FORTY-SEVEN

Present Day

Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

    I woke at five to the sounds of chopping wood. I slid out of bed and gasped when I planted my bare feet on the cold tent floor. I got dressed and unzipped the tent flap.

    A thick layer of frost covered the ground. George and Sue stood under a lantern in front of a large stump. Sue swung the axe, and George placed, gathered, and stacked the wood. Their breath made puffs in the cold air.

    I felt around for my jacket and climbed out. After I zipped up the tent, I headed over to the woodcutting couple. “Need any help?” I asked.

    “We’re just about done,” Sue said. She took a swing at the log George had stood on its end. The axe bit into the wood, and she lifted it, flipped it over, and slammed the back of the axe into the stump. The axe head rang as the log halves fell to the ground.

    George stacked the two halves on the stump, and Sue quartered them. Then she swung the axe into the stump and led me over to the van.

    “The cops came back twenty minutes ago,” George said as he showed me the yellow box.

    “It looks like they brought friends.” I pointed at the six red dots that formed an arc around the entrance to the clearing.

    He nodded. “Last night Sue and I laid out a listening net. But we need Val to translate what they’re saying.”

    “Let me get her,” I said. I walked back to the tent and poked my head in. Val had gotten dressed and was slipping on her shoes. “Your translation services are required,” I said.

    “I heard.” She grabbed her jacket and followed me to the van.

    George handed her a pair of headphones plugged into another yellow box. She put them on and closed her eyes. After a few minutes she looked up. “They’re complaining about how little they’re getting paid to guard the celebrities,” she said. “They’re trying to figure out who we are. And they want to come over and get some coffee, but nobody knows enough English to ask for it.”

    “So they’re friendlies?” George asked.

    Val shrugged, and then she laughed. “Now they’re discussing the mine’s vampires. One of the guys just said that strigoi have blue eyes, ginger hair, and two hearts each.”

    “Maybe they’ve evolved to survive the wooden stakes,” I said.

    “Hold on-someone just asked how to kill them.” She cupped her hands over the headphones and listened for another minute. “Here’s the scoop,” she said. “First you cut out their hearts, then you drive a nail into their foreheads, place garlic under their tongues, and smear their bodies in fat from a pig killed on St. Ignatius Day. Stuff them back in their coffins upside down, and they stay dead forever.”

    Sue poked George’s belly. “You forgot the pig fat.”

    George was looking at the screen. “We’ll have to figure out a plan for getting that gold out unseen,” he said. “Friendly or not, if these guys see it, they’ll want to share.”

    “We’ll need to come up with a diversion,” I said.

    “What kind?” Sue asked.

    I shrugged. “We’ll think of something. But first let’s get the gold.”

    After Rose and Marie planned their reconnaissance dive, Val and I headed into the mine shaft with them and helped them assemble their equipment.

    Marie filled their dry suits with argon. “We’ll keep this first dive to ten minutes,” she said. “That limits the decompression, and it saves our residual nitrogen time for the recovery.”

    They ran through the dive checklists and slipped into the water. Rose slid her face mask on and bit into the mouthpiece. “Can you understand me?” she asked.

    “You’re garbled, but it works,” I replied into the microphone. George had brought special ultrasonic audio and visual gear, but talking was difficult with rebreathers, as the closed-circuit full face masks had a bite mouthpiece.

    I handed Rose a spool of nylon rope.

    Marie switched on her wrist-attached camera, and Val held up her thumb. “The image is clear,” she said. “I’ll start recording now.”

    The twins waved and slid under the surface. I stood at the top of the shaft and watched their descent until they were out of sight, and then I joined Val at the screen.

    “It’s beautiful down there,” she said. “I can’t wait until we go.”

    I could wait.

    “Marie, short strokes on your finning,” we heard Rose say. “You’re stirring up the silt.” The twins had reached the bottom of the first shaft and were making their way through Viliam gallery.

    “It should be another fifty feet or so, on your left,” I told them. I watched as Marie swam the camera up to a walled-off portion. “That must be it.”

    Marie panned the camera around the edges, showing us well-joined stonework stretching from floor to ceiling. Rose drove a pin into a crack in the wall just before the stonework. She attached the nylon rope to the pin. This would let us find our way back through the churned-up muck after we tore the wall down.

    I checked my watch. “You still have three minutes,” I said. “Do you want to see if you can find the alcove your grandmother talked about?”

    “Sure,” said Rose. “Straight back?”

    I checked the map. “Maybe another forty feet on the right. It might be hard to find-your grandmother said she covered the hole.”

    Marie panned her camera around the walls and floor, but none of us spotted anything.

    Rose swam in front of Marie and waved to the camera. “We have to head up,” she said. She shone her wrist light on the dive computer on her wrist. “We’ll decompress at fifteen feet for three minutes.”

    After they surfaced, we helped the twins out of their suits, and the four of us headed out of the mine. Val gave George the video recording on a memory stick.

    He plugged it into his screen and played it back. “I’ve worked out a plan to pull down that wall,” he said.

    “Where’s Madame Flora?” I asked.

    “Still in the tent with Mr. Morgan,” Sue said.

    “Are they all right?” Rose asked.

    George laughed. “We heard them arguing a few minutes ago-I think they’re fine.”

    Marie walked up to the tent and called, “Grandma, are you there?”

    A second later, the tent flap opened, and Madame Flora stuck her head out.

    “We need you to look at this video and verify the location,” Val said, pointing to George’s screen.

    Madame Flora concentrated on a paused image on the video screen. “Can you rewind just a bit?” she asked.

    George went back two seconds.

    She clicked her fingernail on the screen. “That’s the wall Ned built.”

    “And it’s still intact,” I said.

    George hit the play button.

    “Stop!” she shouted.

    George paused again. The image showed the floor of the back alcove.

    “That’s the entrance to the opal nest.” She ran her fingers around the bottom edge. “See the foundation of the old wall?”

    The screen showed the jagged remnants of a wall rising an inch or two out of the silt on the floor.

    “Where’s the trap door?” Rose asked.

    “Right in the middle, under these rocks.” Madame Flora had a tremble in her voice. “Still hidden.”

    I looked at Val. “We have to go there.”

    Her eyebrows went up. “Are you sure?”

    Tough question. The dark cave and tight spaces would put my panic attacks and Val’s singing to the test. But if Madame Flora’s story was true, Ned Callaghan’s body was jammed in a tunnel at the bottom of the pit under that trap door.

    “I’m sure,” I said. How could I miss this opportunity?

    “Let’s get the gold, and if our nitrogen residuals are low enough, we’ll all go,” Marie said. She looked at George. “How are we pulling down the wall?”

    George smiled. “I’ve got the perfect thing for you-spreader bars.” He opened another green plastic container and pulled out a two-foot sharpened steel rod with a large swivel at its blunt end and six murderous-looking foot-long spikes attached below its point. “It’s like an umbrella.” He pressed a button near the swivel, and the spikes sprung out. “We’ll pound three of these babies through cracks in the wall, attach a cable to each swivel, and spring them open. Then I’ll crank up the winch from the surface and pull the wall down.”

    Rose hefted the spreading bar. “You have an underwater hammer?”

    George nodded. “Right here in the case.” He pulled out a short-handled bright yellow sledge hammer.

    “Give us another hour to flush some more nitrogen,” Marie said. She pointed at me. “This time you and Val can come and help.”