Soul Intent Page 22

  During our final decompression stop we discussed how to scare the guards outside our camp.

  “It’s the twenty-first century—they’re not superstitious villagers chasing monsters with pitchforks,” Val said.

  “Their grandmas must have scared them with some Slovak folklore,” I said. “We just need to wake up what’s already there.”

  We’d have to wake it up enough that they wouldn’t dare hang around to watch us haul out the gold.

  fifty

  Present Day

  Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

  Val and I finally finished decompressing, and then we surfaced, unsuited, and dressed. Rose and Marie had already worked with George to clean the silt off the boxes, and Val and I went through the contents of my mesh bag.

  I had grabbed over thirty bones, two pairs of boots, what looked like a leather overcoat, and a belt. It was definitely a body. But was it Ned’s?

  “Look at this,” Val said. She brushed the silt off a block-shaped hunk of crud about half the size of a paperback book. “It could be a wallet.”

  I laid down the bit of rope I had cleaned off and took the block from Val. It looked like a standard bi-fold wallet. I found the crease and pulled the top layers apart. The leather was stiff, and it cracked as the two sides separated.

  I used my thumb to force open the right inside pocket. A gold card, still shiny under some silt and about the size of a driver’s license, lay inside. I pulled it out. “Ned Callaghan,” I read out loud. “Member, Soul Identity. 1912.”

  “You found him, Scott.” Val sounded choked up.

  I stared at the card in my hands. I rubbed at some loose silt that obscured the logo. These bones truly did belong to Ned Callaghan, my soul line predecessor.

  Val knelt next to me. “How do you feel?” she asked.

  I tried to think of something apropos. “Overwhelmed,” I said. That fit.

  I picked up Ned’s skull and held it in my hands. I closed my eyes and tried to remember what he had written in his soul line collection, and what Madame Flora had told me about him. I wished I had a picture of what he looked like.

  The irony behind me and my soul line predecessor both helping an ethically challenged Gypsy lady walk away with some previously stolen gold didn’t escape me. But we had work to do: I needed to stuff Ned’s bones into one of the wooden boxes so he could come to the aid of Madame Flora one last time.

  I tried to lay out Ned’s bones in the proper order. Most of the larger pieces were easy to place, and I sprinkled the smaller bones by the hands and feet. Val helped, and soon Ned’s skeleton took shape.

  George and the twins stood to one side and watched. “You ready for a box?” George asked.

  I nodded. “Did Goering’s papers survive?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “All three boxes were full of muck and what might once have been leather bindings,” he said.

  “That’s probably for the better,” Val said. “This way his future carrier won’t have to deal with the drama of figuring out what to do with Nazi memories.”

  “Don’t let Archie hear you talk that way,” I said.

  George brought over the boxes, and I placed the leather overcoat on the bottom of the first one. It was too long, so I folded its tails in. I put the larger pair of boots at one end, the belt in the middle, and Ned’s skull, facing downward, at the top.

  Val helped me place the other bones. We ran the vertebrae down the middle, slid what we guessed were the arm bones into the coat’s sleeves, and jumbled the ribs and leg bones over each other. I slid the pelvis in backward, inside the belt, and placed the wallet, minus the card, next to it. Then we were done. George handed me the box’s cover, and I gave Ned a lingering look before I set it on top.

  I didn’t know what to do with young Flora’s old boots, so I tossed them in another box.

  We all knelt by the water and washed the mud off our hands and arms. Then the five of us carried the three boxes up the tunnel.

  George stopped us right before we reached the entrance. I squinted into the afternoon gray light, and I saw Dara Sabol, police chief, speaking with Sue, Archie, and Madame Flora.

  “Leave the boxes here for now,” I whispered.

  We stacked the boxes in the shadows. Then we walked out of the cave and over to the fire to join the rest of our group.

  Sabol stood up, hands on her hips. She looked at George for a minute before speaking. “How is diving?” she asked.

  George smiled. “The kids are enjoying your beautiful mine.”

  “Tomorrow your two-day permit expires.” The police chief looked at her watch. “Eight more hours.”

  George threw a glance at Sue, who raised her hands palm-sides-up. He turned back to Sabol. “Now Chief, you gave us two full days’ access to the mines,” he said. “We’ll be out of here bright and early tomorrow morning.”

  She folded her arms low across her chest. “You come yesterday, and you here all day. Two days, as requested. Leave by midnight.”

  George sighed and looked at Archie. “I really thought we had a full forty-eight hours, Mr. Morgan.”

  Madame Flora cleared her throat, but Sue held up her hand and turned to the police chief. “Obviously this is just a misunderstanding between us. Can we please extend for another day?”

  Sabol pursed her lips. “No extensions. Next group arrives at midnight.”

  “The next group?” Madame Flora’s voice was sharp.

  The police chief nodded. “Scientists study zooplankton in mine waters. They use our divers. One week, then you come back, okay?”

  George pulled his wallet out of his pocket and started flipping through a large wad of bills. “If there’s anything we can do…”

  As soon as she saw the wallet, Chief Sabol turned and faced away and refused to meet his eyes again. “You must leave by midnight,” she said as she stared at the ground.

  Somebody was turning her screws. I pulled George off to the side. “Can we get everything out and away in eight hours?” I murmured.

  He stuffed his wallet back into his pocket. “Only if we can lose our audience. Even then it’ll be tight.”

  Ned would have to make an earlier-than-expected entrance. I walked around and stood in front of Dara. “Chief Sabol,” I said, “would your guards like to help us and earn some extra money?”

  She squinted at me. “Help you how?”

  “Haul our gear up from the cave,” I said. “And we need some help preparing a special ceremony.”

  She scratched her head. After a moment, she nodded. “You pay me. I pay them.”

  “How much?”

  “One thousand two hundred dollars.”

  “For how many people?”

  “Six.”

  I looked at George, and he pulled out his wallet. “I’ll pay you half now, and half when we’re done,” he said. “Call your team.”

  The police chief pulled a handheld radio out of her jacket pocket and spoke into it. She put the radio away and smiled at me. “My men come in two minutes.”

  fifty-one

  Present Day

  Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

  Ten minutes later, Chief Dara Sabol and five men in identical gray uniforms stood in front of me. “Tell us what to do,” she said.

  Sue handed me her intruder display. I saw fourteen red dots in the clearing, and no dots anywhere else. That was good.

  I motioned to Val, and she and Madame Flora joined me. “Val will translate,” I said.

  Val spoke to the police in Slovakian, and they nodded. I noticed Dara give one of her men an uneasy look.

  I pointed at Madame Flora. “Two men and this lady came to visit your mines in October 1946,” I said.

  Val translated, and the team turned to look at the old Gypsy.

  “They brought three very special boxes to store in the mine,” I said. “They hired a local guide named Vlado to help them.”

  After Val translated, one of the older men whispered something into Dara’s ear. The c
hief looked at me. “Jan is son of Vlado,” she said.

  Talk about luck—maybe Jan could help me spin this story. “Did your father tell you about the boxes?” I asked him.

  He nodded and spoke to Val.

  “His father told the story many times,” she translated.

  I smiled at him, but I didn’t say anything.

  Jan looked at me, then at Val. I waited for him to think it through.

  Then his eyes went wide, and he blurted something to Val, and his buddies gasped.

  “He wants to know if we’re here for the strigoi morti.”

  I nodded at Jan. “Tell me what your father told you,” I said.

  He spoke for two minutes, waving his hands and raising his voice a few times. When he finished, Val turned to me and Madame Flora.

  “Jan says his father guided a beautiful Roma girl, a German soldier, and an old man on a cane to this entrance. They brought three strigoi in their coffins along with many barrels of cognac.

  “Jan says they showed his father the three vampires. They slept fully dressed with their arms folded across their chests. Their skin was pure white, and their hair was fire-red. One of them had a long beard, and one was a woman.”

  Madame Flora snorted, and I glared at her.

  Val continued. “Jan says his father helped place the vampires into the mine—”

  “I wish he had helped,” Madame Flora whispered.

  “—but when they were finished,” Val said, “the vampires burst out of their coffins and attacked the four of them. Jan says his father fought them off, saved the girl, and escaped.”

  Madame Flora opened her mouth, but I quickly grabbed her arm. “Ask him what happened to the vampires,” I said to Val.

  Val asked, and after Jan answered, she translated. “After he recovered from his injuries, his father returned with some German soldiers who were chasing the strigoi. The mine had half-flooded, the bodies had vanished, and the coffins and cognac had disappeared. The only thing anybody found was a ruined campsite here on the surface.”

  “And the girl?” I asked.

  “I was about to translate that. Jan says his father talked about the beautiful dark-haired girl for the rest of his life. After they escaped, she thanked him and kissed him, but then she clapped her hands and vanished in a flash of blinding white light.”

  I leaned close to Madame Flora’s ear. “Yet another admirer.”

  “The story sounds like it’s been improved over the years,” she whispered.

  “It suits our purposes,” I said. I turned to the police chief. “We are here to finish what was started sixty-four years ago.”

  Dara swallowed and looked away. Val translated, and the five men shuffled their feet and looked down at the ground. Jan spoke after a minute.

  Val translated. “What do you want them to do?”

  “The strigoi morti will soon awaken,” Madame Flora said, “from the cognac we brought to keep them satisfied.” She paused for Val to translate.

  The six riveted their eyes on the old fortune teller.

  Madame Flora sighed. “Unless we take care of them once and for all, they will start to hunt outside of the mine.”

  “How will you take care of them?” The police chief asked, shuddering.

  “We must follow the old ways to kill them,” I said. “Cut out both hearts, put garlic under their tongues, drive a nail in their skulls, and smear them in oil.”

  Val translated, and the police chief and her men stared at me with their mouths open.

  “We have finished only one so far,” I said. “The old man.”

  As Val translated, I motioned to George and Sue. “Bring the boxes,” I called.

  George signaled to Rose and Marie, and the four of them brought the three wooden boxes out of the cave. They laid them out by the entrance.

  George came over to me. “Ned is on the far end,” he said.

  I pointed at Val. “Tell our friends that I wish to show them what a vampire looks like once we kill it.”

  Jan walked over and spoke to Dara. She shook her head, and Jan grabbed her arm and stared at her as he spoke again, this time more urgently.

  “What’s he saying?” I asked Val.

  She watched them for a minute. “Jan wants to leave, right now,” she said. “Dara is telling him he will be well paid. She just ordered him to stay.”

  Jan loosened his grip on the chief’s arm and sighed.

  I walked over to Ned’s box and slid my fingers under the cover. “Tell them it’s safe,” I said. “They can come closer.”

  Val translated, and after looking at each other, the six of them gathered in a circle around the box.

  I cleared my throat. “After we performed the procedure, we placed the vampire face-down in the coffin. He grew old before our eyes.” I waited for Val to translate, and then I lifted the cover off the box.

  All six of them flinched, and Jan gave a slight groan as he looked at Ned’s bones.

  “He’s harmless now.” I reached in and grabbed Ned’s skull. “Even the nail disappeared—see for yourselves.” I held it out to Jan, but he shrank back.

  I offered the skull to the others as Val translated. Nobody seemed to want to touch it, so I placed it back in the box and put the cover on top. “The old one wasn’t too difficult,” I said, “but it took four of us to hold him down while we drove the nail into his head.” I pointed to the other two boxes. “These two know what’s coming, so it will be much harder. We need all of you to help us kill them properly.”

  The translation sparked off a loud and contentious conversation between the six of them. After a few minutes I asked Val to translate.

  “They’re almost ready to help,” she said. She listened some more. “The chief told them they each would make two hundred bucks. That seems to have clinched it.”

  Another few minutes of discussion and the chief turned to me. “We are ready. What do we do?”

  I pointed at the middle box. “When I lift off the top, hold her down.”

  George gave me a hammer and a long steel spike, and Sue handed Val a clove of garlic and a bottle of olive oil. I set the hammer on the ground, then got ready to lift the top.

  “Ready?” I asked.

  They each took a deep breath and nodded. Two of the men crossed themselves.

  I pulled the top off as fast as I could and let out a yell. The six of them grunted and leaned forward, holding their hands out in front of them.

  Except for the extra pair of women’s boots we recovered, the box was empty.

  Jan let out another moan, and I gave a loud gasp. Then I chewed on my bottom lip. “Let’s check the other box,” I said.

  Val translated, and the six gathered around. When that box came up empty, they looked even more worried.

  I swung around and pointed at the cave entrance. “They must have escaped—we must catch them before it’s too late!” I yelled.

  Dara motioned to her men. They huddled together and held a whispered conversation. After a minute, Dara came over.

  “We go now,” she said, chin up in the air.

  I glared at her and tried to put on a big frown. “We need your help,” I said.

  “We are police, and I could arrest you for murder,” she said. “Maybe even kidnapping.” The police chief put her hands on her hips. “Clean up and leave by midnight, or your team goes to jail.”

  “So you’re just going to leave us here?” I stuck out my lower lip and let it tremble just slightly. “With them?”

  She shrugged. “Good luck,” she said. She turned to George and stuck out her hand. “Give me rest of money.”

  George looked at me.

  I scowled at her. “What are we paying you for? Give us the six hundred back.”

  She stared at me for a minute. Then she stalked off.

  The six of them headed in a tight bunch to the edge of the clearing. Jan turned back and frowned, but then he waved his hand and walked away.

  After five minutes of wat
ching the intruder display, Sue smiled. “They’re gone. That leaves just the eight of us.”

  George looked at his watch. “We’d better hurry.”

  fifty-two

  Present Day

  Dubnik Mine, Slovakia

  Since we had to wait for more nitrogen to bleed out of our bodies before we dove again, we spent the next two hours packing our surface gear. Val and I helped George and Sue tear down the tents while the twins went into the mine, checked the diving gear, and replaced the scrubbers and tanks on the rebreathers.

  When all we had left on the surface was the packed green van, the intruder gear, and the ashes from the fire, all eight of us went into the mine. Both Archie and Madame Flora insisted on being present when we pulled the gold out of the water, so we helped them negotiate the low spots in the tunnel, and we made our way to the top of the Viliam gallery.

  “Are you sure it’s okay to leave the outside unguarded?” I asked George.

  He shrugged. “We don’t really have a choice. We’ve only got five more hours, and I need Sue’s help.”

  “Mr. Morgan and Flora are safer down here with us,” Sue said.

  I nodded. We were jammed for time.

  George and Sue helped the four of us suit up. The twins descended, and Val and I stayed on the surface.

  “Pull her up, George,” Rose said over the intercom after a few minutes.

  George turned the lever on the winch. Val and I waited for the first barrel to rise, and as soon as the top showed, we swam over and helped George maneuver it to the ledge.

  Madame Flora walked over to the barrel and used her hands to wipe away the silt. She bowed her head and stood with both hands on its rim. Archie came and put his arm around her shoulders, and when she looked up and grinned, the six of us let out a cheer.

  George lowered the cable back down, and in the next thirty minutes, we raised eight of the barrels.

  “Okay, it’s time to switch,” Marie said. “We’re heading up.”

  The reason we were switching was because our residual nitrogen level had climbed with all the diving. If Rose and Marie stayed down any longer, they’d be stuck in decompression for more time than we had left. As it was, they needed to hang out at fifteen feet for a half hour.