Soul Intent (30 page)

Then Val started singing her song, and like a restless infant comforted by a lullaby, the panic subsided. I was able to swim headfirst into the shaft. I pulled myself down hand over hand. After thirty or so rungs I glanced at my dive computer and noted we were already at eighty feet. We were going to have to make it quick, or we’d be stuck decompressing for a long time.

“Let’s check in with the girls,” Val said. “Rose and Marie?”

No answer.

“Girls, are you there?” she asked.

Silence. Then I remembered our communications were ultrasonic, and we needed something close to line-of-sight to communicate. I began breathing hard, and I spun around. We had to get out of this hole.

Val rapped her knuckles on my faceplate. “Scott, calm down. We can do this.” She sang a bit of her song.

I closed my eyes and forced myself to listen. I was calmed in less than a minute.

Val motioned with her hands. “We’d better hurry.”

We pulled ourselves the rest of the way down. I saw the remains of an old rope tied to the bottom rung.

Val flashed her wrist light at the bottom and illuminated a large, silt-covered wooden plug about the size of a manhole cover jammed like a cork into a hole in the floor. The rope ran into a crack along one side. That loose seal explained why we were swimming and not walking.

I slid my fingers into the crack to test the plug’s weight. It shifted, and I used both hands to lift it out of the hole.

I must have created a little current when I removed the plug, and that current must have sucked at the silt and mixed it up before spitting it back at us. The water grew murky, and we couldn’t see more than a foot in front of us.

“Now what?” I asked.

“We either wait, or we swim into the plume,” Val said.

I looked at my dive computer. We were down one hundred feet, only three minutes before we had to head up. I took a steadying breath. “I’ll do it.”

Val tethered me to her by tying a cord between the loops on each of our suit’s hips.

“Wish me luck,” I said. I swam blind toward the hole, stroking in sync to Val’s song. My wrist light illuminated the silt particles, but I couldn’t see ahead. I moved my arms to the sides and realized two things: My head and shoulders were at the top of a narrow tube, and the silt I stirred up made it even murkier.

I kicked my fins and propelled myself into the hole and down the chute. I kept my gloved hands in front of me and along the sides. Another foot in and I bumped into a blockage that felt a little squishy. Could this be what remained of Ned? It was hard to tell just by feel.

I unsnapped my mesh bag and slipped one of its handles onto my left wrist. I used both hands to pull at the lumpy object. After a minute of wiggling, parts of it broke off. I shoved the pieces into the mesh bag, then patted my hands on the floor of the chute and felt for more.

I grabbed quite a few pieces—whatever wasn’t stuck. Then I propelled myself forward another foot and grabbed even more. Pretty soon my mesh bag was almost as wide as the chute, and it was blocking my forward progress.

“I’ve picked up all the loose pieces,” I said.

“We’re just about out of time,” Val said. “Let’s go.”

I couldn’t turn around because the chute was too narrow—my rebreather scraped along the top. And I couldn’t seem to back out while carrying the mesh net.

“I’m stuck,” I said. “Can you pull me loose?”

“Stop kicking,” she said. I felt her hands on my legs. She pulled, and I pushed with my free arm, and after a minute I was floating free.

The water remained filled with silt. I brought my dive computer close to my face. The recovery had taken too long; we’d have to decompress at fifty feet for an hour before getting out of the cave. Good thing the twins were there—we could help them move the rest of the gold.

I felt around for the plug and sat it back on top of the chute’s opening. Then I followed Val up the ladder. The mesh bag was ponderous, but I kept it from scraping too much silt off the walls.

We took our time ascending the fifty feet back to the alcove, resting each time our dive computers buzzed our arms to remind us to slow down. After ten minutes we reached the alcove and the light, and Val helped me fold back the trap door.

I took a quick look at the bag, but I couldn’t recognize anything under all the silt. “Can you hear us, girls?” I called.

“We’re here, Scott,” Rose said. “What’s up?”

“We’ve got Ned’s bones, and we’re heading your way. How’s the gold moving coming along?”

“We’ve sledded all three boxes and eight of the twelve barrels over to the winching area,” Marie said. She sounded out of breath.

“George has already winched up the boxes,” Rose said.

George came on the intercom. “Do you want to send up the gold?” he asked.

“If the cops crawled down to the gallery, we’d have a hard time explaining it,” I said.

“Good point,” he said.

Val untethered me and turned off the light dangling from the alcove’s ceiling. Then we swam toward the first alcove.

When we reached the twins, Rose pointed at the bag. “So that’s Ned?” she asked.

“I hope so,” I said. I held up the bag so everybody could see it under the light. Some of the silt had begun to flake off; I could make out a boot and what might have been a leg bone.

“That’s just gross,” Marie said.

I thought it was cool, but I let it go. I pointed to my dive computer. “We’ve got an hour of decompression—how can we help?”

“Let’s get the rest of the gold moved,” Marie said.

We joined the remaining four barrels with the other eight at the base of the main shaft. When we finished, George winched up the sled and my mesh bag. Then the twins headed up for the final fifteen foot decompression while Val and I waited the rest of our decompression hour.

Val pointed back at the rocks strewn on the floor in front of the first alcove. “What will the Slovak divers say when they see this?”

“That the vampires got frisky and made a mess,” I said. “Let’s start our ascent.”

During our final decompression stop we discussed how to scare the guards outside our camp.

“It’s the twenty-first century—they’re not superstitious villagers chasing monsters with pitchforks,” Val said.

“Their grandmas must have scared them with some Slovak folklore,” I said. “We just need to wake up what’s already there.”

We’d have to wake it up enough that they wouldn’t dare hang around to watch us haul out the gold.

fifty

Present Day

Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

Val and I finally finished decompressing, and then we surfaced, unsuited, and dressed. Rose and Marie had already worked with George to clean the silt off the boxes, and Val and I went through the contents of my mesh bag.

I had grabbed over thirty bones, two pairs of boots, what looked like a leather overcoat, and a belt. It was definitely a body. But was it Ned’s?

“Look at this,” Val said. She brushed the silt off a block-shaped hunk of crud about half the size of a paperback book. “It could be a wallet.”

I laid down the bit of rope I had cleaned off and took the block from Val. It looked like a standard bi-fold wallet. I found the crease and pulled the top layers apart. The leather was stiff, and it cracked as the two sides separated.

I used my thumb to force open the right inside pocket. A gold card, still shiny under some silt and about the size of a driver’s license, lay inside. I pulled it out. “Ned Callaghan,” I read out loud. “Member, Soul Identity. 1912.”

“You found him, Scott.” Val sounded choked up.

I stared at the card in my hands. I rubbed at some loose silt that obscured the logo. These bones truly did belong to Ned Callaghan, my soul line predecessor.

Val knelt next to me. “How do you feel?” she asked.

I tried to think of something apropos. “Overwhelmed,” I said. That fit.

I picked up Ned’s skull and held it in my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what he had written in his soul line collection, and what Madame Flora had told me about him. I wished I had a picture of what he looked like.

The irony behind me and my soul line predecessor both helping an ethically challenged Gypsy lady walk away with some previously stolen gold didn’t escape me. But we had work to do: I needed to stuff Ned’s bones into one of the wooden boxes so he could come to the aid of Madame Flora one last time.

I tried to lay out Ned’s bones in the proper order. Most of the larger pieces were easy to place, and I sprinkled the smaller bones by the hands and feet. Val helped, and soon Ned’s skeleton took shape.

George and the twins stood to one side and watched. “You ready for a box?” George asked.

I nodded. “Did Goering’s papers survive?” I asked.

He shook his head. “All three boxes were full of muck and what might once have been leather bindings,” he said.

“That’s probably for the better,” Val said. “This way his future carrier won’t have to deal with the drama of figuring out what to do with Nazi memories.”

“Don’t let Archie hear you talk that way,” I said.

George brought over the boxes, and I placed the leather overcoat on the bottom of the first one. It was too long, so I folded its tails in. I put the larger pair of boots at one end, the belt in the middle, and Ned’s skull, facing downward, at the top.

Val helped me place the other bones. We ran the vertebrae down the middle, slid what we guessed were the arm bones into the coat’s sleeves, and jumbled the ribs and leg bones over each other. I slid the pelvis in backward, inside the belt, and placed the wallet, minus the card, next to it. Then we were done. George handed me the box’s cover, and I gave Ned a lingering look before I set it on top.

I didn’t know what to do with young Flora’s old boots, so I tossed them in another box.

We all knelt by the water and washed the mud off our hands and arms. Then the five of us carried the three boxes up the tunnel.

George stopped us right before we reached the entrance. I squinted into the afternoon gray light, and I saw Dara Sabol, police chief, speaking with Sue, Archie, and Madame Flora.

“Leave the boxes here for now,” I whispered.

We stacked the boxes in the shadows. Then we walked out of the cave and over to the fire to join the rest of our group.

Sabol stood up, hands on her hips. She looked at George for a minute before speaking. “How is diving?” she asked.

George smiled. “The kids are enjoying your beautiful mine.”

“Tomorrow your two-day permit expires.” The police chief looked at her watch. “Eight more hours.”

George threw a glance at Sue, who raised her hands palm-sides-up. He turned back to Sabol. “Now Chief, you gave us two full days’ access to the mines,” he said. “We’ll be out of here bright and early tomorrow morning.”

She folded her arms low across her chest. “You come yesterday, and you here all day. Two days, as requested. Leave by midnight.”

George sighed and looked at Archie. “I really thought we had a full forty-eight hours, Mr. Morgan.”

Madame Flora cleared her throat, but Sue held up her hand and turned to the police chief. “Obviously this is just a misunderstanding between us. Can we please extend for another day?”

Sabol pursed her lips. “No extensions. Next group arrives at midnight.”

“The next group?” Madame Flora’s voice was sharp.

The police chief nodded. “Scientists study zooplankton in mine waters. They use our divers. One week, then you come back, okay?”

George pulled his wallet out of his pocket and started flipping through a large wad of bills. “If there’s anything we can do…”

As soon as she saw the wallet, Chief Sabol turned and faced away and refused to meet his eyes again. “You must leave by midnight,” she said as she stared at the ground.

Somebody was turning her screws. I pulled George off to the side. “Can we get everything out and away in eight hours?” I murmured.

He stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. “Only if we can lose our audience. Even then it’ll be tight.”

Ned would have to make an earlier-than-expected entrance. I walked around and stood in front of Dara. “Chief Sabol,” I said, “would your guards like to help us and earn some extra money?”

She squinted at me. “Help you how?”

“Haul our gear up from the cave,” I said. “And we need some help preparing a special ceremony.”

She scratched her head. After a moment, she nodded. “You pay me. I pay them.”

“How much?”

“One thousand two hundred dollars.”

“For how many people?”

“Six.”

I looked at George, and he pulled out his wallet. “I’ll pay you half now, and half when we’re done,” he said. “Call your team.”

The police chief pulled a handheld radio out of her jacket pocket and spoke into it. She put the radio away and smiled at me. “My men come in two minutes.”