The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  “You could be right,” Gray admitted.

  He stared at Roe, struck again by the monsignor’s resemblance to his old friend Vigor Verona. But it was no longer just the man’s outward appearance. This tired old priest was just as brilliant.

  Seichan waved at the museum. “That’s all fine and good, but who are we meeting here, and what did you mean about knowing our enemy if it wasn’t those who attacked us?”

  Roe squinted at the sky. “It is getting hot already. Let’s find those answers inside. Where it’ll be much cooler.”

  Gray swiped his sweaty brow, appreciating this suggestion.

  Definitely a brilliant man.

  10:22 A.M.

  Seichan waited in the cool lobby of the museum. While she enjoyed the air-conditioning, she wondered what they were doing here. One foot would not stop tapping. She wanted to blame her impatience on nerves stretched taut by the adrenaline rush from yesterday’s attack, but she could not fool herself into believing that.

  Before leaving the Italian mainland, with all their gear abandoned, she had been forced to buy a new breast pump, but in their haste to leave, she had to settle for a hand pump. In the privacy of the trawler’s cabin, Gray had assisted her, which was in no way erotic, even with his stimulation to help her. It was, in a word, humiliating.

  Like milking a cow.

  But her shame rose not out of pride. Gray had been kind and patient, even under the circumstances. His touch had been gentle, his words encouraging. Instead, her mortification came from knowing who she had been in the past. She had been honed into the sharpest dagger by her former masters. She could move silently, swiftly, believing herself in those moments to be more shadow than substance. In the heat of those moments, she sensed every fiber of muscle, every nerve ending in her skin.

  And now what am I?

  Even here, in the middle of a mission, her body rebelled, trying to force her back into a role she wasn’t sure she wanted to resume. It would not let her settle into herself, to become that shadow. Instead, the substance of herself refused to be ignored.

  She shook her arms, trying to dispel the tension.

  But deep down, she knew this wasn’t the real issue.

  Unbidden, she pictured Jack’s mop of dark hair after a bath, still tangled with soapy bubbles. The sense memory swelled through her, of baby shampoo, of his milk breath. Though thousands of miles away, he was still with her, inescapable.

  She closed her eyes.

  She knew this was the true source of her nerve-jangling anxiety. Forced to go dark, she had been unable to call Kat, to check on Jack, to make sure he was doing well. She hadn’t expected it to choke her up so much.

  Gray touched her arm. “Are you okay?”

  She flinched but nodded.

  “It looks like Monsignor Roe is heading back,” Gray said.

  Across the lobby, the old priest pushed through the crowd, accompanied by another. The bespectacled man with salt-and-pepper gray hair looked to be in his sixties, wearing a white museum smock and a welcoming smile.

  Monsignor Roe made a surprising introduction. “This is Rabbi Fine.”

  The newcomer shook both their hands. “Please call me Howard. I think we can forgo any rabbinical formalities. Especially as Sebastian tells me you need to consult me on matters archaeological.” He motioned to the museum. “Well, you’ve certainly come to the right place.”

  The monsignor smiled. “Howard and I studied together, back in our university days. We also worked a joint project to preserve the remains of the old Jewish catacomb in Rome.”

  “Back when I was an archaeologist for the Israel Antiquities Authority. After that, we went our separate ways. Sebastian into service with the Vatican, and I into rabbinical studies. But we both remain lovers of history at heart. In fact, I oversee several dig sites here in Sardinia, of the local Nuragic tribes, a Bronze Age people that occupied this island for sixteen centuries, until they vanished.”

  “Not only is Howard a rabbi,” Roe explained, “but he has degrees in archaeology and anthropology. So, I’ll let him guide this tour.”

  Gray frowned. “What is he going to—?”

  Howard turned and headed for a wide set of stairs. “If I understand what Sebastian wanted me to share, I think we should start on the second floor.”

  As the rabbi set off, Roe whispered back to them. “I just told him about an ancient enemy that we wanted more information about. Don’t worry. I was discreet.”

  Seichan shared a look with Gray.

  That had better be true—for all their sakes.

  Gray kept close to the monsignor. “What ancient enemy?”

  Roe hung back long enough to say, “The ones mentioned in the old schematics that Da Vinci used to construct his gold map. The enemy who the Banū Mūsā brothers believed resided in Tartarus and who waged war on three civilizations, destroying them all and leading to the Greek Dark Ages.”

  “What does any of that have to do with Sardinia?” Seichan asked.

  “Because I think the enemy came here first.” Roe left them, hurrying to catch up with his friend. “I’ll let Howard explain.”

  Seichan stared at the two men.

  One a Catholic, the other a Jew.

  And we’re being hunted by Arabs, likely Muslims.

  At least, all the major religions of this area were represented.

  The rabbi took them to the second floor and drew them to a stop before a five-foot-tall stone slab, inscribed deeply by an angular script. “This is the Noro Stone,” Howard explained. “A treasure of our museum. It dates back to the eighth or ninth century B.C.”

  Roe lifted an eyebrow. “In other words, to the middle of the Homeric Age, the Greek Dark Ages.”

  Howard faced the rock. “The inscription here is one of the oldest examples of Phoenician writing. It is incomplete, but the best translation tells of a great war fought on these shores by the Nuragic people against a powerful enemy, one that led to great ruin.”

  Seichan glanced over to Roe, who looked all too happy with himself. “Who were they fighting?”

  Howard smiled. “Ah, an age-old mystery, one that I’ve been trying to solve.”

  You and a bunch of murderous bastards.

  “One of the reasons I’m here at the museum is that I’m overseeing the installation of an exhibit on that very subject matter.” The rabbi waved them over to a nearby room that was roped off and separated by hanging sheets of plastic, the exhibit plainly still under construction. “It’s all about the Sea People.”

  Seichan frowned as she followed the man through the plastic sheets to the small space inside. In the center stood two rows of mostly empty display cases. A few held bronze weapons and tiny statues. But their guide led them to the back wall, where pictures had started to be hung.

  “Like much of the history of the Homeric Age, little is truly known about the Sea People,” Howard explained, “so even putting this installation together is proving to be a challenge. All we really know is that they were a seafaring confederation, likely rising out of the western Mediterranean. But whoever they were, once they burst into the eastern half of the Mediterranean, they laid waste to civilization after civilization, leading to centuries of darkness.”

  “The Greek Dark Ages,” Gray said.

  “Correct.” Howard drew them to a wall display. “Here’s a map that lays out those conquests, so you can get a general scope of the Sea People’s assault.”

  © 2011 David Kaniewski, Elise Van Campo, Karel Van Lerberghe, Tom Boiy, Klaas Vansteenhuyse, Greta Jans, Karin Nys, Harvey Weiss—“The Sea Peoples, from Cuneiform Tablets to Carbon Dating” (from PLOS ONE )

  From PLOS ONE, an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. “© 2011 Kaniewski et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.”

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#/media/File:Map_of_the_Sea_People_invasions_in_the_Aegean_Sea_and_Eastern_Mediterranean_at_the_end_of_the_Late_Bronze_Age.jpg

  Seichan leaned closer next to Gray. She noted the sweep of arrows showing the attacks upon Greece, upon the Middle East, and down to Egypt. If the dates on the map were correct, every kingdom around the Mediterranean fell in less than twenty years. It appeared to be an all-out assault—all rising out of the west.

  Howard continued, “The best accounts of this war—as scant as they are—come from the Egyptians, who were soundly defeated. And while details are scarce, the overlying gist of those stories was one of abject terror. Come see.”

  Howard moved down the wall to another display. This one appeared to be a rubbing taken from an Egyptian site. It showed a chaotic, insane battle, on land and sea, with Egyptian soldiers in the throes of battle, dying by the hundreds.

  Public domain

  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples#/media/File:Medinet_Habu_Ramses_III._Tempel_Nordostwand_Abzeichnung_01.jpg

  “This depiction was found in a temple near Luxor. Not only does it capture the terror so beautifully, but do you see what’s missing?”

  Seichan frowned, but Gray figured it out.

  “Nowhere does it show who is attacking them, only soldiers fending off some force just out of view.”

  “The Egyptians were a superstitious lot,” Howard explained. “They placed much faith in their iconography. I believe they were too fearful to depict the enemy, to reveal them.”

  Seichan remembered Mac and Maria’s description of what had been unleashed from the hold of the shipwrecked dhow. No wonder the Egyptians didn’t want to draw them.

  Monsignor Roe spoke. “But maybe someone else tried to reveal them.”

  His words seemed to surprise even Howard.

  Roe pointed up. “Show them the Giants.”

  10:38 A.M.

  Holy mother . . .

  Gray gaped at what stood before him. He would’ve sworn out loud if not for the presence of the priest and the rabbi. The installation consumed most of the third floor of the archaeological museum. The hall held tall cases and wide pedestals to accommodate the statuary housed within.

  Howard introduced the collection with a bit of drama, which was not unwarranted. “Welcome to the presence of the Kolossoi,” he said with a wave of an arm. “The Giants of Mont’e Prama.”

  Gray glanced over to Seichan, then to Monsignor Roe. He now understood why the priest had dragged them all to this island, why he had kept silent.

  This needs to be seen in person.

  Howard led them around. “These massive sandstone warriors were discovered broken and buried on a farm on the west coast of Sardinia, along the Sinis peninsula. We estimate there were once forty-four giants, though we’ve only restored a little over half of them.”

  Gray stepped up to one of them. It stood twice his height. It appeared to represent an archer, prepared for battle. Nearby was another with a sword, and one with the huge fists of a boxer.

  “There remains some question as to their age,” Howard admitted. “But it’s generally accepted that the Nuragic people carved these statues during the Greek Dark Ages, roughly right after the Sea People would have swept through here.”

  “What were the Giants’ purpose?” Seichan asked.

  “To act as sacred guardians,” Howard said. “They were dug up amid the ruins of a sprawling necropolis on the slopes of Mont’e Prama. It is believed they stood guard over the dead, possibly the bodies of men and women slain by the Sea People.”

  Roe nodded. “Prama overlooks the western sea, as if the Giants were watching for those invaders to return, ready to do battle.”

  Gray understood the monsignor’s implication. It would support the idea that the enemy had come from that direction, from the west.

  “Rumors and myths abound about these massive figures,” Howard continued. “It is written that these statues would come to life if Sardinia were ever attacked. That they would shed their stone, revealing bronze armor beneath, then cast boulders down at any invaders from atop Mont’e Prama’s heights.”

  Gray pictured bronze versions of these statues and felt a shiver of dread—not that they might come to life, but at what that story implied, especially considering the Giants’ odd appearance. He remembered Mac’s story of the lumbering, bronze beast shattering through the hull of the dhow.

  Roe stoked his growing trepidation. “The other myth written about them is that they were carved in this way to mimic the look of their attackers. Sculpted to make the enemy think its own people were already here and skip past this island.”

  Seichan looked as ill as Gray felt.

  He stared up at the giant head in the display cabinet. The face was flat planes, with slits for a mouth and nose. The head was domed unnaturally high, surmounted by a knoblike top piece. But it was the eyes that made him shudder: perfect concentric rings that stared dully forward. He pictured bronze versions of these statues.

  Purchased with Enhanced License from Shutterstock

  Royalty-free stock photo ID: 1287849832

  By Alice Agus

  https://www.shutterstock.com/download/confirm/1287849832?src=ZYw2Hl40L8_A00bPY8Pzmg-1-1&license_type=enhanced&size=huge_tiff

  If this was the true face of the enemy . . . or at least, a representation of their bronze constructs . . .

  Monsignor Roe continued: “All of this implies that the Nuragic tribes believed the enemy was still out there, ready to return at any time.”

  Gray again remembered Mac’s story.

  Something certainly was still out there.

  “But that’s not the only reason I asked you all to come to Sardinia,” Roe said, drawing back Gray’s attention. “The other reason concerns the thousands of structures dotting this island, the mysterious nuraghe.”

  “Which are what?” Seichan asked.

  Howard answered, “They’re stone fortresses built by the Nuragic tribes. Several thousand still exist on the island, going back four thousand years. Many still stand because they are masterworks of engineering and design, far superior to what one would expect from a Bronze Age people.”

  In other words, Gray thought, tech too advanced for the people living here.

  Roe stepped closer to him. “But you should know the ancient Greeks had a different name for the nuraghe fortresses. They called them daidaleia.”

  Gray looked harder at the monsignor.

  “For Daedalus,” Howard confirmed. “The mythic master craftsman of the Greeks, the man who devised the Labyrinth that housed the minotaur, who was the father of Icarus, the boy who died when he flew too close to the sun.”

  Also the man whom the key to the golden map had been named after.

  “I don’t understand,” Seichan said. “Why were those ancient fortresses named after Daedalus?”

  Roe answered, “Because Sardinia was his home.”

  20

  June 24, 11:14 A.M. CEST

  Tyrrhenian Sea

  I’m not going to make it.

  Elena checked the lounge’s wall clock for the hundredth time. The glare of the midday sun reflected off the surrounding seas, sharpening her headache. The noon deadline set by Nehir weighed on her. She had been up all night, only catnapping on the sofa when she couldn’t keep her eyes open any longer.

  Joe had mostly kept her company, but when his conversation turned into riotous snoring last night, she had chased him below, all but shoving him at the guards out in the hall. She had needed to concentrate.

  Then a couple of hours ago, Joe had returned, along with breakfast.

  By that time, her sprawl of books had spread to twice its size.

  Joe slowly paced the lounge, skirting her piles of books. His leg irons clanked with each step. He winced and groaned occasionally, clearly
pained by the brand burned into his thigh.

  Guilt ate at her.

  If I don’t solve this, he’ll suffer worse.

  He continued his clanking and groaning until she couldn’t take it any longer.

  “Can you please quit that?” she begged.

  Joe cringed. “Sorry.” He tried to slink quietly to the sofa, but it only made the chains clink louder. He finally reached the leather seat and sat down. “How’re you doing?” he asked.

  As an answer, she placed her head in her hands.

  “Maybe if you talked it through,” he said. “Gray always likes to do that.”

  She didn’t know who Gray was, but maybe Joe was right. She glanced out to the three towering calderas of Vulcano. She had spent most of the night reading about Hephaestus, the god of the forge. She had searched for every reference to the blacksmith’s creations—which were numerous.

  The god had crafted special arrows for the huntress Artemis, magical shafts that never missed their mark. He fashioned armor for countless heroes, including Achilles from the Iliad. But it was his autonomous creations that she had concentrated on.

  Even here, Hephaestus had been busy. He built a temple to Apollo, the god of music, and adorned it with the Keledones Chryseai, six golden statues of women who would sing on command. For King Minos, the blacksmith built a bronze hunting hound named Laelaps. According to Apollonius’s Argonautica, Hephaestus had created an army of bronze warriors that once awoken would keep on killing until destroyed.

  But there were two creations she found the most intriguing, remembering the stories Joe had related to her, about Mac’s encounters with bronze killing machines.

  “Let me read you something,” Elena said and drew out the pages of Argonautica again from the piles on the desk. She skipped to a passage she had flagged and translated it aloud. “‘The craftsman-god Hephaestus had fashioned for the palace of Aeetes a pair of bulls with feet of bronze, and their mouths were of bronze, and from them they breathed out a terrible flame of fire.’”

  Joe sat up straighter. “That sounds like what Mac and Maria saw in that cave, what tried to attack them.”