Chapter 23

23

May 12, 9:07 A . M . MSK

Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius, Russian Federation

Jason continued through his assigned section of the wine cellar's labyrinth. Sister Anna accompanied him. Twenty minutes ago, the team had broken off into pairs, all carrying flashlights.

Not that we're making any progress.

Crossing into the next chamber, he swept his beam around. He searched the walls, floor, and roof for any sign of a hidden library. Across the back of the space, splashes of graffiti glowed under his flashlight, shining in neon yellows, blues, and crimson.

Anna huffed her disapproval.

This wasn't the first sign of trespassers. There were piles of trash everywhere: broken bottles, crushed cans, crumpled bags. In one chamber, a stained mattress had been left behind, surely harboring an unknown number of STDs. More disturbing, in one cavern, someone had spread a set of matryoshka dolls—Russian nesting dolls—across a row of niches, with their faces all painted into leering, fanged demons.

Down in these shadowy caves, Jason had shuddered at the macabre sight.

While the grounds above might be sacred, there's nothing holy down here.

As the two continued, with each chamber failing to offer any clues, tension slowly built.

Jason tried to break it, asking a question that he had wondered about. "Sister Anna, your name... did you pick it when you became a nun?"

"I'm still a novice," she reminded him. "I'll take my formal vows next month. But, yes, I could change my name—and I did."

He glanced toward her, not sure if it was polite to ask his next question.

She smiled and answered anyway. "My given name was Iskra, which I was never fond of anyway."

"Iskra?"

Her smile widened. "I know. My parents wanted both their children's names to begin with the letter I."

"Like Igor."

She sighed, and her smile dimmed, darkening her face.

Jason kicked himself for bringing up her brother. He tried his best to recover. "Did you pick Anna... or was it selected for you?"

"I chose it. After Anna of Kashin."

He looked toward her.

She explained, "She was a Russian princess of Tver, who was twice canonized, after losing her family to Mongol hordes. She's considered the holy protectress of women who have lost their loved ones." She glanced down as they continued into the next chamber. "I picked her because Igor and I had lost our parents following an auto accident. We were only fourteen. Afterward, we were all we had, following in each other's footsteps, pursuing the same academic careers—until I was drawn to the church, pulled by my faith."

"Was there a moment when you knew about your calling?" Jason whispered, though the labyrinth's acoustic amplified his words.

"I had no heavenly visitation, if that's what you're asking." She looked at him, as if testing if he were mocking her.

"Not at all. I'm sorry for prying. I was truly curious."

She relaxed. "I've always found comfort in prayer. And later, during my studies to be an archivist, my interests slowly diverged from my brother's. He was drawn toward old scientific texts and treatises, where I was fascinated by ancient scriptures, lost gospels, even religious debates among Greek and Roman writers. It was in those yellowed, fragile pages that I felt myself called to a more meditative, worshipful life."

He nodded. "I think we can all use a little more introspection."

She smiled at him. "I'm sure there's a monastery that would love to have a resident computer expert. I heard many of them have websites now."

He held up a palm. "No thanks. Considering my work hours, I'm already living the life of a monk."

She lifted a brow. "That's too bad."

He glanced to see if there was any extra meaning there, but he reminded himself...

She's a nun—or, at least, a novice.

Flustered, he tripped on a loose tile and sent it skittering away. He caught himself, his cheeks warming with embarrassment. He followed the tumbling tile with his flashlight.

Anna gasped next to him.

He spotted it, too.

They both rushed over.

Jason picked up the tile. Like all the others, it was octagon in shape and had been kilned to an azure blue, though age had mottled it. Only this tile also had a sigil engraved in silver atop it, a single symbol. It was so tarnished that it was nearly indiscernible at first glance.

Still, he recognized the glyph. He had seen it before, scrawled along the edge of the astrolabe's sketch.

He turned to Anna.

"It's Glagolitic," she confirmed.

They shared an amazed look.

This must be significant .

With his heart pounding, Jason tried to radio his teammates, but the warren of rock defied his efforts. He gave up and cuffed his hands around his mouth.

"Over here!" he hollered, trusting the acoustics of the place to carry his message to the others. "We found something!"

Before his yell could echo away, Anna waved to him. "Look at this."

She had crossed deeper into the cavern chamber and swept her flashlight across the floor.

He joined her, standing at her shoulder. "It's everywhere," he whispered in awe.

Across the breadth of the room, hundreds of blue tiles were engraved with tarnished silver, shining with Glagolitic symbols in every shape and sigil.

He gaped at the sheer expanse, coming to one firm conclusion. "We need Commander Pierce."

9:31 A . M .

Gray shuffled across the tiled floor, shining his flashlight down. The others were spread across the chamber.

"What do you make of it?" Monk asked.

"Considering the symbols we found in the old Greek text, this must be important."

He examined another few tiles, rubbing a bit of tarnish off one, getting it to shine brighter. As he did, he felt something give under his thumb, accompanied by a barely perceptible click .

Huh...

He did it again, getting the same result.

He sat back on his heels and cast his beam across the expanse of tiles and letters. "I think there's some mechanism hidden under the lettered tiles."

The others gathered closer, and he demonstrated by pushing on the tile. It depressed a quarter inch, then popped back into position.

"Spring-loaded," he mumbled.

"It can't be all the tiles." Jason pointed to a gap in the floor. "I dislodged one. And there's only bare rock under it."

Gray joined him, dropped to a knee, and examined the spot. "You're right."

Bishop Yelagin stood to the side, leaning on his staff. "What does that mean?"

"We'll have to test each tile." Gray stood up. "Find out which of the engraved ones move and record each symbol."

Jason slipped out a digital tablet from a pack. "I'll build a database."

In short order, the team set about testing the hundreds of tiles. Even Yelagin used his metal staff to press lettered pieces. When anyone found one that moved, Jason snapped a picture of it and digitized the letter for clarity.

Anna, down on her hands and knees, offered a theory. "I wonder if this helps explain why Catherine's designers covered up the astrolabe and its Glagolitic symbols in the Greek book. Maybe it wasn't just that the puzzle was too easy to solve. Maybe she feared it was too direct of a connection to what lay down here."

"You could be right," Gray admitted, appreciating her insight.

After several more minutes, they had a complete recording of the mechanized tiles. Gray looked over Jason's shoulder to study the result. On the screen, a row of eleven sigils formed a neat row.

Gray turned to Anna. "Can you translate these symbols?"

She nodded and took the tablet from Jason. "I still have the conversion chart saved. It should only take a moment." As she worked, her frown slowly deepened. "This makes no sense. It's just gibberish."

She shared the result with everyone. Each symbol now had a corresponding letter or number written below it.

"Maybe it's not gibberish," Monk offered. "Maybe it's an anagram . We just randomly recorded those symbols. They're not likely to be in the correct order."

Everyone tested aloud various options, coming up with answers just as nonsensical.

Gray took the tablet and studied it. "That's not the answer. In this list, there are no repeating letters. Most words and phrases, especially those with ten letters, would reuse at least one letter."

"What are you thinking?" Monk asked.

"Whatever the code is, it must require reusing some of the letters." He waved across the breadth of the room. "To spell it out, we may need to press some of the tiles two or three times."

"Or four ," Anna added.

Gray heard a catch in her voice. "What?"

She took the tablet and tapped at the letters on the screen. As she continued, her frown lines faded. Her eyes grew wider.

"I'm right," she whispered.

Jason leaned by her shoulder.

"It's a signature." She faced the others. "The number four gave it away."

"Whose signature?" Jason pressed her.

"The egotistical tyrant who hid the library. The fourth of his name."

Gray understood and shifted closer. "Ivan the Terrible."

"Or his official name..." Anna typed onto the screen and showed everyone.

Ivan IV Vasilyevich

"But instead of using the roman numeral for four," Gray noted, "they used its Glagolitic equivalent."

Anna nodded as she continued to work. She converted the letters of his name using the limited number of Glagolitic symbols available to them.

"See. You can spell out his full name using only those ten letters and that one number," Anna explained. "This must be the code to unlock a hidden door."

Monk stared across the chamber. "Let's give it a try."

Clustered in a tight group, they searched the floor again for the mechanized symbols and set about pressing them in the proper order.

They finally reached the last one.

Gray waved to Yelagin. "Would you like to do the honors?"

" Spasibo, " he said with a grin.

The bishop reached with the butt of his staff and pressed the last tile, getting an audible click .

Gray braced himself, as did the others. Glances searched the room. But nothing happened.

"Did we spell it correctly?" Jason asked.

"I'm sure we did," Anna assured everyone. "Maybe it's just a coincidence that you can spell Ivan's name with those symbols."

Gray shook his head. "Not with that conspicuous number four. This must be the correct code."

Jason grimaced. "Then maybe the mechanism is broken, damaged by age and the conditions down here."

Monk huffed in exasperation. "Then what do we do?"

Gray closed his eyes, trying to picture the centuries-old mechanism under their feet: its metal wheels and gears, its pulleys and chains. For it all to work in synchrony, the locking mechanism would have to register each press of a tile and hold it until the entire sequence was completed. It would be a point of unbalance for the entire mechanism, one it couldn't hold for long.

In his ears, he again heard the small clicks , the tiles returning to their proper place afterward.

"I think we were too slow," he mumbled—at first tentatively, then with more assurance. "The mechanism must have a built-in timer. If you don't enter the code quickly enough, it resets mid-sequence."

"So, we have to enter it faster," Jason said.

"Let's hope so." Gray looked across the floor. "We should spread out and each cover a section of the tiles. That'll allow us to press the symbols in a timely manner."

Gray quickly assigned a specific area of two or three symbols to each person. Except for Anna. She kept hold of the tablet, ready to call out each sigil, using the symbols' proper Glagolitic names.

"All set?" she asked.

Once she got confirmation from everyone, she recited the code aloud.

Gray and the others pressed their respective tiles in the order she called. Gray had taken up a post by the last tile.

This had to work.

Otherwise, I'm out of ideas.

Anna called out the Glagolitic name for the final sigil: " Spidery Ha ."

With a hard swallow, he pressed the corresponding tile, and it clicked under his fingertips.

Before he could straighten, the floor shook with a metallic rumble. He stood up, balancing on his good leg. From a neighboring chamber, stone grated loudly against stone. He also felt a change of pressure, a slight popping of his ears.

Then all went silent and quiet.

They all stared at one another.

Gray finally moved and headed toward the next room. He drew the others with him, but he stopped everyone at the threshold. Flashlights lit the space, illuminating a fine dust swirling in the air.

On the room's far side, a section of the wall had lowered into the floor, leaving behind a foot-tall sill. Beyond it, a black tunnel opened. Something twangled loudly, and the door dropped the rest of the way down. It sounded as if a gear had broken, likely permanently damaging the mechanism, trapping the door open.

"Stay here," Gray warned and headed into the room.

He reached the mouth of a passageway and waved his light down it. The tunnel ran for five yards and ended at a set of stairs that spiraled down.

Looks like we're heading deeper.

Monk called to him. "What now?"

"We continue on."

"What about Seichan and Tucker?" Jason asked. "Should we try to reach them before we enter the lion's den?"

Gray nodded. "You're right. Someone should go topside where there's a radio signal and get an update. Let them know what we're doing."

He turned to Monk and Jason, looking for a volunteer.

Monk sighed. "I'll go. You've dragged me underground enough times as it is." He clapped Jason on the back. "Can't have our latest field agent missing out on all the fun."

Gray nodded. "Once you've contacted the others, come back down. We'll need someone to watch our backs and guard this exit."

"Understood." Monk set off into the cellar.

Gray faced the tunnel and stepped over the threshold. As he did, an uneasy twinge iced through him.

Something must be down there—but what?

The others crowded behind him, stoking his trepidation. He remembered the crushing fate of the other group of explorers who had trespassed into a lost subterranean library.

As he descended, a certainty firmed inside him.

We need to tread carefully from here.