The Moses Legacy - Adam Palmer [52]
‘What?’ asked Daniel.
Mansoor reached into the tomb guardian’s pockets to produce a giant bunch of keys.
For a second, Daniel too was caught up in the euphoria, but then reality set in. ‘What good does that do us? We can’t reach the padlock.’
The door was shut not by a lock that could be reached from inside, but rather by a padlock on the outside. The door could only be unlocked from the other side.
Then Daniel saw something. ‘Look.’
The others turned in the direction he was pointing. It was a loose, fist-sized piece of rock, embedded in the wall, but with the break lines clearly visible.
‘What?’ asked Gabrielle in confusion.
Mansoor understood. And as Daniel took out his pocket-knife and opened it to prise the rock out of the wall, Mansoor crouched down to help him. Between them, they managed to free the piece of rock, which was about the size of half a brick and had a nice pointed corner.
With the rock in his hand, Daniel charged at the iron door and began smashing away at a single point on its surface, near where the lock would be. Iron, when smashed repeatedly with the pressure on a single point, can eventually break. By hitting it repeatedly, Daniel was trying to puncture the iron door and then enlarge the hole sufficiently to reach through it. But after many attempts, all he had managed to do was make a dent in the heavy iron. And he had exhausted himself. Over the course of the next hour, Mansoor took over and then Gabrielle. Finally Daniel took the stone back and went at it with a vengeance.
‘There’s a hole!’ he cried with delight, noticing a pinprick of light. It was very small, but it was progress, and it encouraged the others to take over and go at it with similar vigour.
Daniel wondered why no one heard the noise. To him it was deafening. Having heard the silence of the valley, it seemed strange that such a din did not carry. But then again, he realized that in the main valley the clamour made by the throngs of tourists would surely drown out the noise they were making. In any case, the distance was quite great and the fact that the noise of the tourists did not puncture the peace of the western valley testified to just how far apart those two worlds were.
But as they continued with their exhausting efforts, Daniel noticed two things. The first was that the hole was getting bigger and the second was that the light that was coming through the ever increasing gap was ebbing. It was getting on for half past six and the sun was setting.
A renewed sense of urgency set in and it manifested itself in the vigour with which Daniel wielded the stone as he attacked the hole. Finally, he stopped, exhausted. He held out the stone to Gabrielle, but she refused to take it. She was looking straight past him.
‘I think it’s big enough,’ she said.
Daniel turned and looked. It was hard to tell. The poor light inside the tomb and the dimming light outside made it hard to assess the size, and the jagged edges made it uncertain how safe it was to put one’s hand through, not to mention one’s wrist. Daniel would personally have preferred to enlarge the hole before trying, but he was ready to defer to Gabrielle.
‘Do you think you can reach through that?’ he asked.
Gabrielle stared at him, not answering.
‘No, she can’t,’ said a voice behind him. ‘But I can.’
Daniel turned round to see Mansoor holding the key ready and realized that he was right. Gabrielle, because of her hand size and well-developed wrists, would not be able to reach through and neither could Daniel. But the more slender Mansoor might just be able to.
‘Please don’t drop it,’ said Daniel.
It wasn’t intended to sound patronizing, but Mansoor responded with a withering look. Then, very slowly and carefully, he reached through with the key and tried to angle it towards the padlock. The other two saw the pained expression on his face as he rotated his arm in a desperate effort to get the key to where they needed it. And then he felt the key slipping in his sweaty fingers. He tried to pull his arm back in, but in his haste he cut his wrist