The Rosetta Key

I’d heartily tired of his aphorisms when I had to hear them everyday, but now I missed him. “Wise men don’t need advice, fools don’t take it.” Clever, but hardly a help. “Energy and persistence conquer all things.” Persistence how? Tunneling out like a miner? I inspected the chamber more closely. The Templar statues were rigid and unmoving, unlike the turning Madonnas under the Temple Mount. There were no designs on the cave walls, and no cracks, doors, or holes in which to insert the golden cylinder, in hopes it might serve as some kind of key. I tapped the shaft, but heard no hollows. I shouted, but the echo was useless. I beat the walls, just to see if something might give, but nothing did. How the devil did the Templars get in here? The tunnel t h e

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would be dry between storms. Should I wait? No, more thunder had been growling and a stream like this could run for days. I kicked, wrenched, and howled, but nothing budged. “Never confuse motion with action,” Ben had advised.

What else had he said? “Well done is better than well said.” Yes, but not exactly useful in my present predicament, as near as I could tell. “All would live long, but none would be old.” At the moment, even being old seemed preferable to dying. “In rivers and bad government, the lightest things swim to the top.” Well, at least that had river in it. . . .

Swim to the top.

I looked up. If light was filtering down, there had to be a way out.

Impossible to climb without rope, ladder, or footholds. If only I had one of Conte’s balloons . . . swim to the top.

What Ben did, different than almost all of us, was think first, and then act. Why is that so difficult? Yet finally I had an idea, a desperate one, and—just as important—no plausible alternative. I seized the lid of the sarcophagus that was leaning against the stone box and dragged it, screeching, to the edge of the water. Heaving, I got it upright like a door, balancing on one corner, to teeter above the underground river.

As well as I could, I aimed at the dark hole into which the river disappeared downstream. And, with a grunt, shoved the lid out into the water! The force of the current rammed the lid against the mouth of the tunnel, sealing the water’s outlet.

Instantly, the water began to rise.

It spilled across the sandstone platform, running over the boots of the Templar statues. This had better work! “Sorry, Montbard, or whoever you are.” I heaved the acacia wood coffin up to the lip of the stone sarcophagus and tipped out its bones. They rattled into the limestone sarcophagus in a sacrilegious jumble, the skull looking up at me with what I swear was reproach. Well, I was cursed now.

I balanced the wood box across the top of the sarcophagus, tucked the golden cylinder in my shirt, and climbed in as if it were a bath-tub. The water was rising fast, almost a foot a minute. It crept past the Templar knees, topped the edge of the sarcophagus, and poured 2 2 8

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inside—and then floated me. I prayed to gods Christian, Jewish, and Egyptian. Glory, hallelujah!

My ark rose. As the well filled and the water deepened, I knew the increasing pressure might blow out the lid I’d jammed below, so I could only hope it would hold long enough. “He that lives upon hope will die fasting.” My own advice is to pick and choose your aphorisms as convenient, so I hoped like the very devil. Up we bobbed, foot after precious foot. I realized my action would also back water into the spiral in the chamber behind, toward Ned and Mohammad.

I hoped they could swim.

The dim light grew as we climbed, and stars reflected in the black water. I found a rib or two that hadn’t spilled out of my vessel and unceremoniously pitched them overboard, reasoning I wouldn’t really care what happened to my bones once I didn’t have need of them anymore. Up and up until I indeed saw a silvered disk, reflecting light from a slanted shaft. And on that shaft were sandstone stairs! I stood in my wobbling coffin, stretched for the first step, and boosted. Solid rock! Behind me, the water was still rising.

Then there was a thump, the water burped, and with a sucking roar it began falling, my coffin boat spiraling down with it. The lid that plugged the stream had cracked under the pressure and given way. Back out of sight the water swirled, pouring again out its drain, but I’d no time to watch it. I mounted the stairs, realizing this was the same well shaft we’d found in the ruined temple. We hadn’t noticed the reflection from our angle, and if we hadn’t cast aside the boards I would have had no light down there at all. I emerged between the stone walls, clambered over rubble, and raced back across the causeway to the base of the pillar where we’d first descended. “Ned! Mohammad! Are you alive!”

“By the skin of our teeth, guv’nor! That whole funnel filled with water and we was about to drown like rats! Then the water went down again!”