Map of Bones

11 ALEXANDRIA

THEY’D BE in Egypt in two hours.

Aboard the private jet, Gray inventoried his pack. Director Crowe had managed to outfit them with new supplies and weapons. Even laptops. The director had also had the foresight to move their rented Citation X plane down from Germany to Rome’s Leonardo da Vinci International Airport.

Gray checked his watch. They had taken off half an hour ago. The two hours remaining until they landed in Alexandria was all the time the group had to strategize. The few hours of downtime in Rome had at least helped revive the group. They had left before dawn, sneaking out of Vatican City without alerting anyone of their departure.

Director Crowe had arranged additional cover at his end, setting up a dummy flight plan to Morocco. He had then used his contacts with National Reconnaissance Office to change their call signs in mid-flight as they turned for Egypt. It was the best they could do to cover their tracks.

Now there remained only one detail to iron out.

Where to begin their search in Alexandria?

To answer this, the Citation X’s cabin had been turned into a research think tank. Kat, Rachel, and Vigor all hunched over workstations. Monk was up in the cockpit, coordinating transportation and logistics once on the ground. The man had already taken apart and inspected his new Scattergun. He kept it with him. As he stated, “I feel naked without it. And trust me, you wouldn’t want that.”

In the meantime, Gray had his own investigation to pursue. Though it was not directly related to the immediate question, he intended to research further into the mystery of these m-state superconductors.

But first…

Gray stood and crossed to the trio of researchers. “Any headway?” he asked.

Kat answered, “We’ve divided our efforts. Scouring all references and documents beginning before Alexander’s birth and continuing through his death and the eventual disappearance of his tomb.”

Vigor rubbed his eyes. He’d had the least sleep of any of them. A single hour nap. The monsignor had taken it upon himself to do some further research among the stacks at the Vatican Archives. He was sure that the head prefect of the libraries, the traitor Dr. Alberto Menardi, was the mastermind behind solving the riddles for the Dragon Court. Vigor had hoped to track the prefect’s footsteps, to gain some additional insight. But little had been discerned.

Kat continued, “Mystery still surrounds Alexander. Even his parentage. His mother was a woman named Olympias. His father was King Philip II of Macedonia. But there’s some disagreement here. Alexander came to believe his father was a god named Zeus Ammon, and that he himself was a demigod.”

“Not exactly humble,” Gray said.

“He was a man of many contradictions,” Vigor said. “Prone to drunken rages, but thoughtful in his strategy. Fierce in his friendships, but murderous when crossed. He dabbled with homosexuality, but married both a Persian dancer and the daughter of a Persian king, this last in an attempt to unite Persia and Greece. But back to his parentage. It was well known that his mother and father hated each other. Some historians believe Olympias may have had a hand in assassinating King Philip. And what’s interesting is that one writer, Pseudo-Callisthenes, claimed Alexander was not the son of Philip, but instead was the son of an Egyptian magician to the court, named Nectanebo.”

“A magician…as in magi?” Gray understood the implication.

“Whoever his parents truly were,” Kat continued, “he was born on July 20, 356 B.C.”

Vigor shrugged. “But even that might not be true. On that same date, the Temple of Artemis in Ephesus burned down. One of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world. The historian Plutarch wrote that Artemis herself was ‘too busy taking care of the birth of Alexander to send help to her threatened temple.’ Some scholars believe the choice of date might be propaganda, the true date of Alexander’s birth moved to match this portentous event, portraying the king as a phoenix rising from the ashes.”

“And a rise it was,” Kat said. “Alexander lived only to thirty-three, but he conquered most of the known world during his short life. He defeated King Darius of Persia, then went on to Egypt, where he founded Alexandria, then on to Babylonia.”

Vigor finished, “Eventually he moved east into India, to conquer the Punjab region. The same region where Saint Thomas would eventually baptize the Three Magi.”

“Uniting Egypt and India,” Gray noted.

“Connecting a line of ancient knowledge,” Rachel said, stirring from her own laptop. She didn’t raise her eyes, still focused on her research, but she did work a kink from her back.

Gray liked the way she stretched, slow, unhurried.

Maybe she noticed his study. Without turning her head, just her eyes flicked toward him. She stuttered a moment, glancing away. “He…Alexander even sought out Indian scholars, spending a significant amount of time in philosophical discussions. He was very interested in new sciences, having been taught by Aristotle himself.”

“But his life was cut short,” Kat continued, drawing back Gray’s attention. “He died in 323 B.C. In Babylon. Under mysterious circumstances. Some say he died of natural causes, but others believe he was poisoned or contracted a plague.”

“It is also said,” Vigor added, “that upon his deathbed in the royal palace of Babylon, he gazed out upon the city’s famous Hanging Gardens, a tower of sculpted terraces, rooftop gardens, and waterfalls. Another of the Seven Wonders of the ancient world.”

“So his life began with the destruction of one and ended at another.”

“It may just be allegorical,” Vigor conceded. He scratched at the beard under his chin. “But Alexander’s history seems strangely tied to the Seven Wonders. Even the first compilation of the Seven Wonders was made by an Alexandrian librarian named Callimachus of Cyrene in the third century B.C. The towering bronze statue in Rhodes, another of the Wonders, the ten-story Colossus that spanned the island’s harbor and held up a fiery torch, like your Statue of Liberty, was modeled after Alexander the Great. Then there’s the Statue of Zeus in Olympia, a glowering four-story figure of gold and marble. By Alexander’s own claim, possibly his real father. And there can be no doubt that Alexander visited the Pyramids of Giza. He spent a full decade in Egypt. So Alexander’s fingerprints seem to be all over these masterpieces of the ancient world.”

“Can this be significant?” Gray asked.

Vigor shrugged. “I can’t say. But Alexandria itself was once home to another of the Seven Wonders, the last to be built, though it no longer stands. The Pharos Lighthouse of Alexandria. It rose from a spit of land extending into the harbor of Alexandria, splitting the bay into two halves. It was a three-tiered tower of limestone blocks, held together by molten lead. It rose taller than your Statue of Liberty, some forty stories. At its top, a fire burned in a brazier, amplified by a gold mirror. Its light guided boat pilots from as far away as fifty kilometers. Even today, the very name lighthouse harkens back to this Wonder. In French, phare. In Spanish and Italian, faro.”

“And how does this connect to our search for Alexander’s tomb?” Gray asked.

“We were pointed to Alexandria,” Vigor said. “Chasing clues left by an ancient society of magi. I can’t help but think that the lighthouse, this shining symbol of a guiding light, would be significant to this group. There’s also a legend surrounding the Pharos Lighthouse — that its golden light was so potent that it could burn ships at a distance. Perhaps this hints back to some unknown source of power.”

Vigor finally sighed and shook his head. “But how this all hangs together, I don’t know.”

Gray appreciated the monsignor’s intellect, but he needed more concrete information, something to pursue once they arrived in Alexandria. “Then let’s go directly to the heart of the mystery. Alexander died in Babylon. What happened after that?”

Kat spoke up, leaning over her laptop. She ran a finger down a list she had compiled. “There are many historical references to the parade of his body from Babylon to Alexandria. Once entombed in Alexandria, it became a shrine for visiting dignitaries, including Julius Caesar and the emperor Caligula.”

“During this time,” Vigor added, “the city itself was ruled by one of Alexander’s former generals, Ptolemy, and his descendants. They would go on to establish the Library of Alexandria, turning the city into a major site of intellectual and philosophical study, bringing scholars from around the known world.”

“And what happened to the tomb?”

“That’s what’s intriguing,” Kat said. “The tomb was supposedly a massive sarcophagus made of gold. But in other references, including the major historian of the time, Strabo, the tomb is described as being made of glass.”

“Perhaps golden glass,” Gray said. “One of the states of the m-state powder.”

Kat nodded. “In the early third century A.D.; Septimus Severus closed the tomb from viewing, out of concern for its safety. It’s also interesting to note that he placed many secret books into the vault. Here’s a quote.” She leaned forward to the laptop. “‘So none could read the books nor see the body.’” She pushed back and glanced to Gray. “This plainly supports that something of great importance was hidden at this tomb site. Some storehouse of secret arcana that Septimus feared would be lost or stolen.”

Vigor elaborated, “There were many attacks upon Alexandria from the first through third centuries. They grew worse and worse. Julius Caesar himself burned a large portion of the Alexandrian library to ward off attack at the harbor. These attacks would continue, leading to the eventual destruction and dissolution of the library by the seventh century. I can understand why Septimus would want to protect a portion of the library by hiding it. He must have hidden the most important scrolls there.”

“It wasn’t just military aggressors that threatened the city,” Kat added. “A series of plagues struck. Frequent earthquakes damaged significant parts of Alexandria. A whole section of the city fell into the bay in the fourth century, destroying the Ptolemaic Royal Quarters, including Cleopatra’s palace, and much of the Royal Cemetery. In 1996, a French explorer, Franck Goddio, discovered sections of this lost city in the East Harbor of Alexandria. Another archaeologist, Honor Frost, believes that perhaps this might be the fate of Alexander’s tomb, sunk into a watery grave.”

“I’m not convinced of that,” Vigor said. “Rumors abound on the location of that tomb, but most historical documents place the tomb in the center of the city, away from the coastline.”

“Until, like I said, Septimus Severus closed it off,” Kat argued. “Maybe he moved it.”

Vigor frowned. “Either way, throughout the subsequent centuries, treasure hunters and archaeologists scoured Alexandria and its vicinity. Even today, there’s a gold-rush-like fervor to find this lost tomb. A couple of years ago, a German geophysics team used ground-penetrating radar to show that the subsoil throughout Alexandria is riddled with anomalies and cavities. There are plenty of places to hide a tomb. It could take decades to search them all.”

“We don’t have decades,” Gray said. “I don’t know if we have twenty-four hours.”

Frustrated, Gray paced the narrow cabin. He knew the Dragon Court had the same intel as they did. It would not take them long to realize the hematite slab under Saint Peter’s tomb was a map with Alexandria marked on it.

He faced the trio. “So where do we look first?”

“I may have one hint,” Rachel said, speaking for the first time in a while. She had been furiously typing at her keyboard and squinting at the screen periodically. “Or two.”

All attention turned to her.

“There is a reference back in the ninth century, testimony from the emperor of Constantinople, that some, and I quote, ‘fabulous treasure’ was hidden within or under the Pharos Lighthouse. In fact, the caliph who ruled Alexandria at the time dismantled half of the lighthouse searching for it.”

Gray noted that Vigor stirred at her words. He remembered the monsignor’s interest in the lighthouse. Rachel must have been swayed by her uncle and gone in search of clues.

“Others periodically continued the search, but the lighthouse served a strategic role for the harbor.”

Vigor nodded, his eyes glowing with excitement. “What better place to hide something you don’t want dug up than under a structure too important to tear down?”

“Then it all ended on August 8, 1303, when a massive quake shook the eastern Mediterranean. The lighthouse was destroyed, toppling into the same harbor where the Ptolemaic ruins fell.”

“What became of the original site?” Gray asked.

“It varied over the centuries. But in the fifteenth century, a Mamluk sultan built a fort on the peninsula. It still stands today, the Fort of Qait Bey. Some of its construction includes the original limestone blocks that made up the lighthouse.”

“And if the treasure was never found,” Vigor continued, “then it must still be there…beneath the fort.”

“If it ever existed,” Gray warned.

“It’s a place to start looking,” Vigor said.

“And what do we do? Knock on the door and ask them if it’s okay to dig under their fort?”

Kat offered a more practical solution. “We contact NRO. They have access to satellites with ground-penetrating radar capability. Have them do a pass over the site. We can look for any abnormalities or cavities like the German geophysicists did in the city. It might help pinpoint our search.”

Gray nodded. It wasn’t a bad idea. But it would take time. He had already checked. It would be eight hours until the next pass of a surveillance satellite.

Rachel offered an alternative. “Remember the back door into the cavern under Saint Peter’s tomb? Maybe we don’t have to go in the front door of the Fort of Qait Bey. Maybe there’s a back entrance. One underwater like in Rome.”

Gray liked her idea.

Rachel seemed to take strength from the approval in his face. “There are tour groups that dive on the sites near Qait Bey and the Ptolemaic ruins. We could easily blend in and search the underwater coastline of the harbor.”

“It might not lead to anything,” Kat said, “but it would allow us to do something until a GPR satellite could make a pass over there.”

Gray nodded slowly. It was a start.

Monk pushed into the cabin from the cockpit. “I have a van and a hotel already booked under our aliases, and customs has already been cleared through some cooperation with Washington. I think that should take care of everything.”

“No.” Gray turned to him. “We’re also going to need a boat. Preferably something fast.”

Monk’s eyes widened. “Okay,” he dragged out. His gaze settled on Rachel. “But she’s not going to be driving the damn thing, is she?”

THE HEAT of the morning did not help Raoul’s mood. It was only midmorning and already the temperature spiked. Sunlight baked the stone square outside and glared too brightly. His naked body gleamed with sweat as he stood at the doors out to his room’s balcony. The doors were open but no breeze moved.

He hated Rome.

He despised the stupefying herds of tourists, the black-draped locals smoking continually, the constant chatter, yells, the honking cars. The air reeked of petrol.

Even the whore he had picked up in Travastere, her hair smelled of cigarettes and sweat. She stank of Rome. He rubbed his raw knuckles. At least the sex had been satisfactory. No one had heard her screams through the ball gag. He had enjoyed the way she squirmed under his knife as he dragged the tip around the wide brown nipples and corkscrewed down her breast. But he had found greater satisfaction pounding her face with his fist, flesh to flesh, as he rutted into her.

Upon her body, he beat out his frustration with Rome, with the bastard American who had nearly blinded him, ruining his chance to make their deaths slow. And now he had learned that the others had somehow again escaped certain doom.

He turned from the window. The whore’s body was already wrapped in the bedsheets. His men would dispose of the corpse. It meant nothing to him.

At the bedside table, the phone rang. He had been expecting this call. It was what had really soured his mood.

He crossed and picked up the cell phone.

“Raoul,” he said.

“I received the report from last night’s mission.” As expected, it was the Imperator of his Order. His voice was stiff with fury.

“Sir—”

He was cut off. “I won’t accept any excuse. Failure is one thing, but insubordination will not be tolerated.”

Raoul frowned at this last. “I would never disobey.”

“Then what about the woman, Rachel Verona?”

“Sir?” He pictured the black-haired bitch. He remembered the smell of the nape of her neck as he clutched her and threatened her with a knife. He had felt her heartbeat in her throat as he squeezed and lifted her to her toes.

“You were instructed to capture her…not kill her. The others were to be eliminated. Those were your orders.”

“Yes, sir. Understood. But three times now, I’ve been restrained from using full brutal force against the American team because of this caution. They are still in this matter only because of such restraint.” He hadn’t been planning on excusing his failures, but here was one handed to him. “I need better clarification. Which is more important: the mission or the woman?”

A long silence stretched. Raoul smiled. He poked the dead body on the bed with the tip of his finger.

“You do make a good point.” The edge of fury had faded from the other’s voice. “The woman is important, but the mission must not be jeopardized. The wealth and power at the end of this trail must be ours.”

And Raoul knew why. It had been drilled into him since childhood. The ultimate goal of their sect. To bring about a New World Order, one led by their Court, descendants of kings and emperors, genetically pure and superior. It was their birthright. For generations, going back centuries, their Court had hunted for the treasure and arcane knowledge of this lost society of mages. Whoever possessed it would hold the “keys to the world,” or so it was written in an ancient text in the Court’s library.

Now they were so close.

Raoul spoke, “Then I have the go-ahead to proceed forward without concern for the woman’s security?”

A sigh came through. Raoul wondered if the Imperator was even aware of it. “There will be disappointment in her loss,” he answered. “But the mission must not fail. Not after so long. So to clarify, the opposition must be destroyed by any and all means. Is that plain enough?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Good. But I will also ask that if the opportunity should arise where the woman could be captured, all the better. Still, take no needless risks.”

Raoul tightened a fist. He had a question that had been bothering him. He had never asked it before. He had learned it best to keep such curiosities to himself, to obey without question. Still, he asked it now. “Why is she so important?”

“The Dragon blood runs strongly through her. Back all the way to our Austrian Hapsburg roots. In fact, she had been chosen for you, Raoul. To be your mate. The Court sees great value in strengthening our lines through such a blood tie.”

Raoul stood straighter. He had been denied offspring until now. The few women who took his seed were forced to abort or were killed. It was forbidden to sully their royal bloodlines by producing mud children.

“I hope this information encourages you to seek out an opportunity to secure her. But as I stated, even her blood is expendable if the mission is threatened. Is that understood?”

“Yes, sir.” Raoul found his breath shortened. He again pictured the woman clutched in his arms, held at knifepoint. The smell of her fear. She would make a good baroness…and if not that, then at least an excellent brood mare. The Dragon Court hid a few such women across Europe, caged away, kept alive only to produce children.

Raoul grew hard thinking about such an opportunity.

“Everything has been arranged in Alexandria,” the Imperator finished. “The endgame nears. Get what we need. Slay all who stand in your way.”

Raoul slowly nodded, though the Imperator could not see it.

He pictured the black-haired bitch…and what he would do to her.

RACHEL STOOD behind the wheel of the speedboat, one knee on the bucket seat behind her to support her. Once past the No Wake buoy, she gunned the throttle and shot across the bay. The boat skimmed the flat water, bucking over the occasional wake of another boat.

Wind whipped her hair. Spray cooled her face. Sunlight glinted brightly off the sapphire blue waters of the Mediterranean. Her every sense rang and tingled.

It helped awaken her after the plane ride and the hours spent in front of the computer. They had landed forty minutes ago. They had breezed through customs, greased by Monk’s calls, and had found the boat and gear already waiting for them at the pier to the East Harbor.

Rachel glanced behind her.

The city of Alexandria rose from the arc of the blue bay, a modern sprawl of high-rise apartments, hotels, and time-share properties. Palm trees dotted the garden median dividing the city from the water. There was little evidence of the city’s ancient past. Even the famed Alexandrian library, lost centuries ago, had arisen anew as a massive complex of glass, steel, and concrete, decorated with reflecting pools and serviced by a light-rail station.

But now, out in the water, some of the past came alive again. Old wooden fishing boats dotted the bay, painted in vibrant jeweled hues: ruby reds, sapphire blues, emerald greens. Some sails were raised, square-shaped, the skiff’s direction guided by two oars, an ancient Egyptian design.

And ahead rose a citadel right out of the Middle Ages, the Fort of Qait Bey. It crested a spit of land that divided the bay into halves. A stone causeway joined the fortress to the mainland. Along its length, fishermen with long poles relaxed and shouted among themselves, as their ancestors probably had for centuries into the past.

Rachel studied the Fort of Qait Bey. Built solely of white limestone and marble, it shone starkly against the deep-blue waters of the bay. The main citadel was built atop a foundation of stone, raised twenty feet. There, towering walls, topped with arched parapets, were guarded by four towers and circled a central higher keep. A flagpole jutted from the inner castle, flapping the Egyptian colors, striped bands of red, white, and black, along with the golden eagle of Saladin.

Squinting, Rachel pictured what had once stood atop this foundation: the forty-story-tall Pharos Lighthouse, built in tiers like a wedding cake, decorated with a giant statue of Poseidon, and tipped by a giant fiery brazier, flaming and smoking.

Nothing remained of this Wonder of the ancient world, except perhaps for a few limestone blocks, rebuilt into the citadel here. French archaeologists had also discovered a tumble of blocks in the East Harbor, along with a twenty-foot section of statue, believed to be the sculpture of Poseidon. It was all that was left of the Wonder since the earthquake devastated the region.

Or was it? Could there be another treasure, one dating even further back in time, hidden below the foundations?

The lost tomb of Alexander the Great.

That’s what they had come to find out.

Behind her, the others were gathered over the pile of scuba gear, checking tanks, regulators, and weight belts.

“Do we really need all this gear?” Gray asked. He picked up a full-face mask. “Thick dry suits and all this special head gear?”

“You’ll need it all,” Vigor said. Her uncle was an experienced diver. Being an archaeologist in the Mediterranean, there was no way not to be. Many of the region’s most exciting discoveries were found underwater, including here in Alexandria, where the lost palace of Cleopatra had recently been discovered, sunk under the waves of this same bay.

But there was a reason these underwater treasures had remained hidden for so long.

Her uncle explained. “The pollution here in the East Harbor, coupled with the sewage, has made these waters dangerous to explore without proper protection. The Egyptian tourist board has floated concepts for opening a marine archaeological park here, serviced by glass-bottomed boats. Some unscrupulous tour operators already offer dive trips. But exposure to heavy-metal toxins and the risk of typhoid is real for those entering the water.”

“Great,” Monk said. He already looked a tad green around the gills. He clutched the starboard rail, teeth clenched. He kept his head a bit over the side, like a dog hanging his head out a window. “If I don’t drown, I’ll end up catching some flesh-melting disease. You know, there’s a reason I joined the Army Special Forces versus the Navy or Air Force. Solid ground.”

“You could stay on the boat,” Kat said.

Monk scowled at her.

If they were going to find some underwater tunnel leading to a secret treasure chamber under the fort, they would need everybody. They were all certified divers. They would search in shifts, rotating one person out to rest and guard both boat and gear.

Monk had insisted on the first shift.

Rachel sped their boat along the eastern edge of the spit of land. Ahead, the citadel of Qait Bey grew in size, filling the horizon. It hadn’t looked so massive from the pier. It would be a daunting task to explore the depths surrounding the fort.

A worry began to nag her. It had been her idea to attempt this search. What if she was wrong? Maybe she had missed a clue pointing somewhere else.

She slowed the boat, nervous energy growing.

They had mapped out the regions into quadrants for a systematic exploration of the bay around the fort. She throttled down, approaching the first dive spot.

Gray stepped next to her. He rested one hand on the seatback. His fingertips brushed her shoulder. “This is quadrant A.”

She nodded. “I’ll drop anchor here and raise the orange flag warning of divers in the water.”

“Are you all right?” he asked, leaning down.

“I just hope this isn’t a wild-goose chase, as you Americans say.”

He smiled, determination warming into reassurance. “You gave us a start. It was more than we had going into the matter. And I’d rather be chasing wild geese, as we Americans say, than doing nothing.”

Without realizing it, she shifted her shoulder so it pressed against his hand. He didn’t pull away.

“It’s a good plan,” he said, his voice softer.

She nodded, at a loss for words, and glanced away from those damn eyes of his. She cut the engine and thumbed the release for the anchor. She felt the shudder under her seat as the chained rope dropped.

Gray turned to the others. “Let’s suit up. We’ll drop here, check our marine radios, then begin the search.”

Rachel noted that he kept his hand at her shoulder.

It felt good there.

GRAY FELL backward into the sea.

Water swamped over him. Not an inch of skin was exposed to the potential pollution and sewage. The seams of the full-body suit were double-taped and double-sewed. The neck and wrist seals were heavy-duty latex. Even his AGA mask completely covered his face, sealing the Viking hood over his head. The regulator was built into its faceplate, freeing his mouth.

Gray found the spread of peripheral vision through the mask worth the extra time it took to suit up, especially since visibility was poor here in the harbor. Silt and sediment clouded the view to a range of ten to fifteen feet.

Not bad. It could be worse.

His BC buoyancy vest bobbed him back to the surface, full of air, compensating for the weight belt. He watched Rachel and Vigor drop into the sea on the other side of the boat. Kat was already in the water on his side.

He tried the radio, a Buddy Phone, ultrasonically transmitting on an upper single sideband. “Can everyone hear me?” he asked. “Check in.”

He got positive responses all around, even from Monk, who was taking up the first guard shift on the boat. Monk also had an Aqua-Vu marine infrared video system to monitor the group below.

“We’ll drop to the bottom here and sweep toward shore in a wide spread. Everyone knows their positions.”

Affirmatives answered.

“Down we go,” he said.

He vented the air in his BC vest and lowered into the water, dragged down by his weight vest. This was the point where many novice divers experienced a panicked claustrophobia. Gray never had. Instead, he felt the opposite, a total freedom. He was weightless, flying, capable of all sorts of aerial acrobatics.

He spotted Rachel dropping on the opposite side of the boat. She was easy to spot by the broad red stripe across the chest of her black suit. They each had a different color for ease of identification. His was blue, Kat’s pink, Vigor’s green. Monk had already climbed into his suit, too, ready for his shift. His stripe was yellow, somehow fitting considering his attitude toward diving.

Gray watched Rachel. Like him, she seemed to enjoy the freedom below the waves. She twisted and flew, spiraling down with a minimal flicker of fins. He took a moment to enjoy the curves of her form, then concentrated on his own descent.

The sandy bottom rose up, cluttered with debris.

Gray adjusted his buoyancy to keep him drifting just above the seabed. He searched right and left. The others settled into similar postures.

“Can everyone see each other?” he asked.

Nods and affirmatives all around.

“Monk, how’s the underwater video camera working?”

“You look like a bunch of ghosts. Visibility is crap. I’ll lose you once you head out.”

“Keep in radio contact. Any problems, you raise the alarm and haul ass over to us.” Gray was pretty confident that they had the jump on the Dragon Court, but he was not taking any chances with Raoul. He didn’t know how much of a head start they had gained. But there were plenty of other boats about. It was broad daylight.

Still, they needed to act quickly.

Gray pointed an arm. “Okay, we’ll head to shore, keep no greater distance than fifteen feet apart. Visual contact with each other at all times.”

The four of them could sweep a swath of about twenty-five yards across. Once at shore, if nothing was detected, they would shift down the coastline another twenty-five yards and swim back toward the waiting boat. Back and forth, quadrant by quadrant, they would comb the entire coastline around the fort.

Gray set out. He had a dive knife attached to a sheath on the back of his wrist and a flashlight on the other. With the sun directly overhead and the water only forty feet deep, there was no need for the extra illumination, but it would come in handy to explore nooks and crannies. He had no doubt that the passage they sought would not be plain or it would have already been discovered.

It was another riddle to solve.

As he swam, he pondered what they had missed. There must have been more of a clue to the map drawn on the stone than merely pointing to Alexandria. It must have also held some clue embedded about the location here. Had they missed something? Had Raoul stolen a clue out of the cave below Saint Peter’s tomb? Did the Dragon Court already have the answer?

Unconsciously he had begun to swim faster. He lost sight of Kat on his right. He was last in line on this side. He slowed and she reappeared. Satisfied, he moved onward. A shape appeared ahead, jutting from the sandy bottom. A rock? A ridge of reef?

He kicked forward.

Out of the silty gloom, it appeared.

What the hell…?

The stone face stared back at him, human, worn by the sea and time, but its features were surprisingly clear, the expression stoic. Its upper torso rode atop the squat form of a lion.

Kat had noted his attention and swept slightly closer. “A sphinx?”

“Another one over here,” Vigor announced. “Broken, on its side. Divers have reported dozens of them littered around the seabed in the shadow of the fort. Some of the decorations from the original lighthouse.”

Despite the urgency, Gray stared at the statue, amazed. He studied the face, sculpted by hands two thousand years old. He reached one arm out and touched it, sensing the immense breadth of time between himself and that sculptor.

Vigor spoke out of nowhere. “Fitting that these masters of riddles should be guarding this mystery.”

Gray pulled back his hand. “What do you mean?”

A chuckle. “Don’t you know the story of the Sphinx? The monster terrorized the people of Thebe, eating them if they couldn’t solve its riddle. ‘What has one voice, and is four-footed, two-footed, and three-footed?’”

“And the answer?” Gray asked.

“Mankind,” Kat said next to him. “We crawl on all fours as babes, then upright on two feet as adults, and lean upon a staff in old age.”

Vigor continued. “Oedipus solved the riddle and the Sphinx threw herself off a cliff and died.”

“Toppling from a height,” Gray said. “Like these sphinxes.”

He pushed away from the stone statue and swam onward. They had their own riddle to solve. After another ten minutes of silent searching, they reached the rocky coastline. Gray had come across a tumble of giant blocks, but no passage, no opening, no clues.

“Back again,” he said.

They shifted down the coast and set out again, swimming away from the shoreline toward the boat.

“Everything quiet up there, Monk?” Gray asked.

“Getting a nice suntan.”

“Make sure you use SPF 30. We’ll be down here a while.”

“Aye, aye, Captain.”

Gray continued for another forty minutes, sweeping to the boat, then back again. He came across a sunken husk of a rusted ship, more chunks of stone blocks, a broken pillar, even an inscribed chunk of obelisk. Fish in a rainbow of hues danced away.

He checked his air gauge. He was breathing conservatively. He still had half a tank left. “How’s everyone’s air holding up?”

After comparing, it was decided to go topside in twenty minutes. They’d take a half-hour break, then back into the water.

As he swam, he went back to his original pondering. He kept sensing they had missed something critical. What if the Dragon Court had taken some object from the cave, a second clue? He kicked harder. He had to let that fear go. He had to proceed as though he had the same intel as the Court, an equal playing field.

The silence of the deep pressed on him. “This just doesn’t seem right,” he mumbled.

The radio transmitted his voice.

“Did you find something?” Kat asked. Her shadowy form drifted closer.

“No. That’s just it. The longer I’m down here, the more I’m convinced we’re doing this wrong.”

“I’m sorry,” Rachel said from out of nowhere, sounding hopeless. “I probably put too much emphasis—”

“No.” Gray remembered her worry topside. He kicked himself for rekindling it. “Rachel, I think you’ve targeted the correct place to search. The problem is my plan. This whole searching quadrant by quadrant. It just doesn’t feel right.”

“What do you mean, Commander?” Kat asked. “It may take some time, but we’ll get the area covered.”

That was just it. Kat had clarified it for him. He wasn’t one for systematic, dogged methodology. While some problems were best solved that way, this mystery wasn’t one of them.

“We’ve missed a clue,” he said. “I know it. We recognized the map in the tomb, realized it pointed to Alexander’s tomb, then flew here. We searched records, books, and files, trying to solve a riddle that has baffled historians for more than a millennium. Who are we to solve it in one day?”

“So what do you want us to do?” Kat asked.

Gray settled to a stop. “We go back to square one. We’ve based our search on historical records available to anyone. The only advantage we have over all the treasure hunters of the past centuries is what was discovered under Saint Peter’s tomb. We missed a clue down there.”

Or one was stolen, Gray thought. But he did not speak this worry aloud.

“Maybe we didn’t miss a clue at the tomb,” Vigor said. “Maybe we didn’t look deep enough. Remember the catacombs. The riddles were multilayered, multifathomed. Could there be another layer to this riddle?”

Silence answered him…until an unexpected voice solved it all.

“That goddamn fiery star,” Monk swore. “It wasn’t just pointing down at the city of Alexandria…it was pointing down at the stone slab.”

Gray felt the ring of truth in Monk’s words. They had been so focused on the inscribed map, the fiery star, the implication of it all, but they had ignored the unusual medium of the artist.

“Hematite,” Kat said.

“What do you know about it?” Gray asked, trusting her background in geology.

“It’s an iron oxide. Large deposits have been found throughout Europe. It is mostly iron, but sometimes it contains a fair amount of iridium and titanium.”

“Iridium?” Rachel said. “Isn’t that one of the elements in the amalgam? In the Magi bones?”

“Yes,” Kat said, voice suddenly sounding strained over the radio. “But I don’t think that’s the significant part.”

“What?” Gray asked.

“I’m sorry, Commander. I should have thought of it. The iron in hematite is often weakly magnetic, not as strongly as magnetite, but it’s sometimes used as a lodestone.”

Gray realized the implication. Magnetism had also opened the first tomb. “So the star wasn’t just pointing to Alexandria, it was pointing to a magnetized stone, something we’re supposed to find.”

“And what did the ancient world do with lodestones?” Vigor asked, excitement growing in his voice.

Gray knew the answer. “They made compasses!” He fed air into his BC vest and rose toward the surface. “Everyone topside!”

IN A matter of minutes, they were shedding tanks, vests, and weight belts. Rachel climbed into the pilot’s seat, glad to sit down. She pressed the button to raise the anchor. It chugged upward.

“Go slow,” Gray said. He had taken up a post at her shoulder.

“I second that,” Monk said.

“I’ll watch the compass,” Gray continued. “You keep us on a snail-paced circuit around the fort. Any twitch on the compass needle and we drop anchor and search below.”

Rachel nodded. She prayed that whatever magnetized stone lay down there, it was strong enough for their shipboard compass to detect.

With the anchor retracted, she eased the throttle to the barest chop of her propellers. Motion forward was barely detectable.

“Perfect,” Gray whispered.

Onward they glided. The sun slowly rose into the sky overhead. They pulled up the boat’s canopy to shade the group as the day’s heat climbed. Monk lay sprawled on the portside bench, slightly snoring. No one spoke.

Worry grew in Rachel with each slow turn of the boat’s propeller.

“What if the stone isn’t out here?” she whispered to Gray, who kept a vigil on the compass. “What if it’s inside the fort?”

“Then we’ll search there next,” Gray said, squinting toward the stone citadel. “But I think you’re right about a secret entrance. The hematite slab sat over a secret tunnel to the cavern that led down to a river channel. Water. Perhaps that’s another layer of the riddle.”

Kat heard them, a book open on her lap. “Or we’re reading too much into it,” she said. “Trying to force what we want to match the riddle.”

Up in the bow end, Vigor massaged a sore calf muscle from the swim. “I think the ultimate question of where the stone might lie — on land or in the water — depends on when the alchemists hid the clue. We estimated the clues were hidden sometime around the thirteenth century, maybe a little before or a little after, but that’s the critical era of conflict between Gnosticism and orthodoxy. So, did the alchemists hide their next clue before or after the Pharos Lighthouse collapsed in 1303?”

No one had an answer.

But a few minutes later, the compass needle gave a shaky twitch.

“Hold it!” Gray hissed.

The needle steadied again. Kat and Vigor glanced to them.

Gray placed a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Go back.”

Rachel tweaked the throttle into neutral. Forward momentum stopped. She let the waves bob them backward.

The needle pitched again, swinging a full quarter turn.

“Drop anchor,” Gray ordered.

She pressed the release, hardly breathing.

“Something’s down there,” Gray said.

Everyone began to move at once, grabbing for fresh tanks.

Monk woke with a start, sitting up. “What?” he asked blearily.

“Looks like you’re going on guard duty again,” Gray said. “Unless you want to take a dip?”

Monk scowled his answer.

Once the boat was secure and the orange flag raised, the same four divers fell back into the water.

Rachel bubbled out her buoyancy and sank under the waves.

Gray’s voice reached her through the radio. “Watch your wrist compasses. Zero in on the anomaly.”

Rachel studied her compass as she descended. The water was fairly shallow here. Less than ten meters. She reached the sandy bottom quickly. The others dropped around her, hovering like birds.

“Nothing’s here,” Kat said.

The seabed was a flat expanse of sand.

Rachel stared at her compass. She kicked a body length away, then back again. “The anomaly is right here.”

Gray lowered to the bottom and swept his wrist over the floor. “She’s right.”

He reached to his other wrist and unsheathed his knife. With the blade in hand, he began stabbing into the soft sand. The blade sank to the hilt each time. Silt stirred up, clouding the view.

On his seventh stab, the knife plainly jarred, failing to penetrate more than a few centimeters.

“Got something,” Gray said.

He sheathed the knife and began digging in the sand. The view grew quickly murky, and Rachel lost sight of him.

Then she heard him gasp.

Rachel moved closer. Gray swept back. The disturbed sand dispersed and settled.

Protruding from the sand was a dark bust of a man.

“I think that’s magnetite,” Kat said, studying the stone of the sculpture. She swept her wrist compass over the bust. The needle twirled. “Lodestone.”

Rachel edged closer, staring at the face. There was no mistaking the features. She had seen the same countenance a couple of times today.

Gray recognized it, too.

“It’s another sphinx.”

GRAY SPENT ten minutes clearing the shoulders and upper torso, reaching the lion’s shape below. There was no doubt it was one of the sphinxes, like the others littered on the seabed.

“Hiding it among the others,” Vigor said. “I guess that answers the question of when the alchemists hid their treasure here.”

“After the lighthouse collapsed,” Gray said.

“Exactly.”

They hovered around the magnetic sphinx, waiting for the disturbed silt and sand to settle.

Vigor continued, “This ancient society of mages must have known the location of Alexander’s tomb after Septimus Severus hid it in the third century. They left it undisturbed, letting it safeguard the most valuable scrolls from the lost library. Then perhaps the quake in 1303 not only brought down the lighthouse, but exposed the tomb. They took the opportunity to hide more down there, using the chaotic time after the earthquake to plant their next clue, bury it, and allow the centuries to cover it up again.”

“And if you’re right,” Gray said, “that pinpoints the date when these clues were planted. Remember, we’d already estimated that the clues were laid around the thirteenth century. We were off by only a few years. It was 1303. The first decade of the fourteenth century.”

“Hmm…” Vigor drifted closer to the statue.

“What?”

“It makes me wonder. In that same decade, the true papacy was chased out of Rome and exiled in France. The antipopes ruled Rome for the next century.”

“So?”

“Similarly, the Magi bones were moved from Italy to Germany in 1162, another time when the true pope was chased out of Rome and an antipope sat on the papal seat.”

Gray followed this train of thought. “So these alchemists hid their stuff whenever the papacy was in jeopardy.”

“So it would seem. This would suggest that this society of mages had ties to the papacy. Perhaps the alchemists did indeed join the Gnostic Christians of those turbulent times, Christians open to the quest for arcane knowledge, the Thomas Christians.”

“And this secret society merged with the orthodox church?”

Vigor nodded in the murky water. “When the overall church came under threat, so did the secret church. So they sought safeguards. First moving the bones to safety in Germany during the twelfth century. Then during the embattled years of the exile, they hid the true heart of their knowledge.”

“Even if this is true, how does this help us find Alexander’s tomb?” Kat asked.

“Just as the clues that led to Saint Peter’s tomb were buried in the stories of Catholicism, the clues here might be tied to the mythologies of Alexander. Greek mythologies.” Vigor ran a gloved finger down the face of the statue. “Why else mark the gateway with a sphinx?”

“The riddle masters of the Greeks,” Gray mumbled.

“And the monsters killed you outright if you didn’t answer them correctly,” Vigor reminded them. “Perhaps choosing this symbol is a warning.”

Gray studied the sphinx as the sand cleared, its expression enigmatic. “Then we’d better solve this riddle.”

THE GULFSTREAM IV private jet received clearance from the tower to land. Seichan listened to the chatter of the cockpit crew through the open doorway. She sat in the seat nearest the door. Sunlight blazed through the window on her right.

A large form stepped to her left.

Raoul.

She continued to stare out the window as the jet tilted on a wing over the violet-blue of the Mediterranean and lined up for the final approach to the runway.

“What’s the word from your contact on the ground?” Raoul asked, biting off each word.

He must have noted her using the jet’s air-phone. She fingered the dragon charm on her necklace. “The others are still in the water. If you’re lucky, they may solve this mystery for you.”

“We won’t need them for that.” Raoul stepped back to join his men, a team of sixteen, including the Court’s master adept.

Seichan had already met the esteemed Vatican bibliophile, Dr. Alberto Menardi, a lanky silver-haired man with a pocked complexion, thick lips, narrow eyes. He sat in the back of the plane, nursing a broken nose. She had a full dossier on him. His ties to a certain Sicilian criminal organization ran deep. It seemed even the Vatican could not keep such weeds from taking root in their soil. Then again, she could not discount the keen edge to the man’s mind. He had an IQ three points above Einstein.

It had been Dr. Alberto Menardi who, fifteen years ago, had discerned from the Dragon Court’s library of Gnostic texts the ability of electromagnetism to unlock the energy of these superconducting metals. He had overseen the research project in Lausanne, Switzerland, and tested the effects on animal, vegetable, and mineral. And who would miss the occasional lone Swiss backpacker? These last experiments would turn the stomach of even the worst Nazi scientists.

The man also had a disturbing fetish for young girls.

But not for sex.

For sport.

She had seen some of the pictures and wished she hadn’t. If she hadn’t already been instructed by the Guild to eliminate the man, she would have done so on her own.

The plane began its final descent.

Somewhere far below, the Sigma team labored.

They were no threat.

It would be as easy as shooting fish in a barrel.

12 RIDDLE OF THE SPHINX

"REMEMBER THAT damn fish,” Monk radioed from the boat above.

Twelve feet down, Gray frowned up at the bobbing keel overhead. They had spent the last five minutes ruling out various options. Maybe the sphinx sat atop a tunnel. But how would they move a ton of stone? Levitation was discussed, using the amalgam, like back at St. Peter’s. Gray had a test tube of the powder from his research on the Milan bones. But to activate it would require electricity of some sort…not wise in water.

“What fish are you talking about, Monk?” Gray asked. He had seen enough fish down here to turn him off seafood.

“From the first riddle,” Monk answered. “You know. The painted fish in the catacombs.”

“What about it?”

“I can see you guys and the statue through the Aqua-Vu camera. The sphinx is facing toward that big fort.”

Gray stared at the statue. From here, where visibility was no greater than five yards, it was hard to get the bigger picture. Monk had the better perspective. And the bigger picture was his area of expertise, seeing the forest through the trees.

“The catacombs…” Gray mumbled, understanding Monk’s intent.

Could it be that easy?

“Remember,” Monk continued, “how we had to follow the direction the fish was facing to find our next clue? Maybe the sphinx is facing toward the tunnel opening.”

“Monk could be right,” Vigor said. “These clues were planted in the early fourteenth century. We should be considering the problem from the perspective of that era’s level of technology. They didn’t have scuba gear at the time. But they did have compasses. The sphinx may be nothing but a magnetic road marker. You use your compass to find it. Swim down to take a peek at where it’s facing and move onto shore.”

“There’s only one way to find out,” Gray said. “Monk, keep the boat anchored here until we’re sure. We’ll swim toward shore.”

Gray kicked away from the statue. He waited until he was far enough away to get a good compass fix without the magnetic interference of the lodestone. “Okay, let’s see where this leads.”

He set off. The others trailed behind him. They stuck close together.

The shore was not far. The spit of land rose steeply. The sandy bottom ended abruptly at a tumbled maze of stone blocks. Man-made.

“Must have once been a section of the Pharos Lighthouse,” Vigor said.

Barnacles and anemones had taken over the area, forming it into their own reef. Crabs scrabbled and tiny fish darted.

“We should spread out,” Kat said. “Search the area.”

“No.” Gray intuitively understood what needed to be done. “It’s like the magnetic sphinx hidden among the other sphinxes.” He kicked off the bottom, traveling up the reefscape. He kept one arm fixed in front of him, watching the wrist compass.

It didn’t take long.

Passing over one block, his compass needle pitched and rolled. He was only four yards from the surface. The front of the block was about two feet square.

“Here,” he said.

The others joined him.

Kat took a blade and scraped off the accumulation of sealife. “Hematite again. Less strongly magnetic. You’d never notice it unless you were looking for it.”

“Monk,” Gray said.

“Yeah, boss.”

“Bring the boat over here and drop anchor.”

“On my way.”

Gray searched the edges of the block. It was cemented to its neighbors — above, below, and to the sides — by coral, sand, and dense accumulations of rough-shelled mussels.

“Everyone pick a side and dig the edges clear,” he ordered. He pictured the hematite slab under Saint Peter’s tomb. It had covered a secret tunnel. He had no doubt that they were on the right track.

For once.

In a couple of minutes, the block was cleared.

The beat of a propeller echoed leadenly through the water.

Monk approached the shoreline slowly. “I can see you guys,” he said. “A bunch of striped frogs sitting on a rock.”

“Lower the anchor,” Gray said. “Slowly.”

“Here it comes.”

As the prong of heavy steel dropped from the keel, Gray swam over and helped guide it to the hematite block. He jammed a corner into a gap between the block and its neighbor.

“Winch it up,” Gray ordered.

Monk retracted the anchor line. It grew taut.

“Everybody back,” Gray warned.

The block rocked. Sand billowed from it. Then the chunk of stone tipped loose. It had only been about a foot thick. It rolled down the cliff face, bouncing with muffled crashes, then landed heavily on the sandy floor.

Gray waited for the silt to clear. Pebbles continued to rain down the wall of rock. He moved forward. In the gap-toothed opening left by the dislodged stone, a dark space loomed.

Gray flicked on the flashlight on his wrist. He pointed it into the opening. The light illuminated a straight tunnel, angled slightly upward. It was a tight squeeze. No room for air tanks.

Where did it lead?

There was only one way to find out.

Gray reached to the buckles securing his air tank. He shimmied out of them.

“What are you doing?” Rachel asked.

“Someone’s got to go take a look.”

“We could unrig the boat’s Aqua-Vu camera,” Kat said. “Use a fishing pole or an oar to push the camera inside.”

It wasn’t a bad plan — but it would take time.

Time they didn’t have.

Gray settled his tank to a shelf of rock. “I’ll be right back.” He took a deep breath, unhooked the regulator hose from his mask, then turned to face the tunnel.

It would be snug.

He remembered the riddle of the Sphinx. How it described the first stage of man. Crawling on all fours. It was a fitting way to enter.

Gray ducked his head, arms forward, flashlight leading. He kicked off and sailed into the cramped tunnel.

As the tunnel swallowed him up, he remembered Vigor’s earlier warning about the riddle of the Sphinx.

Get it wrong…and you were dead.

AS GRAY’S flippers vanished into the tunnel, Rachel held her breath.

It was foolhardy madness. What if he got stuck? What if a section of the tunnel collapsed? One of the most dangerous forms of scuba diving was cave diving. Only those with a death wish enjoyed that sport.

And they had air tanks.

She clutched the edge of the rockface with her gloved fingers. Uncle Vigor shifted to her side. He placed his hand over hers, urging confidence.

Kat crouched by the opening. The woman’s flashlight pierced the dark tunnel. “I can’t see him.”

Rachel’s grip on the rock tightened.

Her uncle felt her flinch. “He knows what he’s doing. He knows his limits.”

Does he?

Rachel had recognized the edge of wildness about him in the last few hours. It both thrilled her and scared her. She had spent enough time with him. Gray did not think like other people. He operated at the fringes of common sense, trusting his quick thinking and reflexes to pull him out of tight scrapes. But the sharpest mind and fastest reflexes would not help you if a wall of rock dropped on top of your head.

A chop of words reached her. “—can — clear — okay—”

It was Gray.

“Commander,” Kat said loudly, “you’re breaking up.”

“Hang—”

Kat glanced at them. Through her mask, her frown was clear.

“Is this better?” Gray said, the reception steadier.

“Yes, Commander.”

“I was out of water. Had to duck my head back down.” His voice sounded excited. “The tunnel is short,” he said. “A straight shot angled up. If you take a deep breath and kick a bit with your fins, you’ll pop right up here.”

“What did you find?” Uncle Vigor asked.

“Some stone tunnels. Looks solid enough. I’m going to push forward and explore.”

“I’m going with you,” Rachel blurted out. She struggled with the buckles on her vest.

“First let me make sure it’s safe.”

Rachel shrugged out of her air tank and vest and propped them into a crevice. Gray wasn’t the only bold one. “I’m coming up.”

“Me too,” her uncle said.

Rachel took a breath and undid her hose. Free, she swam to the tunnel opening and ducked through. It was pitch dark. In her haste, she had forgotten to turn on her flashlight. But as she flicked her legs and pushed deeper, a ripple of light appeared only three meters ahead. Her buoyancy helped propel her. The light grew. The tunnel widened to either side.

In a matter of moments, she popped out into small pool.

Gray frowned at her. He stood on the stone bank that lipped the circular pool. A drum-shaped chamber opened around her. A man-made cave. The roof was corbeled in narrowing rings, giving it the appearance of being inside a tiny step pyramid.

Gray held out an arm for her. She didn’t refuse, gawking at the chamber. He helped haul her out.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he said.

“And you shouldn’t have gone,” she countered, but her eyes were still on the blocks of stone around her. “Besides, if this place has withstood an earthquake that toppled the Pharos Lighthouse, I think it can handle my footsteps.”

At least, she hoped so.

A MOMENT later, Vigor appeared, splashing up into the pool Gray sighed. He should’ve known better than to try to keep these two away.

Rachel shed her mask and pushed back her hood. She shook loose her hair, then bent to help the monsignor out of the water.

Gray kept his mask in place and ducked his head under the water. The radio worked best with water contact.

“Kat, maintain a post by the tunnel exit. Once we’re out of the water, we’ll lose communication pretty quickly. Monk, if there’s any trouble, relay it to Kat, so she can fetch us.”

He received affirmatives from both. Kat sounded irritated.

Monk was glad to stay where he was. “You go ahead. I’ve pretty much had my fill of crawling around in tombs.”

Gray straightened and finally pulled away his own mask. The air smelled surprisingly fresh, if not a tad crusty with algae and salt. There must be a few crevices to the surface.

“A tumulus,” Vigor said, free of his own mask. He eyed the stone ceiling. “An Etruscan tomb design.”

Two tunnels led out from here, angled apart. Gray was anxious to explore. One was taller than the other, but narrower, barely wide enough for one man to pass through. The other was low, requiring one to hunch a bit, but it was wider.

Vigor touched the blocks that made up one wall. “Limestone. Cut and fitted tightly, but feel…the blocks are cemented with lead.” He turned to Gray. “According to the historical record, this is the same design as the Pharos Lighthouse.”

Rachel stared around her. “This might be part of the original lighthouse, perhaps a subfloor or basement cellar.”

Vigor headed for the closest tunnel, the shorter of the two. “Let’s see where this leads.”

Gray blocked him with an arm. “Me first.”

The monsignor nodded his head, a bit apologetic. “Of course.”

Gray leaned down, pointed his flashlight. “Conserve your flashlight’s batteries for now,” he instructed. “We don’t know how long we’ll be down here.”

Gray took a step forward, hunched beneath the low roof. A twinge pricked his back from one of the bruising slugs he had taken back in Milan. He felt like an old man.

He froze.

Crap.

Vigor bumped into him from behind.

“Back, back, back…” he urged.

“What?” Vigor asked but obeyed.

Gray retreated into the pool chamber.

Rachel eyed him oddly. “What’s wrong?”

“You ever hear of the story about the man who had to choose between two doors, behind one hid a tiger, the other a lady?”

Rachel and Vigor nodded.

“I could be wrong, but I think we’re faced with a similar dilemma. Two doors.” Gray pointed to each dark tunnel. “Remember the riddle of the Sphinx, marking the ages of man? Crawling, upright, and bent over. It took crawling to get into here.” Gray recalled thinking that when he entered the tunnel.

“Now two ways lead forward,” he continued. “One where you can walk upright, another which requires you to hunch. Like I said, I could be wrong, but I’d prefer we take that other tunnel first. The one where you walk upright, the second stage of man.”

Vigor eyed the tunnel they had been about to enter. In his profession as an archaeologist, he must know all about booby-trapped tombs. He nodded. “No reason to be hasty.”

“No reason at all.” Gray circled the pool to the other tunnel.

He shone his flashlight and led the way. It took about ten steps until he breathed again.

The air grew a bit musty. The tunnel must be leading into the depths of the peninsula. Gray could almost sense the weight of the fort above him.

The passage made a series of sharp jags, but eventually his light revealed the tunnel’s end. A larger space opened ahead. The glow of his flashlight reflected off something beyond.

Gray continued more slowly.

The others crowded behind him.

“What do you see?” Rachel asked at the end of the line.

“Amazing…”

ON THE monitor of the Aqua-Vu camera, Monk watched Kat cooling her heels by the tunnel entrance. She sat perfectly still, hovering with minimal effort, a conservation of energy. As he spied, she shifted ever so subtly, underwater tai chi. She stretched a leg, turning a thigh, accentuating the long curve of her body.

He trailed a finger down the screen of a monitor.

A perfect S.

Perfect.

He shook his head and turned away. Who was he fooling?

He searched the flat expanse of blue water. He wore polarized sunglasses, but by now, the constant noonday glare made his eyes ache.

And the heat…

Even in the shade, it had to be over a hundred degrees. His dry suit chafed. He had unzipped and peeled down the upper section of suit, and stood bare-chested. But all the sweat seemed to have pooled in his crotch.

And now he had to take a leak.

He’d better cut off the diet Cokes.

Motion caught his eye. Coming around the far side of the peninsula. A large sleek ship, midnight blue. Thirty-footer. He read the lines. Not an ordinary ship. Hydrofoil. It raced over the waters, slightly raised on its surface-piercing skids. It flew unimpeded over the slight waves, skimming like a sled on ice.

Crap, it was fast.

He followed its curve around the spit of land, a quarter klick out. It aimed toward the East Harbor. It was too small for a ferry shuttle. Maybe some rich A-rab’s private yacht. He raised a pair of binoculars and searched for the ship. It took an extra moment to pin down the boat.

In the bow, he spotted a pair of girls in bikinis. No burka-wrapped modesty here. Monk had already surveyed a few of the other boats around the harbor, fixing them in place in his mental chessboard. One mini-yacht had a party in full swing, champagne flowing. Another houseboat-like craft had an older couple lounging about buck naked. Apparently Alexandria was the Fort Lauderdale of Egypt.

“Monk,” Kat called from the radio.

He wore a headset connected to the underwater transceiver. “What is it, Kat?”

“I’m picking up a pulsing note of static over the radio. Is that you?”

He lowered the binoculars. “It’s not me. I’ll run a diagnostic on the transceiver. You might be picking up someone’s fish finder.”

“Roger that.”

Monk glanced across the water. The hydrofoil slowed and settled deeper into the water. It had drifted to the far side of the harbor.

Good.

Monk fixed its berth among the other boats in his head, one more piece to the chessboard. He turned his attention to the Buddy Phone transceiver. He twisted the amplitude control, earning a feedback whine in his ear, then reset the channel.

“How’s that?” he asked.

Kat answered. “Better. It’s gone now.”

Monk shook his head. Damn rental equipment…

“Let me know if it returns,” he said.

“Will do. Thanks.”

Monk eyed the length of her form on the camera screen and sighed. What was the use? He picked up his binoculars. Where were those two bikini-clad girls?

RACHEL STEPPED last into the chamber. The two men parted to either side in front of her. Despite Gray’s warning to conserve their batteries, Uncle Vigor had flicked on his own flashlight.

The spears of light illuminated another drum-shaped room, domed above. The ceiling plaster had been painted black. Silver stars glowed brightly against the dark background. But the stars had not been painted onto the ceiling. They were metallic inlays.

The ceiling was reflected in a still pool of water that covered the entire floor. It looked knee-deep. The effect of the mirrored image in the water created a mirage of a perfect sphere of stars, above and below.

But that still wasn’t the most amazing sight.

Resting in the middle of the chamber, rising from the pool of water, stood a giant pyramid of glass, as tall as a man. It seemed to float in the center of the phantom sphere.

The glass pyramid glinted with a familiar golden hue.

“Could it be…?” Uncle Vigor muttered.

“Gold glass,” Gray said. “A giant superconductor.”

They spread out along the narrow lip of stone that surrounded the pool. Four copper pots rested in the water at the edges of the pools. Her uncle inspected one, then moved on. Ancient lamps, Rachel guessed. But they had brought their own illumination.

She studied the structure in the middle of the pool. The pyramid was square-bottomed, four-sided, like the pyramids of Giza.

“Something’s inside it,” Rachel said.

The reflection off the glass surfaces of the pyramid made details inside difficult to discern. Rachel hopped into the water. It was a little deeper than her knees.

“Careful,” Gray said.

“Like you’d take that advice,” she shot back, wading toward the pyramid.

Splashes behind her announced the others were following. They crossed to the glass structure. Her uncle and Gray repositioned their lamps to penetrate the pyramid.

Two shapes appeared.

One stood in the exact center of the pyramid. It was a bronze sculpture of a giant finger, raised and pointing up. So large, she doubted she could get her arms around it. The detail work was masterful, from the trimmed fingernail down to the wrinkles at the knuckles.

But it was the shape below the raised finger that drew most of her attention. A figure, crowned and masked in gold, robed in a flow of white gown, lay atop a stone altar. The arms outstretched to either side, Christlike. But the golden face was distinctly Greek.

Rachel turned to her uncle. “Alexander the Great.”

Her uncle stepped slowly around, getting a view from all angles. His eyes glistened with tears. “His tomb…the historical record mentioned his last resting place was in glass.” He reached to touch one of the outstretched hands, buried only a few centimeters into the glass, then thought better of it and lowered his arm.

“What’s with the bronze finger?” Gray asked.

Uncle Vigor stepped back to them. “I…I think it’s from the Colossus of Rhodes, the giant statue that spanned the island’s harbor. It represented the god Helios but was modeled after Alexander the Great. No part of the statue was thought to still exist.”

“Now this last remnant has become Alexander’s headstone,” Rachel said.

“I think all of this is a testament to Alexander,” her uncle said. “And to the science and knowledge he helped foster. It was at the Library of Alexandria that Euclid discovered the rules of geometry. All around here are triangles, pyramids, circles.”

Uncle Vigor then pointed up and down. “The reflected sphere split by water harkens to Eratosthenes, who at Alexandria calculated the diameter of the Earth. Even the water here…it must be fed through small channels to keep this pool full. It was at the library that Archimedes designed the first screw-shaped water pump, which is still in use today.”

Her uncle shook his head at the wonder. “All of this is a monument to Alexander and the lost Library of Alexandria.”

That reminded Rachel of something. “Weren’t there supposed to be books down here? Didn’t Septimus bury the most important scrolls of the library down here?”

Vigor searched around. “They must have been cleared out after the quake. When the clues were planted here. The knowledge must’ve been taken and sent to whatever hidden vault we seek. We must be close.”

Rachel heard the quaver in her uncle’s voice. What else might they discover?

“But before we move on,” Gray said, “we first must solve this riddle.”

“No,” Uncle Vigor said. “The riddle is not even exposed yet. Remember at St. Peter’s. We must pass some test. Prove our knowledge, like the Dragon Court did with their understanding of magnetism. Only after that was the secret revealed.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Gray asked.

Uncle Vigor stepped back, his eyes on the pyramid. “We have to activate this pyramid.”

“And how do we go about doing that?” Gray asked.

Vigor turned to Gray. “I need some soda.”

GRAY WAITED for Kat to ferry up the last of the cans of Coke. They needed two more six-packs. “Does it matter if it’s diet Coke or regular?” Gray asked.

“No,” Vigor said. “I just need something acidic. Even citrus juice would work, or vinegar.”

Gray glanced to Rachel. She just shook her head and shrugged.

“Would you care to explain now?” Gray asked.

“Remember how magnetism opened the first tomb,” Vigor said. “We know that the ancients were well aware of magnetism. Lodestones were widely distributed and used. Chinese compasses date back to 200 B.C. To move forward, we had to prove our understanding of magnetism. It even led us here. A magnetic marker left underwater.”

Gray nodded.

“So another scientific wonder must be demonstrated here.”

Vigor was interrupted by the arrival of Kat. She rose up into the entry pool, bearing aloft two more six-packs, making it a total of four.

“We’re going to need Kat’s help for a few minutes,” Vigor said. “It’ll take four people.”

“How are things topside?” Gray asked Kat.

She shrugged. “Quiet. Monk fixed a radio glitch. That was the extent of any excitement.”

“Let him know you’ll be off the air for a couple minutes,” Gray said, uneasy, but they needed whatever was hidden here.

Kat dunked under, passing on the message. She then quickly climbed out and they all returned to Alexander’s tomb.

Vigor waved for them to disperse. He pointed to a copper urn at the pool’s edge. There were four of the pots. “Each of you take a six-pack of soda and take up a post by the jars.”

They spread out.

“Care to tell us what we’re doing?” Gray asked as he reached his copper jar.

Vigor nodded. “Demonstrating another scientific wonder. What we must show here is the knowledge of a force known even to the Greeks. They called it electrikus. A name for the static charge of a cloth rubbed over amber. They witnessed it in the form of lightning and along the masts of their sailing ships as Saint Elmo’s fire.”

“Electricity,” Gray said.

Vigor nodded. “In 1938, a German archaeologist named Wilhelm Koenig discovered a number of curious clay jars in the National Museum of Iraq. They were only fifteen centimeters tall. They were attributed to the Persians, the homeland of our biblical Magi. The odd thing about the tiny jars was that they were plugged with asphalt, and from the top protruded a copper cylinder with an iron rod inside. The conformation was familiar to anyone with knowledge of voltaic sciences.”

Gray frowned. “And for those not familiar?”

“The jars…they were the exact conformation of battery cells, even earning the name ‘the Baghdad Batteries.’”

Gray shook his head. “Ancient batteries?”

“Both General Electric and Science Digest magazine in 1957 replicated these jars. They primed them with vinegar, and the jars gave off significant volts of electricity.”

Gray stared down at the jars at his feet, remembering the monsignor’s request for soda, another acidic solution. He noted the iron rod sticking out of the top of the solid copper jar. “Are you saying these are batteries? Ancient Duracell Coppertops?”

He stared at the pool. If the monsignor was correct, Gray understood now why jars were resting in the seawater pool. Whatever shock was generated by the batteries would flow through the water to the pyramid.

“Why don’t we just jump-start the pyramid?” Kat said. “Bring down a marine battery from the boat?”

Vigor shook his head. “I think the activation is tied to the amount of current and the position of the batteries. When it comes to the magnitude of power in these superconductors — especially one this size — I think we should stick to the original design.”

Gray agreed. He remembered the quake and the destruction inside the basilica. That had been with only a single cylinder of m-state powder. He eyed the giant pyramid and knew they’d better heed the monsignor’s recommendation.

“So what do we do?” Gray asked.

Vigor popped the top to one of his sodas. “On my count, we fill up the empty batteries.” He stared around the group. “Oh, and I suggest we stand well back.”

MONK SAT behind the boat’s wheel, tapping an empty can of soda on the starboard rail. He was tired of all this waiting. Maybe scuba diving wasn’t so bad. The water looked inviting as the day’s heat rose.

The loud rumble of an engine drew a glance across the harbor.

The hydrofoil, which had seemed to drop anchor, was on the move again. He listened to the engine throttle up. There seemed to be a bit of commotion on the deck.

He reached for his binoculars. Better safe than sorry.

As he raised the binoculars, he glanced to the monitor of the Aqua-Vu camera. The tunnel continued to be unmanned.

What was taking Kat so long?

GRAY EMPTIED his third can into the cylinder core of his jar. Soon Coke was bubbling down the copper side of the battery. Full.

He stood up and took the last swig from his soda can.

Ugh…diet…

The others finished about the same time, standing and moving back.

A bit of carbonation frothed out the tops of all the cylinders. Nothing else happened. Maybe they had done it wrong, or the soda wouldn’t work — or even more likely, the monsignor’s idea was simply full of crap.

Then a spark danced from the tip of the iron rod of Gray’s jar and cascaded down the copper surface to fizzle out in the seawater.

Similar weak pyrotechnics drizzled from the other batteries.

“It may take a few minutes for the batteries to build and discharge a proper voltage.” Vigor’s voice had lost its confident edge.

Gray frowned. “I don’t think this is going to—”

Simultaneously from all four batteries, brilliant arcs of electricity crackled through the water, fire in the deep. They struck the four sides of the pyramid.

“Back against the wall!” Gray yelled.

His warning was not needed. A blast of force thumped outward from the pyramid, throwing him bodily against the wall. The pressure made it feel like Gray was on his back, the drum-shaped chamber circling over him, the pyramid above him, a topsy-turvy amusement ride.

Yet Gray knew what held him.

A Meissner field, a force that could levitate tombs.

Then the true fireworks began.

From all surfaces of the pyramid, crackling bursts of lightning shattered to the ceiling, seeming to strike the silver stars imbedded there. Jolts also lanced into the pool, as if attempting to attack the reflected stars in the water.

Gray felt the image burning into his retina, but he refused to close his eyes. It was worth the risk of blindness. Where the lightning struck the water, flames erupted and danced across the pool’s surface.

Fire from water!

He knew what he was witnessing.

The electrolysis of water into hydrogen gas and oxygen. The released gas then ignited, set to flame by the play of energies here.

Trapped by force, Gray watched the fire above and below. He could barely comprehend the power being unleashed here.

He had read theoretical studies on how a superconductor could store energy, even light, within its matrix for an infinite span of time. And in a perfect superconductor even the quantity of energy or light could be infinite.

Was that what he was witnessing?

Before he could grasp it fully, the energies suddenly died away, a lightning storm in a bottle, brilliant but brief.

The world swung back upright as the Meissner field expired and his body was released. Gray stumbled a step forward. He caught himself from falling into the pool. Fires died back into the water. Whatever energy had been trapped inside the pyramid had been expended.

No one spoke.

They silently gathered together, needing the company of others, the physicality of one another.

Vigor was the first to make coherent motion. He pointed to the ceiling. “Look.”

Gray craned. The black paint and stars persisted, but now strange letters glowed in a fiery script across the dome of the roof.

“It’s the clue,” Rachel said.

As they stared, the letters faded rapidly. Like the fiery pyre atop the black hematite slab at St. Peter’s, the revelation only lasted a brief time.

Gray hurried to free his underwater camera. They needed a record.

Vigor stayed his hand. “I know what it says. It’s Greek.”

“You can translate?”

The monsignor nodded. “It’s not difficult. It’s a phrase attributed to Plato, describing how the stars affect us and are in fact a reflection of us. It became the foundation for astrology and the cornerstone for Gnostic belief.”

“What’s the phrase?” Gray asked.

“‘As it is above, so it is below.’”

Gray stared at the starry ceiling and at the reflection in the water. Above and below. Here was the same sentiment expressed visually. “But what does it mean?”

Rachel had wandered from the group. She slowly made a complete circuit of the room. She called from the far side of the pyramid. “Over here!”

Gray heard a splash.

They hurried over to her. Rachel waded toward the pyramid.

“Careful,” Gray warned.

“Look,” she said, and pointed.

Gray made it around the edge of the pyramid and saw what had excited her. A tiny section of the pyramid, six inches square, had vanished midway up one face, dissolved away, consumed during the firestorm. Resting inside the hollow lay one of Alexander the Great’s outstretched hands, closed in a fist.

Rachel reached for it, but Gray motioned her away.

“Let me,” he said.

He reached to touch the hand, glad he was still wearing his diving gloves. The brittle flesh felt like stone. Between the clenched fingers, a bit of gold glinted.

Teeth gritted, Gray broke off one of the fingers, earning a gasp from Vigor.

It couldn’t be helped.

From the fist, Gray removed a three-inch-long gold key, thick toothed, one end forged into a cross. It was surprisingly heavy.

“A key,” Kat said.

“But to what lock?” Vigor asked.

Gray stepped away. “To wherever we must go next.” His eyes wandered to the ceiling to where the letters had faded away.

“As it is above, so it is below,” Vigor repeated, noting the direction of his gaze.

“But what is the significance?” Gray mumbled. He pocketed the key into his thigh pouch. “Where does it tell us to go?”

Rachel had moved a step away. She slowly turned in a circle, surveying the room. She stopped, her gaze fixed on Gray. Her eyes shone brightly. He knew that look by now.

“I know where to start.”

IN THE raised pilot compartment of the hydrofoil, Raoul zipped into his wet suit. The boat was owned by the Guild. It had cost the Dragon Court a small fortune to rent it, but there could be no mistakes today.

“Bring us in along a sweeping curve as near as possible without raising suspicion,” he ordered the captain, a dark-skinned Afrikaner with a pattern of pinpoint scars over his cheeks.

Two young women, one black, one white, flanked the man. They were dressed in bikinis, their equivalent of camouflage gear, but their eyes glinted with the promise of deadly force.

The captain didn’t acknowledge Raoul, but he shifted the wheel and the craft angled to the side.

Raoul turned away from the captain and his women. He headed out to the ladder to the lower deck.

He hated being aboard a craft not directly under his authority. He clambered down the ladder to join the twelve-man team that would undertake the dive. His other three men would operate the strafing guns cleverly engineered into the bow and both flanks of the stern. The last member of his team, Dr. Alberto Menardi, was ensconced in one of the cabins, preparing to unravel the riddles here.

And there was one unwelcome addition to the team.

The woman.

Seichan stood with her wet suit half-unzipped, down to her belly button. Her breasts were barely concealed behind the neoprene. She stood by her tanks and her Aquanaut sled. The tiny one-person sleds were propelled by twin propulsion jets. They would skim a diver through the water at breakneck speeds.

The Eurasian woman glanced up to him. Raoul found her mixed heritage repellent, but she served her purpose. His eyes traveled along the length of her bare midriff and chest. Two minutes alone with her, and he’d have that constant disdainful smirk smashed off her face.

But for now, the bitch had to be tolerated.

This was Guild territory.

Seichan had insisted on accompanying the assault team. “Only to observe and offer advice,” she had purred. “Nothing more.”

Still, he spotted the speargun among her stack of diving gear.

“We evac in three minutes,” Raoul said.

They would go overboard as the hydrofoil slowed to turn around the peninsula, just sightseers getting a closer look at the old fort. They would swim into position from there. The hydrofoil would hang back, ready to intercede with its guns if necessary.

Seichan tugged on her zipper. “I’ve had our radio man intermittently jamming their communications. So when their radios go fully out, they’ll be less suspicious.”

Raoul nodded. She had her uses. He’d give her that much respect.

With a final check of his watch, he lifted an arm and made a circling gesture with a finger. “Mount up,” he said.

BACK IN the tunnel entrance to Alexander’s tomb, Rachel knelt down on the stone floor. She worked on her project, preparing to prove her point.

Gray spoke to Kat. “You’d better get back out in the water. Check in with Monk. It’s been longer than the couple minutes we had told him. He’ll be getting edgy.”

Kat nodded, but her eyes glanced around the room, settled on the tomb pyramid. Reluctantly, she turned and headed back down the tunnel toward the entry pool.

Vigor finished his own inspection of the tomb chamber. His face was still aglow with wonder. “I don’t think it will fire like that again.”

Gray nodded at Rachel’s side. “The gold pyramid must have acted like a capacitor. It stored its energy, perfectly preserved within its superconducting matrix…until the charge was released by the shock, creating a cascade reaction that emptied the pyramid.”

“That means,” Vigor said, “that even if the Dragon Court discovers this chamber, they’ll never be able to raise the riddle.”

“Or gain the gold key,” Gray said, patting his thigh pouch. “We’re finally a full step ahead of them.”

Rachel heard the relief and satisfaction in his voice.

“But first we have to solve this riddle,” she reminded him. “I have an inkling of where to begin, but no answer yet.”

Gray came over to her. “What are you working on?”

She had a Mediterranean map spread on the stones, the same map she had used to demonstrate that the inscription on the hematite slab depicted the coastline of the eastern Mediterranean. With a black felt marker, she had carefully drawn spots on the map and assigned names to each.

Sitting back, she waved an arm to the tomb chamber. “The phrase—‘as it is above, so it is below’—was originally meant to bring the star’s positions into our own lives.”

“Astrology,” Gray said.

“Not exactly,” Vigor argued. “The stars truly ruled ancient civilizations. Constellations were the timekeepers of seasons, the guideposts for travel, the home of the gods. Civilizations honored them by building their monuments as a reflection of the starry night. A new theory about the three pyramids of Giza is that they were aligned as such to match the three stars of Orion’s belt. Even in more modern times, every Catholic cathedral or basilica is built along an east-west axis, to mark the rising and setting of the sun. We still honor that tradition.”

“So we’re supposed to look for patterns,” Gray said. “Significant positions of something in the sky or on the Earth.”

“And the tomb is telling us what to pay attention to,” Rachel said.

“Then I must be deaf,” Gray said.

Her uncle had figured it out by now, too. “The bronze finger of the Colossus,” he said, staring out at the tomb. “The giant pyramid, perhaps representative of the one at Giza. The remnants of the Pharos Lighthouse above us. Even the drum-shaped tomb might hearken back to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.”

“I’m sorry,” Gray said with a frown. “The mausoleum of what?”

“It was one of the Seven Wonders,” Rachel said. “Remember how closely Alexander was tied to them all.”

“Right,” Gray said. “Something about his birth coinciding with one and his death another.”

“The Temple of Artemis,” Vigor said with a nod. “And the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They’re all connected to Alexander…to here.”

Rachel pointed to the map she was working on. “I’ve marked all their locations. They are spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean. They are all localized in the same region mapped out on the hematite slab.”

Gray studied the map. “Are you saying we’re supposed to be looking for a pattern among the seven of them?”

“‘As it is above, so it is below,’” Vigor quoted.

“Where do we even begin?” Gray asked.

“Time,” Rachel said. “Or rather the progression of time, as hinted at by the Sphinx’s riddle. Moving from birth to death.”

Gray’s eyes narrowed, then widened with understanding. “Chronological order. When the Wonders were built.”

Rachel nodded. “But I don’t know the order.”

“I do,” Vigor said. “What archaeologist in the region wouldn’t?”

He knelt down and took the felt marker. “I think Rachel is right. The first clue that started this all was hidden in a book in Cairo, near Giza. The pyramids are also the oldest of the Seven Wonders.” He placed the tip of the marker on Giza. “I find it interesting that this tomb lies under the Pharos Lighthouse.”

“Why’s that?” Gray asked.

“Because the lighthouse was the last of the Wonders to be built. From first to last. This might also indicate that wherever we go next might be the end of the road. The last stop.”

Uncle Vigor leaned down and carefully drew lines, connecting the Seven Wonders in order of their construction. “From Giza to Babylon, then on to Olympia, where the statue of Zeus towered.”

“Alexander’s supposed real father,” Rachel reminded.

“From there, we go to Artemis’s Temple at Ephesus, then Halicarnassus, then the island of Rhodes…until at last we reach our own spot on the map. Alexandria and its famous lighthouse.”

Her uncle leaned back. “Is anyone still wondering if we’re not on the right track?”

Rachel and Gray stared at his handiwork.

“Christ…” Gray swore.

“It forms a perfect hourglass,” Rachel said.

Vigor nodded. “The symbol for the passage of time itself. Formed by two triangles. Remember that the Egyptian symbol for the white powder fed to the pharaohs was a triangle. As a matter of fact, triangles were also symbolic for the benben stone of the Egyptians, a symbol of sacred knowledge.”

“What’s a benben stone?” Gray asked.

Rachel answered. “They’re the caps placed over the tips of Egyptian obelisks and pyramids.”

“But they’re mostly represented by triangles in art,” her uncle added. “In fact, you can see one on the back of your own dollar bill. American currency shows a pyramid with a triangle hovering over it.”

“The one with the eye inside it,” Gray said.

“An all-seeing eye,” Vigor corrected. “Symbolic of that sacred knowledge I was talking about. It makes one wonder if this society of ancient mages didn’t have some influence on the early fraternities of your forefathers.” This last was said with a smile. “But certainly for the Egyptians, there seems to be an underlying theme of triangles, sacred knowledge, all tying back to the mysterious white powder. Even the name benben makes this connection.”

“What do you mean?” Rachel said, intrigued.

“The Egyptians implied significance to the spelling of their words. For instance, a-i-s in ancient Egyptian translates to ‘brain,’ but if you reversed the spelling to s-i-a, that word means ‘consciousness.’ They used the very spelling of the words to connect the two: consciousness to the brain. Now back to benben. The letters b-e-n translate to ‘sacred stone,’ as I mentioned, but do you know what you get if you spell it backward?”

Rachel and Gray shrugged at the same time.

“N-e-b translates to ‘gold.’”

Gray let out a breath of surprise. “So gold is connected to sacred stone and sacred knowledge.”

Vigor nodded. “Egypt is where it all began.”

“But where does it end?” Rachel asked, staring down at her map. “What is the significance of the hourglass? How does it point to the next location?”

They all stared out at the pyramidal tomb.

Vigor shook his head.

Gray knelt down. “It’s my turn at the map.”

“You have an idea?” Vigor said.

“You don’t have to sound so shocked.”

GRAY SET to work, using the back of his knife as a straight edge. He had to get this right. With the felt marker in hand, he spoke as he worked, not looking up.

“That big bronze finger,” he said. “See how it’s in the exact center of the room, positioned under the dome?”

The others glanced out to the tomb. The water had settled to a flat sheen again. The arched starscape on the ceiling was again reflected perfectly in the water, creating an illusion of a starry sphere.

“The finger is positioned like the north-south pole of that spherical mirage. The axis around which the world spins. And now look at the map. What spot marks the center of the hourglass?”

Rachel leaned closer and read the name there. “The island of Rhodes,” she said. “Where the finger came from.”

Gray smiled at the wonder in her voice. Was it from the revelation or the fact that he had discovered it?

“I think we’re supposed to find the axis through the hourglass,” he said. He took the felt marker and drew a line bisecting the hourglass vertically. “And that bronze finger points toward the north pole.” He continued, using his knife blade as a guide, and extended the line north.

His marker stopped at a well-known and significant city.

“Rome,” Rachel read off the map.

Gray sat back. “The fact that all this geometry points right back to Rome must be significant. It must be where we have to go next. But where in Rome? The Vatican again?”

He stared around at the others.

Rachel’s brow had bunched up.

Vigor slowly knelt down. “I think, Commander, that you’re both right and wrong. Can I see your knife?”

Gray handed it over, glad to let the monsignor usurp his position.

He played with the knife’s edge on the map. “Hmm…two triangles.” He tapped the hourglass pattern.

“What about it?”

Vigor shook his head, eyes focused. “You were right about the fact that this line hits Rome. But it’s not where we’re supposed to go.”

“How do you know that?”

“Remember the multiple layers of riddles here. We have to look deeper.”

“To where?”

Vigor dragged his finger along the edge of the blade, extending the line past Rome. “Rome was only the first stop.” He continued the imaginary line farther north, into France. He halted at a spot just a bit north of Marseilles.

Vigor nodded and smiled. “Clever.”

“What?”

Vigor passed back the knife and tapped the spot. “Avignon.”

A gasp arose from Rachel.

Gray failed to see the significance. His confused expression made that plain.

Rachel turned to him. “Avignon is the place in France to which the papacy was exiled in the early fourteenth century. It became the papal seat of power for almost a full century.”

“The second seat of papal power,” Vigor stressed. “First Rome, then France. Two triangles, two symbols of power and knowledge.”

“But how can we be sure?” Gray said. “Maybe we’re reading too much into it.”

Vigor waved away his concern. “Remember, we already had pinpointed the date when we thought the clues were planted, when the papacy left Rome. The first decade of the fourteenth century.”

Gray nodded, but he was not totally convinced.

“And these crafty alchemists left us another layer to the riddle to help firmly establish this location.” Vigor pointed to the shape on the map. “When do you think the hourglass was first invented?”

Gray shook his head. “I assumed it was at least a couple thousand years…maybe older.”

“Oddly enough, the hourglass’s invention matched the time of the first mechanical clocks. Only seven hundred years ago.”

Gray calculated in his head. “That would place it back to the start of the thirteen hundreds again. The beginning of the fourteenth century.”

“Marking time, as all hourglasses should do, back to the founding of the French papacy.”

Gray felt a thrill chase through him. Now they knew where they needed to go next. With the gold key. To Avignon, to the French Vatican. He sensed a similar excitement in Rachel and her uncle.

“Let’s get out of here,” Gray said, and led them quickly down the tunnel to the entry pool.

“What about the tomb?” Vigor said.

“The announcement of the discovery will have to wait for another day. If the Dragon Court comes calling, they’ll find out they’re too late.”

Gray hurried into the far chamber. He knelt, slid his mask over his features, and ducked his head underwater, preparing to let the others know the good news.

As soon as his head hit the water, his radio buzzed, irritating and loud. “Kat…Monk…can anyone hear me?”

There was no answer. Gray recalled Kat mentioning some glitch with the Buddy Phones. He listened for a moment longer. His heartbeat thudded more loudly in his chest.

Shit.

He shoved out of the water.

That white noise wasn’t static. They were being jammed. “What?” Rachel asked. “The Dragon Court. They’re already here.”

13 BLOOD IN THE WATER

KAT BOBBED in the gentle waves.

Her radio had completely died ten seconds ago. She had popped up to check with Monk. She found him with binoculars fixed to his face.

“The radio—” she started.

“Something’s fucked,” he said, cutting her off. “Get the others.”

She reacted instantly, flipping down, kicking her legs high. The weight shoved her in a vertical dive. She emergency-flushed the air from her BC vest and plummeted straight down.

Diving for the tunnel, she reached her other hand to free the buckle straps that held her vest and tank. Movement at the entrance stayed her fingers.

The sleek form of a diver jettisoned out of the tunnel. A streak of blue across the black suit identified the swimmer as Commander Pierce. A perpetual whine filled her ears. No way to communicate the urgency.

But there proved to be no need.

On the commander’s heels, two other forms fled the tunnel.

Vigor and Rachel.

Kat twisted back upright. Clicking off her Buddy Phone to end the whine, she kicked toward Gray. He must have realized the radio fritz meant trouble. He simply stared hard at her through his face mask and pointed an arm up questioningly.

Was it clear above?

She gave him an okay signal. No hostiles above. At least not yet.

Gray did not bother with securing their abandoned tanks. He waved the others up. They kicked off the rocks and aimed for the keel of the boat.

To the side, Kat noted the anchor being raised.

Monk was readying for an immediate departure.

Kat filled the buoyancy vest and kicked upward, fighting the drag of her tank and weight belt. Above, the others were already breaching the surface.

A new humming whine filled her hearing.

It wasn’t the radio this time.

She searched the waters for the source, but the visibility in the polluted harbor was poor. Something was coming…coming fast.

As a Navy intelligence officer, she had spent plenty of time aboard all manner of watercraft, including submarines. She recognized the steady hum.

Torpedo.

Locked on the speedboat.

She thrashed upward, but knew she’d never reach them in time.

MONK ENGAGED the boat’s engine while maintaining a watch for the hydrofoil through his binoculars. It had just vanished behind the tip of the peninsula. But he had watched it slow suspiciously a few seconds ago, two hundred yards out. There had been no telltale activity on the stern deck, but he had noted a rippling line of bubbles in the craft’s wake as it glided slowly away.

Then he’d heard the whine over the radio.

Kat appeared a few seconds after that.

They needed to get out of here. He knew it in his gut.

“Monk!” a voice called. It was Gray, surfacing to the port side.

Thank God.

He began to lower his binoculars when he spotted a streaking object racing through the water. A fin cleaved through the waves. A metal fin.

“Fuck…”

Dropping the binoculars, Monk shoved the throttle to full. The boat bucked forward with a scream of the engine. He twisted the wheel to starboard. Away from Gray.

“Everybody down!” he screamed, and shoved his mask over his face. He had no time to zip his suit.

With the boat canting away under him, he ran for the stern, stepped on the back seat, and catapulted into the water.

The torpedo struck behind him. The force of the explosion flipped him feet over head. Something punched him in the hip, rattling all the way to his teeth. He struck the water, rolling across the surface, chased by a wash of flames.

Before it could reach him, he sank into the cool embrace of the sea.

RACHEL HAD SURFACED just as Monk yelled. She watched him run for the stern of the boat. Reacting to his panic, she shoved back down and twisted to dive.

Then the explosion hit.

The concussion through the water stabbed her ears, even through her thick neoprene hood. All the air slammed out of her. Her mask’s seals broke. Seawater rushed in.

She scrambled back to the surface, blind, eyes stinging.

With her head out of water, she emptied her mask, coughing and gagging. Debris continued to rain down into the water. Smoking flotsam steamed and rocked. Flaming rivers of gasoline skimmed the waves.

She searched the waters.

No one.

Then to her left, a flailing shape burst out of the water. It was Monk, dazed and choking.

She paddled over to him and grabbed an arm. His face mask had been turned half around his head. She steadied him as he gagged.

“Goddamn,” he wheezed out, and tugged his mask around.

A new noise traveled over the water. Both turned.

Rachel watched a large hydrofoil swing around the fort, tilted up on skids. It circled out toward them.

“Down!” Monk urged.

They fled together under the water. The explosion had stirred the sand, closing visibility down to a few feet.

Rachel pointed in the general direction of the tunnel entrance, lost in the murk. They needed to reach the abandoned scuba tanks, a source of much-needed air.

Reaching the pile of rocks, she searched around her for the tunnel entrance, for the others. Where was everyone else?

She scrambled along the tumble of boulders. Monk kept with her, but he struggled with his suit. He had only been half zipped up. The upper section flapped and tangled.

Where were the tanks? Had she gotten turned around?

A dark shape passed overhead, further away from shore. The hydrofoil. From Monk’s reaction, it was the source of their trouble.

A burning pressure built in Rachel’s lungs.

Illumination bloomed in the gloom ahead. She moved instinctually toward it, hoping to find her uncle or Gray. Out of the murk, a pair of divers swept into view, leaning on motorized sleds. Silt spiraled behind them.

The divers swung out to trap them against the shore.

Lit by their lamps, steel arrowheads glinted. Spearguns.

To emphasize the threat, a popping zip sounded. A lance of steel streaked at Monk. He jerked aside. The spear pierced the loose half of his suit, shredding through.

Rachel held her palms up, toward the divers.

One of them pointed a thumb, ordering them to the surface.

Caught.

GRAY HELPED Vigor.

The monsignor had knocked into him when the boat had exploded. He had taken a chunk of fiberglass to the side of his head, slicing through his neoprene suit. Blood flowed from the cut. Gray had no way of judging the damage, but the older man was dazed.

Gray had managed to reach the air tanks and now helped hook the monsignor up. Vigor waved him off as the air flowed. Gray swung to a second tank and rapidly reconnected his regulator.

He took several deep breaths.

He eyed the tunnel opening. There was no refuge to be found in there. The Dragon Court would certainly come here. Gray would not be trapped in another tomb.

Grabbing up his tank, Gray pointed away.

Vigor nodded, but his face searched the clouded waters.

Gray read his fear.

Rachel.

They had to survive to be of any help. Gray headed out, leading Vigor. They would find a niche among the fall of boulders and debris to hide in. Earlier, he had noted a sunken rusted skiff about ten yards off, overturned and tilted against the rocks.

He guided Vigor along the cliff. The scuttled boat appeared. He settled the monsignor in its shadow. He motioned for Vigor to stay, then slipped on his tank, freeing his arms.

Gray pointed outward and made a circling motion.

I’m going to search for the others.

Vigor nodded, trying, it seemed, to look hopeful.

Gray headed back toward the tunnel, but he kept close to the seabed. The others, if able, would make for the air tanks. He glided from shadow to shadow, keeping to the boulders.

As he neared the tunnel entrance, a glow grew. He slowed. Individual lights differentiated, splashing over the rocks and pointed outward.

He moved into the darkness behind a chunk of stone and spied.

Black-suited divers clustered around the tunnel opening. They wore mini-tanks, containing less than twenty minutes of air, made for short dives.

Gray watched one diver duck through the opening and vanish.

After a few seconds, some confirmation must have been passed along. Another five divers swept one after the other into the tunnel. Gray recognized the last sleek shape to disappear into the tomb shaft.

Seichan.

Gray swung away. None of his teammates would come here now.

As he moved out of hiding, a shape welled up in front of him, appearing from nowhere. Large. The razored tip of a speargun pressed into the flesh of his belly.

Lights flared around him.

Behind the mask, Gray recognized the heavy countenance of Raoul.

RACHEL HELPED free Monk. The spear shaft had pinned a flap of his suit to the seabed. She tugged him loose.

Two yards away, the two divers hovered on their sleds, like surfers on broken surfboards. One motioned them to the surface. Now.

Rachel didn’t need the urging.

As she obeyed, a dark shadow swept up and behind the pair of divers.

What…?

Two flashes of silver flickered.

One diver clutched his air hose. Too late. Through the man’s mask, Rachel saw his gasped breath draw in a wash of seawater. The second was even less lucky. He was ripped clean off his sled, torn away by a knife lodged in his throat.

Blood spread in a cloud.

The attacker wrenched the blade free and the cloud thickened.

Rachel spotted the pink stripe against the attacker’s black suit.

Kat.

The first diver choked and writhed, drowning in his mask. He attempted to flee to the surface, but Kat was there. Knives in both hands dispatched him with brutal efficiency.

Kat kicked his form away. Weighted down by tank and belt, his body drifted into the depths.

Finished, Kat dragged his sled to Rachel and Monk. She pointed up to the surface and motioned to the sled.

To make a fast getaway.

Rachel had no idea how to operate the vehicle — but Monk did. He mounted the half-board and grabbed the handlebar-like controls. He waved for Rachel to climb atop him and ride piggyback.

She did so, throwing her arms around his shoulders. Lights now danced across the edges of her vision.

Kat swam for the other sled, a speargun in hand.

Monk twisted the throttle, and the sled dragged them away, upward, toward safety, toward fresh air.

They burst from the surf like a breaching whale, then slammed back down. Rachel was jarred, but she kept her grip tight. Monk raced them across the smooth waters, zigzagging through the flaming debris field. Oil lay thick over the water.

Rachel risked freeing a hand to rip up her mask, sucking in air.

She tugged Monk’s mask up, too.

“Ow,” he said. “Watch the nose.”

They passed the overturned bulk of their speedboat — only to find the long form of the hydrofoil waiting for them on the left.

“Maybe they haven’t seen us,” Monk whispered.

Gunfire chattered, strafing across the water, aiming right for them.

“Hang on!” Monk yelled.

THE POINT of Raoul’s spear dug Gray out of his hiding place. Another diver raised a second spear to the side of Gray’s throat.

As Gray moved, a knife slashed at him, wielded by Raoul.

He flinched, but the blade only cut the straps to his tank. The heavy cylinder dropped toward the bottom. Raoul waved for him to unhook the regulator. Did they mean to drown him?

Raoul pointed to the nearby tunnel entrance.

Apparently they meant to interrogate him first.

He had no choice.

Gray swam to the entrance, flanked by guards. He dove through, trying to think of some plan. He sailed up to the entry pool and found the chamber ringed with other men in wet suits. Their mini-tanks were small enough to allow them to traverse the tunnel. Some were shedding out of their vests and tanks. Others pointed spearguns, alerted by Raoul.

Gray climbed out of the pool and removed his mask. Every move was tracked by the point of a spear.

He noted Seichan leaning against one wall, seeming oddly relaxed. Her only acknowledgment was the raise of a single finger.

Hello.

At Gray’s other side, a shape plowed upward into the entry pool. Raoul. In a single movement, the large man one-armed his way out of the pool and to his feet, a gymnastic demonstration of power. His frame must have barely fit through the tunnel. He had abandoned his minitanks outside.

Dragging off his mask and peeling back his hood, he strode to Gray.

It was the first time Gray had a good look at the man. His features were craggy, nose long and thin, aquiline. His coal black hair hung to his shoulders. His arms were massed with muscle, as thick around as Gray’s thigh, plainly grown from steroids and too much time spent in the gym, not from real-world labor.

Eurotrash, Gray thought.

Raoul towered over him, trying to intimidate.

Gray just lifted an eyebrow quizzically. “What?”

“You’re going to tell us everything you know,” Raoul said. His English was fluent, but it was heavily accented with disdain and something Germanic.

“And if I don’t?”

Raoul waved an arm as another form splashed up into the entry pool. Gray immediately recognized Vigor. The monsignor had been found.

“There’s not much a side-scanning radar can’t detect,” Raoul said.

Vigor was dragged bodily from the pool, not gently. Blood from his scalp wound dribbled down one side of his face. He was shoved toward them, but he tripped from exhaustion and fell hard to his knees.

Gray bent down to go to his aid, but a spearhead drove him back.

Another diver surfaced in the pool. He was clearly weighted down. Raoul stepped over and unburdened the man. It was another of those barbell-shaped charges. An incendiary grenade.

Raoul slung the device over a shoulder and stepped back to them. He raised his own speargun and pointed it at Vigor’s crotch. “As the monsignor has sworn off using this part of his anatomy anyway, we’ll start here. Any missteps and the monsignor will be able to join the castrato choir of his church.”

Gray straightened. “What do you want to know?”

“Everything…but first, show us what you found.”

Gray lifted an arm toward the tunnel to Alexander’s tomb, then swung it around to the other tunnel, the shorter of the two, the one that required one to hunch over to traverse it. “It’s that way,” he said.

Vigor’s eyes widened.

Raoul grinned and lifted his speargun. He waved a group of men into the tunnel. “Check it out.”

Five darted away, leaving three men with Raoul.

Seichan, leaning near the tunnel entrance, watched the group disappear. She stepped to follow.

“Not you,” Raoul said.

Seichan glanced over a shoulder. “Do you and your men want to leave this harbor?”

Raoul’s face reddened.

“The escape boat is ours,” she reminded him, and ducked away.

Raoul clenched a fist but stayed silent.

Trouble in paradise…

Gray turned. Vigor’s gaze was hard upon him. Gray motioned with his eyes. Dive away at the first opportunity.

He faced the tunnel again. He prayed he was correct about the Sphinx’s riddle. It was death to solve it wrongly. And that certainly was about to be proven here, one way or the other.

That left only one mystery to be answered.

Who would die?

MONK RACED the bullets. His jet sled skidded across the water. Rachel clung to him from behind, half choking his airway.

The harbor was in chaos. Other watercraft fled from the fighting, scattering like a school of fish. Monk hit the wake of a crabbing boat and sailed high into the air.

Gunfire chewed into the wave below.

“Grab tight!” he cried.

He flipped the sled on its side just as they hit the water. Under they went. He straightened their course and dove deeper, speeding through the water at a depth of three feet.

At least that’s what he hoped.

Monk had squeezed his eyes closed. Without his mask, he couldn’t have seen much anyway. But before diving under, he caught a glimpse of an anchored sailboat directly ahead.

If he could get under it…put it between him and the hydrofoil…

He counted in his head, estimating, praying.

The world went momentarily darker through his eyelids. They were under the shadow of the sailboat. He did an additional four-count and canted back upward toward the surface.

They burst back into sunlight and air.

Monk craned back. They had more than cleared the sailboat. “Fuck, yeah!” The hydrofoil had to swing around the obstacle, losing ground.

“Monk!” Rachel yelled in his ear.

He faced forward to see a boxy wall of boat in front of him, the naked houseboat couple’s. Crap! They were flying right toward its port side. There was no shying from it.

Monk slammed his weight forward and tipped the nose of the sled straight down. They dove in a steep dive…but was it steep enough to duck under the houseboat, like he had the sailboat?

The answer was no.

Monk slammed into the keel with the tip of his sled. The sled flipped ass-end up. Monk clutched an iron grip to the handles. The sled skittered against the wood side, barnacles ripping at his shoulder. He gunned the throttle and shot deeper.

He finally cleared the underside of the boat and sped back into clear water.

He jetted upward, knowing he had little time.

Rachel was gone, knocked off with the first collision.

GRAY HELD his breath.

A commotion immediately sounded from down the low tunnel. The first of the men must have reached the end of the passage. It must have been short.

“Eine Goldtür!” he heard shouted. A gold door.

Raoul hurried forward, dragging Gray with him. Vigor was kept pinned at the pool’s edge by a diver with a speargun.

The tunnel, lit up by the explorers’ flashlights, extended only some thirty yards and was slightly curved. The end could not be seen, but the last two men in line — and Seichan — were limned against the glow, all focused forward.

Gray had a sudden fear that perhaps they’d been wrong about the gold key they had found. Maybe it was meant for this door.

“Es wird entriegelt!” a shout called. Unlocked!

From where Gray stood, he heard the click as the door was opened.

It was too loud.

Seichan must have noted it, too. She spun around and leaped back toward them. She was too late.

From all walls, sharpened poles of steel shot out of crevices and shadowed nooks. They skewered across the passage, piercing through flesh and bone, and embedded into holes drilled on the opposite side. The deadly tangle started deep and swept outward in a matter of two seconds.

Lights bobbled. Men screamed, impaled and pinned.

Seichan made it within two steps of the exit, but the tail end of the booby trap caught her. A single sharpened pole lanced out and impaled through her shoulder. She jerked to a stop, legs going out from under her.

A pained gasp was the only sound she made, hung up and skewered on the bar.

Shocked, Raoul weakened his grip on Gray.

Taking advantage, Gray wrested free and flung himself toward the pool. “Go!” he shouted to Vigor.

Before he could take a second step, something struck the back of his head. Hard. He went down on one knee. He was clubbed again, on the side of the head, pistol-whipped with the butt of a speargun.

He had underestimated the speed of the giant.

A mistake.

Raoul kicked Gray onto his face and pressed a boot on his neck, bearing down with full weight.

Gasping, Gray watched Vigor fished back out of the pool. The monsignor had been caught by the ankle and denied escape.

Raoul leaned down, leering into Gray’s view.

“A nasty little trick,” he said.

“I didn’t know—”

The boot pressed harder, squeezing off his words.

“But you have eliminated a bit of a problem for me,” he continued. “Taking that bitch out of the picture. But now we have some work to do…the two of us.”

RACHEL CLAWED back to the surface of the water, hitting her head again on the side of the boat. She choked on a mouthful of water and broke through to open air. She coughed and gagged repeatedly, reflexively, unable to stop. Her limbs floundered.

A gate suddenly dropped and she saw a naked middle-aged man standing there, bare-assed to the world. “Tudo bem, Menina?”

Portuguese. Asking if she was okay.

She shook her head, still coughing.

He bent down and offered an arm. Taking it, she allowed herself to be hauled up and stood shakily. Where was Monk?

She watched the hydrofoil banking away, heading out toward deeper waters. The reason soon became apparent. A pair of Egyptian police cruisers sped out from the far pier, revving up, gaining speed, finally responding. The chaos in the harbor must have delayed them, but better late than never.

Relief flooded through her.

Rachel turned to find the man’s wife or companion, equally naked.

Except for the gun.

MONK SURFED around the stern of the houseboat, searching for Rachel. Further out in the harbor, a police cruiser wailed across the waters. Lights flashed an angry red and white. The hydrofoil raced away, picking up speed, lifting to the full extent of its skids.

Escaping.

There was no way for the police to catch it. The hydrofoil headed out…to international waters or to some other hidden berth.

Monk turned his full attention to his search for Rachel. He feared to find her floating facedown, drowned in the polluted water. He edged around the stern, staying close to the boat.

He spotted motion on the rear deck of the houseboat.

Rachel…she had her back to him, but looked unsteady. The naked middle-aged man supported her with one arm.

He slowed. “Rachel…are you o—”

She glanced back, eyes panicked. The man raised his other arm. He held a snub-nosed automatic rifle, pointed at Monk’s face.

“Oh…I guess not,” Monk muttered.

GRAY’S NECK was about to break.

Raoul knelt atop him, one knee square on the middle of his back, the other on the back of his neck. One hand twisted into Gray’s hair, yanking his head back. The man’s other hand held the speargun straight-armed toward Vigor’s left eye.

The monsignor was on his knees, flanked by two divers with additional guns. A third looked on, scowling with a knife balanced in his hand. All eyes were narrowed with raw hatred. Gray’s trick had slain five of their men, comrades-in-arms.

Moans still echoed from the bloody tunnel, but there would be no rescue for them. Only revenge.

Raoul leaned closer. “Enough games. What did you learn in—”

A zinging thwack cut off his words.

The speargun clattered from Raoul’s grip. A roaring howl erupted from him as he fell off Gray.

Released, Gray rolled across the floor, snatched up the abandoned speargun, and shot one of the men holding Vigor.

The shaft pierced through the diver’s neck, knocking him back.

The other man straightened, turning his weapon on Gray, but before he could fire, a spear flashed through the air from the pool and spitted the man through the belly.

His weapon fired reflexively, but the shot went wild as he tumbled backward.

Vigor slapped the one unfired speargun toward Gray, then flung himself low.

Gray grabbed it and swung it toward Raoul.

The giant ran for the nearby tunnel, the one that led to Alexander’s tomb. Raoul clutched a hand to his other wrist, his palm pierced through by a length of steel spear.

Kat’s shot had been precise, disarming and disabling.

The last of the Court’s men, the one with the dagger, was the first into the tunnel and led the way. Raoul followed.

Gray gained his feet, took aim at Raoul’s back, and fired.

The spear flew down the tunnel. Raoul would not reach the first turn in time. The shaft struck the large man in the back and clanged.

The spear clattered harmlessly to the stone floor.

Gray cursed his luck. He had hit the incendiary grenade still slung over Raoul’s shoulder. Saved by his own damn bomb.

The giant vanished around the first turn of the passage.

“We have to go,” Kat said. “I killed the two guards outside, slipping in on one of their own sleds, caught them by surprise. But I don’t know how many more are out there.”

Gray eyed the tunnel, hesitating.

Vigor was already in the water. “Rachel…?”

“I sent her off with Monk on another sled. They should be at shore by now.”

Vigor hugged Kat quickly, his eyes bright with tears of relief. He pulled down his mask.

“Commander?”

Gray considered going after Raoul, but a cornered dog was the most dangerous. He didn’t know if Raoul had a dry-wrapped pistol or some other weapon stashed, but the bastard definitely had a bomb. Raoul could lob it here on a short fuse and take them all out.

He turned away.

They had what they needed.

One hand patted the thigh pouch and the hidden gold key.

It was time to go.

Gray pulled on his mask and joined the others. On the stone floor, the man he’d shot through the throat was already dead. The other moaned, pierced fully through the belly. Blood pooled under him. Shot through the kidney. Or maybe his aorta had been nicked. He’d be dead in minutes.

Gray felt no pity. He remembered the atrocities in Cologne and Milan. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

RAOUL YANKED the spear from his hand. Steel ground on bone. Fire lanced through his arm to his chest, emptying his breath in an angry hiss. Blood poured. He pulled his glove off and tied the neoprene around his palm, stanching and putting pressure on the wound.

No broken bones.

Dr. Alberto Menardi had the medical background to patch him up.

Raoul stared across the room, illuminated by his flashlight on the floor. What the hell was this place?

The glass pyramid, the water, the starry dome…

The last surviving man, Kurt, returned from the passageway. He had gone to reconnoiter the entry pool. “They left,” he reported. “Bernard and Pelz are dead.”

Raoul finished his first aid and considered the next step. They would have to evacuate quickly. The Americans could send the Egyptian police straight here. The original plan had been to lure the local authorities away with the hydrofoil, leaving Raoul and his team to do a full investigation down here in secret, then make their escape in the clunky, nondescript houseboat.

Now matters had changed.

Cursing, Raoul bent to his pack on the ground. It held a digital camera. He would get a visual record, get it to Alberto, and hunt down the Americans.

It wasn’t over yet.

As Raoul dug out his camera, his foot nudged the sling holding the incendiary grenade. A fold of sealcloth fell away. He ignored it until he noted a slight red glow on the neighboring wall.

Fuck…

Dropping to a knee, he snatched the bomb and rolled it digital face forward.

00:33.

He spotted the deep ding in the casing near the timer. Where the American bastard had struck it with the speargun.

00:32.

The impact must have shorted something, activated the timer.

Raoul tapped the abort code. Nothing.

He shoved up, the sudden motion making his hand ache.

“Go,” he ordered Kurt.

The man’s eyes were fixed on the bomb. But he glanced up, nodded, and ran for the tunnel.

Raoul retrieved his digital camera, took several rapid flash pictures, sealed the camera in a pocket, then strode away.

00:19.

He retreated back to the entry room. Kurt was already gone.

“Raoul!” a voice called to him.

He spun, startled, but it was only Seichan. The bitch was still trapped in the other tunnel.

Raoul waved to her. “It was nice doing business with you.”

He pulled down his mask and dove cleanly into the pool. He snaked down the tunnel and found Kurt waiting beyond. The diver was examining two other bodies, two more of their men. Kurt shook his head.

A savage fury swelled inside Raoul.

Then a rumbling reverberation trembled through the water, sounding like a passing freight train. The tunnel behind him flashed with a dull orange glow. He glanced back as it rapidly subsided. The trembling faded.

All gone.

Raoul closed his eyes. He had nothing to show. The Court would have his balls…and probably more. He considered simply swimming away, disappearing. He had money stashed in three different Swiss bank accounts.

But he’d still be hunted.

Raoul’s radio buzzed in his ear. “Seal One, this is Slow Tug.”

He opened his eyes. It was his pick-up boat. “Seal One here,” he responded leadenly.

“We report two additional passengers aboard.”

Raoul frowned. “Please clarify.”

“A woman you know and an American.”

Raoul clenched his wounded fist. Saltwater burned with a cleansing agony. The fire spread through him.

Perfect.

GRAY STALKED across the length of the hotel suite, the one Monk had prebooked for the group. They were on the top floor of the Corniche Hotel, having arrived twenty-five minutes ago. The balcony windows overlooked the glass-and-steel sweep of the new Alexandria Library. The harbor beyond shone like dark blue ice. Boats and yachts seemed imbedded in place. Calm had quickly returned to the harbor.

Vigor had watched the local news station and listened as an Egyptian newsman reported on a confrontation among a group of drug smugglers. The police had failed to subdue them. The Court had escaped.

Gray also knew the tomb had been destroyed. He and the others had used air tanks and two of the abandoned sleds to flee to the far side of the harbor, where they shed their gear under a pier. But while crossing, Gray had heard a muffled thump through the water behind him.

The incendiary grenade.

Raoul must have blown it as he made his escape.

Once Gray, Kat, and Vigor had climbed out of the harbor, stripped to trunks and swimsuits, they had blended into a crowd of sunbathers and crossed a seaside park to their hotel. Gray had expected to find Monk and Rachel already here.

But there continued to be no sign of the pair.

No messages, no calls.

“Where could they be?” Vigor asked.

Gray turned to Kat. “And you saw them leave with one of the motorized sleds?”

She nodded, face taut with guilt. “I should’ve made sure…”

“And we’d both be dead,” Gray said. “You made a choice.”

He couldn’t fault her.

Gray rubbed his eyes. “And she has Monk with her.” He took a measure of comfort in that.

“What do we do?” Vigor asked.

Gray lowered his arms and stared out the window. “We have to assume they’ve been captured. We can’t count on our security here lasting much longer. We’ll have to evacuate.”

“Leave?” Vigor said, standing up.

Gray felt the full weight of his responsibility. He faced Vigor, refusing to look away. “We have no choice.”

RACHEL CLIMBED into the terry-cloth robe. She snugged it around her naked form while glaring at the cabin’s other occupant.

The tall, muscular blonde woman ignored her and stepped to the cabin doorway. “All finished in here!” she called out to the passageway.

The door opened to reveal a second woman, a twin to the first but auburn-haired. She entered and held the door for Raoul. The large man ducked through the hatch.

“She’s clean,” the blonde reported, peeling off a pair of latex gloves. She had performed a full body-cavity search on Rachel. “Nothing hidden.”

Certainly not any longer, Rachel thought angrily. She turned her back slightly and knotted the robe’s sash, tight, under her breasts. Her fingers trembled. She squeezed her fingers on the knot. Tears threatened, but she resisted, refusing to give Raoul the satisfaction.

Rachel stared out the tiny porthole, attempting to discern some landmark, something to pinpoint where she was. But all she saw was featureless sea.

She and Monk had been transferred from the houseboat. The ponderous craft had trundled out of the harbor, met a speedboat, and the pair were tied, hooded, and gagged by a foursome of thick-necked men. They were shoved into the smaller boat, then whisked away, bouncing over the waves. They had traveled for what seemed like half a day but was probably only a little more than an hour. Once the hood was tugged off her face, Rachel had found the sun had hardly moved across the sky.

In a small cove, hidden by a tumble of rock, the familiar hydrofoil waited like a midnight-blue shark. Men worked the ropes, preparing to ship out. She’d spotted Raoul at the stern, arms crossed over his chest.

Manhandled aboard, Rachel and Monk were separated.

Raoul had taken charge of Monk.

Rachel still didn’t know what had become of her teammate. She had been hustled below deck to a cabin, guarded by the two Amazon women. The hydrofoil had immediately edged out of the cove and sped away, heading straight out into the Mediterranean.

That had been more than half an hour ago.

Raoul came forward and grabbed her upper arm. His other hand was bandaged. “Come with me.” His fingers dug hard, to bone.

She allowed herself to be led out into the wood-paneled hallway, lit by sconces. The passageway crossed from stern to bow, lined by doors to private cabins. There was only one steep stairway, more like a ladder, to the main deck.

Instead of going up, Raoul marched her toward the bow.

Raoul knocked on the door to the last cabin.

“Entri,” a muffled voice said.

Raoul pulled the door open and dragged Rachel inside. The cabin was larger than her prison cell. It held not only a bed and chair, but also a desk, sidetable, and bookshelves. On every flat surface, texts, magazines, even scrolls were stacked. One corner of the desk supported a laptop computer.

The room’s occupant straightened and turned. He had been leaning over his desk, glasses perched on the tip of his nose.

“Rachel,” the man said warmly, as if they were the best of friends.

She recognized the older man from the days when she had accompanied Uncle Vigor to the Vatican Libraries. He had been the head prefect of the Archives, Dr. Alberto Menardi. The traitor stood a few inches taller than she, but he had a perpetual hunch to his posture, making him seem shorter.

He tapped a sheet on his desk. “From this fresh handwriting — a woman’s, if I’m not mistaken — this map must have been embellished by your own hand.”

He waved her over.

Rachel had no choice. Raoul shoved her forward.

She tripped over a stack of books and had to grab the edge of the desk to keep from falling. She stared down at the map of the Mediterranean. The hourglass was drawn upon it, as were the names of the Seven Wonders.

She kept her face stoic.

They had found her map. She had sealed it in a pouch of her dry suit. Now she wished she’d burned it.

Alberto leaned closer. His breath reeked of olives and sour wine. He drew a fingernail along the axis line that Gray had scribed. It stopped at Rome. “Tell me about this.”

“It’s where we’re supposed to go next,” Rachel lied. She was relieved her uncle had not drawn on the map in ink himself. He had simply extended the line with his finger and the straight edge of Gray’s knife.

Alberto turned his head. “Now, why is that? I’d like to hear all about what went down in that tomb. In great detail. Raoul has been good enough to supply digital snapshots, but I think a firsthand account would be of more value.”

Rachel kept silent.

Raoul’s fingers tightened on her arm. She winced.

Alberto waved Raoul away. “There’s no need for that.”

The pressure relented, but Raoul did not let go.

“You have the American for that, don’t you?” Alberto asked. “Maybe you’d better show her. We could all use a little fresh air, no?”

Raoul grinned.

Rachel felt a knot of terror tighten around her heart.

She was led out of the cabin and forced up the steps. As she climbed, Raoul reached and slid a palm up her robe, along her thigh, fingers kneading. She scrambled upward.

The stairs led to the open stern of the hydrofoil. Sunlight glared off the white decking. Three men lounged on side benches, casually carrying assault rifles.

They eyed her.

She cinched her robe tighter, shuddering, still feeling Raoul’s fingers on her. The large man climbed up, followed by Alberto.

She stepped around a short wall that separated the stairwell from the deck. She found Monk.

He was lying on his stomach, naked except for boxers, his wrists bound behind him and his legs hog-tied at the ankle. It looked like two of his fingers had been broken on his left hand, bent back at impossible angles. Blood smeared the deck. He opened one swollen eye when she stepped out.

He had no quip for her.

That scared her more than anything.

Raoul and his men must have taken their anger out on Monk, the only target.

“Untie his arms,” Raoul ordered. “Get him on his back.”

The men responded quickly. Monk groaned as his arms were freed. He was flipped onto his back. One of the guards held a rifle at Monk’s ear.

Raoul grabbed a fire-ax from a stanchion.

“What are you doing?” Rachel hurried to stand between the large man and Monk.

“That depends on you,” Raoul said. He hefted the ax to his shoulder.

One of the men responded to some discreet signal. Rachel’s elbows were grabbed and pinned behind her back. She was carted backward.

Raoul pointed his ax, one-armed, at the third man. “Sit on his chest, hold his left arm down at the elbow.” Raoul strode forward as the man obeyed. He glanced back to Rachel. “I believe the professore asked you a question.”

Alberto stepped forward. “And don’t leave out any details.”

Rachel was too horrified to respond.

“He has five fingers on this side,” Raoul added. “We’ll start with the broken ones. They’re not of much use anyway.” He raised the ax.

“No!” Rachel choked out.

“Don’t…” Monk groaned to her.

The guard with the rifle kicked Monk in the head.

“I’ll tell you!” Rachel blurted out.

She spoke rapidly, explaining all that had happened, from the discovery of Alexander’s body to the activation of the ancient batteries. She left out nothing, except for the truth. “It took us some time, but we solved the riddle…the map…the Seven Wonders…it all points back to the beginning. A complete circle. Back to Rome.”

Alberto’s eyes glowed with the telling, asking a few pertinent questions, nodding every now and then. “Yes, yes…”

Rachel finished. “That’s all we know.”

Alberto turned to Raoul. “She’s lying.”

“I thought so.” He swung the ax down.

RAOUL ENJOYED the woman’s scream.

He pulled his ax head from where it had embedded in the deck. He had missed the captive’s fingertips by the breadth of a hair. He yanked the ax to his shoulder and turned to the woman. Her face had paled to a shiny translucency.

“Next time, it’s for real,” he warned.

Dr. Alberto stepped forward. “Our large friend here was good enough to get an angled flash on that center pyramid. It shows a square hole in its surface. Something you failed to mention. And a sin of omission is as good as a lie. Is that not so, Raoul?”

He raised the ax. “Shall we try again?”

Alberto leaned closer to Rachel. “There’s no need for your friend to come to harm. I know something must have been taken from the tomb. It makes no sense to blindly point to Rome without an additional clue. What did you take from the pyramid?”

Tears rolled down her face.

Raoul read the tortured agony in every line of her face. He grew hard, remembering a few moments ago. Through a one-way mirror, he had spied as one of the captain’s bitches had fingered through all the woman’s private places. He had wanted to perform the body-cavity search himself, but the captain had refused. His boat, his rule. Raoul hadn’t pressed. The captain was in a sour enough mood upon learning of Seichan’s demise, lost with so many of Raoul’s men.

Besides, he would soon be performing his own private inspection of the woman…but he planned on being much less gentle.

“What was taken?” Alberto pressed.

Raoul widened his stance, hefting the ax higher over his head. His freshly sutured hand ached, but he ignored it. Maybe she wouldn’t tell…maybe this could be stretched out….

But the woman cracked. “A key…a gold key,” she whimpered, then sank to her knees on the deck. “Gray…Commander Pierce has it.”

Behind her tears, Raoul heard a trace of hope in her voice.

He knew a way to squash that.

He brought the ax down in a steady hard swing. The ax severed the man’s hand at the wrist.

"IT’S TIME to go,” Gray said.

He had given Vigor and Kat an additional forty-five minutes to call all the local hospitals and medical centers, even discreet calls to the municipal police. Maybe they had been injured, unable to contact them. Or they were cooling their heels in a jail cell.

Gray stood up as his sat-phone rang from his pack.

All eyes turned.

“Thank God,” Vigor gasped.

Only a handful of people had the phone’s number: Director Crowe and his teammates.

Gray grabbed his phone and swung up its antenna. He moved closer to the window. “Commander Pierce,” he said.

“I will keep this brief, so there’s no confusion.”

Gray stiffened. It was Raoul. That could only mean one thing…

“We have the woman and your teammate. You’ll do exactly as we say or we’ll be mailing their heads to Washington and Rome…after we’re done playing with their bodies, of course.”

“How do I know they’re still—?”

A shuffle sounded at the other end. A new voice gasped. He heard the tears behind the words. “They…I…they cut off Monk’s hand. He—”

The phone was taken away.

Gray tried not to react. Now was not the time. Still, his fingers clenched hard to the phone. His heart climbed into his throat, constricting his words.

“What do you want?”

“The gold key from the tomb,” Raoul said.

So they knew about it. Gray understood why Rachel had revealed the secret. How could she not? She must have traded the information for Monk’s life. They were safe as long as the Court knew Gray retained the key. But that didn’t mean worse mutilations would not be performed if he didn’t cooperate. He remembered the condition of the tortured priests in Milan.

“You want a trade,” he said coldly.

“There is an EgyptAir flight leaving Alexandria at 2100 hours for Geneva, Switzerland. You will be on that flight. You alone. We will have false papers and tickets in a locker, so no computer searches will trace your flight.” Directions to the locker followed. “You will not contact your superiors…either in Washington or Rome. If you do, we’ll know. Is that understood?”

“Yes,” he bit off. “But how do I know you’ll stick to your end of the bargain?”

“You don’t. But as a gesture of goodwill, when you land in Geneva, I’ll contact you again. If you follow our directions precisely, I’ll free your man. He’ll be sent to a local Swiss hospital. We will pass on satisfactory confirmation of this for you. But the woman will remain in custody until you give over the gold key.”

Gray knew the offer to free Monk was probably sincere, but not out of goodwill. Monk’s life was an advance on the deal, a token to lure Gray into cooperating. He tried to shut out Rachel’s earlier words. They had cut off Monk’s hand.

He had no choice.

“I’ll be on the flight,” he said.

Raoul was not done. “The others on the team…the bitch and the monsignor…are free to go as long as they stay quiet and out of the way. If either sets foot in Italy or Switzerland, the deal is off.”

Gray frowned. He understood keeping the others out of Switzerland…but why Italy? Then it struck him. He pictured Rachel’s map. The line he had drawn. Pointing to Rome. Rachel had revealed much — but not all.

Good girl.

“Agreed,” Gray said, his mind already wheeling out in various scenarios.

“Any sign of subterfuge and you’ll never see the woman or your teammate again…except for body parts mailed out daily.” The connection ended.

Gray lowered the phone and turned to the others. He repeated the conversation verbatim, so all would understand. “I will be on that flight.”

Vigor’s face had drained of blood, his worst fears realized.

“They could ambush you at any point,” Kat said.

He nodded. “But I believe as long as I keep moving toward them, they’ll let me. They’ll not risk losing the key in a failed attempt.”

“And what about us?” Vigor asked.

“I need you both in Avignon. Working on the mystery there.”

“I…I can’t,” Vigor said. “Rachel…” He sank to the bed.

Gray firmed his voice. “Rachel has bought us a slim chance in Avignon, some leeway. Paid with Monk’s blood and body. I won’t let their efforts be squandered.”

Vigor looked up at him.

“You have to trust me.” Gray’s demeanor hardened. “I’ll get Rachel. You have my word.”

Vigor stared at him, attempting to read something there. Whatever he found, he seemed to gain some resolve from it.

Gray hoped it was enough.

“How do you—?” Kat began.

Gray shook his head, stepping away. “The less we know of each other’s movements from here, the better.” He crossed and gathered up his pack. “I’ll contact you when I have Rachel.”

He headed out.

With one hope.

SEICHAN SAT in the dark, holding a broken bit of knife.

The spear through her shoulder still held her pinned to the wall. The inch-thick lance had sheared up under her collarbone and out the top of her shoulder, missing major blood vessels and her scapula. But she remained hooked in place. Blood seeped continually down the inside of her wetsuit.

Every movement was agony.

But she was alive.

The last of Raoul’s men had gone quiet about the time the last flashlight had died. The firebomb Raoul had set to destroy the far chamber had barely reached this room. The heat had come close to parboiling her, though, but now she wished for that heat again.

A chill had set in, even through her suit. The stone surfaces leached the warmth from her. The blood loss didn’t help.

Seichan refused to give up. She fingered the broken blade in her hand. She had been picking at the stone block, where the sharpened end of the spear had embedded. If she could dig it free, loosen the shaft…

Rock chips littered the floor. Down there was also the broken hilt to her dagger. It had shattered shortly after she’d started.

All she had left was a three-inch remnant of blade. Her fingers were bloody from the blade and the coarse rock. It was a futile effort.

Cold sweat oiled her face.

Off to the side, a glow grew. She thought it was her imagination. She turned her head. The entry pool was shining. The illumination grew.

The water stirred. Someone was coming.

Seichan clutched the bit of knife — both fearful and hopeful.

Who?

A dark shape splashed up. A diver. The flashlight blinded her as the figure climbed out.

She shadowed her eyes against the sudden brightness and glare.

The diver lowered the flashlight.

Seichan recognized a familiar face as he yanked back his mask and approached. Commander Gray Pierce.

He stepped toward her and lifted a hacksaw. “Let’s talk.”