The Tombs Page 11

  In the evening, Sam and Remi joined Albrecht and his colleagues in studying the objects found in the excavation at the field. The remains of warriors that had already been given preliminary examinations, photographed with their possessions, and catalogued were being placed in wooden boxes, to be archived at the Aquineum Museum, part of the Budapest History Museum, which was housed in the huge Károlyi Palace.

  Sam and Remi wandered among the skeletons that had been laid out on tables and tarps to be studied and photographed but which had not been professionally examined since they’d been exhumed. At one point, Sam stopped for a moment. He knelt by a skeleton, craning his neck to see the face from another angle.

  “What’s wrong?” said Remi.

  “Have you ever tried to get people to keep a secret?”

  “Sure,” she said. “That’s pretty much how girls spend sixth grade.”

  “Ever succeed?”

  “No. Once you tell someone that what you’re saying is a secret, that makes it valuable, a commodity to be traded. Once someone says he has a secret, it means he wants to tell. It’s an invitation to nag him until he gives it up.”

  “Here are a thousand people who had a secret. Not one of them told?”

  “Got to hand it to the Huns,” she said. “They knew it’s hard to talk when you’re headless. We didn’t have that option in sixth grade.”

  “Of course. But even if these men all knew they were going to be killed, they still had relatives they would want to help. I can believe they were all fanatically loyal to Attila, but by then he was dead. Without Attila, the Huns were a loose federation. Didn’t even one of these guys hedge his bets?”

  “Apparently not or we would have a history course about some other guy who came onto the scene with a boatload of treasure.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Sam said. They walked along the rows of skeletons, passing dozens, then more dozens, a hundred.

  “Wait,” said Remi. “Take a look at this one.”

  Sam joined her beside the skeleton. The skeleton had a gold ring around his neck like a Celtic torque. Beside him was a sword with a scabbard with silver mountings. He was wearing a vest that had been made of sheepskin. There were but a few wisps of the shaggy wool left on the outside, and the whole inner leather surface had turned a deep brown.

  Through the rib cage and past the backbone, they could see something that looked like rows of designs and, below it, a large and elaborate shape. Remi said, “Doesn’t that look like print? And surely that’s a picture of something.”

  “Kind of odd,” said Sam. “While he was wearing the vest, you wouldn’t be able to see the designs.”

  “Priscus wrote that they wore their leather clothes until they fell off them. The only time you’d see this is after he was a skeleton.”

  Sam raised his hand in the air. “Albrecht!” he called. “Can you spare a minute?”

  Albrecht came from across the big room and joined them. He looked down. Then he knelt beside the skeleton, moving his head to see the vest through the ribs. Very faintly he breathed, “Oh, no.”

  Remi said, “Doesn’t it look like writing?”

  “It is writing,” said Albrecht. “We’ve got to get the vest off him so we can see all of it.” They carefully lifted the upper part of the skeleton, leaving the severed head on the tarp. While Sam held the torso, Remi and Albrecht slipped the vest down off the shoulders and then the arms. They laid it out on the tarp. Albrecht looked at the shapes closely.

  “It’s Gothic. It’s an early eastern Germanic language, probably what half of Attila’s troops spoke.”

  “Can you read any of it?”

  “Quite a lot of it, actually,” he said. “There was a nobleman named Ulfilas who commissioned a translation of the Bible just about when Attila died, so we know a lot of the vocabulary and structure. And it has a lot of similarities to other Germanic languages. In English you say have. In German it’s haben. In Gothic it’s haban. Generally, Gothic retains a z that German lost. Things like that.”

  He read. “‘Two days and a half north, one half day west. He’s where the fourth-night moon is widest.’ Fourth-night moon. I have no idea what that means.”

  Sam said, “I do. The moon is on a twenty-eight-day cycle. If you start a cycle with the new moon or the full moon, the fourth night is always a crescent.”

  “Look at the picture,” said Albrecht.

  “That’s the waxing crescent,” Sam said. “The left edge is lit up.”

  “Do you think it’s a calendar?” Albrecht said.

  “No,” said Remi. “This guy was the cheater. He didn’t get to talk, but he made a map. The crescent is the shape of the bend in the river that they cut off when they diverted it. He’s telling us where Attila is buried.”

  SZEGED, HUNGARY

  SAM AND REMI WERE IN THEIR HOTEL SUITE, AND SELMA Wondrash was on Remi’s computer screen. “Wendy and Pete and I have done the comparisons and angle measurements and calculations many times and we’re sure that we’ve found the spot that was indicated on the vest. The Roman soldiers of that era could cover twenty-five miles in a day on foot. The Huns were horsemen. When they wanted to, they could probably do twice that distance. But this time they had to transport a heavy load, so we’ve brought the estimate back to about twenty-five. That means we have a distance north along the river of sixty miles and a distance west of twelve miles. Using aerial photography and satellite images, we do find a dry channel with a crescent-shaped accumulation of alluvium on its west, or outer, side. And the later shortening and straightening of the Tisza left the spot not only dry but nowhere near the modern course of the river.”

  “You’re using the same reasoning we are,” said Sam. “The cargo must have weighed several tons, so it was loaded on a huge wagon, probably drawn by a herd of oxen. They would have gone across the plains east of the river, where they didn’t need a road, and probably stayed out of sight of the river until the end. In fact, they probably had groups of outriders on all sides to be sure nobody came close.”

  “Agreed,” said Selma. “So when we compare the map on the vest with the aerial photographs, we get a spot at 46° 25' 55" north and 19° 29' 19" east. That’s about a hundred thirty miles south of Budapest.”

  “What’s there?”

  “Well, it could be worse,” she said. “It’s not a cathedral or a nuclear power plant. It’s the Grape Research Institute, in Kiskunhalas. The halas part means ‘fish.’ In medieval times the town was surrounded by lakes, presumably fed by the river. They’re long gone, but the memory lingers on, as does the sandy soil, which is terrific for growing wine grapes.”

  “How does a modern person get there?”

  “From Szeged, you take Route 55 until you reach Route 53, then switch.”

  “We’ll let you know when we’ve figured out how to do this,” Sam said. “We’ve got a whole lot of activity going on at the Tisza River to make Bako’s men think we’ve already found the tomb underwater.”

  “If I were you, I’d keep that up,” she said. “Arpad Bako has been investigated for three murders besides Tibor Lazar’s son. And I wish you good hunting. If anything comes to mind that I can do, give me a call.”

  “We will.”

  The next morning, Sam and Remi went down to the Tisza River as usual and spent most of the day diving to keep up the pretense that they’d found something. It wasn’t until after dark that Sam, Remi, and Albrecht saw Tibor arrive in an eight-year-old Mercedes sedan. “Is this your car?” Sam asked.

  “My personal car?” said Tibor. “No. I own it, but we use it as a cab. We have a number of regular customers who don’t want a taxi with a sign on it. We take them to restaurants and parties. In Hungary, the legal amount of alcohol you can drink and drive is zero, so they need to be driven. Me, I walk. I don’t need a car.”

/>   Sam loaded the metal detector, three short-handled spades, and night vision goggles into the trunk and climbed into the sedan with the others. Tibor drove them north along the river, staring intently into the rearview mirror at times.

  “Are we being followed?” asked Remi.

  “I don’t think so,” Tibor said. “It’s hard to tell on these country roads, though. If somebody is behind you when you leave one town, he’ll stay behind you all the way to the next town. And it’s dark, so all you can see is his headlights.”

  “But you don’t think anyone is following us?”

  “No. The one who’s been behind us all this time drives like my grandmother. Anybody we have to worry about would be bold and crazy.”

  Sam and Remi caught each other looking out the back window and smiled. Sam said, “At the next town, let’s double back and see if he does too.”

  “Good idea,” said Tibor. He pulled up next to a restaurant at the next town, then drove around it along a narrow and winding road that would accommodate just one car at a time, emerging again near the restaurant. Then he pulled back onto the highway. They didn’t see a car ahead of them, but they could no longer see the car behind them either, so they felt reassured.

  Sam used the GPS on his phone and directed Tibor the rest of the way. When he saw they were nearing the edge of a huge vineyard outside the city of Kiskunhalas, he said, “Turn your headlights off.” The road ahead went dark, and the car rolled to a stop. In the moonlight it was possible to see, on their left, a low hillside gently curving upward like an amphitheater. There were long rows of vines on weathered stakes connected by strands of wire for support. Sam, Albrecht, and Remi got out of the car, took the metal detector, the night vision goggles, and the short-handled, sharp-bladed spades for digging in the sandy soil out of the trunk and closed it quietly. Sam bent close to Tibor’s window and said, “Wait for us somewhere out of sight, and keep your phone on. If you see someone coming, or the sun is about to rise, call.”

  “There are woods up ahead. I’ll be waiting there.” Tibor drove slowly off, turned, and disappeared into the night.

  The three climbed a low rail fence and walked to what they judged to be midway along the crescent-shaped accumulation of soil. Then Sam turned on the metal detector and began to search. He bent over, to present a low profile, and walked up and down the rows of vines, stopping at the end of each row and then moving to the next.

  Albrecht and Remi knelt at either end of the rows, watching through their night vision goggles for any sign of people coming. Occasionally they would switch to the infrared setting to see if they could pick up heat from a human being in any direction, then switch back to normal night vision. None of the three shone any light, and there was no sound except for the steady, faint summer breeze through the grapevine leaves and the slough of Sam’s shoes on the soft ground between the staked vines.

  Sam moved methodically from the upper end of the crescent down toward the flat land. The crescent framed a loop made in the river where the channel curved and the water slowed. The alluvial soil had been deposited there before the river was diverted—highest at the midpoint of the curve and tapering on both ends.

  Suddenly all of the metal detector’s readings changed. Sam saw the needle bury itself at the upper end. He moved a few steps and the needle dropped again. He came at it from the side and got a similar reading. He stood up straight and waved to the others, then knelt down. Remi and Albrecht came from their stations and knelt beside him.

  “Is this it?” whispered Albrecht.

  “It could be a lot of things,” Sam said. “All I know is that it’s metal and that it’s big.”

  Remi rose and went to the end of the row, then came back with the spades. They began to dig, each moving apart from the others and digging quickly in the sandy soil. The work went steadily, and soon they were down about five feet, lifting each shovelful up above their shoulders to throw aside. Sam’s shovel rang out as it hit metal. A second later, Remi’s scraped a smooth, hard surface.

  They set aside their spades and used their hands to clear the dirt off a metal plate. It was a flat rectangle, perhaps six feet long and three feet wide. Albrecht whispered, “There’s rust. The material is an impure form of iron. This could be the lid of the sarcophagus.”

  “Let’s clear around it to get a better look,” Remi said.

  Sam and Remi moved to the ends and began digging around the outside, so Albrecht began on the long side. They dug in silence, the suspense goading them to work harder and faster. But as they dug, each of them hit a second surface, just below the iron slab, that seemed to be stone.

  Sam said, “Let’s see if we can budge it.”

  All three stood at one side of the iron slab and used their spades to try to make it move. They strained, tried inserting the tips of their spades under the edge and pushing. The slab budged a fraction of an inch. “It moves. Let’s dig a space beside it and push the lid in it.”

  They increased the size of the hole by three feet so that there was an empty space for the lid. They pushed again but made little progress. “Let’s try something else,” Sam said.

  He climbed out and went to the nearest row of grapevines, where there were wooden stakes with sixpenny nails driven partway in to hold the wires for the vines. He began to pull the nails out. Sam looked closely at each one, twirled it in his fingers. He put some in his pocket and rejected some, pushing them back into the holes in the stakes.

  “How many do you want?” asked Remi.

  “Thirty or forty. Don’t take any that are bent.”

  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 sixpenny nails. The three looked down through the opening with their night vision goggles. Albrecht said, “This isn’t what I expected. It looks like a stone room.”

  “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.