The Kingdom

24

SAZAN ISLAND, ALBANIA

As soon as they ducked through the hole in the wall, they realized their task was going to be much harder than they’d anticipated. Instead of stepping into an open space, they found themselves standing in a labyrinth.

On either side and ahead of them, eroding wooden coffins were stacked eight high and four deep, forming a corridor that was barely wider than their shoulders. Headlamps illuminating the way, they walked to the end of the corridor. They found themselves at a T-turn. To the left and right, more coffins.

“Are you keeping count?” Sam whispered.

“A hundred ninety-two so far.”

“The Zvernec graveyard isn’t that big.”

“It is if they were packing them shoulder to shoulder and stacking them. We know Mala died in 1436. Even if his was the first burial, we could be talking about five-plus centuries.”

“I just got a shiver down my spine. Left or right?”

Remi chose left. They walked a few paces. Ahead, Sam’s head-lamp washed over an exterior brick wall.

“Dead end,” he said.

“Was that a pun?”

“Freudian slip.”

They turned around, and, with Remi in the lead, proceeded past the T-turn and down the adjoining corridor. At the end of this, a right turn, followed by another sixty-four coffins, followed by a left turn and more coffins. The pattern continued through another five turns until the body count exceeded six hundred.

At last they entered an open space. Here the coffins were also stacked eight high, all the way to the vaulted ceiling’s crossbeams. Sam and Remi turned in a circle, headlamps sweeping over walls of white pine.

“There,” Sam said suddenly.

On the western wall, behind a mountain of rotting pine, was a row of stone sarcophagi. “Fourteen,” Remi said. “The same as the number of mausoleums in the graveyard.”

“That’s a bit of good luck,” Sam replied. He counted the coffin wall behind the sarcophagi. “Unbelievable,” he murmured. “Remi, there are over a thousand corpses in this building.”

“Earta must have been mistaken. After the storm and flood, they must have taken all the bodies. Zvernec isn’t so much a graveyard as it is a charnel pit.”

“There’s no smell.”

“According to Selma, the last burial was in 1912. Even with embalming, there’s probably little flesh left.”

Sam smiled and sang softly, “Dem bones . . . dem bones . . . dem dry bones.”

“Don’t give up your day job. Let’s check for markings. Mala’s mausoleum bore a huge patriarchal cross; maybe they did the same for his sarcophagus.”

A quick check of the end of each sarcophagus showed no crosses. Sam and Remi walked along the row, using their headlamps to peer on the top of each stone coffin. Of the fourteen, three had been chiseled with the Eastern Orthodox Church symbol.

They sat together on the floor and stared at it. Remi asked, “How heavy do you think each one is?”

“Four, five hundred pounds.” Then, after a moment: “But the lid . . . that’s a different story. Crowbar.”

“Pardon?” Remi asked with a smile. She was used to her husband’s cerebral non sequiturs; they were his way of working through problems.

“We forgot a crowbar. That lid weighs a hundred pounds at most, but prying open that seam while the sarcophagus is wedged in there . . . Damn, I knew I had that We’re forgetting something important feeling.”

“Luckily, you have a plan.”

Sam nodded. “Luckily, I have a plan.”

Having long ago learned the universal value of three items-rope, wire, and duct tape-Sam and Remi rarely went into the field without them even when the specific task or journey didn’t obviously call for any of them. This time, in a hurry to beat nightfall, they’d forgotten one of the trio in addition to the crowbar: wire. The fifty-foot coil of climbing rope and the duct tape would be enough, Sam hoped.

It took only a few minutes of scrabbling over the church’s crossbeams before they found what they needed: a loose L bracket. After twisting it free, Sam used his body weight to smash it closed over the rope’s center point. Next he crawled over the sarcophagus and wriggled the bracket into the rear seam beneath the lid. Then, grasping the rope like reins, he tugged until the L bracket was firmly seated in place. Finally he and Remi tossed the ends of the rope over a beam and used their combined body weight to slowly take up the slack until the far end of the lid began rising.

“I’ve got it.” Remi said through clenched teeth, taking Sam’s end. “Go ahead.”

Sam hurried forward, bent over the lid, and slipped his fingers under its near side. He leaned backward and straightened his legs. The lid popped up and slid free between his legs. The L bracket popped free with a metallic twang.

Together, they stepped around the lid and leaned forward, their headlamps panning over the sarcophagus’s contents.

“Bones, bones, and more bones,” Remi said.

“And not a glint of gold in sight,” Sam replied. “One down, two to go.”

Though neither of them voiced the worry, Sam and Remi both had the gut feeling that whichever sarcophagus they chose next, it too would be the wrong choice. Similarly, neither of them dared acknowledge the nagging voice of doubt in the back of each’s head-that Father/Bishop Besim Mala had not been faithful to the King of Mustang’s request and that the second Theurang disk had been long ago discarded or lost, along with the Golden Man and, if Jack Karna were right, the location of Shangri-La.

Thirty minutes and a second sarcophagus lid later, they found themselves staring at a second set of bones and a second strikeout.

Ninety minutes after they entered the church, they slid back the lid of the third and final sarcophagus. Exhausted, Sam and Remi sat before it and took a minute to catch their breath.

“Ready?” Sam said.

“Not really, but let’s get it over with,” replied Remi.

On hands and knees, they crawled forward, went on either side of the stone lid, and, after taking a deep breath, peeked over the edge into the sarcophagus.

From the blackness a sliver of gold winked back at them.