The Two Lost Mountains Page 10
‘So why join a religious order as strict as the Jesuits?’
‘Because the Jesuits, like him, prize knowledge and wisdom above all else. They’re constantly getting into trouble with the Vatican elites. Bertie only ever wanted to be left alone to study history, the planets and the stars. For the last ten years he’s been working for the Vatican Observatory at the VATT, but old Bertie is a dinosaur and not very good at office politics. He was replaced by a much younger—and very ambitious—German priest named Father Felix Rasmussen. This annoyed Bertie very much.’
‘What’s the VATT?’ Rufus asked.
‘The Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope in Arizona. One of the finest telescopes in the world.’
Jack said, ‘He says Sphinx is heading to Mont Saint-Michel and may even already have people there. What’s the English tunnel?’
Iolanthe said, ‘It is a secret entrance to Mont Saint-Michel, a tunnel dug by the English when they laid siege to the Mont in 1434. It starts on a nearby island called Tombelaine. The tunnel is dangerous but it’s the only way to get to Mont Saint-Michel undetected.’
‘Okay,’ Jack said. ‘Here’s what we’re gonna do. If Sphinx is going to Mont Saint-Michel, that’s where I’m going. To either stop him or to get one of those keys and use it to enter the maze. Iolanthe, you’re coming with me to introduce me to this Bertie. Hades, you, too. Nobody, I’ll need you to fly us.
‘Zoe and Mum, I need you two to go to Rome. Go to the Vatican. If the city is asleep, see if you can get in there and find any clues to the location of the blue bell, the globe or that journal in Vault IX of the Archives.’
Mae turned to Sisters Lynda and Agnes. ‘Wanna bust into the Vatican Secret Archives with us?’
Sister Lynda said, ‘Love to. Be nice to see the Church’s inner sanctums and go where no girl has gone before.’
Jack turned to Rufus. ‘Can you fly them in on the Sukhoi?’
‘Be my pleasure, sir.’
Jack added, ‘What’s the status on those cargo planes filled with bronzemen that followed us out of Moscow?’
Rufus checked a portable satellite radar. ‘They’re coming over Europe now, sir. Heading toward northern France on a direct course for Mont Saint-Michel.’
Jack said, ‘Alby, Easton. You get the most important job of all. I need you guys to watch over our unconscious friends here—Lily, Stretch and Aloysius. They can’t fight for themselves, so you need to guard them and keep them out of the reach of our enemies.
‘Stay here for now, but be ready to run in case the bad guys turn up. While you’re waiting, see what you can find out about that Supreme Labyrinth. Check out my stuff from the farm, too: I recall that some of it mentions labyrinths and Imhotep the Great. Also, look into the fourth moon landing and that pedestal. And Alby?’
‘Yeah?’
‘Find out everything you possibly can about the five iron mountains, especially the two lost ones.’
There was movement all over Hades’s palatial estate as everyone prepared for their missions.
Alby and Easton were prepping three rolling hospital beds on which they could lay the sleeping bodies of Lily, Stretch and Aloysius.
Alby hooked up some IVs that would keep the comatose bodies nourished in their sleep. He also set up some computers nearby so he could do his research while watching over them.
Rufus refuelled the Sukhoi as Zoe, Mae and the two nuns loaded everything they needed.
A short distance away, near Hades’s lake house, Nobody flight-checked a compact little seaplane.
It was one of two identical seaplanes that Hades kept on his private lake, although technically the planes did not belong to him.
They had been bought by his sons—his two nasty sons, Princes Dion and Zaitan—for quick hops to mountain lakes at exclusive ski resorts in Switzerland and Austria.
The two seaplanes were custom-built ICON A10s. Regular people couldn’t buy these. They were made to order.
Small and state-of-the-art, the two A10s were slightly larger than the famous ICON A5, which can only carry two people. These could carry five: two up front, three in the back. Like the A5, their big selling point was their ability to take off and land on short bodies of water, like remote alpine lakes.
Painted on the sides of the two seaplanes were their names: Sexy Prince One and Sexy Prince Two.
Nobody shook his head.
‘Jackasses,’ he muttered.
When the sleeping room was ready, Jack carried Lily into it, wrapped in a blanket.
He handed her to Alby who laid her down gently on one of the hospital beds. They handled her like precious cargo, like the most important thing in their lives, which she was.
Once Lily was safely in her bed, Jack went to get Stretch.
He passed Rufus on the way. The big pilot was carrying his unconscious friend, Aloysius, to the sleeping room in a similar manner: gently, tenderly.
After he had laid Aloysius on one of the beds, Rufus approached Jack, holding something in his hands.
It was a black gunbelt, with two sawn-off silver Remington shotguns in its holsters: Aloysius Knight’s signature weapons.
‘Jack,’ Rufus said. ‘I want you to take these. They’re the best in the business. They make an impression. Aloysius would want you to use ’em, you know, to do some damage.’
Jack gave Rufus a long look. Then he nodded, took the gunbelt and strapped it around his waist, affixing the holsters’ Velcro straps around his thighs.
‘Appreciate this, Rufus,’ he said.
‘Do him proud, Cap’n,’ Rufus said, before ambling off with his huge shoulders hunched.
When Lily, Aloysius and Stretch were in their beds, Easton put down some blankets for the dogs nearby. Horus watched it all from her perch.
Easton showed the set-up to Jack. ‘We will keep a good watch, Captain Jack.’
‘You’re a fine man, Easton,’ Jack said. ‘Thanks.’
Easton beamed and went off to grab some more medical supplies with Alby.
Jack sat for a moment in the room with the three sleeping figures and his pets.
It was a rare quiet moment and he used it to bring up two emails kept in special folders on his phone: two Messages from the Other Side pre-written by Sky Monster and Pooh Bear.
In the silence of that room, Jack read them.
First, Sky Monster’s:
Well, hey there Jack, my buddy, my bro,
I imagine this is a time to say something profound, but I never really was any good at all that kind of stuff. I was always just a dumb ol’ pilot.
So all I’ll say is this: thank you.
Thank you for taking me along on your adventures, for giving my life meaning, a purpose, something to fight for.
Running and flying and fighting alongside a guy like you makes a guy like me a little taller, a little braver, a little less fat.
Speaking of which, I will never forget our battles together during those crazy Great Games. All those other brilliant warriors brought with them fit and strong companions while you only had me by your side: a dumb, fat Kiwi who should shave more.
But fuck me, we did it, and I’ll always have that. Always.
And now, I guess I’m gone.
Damn, I hope I went out fighting.
Your friend,
Ernest Q. Shepherd II
a.k.a. Sky Monster
P.S. Go the All Blacks!
Jack sniffed back a sob. ‘Damn New Zealanders. It’s always about the rugby. And you used your name, Ernie.’
He turned to Pooh Bear’s email. It was e
asily the shortest of the messages he’d seen so far. It read:
Jack,
My hero.
Lily,
My light.
Stretch,
My friend forever.
I’m sorry I had to go.
Pooh
Jack sat there for a moment, his head bowed, a tear trickling down his cheek.
Jack was clicking off his phone when Alby returned to the bedroom.
‘Jack, I just did some calculations. The moon is going to be directly over Mont Saint-Michel at 8:37 p.m. tonight. It’ll be over it for approximately thirteen minutes. I don’t have an exact location of the pedestal on the lunar surface, but I’m guessing it’ll be aligned.’
‘Good work, Alby. Now keep my girl safe while I’m away.’
‘I will.’
Jack left the room and called to the others. ‘Time to go, people!’
Goodbyes were said before everyone made for their respective planes.
An air of sombreness hung over the moment.
It was as if many of them sensed they might not see each other again.
Jack and Zoe embraced and kissed.
‘You look after yourself, okay,’ Zoe said. ‘Don’t make me have to come rescue you from somewhere.’
Jack smiled. ‘I only take those risks because I always know you’ll be there to save me. See you soon, honey.’
Hades made to shake hands with Mae, only to be unexpectedly hugged by her.
‘Good luck, Anthony,’ she said. ‘You may have been the King of the Underworld once, but you’ve grown on me.’ She jerked her chin at Jack. ‘Look after my boy.’
‘I will, Mae,’ Hades said. And then he added, ‘Mae. Can I ask you a question?’
‘Shoot.’
Hades looked over at Jack, now striding toward one of the seaplanes with Iolanthe and Nobody. ‘How did you raise him? How did you create a man like that?’
‘I’ll show you,’ Mae said. ‘Hey, Cubby!’ she shouted suddenly.
Jack spun instantly at the name.
‘Sorry, fifth greatest warrior,’ Mae called, smiling. ‘I’m so proud of you, Cub. Be careful out there. Love you.’
Jack gave her wry smile in return. ‘Love you, too, Mum.’
Hades said, ‘Cubby?’
‘My pet name for him as a kid,’ Mae said. ‘His father went by Wolf, so right from when he was a baby, Jack always went by Cub or Cubby. How did I make him the way he is? I don’t know. I do know that every time I see him I tell him how proud I am of him. I hear he does the same with Lily. It’s parenting, right?’
Hades sighed sadly. ‘Mae, during the Great Games my two sons plotted to kill me and seize my throne. The younger one, Zaitan, died, and Dion now works with Sphinx. My brother, Yago, hates me. I failed both as a parent and as a brother.’
They watched in silence as Jack climbed into the seaplane.
‘He’s going to die doing this,’ Hades said softly.
‘Say again?’ Mae said.
‘He’s entirely overmatched. Sphinx has more knowledge, more experts, more resources, more weapons plus an entire army of automatons at his command. Jack cannot win this.’
‘Maybe,’ Mae said. ‘When he was a kid, I only ever gave Jack one piece of advice: choose good friends. Look at all these people helping him now. He chose well. And they help him because he’d step in front of a bus for them.
‘Did Alby tell you what Jack did in Moscow? He dragged three people away from those bronzemen, when he could have run and saved himself. Look at how he just carried Lily and Stretch to their beds. Everything he’s doing now is for his friends. He fights for them, for their world, for their right to live free.
‘Jack may be overmatched on paper, but never count him out,’ Mae said. ‘The odds don’t mean anything to Jack. And that makes me very proud.’
The team split up.
Jack’s seaplane—Sexy Prince One—took off from the lake for the short flight to Mont Saint-Michel in northern France.
Rufus’s Sukhoi flew south toward the Vatican.
Alby stayed behind and watched them go.
MONT SAINT-MICHEL
THE FALLING TEMPLE WITHIN MONT SAINT-MICHEL
(X-RAY VIEW)
Mont Saint-Michel
Northwestern France
23 December, 2000 hours
Mont Saint-Michel is stupendous.
There is no other word for it.
Like its companion island in England over on the other side of the English Channel, St Michael’s Mount, it is a tidal island with a medieval structure on its back.
But that is where the similarities end.
While the castle that sits on St Michael’s Mount in England is squat, square and utilitarian, the structure atop France’s Mont Saint-Michel is striking, soaring and breathtakingly beautiful.
Over time, some historians have used the name ‘Mont Saint-Michel’ to describe both the abbey and the island, but this is not strictly correct. The island’s full name is actually ‘Mont Saint-Michel au péril de la Mer’: The Mount of St Michael at the peril of the sea.
It is well earned.
For the island stands a kilometre out from the shore, in the middle of a wide bay. The tides of this bay are both strong and enormous, rising and falling a full fifteen metres twice a day.
It is one of the largest and fastest tidal movements in the world and it is lethal: even modern-day tourists have been caught unawares by its speed and been overwhelmed by the incoming waves. Victor Hugo himself described it as ‘à la vitesse d’un cheval au galop’: ‘as swift as a galloping horse’.
When the tide is out, the bay around the magnificent island is no less dangerous. The exposed seabed becomes a deadly wasteland of sucking mud and quicksand-filled potholes.
The peril of the sea.
The abbey itself is an architectural marvel. If it was built at ground level, it would be an iconic wonder of the world to rival Notre Dame, but it stands five hundred feet above the landscape at the summit of the mount and is visible for miles.
The multi-levelled, many-spired cathedral cascades down the mountain in a sequence of enormous step-like walls that shade the sprawling medieval town nestled at the base of the island, itself protected at the waterline by battlements.
At the very top of the abbey, at the tip of its steeple above the heart of the cathedral, at the very highest point of the whole fortified island, is a golden statue of the archangel Michael.
The dangerous tides and battlements have proved to be an excellent defence for Mont Saint-Michel: it withstood not one but three sieges by English forces during the Hundred Years War. The English even made camp on the second island in the bay, the nearby uninhabited island of Tombelaine, but they never took Mont Saint-Michel.
In the 1800s, those same tides and battlements worked in the opposite way when Napoleon used the mount as a prison: a 19th-century Alcatraz.
One final feature is worth noting: long before the Catholic Church gained a foothold on it, Mont Saint-Michel contained many stone circles and ancient pagan religious sites both on and inside it. For over a thousand years, the Church has banned access to these sites.
On the evening of 23 December, Mont Saint-Michel was ablaze with light.
A full moon lit up the entire bay and newly erected floodlights mounted on the island’s lower walls illuminated the abbey’s upper reaches. They had been set up by Sphinx’s advance team, the members of which could be seen moving all over the upper reaches of the Mont, especially around the cathedral.
The tide was coming in. Swiftly.
The inrushing waves sloshed against the battlements at the base of the mighty island.
The only road connecting the tidal island to the mainland was a long sweeping causeway bridge. It was also lit up by floodlights and on
it, blocking it, were four jeeps, two troop trucks and . . .
. . . twenty bronzemen, all facing impassively outward, barring the way.
In the other direction, out in the wider bay to the north, the island of Tombelaine lay low and dark in the night.
But underneath it, there was movement.
Jack and Iolanthe raced through a tight tunnel that had been dug under the seabed between Tombelaine and Mont Saint-Michel.
They had left Nobody and Hades back at Tombelaine, with the seaplane that had brought them there. The plane was hidden inside a rickety old fishing shack, part of a cluster of abandoned hovels that hung off the northern tip of the uninhabited island.
Down in the tunnel, Jack and Iolanthe were well aware that in the world above them, the tide was coming in.
For a rising tide above meant a rising tide inside the tunnel.
This was because the tunnel—built by English forces six hundred years earlier—was not entirely watertight. Over half a millennium, its ancient walls had become porous, allowing silty water to slowly seep into it as the tide came in overhead.
‘We have to hurry!’ Iolanthe said as she ran, the rising water slapping against her knees, her flashlight’s beam bouncing up and down.
‘When the tide outside comes in, water gradually fills the tunnel, making it a deathtrap. The English only used it once to try to storm Mont Saint-Michel, but the tide came in too fast and two hundred soldiers drowned. The sheer number of corpses left inside the tunnel blocked the way so badly that it couldn’t be used again without clearing them out. Then the war ended and the English left and it was forgotten.’
The grim evidence of that mass drowning was all around them, even now, six hundred years later.
The flesh and bones of the dead invaders had long ago crumbled to nothing—largely clearing the way—but their 15th-century armour and weapons remained.
Jack found himself hurdling rusted chestplates, fallen swords and blackened shields as he hurried down the tight, rough-walled tunnel.
The water rising around his shins was a foul milky sludge, a mix of mud and silt. The idea of drowning in it was sickening.
The tunnel was about two kilometres long and by the time they reached its end, the sludge—fed by the incoming tide above them seeping through the walls—had risen to their thighs.