“Damn it.”

He grunted, got to his feet carefully on the slippery path. His entire back and ass were caked with mud. He steadied himself, held the torch aloft.

He’d slid half the distance down the path and now stood at the pool’s edge. There were beams and sandbags along the edge of the pool. It seemed the river had been dammed. Kelley held up the torch, looked across the pool, and saw a large passage. Not just dammed. Diverted. The small river rushed into the pool, swirled around, and emptied into the passage across the way. The path continued around the pool, narrow and muddy. Kelley had to put his back against the rough, wet stone to scoot sideways. The construction was more elaborate than it had first appeared. There was a drop of nearly twenty feet on the other side of the pool, and there was a sturdy ladder leading down to the floor of the cavern below.

The dam was large, with wooden beams holding rocks and sandbags in place. A lot of manpower had gone into diverting the river into the other passage. Kelley swung his leg over the edge, making sure to keep careful hold on the torch as he climbed down. The temperature dropped another few degrees. He shivered, wet and cold.

Kelley stepped off the last rung of the ladder and landed with a splash, the cold water coming halfway up his shin.

“Hell.”

Kelley’s feet were lumps of frozen meat in a matter of seconds.

He looked back up at the dam. The structure was not performing its task perfectly. Trickles of water spurted through here and there, so there was still a minor stream running along the river’s old course.

Kelley trudged on.

The cavern was much bigger here. He held the torch as high as he could but still wasn’t able to see the ceiling. He wondered why they’d want to dam the river. What was at the end of this passage?

Kelley’s foot caught on something underwater, and he pitched forward. His hands flew out to break his fall, and he landed with a cold splash, the torch hissing out and plunging him into total darkness.

Muttering every curse he could think of, he sat up in the middle of the stream and blinked. That’s a lot of dark.

He thought about feeling his way back up the stream, finding the ladder. If he was extremely careful, he could probably make his way back without falling in the river and drowning himself.

He was wet. He was cold. He was still hungover. This had been a terrible idea.

Kelley grunted, stood, and rubbed his backside where he’d landed on some rocks. Slowly his eyes adjusted. The darkness was not complete after all. Dimly he perceived the dull yellow flickering of torches at the far end of the cavern. There was light far ahead, around a corner.

He went forward, forcing himself to move slowly. This was no time for a sprained ankle. He stumbled a few times but managed to right himself without going into the water again, and soon he was at the bend in the cavern where it made a right turn. There was more light here, and Kelley picked up the pace. Soon the cavern turned again, and he saw a lot more flickering light.

He stood at the corner, peeked around the edge.

A handful of men milled around a construction site. One stood at a small wooden table, looking at an unrolled parchment. The large chamber was well lit by a number of torches and a large brazier. The echoes of a few men working with various tools mixed with the sound of rushing water coming from behind him. There wasn’t much mud here, although the stream still ran through the center of the chamber and left again through a hole on the far side.

A giant waterwheel had been assembled, but they hadn’t yet placed it in position. Kelley imagined the dam had been built to hold back the water for the construction and placement of the waterwheels. Presumably the water-or at least some of it-would be let loose again when the wheels were in place. But why? It was a hell of a place to grind flour.

The man standing over the parchment looked familiar. Yes, Kelley remembered him from the audience with Rudolph. Hans Vredeman de Vries. Rudolph had said something about the man’s working with drainage.

Kelley couldn’t stand it now. He had to find out what was going on. The curiosity burned a hole in his imagination. He waited until most of the workers were in another part of the chamber and the rest had their backs turned. He scooted fast around the edge of the cave, clinging to the shadows, and hunkered down behind a barrel and a pile of thick, coiled rope. He noticed a few narrow openings behind him, more natural tunnels.

There wasn’t much to see from this vantage point, so Kelley moved stealthily toward a pile of lumber. He never made it.

Strong hands grabbed him from behind, one thick hand clapping over his mouth. He was dragged into a tunnel, backward into the long dark beneath the earth.

This isn’t where I die.

I don’t want to mislead you, so I thought it best to assure you now isn’t when I meet my untimely demise. I mean, I’m a ghost, right? So something bad must have happened to put me in this circumstance. Yeah.

But not yet.

In the meantime, you’re probably wondering what happened to Allen.

After ten minutes, Father Paul began to wonder if Allen was coming back. When twenty minutes had passed, he knew something was wrong.

Father Paul touched the throat microphone hidden under his priest’s collar. “Are you monitoring, Finnegan?”

“Right here, Boss,” came the voice in his earpiece.

“I think I’ve lost Cabbot.”

“Did he rabbit?”

“I don’t think so. I think something happened.”

The priest twiddled his thumbs a moment, smoked the remainder of his cigarette down to the butt. “Finnegan, how many can you round up without jeopardizing our surveillance?”

“Let me see.” Ten seconds crawled by. “Five.”

Father Paul thought about it quickly. Five was enough. “Where’s the van?”

“Two blocks north of you.”

“I’ll see you in five minutes.”

The priest pushed away from the table, made his way through the Globe’s crowd and checked the restrooms. He circled the café once on the off chance that Allen had been caught in a conversation with some girl, but as suspected, Allen was nowhere to be found.

Father Paul went outside and turned north.

He stuck another cigarette in his mouth and considered. Somebody had gotten their hooks into the Cabbot boy. Father Paul thought he’d arrived early enough to preempt any sort of action by the opposition, and it irked him that he’d figured wrong. He’d planned to make Allen Cabbot his link to Evergreen. Father Paul could deal with Evergreen without the boy, but he didn’t want to have to try. A lot of careful thought had gone into the plan.

The black van came into view, and Father Paul broke into a trot. It was a large, nondescript van, parked in an alley. The priest reached it and knocked on the back door. It opened, and he entered, pulling the door closed behind him.

The interior of the van hummed with electronic equipment. Father Flynn Finnegan was a giant pale Irish block of meat with a headset perched on his fat noggin. It looked like some children’s toy headset. His black frock bulged with thick muscles. His red hair was growing gray at the temples. He nodded at Father Paul as he entered the van.

“Blake and Santana are on the way,” Finnegan said. “What’s the target?”

“Give me a quick rundown.”

The big Irishman swiveled in his chair and tapped at a laptop. Pictures of buildings and houses flickered on various monitors. “Target zones alpha and beta are quiet,” Finnegan reported. “But our people watching the house in Zizkov say a sedan pulled into the driveway six minutes ago. The lights are on, and there’s activity.”