SEVEN: RONDO

      'Ow!' Alan lifted his stubbed toe. 'It's pitch black in here. Wonder what's over this way?'
      'Don't, Alan.' Tin-Tin clutched his sleeve nervously. 'There might be.. you know.'
      'No-one rests here now,' Antioni said, coming over in a flickering pool of light with the candelabrum. 'The village boys they break in, they have the nightmares, and everyone say signore Antioni, this is your fault. So twenty years ago we spread the dust of my ancestors in the vineyards. It is the greatest vintage I ever produce.' He side-stepped slowly along the wall, the candlelight illuminating a surface of marble blocks, then stopped in front of a large lion's head carved in bas-relief. In the animal's jaws a stone snake clamped its own tail in its fangs. 'This is what I look for. If there is the hidden way it will be here.'
      'Say, you could be right.' Virgil held his torch close to the marble. 'There's a crack running right down the wall here.'
      'And one this side,' Alan added, excited. 'But this place isn't Roman, it's medieval.'
      'In those times many things were remembered that now are forgotten,' Antioni said. 'But what do we do?'
      'Push,' Virgil suggested. 'Or maybe that's too simple.'
      At the first count of three nothing happened, but at the second attempt there was a shriek that echoed through the bones of the building, and a door-sized square of marble with the lion's head in its centre swung inwards so rapidly that Alan, Alfredo and Virgil followed the curve of their applied force and went with it, ending in a confused sprawl on the dust inside.
      'So it was that simple.' Alan picked up his torch and looked around the brick-walled passage in awe. 'We could be the first people through this door in a thousand years. It's medieval alright.' He got up. 'Hey, and there's some steps down here.'
      'Yeah.' Virgil dusted himself down. 'But I think we should leave our exploration of those until the morning, when we can organise a proper expedition. We've proved there's some kind of tunnel; that's a pretty good start for tonight.'
      Antioni stepped into the passage, the smoke from the candles gathering in an inverted pool under the arch of the roof. 'But we cannot go back now, hesitation she does not make the rich men. At the bottom of these steps there may be..' He raised his free hand. 'Who knows?'
      'That's what worries me,' Virgil said. 'Anyway, it must be a mile at least to the spot where that X is marked.'
      'Let's just see where the steps lead,' Alan suggested. 'No harm in taking a quick look, then we'll know what to be prepared for when we come back tomorrow. I'll go first. Virgil, you bring up the rear.'
      The darkness was thick and almost tangible, and as they descended a chill far heavier than the evening cool above invaded the air. In the wavering candlelight and in the torchbeams they could see their breath condense in a fine fog before them, and, as if their postulated treasure already surrounded them, gems of moisture glittered from the walls. Tin-Tin pulled her thin wrap tighter round her shoulders and started counting the stone steps. After a hundred, maybe a few more, Alan stopped suddenly and the beam of his torch swung up and down, slicing up empty darkness.
      'This is it,' he said, 'we're at the bottom.'
      The stairwell opened at a right angle into a wider passage, and they trailed out in slow single file, peering at their new surroundings in the inadequate light. Massive stone blocks like the bricks from a giant's playset lined the walls, four courses forming a tunnel some eight feet high. Other huge rounded blocks arched over without obvious means of support to form a claustrophobic ceiling, and from their chiselled surfaces the small sounds of moving feet were thrown back magnified but dull and flat, as dead as the masons who had dusted down their work and left it nearly two thousand years before.
      'Wow, real Roman masonry.' Alan's fingers, pressed against the wall at eye-height, came away slicked with a colourless slime, and he side-stepped to avoid the few inches of dark water that lay in the centre of the slightly dished floor. 'Looks like we found your storage tanks, Virgil, or at least a passage between them. If there was a bath-house here this tunnel might've brought its water supply. Only thing I don't understand is the smell.'
      'Yeah.' Virgil sniffed. 'There isn't one.'
      'And that water must've been lying here for years. This place should stink.'
      'Right, it doesn't make sense. And that's part of the reason why I don't think we should hang around. Come on, we've seen what's down here, now let's get back.' Virgil started off in pursuit of Antioni, whose candelabrum was a faint light about fifty yards down the tunnel, and Alan turned to investigate a shadowy recess in the wall. The embrasure was wide, the span of his outstretched arms, its inner surface faced with small rough bricks: medieval again. One or two bricks were loose, and he poked at them idly.
      Beginning to shiver under her cover of chiffon and cold diamonds, Tin-Tin watched Virgil returning and fell in behind him hopefully. 'Are we going?' she asked, but before she got a reply Alan's voice carried down the tunnel. 'Hey! Come here, I think I've found another.. aaaaggghhh!'
      'Alan!' Tin-Tin screamed.
      Close and loud, but dull, as if through an immeasurable depth of earth, there was the grind of stone on stone, followed by a sudden violent blast of air. The tiered candles of Antioni and Alfredo puffed out, extinguished like two birthday cakes raked by the output of an immense pair of lungs, and the light from Alan's torch disappeared. In the darkness footsteps ran; Alfredo yelped and there was a clatter and a splash. 'Stay close, Tin-Tin,' Virgil shouted, but he reached out to find no-one there. A boom like the sound of a giant manhole cover being dropped from above reverberated through the tunnel, closely followed by another, then the air was suddenly still and the only noises left were confused shouts.

      As the lights went out Tin-Tin raced for Alan's last known position, cannoning blindly into someone as she ran. The wildly circling beam of Virgil's torch crossed a black bay in front of her as it flew, and she saw something else: a narrowing chink of grey in the recess that was not torch or candle light. She threw herself into the gap, and a moving mass slammed her in the back and rushed her on like an insane revolving door, shutting behind her with a deafening boom. She fell, landing on something soft, uneven and faintly warm. Horrifyingly, it moved.
      'Get your knees off my chest, I can't breathe,' Alan gasped.
      'Alan!' Tin-Tin scrambled up. 'Oh, Alan, what happened? Where are we?'
      Dimly visible in the grey gloom Alan sat up, his dark dinner suit powdered with pale brick-dust. He looked round at another passageway, low-roofed and even narrower than the first. 'I don't know. One minute I thought I'd found another door in the wall, then there wasn't any wall. I must've touched something.' He got to his feet and examined the featureless barrier that a few seconds ago had been their entry point, pushed at some bricks experimentally, then shook his head. 'It's no good, it probably doesn't even open from this side. Wish we had the torch; guess I must've dropped it when that thing gave way.'
      'I lost my wrap, too.' Tin-Tin folded her hands miserably round her freezing shoulders. 'Couldn't we just shout? If we let the others know where we are perhaps they can open the door from their side.'
      'Don't count on it.' Alan thumped the brick and the resulting sound was muffled and obstinately solid. 'Even if they did hear us through that we might've stopped shouting a long time before they found the hidden catch. Like maybe months.' He saw Tin-Tin's look of fear and took her hand reassuringly. 'But don't panic. This light must be coming from somewhere; let's see what's up this way.'
      At the end of a long cramped walk and a climb up a short slope was a cobwebby grating, and Alan pushed it aside and struggled through the low mouth of the passage. He straightened with difficulty as Tin-Tin followed him.
      'I can't figure this.. looks like we've come out behind some kind of rack.' He started to edge towards the dim light. 'Doesn't look like moonlight, reckon we must still be underground. Can't be.. Hey! Well, I'll be doggoned.' He stepped round the end of the rack, and Tin-Tin slipped out to stand at his shoulder.
      In the vast vault stretching all around them, in casks, kegs, barrels, tuns, bottles, half-bottles, magnums, jeroboams and tiny tasting glasses on a table, was wine. Glowing a dull ruby under the low safety lights it lined the walls in floor-to-ceiling racks; still yeasty with last summer's vigour it oozed from swelling casks that stood like great oak boilers over their drip-trays, and in a graded row of bottles it waited on the table with the glasses, as if someone had just been making their selection for dinner. Tin-Tin stared, round-eyed.
      'Alan, we're in..'
      'Yeah.' Alan nodded. 'The famous Antioni wine cellars. We've come right back to the villa. If Antioni's really been looking for secret passages all his life he sure isn't going to be much help on a treasure hunt. His place's got more tunnels through it than a Swiss cheese.'
      'At least we're safe,' Tin-Tin said. 'But what about the others? They still don't know where we are.'
      'You're right.' Alan pointed to some stone steps and an open door. 'That looks like the way out. Better get back over to the mausoleum again before someone calls out the guardie. Guess they'll be getting pretty worried about us by now.'

      'What're we going to do?' Virgil gazed at the torn chiffon wrap and the fragments of Alan's torch, then started to re-examine the blank bricks of the recess in desperation. 'There must be a door here somewhere, they couldn't just have vanished.'
      Antioni gave his re-lit candelabrum a last pass across the bay and stepped back, pushing Alfredo aside ungently. 'Pah! It is useless; with these lights we shall find nothing. If this stupido did not throw his candles into the water perhaps we would have the chance.'
      'Is not my fault,' Alfredo responded sulkily, 'someone push me in the dark. Perhaps you, Giuseppe Antioni.'
      'Io?' Antioni tapped his own chest. 'When you fall I explore, I am far away: I think your great feet they trip you themselves. Buffone!'
      'Listen, this is serious.' Virgil turned away from the wall. 'They could be running out of air back there, they might've fallen into some bottomless pit, anything. We'll have to get help.' He pointed to the stone staircase. 'You go on ahead, I'll find something to mark the place. Don't want to waste any time when we come back with some digging equipment.'
      He waited as the footsteps receded, then tried his telecom. The watch's dial display faded, but for some reason the power cells still hadn't recharged and the screen stayed as black as the surrounding darkness. That was the end of any hope of getting through to Alan, even to give a reassurance, and the end of any chance of summoning help from home. He turned and started up the steps.
      'Madonna!' A sudden shout from Antioni echoed down the stairwell, and he quickened his pace; at 'Dio mio!' from Alfredo he began to run. Breathless, he reached the head of the stair to see the three Italians standing in a pool of candlelight at the end of the short passage, and with a sudden sinking intuition he shone his torch between them. The beam was scattered back by the countless calcite crystals of a solid wall of marble: the entrance door was closed.
      'Mamma mia, mamma mia, mamma mia,' Alfredo repeated endlessly as they searched without success for so much as a fingernail-grip on the smooth stone. 'We cannot get out; we starve.'
      'Basta!' Antioni cut short the recitation and looked at the salesman's rounded form with narrowed eyes. 'If we starve you at least will be the last to go. Keep your breath, we push.'
      'That won't work.' Virgil shook his head helplessly and stepped back. 'It's pretty obvious it only opens inwards, and it must weigh over a ton. When the other door opened the pressure differential in the air must've blown this one shut. And we can't pull it, there's nothing to get a grip on.'
      'Then we wait.' Antioni held his watch to the light. 'In ten hours it is breakfast-time, and it will be discovered that we are missing. We tell the others we visit the mausoleum; they will put, as you say, the two and two together. We will be found.'
      Virgil frowned. 'It might take a bit more than two and two to find us in here. Anyway, Alan and Tin-Tin may not be able to wait that long; we don't know what sort of shape they're in.' He took a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket. 'This is the plan of the tunnels I copied from Tin-Tin's locket. Shouldn't take me much more than twenty minutes to reach the spot where the X is marked, then if I can find that hole I'll get to the village and fetch help.' He turned for the steps. 'Guess you'd better settle down here.'
      'No.' Il Dottore shook his head. 'In this cold is not good to sit and wait; we will come with you. And do not worry, I think your two friends are safe for some time. Where the wind blows is also the air.'
      'Okay,' Virgil agreed reluctantly, 'but this time let's stick together, and no explorations. Could be any kind of trouble waiting down there: up to now all we've learned for sure about this place is that it's dangerous.'
      Sending the torchbeam ahead he led the procession back down the steps again, the candles of Antioni casting a flickering ring of light in the rear. At the foot of the stair he paused to ensure that the others were following in close order, then the little party passed on grim-faced into the dark.

      'It's useless.' Alan stopped to catch his breath, his shoulder to the marble lion's-head. 'We'll never shift it, even between us. What I can't figure out is how it got closed in the first place.'
      'Perhaps it was that wind,' Tin-Tin suggested from the darkness beside him. 'But the important thing is that the others are trapped in there. There must be some way to get them out.'
      'What we need is more pushing power.' Alan straightened up. 'We could drive to the village and try to bring someone back, but after last night I guess no-one's going to take us seriously, and languages aren't my strong point anyway. Do you know the Italian for secret door? We could be there for hours.'
      'What can we do, then, Alan?'
      'Call out International Rescue, what else?' Alan replied, taking a step towards the square of moonlight at the mausoleum's entrance. 'I'm going to get Thunderbird One over here: we'll haul that door open even if we have to smash this oversized tombstone into a million paperweights to do it. There's a teleradio in the villa, we can say you called IR out on that while I drove for help. When it's all over I can just turn up again. I'll say I got lost.'
      'Alright,' Tin-Tin said dubiously, 'I suppose we haven't much choice. You'd better clear it with your father first, though.'
      'Don't worry, I'll contact him as soon as I'm in the car. Now come on, let's get back to the villa again. There's no time to waste.'
      The moon picked out the villa's marble bestiary as they crossed the grass. A centaur cavorted in a clearing, its flanks splashed with the pale light, while nearby a Venus primly averted her eyes, her own modesty preserved in a whitened drapery of stone. Beyond her, down a slope and under the trees, a third patch of brightness stood out. It moved.
      'Alan.' Tin-Tin caught Alan's sleeve as they reached the sleeping greyhounds at the top of the steps. 'There's a torch!'
      'You're right.' Alan stared. 'Someone's there. But why are they coming up that way?'
      'And Alan!' Tin-Tin's grip tightened. 'Look over there!'
      Across the lower part of the gardens, beyond the little box maze and the well-kept lawn, the villa's gates stood open. Backed in between them was a massive lorry, its tailgate dropped to show its empty interior, and parked just behind the lorry was a fast-looking dark-coloured car.
      'Alan, that's the lorry I saw when we first came up here. And I'm sure it's the same one that was in the square yesterday.'
      Alan nodded. 'And it's the same one that Virgil and I saw last night. And that's the Alfa Romeo that followed us into the village yesterday morning.'
      'What does it mean?' Tin-Tin asked, glancing nervously at the approaching torchlight.
      'It means I was right all along: someone has been tailing us, and someone else is after the treasure.' Alan ducked down behind a stone greyhound, pulling Tin-Tin after him. 'Quick; I think it might be a good idea if we kept out of sight.'
      Where the trees ended at the top of the slope three torchbeams emerged, followed by three figures who stepped out onto the grass fronting the mausoleum then stopped, swinging their lights about as if to recover their bearings. In the hand of the last man out the unmistakable shape of a pistol with a long silencer was outlined by the moon, and as they turned towards the mausoleum's entrance the two others reached for their inside pockets.
      Tin-Tin's hand flew to her mouth. 'Alan! They've all got guns.'
      'Yeah, and it sure won't take the three of them long to get that door open. They'll be able to see where we've been by the marks in the dust, and then..' Alan peered over the greyhound's back. 'We came on our treasure hunt for fun, but these guys mean business. And it looks like they'll stop at nothing to make sure their business is profitable.'
      'But Alan, that means that Virgil and the others could be in terrible danger.'
      'Not if I can help it.' Alan slid round to the greyhound's rump and put a foot on the top of the steps. 'It just means I've got to get Thunderbird One back here quicker than ever. I won't get the car out now with that truck blocking the way, but the doctor's bike might just about squeeze through.'
      'But how will you get it started?'
      'I've learned one or two tricks from Parker that should help, but there's only one set of headgear, so you'll have to stay here.' Alan took a step downwards. 'Promise me you'll stay put and not move a muscle. You'll be perfectly safe, just as long as no-one sees you.'
      'Alright, Alan,' Tin-Tin said, resigned. 'I suppose there's nothing else I can do, is there?'
      'Good girl.'
      From behind the greyhound's back Tin-Tin watched Alan as he crept down the steps, vanishing into the shadows at the edge of the maze. The three gunmen had disappeared into the depths of the mausoleum, leaving the moonlight to the statuary. She shivered, wishing for her oldest pullover in exchange for the designer gown and comfortless diamonds, then put down her bag and sat back against the greyhound's mossy side to wait. After a few minutes there was a cough and a snarl from the distant road, presumably Alan kicking the motorbike into protesting life, then the engine sound deepened, began to move and roared away. At the door of the mausoleum a figure appeared and looked around, but apparently satisfied turned and melted back into the dark. There was silence, then a familiar shriek: the grind of marble on marble. Tin-Tin bit her lip. The door was open, and perhaps relief would already be turning to horror for the little group trapped inside. If the gunmen were looking for treasure protests of ignorance as to its whereabouts were unlikely to be treated with sympathy, and who knew what could happen before Alan returned with Thunderbird One? She felt entirely helpless, ineffectual, and searched with increasing desperation for any idea that might help to even out the overwhelming odds. Then a sudden realisation came to her, and being careful not to raise her head above the greyhound's protecting flank she reached forward and took something out of her bag.

On to EIGHT: PLANET SUITE.