, fitfully illuminating the walls and floor and an oblong stone shape. Then Bronson reappeared.
‘It’s safe,’ he said, ‘and there’s at least one really old corpse in there, though he’s just bones and rags. We’ll need as much light as possible.’
Masters grabbed a couple of torches and followed Bronson and Angela inside.
All three of them paused just inside the inner chamber and looked around them.
‘Did you touch anything?’ Angela asked, sending the beam of her torch travelling around the small room.
‘Apart from the corpse, nothing at all.’
Directly in front of them was an oblong stone structure, the top made of large flat stone slabs, the sides from smaller, cubical stones, the whole thing standing about three feet tall, four feet wide and eight feet long, and at first sight apparently devoid of markings or decoration. But Bronson had spotted something.
‘There’s a mark on the middle slab,’ he said.
Angela walked forward to the stone structure, shining a torch directly at the carving. ‘It looks to me like an early Tibetan script, and I think the letters are probably Y and A.’
‘Yus Asaph,’ Bronson murmured.
But it wasn’t the marking on the slab that was holding anyone’s attention. At the foot of the structure, in what looked like the foetal position, lay the crumbling bones of a skeleton clad in a few wisps of cloth.
‘I think,’ Bronson said, his voice sounding unnaturally loud in the silent room, ‘that he might have died on his knees and then fallen sideways.’
‘In prayer, you mean?’ Angela asked in a whisper.
‘Maybe.’
‘You think that’s what’s left of the guy who sealed the door?’ Masters asked.
Bronson nodded. ‘The bones are really fragile. I touched one of them and it just crumbled away to nothing.’
‘And what we’re looking for is in that stone thing at the back? The thing that looks a bit like a big altar?’
‘Probably,’ Angela said, sounding oddly subdued.
‘Right, then,’ Masters said briskly. ‘You can bet the Indian Army will be heading this way pretty soon, so we’d best get on with it. I’ll get Cross in here, and I suppose Donovan as well. After all, he paid for this little adventure.’