Pact With the Devil Part III

[randy_o]

CHAPTER TWO, EAST AFRICA, NOVEMBER 1938


"I don't know, Jake, I think I'm still sore at you, " Indy said, wiping a trickle of sweat that had escaped the band of his hat in the fierce heat and was running down his forehead. "You damn near gave me a heart attack when you sneaked up behind me in Port Said and tapped me on the shoulder like that."

"Indiana, did you honestly think when you wired us news of your plans that I could bear not to come?"

Jones looked over his friend and sighed. In his white linen shirt and wire-rimmed spectacles, Jake looked more like a schoolmaster on holiday than an archaeologist in the field. Indy knew that Rosen's career had been concentrated more on book scholarship and teaching than on field work, and certainly had been nothing like the rather unorthodox adventures that had become second nature to Indy.

"Frankly, Jake, I had hoped you wouldn't. You knew we'd have to get into Ethiopia by sneaking over the border in the dead of night. As an American citizen, if I get caught here without papers, I'm in deep enough trouble, but you- they'll ship you straight back to Germany. It's too damned risky for you!"

"You still don't understand, do you?" Rosen said gently. "Rachel and my children are all I have. If we fail here, then Germany might as well have me back."

The calm, quiet resolve of Jakob's statement forestalled any answer. Indy shut up and turned his attention to a spot a mile to the west of the boulder behind which they were crouched. Out on the desert floor, its outline shimmering in the shifting currents of heat, rose a massive column of rock nearly two hundred feet tall. It had been weathered out of the native bedrock by eons of blowing wind and sand until it stood separate from the rocky plateau far to the southwest like a silent, lonely sentinel. At the top of this Ethiopian mesa, or Amba, lay the monastery itself. The ancient builders, taking advantage of the natural shape of the formation, had carved the abbey out of the living rock in the form of a Greek cross, each equal-sided arm comprising a massive wing that aligned with the four points of the compass. A narrow pathway chiseled out of the sheer side of the rock snaked its way up from the desert below to enter a portcullis gate at the eastern corner of the north wing, the only way in or out. The whole effect was that of a fortress, grim and impregnable.

"Besides," Jake said, breaking the silence, "from the look of that place, you could use a little help."

"Need help?!" Indy protested. In this case, it was true of course, but Jones would never bring himself to admit it. "Listen, Jake, old pal- you might end up being more of a hindrance. I don't know how things will turn out once we get inside there, but if we get caught and stripped down to the, er, bare essentials, at least I can pass myself off as a Christian, which you, ahem, cannot."

Rosen and grinned wickedly. "Think again, Indiana, my friend. Before the people of Ethiopia became Copts, they were Jews, a legacy of Solomon's association with the Queen of Sheba. Many of the older customs still remain, among them, Sabbath observance, avoidance of unclean foods and, ahem, circumcision. So it is you who will look like the outsider. Of course, it's not too late to remedy the situation…"

"Goddammit, Jake, put that pen knife down! I was only kidding!" Jones shook his head. "Jeez, you'd think I'd learn! Fourteen years I've known you, and I never get the last word."

"And that's what comes of spending your summer breaks chasing around some god-forsaken jungle instead of doing library research," Jake said with a laugh. "Still, I don't like the idea of exposing my bare essentials. Do you think it will come to that?"

"Let's hope not," Indy answered. "From what I hear, after centuries of isolation, the monastery has become a law unto itself. The monks are fanatical about their privacy and they won't take kindly to intruders, no matter what their religion."

"What a strange place to be looking for a pagan Greek relic," Jake remarked.

"It makes a crazy kind of sense when you put the pieces together," Indy replied. "It seems Alexander the Great is actually listed as a saint in the Abyssinian Church, so anything belonging to him would become an object of veneration. There's even a romanticized Ethiopian version of the life of Alexander which portrays him as a pious ascetic and replaces the Greek gods with Patriarchs from the Old Testament."

"Yes, now that you mention it, I remember coming across it in my student days," Jake said dryly. "An unusual view of the man, to say the least."

"Well, both following the Coptic Doctrine, the Ethiopian church kept close ties with the church in Alexandria for some time. I'm not entirely certain of the details, but somehow the shield made its way here from Alexandria, probably sometime during the Middle Ages, not long after the monastery was founded."

"Brilliant of you to make the connection."

"I didn't," Indy said. "It was Rene Belloq who did the preliminary research."

"Belloq? I thought I remembered him from Cornell," Jake mused. "Wasn't he that rather smarmy French boy who couldn't seem to keep his eyes off your exam papers?"

"The very same," Jones chuckled. It was an ironic turn of events, he thought, to be taking advantage of Belloq's hard work, rather than the other way around.

Suddenly, Indy held up his hand for silence and leaned forward with his eyes fixed intently on a spot on the horizon. For the past day and a half, the two men had been holed up in the mouth of a small ravine to the northeast of the monastery, waiting for an opportunity to gain entrance, but so far none had presented itself. No one had come in or out, and time was running short.

Jones squinted his eyes against the bright sunlight and heat-shimmer at a faint movement to the southeast. Slowly, the spot resolved itself into the figure of a lone man dressed in the sand colored robes of the Order of Saint Athanasius. He was approaching across the flat and leading a string of five heavily laden pack mules.

"Jake, this might be it," Indy whispered excitedly as the little caravan drew near. "Must be one of their extern brothers bringing in supplies. If we could just somehow slip in among those mules…"

"I don't see how," Jake hissed back. "We would be spotted from above for sure."

As Rosen spoke, the monk brought his string of animals to a halt several yards from the mouth of the gully. After casting an eye around first, he parted his robes and began to urinate copiously into the sand/. From the look of things, he had held it for some time and wished to lighten his load before the long trip up the path to the abbey.

"You see- ?" Jake whispered. "I was right."

"Know it all," Indy growled back.

As if by a stroke of Providence, the last mule in line, taking advantage of its master's preoccupation, slipped its tether and turned and trotted briskly toward the mouth of the ravine, where it halted just out of sight of the monk and began to crop at a clump of coarse brush.

"Here's our chance, Jake- move!"

The two men rushed to the mule and pulled open the lids of its pannier baskets. Inside of each were several heavy sacks of flour.

"Perfect!" Indy exclaimed. "We'll just fit."

Working fast, they hauled out the sacks and tossed them behind a nearby rock. Then, matching their motions so as not to overbalance the baskets, they stepped in and sat down, squeezing their bodies into tight balls and pulling the lids shut after them. None too soon, for the monk, finally noticing the absence of his wayward beast, had come in search of it and had appeared at the mouth of the gully. Jones could hear him remonstrating with the animal, and he felt a jerk as the halter rope was tugged. Off they went, curled in their hiding places.

The short journey across the flat to the base of the rock was not too bad, although the mule's rough gait threatened to jolt Indy's insides into jelly, but when the tiny caravan started up the trail, the fun began in earnest. Initially, Jones, who was in the right-hand basket, was to the inside of the trail, and he cursed mentally as seemingly every third pace slammed some tender part of his anatomy - a knee, elbow, or shoulder, into the hard rock wall. He longed for the torture to end - that is, until they came to the first switch-back and he found himself on the outside. It was possible to see out through the woven hemp mesh of the basket, and looking down between his feet, he saw that he was suspended out over the edge of the narrow path. With sheer nothingness below him, he shut his eyes and tried not to think of the drop, each bobble and slip of the mule's feet on the loose rocks of the path bringing his heart into his mouth. Mules were supposed to be sure-footed beasts, weren't they? He had heard that somewhere and he sure as hell hoped it was true. Making matters even worse was the fact that Indy was heavier than his friend, causing the load to shift gradually to the right, so that with each turn he bumped even harder into the rock and swung even farther out into space. Up he went, alternately pummeled and terrorized, praying that the cinch would hold.

At last, the monk called out a greeting and Jones heard a faint reply float down from somewhere above. Indy heard a noise of metal grating against rock, the portcullis winching up, and the mule passed out of the bright daylight into cool darkness. No more than four paces later, the straps that held the panniers across the animal's back parted company with a loud snap, sending baskets, archaeologists and all crashing to the floor with a jaw cracking jolt.

Christ! Indy thought. If that had happened half a minute earlier…

Slowly he raised the lid of the basket and peered out. He found himself in a narrow tunnel cut out of the solid rock. By the dim light from the entrance behind them, he could see the rump of their now unencumbered mule disappearing into the dimness up ahead, plodding after its fellows. Fortunately no one had discovered the loss of the baskets as yet, with the noise of the breaking cinch masked by the clatter of the mules' feet and the screech of the lowering portcullis.



"All clear, Jake," he whispered, uncurling himself and stepping free of the basket.

Rosen stood up slowly, rubbing stiffly at the base of his spine. "We're in - so now what?" he whispered back.

Jones pulled out his pocket knife. Stooping, he began to slash at the basketweave, choosing spots where the sharp rock walls had already worn the fibers partially away.

"Quick," he said. "Do the same to yours. The monks will notice the missing baskets and be back here any minute now, and we don't want them wondering what happened to the load of flour."

When Indy had cut a large enough hole, he ground at the edges with his foot to make the edges look naturally frayed.

Jones stood up and motioned for Rosen to follow. The two men headed on down the tunnel, which took a sharp turn to the right and began to slope upward. Hearing noises coming from the other direction, they ducked into the first side tunnel they came to. The smaller tunnel led to a flight of stairs which spiraled upwards for a short distance. At the top they found a large room filled with troughs, large iron kettles, and long tables made out of planks. A bank of windows to the north let in the light and showed an eagles-aerie view - miles and miles of rocky desert below. The room appeared to be empty.

Jones stepped cautiously out into the room. Jake followed, his eyes glued to the airy panorama outside the window.

"My God," he whispered, "it's so far down…"

With the passing nod to his friend, Indy turned back toward the wall from where they had just entered. "Holy sh-!" he exclaimed, catching the vulgarity just in time.

Jake whirled in alarm. "What is it?"

Indy let out his breath in a weak laugh. "Nothing… nothing to worry about." What he had mistaken for a menacing group of cowled figures was only a line of monks; habits hung on pegs along the wall.

"This must be their communal laundry," he continued. "Well . . . we needed a way to move around this place unnoticed - the Lord provides!" He took two habits, still slightly damp and smelling of strong soap, down from the wall. One he kept for himself and the other he tossed to Rosen. He pulled the habit over his head and knotted the cord belt at his waist.

"So, how do I look?" he asked, adjusting his cowl.

Jakob looked his friend slowly up and down. "I think two monks like you and me could give religion a bad name. And, by the way, your bullwhip is making a bulge."

"Huh?… Oh, thanks," Indy said, arranging the coil more evenly at his side. "Better?"

"Better," Jake agreed.

"You never know when a whip'll come in handy, " Jones remarked as they opened a second door at the far end of the room and stepped out into a dimly lit corridor.

Following the source of the light, they came to the end of the long corridor and found themselves looking out onto a large central light court at the abbey's inner core. At this, the 'ground' level, a cloistered walkway surrounded the courtyard on all sides. A number of monks paced slowly round and round, their heads bent in deep, silent meditation. Pulling their cowls down as far as possible and locking their arms together inside their voluminous sleeves to conceal the fair skin of their hands and faces, the two archaeologists stepped out and joined the slowly moving flow.

"Make for the chapel in the east wing," Indy whispered. "It'll be the most likely place to find the shield."

The long slow promenade around the Cloister filled Indy with a tension he found difficult to suppress. Although the two men were muffled in their heavy robes, their height was impossible to disguise and their movements were uniquely their own. Such individual traits could not pass unnoticed for long in a tiny community where there were no strangers and each monk knew every other. Their chance of discovery was at its greatest.

Fortunately, there was a minor distraction. In the corner of the courtyard stood a familiar looking monk, holding the lead rein of a train of five mules. He seemed to be receiving a dressing down from another, older, monk who was gesturing heatedly at the naked back of the fifth mule and at the frayed and empty pack baskets which lay on the ground beside it. The poor fellow looked so dejected as he listened to the harangue that Indy felt a stab of conscience for being the author of his undeserved troubles.

Finally, Indy and Jake came abreast of the chapel's heavy wooden door and stepped inside with a sigh of relief. The interior of the church looked gloomy, lit only by a few small windows high up near the vaulted ceiling and by candles that glowed inside niches and on the altar itself like drifts of tiny pinpoint stars. Several monks knelt silently in the half-light.

Hoping he was not making some horribly obvious gaffe, Jones dipped his right hand into the font of Holy water at the side of the doorway, crossed himself, and genuflected to the altar. Stiffly, Rosen did the same.

"You never told me you were Catholic," Jake whispered as they made their way toward the front of the chapel.

"I'm not," Indy whispered back. "I saw that once in a Spencer Tracy movie."

He dropped to his knees on the cold stone floor, stifling a yelp of pain as he came down on a sharp pebble. Evidently the monks' austere philosophy dictated that devotions should not be made any too comfortable by diligent sweeping.

"What do we now do now?" Jake asked. "Do you see anything that might be the shield?"

"No, I can't see anything at all in this hood. We'll just have to wait till we're alone to get a better look."

Both men fell silent, biding their time. Cautiously, Jones raised the edge of his cowl as much as he dared, slowly scanning the chapel from side to side. His eyes had finally adapted to the dim light, but he could make out nothing like the hoped for glint of gold.

Outside, a bell began to ring, high and clear.

Jakob jumped. "Oy gevalt! If that's a call to prayer, then we're finished. I can fold my hands and shuffle around a courtyard like a schlimazel, and I can cross myself with the best of them, but I simply cannot sing and chant convincingly in Geez!"

"Oh Lord!" Indy muttered. He was with Jake - there was no way he could fake his way through vespers. But luck was with them. The other monks rose stiffly from their prayerful postures and began to head for the door.

Indy chuckled softly. "It's only the dinner bell, Jake. In a few minutes, we'll have the chapel to ourselves."

The two archaeologists pulled themselves to their feet and joined the exodus from the chapel, making sure that they were last in line. Near the back of the church, Indy nipped discreetly behind a pillar and flattened himself against it out of sight. A few paces later, Jakob did the same. At the door, the last monk turned briefly and looked around in puzzlement. Then, shrugging to himself, he shut the heavy door behind him.

"We'll have to be quick - we've got half an hour at best," Indy hissed. "You check the left side, I'll take the right, and we'll meet at the altar."

Jones pulled back his hood and began to work his way toward the front of the chapel, scanning the wall from ground level to the dimly lit regions high up near the roof. He saw icons, rich mosaics, and statues of the Virgin and various saints, but none that looked like Alexander. Nor did he see any sign of the shield.

Rosen, looking disappointed, turned up at the altar, equally empty handed. The hollow stone altar was bare, both inside and out.

The two men moved swiftly to the small sacristy behind the altar. They found the usual array of vestments and equipment for performing the Mass, but nothing else.

"Damn," Indy said, the curse slipping out unwittingly before he had had time to remember where he was and catch himself. "I was sure it would be kept here in the chapel." But a disquieting thought came to him: could Belloq and the Nazi agents who completed his work have been mistaken?

"I refuse to give up," Jakob said. "I'll search this place from the Abbot's quarters to the stables if I must." His tone was grim; both men knew how slim their chances of success were in such a general search.

Indy held up his hand. "Maybe not, Jake. There's one more place we haven't tried." He glanced over towards the barred entrance to the crypt, just to the right of the altar. He picked up a candle from a side niche, mumbling a soft, "sorry" to the sad-eyed image of the saint it illuminated, and went to examine the carved wooden grate across the opening leading down into the crypt. It was unlocked- who was there to disturb the rest of the dead in this hallowed place? Jones swung the gate open and motioned for Jake to follow.

As the two men descended the broad steep staircase, the air became noticeably cooler. Down at the very lowest level of the abbey, they were deep inside the living rock. At the foot of the stairs, their feet touched dirt and they found themselves in a long, low chamber whose walls faded off into the darkness, out of reach of the feeble pool of light cast by their candle.

"Oh, my God…" Indy whispered.

In the flickering half light of Indy's candle, the crypt of Saint Athanasius presented a macabre sight. Generation after generation of monks had come there in death to mingle their earthly remains with those of their brethren. Neat piles of skulls - hundreds of them - stood stacked against one wall, their color ranging in hue from the clean ivory of the newly dead to the aged brownish yellow of those that were almost crumbling into dust. In a corner were masses of arm and thigh bones, further on into the room were ribs and vertebrae, all arranged with reverent detail.

"I've heard of this sort of thing before," Jake whispered, "but I've never actually seen it."

"No space for individual graves," Indy said grimly. "So they bury the bodies for a while then…" He looked down at the dirt floor beneath his feet. "They must have hauled the dirt up here in baskets, a bushel at a time."

The bodies of the monastery's abbots had been laid to rest with more ceremony. Into the rock walls of the chamber, long receptacles, each six feet by three and three feet deep, had been cut, one above other in tiers up to the ceiling. The abbots themselves lay within them, dressed in their crumbling robes of office, each pair of bony hands clutching a wooden crucifix. Some trick of the rocks' cool dry air had preserved them from decay, turning them into natural mummies. Black, pale skin, or in between, death had made no distinction among them; they were all the color of old leather.

A number of receptacles stood empty and waiting - for abbots as yet uncrowned, as yet unborn. Indy looked at the dark holes, the neat piles of bones.

"I wonder what it must be like, Jake, to come down here and see exactly where you're going to be?" He shivered slightly, telling himself that it was from the cold air of the crypt.

Rosen sighed. "We all have to make our peace with death sooner or later. I suppose these men do it sooner than most."

Jones shook his head. Not me - not ever! he thought. There would be no peace with death for Indiana Jones. When it finally came, it would take him kicking and screaming, fighting to his last breath.

He raised his candle higher and stepped carefully out into the room. It was difficult to make things out in the shifting shadows. He would just as soon have it that way; there was very little in the room he wanted to see clearly. There was one thing and one thing only that he wanted to see and… He started forward, wincing momentarily as a stray bit of something crunched beneath his careless boot. He and Jake moved in an isolated pool of light cast by the single candle, no longer able to see the door behind them. At last the furthest edges of the crypt came into view and Indy smiled.

On the back wall of the chamber, set in a central place of honor, was a niche larger than the others and more ornately carved. In it lay what Indy judged to be a man of some importance, if not the abbey's founder. What was left of him looked very old indeed. His frayed and rotten robes were more sumptuous than those worn by the other abbots; his corpse was more desiccated. And on the sunken, bird-like chest, clutched closely in the skeletal hands, lay the Golden Shield of Alexander.

Quickly, Jones threaded his way through the maze of piled bones, with Rosen following. He placed his candle on a ledge inside the niche and bent to examine his find, impatiently brushing away the centuries old layer of dust that dulled the shield's bright finish.

"It's beautiful," Jakob muttered at his side.

Indy could only nod his silent assent. Legend had it that the shield had originally been forged for the Greek hero Achilles by the Smith God Hephaestus himself. Jones, the rational Twentieth Century man, doubted that story, but it would not have been an exaggeration to say that whatever unknown artisan had fashioned the shield so many centuries before had been possessed of a divine talent. Marveling at the shield's beauty, Indy bent to examine the finely wrought decorations in all their intricate detail. He recognized the earth, the sea, and the heavens with their sun, moon, and all the constellations. On the broad expanse of the earth, a microcosm of life teamed in polished gold. Two cities gleamed in delicate relief, one gay - and festive, one beleaguered by armies, with scenes of famine and despair within its walls and tumultuous battles and bloodshed without. Elsewhere, beside the newly plowed fields and ripe vineyards, tiny golden shepherds and herdsmen with their faithful golden dogs watched over cattle and tiny golden sheep. Youths and wreath-clad maidens carried baskets of golden grapes and frolicked to the music of golden lyres. And all around the tiny universe, at the outermost rim of the shield, the river Oceanus twined its serpentine course.

Overcome with wonder, Indy reached out to pick up the gleaming golden disk. But as he did so, he caught sight of the abbot's long dead face, with its gaping empty eye sockets and shrunken lips drawn back from the yellow teeth in a ghastly moldering grin. The bony fingers clasped the shield close, like a treasured prize.

Grave robber, he thought in sudden shame. He had been called that before, not without a certain justification, but this was the first time it was literally true. Before, he had always salved his conscience with the convenient rationalization that he was rescuing precious artifacts from oblivion and the vagaries of fate so that they might be enjoyed and appreciated, if only by one or two visitors to a museum. But to wrest a holy relic from the hands of a dead man, merely to pander to the power-lust of a half insane dictator…

As if sensing his friend's troubled state of mind, Jake laid a hand on Indy's shoulder. "I wish… I wish we were not forced to do this thing."

Indy responded to the real pain in his friend's voice. A few prickings of his none-too-tender conscience were insignificant compared to Jakob's stake in the matter. "I know, Jake. I don't like it any better than you do. But look at it this way - we both know that the monks' reverence for this shield is based on a fallacy. Alexander the Great was hardly the saintly ascetic type their legends portray him as being. He was power hungry, he drank too much, he was a womanizer - and not only that, he was known to fancy a pretty boy or two." He paused and gestured down at the shriveled form of the long dead abbot. "Why, I'll bet if this old fellow knew what kind of guy Alexander really was, he'd probably get up and walk right out of here!"

Rosen flinched and looked over his shoulder nervously, and immediately Jones, too, found himself wishing that he had not used that particular imagery. He was used to working in tombs and around the dead, but the charnel atmosphere of the crypt was beginning to get to him as well. The idea of the occupants getting up and walking around didn't bear thinking about for long. Out in the cold light of day, maybe - but not in the eerie, candle-lit darkness.

Jones lowered his voice and went on. "And just suppose Alexander really was a saint the way they believe? What are saints and holy relics for?… To do good! And what good is this thing doing here in the dark? Think about what we have at stake."

He looked back down at the dull gleam of the shield. For some reason, it reminded him of a photograph Jake had shown him of his little daughter, Rebecca. Even in the blurred black and white photo, her blonde hair had gleamed the same way, a gold more precious than any mere metal. And then, unbidden, a strange, inexplicable vision leapt into Jones' mind: hair, some of it gold like Rebecca's, the rest running the full spectrum of colors from light brown to black, all manner of textures, curls, plaits and braids, lying in piles on a cold concrete floor. Never had he seen so much hair. He tried to shake the vision from his head; its meaning puzzled him, yet it terrified him as well.

Jones found his hand shaking. He reached for the shield, spurred on by a new sense of purpose. "C'mon, baby," he said. "You'll feel right at home with your new owner. New worlds to conquer."



As he grasped the metal rim, a feeling not unlike an electric shock surged through him. Just nerves, he told himself - it was only a hunk of metal. He lifted and heard a ghastly, crackling sound. The corpse's stick-like hands and arms were rising along with it, still holding on to the shield with a death-fast grip. Jones shut his eyes and fought down his rising nausea.

Without a word, Rosen reached out and plucked the bony hands away, replacing them on the hollow chest. "May God forgive me," he muttered, "but if the choice is between the dead and the living, life must win." He remained staring sadly down for a long time, then his expression changed as he glanced up.

"Look, Indy - on the inner side of the shield. It seems to be an inscription of some kind. The lettering looks as if it is newer than the rest of the work."

Jones smiled as he bent to examine the new discovery. "I wasn't sure we'd find this. I had my hopes, but -" Before he could explain further, he was interrupted by the sound of a bell, which began to toll slowly and sonorously, its deep tones causing the rock to vibrate beneath their feet.

"It's almost as if they knew," Jake said in alarm.

"They can't possibly," Indy replied. "It's the call to another prayer. Come on, we've got to get out of here quickly."

He tucked the shield inside the folds of his habit and hurried to the foot of the stairway, taking large steps to avoid the piles of bones. They ran up the stairs and out into the chapel, taking cover behind a large pillar in the side aisle just as the heavy wooden door swung open and a procession of monks entered slowly, walking two abreast. The bell continued its slow tolling.

Indy chanced a quick peek. "Oh, dear God!" he whispered in horror. "I was wrong - It's the death bell!"