A fly hits Sweetheart in the eye and makes her do a panic jig.
Valentina holds her and tries to comfort her. The insects are crawling into her long hair and down her shabby night-dress. Valentina beats them off but they’re instantly replaced by hundreds more.
They have to keep moving.
They must get out of here.
She pulls Sweetheart’s hand up to shield as much of her face as possible. ‘Keep your mouth covered; don’t let these horrid bugs get in there or up your nose.’ The youngster looks terrified as she leads her towards the doors.
The sooner they get out of here, the better.
They reach the doors and Valentina flips the handle.
Locked.
She tries again to see if she’s mistaken.
Maybe it’s just sticking.
Definitely locked.
She lets go of Sweetheart’s hand and takes a hefty kick at the weak point where the doors meet.
They don’t budge.
She looks up and sees ten feet of solid oak.
The flies will have picked her bones clean by the time she’s forced them open.
‘Stand back!’ She moves Sweetheart away. ‘Stay over here and don’t move.’
She pulls the gun and takes aim at the heavy brass lock, careful to make sure that she’s at an angle, so if there’s any freak rebound she doesn’t catch shrapnel.
The Glock kicks in her palm.
It’s not a clean shot.
She’s nicked the lock, but the oak is so thick, the bullet hasn’t even gone all the way through.
Valentina lets off three more rounds.
The brass mangles up but the edge of the door shows no sign of splintering as she hoped.
Her temper flares.
She steps close to the door and fires off five shots in a circle around the lock.
She may as well have saved the ammunition.
She jams the Glock back in her waistband.
She has an idea.
A crazy, desperate idea, but it might just work.
Valentina runs through the thick cloud of flies to the flower-covered altar and climbs it.
She’s after one of the flaming torches.
The flies are so thick, it’s like working beneath a blanket.
It takes several minutes, but Valentina finally frees a torch from the wall.
She jumps from the altar and looks across to the opposite wall.
High on the pulpit ledge, behind a wall of glass, she sees an old woman in a long red robe is staring at her.
She looks like Cybele.
Alongside her are other old women, their faces all turned down towards the temple floor.
Valentina’s eyes flash hatred as she carries the torch away.
Flies sizzle in the wafting orange flames.
She pulls Sweetheart even further away from the giant doors, then kneels down with the torch and holds it to the oak.
She’s going to burn a way out.
Then she’s going to find those cruel old crones and make them wish they’d died decades ago.
134
Guilio’s final screams are already haunting Tom as he picks up the rucksack and walks away from the pit.
He knows there’s nothing he could have done.
There was no way he could have stopped the second lion.
But he still feels awful.
If Guilio hadn’t jumped in the pit, Tom would be dead.
It seems wrong that he lost his life in such a way.
Tom shines his torch into the darkness and walks slowly towards the end of the gallery, staying as close to the centre as he can.
He hopes there are no more traps.
After fifty metres the tunnel comes to a dead end, just as the others have done.
Only there’s a difference.
A big difference.
There’s no hatch on the floor. No marble disc through which to pass to another level.
Instead, there’s a huge felled tree.
It’s either set into the wall or the wall has been built around it.
Tom touches it.
It’s a big old chunk of a thing, its bark riddled with ridges, gnarls and knots where branches have been lopped off.
The tree is a sign.
A sign of nature.
It must have symbolic connections to Cybele and Mother Nature.
He remembers that the last time he was around trees was when he was in the field above the catacombs, where Guilio painstakingly used the scalene pendant to locate the position of the entrance to the Cybelene chambers.
He grabs the rucksack and searches inside for the pendant.
Only when he’s emptied everything does he see it tied to one of the straps.
Now he can’t remember exactly how Guilio used it.
Did the eunuch start with the shortest side in the right-hand corner of the field, or with one of the longer sides?
Tom digs out the spool of fishing twine and decides to start with the shortest, so that the pendant leans in towards the centre of the wood.
Suddenly he’s all fingers and thumbs. He needs something to mark the lines with. Something to hold the other end.
And he needs something to cut the twine with.
He doesn’t have any of those things.
He looks again in the rucksack.
He daren’t use the nail gun on the wood. The impact could trigger some kind of trap.
But maybe, if he’s careful, he could use the nails and tap them in gently.
He frees several from the magazine and grabs the carpet knife to cut the twine and score lines.
He pictures Guilio in the field and gambles that he started bottom right with the scalene pendant long edge down and shortest edge up.
He replicates the actions on both ends of the wood and sees where the lines meet.
Bingo.
He runs his fingers along the bark where the line is and finds a sliver of silver set in the wood. A silver-lined groove big enough to take the shortest edge of the pendant.
He pauses.
