On the other side of the moving door, Donovan thrust himself forward, diving headlong into the narrow space.
‘Nick, help me!’ he shouted as he started to force his way through the gap.
Masters stepped forward and reached down to grab Donovan’s out-stretched arm.
Then the stone door gave a sudden lurch and Masters looked up. The crowbar was starting to bend under the enormous pressure of the moving slab of stone. He grabbed Donovan’s hand and started to pull, but even as he did so he knew it was too late.
Donovan felt an enormous, intolerable pressure on his chest as the stone door started moving again, started closing the gap. He couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move.
He felt a snap as the first of his ribs broke, then his chest caved in, a sudden excruciating shaft of agony that seared through his very being. And then he felt nothing at all as the crowbar snapped and the stone slab finally slammed into place, the ancient stone rollers crumbling to dust with the impact, jamming the door closed for another eternity.
70
‘We’re out of here,’ Masters said, as they stepped outside the mouth of the cave. ‘The Indian Army or Air Force are going to be swarming all over this valley lookin’ for whoever blew their shiny Hind gunship out of the sky, so we need to be history before they get here. You gonna be OK?’
‘Thanks,’ Bronson said, shaking the American’s hand. ‘Our truck’s parked down at the bottom of the valley, but I suppose you knew that already.’
Masters nodded and grinned, then turned, his mind already on his exit strategy as he selected a number on his sat-phone.
In the open space outside the cave, Bronson took Angela in his arms and for a few seconds just held her tight.
‘I thought that was it,’ Angela murmured, her cheeks damp from tears of relief. ‘I really thought you’d be crushed by that stone door closing. What do you think happened?’ She turned back to look through the dark mouth of the cave.
‘A clever booby-trap is how I see it,’ Bronson said. ‘When we pushed the slab all the way over to the right, the top of it was resting against another lump of stone. Somehow that must have tripped a trigger of some kind, because that second slab then started moving down, pushing against the first one. That was the noise we heard — the second slab starting to move.’
Before he’d left the cave he’d looked over the right-hand side of the slab. On the far side of the stone door was another rough-cut lump of stone which had clearly forced the slab closed as it pivoted downwards.
‘That’s just like some of the pyramids,’ Angela said. ‘An anti-theft mechanism. Open the first door and something triggers the mechanism. Then gravity does the rest.’
‘I wonder why Yus Asaph’s followers didn’t trigger it themselves, and seal the door using the second slab when they hid the body here?’ Bronson asked.
‘Maybe it would have made it too obvious that something was hidden in the inner chamber. If you knew that there was a secret room in there, you could hack your way through the stone door.’ Angela shuddered against Bronson’s body. ‘Let’s get out of here, Chris. Let’s go home.’
Bronson took her hand, and together they started picking their way over the rutted boulder-strewn surface of the valley down to where they’d left their jeep. Night had fallen, and above them the sky was a black velvet blanket pierced by the light of countless millions of stars. It felt good to be alive.
Several minutes later, Killian recovered consciousness inside the inner chamber. At first, he could see nothing at all, then pulled a small torch from his pocket, switched it on and glanced around him. The others had all gone, which suited him perfectly. Now he had the time to complete the task he’d been set by God himself.
He walked across to the stone structure and ran his hand slowly over the top of the lead coffin and looked down, a contented smile on his face. Inside, the body he believed to have been Jesus the Nazarite had simply ceased to exist, turned to dust by the inexorable process of decay. That was something he’d completely failed to anticipate, but ultimately that was exactly what he’d intended. He had expected to have to destroy the tomb and its contents with explosives, but a force of nature had saved him the job. And it simply didn’t matter what Donovan or any of the others said or claimed now — there was not the slightest shred of proof that the coffin had ever contained a human body, far less the body of the Messiah Himself.
Killian’s smile deepened. He truly had been blessed. For the first time in two millennia, a small group of people had been granted the most sublime and utterly divine gift possible. For a few moments they had been permitted to stare at the face of the Saviour of mankind, at the man revered by countless millions of worshippers as the Son of God.
He made the sign of the cross and turned away from the coffin, swinging the torch beam in front of him. For the first time he registered the fact that the stone door was closed. Then he saw the spreading pool of blood on the floor of the chamber, and Donovan’s body obscenely crushed into the gap.
Killian looked around desperately, seeking another way out, some tunnel or passageway they’d all missed, but in seconds he confirmed that the walls of the chamber were solid.
He ran to the stone door and tore at the edge of it with his fingers, ripping the skin and flesh and tearing off two of his nails. But the stone didn’t budge by even a millimetre.
Then he started to scream.