Kowalski furrowed his brows, surprised the director knew this detail about his past, but when it came to background searches, Sigma was thorough. So of course Sigma would know about his family background, about how he had been raised in the South Bronx, literally on the wrong side of the tracks. His grandparents had emigrated from Poland during the war. His father eventually started a small deli, but drank away most of the profits on the weekends. Kowalski had one sibling, a kid sister, Anne, who was born with Goldenhar syndrome, a birth defect that left her with a twisted back and severe hearing loss. After their mother was killed by a drunk driver, his father took this tragedy as a reason to drink even more heavily, leaving most of Anne’s care to fall upon Kowalski’s own young shoulders.
He took a deep breath, shying from those hard memories of the agony his sister suffered, both physical and emotional, before dying at only eleven years old. He found his fingers reaching to a pocket, to the cigar stashed there. He fingered the cellophane wrapper, wanting suddenly to smoke.
“I’m pretty rusty at it,” he mumbled.
“That’s not what I heard,” Painter said. “I heard you sometimes volunteer, working with at-risk deaf children at Georgetown Hospital.”
Monk glanced at him, lifting his eyebrows in surprise.
Kowalski silently cursed Sigma’s prying. “So who exactly am I supposed to be interrogating over there?”
Painter crossed his arms. “I think I’ll let you meet him in person before answering that. If we’re going to win over Dr. Crandall’s full cooperation, such fluency with her test subject may prove beneficial.”
Whatever . . .
Kowalski turned away, not bothering to hide his irritation.
“What about the other sister, the one in Croatia?” Monk asked behind him. “You’ve still heard no further word about the fate of that research team?”
Painter’s tone grew graver. “Nothing. The only news from the region is that they’re suffering through a series of small earthquakes. It’s left the whole mountain range rattling with aftershocks.”
Kat added, “And it’s likely only to get worse.”
5
April 29, 2:15 P.M. CEST
Karlovac County, Croatia
Shivering in the dark, Lena crouched on a lip of rock. Her helmet lamp shone across the black surface of the growing lake that filled the bottom of the cavern.
We need to get out of here . . .
In the past twenty minutes, the floodwaters had erased all evidence of the prehistoric encampment that once occupied this subterranean world, swamping over the calcite-crusted bones and the charred sites of old home fires. All that remained were the tops of stalagmites protruding from the lake and the cave paintings along the walls—only now those painted herds of deer and bison looked like they were drowning.
Despite her own terror, she mourned the destruction.
At her side, Father Novak shoved his cell phone back into his pack. He shook his head, having no better luck getting a signal than she had a moment ago. She had tried to reach her sister in the States, but she could get no service this far underground.
“We should wade over to the next cave, to where we climbed down here,” he suggested. “See if there’s any way out. After all of these aftershocks, maybe something knocked loose, reopened what the thieves blasted closed.”
He didn’t sound hopeful, but Lena nodded, wanting to do something—if nothing else, to keep moving. She hiked her pack higher on her shoulder and slipped off the lip of rock into the dark lake. The icy water immediately filled her boots and soaked her pants to midthigh. Gritting her teeth, she took a few steps and continued on.
“Careful,” she warned. “It’s pretty slippery.”
The priest followed her, gasping loudly as he waded in. “Slippery? Should’ve warned me about how cold it is.”
She couldn’t help but grin, appreciating his attempt to lighten the mood. Together they crossed the large cavern and headed toward the tunnel that ran to the neighboring smaller cave. She prayed there was some escape in that direction.
As they neared the tunnel mouth, a low rumble rose around her, rippling the surface of the lake.
“Another aftershock,” Roland said, stopping with her.
They waited together, holding their breaths, expecting the worst, but like the half-dozen previous quakes, this one quickly subsided. Still, she splashed more quickly to the tunnel’s mouth and shone her light down its throat.
“It’s half flooded in there,” she said.
“Better than fully flooded.”
“That’s true.”
She ducked beneath the low roof and headed along the tunnel. She breathed hard, doing her best to hold her claustrophobia at bay. She was not normally prone to anxiety in tight places, but with the weight of the mountain overhead and the need to bend over and bring her nose close to the flow of dark water, she could hear her heart pounding in her ears.
Luckily, the tunnel climbed at a slight angle, and by the time she reached its end, the water was only ankle-deep. Still, she was already soaked and had a hard time keeping her teeth from chattering, a reaction only partly due to the cold.
Roland fared no better, shivering as he faced a tumble of broken rock along the base of the far wall. He craned upward, pointing his beam toward the ceiling. She joined her light to his. Together they scanned the roof for any sign of the old entrance, but it had been thoroughly blasted away. Only a few streams of water trickled down from up there, draining through the boulders from the storm-swept mountaintop.
Roland clenched a fist and mumbled under his breath. His words were in Croatian, and though she couldn’t understand him, they sounded more like a curse than any prayer to God.
“It’ll be okay,” she offered uselessly. “We’ll wait out the storm. Surely someone will come looking for us. If we hear anything, we can scream and shout. Once they know we’re down here, they can dig us free.”
Roland studied the water, which had already climbed to midcalf. He didn’t state the obvious, which she appreciated. If the flooding didn’t kill them, the cold and exposure surely would.
He nodded. “So then we wait and—”
A low groan cut him off, rising from the shadows to the left. She swung in that direction. From behind a thick folded curtain of flowstone, a dark figure fell into view. Roland pushed Lena behind him, likely fearing this was one of the thieves.
The man, on his hands and knees, rolled to the side of a hip and raised a hand against the blinding glare of their two helmet lamps.
“Père Novak . . . Docteur Crandall . . .” he croaked out, a French accent thick on his tongue. “C’est vous?”
Lena centered her beam, discovering a familiar face, one half covered in blood. Though she had glimpsed the man only briefly, she recognized the leader of the French infantry unit.
So did Roland.
The priest rushed forward. “Commandant Gerard!”
The soldier looked relieved and dragged a rifle from behind the flowstone curtain. Its solidness seemed to help center him. He faced them both. “Qu’est-ce qui s’est passé?” he asked hoarsely, then tried again in English. “Wh-what has happened?”
Lena joined Roland as the priest checked the soldier’s head wound. A scalp laceration continued to bleed slowly. She suspected his injury must have happened during the explosion.
“How . . . how did you end up down here?” Lena asked.
Gerard stared toward the blasted remains of the old entrance, then spoke slowly, hesitantly, still dazed. “When we were attacked, I rushed down here to protect you all. That was our highest priority.”
She understood. To keep the civilians in his charge safe.
“But the enemy was too fast,” Gerard explained. “I barely had time to hide when they came down in force on my heels. I heard them call for Wrightson and Arnaud to show themselves. When you two did not appear with the other men, I suspected they had hidden you. To protect you, n’est-ce pas?”
&nbs
p; She nodded at his assessment.
“There were too many for me to risk an assault to free the professors. Any attempt would’ve gotten them both killed. So I waited, hoping to rescue you two, then raise an alarm when it was safe.”
“We had a similar plan,” Lena admitted.
The soldier frowned at the roof. “I was about to move when . . .” He shook his head. “I do not remember.”
“The thieves blew up the entrance,” Lena explained. “You must have been knocked out.”
Gerard gained his feet unsteadily, keeping one hand on the wall and shouldering his rifle with the other. He stared down at the water splashing over his legs.
“The caverns are flooding,” Roland warned. “We should try to get as high as possible.”
The soldier ignored him, stepping away. He unclipped a small flashlight from his belt and shone it down the throat of the tunnel to the neighboring cavern. A few yards down the passageway, water now fully flooded the tunnel.
Lena joined him. “I think Roland . . . Father Novak is right. We should climb higher on these walls, try to stay above the rising tide.”
Gerard shook his head. “Any rescue team will take too long to reach us here.”
“Then what would you have us do?” Roland asked.
Gerard led them back to the curtain of flowstone and pointed behind it. Lena peered into the space and discovered that the soldier’s hiding place was the mouth of another tunnel. It opened four feet above the flooded floor.
But where did it lead?
She turned to find Gerard pulling out a hand-drawn map from his pocket. He shook it open and splayed it on the wall. It appeared to be a detailed sketch of this cavern system.
“We are here,” he said, stabbing a thick finger on a spot on the map. “According to Wrightson’s geological study of the surrounding area, this set of caves connects to a series of tunnels and caverns that run deeper and farther through the mountains. Possibly as far as Đula’s Abyss.”
Gerard turned to Roland, but the priest wore a doubtful expression.
“What is he talking about?” Lena asked.
“You came through the city of Ogulin to get here, yes?” Roland asked.
She nodded, remembering the quaint medieval village with its stone castle and old homes.
“The town sits atop Croatia’s longest caving system, over twenty kilometers of caverns, passageways, and subterranean lakes. In the center of town is one of the openings into that system.”
“In the middle of town?” she asked.
Roland explained, “The River Dobra flows out of the neighboring mountains and carves a deep gorge that runs halfway through Ogulin. In the town’s center, it drops through an abyss, where it vanishes underground and becomes a subterranean river. That point is called Đula’s Abyss. Legends surround that place, telling of a young girl named Đula who threw herself into its depths to avoid marrying an old and cruel nobleman.”
Lena turned to the French soldier. “And you think this set of caverns might lead to that abyss and a way out of here.”
“Wrightson believed it might,” Gerard said. “But it’s never been fully explored.”
“How far away is that town?”
Roland answered, “About seven kilometers as the crow flies.”
That’s over four miles.
She felt a sinking despair.
“I have ropes, climbing gear, and extra batteries in my pack,” Gerard offered.
Trying to stave off panic, she stared down at the rising water. “What if the rest of that cavern system is equally flooded?”
“Je ne sais pas,” Gerard said with a shrug. “I do not know, but here it is definitely flooding.”
Roland turned to her. “What do you want to do? If you wish to remain, I will stay with you.”
Lena flashed her light toward the mouth of the tunnel, pondering the unknowns that lay out in that darkness. But the French soldier was right. Better to head off into the unknown than stay here, where death was almost certain.
She straightened her back and faced the two men.
“Then let’s go.”
4:04 P.M.
Gray clutched a handgrip near his shoulder as the helicopter jostled roughly through the storm. Rain swept in heavy sheets across the window canopy, threatening the ability of the craft’s wipers to maintain visibility. Though sunset was still a couple of hours away, a heavy cloak of black clouds hugged the mountaintops and turned day into night.
Next to Gray, the pilot struggled with his controls as the rotors chopped savagely through the harsh weather. Winds continually buffeted the small craft, seeming to come from all directions at once as they fought higher into the Alps. Finally they cleared a mountain pass and a scatter of lights appeared in the next valley.
“Ogulin!” the pilot yelled through his radio, swiping beads of sweat from his brow. “That’s as far as I can take you in this storm. Reports say the weather is even worse in the mountains beyond.”
Gray turned to Seichan, who lounged in the rear cabin, seemingly unperturbed by their turbulent ascent into these mountains. She shrugged, accepting this change of plans just as readily.
Half an hour ago, the two had landed in Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, where a local pilot and helicopter had been waiting for them. The hop to the coordinates of the missing French unit should have taken only fifteen minutes, but the storm had doubled that flight time and now threatened to pummel them back to the ground.
Gray faced around, preparing to browbeat the pilot into continuing onward, not wanting to lose any more time. The longer they delayed, the more likely they’d lose any trace of the research team and their guards. But as he stared at the black skies, at the crackles of lightning forking over the mountaintops, he sank back into his seat.
“Take us down,” he conceded.
The pilot nodded, blowing out a sigh of relief, and lowered the craft toward the lights scattered across the bowl of the valley.
“I can land in a field at the edge of town,” the man said, pointing. “I’ll radio for a car to meet us. Once the worst of the storm blows out, we can try again. But it’ll likely be morning at the earliest. I can arrange a hotel in the meantime.”
Gray barely heard him, already adjusting the timetable in his head, seeking alternatives. “How long would it take to reach the site on foot?”
The pilot cast him a skeptical look. “You can take a car to the village of Bjelsko. It’s only six kilometers away. From there, it’s a hike of forty minutes. But that’s in good weather. In this storm, through those dense woods, with the trails washed away, it could take hours, and you could just as easily get lost. Better to wait out the storm.”
As if to punctuate this recommendation, a hard gust pounded the helicopter, jolting it to the side. The pilot returned his full attention to landing his craft in the field.
Gray reached into his pocket and retrieved his phone. He used his thumbprint to decrypt its contents and reviewed the mission files loaded there. He had reviewed everything thoroughly en route to Zagreb and knew what he wanted to find. He brought up a photo of a man in his midfifties with salt-and-pepper hair, decked out in a climbing harness, standing at the edge of a gorge.
Twisting around, he showed the picture to Seichan. “Fredrik Horvat, head of the local mountaineering society. It was his group that first entered the caves up in the mountains and kept it secret until a research team could be put together to secure the site.”
Seichan leaned forward. “And he lives in this little town?”
“He does. And I expect he knows these mountains better than anyone. If he can guide us there . . .”
Seichan sat straighter. “Then we wouldn’t have to wait until morning.”
“I have his address.”
The pilot quickly landed the helicopter in a wide field. Shortly thereafter, the twin beams of a sedan pierced the gloom and sped along the neighboring road toward their position. Gray and Seichan exited the aircraft and hunched in thei
r jackets against the wind-whipped sheets of rain. As soon as the sedan arrived, they climbed into the backseat.
Once the car started moving, Gray gave the driver—a young man named Dag—the name and address of the local mountaineer.
“Ah, Fredrik . . . I know him,” Dag said in halting English, smiling brightly, showing a wide gap in his front teeth. “This is a small place. He is crazy man. Crawling through all those caves. Me, I want open air. More the better.”
“I tried phoning him,” Gray said. “No answer.”
“He maybe at the pub. At Hotel Frankopan. He lives nearby. Lots of people go to the pub during storms. Good to drink brandy when the vještice—witches—howl.” Thunder boomed, loud enough to shake the windows of the sedan. Dag ducked slightly from the din, then straightened and made the sign of the cross with one arm. “Maybe best not to talk about those vještice right now.”
As they headed toward the center of town, Gray repeatedly tried to raise the mountaineer on his cell, but he had no better luck reaching the man. Gray was left with little other choice.
“We’ll try the pub first,” he told Dag, then turned to Seichan. “If we fail to find Fredrik there, someone at the hotel might know another guide.”
“That is, if they’re not all afraid of those witches,” Seichan added, leaning her head back and closing her eyes.
As they entered the town, Gray studied the passing landscape. It was a quaint fairy-tale village of narrow streets, small wooded parks, and homes roofed in red tiles. All around, the town’s sixteenth-century origin revealed itself: from an old stately church with a tall steeple to the remains of an ancient fort atop a nearby hill. They finally stopped below the thick walls of a stone castle, each corner flanked by massive round towers. Its battlements overlooked a deep river gorge, likely the same one pictured in the photo of Fredrik.
“Frankopan Castle,” Dag said as he parked the car at the curb. He drew their attention to the neighboring whitewashed building that abutted the Gothic castle. “And that is Hotel Frankopan. The pub is just inside. I will show you and ask about Fredrik.”
Normally Gray would have preferred to maintain a low profile, but they’d already lost enough time detouring here and still had a long slog ahead of them.