"It's wet," Jennings observed. "Why the hell is it wet?"

His match went off and they stood in darkness.

"This is arid desert. Where the hell's the water coming from?"

"There must be an underground source . . ." Thorn mused.

"Or holding tanks. I wouldn't be surprised if we're near the underground quarry. They found snail shells

out there in the desert; it's possible there was a body of water that filled it up when the earth caved in."

Thorn was silent, his breath still labored.

"Let's go," he panted.

"Through the wall?"

"Back. Let's get out of here."

They began to feel their way back, their hands sliding along the moist rock wall. Their progress was slow, and without vision each inch seemed like a mile. Then Jennings' hand hit an open space.

"Thorn?"

He took Thorn's arm and pulled him up close behind him. Beside them was another corridor leading off at ninety degrees from the one they were on. They had apparently passed it before, unnoticing, in the dark.

"There's a light down there," whispered Thorn.

"Probably our little Gandhi."

They moved into it, groping slowly forward. It was not another avenue of the drainage canal, but a cavern; boulders were strewn in their way, the walls jagged and spearing outward at unexpected points from the side. Feeling their way carefully, they crept forward, beginning to make out the shape of what lay ahead. It was not a single torchlight but a fully illuminated chamber, its shadowy shape containing two men who watched and waited for them as they slowly moved forward. One was the Arab beggar, his extinguished torch held loosely at his side, the other was an elderly man garbed in khaki shorts and short-sleeved shirt, resembling the archaeologists they had seen at the digging site on the desert floor. His face was serious and drawn, his shirt plastered to his body with sweat. Behind him they could see a wooden table stacked with piles of papers and scrolls.

Jennings and Thorn climbed upward, across a threshold of jagged rocks to enter the cubicle and stood there, dumbfounded, squinting against the sudden onslaught of light. The chamber was lit with dozens of

hanging laterns, the shadowed walls betraying the vague contours of buildings and stone stairwells molded directly into the rock. The ground beneath their feet was hardpacked mud, but in patches that had been worn down by dripping stalagtites, they could make out the shape of cobblestones that once lined an ancient street.

"Two hundred drachma," the Arab said with his hand outstretched.

"Can you pay him?" asked the man in khaki shorts.

Thorn and Jennings stared at him; the man in shorts shrugged as if in apology.

"Are you. . . ?" Jennings was interrupted by the man's abrupt nod. "... You're Bugenhagen?"

"Yes."

Jennings eyed him suspiciously.

"Bugenhagen was a seventeenth-century exorcist."

"That was nine generations ago."

"But you . . ."

"I'm the last," he replied abruptly. "And the least."