He cupped his hands around the pulsating glow of his cigarette tip to warm them. Gott, it was cold! Colder down here than in the open air up on the rampart where Ernst and Otto were patrolling. Lutz had come down to the cellar knowing it was cold. Ostensibly, he hoped the lower temperature would refresh him and help keep him awake; actually, he wanted a chance for a private reconnaissance.
For Lutz had yet to be dissuaded from his belief that there was papal treasure here. There were too many indications—in fact, everything pointed to it. The crosses were the first and most obvious clue; they weren't good, strong, symmetrical Maltese crosses, but they were crosses nonetheless. And they did look like gold and silver. Further, none of the rooms was furnished, which meant that no one was intended to live here. But far more striking was the constant maintenance: Some organization had been paying the upkeep of this place for centuries without interruption. Centuries! He knew of only one organization with the power, the resources, and the continuity for that—the Catholic Church.
As far as Lutz was concerned, the keep was being maintained for only one purpose: to safeguard Vatican loot.
It was here somewhere—behind the walls or under the floors—and he'd find it.
Lutz stared at the stone wall across the corridor from him. The crosses were particularly numerous down here in the cellar, and as usual they all looked the same—
—except perhaps for that one off to the left there, the one in the stone on the bottom row at the edge of the light ... something different about the way the wan illumination glanced off its surface. A trick of the light? A different finish?
Or a different metal?
Lutz took his Schmeisser automatic from its resting place across his knees and leaned it against the wall. He unsheathed his bayonet as he crawled across the corridor on his hands and knees. The instant the point touched the yellow metal of the cross's upright he knew he was on to something: The metal was soft... soft and yellow as only solid gold can be.
His hands began to tremble as he dug the tip of the blade into the interface of cross and stone, wedging it deeper and deeper until he felt it grate against stone. Despite increasing pressure, he could advance the blade no farther. He had penetrated to the rear of the inlaid cross. With a little work he was sure he could pop the entire thing out of the stone in one piece. Leaning against the handle of the knife, Lutz applied steadily increasing pressure. He felt something give and stopped to look.
Damn! The tempered steel of the bayonet was tearing through the gold. He tried to adjust the vector of force more directly outward from the stone, but the metal continued to bulge, to stretch—
—the stone moved.
Lutz withdrew the bayonet and studied the block. Nothing special about it: two feet wide, about a foot and a half high, and probably a foot deep. It was unmortared like the rest of the blocks in the wall, only now it stood a full quarter inch out from its fellows. He rose and paced the distance down to the doorway on the left; entering the room there, he paced the distance back to the wall within. He repeated the procedure on the other side in the room to the right of the loose stone. Simple addition and subtraction revealed a significant discrepancy. The number of steps didn't match.
There was a large dead space behind the wall.
With a tight thrill tingling in his chest, Lutz fairly fell upon the loose block, prying frantically at its edge. Despite his best efforts, however, he could not move it any farther out of the wall. He hated the thought, but finally had to admit that he couldn't do it alone. He would have to bring someone else in on this.
Otto Grunstadt, patrolling the wall at this moment, was the obvious choice. He was always looking for a way to pick up a few quick and easy marks. And there were more than a few involved here. Behind that loose stone waited millions in papal gold. Lutz was sure of it. He could almost taste it.
Leaving his Schmeisser and bayonet behind, he ran for the stairs.
"Hurry, Otto!"
"I still don't know about this," Grunstadt said, trotting to keep up. He was heavier, darker than Lutz, and sweating despite the cold. "I'm supposed to be on duty above. If I'm caught—"
"This will only take a minute or two. It's right over here," Lutz said.
After helping himself to a kerosene lamp from the supply room, he had literally pulled Grunstadt from his post, talking all the while of treasure and of being rich for life, of never having to work again. Like a moth catching sight of a light, Grunstadt had followed.
"See?" Lutz said, standing over the stone and pointing. "See how it's out of line?"
Grunstadt knelt to examine the warped and lacerated border of the stone's inlaid cross. He picked up Lutz's bayonet and pressed the cutting edge against the yellow metal of the upright. It cut easily.
"Gold, all right," he said softly. Lutz wanted to kick him, tell him to hurry up, but he had to let Grunstadt make up his own mind. He watched him try the bayonet point on all the other crosses within reach. "All the other uprights are brass. This is the only one that's worth anything."
"And the stone that it's in is loose," Lutz added quickly. "And there's a dead space behind it six feet wide and who knows how deep."
Grunstadt looked up and grinned. The conclusion was inescapable. "Let's get started."
Working in concert they made progress, but not quickly enough to satisfy Lutz. The stone block canted infinitesimally to the left, then to the right, and after fifteen minutes of backbreaking labor it stood less than an inch out from the wall.
"Wait," Lutz panted. "This thing is a foot deep. It'll take all night like this. We'll never finish before the next watch. Let's see if we can bend the center of the cross out a little more. I've got an idea."
Using both bayonets, they managed to bulge the gold upright out of its groove at a point just below the silver crosspiece, leaving enough space behind it to slip Lutz's belt through between the metal and the stone.
"Now we can pull straight out!"
Grunstadt returned the smile, but weakly. He seemed uneasy about being away from his post for so long. "Then let's get to it".
They put their feet on the wall above and beside the block, each with both hands on the belt, then threw their aching backs, legs, and arms into extracting the stubborn stone. With a high-pitched scrape of protest, it began to move, shimmying, shuddering, sliding. Then it was out. They pushed it to the side and Lutz fumbled for a match.
"Ready to be rich?" He lit the kerosene lamp and held it to the opening. Nothing but darkness within.
"Always," Grunstadt replied. "When do I start counting?"
"Soon as I get back." He adjusted the flame, then began to belly-crawl through the opening, pushing the lamp ahead of him. He found himself in a narrow stone shaft, angled slightly downward ... and only four feet long. The shaft ended at another stone block, identical to the one they had just struggled so long and so hard to move. Lutz held the lamp close to it. This cross looked like gold and silver, too.
"Give me the bayonet," he said, reaching his hand back to Grunstadt.
Grunstadt placed the handle of the bayonet into the waiting palm. "What's the matter?"
"Roadblock."
For a moment, Lutz felt defeated. With barely room for one man in the narrow shaft, it would be impossible to remove the second stone that faced him. The whole wall would have to be broken through, and that was more than he and Grunstadt could hope to accomplish on their own, no matter how many nights they worked at it. He didn't know what to do next, but he had to satisfy his curiosity as to the metals in the inlaid cross before him. If the upright was gold, he would at least be sure that he was on the right track.
Grunting as he twisted within the confinement of the shaft, Lutz dug the point of the bayonet into the cross. It sank easily. But more, the stone began to swing backward, as if hinged on its left side. Ecstatic, Lutz pushed at it with his free hand and found that it was only a facade no more than an inch thick. It moved easily at his touch, releasing a waft of cold, fetid air from the darkness beyond it. Something in that air caused the hair on his arms and at the base of his neck to stand on end.
Cold, he thought, as he felt himself shiver involuntarily, but not that cold.
He stifled a growing unease and crawled forward, sliding the lamp ahead of him along the stone floor of the shaft. As he passed it through the new opening, the flame began to die. It neither flickered nor sputtered within its glass chimney, so the blame could not be laid on any turbulence in the cold air that continued to drift past him. The flame merely began to waste away, to wither on its wick. The possibility of a noxious gas crossed his mind, but Lutz could smell nothing and felt no shortness of breath, no eye or nasal irritation.
Perhaps the kerosene was low. As he pulled the lamp back to him to check, the flame returned to its former size and brightness. He shook the base and felt the liquid slosh around within. Plenty of kerosene. Puzzled, he pushed the lamp forward again, and again the flame began to shrink. The farther into the chamber he pushed it, the smaller it became, illuminating absolutely nothing. Something was wrong here.
"Otto!" he called over his shoulder. "Tie the belt around one of my ankles and hold on. I'm going further down."
"Why don't we wait until tomorrow ... when it's light?"
"Are you mad? The whole detail will know then! They'll all want a share—and the captain will probably take most of it! We'll have done all the work and we'll wind up with nothing!"
Grunstadt's voice wavered. "I don't like this anymore."
"Something wrong, Otto?"
"I'm not sure. I just don't want to be down here anymore."
"Stop talking like an old woman!" Lutz snapped. He didn't need Grunstadt going soft on him now. He felt uneasy himself, but there was a fortune just inches away and he wasn't going to let anything stop him from claiming it. "Tie that belt and hold on! If this shaft gets any steeper, I don't want to slip down."