Map of Bones: A Sigma Force Novel

by James Rollins

Vigor was the first to make coherent motion. He pointed to the ceiling. “Look.”

  Gray craned. The black paint and stars persisted, but now strange letters glowed in a fiery script across the dome of the roof.

  “It’s the clue,” Rachel said.

  As they stared, the letters faded rapidly. Like the fiery pyre atop the black hematite slab at St. Peter’s, the revelation only lasted a brief time.

  Gray hurried to free his underwater camera. They needed a record.

  Vigor stayed his hand. “I know what it says. It’s Greek.”

  “You can translate?”

  The monsignor nodded. “It’s not difficult. It’s a phrase attributed to Plato, describing how the stars affect us and are in fact a reflection of us. It became the foundation for astrology and the cornerstone for Gnostic belief.”

  “What’s the phrase?” Gray asked.

  “‘As it is above, so it is below.’”

  Gray stared at the starry ceiling and at the reflection in the water. Above and below. Here was the same sentiment expressed visually. “But what does it mean?”

  Rachel had wandered from the group. She slowly made a complete circuit of the room. She called from the far side of the pyramid. “Over here!”

  Gray heard a splash.

  They hurried over to her. Rachel waded toward the pyramid.

  “Careful,” Gray warned.

  “Look,” she said, and pointed.

  Gray made it around the edge of the pyramid and saw what had excited her. A tiny section of the pyramid, six inches square, had vanished midway up one face, dissolved away, consumed during the firestorm. Resting inside the hollow lay one of Alexander the Great’s outstretched hands, closed in a fist.

  Rachel reached for it, but Gray motioned her away.

  “Let me,” he said.

  He reached to touch the hand, glad he was still wearing his diving gloves. The brittle flesh felt like stone. Between the clenched fingers, a bit of gold glinted.

  Teeth gritted, Gray broke off one of the fingers, earning a gasp from Vigor.

  It couldn’t be helped.

  From the fist, Gray removed a three-inch-long gold key, thick toothed, one end forged into a cross. It was surprisingly heavy.

  “A key,” Kat said.

  “But to what lock?” Vigor asked.

  Gray stepped away. “To wherever we must go next.” His eyes wandered to the ceiling to where the letters had faded away.

  “As it is above, so it is below,” Vigor repeated, noting the direction of his gaze.

  “But what is the significance?” Gray mumbled. He pocketed the key into his thigh pouch. “Where does it tell us to go?”

  Rachel had moved a step away. She slowly turned in a circle, surveying the room. She stopped, her gaze fixed on Gray. Her eyes shone brightly. He knew that look by now.

  “I know where to start.”

  1:24 P.M.

  IN THE raised pilot compartment of the hydrofoil, Raoul zipped into his wet suit. The boat was owned by the Guild. It had cost the Dragon Court a small fortune to rent it, but there could be no mistakes today.

  “Bring us in along a sweeping curve as near as possible without raising suspicion,” he ordered the captain, a dark-skinned Afrikaner with a pattern of pinpoint scars over his cheeks.

  Two young women, one black, one white, flanked the man. They were dressed in bikinis, their equivalent of camouflage gear, but their eyes glinted with the promise of deadly force.

  The captain didn’t acknowledge Raoul, but he shifted the wheel and the craft angled to the side.

  Raoul turned away from the captain and his women. He headed out to the ladder to the lower deck.

  He hated being aboard a craft not directly under his authority. He clambered down the ladder to join the twelve-man team that would undertake the dive. His other three men would operate the strafing guns cleverly engineered into the bow and both flanks of the stern. The last member of his team, Dr. Alberto Menardi, was ensconced in one of the cabins, preparing to unravel the riddles here.

  And there was one unwelcome addition to the team.

  The woman.

  Seichan stood with her wet suit half-unzipped, down to her belly button. Her breasts were barely concealed behind the neoprene. She stood by her tanks and her Aquanaut sled. The tiny one-person sleds were propelled by twin propulsion jets. They would skim a diver through the water at breakneck speeds.

  The Eurasian woman glanced up to him. Raoul found her mixed heritage repellent, but she served her purpose. His eyes traveled along the length of her bare midriff and chest. Two minutes alone with her, and he’d have that constant disdainful smirk smashed off her face.

  But for now, the bitch had to be tolerated.

  This was Guild territory.

  Seichan had insisted on accompanying the assault team. “Only to observe and offer advice,” she had purred. “Nothing more.”

  Still, he spotted the speargun among her stack of diving gear.

  “We evac in three minutes,” Raoul said.

  They would go overboard as the hydrofoil slowed to turn around the peninsula, just sightseers getting a closer look at the old fort. They would swim into position from there. The hydrofoil would hang back, ready to intercede with its guns if necessary.

  Seichan tugged on her zipper. “I’ve had our radio man intermittently jamming their communications. So when their radios go fully out, they’ll be less suspicious.”

  Raoul nodded. She had her uses. He’d give her that much respect.

  With a final check of his watch, he lifted an arm and made a circling gesture with a finger. “Mount up,” he said.

  1:26 P.M.

  BACK IN the tunnel entrance to Alexander’s tomb, Rachel knelt down on the stone floor. She worked on her project, preparing to prove her point.

  Gray spoke to Kat. “You’d better get back out in the water. Check in with Monk. It’s been longer than the couple minutes we had told him. He’ll be getting edgy.”

  Kat nodded, but her eyes glanced around the room, settled on the tomb pyramid. Reluctantly, she turned and headed back down the tunnel toward the entry pool.

  Vigor finished his own inspection of the tomb chamber. His face was still aglow with wonder. “I don’t think it will fire like that again.”

  Gray nodded at Rachel’s side. “The gold pyramid must have acted like a capacitor. It stored its energy, perfectly preserved within its superconducting matrix…until the charge was released by the shock, creating a cascade reaction that emptied the pyramid.”

  “That means,” Vigor said, “that even if the Dragon Court discovers this chamber, they’ll never be able to raise the riddle.”

  “Or gain the gold key,” Gray said, patting his thigh pouch. “We’re finally a full step ahead of them.”

  Rachel heard the relief and satisfaction in his voice.

  “But first we have to solve this riddle,” she reminded him. “I have an inkling of where to begin, but no answer yet.”

  Gray came over to her. “What are you working on?”

  She had a Mediterranean map spread on the stones, the same map she had used to demonstrate that the inscription on the hematite slab depicted the coastline of the eastern Mediterranean. With a black felt marker, she had carefully drawn spots on the map and assigned names to each.

  Sitting back, she waved an arm to the tomb chamber. “The phrase—‘as it is above, so it is below’—was originally meant to bring the star’s positions into our own lives.”

  “Astrology,” Gray said.

  “Not exactly,” Vigor argued. “The stars truly ruled ancient civilizations. Constellations were the timekeepers of seasons, the guideposts for travel, the home of the gods. Civilizations honored them by building their monuments as a reflection of the starry night. A new theory about the three pyramids of Giza is that they were aligned as such to match the three stars of Orion’s belt. Even in more modern times, every Catholic cathedral or basilica is built along an east-west axis, t
o mark the rising and setting of the sun. We still honor that tradition.”

  “So we’re supposed to look for patterns,” Gray said. “Significant positions of something in the sky or on the Earth.”

  “And the tomb is telling us what to pay attention to,” Rachel said.

  “Then I must be deaf,” Gray said.

  Her uncle had figured it out by now, too. “The bronze finger of the Colossus,” he said, staring out at the tomb. “The giant pyramid, perhaps representative of the one at Giza. The remnants of the Pharos Lighthouse above us. Even the drum-shaped tomb might hearken back to the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus.”

  “I’m sorry,” Gray said with a frown. “The mausoleum of what?”

  “It was one of the Seven Wonders,” Rachel said. “Remember how closely Alexander was tied to them all.”

  “Right,” Gray said. “Something about his birth coinciding with one and his death another.”

  “The Temple of Artemis,” Vigor said with a nod. “And the Hanging Gardens of Babylon. They’re all connected to Alexander…to here.”

  Rachel pointed to the map she was working on. “I’ve marked all their locations. They are spread throughout the eastern Mediterranean. They are all localized in the same region mapped out on the hematite slab.”

  Gray studied the map. “Are you saying we’re supposed to be looking for a pattern among the seven of them?”

  “‘As it is above, so it is below,’” Vigor quoted.

  “Where do we even begin?” Gray asked.

  “Time,” Rachel said. “Or rather the progression of time, as hinted at by the Sphinx’s riddle. Moving from birth to death.”

  Gray’s eyes narrowed, then widened with understanding. “Chronological order. When the Wonders were built.”

  Rachel nodded. “But I don’t know the order.”

  “I do,” Vigor said. “What archaeologist in the region wouldn’t?”

  He knelt down and took the felt marker. “I think Rachel is right. The first clue that started this all was hidden in a book in Cairo, near Giza. The pyramids are also the oldest of the Seven Wonders.” He placed the tip of the marker on Giza. “I find it interesting that this tomb lies under the Pharos Lighthouse.”

  “Why’s that?” Gray asked.

  “Because the lighthouse was the last of the Wonders to be built. From first to last. This might also indicate that wherever we go next might be the end of the road. The last stop.”

  Uncle Vigor leaned down and carefully drew lines, connecting the Seven Wonders in order of their construction. “From Giza to Babylon, then on to Olympia, where the statue of Zeus towered.”

  “Alexander’s supposed real father,” Rachel reminded.

  “From there, we go to Artemis’s Temple at Ephesus, then Halicarnassus, then the island of Rhodes…until at last we reach our own spot on the map. Alexandria and its famous lighthouse.”

  Her uncle leaned back. “Is anyone still wondering if we’re not on the right track?”

  Rachel and Gray stared at his handiwork.

  “Christ…” Gray swore.

  “It forms a perfect hourglass,” Rachel said.

  Vigor nodded. “The symbol for the passage of time itself. Formed by two triangles. Remember that the Egyptian symbol for the white powder fed to the pharaohs was a triangle. As a matter of fact, triangles were also symbolic for the benben stone of the Egyptians, a symbol of sacred knowledge.”

  “What’s a benben stone?” Gray asked.

  Rachel answered. “They’re the caps placed over the tips of Egyptian obelisks and pyramids.”

  “But they’re mostly represented by triangles in art,” her uncle added. “In fact, you can see one on the back of your own dollar bill. American currency shows a pyramid with a triangle hovering over it.”

  “The one with the eye inside it,” Gray said.

  “An all-seeing eye,” Vigor corrected. “Symbolic of that sacred knowledge I was talking about. It makes one wonder if this society of ancient mages didn’t have some influence on the early fraternities of your forefathers.” This last was said with a smile. “But certainly for the Egyptians, there seems to be an underlying theme of triangles, sacred knowledge, all tying back to the mysterious white powder. Even the name benben makes this connection.”

  “What do you mean?” Rachel said, intrigued.

  “The Egyptians implied significance to the spelling of their words. For instance, a-i-s in ancient Egyptian translates to ‘brain,’ but if you reversed the spelling to s-i-a, that word means ‘consciousness.’ They used the very spelling of the words to connect the two: consciousness to the brain. Now back to benben. The letters b-e-n translate to ‘sacred stone,’ as I mentioned, but do you know what you get if you spell it backward?”

  Rachel and Gray shrugged at the same time.

  “N-e-b translates to ‘gold.’”

  Gray let out a breath of surprise. “So gold is connected to sacred stone and sacred knowledge.”

  Vigor nodded. “Egypt is where it all began.”

  “But where does it end?” Rachel asked, staring down at her map. “What is the significance of the hourglass? How does it point to the next location?”

  They all stared out at the pyramidal tomb.

  Vigor shook his head.

  Gray knelt down. “It’s my turn at the map.”

  “You have an idea?” Vigor said.

  “You don’t have to sound so shocked.”

  1:37 P.M.

  GRAY SET to work, using the back of his knife as a straight edge. He had to get this right. With the felt marker in hand, he spoke as he worked, not looking up.

  “That big bronze finger,” he said. “See how it’s in the exact center of the room, positioned under the dome?”

  The others glanced out to the tomb. The water had settled to a flat sheen again. The arched starscape on the ceiling was again reflected perfectly in the water, creating an illusion of a starry sphere.

  “The finger is positioned like the north-south pole of that spherical mirage. The axis around which the world spins. And now look at the map. What spot marks the center of the hourglass?”

  Rachel leaned closer and read the name there. “The island of Rhodes,” she said. “Where the finger came from.”

  Gray smiled at the wonder in her voice. Was it from the revelation or the fact that he had discovered it?

  “I think we’re supposed to find the axis through the hourglass,” he said. He took the felt marker and drew a line bisecting the hourglass vertically. “And that bronze finger points toward the north pole.” He continued, using his knife blade as a guide, and extended the line north.

  His marker stopped at a well-known and significant city.

  “Rome,” Rachel read off the map.

  Gray sat back. “The fact that all this geometry points right back to Rome must be significant. It must be where we have to go next. But where in Rome? The Vatican again?”

  He stared around at the others.

  Rachel’s brow had bunched up.

  Vigor slowly knelt down. “I think, Commander, that you’re both right and wrong. Can I see your knife?”

  Gray handed it over, glad to let the monsignor usurp his position.

  He played with the knife’s edge on the map. “Hmm…two triangles.” He tapped the hourglass pattern.

  “What about it?”

  Vigor shook his head, eyes focused. “You were right about the fact that this line hits Rome. But it’s not where we’re supposed to go.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Remember the multiple layers of riddles here. We have to look deeper.”

  “To where?”

  Vigor dragged his finger along the edge of the blade, extending the line past Rome. “Rome was only the first stop.” He continued the imaginary line farther north, into France. He halted at a spot just a bit north of Marseilles.

  Vigor nodded and smiled. “Clever.”

  “What?”

  Vigor passed ba
ck the knife and tapped the spot. “Avignon.”

  A gasp arose from Rachel.

  Gray failed to see the significance. His confused expression made that plain.

  Rachel turned to him. “Avignon is the place in France to which the papacy was exiled in the early fourteenth century. It became the papal seat of power for almost a full century.”

  “The second seat of papal power,” Vigor stressed. “First Rome, then France. Two triangles, two symbols of power and knowledge.”

  “But how can we be sure?” Gray said. “Maybe we’re reading too much into it.”

  Vigor waved away his concern. “Remember, we already had pinpointed the date when we thought the clues were planted, when the papacy left Rome. The first decade of the fourteenth century.”

  Gray nodded, but he was not totally convinced.

  “And these crafty alchemists left us another layer to the riddle to help firmly establish this location.” Vigor pointed to the shape on the map. “When do you think the hourglass was first invented?”

  Gray shook his head. “I assumed it was at least a couple thousand years…maybe older.”

  “Oddly enough, the hourglass’s invention matched the time of the first mechanical clocks. Only seven hundred years ago.”

  Gray calculated in his head. “That would place it back to the start of the thirteen hundreds again. The beginning of the fourteenth century.”

  “Marking time, as all hourglasses should do, back to the founding of the French papacy.”

  Gray felt a thrill chase through him. Now they knew where they needed to go next. With the gold key. To Avignon, to the French Vatican. He sensed a similar excitement in Rachel and her uncle.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Gray said, and led them quickly down the tunnel to the entry pool.

  “What about the tomb?” Vigor said.

  “The announcement of the discovery will have to wait for another day. If the Dragon Court comes calling, they’ll find out they’re too late.”

  Gray hurried into the far chamber. He knelt, slid his mask over his features, and ducked his head underwater, preparing to let the others know the good news.

  As soon as his head hit the water, his radio buzzed, irritating and loud. “Kat…Monk…can anyone hear me?”