Seven Ancient Wonders

Beyond the mayhem happening on the platform, unseen by anyone,

the exit door above the left wing of the Halicarnassus opened and a figure emerged from it, skulking low, moving swiftly, holding something small in his hands.

He scurried out from the doorway and onto the wing. Then he leapt down from the front of the wing onto the wooden platform, heading—again unseen—in the direction of Wizard and Lily.

West and Kallis faced each other.

Then they moved, at exactly the same time, lifting and firing their guns simultaneously, like a pair of wild west gunslingers—

Click! Click!

They were both dry.

'Fuck!' Kallis yelled.

'No . . .' West breathed.

For he knew that it didn't matter now.

Judah also knew. Their eyes met, and West's face fell.

He was too late.

By a bare few seconds—no a bare few metres—he was too late.

With a smile of insane delight, by the light of the Tartarus Sunspot on the Day of the Rotation, Marshall Judah uttered the final words of the ritual of power and looked triumphantly to the heavens.

Nothing happened.

Granted, West wasn't sure what should have happened. Should the sky darken? Should the Earth shake? Should Judah turn into some giant all-powerful dragon? Should West's gun turn to dust?

Whatever was supposed to happen to show that the United States of America had just earned itself a thousand years of undisputed worldly power, it didn't manifest itself in any visible way.

And then West saw that, indeed, nothing had happened.

For there, scuttling on all fours away from the Capstone on the other side of the platform, having crawled over the corpse of the CIEF trooper who was supposed to be guarding the channel that led under the Capstone, was the boy, Alexander.

He hadn't been in the sacrificial spot when judah had completed the ritual. . .

So the ritual hadn't taken effect.

Judah saw it too and he shouted, 'No! No?

The boy clambered to the edge of the platform, turned back— and seeing del Piero's dead body, he leaned out over the side of the platform, lowering himself down to the level below.

West's view of Alexander disappearing over the edge was cut off by the flash of Cal Kallis's K-Bar knife rushing toward his eyes.

West ducked and the blade went high. He then rose quickly and punched the knife from Kallis's hand before nailing the CIEF trooper square in the nose with the best punch he'd ever thrown with his all-metal left hand—

The blow connected . . .

. . . and had no effect on Kallis at all.

The big CIEF trooper just grinned back at West through bloody teeth.

Then he replied with three awesome punches of his own—all vicious, all hard, all to West's face.

Once, twice, three times, each blow sent West staggering backwards.

'You feel that, West! You feel that!' Kallis roared. 'I've been waiting all fucking week for this! But I had to keep you alive, to let you lead us to each site. But not anymore. My boys got your Spanish friend in the Sudan! But I was the one who offed your dumb Irish lad in Kenya! He was still alive after you left, you know—a gurgling bloody mess. I was the one who put a bullet in his brain to finish him off.'

A fourth blow, then a fifth.

On the fifth punch, West's nose broke, exploded with blood, and his boots came to the edge of the platform and he teetered there for a moment, glanced quickly behind him.

Immediately below him, thirty feet down, was the crashed Super Stallion—its still-spinning buzzsaw-like blades directly beneath him!

Kallis saw them too. 'But while I enjoyed snuffing out the Irish kid, I'm glad I'm the one who gets to kill you. See you in Hell, West!'

And with that, Kallis unleashed the final crushing blow.

Just as West himself lunged desperately forwards, his left arm lashing out, extending fast—a final last-gasp all-or-nothing strike.

His blow struck Kallis a nanosecond before Kallis's blow struck him.

Phwack!

Kallis froze in mid-action—

—with West's artificial left fist, his metal fist, lodged deep in the centre of his face, having thundered right through his nose. The blow had been so powerful, it had dented Kallis's nose three inches inward, breaking it in several places. Blood had sprayed everywhere.

Incredibly, Kallis was still conscious, his eyes bulging, his entire

body twitching, but his limbs were no longer responding to his brain.

He wouldn't be alive for long.

'This is for Big Ears,' West said, yanking Kallis around and hurling him off the edge of the platform.

Kallis fell—thirty feet, straight down—and in his very last moment of consciousness, he saw, to his horror, the spinning rotor blades of the Super Stallion rush up to meet him . . .

He made to scream, but the shout never came. In a single split second, Cal Kallis was diced into a million bloody pieces.

On the other side of the platform, Wizard had watched in horror as West had fought Kallis.

He wanted to help, but he also didn't want to leave Lily.

But then he saw Jack nail Kallis with his brutal punch, saw the foul explosion of blood from Kallis's face and he suddenly felt like they might just have a chance—

Wizard was struck viciously from behind ... by the figure who had emerged from the Halicarnassus.

He fell, and his world began to darken at the edges.

Oddly, the last thing he heard before he fell into blackness was Lily shouting to someone: 'No! Forget Alexander! Take me instead!'

His face a mess of blood and dust, West rose from the edge of the platform and turned to head back to the Capstone—

—only to find himself staring into the barrel of Marshall Judah's Glock, just as del Piero had. He froze.

'You should be proud, Jack!' Judah called. 'This is all your doing! You led us to this juncture! But all the while you were working for me! There is nothing you can think of, nothing you can do, nothing you have, that I do not already possess! Why, I even have your little girl to use for the ritual! Tragically, you won't live to see her fulfil her destiny! Goodbye, Jack!'

Judah tightened his trigger finger . . .

'That's not true!' West shouted above the din. 'I do have one thing you don't have! Something that was once yours!'

'What?'

'Horus!'

At that instant, a blurring flash of brown streaked through the air, cutting across Judah's face, and suddenly Judah screamed, his face spraying blood. He threw his hands to his eyes, still half-holding the gun.

Horus swooped clear of the screaming Judah, clutching something in her talons . . . something white and round and trailing a ragged bloody tail.

It was Judah's entire left eye, including the optic nerve.

Horus had ripped it clean from its socket!

Judah dropped to his knees, wailing, 'My eye! My eye!'

At the same time, with his good eye, he saw the Capstone and yelled with even more anguish: 'Oh, God, no . . . !'

West spun too—and he also saw the nightmare scenario take physical form.

For there, standing at the Capstone, having taken Lily from Wizard and ushered her at gunpoint into the sacrificial cavity in the base of the Capstone and having re-filled the crucible inside the cavity with exactly one deben of the fine-grained sand from his black-jade box, was Mustapha Zaeed, now reading from Judah's notebook, performing the ritual of power!

It was Zaeed who had crept unseen from the wing-door of the Halicarnassus earlier, having stowed aboard the plane in Iran after the confrontation at the Hanging Gardens.

It was he who had followed West and Pooh Bear to the rendezvous with Sky Monster and crept aboard the plane through its landing gear, unnoticed—assuming correctly that West would come here to confront the Americans one last time.

Once on board, Zaeed had crept to his old trunk and pulled

from it his prized black-jade box, filled with the fine-grained sand, sand that he had kept for so long in his secret cave in Saudi Arabia—sand unique to the Arabian Peninsula, sand that would bring to the Muslim world a thousand years of unchallenged power.

Now, here, on the platform, it was he who had struck Wizard from behind. As he'd done so, he had spotted Alexander lowering himself over the edge nearby, and he'd been about to grab the boy to perform the ritual, when suddenly Lily had said, 'No! Forget Alexander! Take me instead!'

And so Zaeed had.

Now he only had to utter seven lines.

It took him fifteen seconds.

And there, atop the Great Pyramid at Giza, under the blinding Sun-ray from the Tartarus Sunspot in the roaring wind and the blazing heat, to the horror of everyone else watching powerlessly, Mustapha Zaeed—his voice resonating with evil reverence— uttered the final words of the ritual of power.

This time, West had no doubt that the ritual had been performed correctly.

It sounded like the end of the universe.

Flaring light.

Clashing thunder.

The very Earth shook.

What followed next made man's most spectacular fireworks shows look positively puny.

The dazzling-white beam of light reaching down from the Sun pulsed brilliantly, as if it were doubling in intensity.

An unearthly thunderclap boomed, causing West's ears to ring, and a white-hot ball of superbrilliant energy thundered out of the sky, racing down the length of the vertical beam before rushing headlong into the Capstone . . .

. . . where the Capstone received it within its crystal array.

Inside the Golden Capstone, the energy-burst rushed down through its seven layers of crystals—each layer refining the beam into an ever-smaller, ever-more-intense thread of superluminous light.

And then this superthin beam struck Lily in the heart.

The little girl convulsed, hit by the lightbeam. The beam, however, seemed to pass right through her chest and strike the soil in the crucible.

With a blinding flash, the soil was instantly transformed to cinders.

Seen from the outside, the Capstone shone with blinding brilliance as it received the energy-burst, before with a terrible whump, the white-hot ball disappeared into it, and the phenomenon abruptly ceased and all was quiet, save for a deep humming that came from the Capstone and the drone of the Halicarnassus's engines.

West could only stare at the Capstone, and wonder what had happened to Lily inside it. Could she have survived such a phenomenon? Or had Zaeed been right when he'd said she would die in the ceremony?

Zaeed stood beside the Capstone, his arms raised in triumph, his face upturned to the sky. 'A thousand years! A thousand years of Islamic rule!'

He rounded on West, eyes glowering, hands spread wide.

'The ritual is done, infidel! Which means my people are unconquerable! Invincible! And you—you—will be the first to feel my wrath!'

'Is that so?' West said, jamming a new clip into one of his Desert Eagles and aiming it at Zaeed.

'Fire your weapon!' Zaeed taunted him. 'Bullets cannot help you anymore!'

'Fine,' West said.

Bam!—he fired.

The bullet hit Zaeed square in the chest, sending him jolting backwards. Blood sprayed outwards and the terrorist dropped to the ground, to his knees, his face the picture of shock and confusion.

He stared at his wound, then up at West.

'But. . . how . . . ?'

'I knew you were on my plane after the Hanging Gardens,' West said. 'I knew you'd try to stow aboard. How else were you going to get here? You've been chasing this all your life, you weren't going to stay away. So I let you stow aboard.'

'But the sand . . .'

'While you were hiding in the belly of my plane, I took the liberty

of changing the sand in your black-jade box,' West said. 'It's not the soil of Arabia anymore. What you put inside the Capstone was the soil of my homeland. You just performed the ritual of power for my people, Zaeed, not yours. Thanks.'

Zaeed was thunderstruck. He looked away, considering the consequences. 'Your soil? But that would mean . . .'

He never finished the sentence, for at that moment life escaped him, and Mustapha Zaeed dropped to the platform, dead.

There came a sudden pained shout—'WEST!'—and West spun to see Marshall Judah lunging toward him, blood and flesh dangling from his ripped-open eye socket, and an M-4 assault rifle in his hands, taken from one of his dead CIEF troops.

It was point-blank range.

Judah couldn't miss.

He jammed down on the trigger.

The gun literally exploded in Judah's hands.

It wasn't a misfire, or a jam. It was a total outward explosion. The gun broke outwards in a hundred pieces and fell crumbling from Judah's hands.

Judah frowned, confused—then he looked up in horror at West and said, 'Oh my God . . . you . . . you have the power . . .'

West stepped forwards, his eyes deadly. 'Judah, I could forgive you for what you did to me, putting that chip in my head. I could forgive you for the beatings you gave Horus. But there's one thing I cannot forgive: killing Doris Epper. For that you have to pay.'

As he spoke, West picked up the end of Judah's long safety rope, undipped it from its anchor near the Capstone.

Judah stepped backwards, toward the edge of the platform where the Halicarnassus's wing loomed. He held his hands up. 'Now, Jack. We're both soldiers and sometimes soldiers have to—'

'You executed her. Now I'm going to execute you.'

And West threw his end of the safety rope past Judah . . . into the still-rotating jet engine of the Halicarnassus that hovered immediately behind Judah.

Judah spun as the rope flew by him, saw it enter the yawning maw of the engine.

Then he saw the future, saw what would happen next and his one good eye boggled with fear.

He screamed, but his scream was cut short as the enormous turbine swallowed the rope . . . and sucked the rest of the safety rope in after it.

Judah was yanked off his feet, doubling over as he was sucked backward through the air. Then he entered the engine and— thwack-thwack-CHUNK!—was chewed alive by its hyper-rotating blades.

And suddenly the summit of the Great Pyramid was still.

Seeing the awesome blast of light from the Sun and the deaths of their summit team, the American force at the base of the Pyramid fled, leaving West and Wizard up on the platform, alone.

Moments later, Zoe's Black Hawk landed on the platform and Zoe, Fuzzy and Stretch came rushing out of it—at the same time as Pooh Bear leapt onto the platform from the Halicamassus's wing.

They all arrived on the platform to find West—watched by Wizard—crawling underneath the Capstone to check on Lily.

West bellycrawled through the tight channel carved into the stone beneath the Capstone.

He came to Lily, found her lying motionless inside the human-shaped cavity in the Capstone's lowest Piece. Her eyes were closed. She seemed calm, at peace . . . and not breathing.

'Oh, Lily . . .' West scrambled forwards on his elbows, desperate to get to her.

His head came alongside hers. He scanned her face for any movement, any sign of life.

Nothing. She didn't move at all.

He deflated completely, his entire body going limp, his eyes closing in anguish. 'Oh, Lily. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

He bowed his head, tears rolled from the corners of his eyes, and he said, 'I loved you, kiddo.'

And there in the cavity, in the golden glow of the Capstone, lying before the body of the happy little girl he had guarded and raised for ten whole years, Jack West Jr wept.

'I love you, too, Daddy . . .' a soft voice whispered weakly from nearby.

West snapped up, his eyes darting open, to see Lily staring back at him, her head rolled onto its side. Her eyes were milky, dazed.

But she was alive, and smiling at him.

'You're alive . . .' West said, amazed. 'You're alive!'

He scooped her up in his arms and hugged her firmly.

'But how . . . ?' West asked aloud.

'I'll tell you later,' she said. 'Can we please get out of here?'

'You bet,' he breathed. 'You bet.'

Minutes later, the Halicarnassus powered up and lifted vertically into the sky, rising on its eight massive retro thrusters.

Once it was high enough, it pivoted in mid-air and allowed itself to drop, nose-down. It fell briefly, plummeting towards the ground, before it engaged its regular engines, using the short vertical fall to get up to flight speed. Its main engines firing, it swung up at the last moment and soared away from the Pyramids on the Giza Plateau.

The Great Pyramid was left standing there behind it, with the half-destroyed platform shrouding its summit, and the American helicopters and cranes lying smoking and broken on its flanks. The Egyptian Government that had aided and abetted the American ritual would have to clean it all up.

Importantly, however, the peak of the Pyramid was also once again nine feet shorter than it should have been.

West and his team had taken the Capstone—the entire Capstone—with them.

Inside the main cabin of the Halicarnassus, West and the others gathered around Lily, hugging her, kissing her, clapping her on the shoulders.

Pooh Bear embraced her: 'Well done, young one! Well doneV

'Thanks for coming back for me, Pooh Bear,' she said.

'I was never going to leave you, young one,' he said.

'Nor was I,' said Stretch, stepping forwards.

'Thanks, Stretch. For saving me at the Gardens, for staying with me when you could have gone.'

Stretch nodded silently, to Lily and also to all the others, especially Pooh Bear. 'They don't come often,' he said, 'but every now and then, there come times in your life when you have to choose a side; choose who you are fighting for. I made my choice, Lily, to fight with you. It was a hard choice, but I have no doubt that it was the right one.'

'It was the right one,' Pooh Bear said, clapping a hand onto Stretch's shoulder. 'You are a good man, Israeli ... I mean, Stretch. I would be honoured to call you my friend.'

'Thank you,' Stretch said with a smile. 'Thank you, friend.''

When all the back-slapping was over, West was eager to understand how Lily had survived.

'I went willingly,' she said simply.

'I don't get it,' West said.

Lily grinned, obviously proud of herself. 'It was the inscription cut into the wall of the volcano chamber where I was born. You yourself were studying it one day. It said:

"Enter the embrace of Anubis willingly, and you shall live beyond the coming of Ra.

Enter against your will, and your people shall rule for but one eon, but you shall live no more.

Enter not at all, and the world shall be no more.

'Like the Egyptians, we thought it was simply a reference to the god Horus, accepting death and being rewarded for that with some kind of afterlife. But that was wrong. It was meant to apply to me and Alexander—to the Oracles. It's not about accepting death willingly. It's about entering the cavity, the embrace of Anubis, willingly.

'If I entered it of my own accord, I would survive. If I went unwillingly, I'd die. But if I didn't go at all, and the ritual was not performed, you would all have died. And I, well, I didn't want to lose my family.'

'Even if that meant giving Zaeed power for all eternity?' Pooh Bear said in disbelief.

Lily turned to him, and her eyes glinted.

'Mr Zaeed was never going to rule,' she said. 'When he grabbed me, I saw the soil in his jade box.' Lily turned to West. 'It was a kind of soil I'd seen many times before. I've been fascinated with it for a long time. It has been sitting in a glass jar on a shelf in Daddy's study for years. When I saw it in Mr Zaeed's box, I knew exactly what it was, and so I knew I wasn't giving Mr Zaeed any power at all.'

Pooh Bear said, 'Did del Piero know this, too? Is that why he treated Alexander like a little emperor, ready to rule? Did he want Alexander to enter that cavity willingly?'

'I think so,' West said. 'But there was more to it than that. Del Piero was a priest and he thought like a priest. He wanted Alexander to survive the ritual not because he wanted the boy to live and rule, but because he also wanted a saviour, a figurehead, a focal point for his new ruling religion. A new Christ figure.'

Through all this, Wizard sat alone in a corner of the cabin, silent, head bent. Zoe sat with him, holding his hand, equally shocked at the death of her brother, Big Ears.

Lily walked over to them, touched their shoulders.

'I'm sorry about Doris, Wizard,' she said with a seriousness that belied her age. 'And Big Ears, too, Zoe.'

Tear-lines streaked down Wizard's face; his eyes were moist and red. It was only on the platform that he had learned of Doris's death at Judah's hands.

'She died saving us,' Lily said. 'Telling us to get away. She gave her life so that we could escape.'

'She was my wife for 45 years,' Wizard said. 'The most wonderful woman I've ever known. She was my life, my family.'

'I'm so sorry,' Lily said.

Then she took his hand and looked deep into his eyes. 'But if you'll take me, I'll be your family now'

Wizard looked up at her through his wet eyes . . . and he nodded. 'I'd like that, Lily. I'd like that a lot.'

A few hours later, Wizard found West alone in his office at the back of the Halicarnassus.

'I have a question for you, Jack,' he said. 'What does all this mean now? We set out to perform the ritual of peace, but now the ritual of power has been initiated—in favour of your country. Can Australians be trusted to possess such power?'

'Max,' West said, 'you know where I'm from. You know what we're like. We're certainly not aggressors or warmongers. And if my people don't know they've got this power, then I think this is the best possible outcome—because we're the most unlikely people on Earth to use it.'

Wizard nodded slowly, accepting this.

'I won't let them know if you won't,' West said.

'Deal,' Wizard said. 'Thank you, Jack. Thank you.'

The two men shared a smile.

And with that, the Halicarnassus soared into the sky, heading for Kenya, heading for home.

O'SHEA FARM

COUNTY KERRY, IRELAND

9 APRIL, 2006, 1630 HOURS

For the second time in ten years, the lonely old farmhouse on the hilltop overlooking the Atlantic Ocean was host to an important meeting of nations.

A couple of the faces had changed, but the nine original nations represented at the first meeting had not. Plus, there was one extra nation present this time: Israel.

'They're late,' the Arab delegate, Sheik Anzar al Abbas, growled. 'Again.'

The Canadian delegate—again—said, 'They'll be here. They'll be

here.'

A door slammed somewhere, and a few moments later, Max T Epper entered the sitting room.

Jack West, however, was not with him.

But he did have a companion: the little girl.

Lily.

'Where is Captain West?' Abbas demanded.

Wizard bowed respectfully. 'Captain West sends his apologies. Having succeeded on his mission, he assumed you wouldn't mind if he did not attend this meeting. He said he had some things to do, some loose ends to tie up. In the meantime, may I introduce to you all the young lady to whom we owe a profound debt of gratitude. Ladies and gentlemen, meet Lily.'

• • •

At length Wizard reported the events of the previous ten years to the delegates of the coalition of small nations.

Of course, they were aware of some elements of his success: the Earth had not been blasted with superheated solar energy; and America had not become invincible—its continued problems imposing law and order in the Middle East showed that. Word had got out about a spectacular battle atop the Great Pyramid, too, but damage to the structure had actually been minimal and the Egyptian Government, ever keen to retain American aid money, had denied the story absolutely.

And so Wizard told the delegates of Lily's upbringing in Kenya, of the chase to locate the seven Pieces of the Capstone, of the inclusion of Mustapha Zaeed in their quest, of their losses—of Noddy, Big Ears and of his own wife, Doris—and of the final confrontation on the summit of the Great Pyramid with the Americans and with Zaeed.

It was only on this last point that Wizard diverged slightly from the truth.

Since it accorded with the state of the world—safe from the power of the Sun, and with no apparent superpowerful ruling nation—he reported that on the summit of the Great Pyramid the ritual of peace had been performed, not the ritual of power.

He even informed them of the fate of the boy, Alexander. He had been found after the battle on the Pyramid and placed in the care of some trusted friends of Wizard's, people who would teach him to be a normal boy . . . and who would observe his maturation into adulthood, and keep track of any children he might have later in life.

'And so, ladies and gentlemen, our mission is accomplished,' Wizard concluded. 'This issue need not be addressed for another 4,500 years. At which time, I am pleased to say, it shall fall to someone else to handle.'

The delegates at the meeting rose from their chairs and applauded.

Then, buzzing with excitement, they started congratulating each other and calling home, to relay the excellent news.

Only one of them remained seated.

Sheik Abbas.

'Wizard!' he called above the din. 'You neglected to tell us one thing. Where is the Capstone now?'

All fell silent.

Wizard faced Abbas, eyed him evenly. 'The disposition of the Capstone was one of the loose ends Captain West had to attend to.'

'Where does he intend to hide it?'

Wizard cocked his head to one side. 'Surely, Anzar, the fewer who know the resting place of the Capstone, the better. You have trusted us this far, now trust us one more time.

'But let me assure you of one thing: Captain West has now retired from national service. He does not intend to be found. If you can find him, you can find the Capstone, but I pity the man who is tasked with that hunt.'

This seemed to satisfy Abbas, and the congratulations continued.

The sounds of celebration would echo from the farmhouse deep into the night.

The next morning, Wizard and Lily left Ireland.

As they boarded a private plane at Cork International Airport, Lily said, 'Wizard, where did Daddy go?'

'As I said, to tie up some loose ends.'

'What about after that? When he's done, where will he go?'

Wizard eyed her sideways. 'I actually don't know, Lily. Only you know. For all our safety, Jack wouldn't reveal his final destination. But he did tell me that he once gave you a riddle which, when solved, would reveal the location of his new home. So now it's all up to you, little one. If you want to find him, you must solve the riddle.'

GREAT SANDY DESERT NORTH-WESTERN AUSTRALIA 25 APRIL, 2006, 1130 HOURS

The Toyota four-wheel drive zoomed along the empty desert highway.

In the passenger seat, Lily gazed out at the most inhospitable landscape she had ever seen. Wizard drove, with Zoe in the back. Lily shook her head. If there was any place on Earth further from civilisation, she didn't know it.

Dry barren hills stretched away in every direction. Sand crept out onto the desert highway, as if eventually it would consume it.

But it was an odd kind of sand, orange-red in colour, just like the soil that had been in West's jar.

They hadn't seen another car in hours. In fact, the last living thing they'd seen was a big saltwater crocodile basking on a virtually dry riverbank under a bridge they'd crossed a couple of hours ago.

A sign on the bridge had revealed the river to be named, somewhat appropriately, the River Styx, after the river in Hell. A three-way junction a few miles after it offered three options. To the left: Simpson's Crossing, 50 miles; straight: Death Valley, 75 miles; while going right would ultimately take them to a place called Franklin Downs.

'Go straight,' Lily had said. 'Death Valley.'

Now, two hours later, she said, 'It has to be here somewhere . . .'

She checked her riddle:

My new home is home to both tigers and crocodiles.

To find it, pay the boatman, take your chances with the dog and

journey

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell.

There you will find me, protected by a great villain.

Lily said, '"Pay the boatman, take your chances with the dog." In Greek mythology, when you entered the underworld, you first had to cross the River Styx. To do that, you paid the boatman and then took your chances against Cerberus, the dog guarding Hades. We've found the River Styx.'

Wizard and Zoe exchanged looks.

'And Death Valley?' Zoe asked. 'What makes you think that?'

'The next two lines in the riddle, "Into the jaws of Death/Into the mouth of Hell", they're from a poem that Wizard taught me, "The Charge of the Light Brigade". In the poem, the 600 members of the Light Brigade charge into "the Valley of Death". Death Valley'

Minutes later, a series of low buildings rose out of the heat haze.

The town of Death Valley.

A weatherworn sign at the entry to the town read:

WELCOME TO

DEATH VALLEY

HOME OF THE MIGHTY

DEATH VALLEY TIGERS FOOTBALL TEAM!

'Home to both tigers and crocodiles,' Lily said.

Death Valley turned out to be a ghost town—just a cluster of old wooden shacks and farms with crumbling dirt driveways, long-abandoned.

They drove round for a while.

Lily gazed out the window, her eyes searching for a clue. 'Now we need to find a "great villain" ... a great villain . . . Therel Wizard! Stop the car!'

They stopped at the end of an ultralong dirt driveway. It was so long, the farmhouse to which it belonged lay over the horizon.

At the point where the driveway met the road, however, a rusty old mailbox sat on a post. Like many such mailboxes in rural Australia, this one was a home-made work of art.

Constructed of old tractor parts and a rusted oil barrel, it was fashioned in the shape of a mouse . . . complete with ears and whiskers. Only this mouse wore, of all things, a crown.

'A Mouse King . . .' she breathed. 'The Mouse King. This is it.'

'How do you know?' Zoe asked.

Lily smiled at the in-joke. 'The Mouse King is a great villain. He's the villain in The Nutcracker Suite.''

Their car bounced up the dusty dirt driveway. At the very end of the long drive, far from the main road, they found a quiet little farmhouse nestled beneath a low hill, its windmill turning slowly.

A man stood on the front porch, dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, his metal left arm glinting in the sunshine, watching the approaching four-wheel drive.

Jack West Jr.

Lily bounded out of the car and leapt into West's arms.

'You found me,' he said. 'Took you long enough.'

'Where have you been?' Lily asked. 'What were these loose ends you had to tie up for a whole month?'

West grinned. 'Why don't you come and see.'

He led them behind the farmhouse, into an old abandoned mine hidden in the base of the low sandy hill back there.

'Later today, like Imhotep III did at the Hanging Gardens, I'm going to trigger a landslide to cover the entrance to this mine,' he said as they walked, 'so that no-one will ever know that there's a mine here, or what it contains.'

A hundred metres inside the mine, they came to a wide chamber and in the centre of the chamber stood . . .

. . . the Golden Capstone.

Nine feet tall, glittering and golden, and absolutely magnificent.

'Pooh Bear and Stretch helped me get it to Australia. Oh, and Sky Monster, too,' West said. 'But I left them all at the dock in Fremantle. A little later I got them to help me pick up a few other things that we encountered on our adventures. Wizard, I thought you might like to keep one or two.'

Standing in a semi-circle on the far side of the Capstone were several other ancient items.

The Mirror from the Lighthouse at Alexandria.

The Pillar from the Mausoleum at Halicarnassus.

Both last seen in Tunisia, inside Hamilcar's Refuge.

'You didn't get the head of the Colossus of Rhodes?' Wizard asked jokingly.

'I was thinking of going after it in a few months, if you wanted to join me,' West said. 'I could use the help. Oh, and Zoe . . .'

'Yes, Jack . . .'

'I thought you might like a flower, as a token of thanks for your efforts these last ten years.' With a flourish, he whipped something from behind his back and held it out to her.

It was a rose, a white rose of some kind, but one of unusual beauty.

Zoe's eyes widened. 'Where did you find this—?'

'Some gardens I saw once,' West said. 'Alas, they're no longer there. But this variety of rose is really rather resilient, and it's taking in my front garden very well. I expect to develop quite a rosebush. Come on, it's hot, let's head inside and Pll get some drinks.'

And so they left the abandoned mine and went back to the farmhouse, their shoes and boots caked in the unusual orange-red soil.

It was indeed a unique kind of soil, soil rich in iron and nickel, soil that was unique to this area: the north-western corner of what was now the most powerful nation on Earth ... if only it knew it.

Australia.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, I am indebted to a wonderful non-fiction book called Secret Chamber by the Egyptologist Robert Bauval. He's the guy who deduced that the pyramids at Giza are laid out in imitation of the constellation Orion's Belt.

It was from reading Secret Chamber that I discovered a Golden Capstone did indeed once sit atop the Great Pyramid at Giza. As an author, it's wonderful when you discover something so big and so cool that it can be the ultimate goal of your story, and when I read about the Golden Capstone, I just leapt up and started dancing around my living room, because I'd found exactly that.

I am often asked 'Where do you get your ideas from?' And this is the answer: I read a lot of non-fiction books, and if you read enough, you find gems like this. As a work on the darker side of ancient Egypt, with interesting sections on the Word of Thoth and the Sphinx, I would thoroughly recommend this book to anyone keen on the subject of ancient Egypt.

On the home front, as always, my wife Natalie was a model of support and encouragement—reading draft after draft, letting me off doing chores around the house, and most of all, happily allowing our honeymoon in Egypt to morph into a quasi-research trip!

Honestly, in Egypt I became one of those tourists who is the first off the bus and the last one back to it, and who pesters the tour guide with all kinds of weird questions. For example, at the Valley of the Kings, I asked, 'Is there a hieroglyph that says "Death to

grave robbers?"' (Sure enough, there is, and the image of it in this book is it!). And neither of us will ever forget exploring—on our own—the haunting chambers beneath the 'Red' Pyramid south of Giza by the light of a perilously fading flashlight!

Once again, thanks to everyone at Pan Macmillan for another stellar effort. I've been so fortunate to work with a group of people who can package my work so well (I really love the jacket of this book).

Kudos also to my agents at the William Morris Agency, Suzanne Gluck and Eugenie Furniss—they look after me so well! And they're just from the literary section. That's not even mentioning the cool people in LA (notably Alicia Gordon and Danny Greenberg) doing film things on my behalf.

I'd also like to thank Mr David Epper, who generously supported my favourite charity, the Bullant Charity Challenge, by 'buying' the name of a character in this book at Bullant's annual auction dinner. Thus, his son, Max Epper, is in the book as Professor Max Epper, aka Wizard. Thanks, Dave.

And lastly, to family and friends, once again I pledge my eternal thanks for their support and tolerance. My mum and dad; my brother, Stephen; friends like Bee Wilson, Nik and Simon Kozlina; and, of course, my first 'official' reader, my good friend John Schrooten, who still reads my stuff in the stands at the cricket after all these years. If he starts ignoring the cricket because he's absorbed in the book, then it's a good sign!

Believe me, it's all about encouragement. As I've said in my previous books: to anyone who knows a writer, never underestimate the power of your encouragement.

M.R.

Sydney, Australia

October 2005

AN INTERVIEW WITH MATTHEW REILLY

THE WRITING OF SEVEN ANCIENT WONDERS

How was the writing of Seven Ancient Wonders different from the writing of your other books?

It's funny, but for some reason the writing of this book was a more solitary experience than the others—if anything, it felt a lot like the writing of Contest. Perhaps that's because the subject matter of the book, the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, is so ancient, so distant, so alien to us, that I was creating most of the story from pure imagination (rather than from actual sources—some of the stuff on the Wonders is pretty flimsy). As I did when I created the aliens in Contest, I just had to create these mystical places, like the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, for example, from scratch.

What did you try to do differently with this book?

For me, the key difference between Seven Ancient Wonders and my previous books is the theme of 'family' in it. The team of international soldiers guarding Lily ultimately becomes a family—complete with grandparents (Doris and Max Epper), squabbling brothers and sisters (Pooh Bear, Stretch, Big Ears, Zoe), and the father-like figure of Jack West.

This was a thematic thing that I started in Hover Car Racer and I enjoyed it immensely when I wrote that novel. In the end, when you write an action-thriller novel, you must have characters that you care about, and by creating this quasi-family environment out of a bunch of hard-ass troopers, I felt I'd created a special kind of team that readers would want to cheer for.

I particularly love how Lily renames all the soldiers, changing all

their tough-guy call-signs into goofy childish nicknames. Having utilised 'serious' call-signs in the Scarecrow books, I felt it was time to have a bit of fun, and turn this plot device on its head.

Is it true that for this book you created your own language?

I wouldn't go so far as to say that I created a language! What I did do was create an alphabet (not unlike cuneiform) to display the Word of Thoth—but my translation is just from English, not a brand-new language. That would have been way too hard and time-consuming. I'll leave that sort of thing to JRR Tolkien!

It took some time, but it was great fun. I created symbols to match those of our own alphabet, plus rules for proper nouns and special symbols for certain objects (like the Great Pyramid, Alexander the Great and the Sun, for instance). If anyone has the time and the inclination they can translate all the Thoth references in the book back to English, but be careful, as in the novel, it gets harder, as more symbols are used, and sometimes not from left-to-right!

After the book has been out a while, I'll put up the alphabet on my website, so that anyone who's interested can see how it works.

With the exception of Jason Chaser in Hover Car Racer, Seven Ancient Wonders sees the introduction of your first Australian action hero. What made you decide to make Jack Westjr an Australian?

It suited the story. Simple as that. I'm often asked why the heroes of my other books are American and the answer is really the same: it suited those stories (it especially suited Ice Station).

With Seven Ancient Wonders, I wanted the hero specifically not to be American. He had to lead this little band of small nations against the combined might of America and Europe. And so I

thought of an ex-SAS soldier from Australia. I also knew that the ending of the book required one country to be imbued with the power of Tartarus, and what could be more fun than Australia being the most powerful country on Earth and not knowing it? (I already think that, anyway!)

You mention The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown a couple of times in the novel. Have you read it? Did it influence you?

I have indeed read The Da Vinci Code and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I actually read it long before it dominated the bestseller lists—when I was touring with Scarecrow in 2003, I would recommend it to anyone who would listen!

That said, The Da Vinci Code wasn't really an influence on Seven Ancient Wonders. The Indiana Jones movies were probably more of an influence. I wanted to create an Indiana Jones-type story, with booby traps and high adventure, but set in the present day. The reason I mentioned The Da Vinci Code in the book was really because that novel is now so globally known, if you do write a story about Catholic Church conspiracy theories or one which has a scene set in the Louvre, you should probably make a Da Vinci Code joke!

Seven Ancient Wonders features some pretty dastardly American villains'. Is it an anti-American novel?

I hope it's not interpreted that way. The Americans are just the villains in this book, that's all. They want the power of Tartarus and so they go after it—they just do so a little more ruthlessly than our heroes!

The key to Seven Ancient Wonders was that the heroes had to be underdogs, underdogs battling the most powerful nation on Earth, and that at the moment is America. America has more guns, tanks and planes than the next dozen countries combined. For a bunch of

little countries to go up against the United States is a big thing, a hard thing. And that, to my mind, makes for an interesting story.

I guess, like many others, I do question the new American 'Imperialism' under George W. Bush, but unlike others I don't dislike America for it. It's a lone superpower in a changed world. It has to figure out how to find its way, just like the rest of us. It will make mistakes. Unfortunately, any mistakes it makes will have a big impact on everyone else on this planet. It will also, it must be said, do much good.

I don't know. I invariably find myself defending America when I'm out at dinner with friends. I have many American friends, and I work with some very clever New Yorkers and Los Angelinos. Smart people, all of them. I also firmly believe that America is a fantastic social experiment—a land of opportunity, where capitalism is king, and where 280 million people live in relative peace under the rule of law; not a bad achievement at all.

After all that, if some Americans think that just because I made them the villains of this book that I'm anti-American, then what can I do? I'll just have to cop it and know that they're wrong. And hey, the Brits never minded being the villains of Ice Station*. But then again, I still have not been published in France . . .

Will we see Jack West jr again?

I think there's a good chance we'll see Jack West in a new book sometime in the future. I enjoyed writing about him and going on this huge adventure with him—and that's the key incentive for me to write about a character a second time. It takes me a year to write a novel, and if I'm going to spend a year with a character, I have to like him or her!

And I do already have an idea of what that adventure could be . . .

You've bad a busy year. Seven Ancient Wonders, Hell Island, and your movie work on Contest. How have you survived it all?

Yes, it has been a busy year! But it's been enormous fun.

I had just finished Seven Ancient Wonders when the call came from the Federal Government asking if I would write a brand-new short-novel for their Books Alive campaign. Luckily, I had a new idea sitting in the 'Story Ideas' drawer of my desk ready to go, so I turned around, sat back down and started writing again!

And yes, at that stage, I'd already planned to direct a pilot shoot of Contest, so I was in the midst of pre-production when I was polishing both Hell Island and Seven Ancient Wonders. I'm still not quite sure how I did it, but I figured I could sleep later! Believe me, I'm resting now.

Shane Schofield appeared in the Books Alive edition of Hell Island. Will we see the Scarecrow again in a new novel?

A few things about Hell Island, especially since I didn't do an interview like this in the back of that book.

I really enjoyed doing Hell Island, and making it a Schofield book. I think it's a pretty kick-ass story—bold, fast and mean; and yet still short. It was designed to be a kind of 'side-adventure' for Schofield; a minor mission that occurred in between books (although technically it occurs after the events in Scarecrow). You also have to remember that my fans in the US and other countries won't see Hell Island, as it was a free book given out in Australia only, which I actually kind of like.

Will he appear again? I reckon so. He's a fun character, who's always getting into trouble, and they're the ones I like to write about. The question is, who do I write about next? Schofield or Jack West?

What is the latest movie news?

Hover Car Racer is still with Disney. Last I heard, Al Gough and Miles Millar were still at work on the screenplay. And, of course, I'm hard at work trying to get Contest up and running as a feature film.

I had an awesome time directing the pilot of Contest earlier this year, which was the first twelve minutes of the book: this included getting a creature shop to build a fully-articulated Karanadon head and filming it in the stack of the New South Wales State Library. We also filmed in the abandoned train tunnels underneath Sydney, the Royal North Shore Hospital and even in the basement of my house! Ah, movie magic.

So, what's next for Matthew Reilly?

Sleep. Rest. And maybe play a bit of golf. It's been a very busy year and I need to slow down a bit. I'm just going to sit on my couch and read a bunch of non-fiction books! Although if I get Contest up and running, then it'll be all systems go and I can sleep next year. . .

Any final words?

As always, I just hope you all enjoyed the book. I had a lot of fun writing this one and I hope you had just as much fun reading it.

M.R.

Sydney, Australia October 2005