The Giant's Almanac Andrew Zurcher (books to read fiction TXT) 📖

– shut firm behind them. Down a corridor, up a quiet stone stair, through countless doors and from room to room, shifting unobserved between passages and staircases, they rose within the fabric of the building, never putting their heads needlessly beyond a corner, never setting their feet but lightly where they meant to go. At length they emerged into a huge hall or courtyard of white stone, luminously bright, magnificently deserted. In its centre stood a round tower; above, a ceiling all of glass. Fitz checked the gasp as it rose spontaneously from his throat, absorbing his shock in a shudder that stuttered through his chest like a deadbolt catching.

‘Now,’ said Mr Ahmadi, ‘we will run. Very fast. Remember, everywhere and exactly where I go.’

He set off at a sprint for a paved ramp that coursed, ascending, round the outside of the tower. Fitz followed, matching his stride to that of his guide, throwing his legs out before him at every step. Up the ramp they sprinted, circling the building. Fitz’s chest heaved as he struggled to take in ever larger breaths. As they rounded the tower for the second time, Fitz thought he could hear commotion below, the report of heavy soles on stone. From the corner of his eye, beyond a ledge, he saw a black form moving, and heard from somewhere the sound of lift doors closing.

They reached the top. A grille had been pulled down over the large entrance to a larger room. Through the glass Fitz could see chairs, tables, colourful displays. Mr Ahmadi had drawn aside, and was picking at the lock of a small, nondescript door – almost invisible against the white walls of the tower. The pins in the lock made a tiny scratching sound, and Fitz strained to hear it, to hear the lock turning. But in the silent emptiness of the huge hall, he was suddenly conscious of another sound, instead: a lift rising, slowly but surely, somewhere in the walls away to his left. Turning, scanning the open air, across a high walkway he saw the lobby where the doors would open.

‘Mr Ahmadi,’ he said, his voice tentative.

With a heave of exasperation Mr Ahmadi pushed himself to his feet. ‘I know’, he said; his eyes had immediately swung to the far, blank wall, within which the lift rose. It was nearly at the top.

‘Follow me.’

Abandoning the door, they ran away from the lift, round the tall tower that dominated the courtyard, and across a second high bridge. The close, bright room on the other side was stacked with mummies.

Mr Ahmadi stopped in front of a huge stone chest, carved and set on a massive plinth. He paused, judging it for an instant, then stepped lightly on to the plinth and began to rotate the chest’s heavy stone cover.

‘In,’ he said.

‘What is this?’ asked Fitz, climbing too slowly, catching his feet clumsily against the faces, the outstretched arms, the raised swords, the shaggy hams of satyrs.

‘Sarcophagus. Imperial, Roman, second century. Pentelic marble. Try not to break it. In.’

Inside the chest smelled of chalk and walnuts. Mr Ahmadi didn’t waste a moment slipping in behind him. His hat he tossed into Fitz’s lap. With his back hunched against the marble, he shimmied the cover back into place, and in the last slice of light as the lid closed, Fitz saw on his face a dramatic scowl – as twisted and horrible a face as any carved on the stone exterior – commanding him to be silent.

‘These are not museum guards. They are much worse, so – not a sound,’ whispered Mr Ahmadi. They crouched side by side in the darkness.

Footsteps ran into the room; they could feel them through the stone like a distant drum of war – two or three large men. Fitz imagined them, perhaps security officers, perhaps something worse, armed, looking for him. They wanted to kill him.

But I’m already in a tomb.

As the footsteps died off down the long room, Fitz tried to picture the last person to have lain in this stone box with its cover closed: wrapped in white cloth, the body pale, eyes open, staring at nothing but eternity.

He shivered. Mr Ahmadi, sensing the movement, put his hand firmly on Fitz’s shoulder.

‘No,’ he whispered, so quietly that the word was almost as still and quiet as the close and warming air of the sarcophagus itself. ‘Only two walked away. One –’ he paused, breathing, and his voice when it came again was if anything even more silent – ‘is still … here.’

Just then they heard the light tread as this last man – this guard, this hunter, this assassin – paced the museum floor. The footsteps seemed – were they? – to be getting closer. Fitz felt his body shrink inside his clothes, felt the breath squeeze from his constricting lungs. The cold of the stone rose like a spreading vein of ice in his bones. The footsteps came to a halt. There was a tap, then another. Then a third. The man was pacing the length of the sarcophagus. A fourth tap. Something was in his hand. It sounded metallic where it rang gently against the edge of the plinth – metallic and solid. Every muscle in Fitz’s body hardened.

From a distance, there came a shout – a muffled oath – and the footsteps ran off. Before they had faded completely, Mr Ahmadi had stood, bowed, to the cover, and was starting to push it open. Fitz didn’t need to be asked; the moment the gap was wide enough, he vaulted through it, straight off the plinth and on to the wooden floor. Mr Ahmadi, as nimbly free, didn’t bother to set the stone to rights but sprinted past Fitz, back towards the courtyard.

Two, three moments after he had squatted anew before the little white door, tools in hand, it swung ajar.

‘Up,’ said Mr Ahmadi. Fitz rushed up the narrow flight of stairs while Mr Ahmadi drew the door quietly closed behind him.