Chapter 62 Marlena
The entrance to the catacombs was hidden behind an old church on the east side of the city.
Katya led us there just before dawn, when the streets were still empty and the light was grey and thin. She had maps printed on thin paper that she kept checking against landmarks, marking our path with a pencil as we walked. Nobody spoke. We just followed her through narrow alleys that smelled like rain and old brick until we reached a wooden door set into the ground.
"This goes down about forty meters," Katya said, pulling the door open with a creak that sounded too loud. "The tunnels branch in three directions at the bottom. Marcus will be in the center chamber. He chose it because there's only one way in."
"A trap," Nikolai said.
"Obviously." Katya pulled out a flashlight and clicked it on. "But he has Elena. So we go anyway."
The stairs were steep and made of stone worn smooth by centuries of feet. I went down carefully, one hand on the cold wall for balance. The air changed as we descended, getting colder and wetter, thick with the smell of earth and mold and something else I couldn't name. Something old and stale and wrong.
My skin started prickling before we even reached the bottom. Some animal part of my brain was screaming that this was a bad place, that we should turn around and find another way. But there was no other way. Marcus had made sure of that.
The tunnel at the bottom was narrow and low. We had to walk single file with our flashlights cutting weak paths through the darkness ahead. The walls were made of bones in some places, skulls stacked neat and precise the way they did in old burial sites. The bones watched us pass with empty eyes.
I kept my hand on the gun in my jacket pocket. Katya had given it to me in the car with quick instructions on how to use it if I needed to. Point and shoot. Simple. Except nothing about this felt simple.
We walked for maybe ten minutes, turning left and then right and then left again, following marks on the wall that only Katya seemed to understand. The sound of our footsteps echoed strange in the confined space, multiplying until it sounded like there were more of us than there were.
Then the tunnel opened up into a larger chamber.
It was round and high with pillars supporting the ceiling. Old electric lights had been strung up, bare bulbs hanging from wires that looked too new for this place. They cast harsh shadows across the space and made everything look wrong and distorted.
Marcus stood in the center of the chamber.
He looked different than I remembered from the photos Nikolai had shown me months ago. Thinner. Wild around the eyes. His suit was dirty and his hair was uncombed and when he smiled at us the expression was mean and broken, like something inside him had cracked completely.
"Nikolai," he said. His voice echoed off the stone. "You actually came. I wasn't sure you would. Thought maybe you'd gotten smarter."
"Where's Elena?" I called out before Nikolai could speak.
Marcus's eyes moved to me. "The daughter. Of course you'd be here. You people and your families. It's pathetic really. All this love, all this loyalty. It makes you so easy to control."
"Where is she?" I said again.
He gestured behind him with one hand. I followed the movement and saw her then, tied to a chair against the far wall. Even from this distance I could see she was slumped forward, unconscious or drugged. My stomach turned over hard.
"She's alive," Marcus said. "For now. Whether she stays that way depends entirely on how cooperative you all are."
Nikolai moved forward slowly. I could see the tension in his shoulders, the way his hand hung near his jacket where I knew he kept his gun. "What do you want?"
"What do I want?" Marcus laughed and it bounced around the chamber like shattered glass. "I want what I've always wanted. The business. The empire you built and then decided to burn down because you fell in love with a girl who painted fake pictures. I want what should have been mine if you hadn't gone soft."
"The business is done," Nikolai said. "It's already sold. There's nothing left to take."
"Then I'll take what's left of you instead." Marcus pulled his gun fast. "All of you. Starting with her."
He pointed at me.
Everything happened at once.
Nikolai and Katya both drew their weapons. Marcus fired first and the sound was enormous in the enclosed space, deafening. I dove sideways behind one of the stone pillars as more shots rang out, the noise overwhelming, bouncing off every surface until I couldn't tell where it was coming from anymore.
I pressed myself flat against the pillar with my heart hammering and my ears ringing. I could hear shouting but couldn't make out words. More gunfire. The sound of something heavy hitting the ground.
Then new sounds. Boots on stone. Multiple people moving fast. Voices calling out in English with American accents.
"FBI! Drop your weapons!"
Bright lights flooded the chamber, so bright after the dim bulbs that I had to close my eyes against them. When I opened them again I saw men in tactical gear pouring in from the tunnel we had just come through. Six of them. Eight. More.
Damien was leading them.
His team spread out fast and professional, weapons raised, calling out commands. I saw Nikolai lower his gun slowly and put his hands up. Katya did the same.
Marcus didn't.
He turned toward the FBI team with his gun still raised and his face twisted into something angry and desperate. He started to say something but didn't get the words out.
The FBI agents fired.
Three shots, maybe four, so close together they almost sounded like one. Marcus jerked backward with red blooming across his chest and fell. He hit the stone floor hard and didn't move.
Then the ground shook.
Not like an earthquake. Like something had exploded below us or beside us or all around us. The chamber groaned and dust fell from the ceiling in thick clouds. One of the light bulbs shattered. Cracks appeared in the walls, spider webbing across the old stone.
"Explosives!" someone yelled. "He rigged the tunnels! Move!"
Another explosion, closer this time. The ground bucked under my feet and I stumbled, catching myself against the pillar. The cracks in the walls were spreading, chunks of stone starting to fall.