“What’s wrong?” Mac asked. “Is it broken?”
“No,” Roe said. “It seems we are still missing key pieces to this puzzle.”
Gray remembered the video call with Father Bailey in Painter’s office. The priest had used those same words. Missing pieces. “What do you mean?” he asked.
Roe answered, “If you remember our conversation about astrolabes, there is a distinct difference between the earlier flat ones and the spherical designs that came much later. For a flat astrolabe to function, it has to be built with a fixed latitude set to the builder’s location.”
Bailey elaborated, “For a flat astrolabe to work in Baghdad, you have to build it with that city’s latitude fixed into it. After that, it would only function at that latitude. If you moved it to Paris, none of its amazing calculations and guidance would work.”
“But a spherical astrolabe is universal in design. That’s what makes them unique and rare.” Roe waved Gray closer. “If you look, you can see holes across its surface.”
Gray squinted and made out tiny perforations across the globe’s inner shell. At least two dozen of them. Each marked with a tiny symbol. He imagined there must be the same number of holes on the underside of the cradled artifact.
“When you insert rods into specific holes, you can change the astrolabe’s set latitude. Move the rods, and you can reset it to a new location. Over and over again.” Roe faced them. “But without those rods, it’s a blank, directionless slate.”
Gray pictured that tiny spinning ship.
Bailey added even worse news. “And we don’t know the right number of rods for this particular astrolabe or where to place them. The possible combinations are nearly infinite.”
Gray now understood why Bailey had summoned him here. “In other words, this astrolabe might be the key to the map, but the rods are the key to the astrolabe. To activate the map and have it point to the correct location, we need to put the right combination into the astrolabe.”
Bailey shrugged. “And without the rods and knowing where to place them . . .”
We’re no closer to an answer.
Mac looked aghast. “Back in Greenland. When we activated the map, the little ship traveled a bit farther out to the sea. Which makes me think at least some of the rods had been in place. But they must’ve dropped out when the astrolabe fell, or maybe when I caught it.”
“Then they’re gone for good,” Gray said. “Trying to find them in that glacier would be like searching for an unknown number of needles in the world’s largest frozen haystack.”
“What can we do?” Maria asked.
Roe stared at him, too, clearly wanting his help to solve this.
Gray shook his head, struggling for any answers. “Without those needles, there’s nothing we can do.”
Roe patted his shoulder and turned away. “I feared as much.”
Still, Gray spent the next ten minutes examining the device from every angle. He refused to believe it was hopeless. His mind spun with possibilities. If the rods had been in place, maybe by analyzing each of the holes—by looking for microabrasions or missing tarnish—we could identify the correct holes where they’d been seated. If we could fabricate new rods, then maybe—
A huge boom shook through the vaults.
Then another and another in rapid succession.
With the last one, the ground jolted hard, throwing them all down. The mosaic tile floor fractured beneath them. A burning log was bumped out of the fireplace as the hearth’s iron grate crashed down. It rolled against one of the tapestries and set it on fire.
Gray gained his feet and rushed to the door. “Stay here!” he yelled.
He skidded into the bricked dome. Seichan slid next to him, ignoring his warning. Across the space, the elevator doors were still open. Movement inside the cage drew his gaze. A figure dropped from above and landed in a crouch.
Gray tensed.
Seichan had a dagger in hand, somehow having managed to get the blade through the layers of security.
Out of the elevator, Major Bossard burst into view. As he ran, he carried his suit jacket bundled in his hands, then tossed it aside. He must have slid down the elevator cable using his jacket as insulation. His H&K submachine gun, still slung to his shoulder, bounced at his hip.
“Run!” he screamed.
Overhead, another thunderous blast. Behind him, the elevator cage blew out of its shaft in an explosion of rock, dust, and smoke. The brick dome shattered on the far side, huge sections crashed to the floor—then it all began to implode.
Bossard reached them. “Jets,” he gasped out. “Missile attack.”
More booms—some close, some far.
Bossard rushed them back toward the reading room as more of the dome collapsed behind them. The air choked with rock dust. “Bombarding the whole place,” the major coughed out. “Concentrating here.”
No doubt.
Gray knew the reason why.
After failing to secure the astrolabe, the enemy wasn’t taking any chances with it.
If they couldn’t have it, they were making damned sure no one else could.
Gray rejoined the others and got them moving. “Grab the map, anything else you can think of.” He pointed toward the tunnel farthest from the dome collapse. “We need to get as deep into this bunker as we can.”
Everyone moved. Following the monsignor’s instructions, Bossard dropped the lid over the gold map. He then lifted it in both arms, demonstrating his considerable strength. Off to the side, Bailey gathered sheaves of papers from a desk, while Maria grabbed books. Mac, with his arm in a sling, tried to stay out of everyone’s way.
More of the dome collapsed, washing a thick cloud of dust into the room.
Too close.
“That’s it!” Gray ordered. “Everyone out!”
They fled the room, turned a corner, and ran down the neighboring tunnel. Their way was lit by the red glow of electronic locks sealing off storage chambers. The chain of crimson lights ran down the dark throat of the passageway. After seventy yards or so, the tunnel ended at a stone wall that blocked the way.
Gray reached out and put a palm against the cold volcanic stone.
Dead end.
He turned to face the others. Behind them, one by one, the red glows of the vaults blinked out. As darkness fell over the group, the collapse of the vault continued, closing relentlessly toward them.
“Is there any way out of here?” Gray asked.
Monsignor Roe’s answer was a moan. “No . . .”
15
June 23, 7:04 A.M. TRT
Çanakkale Province, Turkey
I have to risk it . . .
Elena crossed to the wood-framed cot in her stone cell. As she knelt beside it, she glanced to the roof, as if in prayer. Instead, while reaching under the thin mattress, she noted the old chisel marks across the ceiling. Fat candles flickered in niches hacked into the rock walls, while thick layers of accumulated wax—likely decades, if not centuries old—dripped down the walls.
She estimated she was a dozen stories underground—in one of the many ancient subterranean cities dug out of the rock in Turkey. She pictured those long-dead builders, using Bronze Age tools to excavate these multilevel metropolises. As an archaeologist in this region, she knew that more than two hundred such troglodyte-cave cities had been discovered throughout Turkey, mostly in the Cappadocia region to the east, but also here near the coast.
The most famous was discovered in the sixties, the Derinkuyu Underground City. She had toured that complex. It had its own rivers, bridges, and thousands of ventilation shafts that carried air down to its deepest levels, some of which were dug three hundred feet into the earth. The massive city had once housed over twenty thousand people. It had barns, churches, kitchens, storage cellars, even its own winery. Some of these ancient cities, like Derinkuyu, had been turned into tourist attractions, while others were still used to stable animals or kept as secret hideouts for unsavory elements.
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Which was clearly the purpose of this cave-city.
Yesterday, the private jet that had flown Elena from the Arctic landed at a small airfield in the middle of the Turkish hills. After that, she had been driven by her captors to the outskirts of a small village, where in the cellar of a farmhouse, a door had led into this hidden complex.
She had been marched down stone stairs and along passageways strung with electric lights. In the upper levels, she passed rooms full of sleek gym equipment, free weights, and mat-lined rings. Another held shelves and racks of assault rifles and boxes of ammunition. Throughout the tunnels, they passed several hard-eyed men and women, all in red or black. From the subservience of those in red, she guessed them to be recruits in training. No one made eye contact with her as their group was led by the woman who called herself the Daughter of Moses. Even those in black gave slight bows of their heads as the woman passed. Clearly, she was high up in this group’s hierarchy.
Elena could also guess the purpose of this subterranean complex.
A terrorist training camp.
Certainty grew the deeper she went. Stiff-backed gunmen guarded the entrances to each level. They stood posted before giant disk-shaped stones, as ancient as the city itself. To distract herself from her trepidation, she concentrated on the archaeological significance of her surroundings. To escape waves of raids and attacks, people over the centuries had retreated into these underground cities. They rolled those circular stone slabs to seal off each level. Battles had been fought across these lands going back millennia. The Derinkuyu complex dated back to the eighth century B.C., while others were even older. But most had been built during the depths of the Greek Dark Ages, when the entire Mediterranean was embroiled in a great war.
While being escorted down, she had run her fingertips along the walls, imagining the effort to dig out this city, and the hundreds like it. While the rock here was relatively soft—made up of volcanic tuff that could be carved and sculpted into these subterranean cities—the sheer manpower needed and scope of the excavation seemed excessive.
Questions slowly arose: Why were these cities so hastily built during those dark ages? What were they all hiding from? What had terrorized them to such an extent that they had felt the need to claw their way down into the rock to escape it?
In the deeper levels of the complex, she passed dormitories smelling of grease and grilled meats, another that served as a storage facility, stacked with crates, barrels, and sacks of dry goods. She estimated there was enough foodstuffs to last years. Below that, they reached a section that seemed to be a whole warren of mazelike rooms crammed tightly with dark bookshelves and cabinets full of shadowy artifacts. Curiosity about this buried library had slowed her feet, but her captors forced her even deeper, to a region lit only by candles and finally into this cell where she had spent the night.
They had left her with a cold dinner and fed her breakfast again this morning.
But Elena knew something had changed overnight. This morning, she had heard yelling echoing down from above. She had tried to question the red-clad recruit—a young woman, barely older than a teenager—who delivered her breakfast tray. When Elena asked about the commotion, the server’s eyes had flashed with worry.
All Elena got was a terse warning from the recruit: Do what they say. Tell them what you know.
After that, Elena had paced her cell, plagued by a question.
What do they expect me to know?
Her hands finally found what she had hidden under her mattress. She withdrew the two small books—a copy of Homer’s Odyssey and the journal of the dead captain—the contents of the package guarded over by the frozen corpse. With the books secretly tucked into the back of her trousers for the flight here, her body heat had thawed the frozen volumes. The leather covers were now pliant, the cords binding them pliable.
Whatever her captors wanted from her had to involve that ship and its history. Why else kidnap an expert on nautical archaeology, one who specialized in the Mediterranean? She knew her life depended on her continuing usefulness. She also knew her father would shake the very foundations of the world to find her, but until then—
I must survive.
To that end, she needed to be armed with as much information as possible.
No matter the risk.
She took the books to the crude table where her breakfast sat untouched. She had no fear of being watched, of hidden cameras spying upon her. Every surface of her cell, except for the stout wooden door, was solid rock. In fact, this entire dungeon was only lit by candles or flickering torches.
With no electricity and the stone too thick to allow even a wireless device to transmit, she felt secure enough to place the books on the table and cautiously peel back the cover of the one entitled The Testament of the Fourth Son of Moses. Originally wrapped in sealskin and sealed in wax, the pages had been kept dry over the centuries, the ink preserved. Though they were brittle with age, she could still turn the vellum pages if she was careful.
She began reading an account of its author, Hunayn ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, the fourth son of a man named Mūsā—or Moses. She skimmed through the initial pages, which related to handwritten details of the ship’s preparation, the picking of a trusted crew, followed by the first week of travel. It also held the captain’s ruminations about Homer’s work, including translated sections from the ancient Greek text Geographica, written by Strabo, a Greek historian from the first century who believed Homer’s epics recounted historical events.
According to the journal, the ship reached an island described by the captain as “the forge of Hephaestus”—then the story suddenly stopped. A large section of pages in the middle had been sliced out.
Likely deliberately destroyed.
She frowned with disappointment at the missing pages—though in truth, she was more interested in the last section, which remained intact. She wanted to know what befell the ship, how it ended up in Greenland. The story picked up again with a huge storm and a hard voyage to what sounded like Iceland (“an island of fire and ice, of steaming ground, and vast white forests”), then from there to the coast of Greenland (“to an ice-shrouded land beyond the rim of the world, haunted by ghostly bears furred in snow”).
Her heart pounded harder as she reached the final journal entry.
She read the date at the top: Jumada Al-Thani 22, 248.
The year—248—had to be based on the Arabic calendar, known as the Hijiri calendar. She converted it in her head to modern numbering and came up with 862.
In the ninth century.
And the time of the year: late August.
Her brows bunched.
It should have been too warm for those sailors to be trapped by winter’s ice. So what happened?
She held her breath as she read the final entry from Hunayn ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, the fourth son of Moses:
My dearest brothers—Muhammed, Ahmad, and al-Hasan—
forgive me for my betrayal, for defying the esteemed of the House of Wisdom during a time when our enemies grow emboldened and what I found could turn the tides of fate in our favor.
But know I had no choice. I write this as my last testament both as absolution and to serve as a warning.
As I scratch cold ink into vellum, the screams behind me have finally ended. For most of the night, I have crouched in my cabin with my palms clamped over my ears. It offered no relief. Even my prayers to Allah failed to shut out the screaming of my men, the pounding of their fists on the barred door, their pleading cries. Though their suffering and terror cut down to my marrow, I dared not relent.
Even now, I can picture the shayãtīn—those fiery demons of Tartarus—mercilessly tearing into my men, a crew who had faithfully sailed at my side for two years. But as this tale will prove, the terror of a slow death can turn even an honorable man into an ignoble savage.
Five days ago, I brought this ship to these desolate shores. After learning the ungodly truth, I dared not sail this vessel
into any port. Instead, I had ordered the crew to this lonely shelter along these frozen shores after a savage storm blew us beyond the rim of the world. I lied to them about the need for fresh water and salted meat for the long voyage home.
Instead, in the dead of night, I scuttled the ship—axing through the twin masts and shredding the sails. Upon learning of my sabotage, the crew argued and pleaded, even threatened, to be allowed to make repairs. When I refused, I read the stony determination in some of their faces, the wild terror in others.
Being one man against a dozen angry mutineers, I wielded the only weapon capable of ensuring this broken ship never left this frozen berth. In the dark of night, as all were asleep, I freed a hammer and broke one of Pandora’s pots. I woke the legion inside, unleashing the shayãṭīn horde upon my own crew.
It was a necessary cruelty—for what is hidden here must never be found. And if it is found, may the horrors preserved inside this ship serve as a fiery admonition against looking any farther, of searching for Tartarus.
Even as I write this, with the screaming ended, I can hear the claws of the demons against the wood. I will wait for the horde to quiet once again. Then will begin my long vigil. I will bide the cold, set my traps against the unworthy, and wait for the bitter end. It will serve as my final atonement.
Until then, I beg Allah’s forgiveness—for the bloodshed now, for my trespasses in the past. Still, I take comfort that the greater world has been kept safe—but for how long?
As I sit here, I can hear the ticking inside the Storm Atlas beside me, marking time with my heartbeat, counting down to certain doom. I should smash the infernal mechanism, but I cannot bring myself to do so. It is my last connection to you, my three brothers. I remember crafting this with you, a time full of laughter, excitement, and hope. Together we created the greatest of all navigational tools, like none engineered before, encrypted so only I can use it, and fueled by Promethean fire.
As I write these last words, I am reminded that it was the Titan, Prometheus, who stole fire from Zeus and gave it to mankind and was punished for his theft by an eternity of torment. So, too, I stole fire from Tartarus and brought it home—and now must be punished as well.
The Last Odyssey: A Thriller Page 14