The inside was tiny. Twelve pews made of knotted pine, six on each side, sat in front of a simple all-white altar. The plain stained-glass windows looked old, and the statues of the Virgin Mary and Jesus stared down toward the carpeted floor, away from the eight men dressed in camo. Their gloved hands held assault rifles and they wore military-grade tactical vests and belts equipped with flex cuffs and flash-bang grenades. They all wore helmets equipped with night-vision goggles except for the one Roland was talking to, a man twice his size and twice as tall. He had a black buzz cut and sharp features, and his eyes were set back deep in his skull and looked like two small marbles. The man kept glancing over Roland’s shoulder, at her, as she approached. Everyone did. They had all stopped talking the moment she entered.

Roland turned to her and said, “Lead the way.”

Ellie walked down the center aisle, the men filing in behind her, and moved past the altar, to the white-painted door with the plastic EXIT sign above it. She opened the door and moved down a hallway no longer than ten feet.

She hadn’t been raised Catholic, but she had known plenty of Catholics growing up and had picked up on a lot of things. The room she found herself in was called a sacristy—the Catholic version of “the greenroom,” the place where the priest waited before mass started. It was also used to store his vestments and whatever other religious items he used during the service, but those were long gone. The only items inside this windowless white room were a bare wooden desk bolted down to the floor and, nailed to the wall, a black crucifix that matched the one on the spire.

Ellie turned her attention to the old fireplace. The soldiers were filing into the room. She held up a hand.

“You can’t be in here,” she said. “Everyone needs to back up into the hallway.”

“Why?” The question came from the guy with the black crew cut.

Must be the point man, she thought. “We won’t have enough room,” she replied, kneeling in front of the hearth. She had reached her right hand up, inside the chimney, her fingertips feeling for the loose brick when she saw that the man hadn’t moved. “I can’t do this if you guys don’t back out.”

Roland said, “Do what she says.”

Ellie removed the loose brick. Then she reached inside the cavity, found the lever Sebastian had described, and pulled. When she moved back to the archway leading into the hall, she had to push them back.

She expected to hear the rumble of some machinery—gear workings, a hum of a motor, something. She heard a creak, and the floor directly in front of her rose quietly, stopped at a forty-five-degree angle.

A set of steps faced her now. She saw a keypad, and a vault door made of steel.

Roland grabbed her by the arm and said, “You don’t know what’s down there. Let them handle it.”