The Tomb Of Hercules

7 New York City

Nina picked her way as fast as she dared along the dark tunnel, cold water splashing up her legs. From the smell, she assumed that a sewer was leaking into the passage. Every so often she heard flurries of movement-rats scuttling away from her.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been running or how far she’d traveled from City Hall station-only that it wasn’t far enough. While the narrow tunnel twisted, it only went in one direction. Barred gates blocked every side passage, leaving nowhere she could hide from her pursuers.

And they were getting closer. By closing the hatch in the abandoned station she had given herself a little extra time as they checked the stairs… but realizing there was no way out, they hadn’t taken long to guess where she’d gone.

Her arms ached as much as her legs. The book was getting heavier, sharp edges digging into her flesh. But she couldn’t get rid of it even if she wanted to, couldn’t simply drop it so her hunters could take what they were after. It was still locked to her wrist.

Another turn. Nina rounded it, hoping to see an exit, or at least other passages to confuse the men behind her. But there was nothing except more feeble lights on the arched brick ceiling pointing her way further into the darkness.

And more water. The tunnel dipped before leveling out again, the stagnant pool at her feet becoming deeper. Somewhere ahead she could hear a low hiss of flowing water.

Running became harder, a layer of sticky ooze beneath the filthy surface engulfing her feet at each step. It felt like a childhood nightmare come to life, the sensation of trying to run through quicksand.

Her fear rose. The slower she moved, the closer the two men got-and they didn’t need to catch her. Just shoot her.

Gasping for breath, she ran faster, forcing her knees higher as her feet pounded through the sludge. The noise of running water ahead grew louder-as did the splashes from behind.

She didn’t dare look back. Another bend in the tunnel, a faint glow of daylight on the walls as well as the greasy yellow of the bulbs-

One of the sets of chasing footsteps suddenly stopped.

A clear shot-

The flat thumps of the silenced shots were amplified by the confined space, but they were nothing compared to the splintering crack of bullets hitting the walls as Nina threw herself headlong around the corner. Chunks of broken brickwork rained on her as she landed in the disgusting pool.

The firing stopped. She pushed herself up, something awful crunching under one hand in the muck. Cockroaches slithered away from her. The tunnel sloped upwards again, the source of the daylight visible at its end. An opening into a larger chamber.

A way out.

Nina ran up the slope. Water trickled from above the opening. She reached the end-

And grabbed desperately at an overhead pipe as she almost fell down an open shaft.

She hung for a moment, one hand around the pipe and her toes clinging to the edge of the tunnel. Then, very carefully, she shifted her weight and leaned back, wobbling on the brink before regaining her balance.

The tall chamber she had entered was about ten feet across, some sort of sewer shaft. Pipes entered it at various heights and angles, spewing their contents into the void below. The daylight came through grubby glass bricks in the ceiling some forty feet above. As she watched, somebody walked over them, for a moment blotting out the sky.

Rusted rungs protruded from the wall, a ladder leading up to a manhole cover at street level…

A locked manhole cover. Even from this distance, she could see the padlock holding it shut.

She looked down. The rungs descended into the abyss below, but she couldn’t even guess how deep it went. Not that it mattered. Whether she went up or down, the gunmen would reach the end of the tunnel long before she reached either end of the ladder.

But there was something on the other side of the shaft, another passage. The entrance was smaller than the one in which she was standing, but she could see the distant glimmer of a light within. Another way out.

If she could reach it. There was no bridge across the shaft, only the metal pipe above her head-

Nina cradled the heavy book on her shoulder, squeezing it as firmly as she could between her cheek and her upper arm as she reached up and took hold of the pipe with her left hand. Then she stretched out her right hand, took a deep, fearful breath…

And swung out over the shaft.

The book wobbled, threatening to pitch forward. She pushed her face harder against the leather to keep it in place. If the book fell, the jolt when the chain pulled taut would tear her loose.

Gripping the pipe as tightly as she could, she slid her right hand forward by about a foot. Then she jerked her left hand along behind it, a couple of inches at a time, trying to keep the book in position. Its hard edge dug savagely into her shoulder. Another foot, another series of little jerks to catch up…

She heard splashing from the passage behind.

Nina let out a strained gasp as she tried to move faster. The book slipped again. She wrestled it between her head and arm, forcing it back into place. Another foot, then the frantic catch-up, right hand forward once more…

Halfway across. She had no idea when the gunmen would be able to see her hanging there, an unmissable target.

But if they shot her, she would fall into the unknown below, taking the book with her. If the shaft opened into a main sewer line, their prize would be swept away. That might deter them from firing.

Maybe…

Every move made her gasp now, panic rising. A line of pain seared through her shoulder as the book’s brass frame ground into her muscles. Three feet, two, boots clattering up the sloping passage behind her…

Rancid water, and worse, spewed onto her from an outlet above, drenching her hair and clothing. The pipe was slick under her hands. Nina could feel the book shifting, sliding backwards this time. She pushed her cheek against it, trying to hold it in place, but it was moving towards the point of no return.

Less than a foot to go-

The book tipped. Leather rubbed against her face, then the cold edge of its frame. And gone.

It fell, the chain snaking past her head just as she grabbed the edge of the passage with her right hand. Her fingers closed around metal. The sudden weight of the book wrenched her left hand from the pipe-

Her grip on the frame held. Just. Stifling a scream, Nina stretched out one leg and managed to get a toehold on the edge of the low tunnel. The book swung below her like a pendulum. It banged against the side of the shaft, the clasp that held it shut breaking. Every muscle on fire, she hauled herself onto the solid floor of the tunnel entrance, dragging the book with her.

One of the gunmen appeared at the end of the passage opposite, raised his weapon, and pulled the trigger-

Click.

Nothing happened. The Asian man tried again, then pulled out the magazine to examine it and shouted what she was certain was an obscenity. Out of ammo.

The ponytailed man appeared behind him. He snapped out an order. The first man gave him a dubious look, then reached up to grab the overhead pipe.

Nina turned to run. The man swung out over the shaft-

The end of the pipe sheared off from the wall.

With a piercing scream, he plunged down the shaft and disappeared into the darkness, the pipe breaking loose at its other end and falling after him. The splash from below took longer to arrive than Nina expected.

She looked back at the ponytailed man, who seemed more annoyed than shocked by the death of his associate. His eyes locked on to hers. Apparently he too was out of ammo. With no way across the shaft, the chase was over.

“Say hi to the C.H.U.D.s for me!” said Nina, slamming the book closed and hurrying down the passage.

She got about ten feet before hearing movement behind her.

She looked around to see the man leap across the shaft, coat billowing like a cape. Arms outstretched, he slammed against the lip of the passage, grunting at the impact before gripping the metal frame and pulling himself up.

“Oh, shit!” She ran again, more terrified than ever. The dim maintenance lights whipped past just overhead. This passage, while more confined than the last, was at least dry, and she could hear something else ahead, a familiar sound-the rumble and clatter of a passing train. She was rejoining the subway tunnels.

The lights brightened, the cold blue of fluorescents shining on concrete walls. She emerged in a rectangular chamber, more tunnels leading off in different directions. After the darkness of the passage, the glare was almost blinding. Bare walls, service access for the subway-with an open elevator.

Nina threw herself into the cramped car and hammered at the topmost button on the control panel, waiting for the doors to close. It took her a moment to realize that she had to close the old-fashioned cage gates herself. She grabbed the handles of the outer doors and dragged them together, the concertina-like metal framework clashing shut.

Fang burst out of the tunnel and ran straight at her. He had something in his hands, a black cane, one hand whipping back-

She slammed the inner gate. A motor whined.

He thrust his hand at Nina, a silver line stabbing between the bars of the gate. She instinctively raised the book like a shield-

Tchink!

The sword blade went right through the book, effortlessly piercing leather and metal and glass and parchment.

And clothing.

And flesh.

Nina was slammed against the back wall of the little elevator, the book pressed against her chest. She let out an almost silent gasp, mouth open in a stunned O as she looked down.

The pointed tip of the sword blade was stuck in her chest, right over her heart…

But only the tip. The book had taken the brunt of the blow, only a centimeter of sharpened metal making it all the way through to bury itself in her left breast.

Nina forced the book away from her body. The sword’s tip slid free. A circle of blood swelled around the cut in her blouse, pain now searing through her shock.

Fang drew his sword hand back sharply, almost tearing the book from Nina’s grip. The text dropped heavily to the floor, more glass cracking. With the clasp broken, the book swung open as the blade withdrew.

The elevator started to ascend.

Fang snatched his sword clear and grasped the near edge of the open book with his free hand, standing the whole thing on its end and pulling it towards him. The two halves of the outer gate sprang apart, forced open by the book as it rose between them.

The chain around Nina’s wrist pulled tight. Fang only needed to bring the book a few inches closer before it dropped over the edge of the elevator’s floor and the chain was severed by the approaching ceiling-

Despite her pain, Nina grabbed the chain with both hands and hauled with all her strength. “Screw-you!”

Still on its end, the book slid back just as it reached the ceiling-

The elevator continued relentlessly upwards, the edge of the ceiling slicing downwards through the metal spine of the book like a guillotine blade. With a crunch, the volume was ripped in two. Nina fell back and banged her head as her half broke free. The chamber below, and her enemy, disappeared from view.

Dizzy, she shoved herself into a sitting position. The patch of blood on her chest was about the size of her palm, slowly spreading through the sodden material. She pressed a hand against it, wincing. The wound hurt like hell, but didn’t seem to be life-threatening.

Other things were, however. She might have briefly escaped her pursuer, but she still wasn’t safe. There was a flight of stairs alongside the elevator-he was probably running up them already.

Nina scooped up the loose pieces of the book, then dragged herself to her feet as the upper floor slid into view. The elevator came to a stop. She threw the doors open and rushed out, hearing the ponytailed man pounding up the stairs.

She spotted a door along the corridor, a fire exit, and burst through it to find herself at the end of a subway platform. Canal Street, one stop north of Brooklyn Bridge station. She’d run much farther than she realized, several blocks.

But she didn’t care, because all that mattered was the train at the platform, doors open-

She ran into the nearest car, looking back at the fire door. Her attacker could appear at any moment.

The doors began to groan shut.

The fire exit flew open. The ponytailed man barreled onto the platform and ran at the train. His sword flashed again-

The doors slammed closed.

Nina jumped back with a shriek as the sword sliced through the rubber seal between the doors. The train started moving. Fang ran alongside, glaring at Nina, then was forced to admit defeat and pull out his blade before the accelerating train tore it from his grip. A few seconds later, he vanished from sight as the train entered the tunnel.

She let out a long breath of relief, then turned to see that she had an audience. The other occupants of the car were staring at her. Even by the blasé standards of New Yorkers, a soaking, bloodied, slime-covered woman being chased on to a train by a man wielding a sword was hard to ignore.

“Hi,” Nina said wearily, holding up the book. “Overdue. The guy didn’t want to pay his fine.” A couple of people chuckled. She slumped into a seat, belatedly realizing that the man next to her was her erstwhile Good Samaritan from the street near the Brotherhood’s safe house. “Oh, hey, you again,” she said to him, shaking something out from inside the sleeve of her ruined Armani jacket. “Can you hold this for me?”

He looked at the cockroach she’d just deposited in his hands with utter horror, then threw it onto the floor and hurriedly found a new seat as far away from her as possible. Nina shot him a tired, sarcastic smile, then examined what was left of the book.

The front cover was missing, as were several folios. She quickly checked the remainder, splinters of cracked glass tinkling out as she turned the pages. She realized that her attacker now had the first four sheets of parchment, almost a fifth of the whole thing.

She had copies of the text, of course. But clearly there was something that could only be learned from the original, just as she’d thought-otherwise why go to such extreme lengths to steal it?

That was something she could figure out later, however. Right now, she needed to reach somewhere safe, where she could get first aid.

And have a very long shower.

Popadopoulos soundlessly opened and closed his mouth like a fish as Nina spread out what was left of the book containing the ancient dialogue of Hermocrates on her office desk. Pieces of broken glass spilled from the bent frames. “This-this-this is a catastrophe!” he finally managed to say.

Nina scowled. “I’m fine, thank you.” It was now evening, most of her day having been spent in a police station trying to explain the events that had left several men dead in a downtown office building, and three more burned, crushed or drowned in New York’s subways and sewers. “By the way, our ponytailed pal now has the first four pages.” She picked through the book to show him the missing section, more smashed glass crunching. “I don’t suppose you have any idea who he was or who he works for?”

“I was about to ask you that very question!” said the little historian, flustered. “I have no idea! The only person I have dealt with directly about the Hermocrates parchments…is you.” He regarded her with sudden suspicion from behind his glasses. “Perhaps this is all your doing, hmm? Hmm?”

Nina rubbed her temples in exasperation. “Yeah, because whenever I hire a gang of psychos to steal ancient documents, I also ask them to try to kill me!”

“You survived.”

“So did you!” She regarded him quizzically, arching an eyebrow. “Anyway, how did you survive? What happened to you?”

“Let us not speak of that,” Popadopoulos said hurriedly. He bent down, lowering Nina’s desk lamp to illuminate one of the pages. “Oh, no, no! Look! The parchment has been damaged!” He indicated the vertical slit made by the blade.

“It’s like that on every page, I’m afraid. It got skewered by a sword.” Popadopoulos’s eyes widened. Nina continued before he could express his outrage. “And be glad it did, because if it hadn’t, I’d be dead and our friend would have the entire thing.”

Popadopoulos’s expression suggested he was weighing the pros and cons of that particular scenario. “None of this would have happened if you hadn’t insisted on removing the text from my archive in Rome,” he finally said, turning the page over. The sheet of glass backing it broke into pieces and fell onto the desk. Nina gingerly lifted the shards away from the fragile parchment as he examined the blank side of the page for more signs of damage. “Such a thing would never have happened there, no, no, no.”

Nina was about to ask if he was sure about that when Hector Amoros entered the office. “Nina! Mr. Popadopoulos! I’m glad you’re both all right.”

“Thanks. One of us is too,” she replied. Popadopoulos pursed his lips in annoyance, then continued his careful survey of the pages beneath the lamp.

“How are you feeling?” Amoros asked.

“Like I’ve been stuck with about fifty injections of antibiotics. I think I’ll live, though.”

“That’s a relief. It turns out you’re not the only member of the IHA who’s been involved in an… incident today.” He looked at Popadopoulos. “Mr. Popadopoulos, could I ask you to wait outside, just for a moment? I need to discuss something with Dr. Wilde in private.”

“Don’t worry, I’m not going to jump out the window with it again,” Nina said, gesturing at the scattered pages on the desk. Popadopoulos harrumphed, then left the room. She looked back at Amoros. “What do you mean?”

“I just got off the phone with Eddie.”

“What?” Nina said, suddenly concerned. She’d all but forgotten him in the chaos of the day. “What happened? Is he okay?”

“He’s fine. He’s on his way back to New York right now; he called from the plane. He’s been trying to contact you all day, actually.”

Nina glanced at the phone on her desk, noticing for the first time that its message light was flashing. “Oh… Well, I did kind of have other things on my mind.”

“Indeed.” Amoros rubbed a thumb through his salt-and-pepper beard thoughtfully. “You said that the men who attacked you today were Chinese?”

“East Asian, certainly. I didn’t have a chance to check their passports.” The link struck her. “Wait, you think there’s some connection between them and Eddie going to China?”

“Eddie went to Shanghai,” Amoros explained, “because he said he had a lead regarding the sinking of the SBX rig at Atlantis three months ago.”

“What kind of lead?”

“Some classified IHA files were downloaded from the rig via its satellite link just before it capsized. Eddie says he has copies of those files. They included information about the lost Plato texts,” he nodded at the pages on the desk, “and IHA personnel files. Eddie’s…and yours.”

Nina felt a chill. “You’re saying the rig was deliberately sunk? And that it’s got something to do with what just happened to me?”

“There might be a connection, yes. What it is, we don’t know yet… but I assure you, we’re going to do our damnedest to find out. If someone was willing to kill everybody aboard the rig just to cover up stealing our files, it must be for something big.”

“Jesus.” Nina went back to her desk and leaned against it, shaken. “Where did Eddie get these files? Who had them?”

Amoros’s face became more grim. “According to Eddie, Richard Yuen.”

“What?” She remembered him from the party aboard René Corvus’s yacht. Arrogant, smug, cocky, overbearing… but she hadn’t imagined he might also be a killer.

“We’re going to get to the bottom of this, Nina, don’t worry. But there’s not much I can do until I see the files for myself.”

“So when will Eddie get back?”

“Sometime early in the morning, around five a.m. He’s going to come straight here.”

“Right.” She remembered something Amoros had told her earlier. “Wait, when you said he’d been involved in an incident…”

“The important thing is that he’s fine,” Amoros quickly assured her. “And so are you. And you still have the Plato text.”

“Most of it,” she reminded him glumly.

“What do you want to do with it?”

“I think Pops out there wants to bundle it up and jump straight on a plane back to Rome,” said Nina, gesturing at the door. “But we need to keep it safe, until we can find out why Yuen’s willing to kill to find out the location of the Tomb of Hercules.”

“We don’t know for sure that it’s Yuen behind this,” Amoros pointed out.

“Eddie seems to think so.”

“Let’s wait until we get all the facts before we start making any accusations. Especially against one of the IHA’s own directors.” He headed for the door. “I’ll go find Popadopoulos, try to convince him to let us keep hold of the text for now.”

“Thanks,” said Nina. He nodded and left the room. She sighed, suddenly feeling more exhausted than ever. What the hell had Chase been up to in Shanghai?

She sniffed. There was an odd smell, and it wasn’t her-

“Shit!” Nina whipped around to see that one of the pieces of parchment was still directly beneath the hood of her lamp, the leathery sheet beginning to shrivel under the heat from the bulb.

She snatched the lamp away, flapping a hand and blowing on the ancient document to cool it. Her heart raced in panic at the thought of the text going up in smoke right there on her desk, but to her enormous relief it had survived, if more crinkled than before. The smell wasn’t burning…

So what was it?

The odor was faint but somehow familiar, a sharp, sour tang that some part of her mind immediately associated with the kitchen. Like vinegar, or lemon juice…

Nina clapped a hand to her mouth, muffling a “Whoa!” as she realized the significance of the scent. She brought the lamp back down, warming the blank side of the parchment.

Faint brown marks slowly appeared. At a casual glance they seemed unremarkable, nothing more than random stains and scribbles. But Nina knew that the mere fact they had been hidden meant there was far more to them.

She picked up the parchment and shook off the remaining splinters of glass. Then she turned to the other pages…

Popadopoulos reentered the office. “Dr. Wilde, I-Aah!” He froze, mouth goldfishing again as he saw Nina smashing open the frames and plucking the fragile pages from the broken glass. “What are you doing? You, you-lunatic vandal woman!”

Nina held up a hand to shut him up. “The backs of the parchments,” she said, speaking as rapidly as her mind was working. “Nobody ever examined them before, right?”

“There was nothing to examine! They are blank!”

“Oh yeah?” She showed him the page on which the markings had appeared. His flustered horror suddenly became fascination. “You agreed it was unusual that only one side of the parchment was used, right? But all the centuries that the Brotherhood had Hermocrates in its archives, nobody ever thought to ask why. Well, I’ll tell you why.” All the pages now removed from the glass, Nina used the edge of a plastic binder to sweep the broken fragments aside before laying out the pieces of parchment on her desk, facedown. “Because Plato wanted to use the backs of the pages for something else! Look!” She lowered the lamp over a different part of the first page. More markings faded into view. “He drew something in invisible ink!”

“My God!” Popadopoulos exclaimed, hunching down and staring intently at the page.

“Invisible ink,” Nina said again, with a slightly accusatory, mocking tone. “One of the oldest tricks ever invented for concealing information…and the Brotherhood never once thought to check for it in over two thousand years.”

“Our purpose was to keep knowledge of Atlantis out of the hands of others,” Popadopoulos sniffed, “not go treasure-hunting for unrelated Greek myths.” He carefully moved the parchment around under the lamp, searching for more hidden markings. “How long will the ink remain visible?”

“I don’t know-it might be permanent, or it might fade again once it cools. Either way, I’ll make sure everything’s photographed.” She tipped her head to one side. “That’s odd.”

“What?”

“Whatever this is meant to show, it looks as though it’s been cut off.” She pointed at a particular area near the center of the page. “See? All the marks suddenly stop along a straight line, as though… as though another page had been laid on top of it!” She slid the edge of another sheet of parchment over the first to demonstrate. “We need more lights.”

Nina ran from the room, soon returning with two more lamps swiped from nearby offices. She plugged them in and placed them on her desk. “Warm them all up. We need to see the markings on every page.”

It took several minutes, but with the help of Popadopoulos each of the parchments was given the same impromptu heat treatment as the first. They all turned out to have faint marks hidden on them. “I can’t tell what it is meant to represent,” Popadopoulos complained, stepping back to get an overview of the whole collection.

“I can,” Nina told him. “Or at least, what it’s going to be. Look at this.” She indicated a group of small symbols on one page. “These are Greek letters-the bottom halves of Greek letters, at least. And the top halves are…” She searched the other pages, spotting more symbols along the edge of a different sheet. When they were brought together, the symbols matched up perfectly to form a word-βoθvó. Mountain. “The whole thing’s a map! It’s like a jigsaw-all we have to do is put it together and it’ll tell us how to find the Tomb of Hercules!”

Popadopoulos regarded the parchments in disbelief. “But that would mean…”

“The clue was right there, all along! ‘For even a man who cannot see may know the path when he turns his empty face to the warmth of the sun’! Empty face-blank page! Critias must have told Plato how to find the Tomb, but for whatever reason they wanted to obfuscate the details-maybe they didn’t want Plato’s students to run off and raid the place. So when Plato dramatized what he’d been told into the dialogue of Hermocrates, he put hints on how to find the map within the text itself-and hid the actual map right there on the master transcript!”

“Only for the ancient Brotherhood of Selasphoros to steal it,” mused Popadopoulos. “All they cared about was suppressing the section of the dialogue concerning Atlantis, but they never realized how much else was in it…”

“But now we do,” Nina reminded him. “Let’s put it all together.”

It took some time to assemble the puzzle, the faintness of the markings and damage to parts of the pages obscuring details, but eventually they succeeded. Mostly.

“Bollocks!” Nina burst out. Popadopoulos gave her a strange look. She blushed. “That’s, er, something I picked up from my boyfriend. He’s British. But look, we’re missing a whole section of the map.”

The assemblage of pages looked almost random, sheets of parchment overlaid upon one another at different angles, some nearly hidden under two or three others. But the image that was revealed was clear enough. It was a map, a path leading to a representation of a mountain annotated with a single Greek word.

Hρακλεφ. Heracles. Hercules.

The Tomb of Hercules. It existed, was an actual, physical place. Nina felt a surge of adrenaline at the sight. She’d been right.

But it was impossible to reach…

“I see,” said Popadopoulos, examining the map. “This river, it curves and twists as it widens, as if it is about to reach the sea. But… no sea.”

“The coastline,” Nina moaned. “The map of the coastline’s on the other pages, the ones we don’t have. And if we don’t have the coastline to use as a point of reference, there’s no way we can find the Tomb!”

“There is one good thing, though, hmm?”

“What?”

“Whoever stole the other pages cannot find the Tomb either!”

“You have a point.” Nina looked back at the map. So close to finding what she was looking for, yet she couldn’t take the very first step… “I’ll photograph this, make sure all the details are recorded.”

“Good! Then I can arrange for the return of what is left of the text to my archive, yes?” asked Popadopoulos hopefully.

Nina considered this. “Not yet,” she said, ignoring the historian’s glower. “I still think there’s more to it. There are other phrases in the text that Plato seems to have left as clues, like he did about the map. But I’m sure I’ll need the original copy of the text to work them out.”

Popadopoulos growled in frustration. “Very well, Dr. Wilde, very well. The parchments are already so badly damaged they will be difficult to preserve… But I do not see how you will be able to find the Tomb even if you do decipher other clues. You are still missing several pages.”

“Then we have to get them back.” Nina set her jaw in determination. “I already think I know who’s got them. We go after him and get them back.”

“Assuming,” Popadopoulos warned, “that he doesn’t come after you first.”