The Buried Cities. James Frey

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      “These so-called fairy towers are spectacular,” says Brecht. “But the truly remarkable parts are underground. The rock is fairly easy to dig away, and the cities extend to great depths beneath the surface, in some instances hundreds of meters.”

      “Who built them?” I ask.

      Brecht smiles. “That depends who you ask. Most archaeologists will tell you they were built by early Christians, to be used as places of refuge from persecution. And many of the underground cities do feature churches, some with beautiful frescoes painted inside them. But this place is different.”

      “Different how?” Ari asks.

      Brecht raises his eyebrows and grins like an excited kid. “It’s best to show you.”

      We keep walking. We have been traveling for several days, ever since we left Moscow after springing Brecht from Taganka Prison. The journey has been a difficult one, made more difficult, at least for me, by the presence of Karl Ott. Since he betrayed us in Moscow, attempting to turn us over to Charles Kenney in exchange for a reward, I have been even more suspicious of him than I was to begin with. Kenney himself is another worry. Claiming to be working for my own council, he turned out to be a rogue operative who had somehow found out about Endgame and decided he could make a profit by doing business with the lines. But which lines he made contact with, and what kind of deals he made with them, we don’t know. And since I pushed him off the roof of a building, he can’t tell us.

      I don’t really want Ott with us at all. We needed him in Moscow, where his connections helped us get into Taganka Prison, and he helped us because we were also supposed to be freeing his father. Unfortunately, his father was killed in the attempt, and Ott turned on us. At first, he wanted to return to France on his own to check on his family. He was worried that someone else looking for the weapon might harm them or kidnap them to use as a bargaining chip. If I didn’t think he might be running back to try to make another deal with someone else, I might have let him go. Then, after Brecht said he wanted to see his daughter again and make sure she and his grandson were safe, I thought we might all be going back to France. And since his daughter was married to my brother and his grandson is my nephew, I get being worried about them. But Endgame doesn’t stop so you can check in on your family, so after some back and forth Ari and I convinced them that finding the second set of weapon plans would be the best way to make sure they got to see their loved ones again. The plan now is that once we find what we’ve come for, we’ll go back to France and figure out our next moves.

      So all of us are still together, although uneasily. Even though Kenney is dead, we don’t know what information he might already have relayed back to the Minoans. Nor do we know if it is true that the Minoans, or someone else with whom Kenney was working, have taken Lottie and Bernard. Since we have no way of contacting them, we can’t know for certain. We may be racing against a clock we cannot see. All we can do is hope that we’ve made the right choice.

      One thing that I am not at all surprised about is that the Minoans have put a price on Ari’s head. I’m sure Kenney wasn’t lying about that. What worries me more is that Cassandra didn’t make an appearance in Moscow. I’d have thought that once she knew where Ari and I were going, she would have made it a point to come after us. Since we haven’t seen her, that means that she either didn’t arrive in time to confront us, or that she has another plan. One way or another, I sense that we will meet again, and soon.

      “If people know about this place, why hasn’t it been studied like the other underground cities?” Ari asks.

      “It’s thought to be unlucky,” Brecht answers. “Although people still reside in many of the underground cities, this one was abandoned centuries ago. The locals avoid it, and as you saw, there are no populated towns for many kilometers in every direction. That is not by accident. They fear this place. They say it’s cursed.”

      “Cursed?” Ari says. “How so?”

      “It’s said that if anyone disturbs the secrets hidden here, he will suffer greatly.”

      “Just like in The Mummy,” I say.

      Yildiz turns again. “Boris Karloff!” she says, and gives me a thumbs-up. I return the gesture, and she cackles happily. Kelebek, watching us, scowls.

      “Rather like that, yes,” says Brecht. “Well, more like the real-life Lord Carnarvon, who financed the expedition to find Tut’s tomb and died shortly after it was opened.”

      “Carnarvon died from a mosquito bite, not a curse,” Ott says, snorting. “I suppose Hollywood didn’t find that interesting enough.”

      I ignore him. “But you’ve already opened this particular place, haven’t you?” I ask Brecht.

      “Yes and no. We did a bit of excavation. But we were … interrupted.”

      I stop walking, which forces Ari and Ott to stop as well. Brecht turns and looks at us. Ahead of him, Yildiz and Kelebek keep going. “What?” Brecht says, wiping his brow with a handkerchief. Despite the cold, he is sweating.

      “What have you not told us?” I say.

      “Nothing,” he says. “I told you that the second half of the weapon plans are here.”

      “Yes,” I say. “And do you know where, exactly, they are?”

      “No,” he admits. “Not exactly.”

      Ari and I look at each other. Ott curses. Hearing him, Yildiz and Kelebek stop and wait to see what is happening.

      “You might have mentioned this earlier,” I tell Brecht.

      “I told you the truth in Moscow,” he says. “Just not, perhaps, the whole of it.”

      “What makes you so sure the plans are here, then?” Ott asks, voicing what we are all wondering.

      “Information gathered at the site where the first set of plans was found,” he says. “There was a map. It showed the location of this city, as well as details of the underground rooms.”

      This is better news. “And you recall the details of this map.”

      “Regrettably, it was destroyed,” he says. “Shortly after we arrived here to begin our search.”

      “Destroyed?” Ari says.

      “By one of the other guides,” Brecht explains. “He claimed he was doing it to prevent us from causing a disaster. He was shot for his troubles, but the damage was done. The map was gone.”

      “And there was no copy?” I say.

      “None. And no further work was done.”

      “Why not?” I ask.

      “The tide of the war was turning against our employers,” Brecht explains. “All available minds and bodies were recalled to Germany in an attempt to defend what remained of the Reich.”

      “Then how are we going to find the plans now?” Ari says.

      “By doing what archaeologists and adventurers have done since the first robber broke into the first tomb,” Brecht says. “Following the clues.”

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