Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth

18

Turbulence jostled Drake from an unsettling dream. He had been standing in the rain at Sully’s funeral, the only person without a black umbrella. Among the sea of faces he could see through the veil of dream and rain were many of the less savory characters he and Sully had encountered over the years. Thieves and cutthroats, smugglers and corrupt politicians-all of them had gathered to pay their respects. Jada stood by the grave, her magenta bangs now dyed a bloody crimson, and the priest who stood at the head of the gathering, one hand on the coffin, was Luka Hzujak.

The priest had looked at him, dry beneath his huge black umbrella.

“When you lie down with snakes, you’ve gotta learn to hiss,” the priestly Luka had said, his voice like a whisper in Drake’s ear. “But that doesn’t mean you have to slither.”

He had laughed then, and the entire gathering of mourners had laughed with him, their voices the shush of rain pattering on umbrellas. Drake, soaked to the skin, had not found it funny. Sully had used that line about snakes with him ten years earlier, the morning they had paid a ship’s captain in Valparaiso to carry them and their cargo home to the States. The man had had a huge cache of drugs on board, also headed for the USA, and Drake had needed to be persuaded not to throw them overboard. Sully had reminded him that if they didn’t want the captain to interfere in their business, they couldn’t interfere with his.

When he woke from the dream, he found Tyr Henriksen watching him.

Drake sat up, groggily reaching for his gun.

Henriksen nodded. “It’s all right, Mr. Drake. Your weapon is still there and still loaded.”

Drake’s hand closed on the butt of the gun, but he didn’t take it out of his waistband. The guttural drone of the engine made him blink, and only as he glanced around did he remember that they were on an airplane chartered by Henriksen for the journey from Greece to China. Out the oval window beyond Henriksen the sky was dark. He wasn’t sure how long they had been flying or how long he’d been sleeping, but it was still night.

The plane Henriksen had chartered was of a sort he rarely had been inside: a private jet with seating for twelve in the center and a cabin for business in the rear, complete with a narrow conference table. Henriksen, Olivia, and Corelli had been in the back when Drake had fallen asleep, and it disconcerted him to wake with the man studying him as if he were some kind of exotic pet.

“You slept soundly,” Henriksen said. “You snore.”

“Back off, pal. You’re freaking me out.”

Feeling something sticky on his chin, Drake wiped his mouth and realized he had been so deeply asleep that he had been drooling a little. Henriksen had had the good grace not to mention it.

“I guess I was more tired than I thought,” Drake said.

Henriksen leaned back in his seat. “We all were. I dozed for several hours myself. Jada is still sleeping.”

Drake craned his neck to look back along the aisle and saw her stretched out in her wide, fully reclined seat, a blanket over her. She looked peaceful, and Drake felt happy for her. Peace had been hard for Jada to come by of late. Only sleep offered any respite from her grief and the fears and tensions of recent days. Olivia and Corelli were nowhere to be seen, which he assumed meant they were still in the rear cabin. Whether they had gotten any sleep, he didn’t know. Not that he had a lot of concern for their well-being.

“How much longer?” Drake asked, sitting up straight.

He had fallen asleep so quickly that he hadn’t even taken the trouble to recline his seat completely, and now his back ached from slouching in the chair for so long.

“We have several hours yet,” Henriksen replied.

When he shifted in the seat, he winced, and Drake realized that the knife wound was bothering him badly. Corelli had stitched him up, and it seemed their first aid kit had included some serious painkillers, but if Henriksen had taken anything, Drake hadn’t seen him do it.

After escaping from the labyrinth beneath the Goulas in Akrotiri village, they all had spent a little time recovering and letting their clothes drip-dry on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff not far from the village. Getting topside had been a time-consuming process. Drake had hoped the taxi that had dropped him and Jada off in the morning would be there waiting, but night had fallen by the time they returned to the village, and he and Jada had reluctantly accepted a ride back to their hotel from Henriksen. They had ridden in relative silence, all the suspicion and ill will poisoning the air in the limousine.

Drake and Jada had returned to the suite, entering with guns drawn, just in case the hooded men were waiting. Not that Drake had believed they would be. All they seemed to want was for everyone to stop searching for the fourth labyrinth, and now that they realized Henriksen and Jada were both on the verge of locating it, Drake figured they would retreat and just wait. He wondered how many killers would be waiting for them when they got to China.

They had showered and put on clean clothes, then packed up what little they had. Without a word, Jada had put all of Sully’s things in his duffel, including the sweater he’d bought when they had shopped the night before. Neither one of them was willing even to consider the possibility that he wouldn’t have need of the contents of that duffel again.

A door clicked open at the rear of the passenger cabin. Drake turned and saw Corelli poke his head through.

“Mr. Henriksen,” the short man said. “Olivia has something you’re going to want to hear.”

Drake frowned, turning to Henriksen, who popped up from his seat with the exuberance of a child.

“Well?” he said, turning to Drake. “Are you coming?”

“What is it?” Drake asked, still not completely awake. The echoes of his dream had lingered like cobwebs in his mind.

“I’m going to guess it’s a translation of all the ancient Chinese back in that chamber,” Henriksen said. “Or don’t you want to know if my people have figured out the location of the fourth labyrinth?”

Drake stretched and started to rise. “I’m coming.”

Henriksen went on without him, hurrying excitedly to the back of the plane and slipping through the door to the rear cabin. As Drake watched him go, a voice from his dream came back to him.

You’ve gotta learn to hiss, but that doesn’t mean you have to slither.

He crouched to shake Jada awake. When he saw that she had been drooling as well, he smiled and used the edge of his shirt cuff to wipe her mouth.

“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”

She blinked and then sat up quickly, pulling away from him in a tangle of blanket, eyes wide. For a second she seemed almost not to recognize him, and then she relaxed, remembering where she was and how she had gotten there.

“Bad dreams?” he asked.

“No. Good ones,” she replied, but she didn’t elaborate. Jada glanced around. “And now I wake up to the nightmare.”

Drake nodded, giving her a moment to come more fully awake. Then he hooked his thumb toward the rear of the plane.

“Henriksen just went into the back. I guess Olivia’s got something new.”

At the mention of her stepmother’s name, Jada’s eyes darkened. She didn’t bother using the control to put her seat upright, just shoved the blanket aside and joined Drake in the aisle. She ran her fingers through her sleep-mussed hair and nodded to him, then led the way to the door to the rear cabin.

Jada didn’t knock, just opened the door and stepped through.

Olivia and Corelli were seated at the narrow conference table and glanced up from the laptop open in front of them when Jada and Drake entered the cabin. Henriksen had expected them and did not bother to turn away; he stood over the nearer end of the table, studying one of the maps Luka had left with his journal for Jada to find. Drake knew the sight must have given Jada pause-her father had hidden his research to keep it out of Henriksen’s hands, and now she had handed the journal and maps over to the man who’d been his rival. It had been the right choice at the time, the only choice-they had more dangerous enemies to be wary of-but Drake could tell the decision didn’t sit right with Jada at all.

Drake had no doubt they would come to regret it. The only question was when that moment would arrive and whether they would be ready for it.

“What’ve you got?” Jada asked, staring at her stepmother. Henriksen might be Olivia’s boss, but when the two women were in the same room, the bitterness and tension existed for the two of them alone.

Olivia smiled thinly. Either she had wearied of her stepdaughter’s hatred and suspicion or she had decided it was time to stop pretending she gave a crap what Jada thought. Whatever happened now, it was all business. They shared certain goals-all of them-and for the moment that was enough to keep them cooperating.

“Quite a lot, actually,” Olivia said. “Why don’t you have a seat.”

Drake waited for a cue from Jada, wondering if she might refuse to sit. But she hesitated for only a moment before sliding into one of the remaining chairs around the table. Drake sat next to her, glancing for a moment at the large screen at the rear of the cabin, which flickered with blank light. The monitor was on but displayed nothing at the moment.

“Are we gonna have a slide show?” he asked. “Fair warning, I tend to fall asleep. Unless it’s the one on fire safety. I like the sirens. And the Dalmatian.”

Henriksen shot him a disapproving glance, and Corelli scoffed like a man about to start a fight in a bar. The women ignored them all. Jada stared impatiently at Olivia, who tapped a couple of keys on the laptop. The plane’s engine whined loudly enough that they had to raise their voices slightly to be heard, and the pungent smell of urine and industrial cleanser came from the bathroom. Drake figured no amount of money could build an airplane without those two elements, but wealthy people liked to pretend they didn’t notice them. The thought crystallized a feeling he’d had in the back of his mind all day: Henriksen was a brat, just a spoiled rich kid grown up into a spoiled rich man. He wanted the secrets and treasures of the fourth labyrinth because he liked to own things that nobody else could have.

“Phoenix Innovations employs a man named Emil Yablonski,” Olivia said. “Yablonski is the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, but he’s almost incapable of functioning socially. He’s a historian and archaeologist, but he hadn’t done fieldwork in more than twenty years. He doesn’t mind e-mail or even the phone, but he doesn’t like talking to people in person. He’d rather you be in the next room than in his office.”

Henriksen waved a hand to indicate she should move along. He slipped into a chair, though still studying the map unfolded in front of him.

“They don’t care about Yablonski,” Henriksen said. “The guy works for me, and I don’t care, either.” He shot a look at Jada. “Part of my company is a think tank. Yablonski has his own division. Now we move on.”

Olivia smiled at her employer, but there were sharp edges to her expression and it was clear she didn’t like being spoken to so brusquely. Drake couldn’t muster much sympathy.

“Yablonski is practically paralyzed with geek joy over the information he’s getting from these translations,” Olivia said. “His exact words were, ‘This changes everything.’ Frankly, I think that’s a rash overstatement. The ancient Chinese writing on the walls and on the ceremonial jars clarifies certain things, confirms others, and gives us some vital clues as to our next step.

“We start with Daedalus. With the writings from the three chambers in the labyrinth of Sobek for comparison, Yablonski has confirmed that Daedalus designed the first three-Knossos, Crocodilopolis, and Thera-though if you want to refer to the Thera structure as the labyrinth of Atlantis, it would make Yablonski very happy.”

“He really thinks Atlantis was there?” Drake asked.

Olivia shot him a withering look, cold and beautiful. “Atlantis is a myth, Mr. Drake. The labyrinth of Poseidon on Thera is the seed from which the roots of that myth grew.”

“Are you saying Daedalus didn’t design the fourth labyrinth?” Jada asked.

Olivia arched an eyebrow. “Someone was listening. Let me back up, though. The temple at Knossos was built around 1700 B.C., the same era in which the Egyptians built Crocodile City. But what’s become clear here is that these cities were already under way or already built by the time the labyrinths were constructed. We’re putting our best guess at around 1550 B.C. Knossos came first. Daedalus tried to impress Minos-or Midas-in order to win his approval so that he could marry Ariadne. But one entire wall of the Chinese worship chamber on Thera is given over to telling the story, and it’s clear that Daedalus only met Ariadne when he went to the king with his plans to build the labyrinth.”

Henriksen grunted. “The labyrinth came first.”

Olivia nodded. “It did.”

“So what was Daedalus? The traveling inventor?” Drake asked. “He just wandered around the ancient world saying, ‘Hey, want me to build you something cool?’ ”

“He was an alchemist, of course,” Olivia said, her smile genuine for once.

“That’s crap,” Jada snorted.

Corelli hit a key on the laptop, and an image appeared on the monitor screen on the rear wall of the cabin, showing several paintings and a lot of ancient Chinese characters.

“The people who wrote this disagree,” Corelli said.

Drake stared at him. “Relax, junior. The grown-ups are talking.”

Corelli froze, his features practically turning to stone. For a moment, Drake thought he might lunge across the table or pull a weapon, but then Olivia put a firm hand on his arm and he relaxed, forcing a smile.

“Go on, then. Why don’t you tell me what it says?” Corelli said.

Drake shrugged. “It’s all chicken scratches to me,” he said, looking back at Olivia. “But I know a little bit about alchemists. You can’t make gold.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Henriksen said. He pointed to the screen. “They believed it could be done, and they believed Daedalus could do it.”

Olivia leaned back in her chair. “Exactly.”

“So Daedalus was a snake-oil salesman,” Jada said. “He didn’t fulfill a need; he invented it.”

Drake glanced down at Luka Hzujak’s journal, which had been in the center of the table since they’d entered. He picked it up and flipped to the first maze sketches he found, and then he looked up at Jada, ignoring the others.

“Your father had figured that part out, I think.”

“Why do you say that?” Olivia asked.

Drake ignored her, opened the book, and leaned over to show Jada a page where Luka had titled one maze drawing “The Labyrinth of Anygod.”

Jada’s eyes were bright as she lifted her gaze. “He knew.” She looked at Olivia and Corelli and then turned to Henriksen. “Daedalus went to the kings and high priests with the labyrinth design and claimed he could make them all as much gold as they could ever want. And he promised them that the labyrinth would be the perfect treasury, a place for them to store their own gold where it could never be stolen.”

“And then he stole it,” Drake said, grinning. “The lovable bastard.”

“You can’t know that,” Olivia sniffed.

“Sure we can,” Drake said. “It makes sense. Dionysus, Poseidon-Sobek? The crocodile god? Daedalus would dedicate his labyrinth to whichever god was best loved where he wanted to build. Real estate developers do basically the same thing every damn day.”

Olivia and Henriksen studied each other a moment, and then Henriksen nodded. Once again, Drake felt sure they were hiding something. Not all of this stuff about Daedalus, because he sensed their excitement about the revelations that Yablonski’s translations had turned up. But they had a piece of the puzzle they weren’t sharing.

“It could be,” Olivia said.

“What else did your supergeek turn up?” Drake asked.

Corelli hit another key. More of the flowers that had been a part of the design throughout the labyrinth under the fortress and the Minotaur.

“There are about a dozen flowers this could be,” Corelli said. “The research team thinks it’s most likely something called false hellebore or white hellebore. They’re poisonous.”

Drake had been wondering why he’d take an interest until Corelli mentioned poison, and then he saw the thug’s eyes light up. The information had stuck with him because he had a fascination with ways to hurt and kill people. Drake had met his kind before and didn’t like the unpredictable quality they brought to the table.

Olivia typed a couple of things. Images flashed by, ending with the large painting of the Chinese hell-Diyu-that they’d found in the chamber.

“Obviously the labyrinth on Thera was begun later than the other three,” Olivia said. “It may be that Daedalus was moving his hoard from one to the next, abandoning the kingdoms he had duped. By the time the construction of the worship chambers on Thera had begun, he had obviously found a new sucker and a location where he could break ground on a fourth labyrinth. It would’ve been under construction while the labyrinth on Thera was still being completed.

“By the time of the eruption on Thera-which destroyed the Minoan offshoot colony there-”

“Atlantis,” Drake put in just to irritate her.

“-the fourth labyrinth was being built in a place called Yiajiang in southern China,” Olivia continued. “Yiajiang was a tiny settlement that grew and later became known as Yecheng.”

“It doesn’t really ring a bell,” Drake said.

Olivia turned to Henriksen. “Today we know it as the city of Nanjing.”

“That’s nuts,” Drake said. “I’ve been to Nanjing. The original city wasn’t built until-what, fifth century B.C. That’s a thousand years after Thera exploded.”

Olivia nodded. “That was my first reaction, too. But Yablonski confirms there were tribal settlements in the area all through that period. And would you care to guess what myth is consistent with every one of those settlements?”

Drake sat back in his chair, letting it sink in. He glanced at the hideous painting on the screen.

“Diyu.”

“You’re not as dumb as you look,” Corelli muttered.

Henriksen had his phone out. He punched a couple of keys, and a moment later he was barking orders. It took Drake a minute to realize that he must have a whole new batch of hired thugs either already in China or on their way and had just instructed them to rendezvous in Nanjing. A second later, Henriksen hit an intercom switch and the pilot answered. Henriksen gave him their new destination and then signed off, turning his attention back to the conversation.

“The gold was on Thera during the eruption,” Jada said, eyes narrowed as she worked it out. “Had to be. The labyrinth there was unstable but only partially destroyed. Once they’d finished the fourth labyrinth, they would’ve moved Daedalus’s hoard there. But what about Daedalus?”

Olivia clicked past several other images and stopped on one of the ceremonial jars, which showed the Mistress of the Labyrinth, a Minotaur, and what Drake realized was a funeral pyre.

“They burned him?” Drake asked.

“He died,” Olivia said. “His nephew, Talos, finished the design for the fourth labyrinth and altered it considerably. Beneath the painting of Diyu in the chamber, it is written that Talos wanted an army of slaves to build the labyrinth for him, and that would require overseers and protectors.”

“The Minotaur was supposed to be the protector,” Drake said.

“Of the labyrinth, yes,” Olivia replied. “But the Minotaur would’ve been like a guard dog. They’d have selected the biggest, most frightening warrior they could find.”

“So, not Corelli, then,” Drake said.

Corelli made a rude gesture but said nothing.

“Talos wanted what Yablonski translated as ‘Protectors of the Hidden Word,’ ” Olivia finished.

Henriksen looked at her. “Tell me about Diyu. What did the research team find?”

Olivia glanced at her laptop screen. “According to the myth-as opposed to the writings we found-the labyrinth was ruled by Yan Luo, sort of a god himself. Yablonski’s translations confirm that the Chinese worship chamber was dedicated to Yan Luo, the king of hell. On Thera, Daedalus had started to expand more with the idea of underground, multilevel labyrinths, and that matches up with the myth of Diyu, which was a maze of levels and chambers where souls were supposed to be brought and punished for their earthly sins. Once they had redeemed themselves, they could be given the Drink of Forgetfulness and return to the world, or so they were promised.”

Drake felt something unlocking in his mind, tumblers clicking into place. Jada must have sensed a change in him, because she gave him an odd look.

“Nate? What is it?” she asked.

Corelli, Olivia, and Henriksen were all looking at him. The airplane’s engine seemed louder than ever. Sudden turbulence shook them hard enough that his teeth clacked together, and it felt like the plane veered to the right. Drake chalked it up to the pilot correcting their course for Nanjing.

“Daedalus’s nephew wanted slaves. The people believed in hell. What if that’s the reason they chose this location and the reason they changed the design? What if they built hell and then abducted people, maybe drugged them and pulled them down there and made them think they were in Diyu? Who knows, maybe there really was some kind of Drink of Forgetfulness. When they grew too old to be useful, they’d drug them again and return them to the surface.”

Drake glanced around, the plane taking a bounce that jarred his knees against the underside of the table. He grimaced, then threw up his hands.

“Am I crazy?”

Henriksen frowned and cast a dark look toward the front of the plane, apparently irritated at the pilot. But then he turned back to Drake.

“That may not be as far-fetched as it sounds,” he said.

Jada rolled her eyes. “Everything about this is far-fetched. But all the pieces fit together too neatly not to be true.”

“Nanjing has a long history of stories about people vanishing. Three Jin princes and their courts went missing in the third century. During the Ming Dynasty, when Nanjing was the capital of China, hundreds of thousands of workers were brought in to rebuild the city, and there were stories that a demon lived under the old city gates and would eat the workers if it caught them out at night. Many of them supposedly vanished.”

“The Minotaur?” Jada asked. “Or whoever the Mistress of the Labyrinth made up to look like a Minotaur?”

“Could be,” Drake said.

“These guys in the hoods,” Corelli said. “If they’re still down there, how many do we think there are?”

Drake could see he was thinking in terms of combat. How many guns would they need to get past the hooded killers of the labyrinth, the Protectors of the Hidden Word?

“Are there still slaves?” Olivia wondered aloud.

Drake thought of Sully and Ian Welch, and he knew the answer. It enraged him to think what Sully might be going through-he didn’t want to think about the images of torture in Diyu-but it reassured him as well. If all of their conjecture held together, it meant that Sully was still alive.

Henriksen looked contemplative. “There’s a famous story about an army detachment-three hundred men-who disappeared while returning to Nanjing in 1939. They were expected, but they never arrived.”

“Maybe they did,” Drake said. “But they hit a detour.”

Olivia cried out as the plane shook violently. The laptop slid from the table. Corelli made a grab for it, but the aircraft pitched to starboard and he toppled after the computer to the floor. The large screen winked out as the laptop landed with a crack, Corelli sprawling on top of it.

Jada slid into Drake, who held on to the table to keep from falling from his chair. Henriksen stood, but the pitch of the plane threw him into the wall. He made his way to the door and flung it open. Drake could see into the vacant passenger cabin, and his stomach lurched as he got a better view of just how badly they were listing.

“What the hell is going on?” Drake asked, following Henriksen into the passenger cabin. They leaned on seats and braced themselves on the overhead compartments as they struggled toward the cockpit. The tall man had a small spot of blood seeping through his shirt where his knife wound had been bandaged.

“I don’t know,” Henriksen replied, eyes dark with resignation. “But this isn’t turbulence.”

They reached the front of the cabin. Henriksen began pounding on the door to the cockpit, shouting for the pilot or the copilot to let him in. Drake shifted his stance and felt something sticky under his boot. When he glanced down, he swore under his breath and tapped Henriksen, pointing out the narrow pool of blood trickling out from underneath the door.

“Back up!” Drake shouted, drawing his gun.

Henriksen moved aside, eyes wide, and covered his ears against the boom a gunshot would make in such a closed space. Drake tried not to think about the possibility of a ricochet and what would happen to the plane at this altitude if a bullet ripped through the aircraft’s skin.

Then he pulled the trigger three times, blowing apart the cockpit’s lock.

Drake kicked the door in, Henriksen right behind him.

The pilot lay dead on the floor, his slashed throat gaping like a bloody, mocking grin. The copilot held a disturbingly familiar curved blade, the same sort used by the Protectors of the Hidden Word. The guy looked Greek; he sure as hell wasn’t Chinese. For a second, Drake wondered if everything they had been assuming was wrong, if they really knew nothing at all about the threat they were facing and the people trying to keep them from finding the fourth labyrinth. Then he noticed the glazed look in the copilot’s eyes, his lost and distant gaze, and he knew the man was not in his right mind.

“Drop the knife or I will shoot you,” Drake said.

The copilot didn’t even acknowledge them. Instead, at the mention of the knife, he glanced down at the gleaming blood-streaked blade, eyes wide with recognition. His face slack and expressionless, he slashed his own throat.

“No, damn it!” Drake shouted, reaching for the copilot with his free hand.

The man crumpled to the ground, twitching, blood pulsing from his wound. The cut was deep and long, blood vessels severed. There would be no saving him.

Henriksen stared slack-jawed at the two dead men even as the hull of the plane screamed around them, air currents twisting the craft, dipping it even harder to starboard. Any second, the plane would begin to dive.

Drake tucked away his gun and dived for the pilot’s seat. He grabbed the stick and held on, trying to keep the plane from shaking apart around them.

“Please tell me you know how to fly an airplane,” Henriksen said.

Drake didn’t spare him a glance as he replied. “Does ‘sort of’ count?”