her standing calmly in front of what looks like a trough carved into the rock. It’s filled with water. Then I hear the muffled sound of someone loudly cursing. It seems to be coming from beneath the floor.
“Is that Ott?” I ask.
Kelebek nods. “He threatened to harm me,” she says coolly.
“How did he get down there?”
Kelebek steps on one of the stones, and it tips beneath her foot, pivoting on an unseen hinge. Ott’s voice becomes louder for a moment, then is dampened again as the stone slides back into place. I kneel beside the stone and test it with my hand. Once again it tips. This time I stop it from closing by holding it open. I shine my flashlight into the darkness below. Ott’s face is illuminated as he looks up at me from the bottom of a narrow pit about 15 feet deep. He shields his eyes with his hand.
“Get me out of here,” he says. “I think my damn leg is broken.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t have tried to force the girl to open the door for you,” I suggest.
“I didn’t,” he says. “I went after her when I realized she’d taken the key.”
I look at Kelebek.
“He’s lying,” she says instantly.
“Search her,” I tell Ari.
Ari moves toward the girl, who backs away and pulls a small knife out of somewhere in her clothes. “Don’t touch me!”
“Looks like he’s telling the truth,” I say as the girl pokes her knife at Ari.
“Of course I’m telling the truth,” Ott snaps. “Now get me out of here.”
“We’ll need to get some rope,” I tell him. “And something to make a harness out of.”
I hear a grunt, then some more cursing. This time, it comes from Kelebek. Ari has disarmed her easily, and now has her arms around the girl, who is thrashing wildly and clawing uselessly at Ari. Yildiz is talking to her in Turkish, trying to calm her down, but the girl is too busy being angry to listen.
“Stop it!” Ari says. “Nobody is going to hurt you.”
Kelebek, probably more worn out than she is ready to listen, stops struggling. When she’s no longer trying to break away from Ari’s grasp, Ari slips a hand into the girl’s pockets. She pulls out the key from the weapon case.
“Why did you take it?” she asks.
“I didn’t,” the girl says. “I took it from him.”
“Before you tricked him into stepping on the stone?” Ari says.
Kelebek nods. “I told him I would open the door for him. He gave me the key.”
“She’s lying!” Ott bellows. “I was going to take the key from her, but I stepped on that damn trapdoor and fell in here.”
I look at Ari. I honestly don’t know which of them to believe. Based on what I know of him, it’s far more likely that Ott took the key and tried to get the girl to open the door for him. But something about the way the girl is acting makes me think she might not be telling the truth. Normally I would say that she’s just frightened and intimidated, but I’m not sure those are feelings she’s capable of.
Ari lets go of the girl, who immediately steps away and glares at all of us like an angry cat. When Yildiz attempts to put an arm around her, Kelebek shrugs her away and stands with her arms crossed over her chest.
“I’ll go back and get some rope from our packs,” I tell Ari. I look down at Ott and say, “Sorry, but you’ll have to sit in the dark for a little longer.” I let go of the rock, and as it slides back into place, once again sealing him in the pit, I hear him muttering in German.
“I’ll be back as soon as I can,” I say.
It’s easy enough to find my way back through the tunnels. I memorized the route on the way in, and now I just reverse it. Ott is in no immediate danger, and I know Ari can handle whatever might happen, so this time I go a little more slowly and appreciate the enormous amount of work that went into creating this place. I try to imagine how it was built, how long it took to carve the stairs and tunnels out of rock, to go so deep into the ground. It’s an amazing feat of engineering. I think about how much Jackson would love this place. Then I remember that my brother is dead, his body lying in a crypt beneath a church in France. I push that thought from my mind and climb the last set of stairs, back to the surface.
As I walk outside and toward the room where our gear is, I’m startled by someone coming out of the door. For a moment, my flashlight shines on the face of a boy. I have just enough time to see that there is a thick scar running across it, and that his right eye is missing. Then he turns and takes off at a run.
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