They made it to the last page of the map. There were seven more symbols to negotiate, seven more junctions in this impossibly complex labyrinth of tunnels. They heard the voices close behind them, closer than ever. Jake took out his SIG Sauer and positioned himself behind the team. A figure appeared at the far end of a straightaway. Jake fired and was answered with a spray of bullets from a submachine gun. “Get to the next turn!” Jake said. “I’ll hold them off!”
“We’re not leaving you!” Kate said. She took out her own Beretta and started firing down the same straightaway.
“It’s right here!” Quentin said. “A hundred more feet!”
Nick hurried to the next junction and quickly checked the map. There was no time to double-check. “To the right!” Nick yelled. “This way. To the right!”
As Jake and Kate caught up to him, he motioned to the left, where Quentin was already waiting. “To the right!” Nick yelled again, hoping that someone behind them could hear him. Someone who knew enough English to understand “right” versus “left.”
They disappeared down the left tunnel, moving quickly but quietly. The voices could be heard in the other tunnel. Nick counted it down in his head. Five, four, three, two, one. The explosion reverberated down the narrow tunnel, almost blowing them over with heat and sound and a wave of concussed air.
“That was a dirty trick,” Quentin said.
“Yeah, well done,” Kate said.
They had six more symbols left, then five, then four. They didn’t hear any more sounds behind them. They let themselves slow down. Three left, then two, until they reached the last test. Here the tunnel branched off into two last tunnels, placed very close together, but there were no symbols carved into the wood bracing up the ceiling.
“What’s the symbol we’re looking for?” Nick asked.
“Professor called it Fehu, meaning wealth,” Quentin said. “Which is how he knew it was the last one. But I don’t see it.”
Nick examined the entrance to the last two tunnels, without daring to step foot into either one. Jake pulled out his burner phone, tried to call Professor Lewis, but he was underneath a mountain. If the phone could have laughed in his face, it would have.
“Let’s think about this,” Nick said. “We can’t blow this last one.”
They heard the sounds of voices again, and with heavy pounding footsteps. Whoever was still alive, they were right behind them.
“We don’t have much time,” Jake said, drawing his gun and getting ready to fire. “Somebody better make a decision.”
The voices and the footsteps got louder. Kate, Nick, and Quentin stared at the last page of the map, waiting for the answer to reach up and grab them.
“Right about now would be great,” Jake said, getting ready to fire at the first man he saw come around that last corner.
“This way!” Kate said. She didn’t wait for anyone else to come with her. She just headed straight into the right-hand tunnel, holding her breath and waiting for the explosion. It didn’t come.
Nick and Quentin ran in behind her, followed by Jake. They made it down the tunnel and barely out of sight, just as the men behind them reached the same junction.
“How did you know to go that way?” Nick asked.
“I didn’t,” Kate said. “Not for sure. But look.”
She showed them the last page of the map, where the Fehu rune was created with two lines coming off a single vertical line, like two branches on a tree, but both on the right side. “So I just figured, go right,” she said.
She was cut off by another explosion, the biggest and loudest of all. This one really did knock Jake, Quentin, Nick, and Kate off their feet.
They all lay on their backs for a long time. It was completely dark. Kate fumbled around on the ground for her flashlight, found it, and shined it on the men. “Is everybody okay?”
“You’ll have to speak up,” Nick said. “I think my eardrums are broken.”
When they were all on their feet again, they shook their heads clear and walked a few yards back up the tunnel. Jake led with the barrel of his gun, but it was a pointless gesture. The tunnel behind them was completely closed off by a cave-in.
“So there’s another way out of here, right?” Nick asked. “I’m sure that’s on the map, too. Right?”
They walked down the last hundred yards of the tunnel, until it opened up into a larger space. How much larger, it was impossible to say, but the air suddenly felt different all around them and the beams of their flashlights were lost in the darkness.
“Watch where you’re walking,” Nick said. “God knows what other booby traps got set around here.”
They moved forward slowly, until their flashlights reflected against a hard, black surface. As they got closer, the huge object in front of them took form.
It was a locomotive.
“Are we really seeing this?” Nick asked. “How did this get here?”
“On these tracks,” Quentin said, kicking at the metal rail beneath one of the train’s great wheels.
Jake found the ladder to the cab of the locomotive and hoisted himself up. A few moments later, a miracle happened. There was light. He jumped back down to the ground, holding a lantern.
“I’m a little surprised the oil still burns,” he said. “But I’ll take it.”
He handed a second lantern to Quentin, took a match from an ancient box of matches, and lit it. Now there were two glowing lights and they were able to make out just how big the space was that they had found. It was a railway tunnel with high vaulted ceilings, not like the cramped, barely propped-up passageways they had been walking in. The tracks led into the darkness, farther than they could see.
“Maybe that’s the way out,” Nick said, shining his light on the tracks.
But Quentin wasn’t listening to anyone else now. He was facing in the opposite direction, not at all interested in what was ahead of the locomotive, but in what was behind it. A half-dozen boxcars.
“Do you realize what this is?” he asked, turning to look at them. “Do you know how many people have been looking for this? For seventy-five years? There have been so many rumors about where this was hidden. Most treasure hunters, the ones who are still looking, they think it’s in Poland somewhere, probably between Breslau and Waldenburg. But it’s not. It’s here, across the border in Slovakia.”
He turned back to stare at the train.
“This is it,” he said. “This is what we’ve been looking for. We found it.”
Jake came forward to put a hand on Quentin’s shoulder. Nick and Kate stood on the other side of him. After everything they’d been through, even if they still had to face the problem of finding a way back out of here, Quentin was right. They had found the treasure.
“I know we still have work to do,” Quentin said, snapping back to reality. “But we have to check inside first. What does four hundred tons of gold even look like?”
They all went back to the first car behind the locomotive, a boxcar with a big sliding door on the side. Jake and Quentin worked together to pull the door open. Nick and Kate moved closer and shined in their flashlights, expecting to see it piled high with gold bars. They couldn’t quite make out what they were seeing at first. Old tattered cloth, and something else, scattered all over the floor. Pale in the glare of the light.