The Oracle Code

54

“Charon?” Lourds couldn’t believe the being was standing there before him. He tried to get up, but Charon pushed him back down again. He didn’t think he would have made it anyway. His head felt like it was floating off his shoulders.

“Stay there. You will not get away this time.”

Lourds thought of all the ways he had cheated death before, all the narrow escapes he’d had, and he knew that he owed death on several accounts. He had been inordinately lucky. Especially over the past few years.

Now, though, that was over.

Charon stepped into the small chamber with him. The old man’s face was wrinkled and wept blood in places. His lips were so thin that his teeth showed through them.

Only they weren’t teeth. They were fangs.

“Is your friend still alive?” Charon looked down at Fitrat.

“I don’t know.”

“Then maybe I should make sure. To be safe.”

In that moment, Lourds realized that Charon was speaking Russian. “Shouldn’t you be speaking Greek?”

Charon looked at him oddly. “What are you talking about?”

For a moment, another picture overlaid the image of Charon. The other image was a familiar face — the face of the man who had shot Boris Glukov. And he wasn’t holding a pole. He was holding a machine pistol.

“Linko!”

The voice belonged to a young woman. Even Linko heard it. He turned and looked over his shoulder.

There in the doorway, Anna Cherkshan stood looking invincible. She pinned Linko with her gaze. “You murdered me. And for that you’re going to pay.” She took a step toward Linko.

Obviously frightened, Linko swiveled the rifle toward her and brought it up to fire. Without thinking, Lourds launched himself at the man.

Lourds’s momentum knocked them both out of the small chamber. He drove the Russian back against the wall, bounced off of it with him, and spun swiftly to throw his opponent over his hip. Before Linko fell, though, he slammed the rifle butt into the side of Lourds’s head.

Knees buckling, Lourds dropped to the stone floor and tried to stay conscious. Only a few feet away, he watched as Linko pushed himself to his feet. Before he reached a standing position, Linko had once more become Charon.

“Professor Lourds, here.”

Glancing to the side, Lourds saw Anna standing nearby. At her feet was one of Fitrat’s pistols. Lourds lunged for the pistol, hoping that it wasn’t empty. He pulled it up into his fist, taking a firm but loose grip the way he’d trained at the firing range, pointed it at Charon, pulled the trigger, and shot him in his skeletal face.

Lourds fired twice more, and the pistol clicked dry.

The dead body of another man he didn’t recognize lay behind Charon. Another man moved behind them, this one regal and dressed all in black, with a helm that Lourds couldn’t quite identify.

Heart beating wildly, head spinning, Lourds pointed the pistol at the figure.

“Thomas, put the gun down. You are among friends.”

The voice was familiar, and Lourds placed it immediately. “Boris?” He looked around, but his friend wasn’t there.

Then Hades was bending down, plucking the gun from his hand, and smiling. “Well, Professor Lourds, it appears you’ve survived. And you’ve done a task for me that I had promised to do for someone else.”

Only Hades suddenly wasn’t Hades. He was Dmitry Dolgov, the spy from the dig site all those month ago.

“Dmitry?”

“Yes.”

“Captain Fitrat needs help.”

“Then let’s help him.” Dmitry pulled Lourds to his feet, and he stood woozily.

They went back and checked on the Afghan captain and found him unconscious but still breathing.

“I have a corpsman with me, Professor Lourds. We will get this man patched up, and we will get all of you out of here.”

A short time later, Lourds walked with Dmitry as they made their way back through the passageways and out of the caverns. Fitrat needed emergency care. Dmitry had promised a helicopter outside that would take the captain to the nearest hospital.

As they walked, Dmitry explained that he was there to find and kill Linko, but that he could never publicly admit that. There were repercussions that were going to take place in Russia, and Lourds should watch the news.

Lourds had trouble tracking everything Dmitry was saying.

“Are you ill?”

“No.” Lourds shook his head and regretted the action. “There was a chamber in the back of the Oracle room. I think it was set up the same way the Oracle at Delphi was. Over some type of underground gas deposit that causes hallucinations.”

“You have to wonder how they knew to find such a thing.”

“I do.”

“Ancient engineering is always a marvel. I love the Discovery channel.”

Later, they stood outside the well and watched as the emergency helicopter descended from the night with its lights on and landed in a landing site marked by flares that Dmitry’s men had laid out.

Fitrat was loaded onto the helicopter, then Marias.

Dmitry turned to Lourds. “There is still room for you. Perhaps you should get checked out.”

“No. I’m fine. The fresh air is doing a lot to clear my head.” Lourds turned back to the well. “I want to go back down there and go through the rest of that room. We left a lot of scrolls down there.”

“Wait a while, my friend. We are not certain all of Linko’s men are dead. There may still be a few rats to flush out of there.”

Before Lourds could make a reply, a loud rumble came from out of the ground. As he watched, the hill over the passageway crumpled inward.

“No!” Lourds tried to rush forward, impelled by the need to protect his discovery, but Dmitry snaked a strong arm around him and held him back until the earth settled down once more.

Lourds stared in disbelief at the mass of rubble where the well had been.

Standing nearby, Haros looked at him knowingly. “I told you that you weren’t supposed to go in there.”