The Tombs

Albrecht and Remi collected nails until Sam said, “That’s enough to test the theory.” They all got back in the hole.

“Now we use our spades to try to pry up one end. A quarter inch will do.”

They pried an end up, and Sam held his spade down with one hand and bent to insert a nail sideways between the iron sheet and its stone base. Once one was in, he could insert twenty others without much strain. They repeated the process on the other end of the slab. Albrecht said, “Your theory is sound. Let’s hope your rollers are big enough.”

Sam knelt at one side of the slab of iron and moved it easily aside, rolling on the sixpe

“Let’s hope it’s not an air-raid shelter,” said Remi. “Or a septic tank.”

Sam said, “I can see part of the floor.” He took off his belt and slipped it over the handle of his spade and through the buckle. “Each of you hold one end of the spade and I’ll lower myself down a bit and jump.”

Remi put her hand on his shoulder. “Sam, I weigh eighty pounds less than you do.” She took the end of the belt and sat at the edge of the opening. She pushed off, rappelling down a few feet, then extended her arms and hung from the belt. Then she dropped into the darkness.

They heard the soft thud of her feet hitting the stone floor. There was silence as she walked into the part of the stone room where they couldn’t see her.

“Remi, talk,” Sam said. “Just so I know it wasn’t full of carbon monoxide, or fifty-year-old nerve gas.”

“It’s full of . . . nothing.”

“You mean grave robbers have been here?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Grave robbers are messy. Wait. There’s another big piece of iron. This one’s only tarnished, not much rust. It’s got something carved in it. Looks like Latin.”

“The Romans are my regular specialty,” said Albrecht. “I’ve got to see it.”

“Here. Hold on,” said Sam. “Exactly the way Remi did it.”

Albrecht held the belt and eased himself over the edge, then held on and rappelled a few steps, hung, then dropped the last couple feet.

Sam put the three spades together like spoons, slipped his belt around them and through the buckle, and propped them across a corner of the opening. He then lowered himself down.

The room was made of big river sandstone, worked roughly into rectangular blocks. They had been put together with mortar, so the room was waterproof.

Sam found Albrecht engrossed, standing beside Remi with his night vision goggles on and staring at the big piece of iron that had been burnished and then had Roman letters carved deeply into it. “Can you translate for us?” asked Sam.

“‘You have found my secret but have not begun to learn it. Know that treasures are buried in sadness, never in joy. I did not bury treasure once. I buried treasure five times. To find the last, you must reach the first. The fifth is the place where the world was lost.’”

Sam said, “Remi, your phone has a flash. You’d better get a shot of this.”

“But somebody could see it.”

“Unless you want to carry that chunk of iron to Szeged, we’ve got to chance it.”

She took off her night vision goggles, raised her cell phone, and took the picture. Then she said, “I’ll send this to Selma as soon as we’re aboveground and can send a signal.”

They all heard a sound like footsteps coming from above and froze in place, barely breathing. There was a voice, male, speaking quietly as he walked. Then someone laughed once, like a cough.

Sam jumped up, caught the end of the belt, and pulled it overhand. The spades came with it and dropped into his arms. They made a slight metallic noise, but he hoped it hadn’t been loud enough to reach the people above. He, Albrecht, and Remi crouched in the far end of the room, away from the entrance, waiting for the intruders to pass by the hole they had dug or come closer to examine it.

As the three watched, the steel slab was pushed across the opening, narrowing the faint rectangle of moonlight until it became a slit and then disappeared.

KISKUNHALAS, HUNGARY

THERE WAS THE SOUND OF DIRT BEING SHOVELED ONTO the iron slab that sealed the stone crypt. The shoveling continued. The first few loads of dirt were louder, and the ones after that quieter, but it was clear the dirt they had removed to dig down to the crypt was all being returned to the hole to cover it.

Sam whispered, “Stay still, and don’t use more oxygen than we have to.”

The three sat on the floor of the crypt, leaning against the stone walls, waiting. A half hour passed, then an hour.

“Do you hear anything?” whispered Remi.

“No,” Sam said. “I think they’ve gone.” Sam stood and moved to the space just below the slab of iron. “I think we can get out.”

“How?” asked Albrecht.

“We dug down about eight feet. The hole was eight feet wide and ten feet long—six hundred forty cubic feet. This room is ten feet wide, ten feet long, and ten feet deep. That’s a thousand cubic feet. We can let the dirt fall in here. We’ll spread it on the stone floor as it comes in and it will raise us as it does.”

“So simple,” said Albrecht. “You think like a Roman.”

“I just hope they haven’t left guards on the surface to watch the site,” Remi said softly.

Albrecht said, “I say we take the chance. We breathe about sixteen times a minute and consume about twenty-four liters of air. We’d better get started.”

“Right,” said Remi. “Let’s lift Sam up to reach the slab.”

“No,” said Sam. “It would take both of you to lift me, but I can lift you both. If I brace myself against the wall, you can each step up on one of my knees, then to my shoulder. Push your shovel blade between the wall and the iron slab and pry it open an inch or two. That should be enough.”

“He’s right,” said Albrecht. “The two of us can exert more force than Sam can alone.”

Sam selected a spot, braced his back against the wall, and bent his knees. Albrecht and Remi took off their boots. Albrecht took a shovel, then stepped from Sam’s knee to his shoulder. Remi stepped on the other knee and shoulder. They worked the blades of their shovels into the crack between the iron slab and the stone entrance. They moved both hands down to their shovel handles for maximum leverage. Remi said, “On three . . . one . . . two . . . three.”

Sam didn’t have to wait to find out if his plan had worked. The fine, sandy soil that had made this such a perfect place for viniculture immediately began to trickle from the narrow opening that they had made. It soon fell in an unbroken curtain, coming down steadily, in front of his eyes.

Remi came down from his shoulder and helped Albrecht step down. Sam raised himself up and sidestepped past the falling dirt. Whenever the soil under the opening got to be a foot deep, the three would shovel it into the empty end of the stone chamber in front of Attila’s message. As the minutes passed, the level rose steadily, and they stepped up on it repeatedly, rising higher and closer to the ceiling each time.

Filling the stone chamber with dirt left less and less space for air. When the floor level had risen about four feet, Sam lifted his shovel and worked it up into the narrow space between the stone and the iron slab, increasing the opening, and then scraped along the wall’s edge, bringing more dirt into the crypt.

Remi said, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to speed up the process before the air in here gets too scarce. I’ve cleared a few inches of space so we can slide the slab into it and make a bigger opening on the other side.”