The Bone Labyrinth

by James Rollins

Roland tapped the iPad screen. “I recognized this map as soon as I saw it. A fuller version can be found in Kircher’s volume, Mundus Subterraneus.”

  Lena remembered Roland showing them pictures from the Jesuit priest’s book, a volume full of illustrations both practical and fantastic.

  “Let me find it.” Roland sifted through the records he had stored on the device concerning Father Kircher, including a full collection of his books. “Here it is.”

  They all stared down at a map copied from one of the pages of Mundus Subterraneus.

  The island featured in the center was definitely the same one carved into the bronze shell. Only here there were more details, including names and a legend at the top, written in Latin.

  Lena couldn’t decipher much, except for the name written on the island in the center. “Is that what I think it is?”

  Roland grinned and read the legend at the top. “Situs Insulae Atlantidis, a Mari olim absorpte ex mente Egyptiorum et Platonis descriptio. Or translated, ‘Site of the island of Atlantis, in the sea, from Egyptian sources and Plato’s description.’ ”

  “This is meant to be Atlantis?” The incredulity in Gray’s voice was easy to hear.

  “That’s right. According to what Kircher wrote in Mundus Subterraneus, this map was compiled from charts found on ancient papyruses he had discovered during his research concerning Egypt and from information gleaned from Plato’s writings. By Plato’s account, this island was home to a technologically superior race, a people who were also great teachers. Similarly, the Egyptian papyruses also spoke of the godlike residents of this island, who came bearing gifts of knowledge and wisdom, teaching the most ancient pharaohs.”

  Lena recognized how much this sounded like her and her sister’s theory: that mankind’s Great Leap Forward was propelled by a small group of unique individuals.

  “You must understand,” Roland continued, “the legend of these great and mysterious teachers is not limited to the Greeks and Egyptians. Ancient Sumerian texts also make mention of the existence of a race of tall beings whom they called Watchers. You’ll find these same Watchers mentioned in Jewish texts, even the Bible. But the most pertinent account comes from the Book of Enoch. According to that ancient text, it was a Watcher named Uriel who taught Enoch about the movement of the stars. The same text names other Watchers, along with the sciences they taught.”

  He pulled one of the books from the pile, opened to a tagged page, and read aloud from it. “ ‘Semjaza taught enchantments and the cutting of roots . . . Baraqijal astrology . . . Kokabel the constellations . . . Araqiel the signs of the earth . . . and Sariel the course of the moon.’ ”

  Roland lowered the book. “So you see this same mythology persists throughout ancient cultures.” He turned to Lena. “And in regards to your research into hybrid species of early man, the Dead Sea Scrolls references the interbreeding of these Watchers with other humans, mentioning children born of those unions.”

  Lena swallowed, taking it all in. In her mind’s eye, she put flesh on the bones of Kircher’s Eve, wondering if these ancient hybrids between Neanderthal and early man might be the source of such legends.

  Intrigued, she asked, “So did Father Kircher come to believe Eve was one of these Atlanteans, these ancient Watchers? Is that why he inscribed that map inside the bronze shell that housed her bones?”

  “Possibly. Think about it. After the Madonna was sealed closed, Eve’s empty eye sockets would have forever looked upon that island, a place Kircher might have believed was Eve’s former homeland.”

  “But that’s a pretty large leap for Kircher to make,” Gray commented. “To tie these bones to the mythology of Atlantis.”

  Lena disagreed and pointed to the sculpture of the moon resting on the library table next to Roland’s satchel. “Kircher stole that from the prehistoric sculpture garden we found in those caves. Like us, he surely recognized that whatever people lived in those caves were much further advanced than anyone could expect or imagine. Remember how Kircher mistook the bones of a mammoth to be the remains of some extinct species of giant? It would not be hard for him to make a similar fantastical conclusion in regards to these bones.”

  “Only in this case,” Roland said, his eyes gleaming, “the reverend father may have been correct.”

  Lena turned to him, unable to hold back her own disbelief this time. “What are you talking about? How can that be?”

  Roland looked down at the map glowing on the screen, then back at all of them. “Because I know the location of Atlantis.”

  6:07 P.M.

  Roland took a small amount of guilty pleasure at their shocked expressions. “Like I said, let me walk you through it all. Then you’ll better understand the message left by Father Kircher.”

  He tapped and zoomed in on the island of Atlantis found in Mundus Subterraneus.

  “If you look at the compass rose on the reverend father’s map, you’ll see the arrow is pointing downward, indicating this chart was drawn with north pointing down and south up.”

  “The reverse of most maps,” Lena commented.

  “That’s right, and it wasn’t unusual for that time period to have maps occasionally drawn in this manner.” He danced his fingertips across the screen of his iPad and brought up a picture he had rendered while down in the university library. “I took the liberty of flipping the map around and labeling the surrounding continents in English.”

  He showed the others the result.

  Gray studied it for a breath. “If I’m looking at this right, it appears the island of Atlantis is drawn somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic . . . or at least somewhere between North America and Europe.”

  “Which supports what Plato wrote in his dialogue Timaeus.” Roland grabbed a copy of the Greek book from his pile and read from a marked passage. “As Plato describes it, Atlantis lies beyond ‘the straits which are by you called the Pillars of Hercules’ . . . which in modern times are the Straits of Gibraltar.”

  “Placing Atlantis outside the Mediterranean,” Gray commented.

  “Correct.” He pointed down at the book in his hand. “But Plato also states here that this island is ‘larger than Libya and Asia put together.’ ”

  Gray frowned. “That would make Atlantis less of an island and more like a continent.”

  “And what continent lies outside the Straits of Gibraltar and close to North America?”

  Gray rubbed his chin. “The only other continent out there is South America.”

  “Exactly.”

  Gray lifted his brows skeptically. “So you’re claiming the island of Atlantis is actually the continent of South America?” He pointed to Kircher’s map on the screen. “While I can appreciate that the coastline of this island does resemble South America, it’s drawn in the middle of the Atlantic.”

  Roland understood his hesitation, having gone through the same intellectual cartwheels himself. “You have to keep in mind,” he warned, “that what’s illustrated here was derived from older maps. So perhaps those ancient cartographers got the continent aligned wrong, or maybe they put it there as a place of prominence, to better highlight the features of that landmass.”

  Roland reached to his iPad and brought up another pair of images he had created. “If you look at these side-by-side silhouettes that I compiled, you can see the resemblance is more than just the coastlines. Even the river deltas and mountains seem to match up between the two.”

  “He’s right,” Lena said, leaning closer, comparing the two maps. “The Amazon . . . the Orinoco . . . and the other major rivers. They do line up.”

  Gray waved dismissively. “Still, it makes no sense. If South America was once Atlantis—home to some great empire of godlike teachers—how come there’s no evidence of their prior existence?”

  “Who says there’s not?” Roland pulled a recent archaeology magazine from his stack of books and slapped it on the table. “In early 2015, a team of Honduran archaeologists, aided by British SAS soldiers, discovere
d the ruins of a lost city buried in the rain forest. They believe they had found Ciudad Blanca, the legendary White City of Gold, a complex built by a mysterious pre-Columbian civilization that vanished long ago. The only firsthand account of this city came from a conquistador, Hernán Cortés, in letters to the Spanish king back in 1526. He told the story of a miraculous place whose inhabitants were said to be descended from a Monkey God, and whose children still bore monkey-like features.”

  “Monkey-like features.” Lena straightened, a thoughtful expression fixed on her face. “If some conquistadors did encounter an existing tribe of hominins—or even hybrids like Eve—I could see them mistaking them for some relation to primitive primates.”

  “And that’s only one story,” Roland said. “Satellite mapping and ground-penetrating radar is slowly stripping away what’s hidden under the jungles of that continent, revealing layer upon layer of ancient civilizations, some ruins predating the Aztecs, Incas, and Mayas by millennia.”

  Gray continued to look unconvinced. “You actually believe one of these lost civilizations was the home of the Watchers?”

  “Possibly. If this civilization was advanced enough in navigation and sailing, they could’ve periodically sent out emissaries, offering new tools, teaching new techniques. Maybe some settled in foreign lands, had children, and became assimilated into the many ancient cultures.” Roland tapped the map on the screen. “Or maybe here was where they eventually retreated and hid.”

  Lena slowly nodded her head. Still, she had one more concern. “But didn’t Plato describe Atlantis being destroyed, sunk under the sea? As far as I can tell, South America is still there.”

  Roland waved a hand across the books before him. “You must take into account that these Greek and Egyptian stories were written by people who could not truly fathom something as large as a continent in the oceans beyond the straits of Gibraltar. Also, upon closer reading, the cataclysm described by Plato actually sounds more like the sinking of an island city, or possibly an isolated piece of a larger landmass that was destroyed by earthquakes and flooding.”

  “Still,” Gray pressed, “even if Father Kircher believed those bones he interred under that chapel belonged to Eve and had a connection to these ancient Watchers, where do all these conjectures about South America get us?”

  Roland smiled. “They get us to that city, to that lost home of the Watchers, to the very heart of the mystery that Kircher spent the last eleven years of his life investigating—all of which may help explain why the Chinese stole those bones and kidnapped Lena’s sister.”

  6:12 P.M.

  Gray sighed, hearing in Roland’s last words an echo of his earlier conversation with Painter Crowe: how following the historical path left by Athanasius Kircher might lead to the very answers they needed to get an upper hand on the Chinese.

  With a measure of impatience, he motioned for Roland to continue, sensing the priest had more to reveal. “Go on,” he ordered. “If Kircher spent the last eleven years of his life secretly studying this mystery, what else did he discover?”

  “It wasn’t so much what he discovered as what his dear friend Bishop Nicolas Steno discovered.”

  Gray remembered that name from Sister Clara’s account of the building of the Sanctuary of Mentorella—how Bishop Steno was the only colleague whom Kircher would allow to visit the construction of the chapel that hid Eve’s bones. The younger man was also a budding paleontologist, with an avid interest in fossils and old bones.

  Roland picked up Kircher’s book from the table. “According to this journal, Kircher sent the young Nicolas out into the world to follow up on leads. The reverend father needed a younger man’s eyes and strength to extend the investigation abroad. To Crete, to Egypt, to Africa, and eventually as far as the New World.”

  “What was he sent to look for?” Lena asked.

  “For the truth behind those bones.” Roland lifted the journal higher. “Though I’ve not had a chance to fully review everything packed in here, I did read through correspondence, copied by Kircher into these pages, all written by Nicolas Steno, including several maps of his travels. One of those maps caught my eye, one that may tell us where to go from here.”

  Gray stepped closer. “What did you find?”

  “To understand that, you have to see this first.” Roland used his iPad to pull up a new image. “Here is another map, one that Father Kircher drew in Mundus Subterraneus. This one clearly depicts the continent of South America in more detail.”

  Gray studied it, confused. “Didn’t Kircher publish this book well before he ever found Eve’s bones?”

  “He did,” Roland admitted. “He actually constructed this map in attempt to describe the unique hydrology of that continent, to show how the rivers flowed out of the Andes and down to the sea. But note the large crater-like feature drawn in the center of the Andes.”

  “What about it?” Gray asked.

  “Father Kircher hypothesized that the Andes hid a great reservoir, a massive underground sea that supplied this continent with its water.”

  “Okay,” Lena said tentatively. “But what does that have to—”

  “Then look at this.” Roland cut her off and opened Kircher’s journal. “I found this illustration among the correspondence from Nicolas. It’s a copy of a section of the same map, but overdrawn with something that I think bears on all of this.”

  Roland placed the journal on the table so all could see.

  It did indeed appear to be a closer view of that same subterranean lake; only this time a new illustration lay atop the water, almost shimmering there.

  Lena gasped softly. “That overlaid image—it’s the same one from the journal’s cover.”

  Roland nodded. “The famous Minotaur’s labyrinth from Crete.”

  Gray recalled Roland’s history of this maze, how that same pattern had been found carved into rocks discovered not only in Crete, but also in Italy, Spain, Ireland, and as far north as Finland. The pattern was even described in an Indian Sanskrit epic.

  Roland faced them all. “I believe Nicolas Steno—following the clues found in Croatia and driven by the insights of Father Kircher—discovered the ancient home of these lost Watchers, marking it here with this labyrinth.”

  Gray stared at the vast lake depicted on the drawing. “You mentioned before that the sinking of Atlantis might actually be the story of a drowned city.” He pointed to the open journal. “Are you saying that might be the place?”

  “Possibly. At least Kircher believed so, but of course he might have conflated the reports from Nicolas Steno with Plato’s ancient tale. But either way, Nicolas discovered something in those South American mountains, something that ties all of this together.”

  “If only we knew where that place was,” Lena said, her voice tinged with awe. “Can you imagine if we could go there?”

  Roland glanced to her. “We can.”

  “How?” Gray asked.

  He tapped the illustration of the crater with a fingertip. “Because I know exactly where that is.”

  Gray studied the map and understood. “The lines that crisscross over that site. They’re numbered.”

  “Marking longitude and latitude. During Father Kircher’s time, latitude lines were calculated similarly to how we do today, but longitude used the Ferro Meridian instead of the Prime Meridian.”

  “And you were able to convert them?” Gray asked, noting the twinkle of excitement shining brighter in the priest’s eyes.

  “Not only that, I plotted the location.” Roland returned to his iPad and pulled up a map with an arrow pointing to the coordinates.

  “It’s in Ecuador,” Gray said.

  Roland nodded. “Deep in the Andes Mountains. About fifty miles due south of Cuenca.”

  Lena shared Gray’s skepticism. “But how can we really know if any of this is significant? I mean, that looks like it’s in the middle of nowhere.”

  Roland’s eyes shone brightly. “Because we’re not the first ones
to follow Kircher’s bread crumbs to that area of the country.”

  “What do you mean?” Gray asked, unable to hide his surprise.

  “From my own doctoral work, I know that there was another Catholic cleric—a monk named Father Carlos Crespi—who became enamored with Athanasius Kircher back in the early 1900s. The man even emulated the reverend father by pursuing the sciences as devotedly as he did his religion. Father Crespi was an avid botanist, anthropologist, historian, and musician. He eventually started a mission in Cuenca, where he served for fifty years until his death.”

  “Cuenca?” Lena said, staring down at the map of Ecuador. “It’s right near that spot.”

  “Exactly. It always struck me as strange that such an accomplished and knowledgeable man as Father Crespi should choose such a remote village in the Andes to spend the rest of his life. That is, until now.”

  “You think he went out there because of Kircher?”

  “In the rare stacks of this library, there are still scores of the reverend father’s collected works, most dating back to when the Museum Kircherianum closed its doors here at the university. It included a vast collection of his correspondence: notes, letters, replies, even early drafts of his work, some of which were never published. Most of it was forgotten for centuries and never cataloged. Until the project was undertaken by one man.”

  “Let me guess,” Gray said. “Father Carlos Crespi.”

  “He helped organize a majority of it, along with restoring and preserving most of those old letters. Including many from Nicolas Steno.”

  “So you’re thinking that Crespi gleaned something from those letters that led him to Ecuador.”

  “I can’t imagine he grasped the true breadth of all of this. But he must have believed there was something important worth investigating.”

  “So he set up that mission in Cuenca?” Lena asked. “As a cover?”

  Roland winced slightly. “No. I believe he saw an opportunity to pursue this line of interest while also following a true calling to help the natives of that region. In the end, he was deeply loved by those he served.”