The Three Secret Cities

by Matthew Reilly

  The island was under attack.

  Get the fuck out of here.

  Dion leapt into an inflatable dinghy and gunned the engine, shooting quickly out of the hangar into the night.

  Up in the Hall of the Round Table, Jaeger Eins was reeling.

  This simply couldn’t be.

  No-one in all of history—no prince or duke, not even a king—had been brazen enough to launch a full-scale assault on the Castle of the Golden Eight, no matter who the Knights held in their custody.

  ‘Who would be insane enough to do this?’ he asked aloud.

  It was then that two figures came swooping out of the night-time sky, each on a set of carbon-fibre gull-wings, landing perfectly on the rim of the viewing balcony, jettisoning their gull-wings as soon as their feet hit the polished stone floor.

  The first man wore a tan miner’s jacket and an FDNY fire helmet. In his hands, he gripped a pair of MP-7 submachine guns.

  Jack West Jr.

  Jaeger Eins was beyond shocked to see him. Last he’d heard, West had been sent to Erebus, from which there was no escape.

  The second man he didn’t recognise, but Eins had fought enough dangerous men to know, on sight, that this man was even more lethal than West.

  The second man was dressed entirely in black, including a black hockey helmet that screamed Special Forces and yellow-lensed glasses, and he held on his shoulder a Predator rocket launcher.

  Without missing a beat, the second man fired his rocket launcher into the Hall of the Round Table.

  Jack West had brought a knight of his own to take on the Knights of the Golden Eight.

  A black knight.

  One of the Knights of the Golden Eight exploded.

  One second he was standing there, the next he was gone, hit by Aloysius’s RPG and vaporised.

  Aloysius ditched the Predator and drew his two short-barrelled Remington shotguns from his thigh holsters and started firing them ruthlessly as he advanced.

  He shot another Knight, who went sailing off the edge of the rock tower, plummeting down its side. Previously, the man would have landed in water, but today he landed with a foul thud on the bow of the supertanker that had penetrated the hangar down there.

  Jack strode along beside him, firing repeatedly with his submachine guns. Three squires fell in hails of bullets.

  Glaring in disbelief, Jaeger Eins barked two orders.

  ‘Drop the boy!’ he called to the Knight nearest to Alby.

  The Knight obeyed at once and hit the release catch on the frame holding up Alby’s cage and . . .

  . . . the cage dropped, with Alby in it.

  Jack gasped as he saw Alby disappear from view.

  Alby’s cage fell through the air, speeding down the sheer side of the rock tower before it splashed into the water at its base.

  It bobbed for a moment and then—still with Alby in it, his remaining hand still pinned in the cage’s manacle-hole—it went under.

  Jaeger Eins’s second order was to Jaeger Acht. ‘The railgun!’

  Acht dived into a compartment near the Round Table and hurled open its door to reveal a full-sized long-barrelled anti-aircraft turret inside it, complete with gunner’s chair. He sat in the chair and swung the immense gun around to face Aloysius.

  Jaeger Eins grinned. This was why no-one ever attacked the Castle of the Golden Eight.

  Silhouetted by the wide viewing window, Aloysius saw the big gun come around toward him, but he just kept firing in a different direction.

  Jaeger Acht brought the railgun around . . .

  . . . just as a fearsome shape swung into a hover outside the viewing window . . .

  . . . the shape of a Sukhoi Su-37 fighter-bomber, its guns aimed into the hall.

  It was Aloysius Knight’s plane, the Black Raven, flown by his loyal pilot, Rufus.

  The Sukhoi’s guns blazed to life, spitting tongues of fire. A shitload of tracer rounds sizzled past Jack and Aloysius, right into Jaeger Acht and his railgun.

  Acht and the railgun were cut to pieces, literally blown apart.

  Seeing the Sukhoi and its incredible firepower, Jaeger Eins scurried for the edge of the rock tower. ‘Knights! Squires! Effect Escape Plan Delta!’

  He glared at Jack. ‘You came for your daughter and the boy! She has already gone and now he is dead! You have failed, Captain! Failed!’

  Then Eins simply stepped off the top of the rock tower and dropped down its side, falling three hundred feet before splashing feet-first into the water at its base.

  He surfaced in the hangar at the bottom of the rock tower and clambered into the Akula-class submarine parked there.

  The water hangar looked like a bomb-site: pieces of the shattered seagate lay everywhere and the supertanker had shoved the Hercules up against the Akula.

  It was also blocking the exit.

  Eins followed Escape Plan Delta, a plan that had been prepared in the event of an attack that blocked the seagate.

  He hurried into the torpedo room of the Akula, prepped three torpedoes, and launched one of them.

  That first torpedo hit the supertanker at point-blank range and detonated.

  The front half of the supertanker exploded spectacularly.

  The giant ship lurched backwards like a boxer being punched, erupting along its long bow with billowing fireballs, emitting a deep metallic groan as it recoiled.

  The blast knocked it completely out of the seagate and suddenly the exit was clear.

  Then Eins launched two more torpedoes.

  They shoomed out through the seagate and lanced into the sea beyond it, their timers ticking downward.

  Then he hurried up onto the hull of the sub, to be met by the surviving Knights and squires. They swung the underwater combat sled that sat on top of the Akula into the water and zoomed off on it into the night.

  It was only once they were clear of the island that the other two torpedoes turned around and came back toward Aragon Castle.

  That was the final part of Escape Plan Delta: destroy the island and whoever had attacked it.

  When those torpedoes hit the base of the cliff—armed as they were with powerful RDX explosive charges—they would bring down the entire northern end of the island, including the new castle, the old castle and the Hall of the Round Table.

  The two torpedoes rushed toward the island, gaining speed, when suddenly a pair of decoys dropped into the water in front of them, released from the hovering Sukhoi.

  The torpedoes slammed into the decoys and detonated a hundred metres offshore, sending two huge but harmless geysers of water shooting into the air . . .

  . . . leaving the Castle of the Golden Eight intact and in the hands of Aloysius Knight and Jack West Jr.

  Minutes later, Zoe, Hades and Sky Monster arrived in the water hangar, after disembarking from the two supertankers they had commandeered and slammed into the island.

  Sky Monster had driven the one that had run aground on the southern end of Ischia Island; Zoe had been at the wheel of the one that had speared into the seagate with the still-weakened Hades by her side. They’d been thrown around the tanker’s stern-mounted bridge as their ship had been blasted back out of the hangar by Jaeger Eins’s torpedo, but had survived well enough to board a lifeboat and drive it here now.

  After they had secured the Hall of the Round Table, Jack and Aloysius went down in the gantry elevator to join the others in the water hangar.

  They saw the Hercules and the Akula, askew in their berths, plus a few other vehicles parked on the docks. The broken seagate lay open, and beyond it, they saw the waters of the Mediterranean and the coast of Italy, glittering in the night.

  The water in the hangar was still, like glass.

  Zoe looked at Jack, worried. ‘You don’t think . . .?’

  The stillness of the
water was shattered by two figures in scuba gear bursting up from it, holding a third.

  It was Pooh Bear and Stretch . . . with the sagging figure of Alby held between them.

  ‘Is he okay?’ Jack hurried to the edge of the dock to meet them.

  Stretch yanked off his scuba mask. ‘The bastards cut off one of his hands. But he’s alive.’

  Pooh Bear glared at Aloysius Knight. ‘I can’t believe you convinced us to parachute to Earth inside that tank. They could have shot us out of the sky.’

  ‘I figured they’d be too shocked to see their own tank right in front of their eyes to shoot it down,’ Aloysius said as Zoe and Jack pulled the three of them out of the water.

  That wasn’t entirely true.

  It wasn’t the Knights’ actual tank. Jack and Aloysius had grabbed this one in Malta on the way here.

  In response to Aloysius Knight’s single question to him—‘Does Malta own any tanks like the one that was used in London?’—Hades had informed them that, yes, the Republic of Malta did indeed own several Challenger main battle tanks just like the one the Knights had used in London. It didn’t have to be the exact same tank, just a lookalike.

  ‘It was worth a quick detour to Malta,’ Aloysius said. ‘Shock value has great value.’

  Pooh Bear shook his head and turned to Jack. ‘Where did you find this guy?’

  ‘He found me. Scarecrow sent him.’

  Inserting Pooh and Stretch via the tank had actually served two purposes. The first was to put them in the water hangar in the event that the fighting went down there.

  The second was something that Hades had warned them about: if attacked, the Knights might drop any prisoners into the water to drown. Pooh and Stretch were also there for that eventuality.

  Jack examined the stump that was Alby’s left hand. Stretch and Pooh had hastily wrapped some moist bandages around the cauterised wound, but it would need to be properly dressed.

  Alby shivered, in shock.

  ‘L . . . L . . . Lily . . .’ he stammered. ‘A guy named Sph . . . Sphinx took her . . . and they . . . killed Julius.’

  ‘Julius was here?’ Jack said.

  ‘He wanted payback for Lachie. But he was too obsessed, too intent on revenge, and they caught him and killed him.’

  ‘Oh, Julius,’ Jack whispered. He hadn’t seen that coming, but he should have known that Julius would come after the men who had so brutally killed his brother. He’d come after them, all right. ‘Rest in peace with Lachie.’

  ‘But no rest for us,’ Zoe said to Jack. ‘Your mother and Iolanthe should be in South America by now. Iolanthe spotted something in that letter from Francis Drake to Queen Elizabeth. They went to join up with Nobody down there while we came for you.’

  ‘You and Iolanthe were working together?’ Jack said.

  ‘Even I can forgive someone. Eventually,’ Zoe said.

  ‘Jack. Please! We gotta find Lily,’ Alby said fretfully. ‘And that guy called Sphinx.’

  ‘Sphinx,’ Jack said softly, recalling the shadowy figure who had visited him at Erebus.

  Alby said, ‘We can’t wait. We have to catch up with them—’

  ‘Easy, son. Easy,’ Jack said, wrapping his arms around him. ‘If someone took Lily, it means he plans to use her talent and that keeps her alive. Right now, we gotta take care of you.’

  As Jack held Alby close, Aloysius Knight took in the space around them: the spectacularly high cavern with the dock at its base and the Hall of the Round Table at its top.

  ‘I like this place,’ he said. ‘It’s got a nice evil-lair feel to it. I’ve been looking for a new European base of operations. I think I’ll take it.’

  The Orinoco Delta

  Northeastern coast of Venezuela

  29 November

  The Orinoco Delta is one of the most remote, beautiful and dangerous bodies of water on our planet.

  Situated on the Venezuelan coast at the extreme northeastern tip of South America, it is where the mighty Orinoco River discharges into the Atlantic at the astonishing rate of over twenty-five million litres per second.

  It is also vast.

  Really vast: over fifteen thousand square miles of marshy islands and countless interconnected waterways created by the outward-flowing waters of the Orinoco. Seen from the air, it is a carpet of limitless green shot through with hundreds of twisting canals.

  This maze-like network of natural canals actually gave Venezuela its modern name. When they saw them, the Spanish conquistadors named the new land ‘Little Venice’: Venezuela.

  But it is a long way from anywhere. Owing to the lack of firm ground, few people live on the delta. It is far from the strife that has riven Venezuela’s major cities in recent years. It is so remote, it has no cell phone coverage.

  The delta is also home to all manner of dangerous animal life, from tarantulas and swarms of Pygocentrus nattereri—the notorious red-bellied piranha—to the Orinoco crocodile, known for its immense size and tan colour.

  It was into this huge natural maze that Dave ‘Nobody’ Black’s boat, the Betty White, cruised slowly and silently.

  It had been a day since Mae and Iolanthe had arrived from London and met up with Nobody in Barbados.

  In the time they had been away, Jack had been broken out of Erebus and had successfully attacked the Castle of the Golden Eight.

  While that had been happening, they had been down here, on the edge of South America, virtually incommunicado, searching for the final resting place of Sir Francis Drake.

  And the clock was ticking. It was now 29 November so they only had two days to perform the ritual at the Altar of the Cosmos to avert the end of the world.

  The Betty White moved slowly around the outer reaches of the delta, where the fresh water of the river met the salt water of the Atlantic Ocean, her depth-sounding radar pinging constantly.

  Giant flat-topped mountains known as tepuis loomed in the distance to the south, rising out of the endless swamp, immense behemoths against the hazy sky.

  Mae and Iolanthe stood on the bridge of the boat with Nobody.

  The Betty White wasn’t exactly a sleek ship.

  Based in Barbados, it was a submersible support vessel: a utilitarian-looking boat with a crane on its stern—from which hung a three-person deep-sea submersible—and a small white floatplane tied down on its bow.

  At seventy feet in length, the Betty was actually rather small for a support vessel, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in tech: glistening white, the Betty was brand-new and state-of-the-art.

  ‘I bought Betty with the proceeds of a wreck I found,’ Nobody said as they patrolled the edge of the delta, the ocean behind them.

  ‘What kind of wreck?’ Iolanthe asked.

  ‘A Spanish treasure galleon,’ Nobody said. ‘Filled with silver bars.’

  ‘I thought you were some kind of do-gooder oceanographer,’ Iolanthe said, squinting at him. ‘Not a treasure hunter.’

  Nobody grinned. He was a handsome guy: tanned and lean. In his Johnnie-O t-shirt, sun-bleached shorts, deck shoes and sailing sunglasses, he cut a cool figure. He looked like he lived on the sea, which he kind of did.

  ‘A collateral benefit of spending a lot of time on the ocean floor. I love my Betty. She’s got all the mod cons: seabed scanning radar, four berths with private bathrooms, and that little floatplane has a watertight engine that could stay dry in a hurricane, which is necessary these days in the Caribbean.’

  Iolanthe gazed at the radar scanning the ocean floor ninety feet below them.

  It was her idea that had brought them here and, after a day of fruitless searching, she was starting to doubt if she’d been right.

  She looked again at the five-hundred-year-old letter from Sir Francis Drake to Queen Elizabeth I:

  My Queen,

  I have
taken ill with the fever. I cannot get back. I doubt I will survive the next five days.

  But know that I found them—all three of them—as you commanded. Their locations will be buried at sea with me in a lead coffin here in Portobelo.

  As I approach my last sunrise, I remain forever,

  Your loyal servant,

  Drake

  Codes, Iolanthe thought.

  Like all monarchs of her time, Queen Elizabeth I—a canny ruler who for almost her entire reign was at war with the Spanish—had had many codes with her sailors, men like Francis Drake and Walter Raleigh. As a historian with special access to British royal records, Iolanthe knew the key elements to Elizabeth’s main codes.

  Codes concerning locations had four elements: a starting point, a number, a direction and a distance. The first three would be threaded into a message; the last element, the distance, would be prearranged.

  The starting point here was obviously Portobelo. The Panamanian town was not, as many had surmised, the end point. It was the launching point from which their coded calculation would begin.

  Drake had written that he would not survive five days. That was the number. Five.

  The direction was the direction one had to go from the starting point, Portobelo.

  In his note, Drake mentioned his last sunrise. Sunrise meant east.

  The final element of the code was the distance, a prearranged distance known only to Drake and the queen that was not in the letter.

  Fortunately, in over a decade of working in the Hall of Royal Records, Iolanthe had found many of Elizabeth’s personal diaries.

  They were quite stunning documents, actually. One of them recounted an extraordinary trip Elizabeth had taken as a child with her famous teacher, Roger Ascham, to a chess tournament in Constantinople that for some reason had been lost to history.

  In another of the diaries, however, was an entry written in Elizabeth’s own hand that simply read: Drake 250 miles.

  And so here they were, 1250 miles—five times 250—east of Portobelo, Panama, scanning the seabed for a coffin made of lead.

  Looking out over the vast Orinoco Delta from the deck of the Betty White, Iolanthe began to worry. What if she’d been mistaken? What if the distance was wrong? They hadn’t found anything yet. Christ, they could have been hundreds of miles off course.