Hunt Through the Cradle of Fear by Gabriel Hunt, Charles Ardai Read Free Book Online Page B

talking about, ‘below’? ‘Within’?”
    “Over the past dozen years, analysis with ground-penetrating radar has revealed open spaces deep within the body of the Sphinx.”
    “In a figure this large,” Sheba said, “carved from a single piece of stone, that’s almost inevitable. There are open spaces in any hill or mountain, too—they’re called caves. It doesn’t mean anything.”
    “Well, that’s your opinion,” DeGroet said, “and you’re in fine company, but your company is wrong and so are you. Most of the open spaces, it is true, are naturally occurring, irregular—but one is very clearly a man-made chamber. How do I know this? Simple: I was the one who commissioned the analysis, and I am the only one who possesses the full results.”
    “All right, you possess the results. What’s the point?”
    “The point, Miss McCoy, is that there’s a way inside the Great Sphinx and a chamber in there that no one has entered in four thousand years. And the reason no one has found it until now is that the entrance was sealed up—buried, if you will. And two hundred generations of royal sons and archaeologists and treasure hunters and historians have failed to unbury it. Until now. I am going to unbury it—with, my dear girl, your help.”
    “Why do you need me?” Sheba said.
    “Because you know how to read and interpret the instructions,” DeGroet said. “Unlike the last eight people I sent in, all of whom are now dead.”

Chapter 7
    DeGroet snapped his fingers twice, pointed to the section of the paw they were next to, and then pulled Sheba away to one side. Two of the local workers—a hardy older man with wind-weathered cheeks and extravagant gray moustaches and a younger, beefier sort in a striped robe and fez, whose angular goatee and eyebrows made him look perpetually outraged—stepped forward and bent to the task of scraping out mortar around the edges of a block of stone that Gabriel hadn’t realized was a separate block to begin with. Which was the point, of course—for this block to have remained in place undetected for all these centuries, the seam would have had to have been pretty damn well concealed.
    They made short work of it, no doubt because they’d done it at least eight times before. Grunting and straining, they then levered the stone out of the way, moving it first just a millimeter at a time, then an inch, then a few inches, and then all the way. It slid smoothly, though ponderously, across the ground and the two workers left it where it lay, smacking their hands together to get rid of dust or restore circulation or both. A third local, wearing the same sort of striped turban as the older man (and looking similar enough facially, Gabriel thought, that he was likely related—a son, a nephew, something), brought a handful of torches and passed them around: one to each of the first two workers, one to Karoly. He alsoheld onto one for himself, but that left one extra, and behind DeGroet’s back, Gabriel stepped forward to take it. No way was he going to let Sheba go in there by herself.
    The son/nephew went first, after lighting his torch with a flick of a lighter. The lighter went around from hand to hand and the torches all went alight quickly—they must have been doused in some sort of accelerant. Karoly followed the young man in, then DeGroet, pushing Sheba ahead of him, one of her bare and goose pimpled arms in his left fist, his sword in his right. The two workers who’d moved the stone looked at Gabriel then, offering him the privilege of following directly behind the boss, but Gabriel had his own reasons for not wanting to get too close to DeGroet and waved the others on ahead. They grabbed some bags of supplies from the ground and went inside. Then Gabriel ducked to squeeze through the dark entrance himself. As soon as he did, he realized that this was not just a passageway—it was a crudely carved staircase, descending steeply into the rock below the statue.
    The