A Passing Curse (2011) Read Free Page A

It was true what they said about the walls closing in on you. Syria had not been that long ago. And why was Radu so worried about doing his job?
    Twenty steps down, she shined the light on a door of wood planks and iron straps. She pushed the door once, felt it give, rammed it with her shoulder. Three hits and the door opened two feet, grating roughly across the stone. The smell was damp and musty, a field of dead grass, something else, too, like a bag of old coins. At least the air wasn’t freezing.
    “Talk please!” Radu yelled. He sounded far away, probably sitting in the jeep, keeping warm and smoking his crummy Turkish cigarettes.
    “A door,” she yelled and heard water dripping far off.
    She forced the door another foot and poked her light through. Heavy granite blocks glistened from underground springs. She went through the door and turned right. Something cracked underfoot. The spiky teeth of a narrow head smiled up at her. She lit the floor and saw more heads along with the bones and bloody fur of several large rats, freshly killed judging by the wetness of the blood. Wolf? Possibly, but a wolf could not have come though the door. Another entrance? She thought about getting the rifle, but if it were a wolf, her light would scare it off.
    She stepped over the carcasses. Wolves were shy. They liked their dens far from the smell of men. They liked their homes dry. The work of a fox? Yes. A fox she could deal with.
    She wondered about the possibility of anyone else being down here and just as quickly disregarded it. There had been no footprints in the snow, and, judging by the thick ice on the creek, the road had not been traveled on recently. It bothered her that she’d heard no birds singing from the surrounding forest.
    She followed the corridor, stepping lightly, and soon came to a small chamber.
    She saw a limestone casket resting on a pedestal of black marble.
    Carved into the top, a stone knight slept, his broadsword held close, running the length of his stone body. The cross on his shield was upside down.
    The chamber was fifteen feet square. Another corridor trailed off in front of her. Cobwebs and rat droppings glistened. She caught a reflection from the opposite corridor and turned off the bulky lantern. A dim light seeped from the corridor before all was pure black. Had she imagined it?
    She stood still, listening and soaking up the blackness and empty dead smell of the place. She took a deep breath and held it but only heard water running in the distance. She was alone.
    She ignored her sudden apprehension, putting it off as underground jitters, and turned on the florescent light on the edge of the lantern. The chamber turned ghostly blue.
    She touched the smooth limestone face. Depthless, yet familiar, the face reminded her for a moment of Ajax Rasmussen, who, for all his urbane and debonair qualities, had a face from the past, a Renaissance face, like a Borgia or one of the Medici Popes, cruel and munificent at the same time.
    It struck her how easy it had been: the job interview, the first-class flight to Paris then Bucharest, finding this crypt on the second day. She was either on a roll or being led by the nose. And hadn’t Radu seemed a little too familiar when talking about Ajax? As if he personally knew the tycoon and wasn’t simply a contract guide who had met her at the airport.
    With the point of her Buck knife, a three-inch skinning blade, she traced the line where the lid connected to the coffin. She wondered why the joint was so clean, not mortar filled as it should be. A rifle shot echoed from above.
    She backed away from the casket and sheathed the knife. The shot was probably nothing, but she had to check. She’d have Radu’s ass if he was shooting rabbits.
    She was down the corridor, halfway to the door, when she heard a heavy grating behind her. Limestone against limestone? No one could be climbing out of the sarcophagus, the lid alone weighed four hundred pounds, but instead of