She shot him a hard glance. ‘We can save the meet and greet for later. This tunnel has to go somewhere. Maybe Qayin and his little friends might not be able to get through this door, but they can come at us from the other end of this passageway.’

‘Actually, they don’t know all the secrets of these catacombs. We know more about them than they do,’ the young man assured her.

‘That’s terrific,’ she said sarcastically. ‘You win. But I’d still prefer to be elsewhere.’

‘Of course.’ The young man nodded to his companion with the flashlight who immediately headed down the dark throat of the tunnel. Lourds followed the light.

Lourds guessed that several minutes passed as they made their way along the passage. He thought he detected an upward grade, but wasn’t sure. It was too dark to tell and he was more interested in listening for sounds of pursuit.

‘I see you’re carrying Qayin’s book,’ the young man said.

‘I had the impression that this book didn’t actually belong to Qayin,’ Lourds replied. ‘He couldn’t read it anyway.’

‘My bad,’ the man said, sounding for a moment like one of Lourds’ Harvard students. ‘I didn’t mean to infer that the book belonged to Qayin. It doesn’t.’

Unable to control his curiosity, Lourds asked, ‘Whose book is it?’

‘I’m not at liberty to say at this moment.’

‘Well, isn’t that delightfully mysterious,’ Cleena said.

‘Were you so curious about the people who hired you to kidnap Professor Lourds?’ the man countered.

She didn’t say anything, though Lourds couldn’t tell whether that was because of shame or anger.

‘What makes this book so special?’ Lourds asked.

‘Were you able to read it?’ the man asked.

‘I had barely started, but, yes, I believe I can read it. Given time.’

Behind him, Cleena cursed softly. Lourds suddenly realized that the admission might endanger him with their newfound friends.

‘Watch your head here.’ The young man reached up to touch a low-hanging section of the passageway ceiling.

Lourds ducked and followed the man through it. The passageway came to a T only a short distance farther on. They bore to the left.

‘What did you find out from reading the book?’ the young man asked.

‘Not enough,’ Lourds responded.

‘But you think you can decipher it?’

Lourds hesitated only a moment. If I say I can, are you going to take me captive? Or if I say I can’t, are you going to kill me? Neither of those options appealed to him. He had a mystery on his hands, a true enigma of the sort that he loved to unravel. He wasn’t prepared to let this go without a fight.

‘Yes,’ he answered.

‘That’s good.’ The young man halted behind the man with a flashlight. He held the flashlight while the leader did something to the wall ahead of them.

‘Do you know what the book is about?’ Lourds asked.

The young man looked at Lourds with deep sincerity. ‘Something has been lost, Professor Lourds. Something very valuable and very important. This thing must be found. Much depends on that.’

‘What has been lost?’

Sadly, the young man shook his head. ‘That isn’t for me to say. I apologize. I know you’ve had a difficult day. But anything I may tell you could interfere with your translation. The impressions you form regarding the material you’ll find there must be your own. Many people over the years have tried to decipher the book. If you fail, it must be your own unique failure.’

Up ahead, a section of the passageway wall opened up to reveal a small high space. Iron rungs were attached to one wall. The young man with the light shone the flashlight up into the vertical passageway.

‘All clear,’ he said.

Lourds was third in line and grabbed one of the rusting iron rungs above his head. He settled his backpack, with the book inside, across his shoulders and hoisted himself up. The corroded metal bit into his palms and flaked off as he climbed. A brief glance revealed that the vertical passageway went up some distance. He couldn’t keep watching because rust flakes spilled into his eyes. As he climbed, he felt the steady burn of his abused muscles and longed for bed. And a meal of some kind.

But the mystery of the book chafed at his mind as surely as the rotten iron dug into his hands.

Just when Lourds was about to let the others know he couldn’t go any further, the lead man called a halt to the procession. Metal rasped overhead, then sunlight poured down into the shaft.

Morning? Lourds couldn’t believe what he was seeing. But he had no frame of reference for how long he had been rendered unconscious by the drugs he had been given.

The first man climbed slowly and peered around for a moment, then climbed out of the tunnel. The young man who had done all the talking followed him. Then in short order, Lourds and the girl followed, then the other three men. Lourds stood in a narrow alley that could have been a twin of the one where the helicopter had crashed.

Cleena stood with her pistol in her fist. Somehow she’d made the long climb with the weapon in her hand. The five men watched her uneasily.

‘So how do we handle this?’ she asked.

‘We’re escorting Professor Lourds to his hotel,’ the young man with a goatee said.

‘What about me?’

‘You’re free to go.’

She looked at the five men suspiciously and took a fresh grip on her weapon. ‘What? Just like that?’

‘Yes.’

She smiled. ‘And if I preferred to take the professor with me?’

‘That wouldn’t be acceptable.’

‘I’ve always been told the person with the gun makes the rules.’

Uneasily, Lourds shifted and took a step back from her.

The young man spoke calmly. ‘I assure you, you’re not the only one with a weapon here. You were allowed to come with us because we don’t like to kill, nor would we allow Qayin and his followers to murder you. But our people have fought and died for centuries for the secrets contained within that book.’

Lourds didn’t know if the robed men were armed. He could see no weapons, but the robes concealed a lot. He suddenly felt like a choice meat bone being growled over by two dogs. The thing that most captured his attention was the statement about how long people had been searching for the secret he presently had in his possession. He pulled the backpack’s straps a little tighter.

Then he remembered the other men at the airport.

‘You didn’t try to contact me at the airport yesterday morning, did you?’

‘No, Professor,’ the young man answered.

So there is a third party after me, Lourds realized.

‘Professor?’ Cleena asked. ‘The decision is yours. Do you want to stay with them?’

‘They’ve said that they’re taking me to my hotel room,’ Lourds replied.

‘And you trust them?’

Lourds shrugged. ‘They haven’t kidnapped me.’

An insouciant smile quirked her lips. ‘Yet.’ She paused. ‘I wish you well, professor. It’s been… interesting, but I hope you don’t take offence when I tell you I hope never to see you again.’

‘No offence taken. And I hope you don’t mind that the feeling is mutual.’

Gun in hand, Cleena backed down the alley for one hundred paces. Then she turned and fled, rounding the corner at the end of the alley and disappearing.

‘Professor Lourds,’ the young man prompted, ‘are you ready to go to your hotel now?’

‘Of course. Give me just a second.’ Lourds rummaged in his backpack and took out the pen and paper he’d worked with earlier. He already knew the avenues he wanted to follow with the translation. As he made notes, his fascination grew.

Returning to the hotel proved less clandestine than Lourds would have believed. The group doffed their robes and threw them into a rubbish bin, then escorted him to the other end of the alley and hailed a cab. Only the young man with the goatee accompanied Lourds on the journey. No longer dressed in the robe, he looked like anyone. Like a student, actually, Lourds thought. He wore khaki slacks, loafers and a soccer jersey. He would have been perfectly at home on the greens at Harvard.