King Solomon's Curse

  Nina gasped as she saw what he meant. ‘My God. It really is! Howie, turn the drone ninety degrees to the right.’

  Howie did so. The image on the screen rotated through a quarter-turn – and what had seemed abstract took on form. Enough of the carving was visible through the decaying leaves to show its true nature: a stylised bird, wings spread wide. ‘It’s not just any bird,’ the redhead went on. ‘It’s an eagle!’

  ‘Then that means—’ stammered Ziff.

  ‘The legend is true!’ she cut in.

  Fisher hurriedly checked that Rivero was filming the discussion. ‘Okay, hold on,’ he said. ‘Quick recap for the benefit of everyone who isn’t an archaeologist?’

  ‘The Hebrew legend of the Palace Without Entrance,’ Nina said, addressing the camera. ‘It said that to find the way in, Solomon questioned eagles that lived on its roof. Well, there are the eagles!’

  ‘Are they going to do “Hotel California”?’ asked Eddie.

  ‘Shush! And the other blocks around it have eagle carvings as well.’ She looked more closely. ‘And . . . see that? They’re not the same.’

  She darted a fingertip between details of the two carvings. ‘You’re right,’ exclaimed Ziff. One eagle had its left claw raised higher than the right and its beak tilted downwards, but both its neighbour’s feet were level while it was looking up. ‘What about the others? Are they all different?’

  Howie moved the drone to examine other blocks. There were indeed more subtle variations between each bird; heads looking left or right, wings extended or drawn up, claws open or closed. ‘So what does that mean?’ said Eddie.

  ‘It means,’ Nina said with delight, ‘it’s a puzzle. A puzzle that tells you how to find the entrance!’

  ‘According to the legend,’ continued Ziff, ‘Solomon first spoke to one eagle, who directed him to his older brother, who then directed him to its older brother, and so on until they found the oldest of them all – the only one who knew the location of the entrance.’

  Nina nodded. ‘My guess is that certain eagles point to other similar ones. You look for—’

  ‘Sorry to butt in, but the drone’s almost out of power,’ said Howie with sudden urgency. He quickly swept the little aircraft off the roof. ‘I need to land it.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ – Nina was about to swear until she realised Rivero’s camera was still focused on her – ‘. . . dammit. How long to recharge?’

  ‘Just gotta swap in a new battery. Then we’ll have another twenty minutes of flight time.’

  ‘Is that all? Really? We’re a fifth of the way through the twenty-first century and batteries still suck?’ She glowered at the drone as it buzzed down to land, then turned to regard the looming palace. ‘I’ll need to look at the carvings for much longer than that.’

  ‘How?’ asked Fisher.

  She addressed the camera. ‘Isn’t it obvious? We’ve got to get up there ourselves!’

  As Eddie had thought, the folding ladders the team had brought did not reach all the way to the roof. The Yorkshireman reluctantly ended up climbing as high as he could, then tossed a grappling hook on a rope over the edge above. It took a couple of attempts, but finally held firm. ‘Sorted!’ he called down to the others before ascending the final stretch. ‘I’ll fix the rope so everyone else can climb up.’

  Fisher was not enthusiastic. ‘I haven’t climbed a rope since gym class. And I wasn’t good at it even then.’

  ‘We can push you up if we have to, Mr Fisher,’ Fortune told him.

  Rivero grinned. ‘Can’t wait to get that on camera.’

  Nina inevitably was the first to follow her husband. Eddie helped her on to the roof. ‘Ay up. Fancy meeting you here.’

  ‘Hi,’ she said, grinning, before hurrying to the arched section. She brushed dirt from one of the blocks to reveal the eagle carved into it, then did the same to its neighbours.

  By the time she had cleared the images, Howie, Rivero, Ziff and Lydia had also made the climb. ‘Wait, don’t do anything until I’ve got the camera running,’ puffed the sweating Rivero. He turned to receive it from Paris, who had carried it up behind him. ‘Okay, what we got?’

  ‘What we’ve got,’ said Nina, ‘is a puzzle involving these eagle carvings.’ She wiped another block. ‘So far, I’ve seen eleven different points of variation: the position and direction of the heads, the feet, wings outstretched or bent, these feather details on the chest, and so on. That’s two thousand and forty-eight possible combinations, and while there are a lot of blocks in this roof, I don’t think there are that many.’

  More panting and scrabbling signalled Fisher’s arrival as Paris and Eddie pulled him on to the roof. ‘So . . . so what are we looking for?’ the director asked as Fortune climbed effortlessly up behind him.

  ‘Based on the legend, I’d say we need to find the eagles that match – that are family, so to speak.’ She indicated smaller markings on one of the slabs, Rivero moving in to film them. ‘I’m not sure what these mean yet, but they’re probably some kind of directional clue. Three rows up and eight blocks over, something like that. Find the first eagle, and it points you towards the next.’

  ‘The obvious question,’ said Ziff, joining her, ‘is: which is the first eagle?’

  ‘I don’t know, is the answer.’

  ‘First time for everything,’ said Lydia under her breath.

  Nina ignored her. ‘We’ll need to check the whole roof.’

  ‘Do we have any high-resolution pictures of the model in the First Temple?’ Ziff asked. ‘Perhaps there is a clue on its roof?’

  ‘My God, you’re right,’ she realised. ‘Why didn’t we think of that before? It’s a perfect replica – so its roof should be an exact copy of this one! Steven, Howie; do we have backups of everything from Jerusalem?’

  ‘Yeah, but I’ll have to dig ’em out from the hard drives,’ Howie told her.

  ‘Okay, do it! It’ll be a much faster way of finding the entrance than cleaning this entire roof.’

  ‘I know an even quicker way,’ said Eddie.

  Nina knew from his tone that he had discovered something important. ‘What is it?’

  ‘See that tower? It’s got a little tree growing on top of it.’ He pointed. A spindly plant stood upon the flat top of one of the towers along the palace’s western side, stretching hungrily towards a gap in the overhanging canopy. ‘None of the others have got anything more than creepers on them – so how’s it taken root?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, curious. ‘It’d need soil, but not much would accumulate up there. It’s not even that thick here, and it’s a much bigger surface.’ She dug her boot’s toe into the dirt on the rooftop, easily scraping through to the stone beneath.

  ‘I’ll tell you how it could, though,’ Eddie said. ‘If there’s a hole in the roof for it to build up in!’

  ‘A hole?’ said Ziff. ‘Or – an entrance?’

  ‘Maybe. It could be! We’ve got to look.’ Nina hugged her husband. ‘I know there was a reason I married you.’

  Eddie grinned. ‘What, my enormous cock?’

  ‘Eddie!’ Blushing, Nina punched his arm. ‘We’re being filmed!’

  ‘Oh, are we?’ he asked innocently, winking at Rivero’s lens.

  ‘We could just bleep that,’ suggested Fisher with a chuckle.

  Wemba brought up another ladder, which was taken to the tower and extended. It fell short of the top, but this time only by a few feet – enough for someone on the top rung to pull themselves up.

  Eddie was about to scale it, but Nina pushed in front of him. ‘No, no. I want to do this.’

  ‘You don’t know if it’s safe,’ he objected.

  ‘We’re on the roof of a three-thousand-year-old temple on top of a cliff in the middle of the jungle. How safe is anything?’ She started to climb.

  Eddi
e sighed and looked into the camera again. ‘Some day, our daughter’s going to watch this and use it as an excuse for why she should be allowed to ride her bike down Fifth Avenue without a helmet.’

  ‘Yeah, yeah,’ Nina said dismissively. She quickly reached the ladder’s top and peered over the edge of the new roof.

  Even from her low angle, she saw at once that the tree had taken root in more than a thin layer of dirt. The platform was square, about twenty feet along each edge – but set into its centre was a recess some six feet by six, full of dark, moist soil.

  She pulled herself up. ‘What can you see?’ Ziff called.

  ‘There’s a pit in the middle of the roof. Enough dirt’s built up in it for the tree to grow.’ She scooped out some soil. While it seemed rich at the surface, it was gritty not far below. ‘There’s sand underneath it!’

  ‘Sand? Do you think—’

  ‘Yeah, I do think,’ she said. None of the other towers had any features resembling the one at her feet. ‘Eddie was right. This is the Palace With Entrance!’

  12

  With a crackle of tearing roots, the little tree toppled over the tower’s side and plunged to the ground over fifty feet below in an explosion of leaves and dust. Those watching from the roof whooped and cheered.

  Eddie, who along with Fortune, Paris and Wemba had dug the tree out from the pit, was less vocal but equally exuberant. ‘Bye, you bugger,’ he said, shaking off sweat.

  ‘Nice work!’ Nina shouted from below. ‘Was anything underneath?’

  ‘God, give us a chance!’ He turned to the ragged hole where the tree had stood. ‘More sand, but . . .’ He jabbed a shovel into the newly excavated space. Muffled thuds as the blade cut into the soil – then came a harsh clank as it struck stone beneath. ‘The bottom’s about a foot down.’

  ‘How long will it take you to clear it?’

  ‘The four of us? Twenty minutes, if that.’

  ‘More digging?’ said Fortune. ‘I am glad I took off my jacket.’

  Eddie regarded him sidelong. ‘Yeah, and there’s still not a speck of dirt on you. How do you do that?’

  The African gave him a gold-toothed smile. ‘I am just lucky.’

  ‘If you were that lucky, you wouldn’t be up here digging a bloody hole in eighty-degree heat.’

  Fortune laughed, then picked up another shovel. With the four men working in concert, it did not take long to clear the pit. ‘Okay, we’re done,’ Eddie finally announced. ‘The people with an archaeology degree can get their lazy arses up here now.’

  ‘We will get out of the way,’ said Fortune. He and the two other Congolese descended the ladder.

  They were soon replaced by Nina, Ziff and the documentary crew. Nina stepped into the pit to examine its floor. ‘This,’ she said, running a finger along a narrow gap surrounding a block at its centre, ‘looks like it might lift out.’

  Ziff probed the crack with a fingernail. ‘It will be heavy.’

  ‘I came prepared.’ She unslung a backpack, metal clanking inside it.

  ‘Bollocks,’ said Eddie as she produced some crowbars. ‘No prizes for guessing who’ll be hoiking big stone blocks out of the floor. I should’ve gone back down with Fortune when I had the chance. He is bloody lucky.’

  ‘Oh, stop moaning,’ Nina said, smiling. ‘You sound like . . .’ She realised her eyes had gone to Lydia. ‘Mona the moaner,’ she hurriedly concluded.

  ‘Who?’ Eddie asked, puzzled. Rivero snickered.

  ‘Nobody, never mind.’ She picked up a crowbar to cover her embarrassment as the New Zealander’s look of suspicion grew. ‘Help me get this thing open.’

  Both bars were jammed into the gaps on each side of the block. The couple readied themselves, then pulled. The slab inched upwards as they repositioned the tips of their crowbars in turn. ‘Nearly – got it,’ Nina grunted. ‘Just a little—’ The stone slab jerked upwards. ‘Whoa, wedge it, wedge it!’

  ‘I’ve got it,’ said Eddie, holding it in place. Nina tugged again. The thick flagstone lifted higher – and dust blew out from beneath it as a dark crack opened up. ‘It’s coming out!’ More effort, and he managed to slide the slab out of its resting place. Once freed, it did not take long to move clear.

  Nina peered into the revealed opening. A vertical shaft dropped into darkness below, holes cut into one wall acting as a ladder. ‘This is it!’ she announced in awe. ‘We found the way into the Palace Without Entrance. Or rather,’ she went on, looking up at her husband, ‘you did, Eddie. You bypassed the puzzle – which means you actually out-thought King Solomon!’

  Eddie grinned. ‘I always thought I was really wise. It’s just no one ever agreed with me!’

  ‘It’s very possible that nobody has been inside the palace since Solomon built it!’ said Ziff excitedly. ‘We have to get down there and see.’

  ‘Your attitude’s changed since we opened up the First Temple,’ Nina said, lightly teasing. ‘You weren’t in such a rush back then.’

  ‘What can I say? You have shown me the benefits of your . . . unique approach.’ The old man grinned. ‘But this is an incredible find. The First Temple had been lost, yes, but its existence was never in doubt. This, though? It is a legend brought to life!’

  ‘We’d better get some more gear, then,’ said Eddie. ‘Lights, for a start.’ He was about to call down to Fortune when he noticed something odd about the slab they had removed. ‘Hold on, look at this.’

  He indicated the bottom of the square flag. Beneath the inches of pale stone was a layer of a dull grey material. ‘Is that lead?’ Nina asked. She tapped it with a crowbar. The soft metal dented with the contact. ‘It is.’

  Ziff pointed into the entrance. ‘There is more here, on the inside.’ Beneath its lip was another line of grey, close to an inch thick. ‘It goes all the way around.’

  Eddie drew back in alarm. ‘The place is lead-lined? It is fucking radioactive!’ Several of the others pulled away from the opening. ‘No wonder all the bloody trees are sick! We need to get out of here.’

  Lydia shook her head. ‘A radiation source wouldn’t make that low-frequency noise.’

  ‘What are you, a nuclear physicist?’

  She looked offended. ‘As a matter of fact, I did study physics at university.’

  ‘Oh, well, then I wholeheartedly apologise,’ he said with a sarcastic lack of contrition. ‘But King Solomon bricked up whatever’s down there inside a lead-lined palace because it killed off the people who lived around it! This whole place was called the City of the Damned, remember?’

  ‘There’s a way we can check,’ Lydia insisted. ‘Jay, put the camera’s lens cap on and point it down the hole, then shoot some footage.’

  Rivero shot her a bewildered frown. ‘What good’ll that do?’

  ‘If there’s any dangerous radiation down there, the camera’s CCD will still pick it up even through the cap – it’ll show on the recording as static. We did an experiment using an old phone camera where we put tape over the lens and filmed a radiation source. It looks like snow.’

  The cameraman was still unconvinced. ‘Wait, so you want me to poke my face into Chernobyl?’

  ‘If it really is radioactive down there, we’ve already been exposed to it,’ Nina pointed out. ‘And David and I have been closer to it than anyone else.’

  ‘Okay, then you shoot the footage!’

  She impatiently held out her hands. ‘Give me the camera, then.’

  The prospect of surrendering what was practically an inseparable appendage gave Rivero second thoughts. ‘No, no, it’s okay, I can do it,’ he muttered, sulkily attaching the lens cap and moving to the shaft. All the same, he held the camera at arm’s length as he pointed it into the darkness. ‘All right, five seconds – that better be long enough,’ he said, rapidly retreating.

  The Sony had a small fold-out
monitor. Everyone clustered around it as he reviewed the recording. ‘It just looks black,’ said Fisher, relieved.

  Rivero paused playback, zooming in on the frame. Blocky digital artefacts became vaguely visible, but there was no sign of the snow Lydia had described. ‘I think it’s safe,’ she announced.

  Expressions of relief echoed around the group. ‘Second kid’s still an option, then,’ Eddie said to Nina.

  ‘As if the first isn’t enough of a handful?’ she replied. ‘So why would Solomon have lined the roof with lead if not to keep radiation in?’

  ‘It would protect whatever is inside from water,’ suggested Ziff.

  ‘Only one way to find out.’ Nina went to the top of the shaft. ‘We have to go inside.’

  With the help of the three porters, the team brought all the equipment needed to explore the palace’s interior to its entrance. ‘Okay,’ said Nina, ‘I think we’re ready. We should limit the number of people going inside to start with, though. Sorry,’ she added to her Congolese companions.

  ‘We don’t get to see the treasure?’ said Wemba, disappointed.

  ‘We don’t even know if there is any treasure,’ Ziff told him. ‘For all we know, the shaft could be blocked at the bottom.’

  ‘I could send the drone down to look,’ Howie suggested, patting the quadcopter’s case.

  ‘I’d rather get the first look with my own eyes, thanks,’ said Nina. ‘And why did you bring it with you at all? A drone won’t be much use indoors.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Fisher said. He indicated the vaulted roof. ‘There could be a big open space underneath that. If there is, then the drone can fly up to the ceiling and get some great shots of the whole interior.’

  ‘Just remember that this is an archaeological expedition first and a photo opportunity second,’ Nina insisted. She donned a backpack, then shone a powerful flashlight into the darkness. The holes cut into the wall descended all the way to the bottom, which she estimated was at least twenty feet below the level of the palace’s main roof. ‘Long climb, but doesn’t look too hard.’

  ‘Someone should stay up here while we’re inside, just in case,’ Eddie said to Fortune.