Everyone else was fighting; Bella alone stood calmly at the rear and watched.
When the last of the eighteen revenants had been destroyed, she raised a hand and gestured the group forward.
They followed Whitington Lane's passageway deeper into the earth. The tunnel ended at a crude wooden elevator beside a shaft that plunged into absolute darkness. Shaun dropped a glow stick and counted the fall, then looked up with genuine surprise.
"This shaft is at least 500 feet (150 m) deep. It's hard to imagine they dug all this without a single piece of modern machinery."
Bella wasn't surprised. The Templar Order had always been immensely wealthy throughout history. And wealth meant being able to accomplish things ordinary people found unthinkable.
She studied the ancient wooden elevator. It swayed visibly, looked ready to fall apart, and could support three to five people at most. After hauling treasure through it, it would probably survive two trips before giving out completely.
Better to deal with it now than get slowed down later.
"Shaun and I go down first," she said, her voice carrying a deceptively gentle tone. "Everyone else—replace every wooden structure here with metal."
006 started to say something. She added, "You too."
The three of them stepped onto the elevator and descended slowly into the depths.
The wood had rotted badly. With a series of protesting groans, the platform reached the bottom. From there, they followed a spiral staircase downward.
Many of the steps had been eaten through by insects, and every footfall drew a long creak from the wood.
Bella, light on her feet, moved in complete silence. Shaun was lean and wore glasses—he managed fine. 006 was another matter. Built like a Cossack, solidly built and considerably heavier than the other two, he had to watch every step with care. One wrong foot through a rotten plank and there'd be no coming back.
They spiraled downward. Bella was still in the white robes that seemed distinctly out of place in these surroundings. She reached the bottom first, located a mechanism in the wall, and activated it. Shaun and 006 put their shoulders to a heavy stone door and pushed it open together.
They moved through a dark corridor and emerged into a chamber of no more than about 215 square feet (20 m²). The walls were flaking and crumbling. The only furnishings were a few scattered stone seats; in one corner lay the shattered remains of wooden crates and a collection of cobweb-draped vessels. Not a single coin in sight.
006 had come with high hopes. The empty chamber gutted him.
Even Shaun Hastings—normally dry and unfailingly upbeat—wore a look of pure disappointment.
He'd started to accept it: all that effort, and they'd come up empty. The Templars had almost certainly moved the treasure long ago.
Bella's gaze swept the room. She turned to 006.
"The pipe."
The pipe? It took him a moment—then it clicked. She meant the pipe he and Ben Gates had recovered from the wreck of the Charlotte.
He opened his pack and produced it, uncertain what to do next.
Bella pointed to a section of wall. "The Templars do love their theatrical flourishes. Alec—look there. The wall has four symbols: an eye, a compass, a pyramid, and a wall."
006 and Shaun looked immediately.
With that level of explanation, no one needed further prompting.
006 tore away the cobwebs. The four symbols were now clearly visible.
Three of them—the eye, the compass, and the pyramid—were heavily corroded. Only the wall symbol had a distinct hollow at its center.
006 detached the handle from the pipe, fitted the wall-shaped end into the depression, rotated it counterclockwise a half-turn, and pressed down on the raised section.
A deep rumble moved through the stone.
All three turned. To their left, a gap opened in the wall—a passage just wide enough for one person, darkness beyond.
Bella walked in like she was entering her own home.
006 and Shaun followed quickly.
The corridor was short—roughly 165 feet (50 m). It bent once, and then the darkness gave way.
Before them stretched a cavern measuring over 8,600 square feet (800 m²), its ceiling soaring more than 65 feet (20 m) overhead.
The space glittered.
Gold and silver covered every surface. Gemstones, jade, carved stone, and precious vessels stretched across the entire floor in every direction.
Its origins traced back to the campaigns of Alexander the Great. His Macedonian armies had swept across the entire Western world, undefeated, their soldiers living off conquest and accumulating staggering wealth. That hoard was later discovered by the Knights Templar during the Crusades. In the modern era, they had transported it to the Americas—and then the crucial trail of clues had gone cold when America was founded.
The chamber was filled with statues, armor, magnificent ornaments, and inscribed stone tablets in the styles of ancient Egypt, Babylon, and Persia. Chests of gold and silver coins, crowns and scepters lay tumbled together in glittering heaps.
Along both walls, shelves held ancient scrolls collected from across the world. Treated with archaic preservation techniques, they had survived two thousand years with barely a trace of decay.
Bella had never had much interest in gold or jewels. She could have been the wealthiest person on earth if she'd chosen to be. What drew her gaze were the scrolls—these perfectly preserved vessels of ancient knowledge. A single glance told her that some of them were older than the Galilean Iron Books she had once excavated.
"Oh wow, oh wow..." Shaun pushed his glasses up with a dramatically villainous air. "I feel like I should say something here. Something like — 'Thank you for finding my treasure. You may all rest now.'"
Bella gave him a flat look.
The Hollywood influence runs deep. Real life doesn't hand you dramatic reversals on cue—and did he genuinely think her telepathy was just for show?
She let him have his moment. She knew the lines were really aimed at 006.
006—who had recently been reduced to selling his watch and wearing a secondhand suit—gave a dignified sniff. "I don't need the money."
Watching him save face in real time, Bella's mood lifted. She smiled slightly. "You put a lot in upfront. How about this—five percent of the haul is yours. That should cover your losses ten times over."
Five percent of this treasure would cover his losses ten times over? 006 badly wanted to ask exactly how much this cache was worth—but he reined himself in with considerable effort. Saying anything right now was a recipe for misunderstanding. If he hadn't been so desperate to see this treasure with his own eyes, he never should have come at all.
Bella had already turned away from the gold entirely. She walked straight toward the shelves of ancient scrolls. To her, money was just a number. These scrolls were worth a hundred times everything else in this room combined.
006 stood motionless in the distance, staring at nothing in particular.
Bella was absorbed in the scrolls.
That left Shaun Hastings to begin cataloguing the chamber alone, working up a rough estimate of the total value.