The King's Tomb

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Dozing on the rear seat of the Suburban, Hawke tipped his head back and closed his eyes but stayed tuned to the conversation going on around him. It felt good to have the team working together like this, but they still had problems. Elysium had to be restored if they were going to have a proper center of operations again, but while the Oracle was alive there was little point in spending time and money on something he could so easily destroy.

And then there was his private life. Lea had forgiven him, but their break up had made him rethink the marriage proposal. He was still carrying the engagement ring in his gear bag, but he was no longer sure it was the best for the two of them. Still haunted by the memories of his wife’s murder and getting along so well with her without a ring on her finger, he started to think it was best to leave things as they were.

Lexi yawned. “How long till we get to Amphipolis?”

“One hour forty,” Ryan said without hesitation. “Just checked it out on the satnav.”

“Bummer the place doesn’t have an airport,” Scarlet sighed.

“Yes,” Ryan replied. “How ignorant the ancient Greeks were, not providing an airport for you to land your private jet in.”

She raised her middle finger. “Spin on it, Jemima.”

Hawke said, “Pull it together everyone. Thanks to Ryan deciphering the shield back in the tunnel we know where the tomb is located, but the Oracle knows too. We have the sword but he has the shield. All bets are off as to how this thing ends.”

Lea tied her hair back and blew out a deep breath. “And this is the Oracle we’re talking about. Remember that. This is a man who controls presidents and prime ministers. For all we know he’s already tracking us or something. Probably has an army of Athanatoi cultists waiting for us at the tomb.”

Kim gave a heavy sigh. “This is starting to feel like I don’t have a life anymore,” she said. “Before all this my life had structure. I had a career — the CIA and US Secret Service. I knew where I was from and where I was heading, but this is different. Maybe you Special Forces guys are used to all these crazy deployments and fights without rules, but I’m not sure I can handle it anymore and I miss my friends back in the States like crazy.”

“I understand what you’re saying,” Lea smiled, but then concern and sympathy twisted her lips. “But it’s not so great out there either.” She nodded with her head toward the car window. “We’re a family here and that’s something most of us just don’t have anywhere else in the world.”

“I get that, but don’t you ever get tired of this life?”

“Sure, but I can’t stop until I know what happened to my father and I’ve punished those responsible for his death. Until that day comes, I’ll never give up.”

A long silence passed and then Hawke spoke up. “So where are we on this tomb, Ryan?”

“Since we got the location of the tomb off the shield, I’ve been looking into the area in a lot of detail. It’s near a site called the Kasta Tomb. This was first discovered back in 2014 by archaeologists and it immediately raised eyebrows all over the world because of the hype surrounding the possibility of it being the location of Alexander the Great’s tomb. Since its initial discovery much more evidence has been found suggesting strong links between the tomb site and Alexander.”

“Such as?” Kim asked.

“Such as certain inscriptions which imply Hephaestion, one of Alexander’s top generals and advisors is buried there, for one thing. Another is the grandness of the place. There are two enormous sphinxes made of marble guarding the tomb’s main entrance and some archaeologists say there’s a good chance the entire complex was designed by King Alexander’s chief architect, a man named Dimocrates, sometimes known as Dinocrates of Rhodes. All of this means they think they might have found the tomb of Alexander the Great, but only we know it.”

“Thanks to the sword and shield,” Devlin said.

“Exactly,” said Ryan. “Now we know that they’re digging in roughly the right place, but not deep enough and slightly to the west of the actual site of his tomb. With the information we have now we should be able to locate the tomb precisely.”

“These little quests just keep dragging us deeper and deeper down the rabbit hole,” Lexi said quietly from the Chevy’s second row near the front. “Idols, maps, treasure hunts, immortal men, cults, secrets and lies. We’re so deep now we might never get out again.” Her tortured hand was hidden inside a leather glove which she tried to keep out of sight as much as possible.

Hawke considered her words as he let Camacho’s smooth driving whisk them around the northern shores of the Strymonian Gulf. Part of the Aegean Sea, it was a world of olive tree-covered peninsulas stretching into the sparkling turquoise water and cirrus cloud-streaked skies.

Deeper into the rabbit hole.

He nodded with the thought and found himself working his way through all the men and women he’d been forced to take out on this crazy journey. Hugo Zaugg and his depraved henchman, the one-eyed Baumann. Sheng Fang and his insane belief that he was the Thunder God. Maxim Vetrov and his crocodile pit. Klaus Kiefel’s masterplan to wipe out the United States with an ancient bio weapon. Álvaro Sala and his crazy pursuit of the elixir of life to the very ends of the world. Morton Wade and his Mexican coffee plantation full of slaves… It almost seemed like a dream now, unreal and impossible.

And yet it was real.

And so were Dirk Kruger and the sick and twisted man who pulled his strings, the Oracle. Thousands of years old, was he a man or a god? A demigod? This creature who had been tormenting them for so long could be either and it drove him mad just to think about it. He glanced forward to the next row where Lea was sleeping.

If it felt like he was losing his mind in all this, then he couldn’t imagine what it was doing to her. This man Wolff, the Oracle, had ordered the murder of her father and had him slaughtered right in front of her eyes. If anyone here deserved closure from this nightmare, then it was her and he was going to make damned sure she got it, no matter what it took.

He looked down at his watch and sighed when he saw the shattered face. He’d smashed it on the rocks back at the Parthenon and broken it. He took it off and slipped it into his bag down at the bottom near the engagement ring. It was a present his mother gave him on his pass out parade. A long time ago now, to be certain and he would get it repaired as soon as some degree of sanity returned to his turbulent life.

Beside him, Reaper pushed his window open and fired up a cigarette. Some of the smoke blew back into the SUV, but no one complained. They were all smokers or ex-smokers of one thing or another and they let him enjoy the thing in peace. It settled the nerves, he said and Scarlet lit one up to join him.

“Just imagine,” Devlin said quietly. “Finally finding the tomb of Alexander the Great after all this time…”

Ryan turned around in his seat and faced the back. “Tell me about it. Archaeologists and historians have been searching for the tomb of Alexander the Great for centuries, hoping to find not only artefacts and relics relating to his life and conquests but also the vast amount of treasure he’s generally supposed to be have been buried with.”

Lea opened her eyes and sighed. “We want the idols,” she said bitterly. “Just the idols.”