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Old wounds would bleed again.
Sonia was staring, allowing him his thoughts. He wanted to talk to her, to explain, seek her help, but knew better. This was better kept to himself.
At least for now.
One of the curses of being president.
But the fact remained that much more was at stake here than just his political career.
CHAPTER SIXTY-SIX
Cotton ran his hand along the walls. Parts were smooth, like glass, others sharp and rough, easily capable of slicing skin.
“Why is it gray?” he asked Patrycja.
“The salt is impure. It has some magnesium and calcium mixed with it, which is good for you. That’s what once made this salt so highly valued.”
They walked in the center of the tunnel, over grooves made long ago by heavy carts. All around were stalactites and stalagmites in the irregular shapes salt crystals adopted from water intrusion. One wall was totally sheathed in bright-white cauliflower-like formations.
“Do a lot of people come down here?” Stephanie asked.
“Oh, yes. It is a busy place. When the Austrians controlled the mine in the 18th century, they set up the first tourist routes. The price of a ticket then depended on the quality of the light provided. Torches were a basic fee, but fireworks were expensive.”
“They actually set off pyrotechnics down here?” he asked.
“As crazy as that sounds, they did. And the price depended on the color used.”
The sound from earlier continued to bother him, but Patrycja explained that it was probably just another tour group. Many ventured to Level IX during each day, but, as she explained, they all stayed closer to the elevators. None ventured this deep into the tunnels.
Their path drained into another chamber, larger than the ones they’d already encountered, and different in that pillars had been left across it from floor to ceiling. He counted eight, along with spotting two other exits.
“Is this some sort of junction?” Stephanie asked.
Patrycja nodded. “The miners would use this as a starting point, then dig to the next deposits. That’s why there’s a chapel here.”
Her light revealed a small room, separate and individual, that jutted from one wall into a square-shaped cavity. Heavy timbers framed out its entrance, a set of beams securing the opening on all four sides, supported by a thick center post. Across the top, scrawled in white chalk, was KAPLICZKA SW. FRANCISZKA.
Patrycja pointed at the words. “Chapel of St. Francis. Kapliczka means ‘small chapel.’”
Cotton stepped across to the framed opening. Past it, in his headlamp, he spied a crucifix relief chipped from the wall. Beneath, a thick salt shelf rested on two projecting wooden dowels. A few feet away a wooden pew had been constructed of plank boards and faced the altar. Neighboring walls held small niches with crude statues, one he recognized from the book back at the castle.
St. Bobola.
Stephanie and Patrycja came up beside him and added more illumination.
“This is it,” he said.
* * *
Eli stopped.
Both Konrad and Ivan had halted, too, along with Munoz behind him.
“I heard voices,” he whispered.
“It could be another tour group,” Konrad noted.
Perhaps. But caution was the word for this day. “Let’s go slow and make sure it’s not a problem.” He stared at Ivan. “You said Malone was in the vicinity.”
“I never received report on what happened,” Ivan breathed out. “You think he’s here.”
“I don’t know what to think. But we need to be careful.”
The Russian broke into a toothy grin. “Good advice, comrade. I agree. We be careful.”
“How much farther?” Eli asked Konrad.
“Around the next two bends and we’re there.”
“Lead way,” Ivan said to Konrad, who began heading off into the darkness.
Ivan unzipped his jumpsuit, removed a gun, and kept it down at his side, finger on the trigger but shielded from view by the big man’s thigh.
The Russian headed off.
Eli turned back to Munoz, who’d done the same thing with his weapon. His acolyte nodded.
Ready.
* * *
Cotton stepped into the chapel. Simple and austere, everything stained white by humidity. Graffiti decorated the roof bars that had been inserted along the rear wall for strength. Random words and letters. Initials. Numbers. Dates. A layer of crushed salt lay across the floor like sand.
“What’s with all the writing on the wood?” he asked.
“From the miners, over the centuries. We don’t eliminate what they left.”
“What exactly are we looking for?” Stephanie asked him.
“One hundred and forty-seven pages of documents. So it should be about that thick.”
His index finger and thumb showed three-quarters of an inch or so of space.
He stepped over to St. Bobola and saw that, like the crucifix, the distorted sculpture was not a separate piece. Instead it, and the niche itself, had been chipped from the wall in bas-relief. No way anything was either behind or under. The same was true with the other images.
Everything pointed to here.
But where?
Think.
* * *
Eli heard the voices at the same time everyone else did, and they all stopped. Ivan motioned and they extinguished their lights, Konrad the last to catch on to what was happening and follow suit.
They stood in absolute darkness.
“Is our destination just ahead?” he whispered.
“Around the next ben
d,” Konrad breathed out.
“Somebody already there,” Ivan said.
Both Ivan and Munoz were armed, the darkness now concealing that fact from Konrad. Eli knew what had to be done.
“Konrad, stay here,” he said to the blackness. “We have to investigate.”
“We go ahead with one light, pointed to floor,” Ivan added.
“Agreed.”
* * *
Cotton narrowed the choices and decided there could only be one solution.
The wooden pew.
It was the only thing not built of salt in the makeshift chapel.
Crude and simple in construction, fashioned from rough-cut one-by-six and one-by-eight planks nailed together. About four feet wide. With a bench for sitting and an angled platform for resting hands or a hymnal while kneeling.
He stepped over and lifted the structure, setting it to one side. Beneath, the salt floor was solid and undisturbed. He brushed it with his shoe. Little to no give was returned. Like concrete. He looked at Stephanie. Who nodded. They were thinking the same thing. Nothing buried.
He tipped the makeshift pew over.
Nothing.
Its base was composed of one-by-eight boards fashioned into rectangles. One was set at the rear beneath the bench where a penitent could sit, while the other formed a kneeler. They were tacked together with headless nails.
“There’s a compartment formed in both of those,” he said.
The trick was opening them.
He threw his weight and gave two swift kicks with his boot. The thin wood split and parted from the frame. He pushed through the splinters and saw he was right. There was a compartment. But it was empty. He turned his attention to the other base support and pounded it, too.
Inside, taped to the boards, was a vacuum-sealed plastic pouch. Now the machine he’d spotted back at the castle made sense. It contained a manila envelope, similar to the one in which he’d found the book back at the castle.
He wrenched it free. “This is it.”
