The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  Seichan stretched her legs and leaned against him. He pulled her closer with his free arm, where she snuggled against him. She wore a pair of black yoga pants and a matching bikini-strap top. Her long mane was tied in a ponytail that draped to her midback. He smelled the musky scent of her skin. She and Kat had gone to an early yoga class. Not that Seichan needed the stretching and breathing exercises. The determined woman had shed her baby fat in six weeks, returning to her sculpted fighting form.

  Gray looked down at his own belly, which had filled out a little.

  I should’ve followed her example.

  Still, considering their months of sleep deprivation and Jack’s unpredictable schedule, Gray cut himself some slack. Kat’s husband, Monk, had been inviting him to play basketball or to spot him at the gym, but Gray had mostly declined, enjoying this period of domesticity. Plus, he always felt a twinge of guilt leaving Seichan alone with Jack. He wanted to pull his weight as best he could.

  Maybe I’m trying to prove something as much as Seichan.

  Over the past six months, Kat and Monk had come over often with their rambunctious girls, Harriet and Penny. While they never stated it openly, Gray suspected the visits were to make sure Gray and Seichan did not become too isolated, as could often happen with first-time parents, whose lives end up revolving around the baby, leaving time for little else. Perhaps Monk and Kat were also demonstrating by example how to balance married life, parenthood, and a demanding job. The pair certainly kept them abreast of events at Sigma command, almost as if to entice them to return early.

  The satellite phone Gray had left on the end table chimed.

  He groaned, not wanting to get it. But Jack, half-drowsing, heard it too and began to sniffle his way toward a full wail. He passed the baby to Seichan.

  “Needs a diaper change,” he said.

  “Not so fast. When you start breastfeeding, we’ll talk about excusing you from diaper duty.”

  He grinned and rolled to the phone. “Fine. It’s probably Monk seeing if I want to join him for a game of pickup at the park.”

  “You should go.” She eyed his midsection. “Really.”

  He rolled his eyes and picked up the satellite phone. He answered it and was surprised to hear Captain Kathryn Bryant’s voice.

  “Kat, do you want to speak to Seichan?”

  “No, I’m calling you on behalf of the director. I know you’re still on leave, but we’re monitoring a situation over here. And someone involved has asked specifically for you.”

  He felt a familiar fire stoke in his blood. “Who?”

  “It’s a long story. We’ll fill you in when you get here.”

  He covered the phone and turned to Seichan. “Something’s up over at Sigma. They want me over there.”

  “Really?” The gold flecks shone brighter in her green eyes, plainly intrigued, maybe envious. Still, she waved him off. “Go. Get out of here.”

  He lifted the phone, but Seichan raised a hand.

  “After you change Jack’s diaper.”

  He smiled.

  Definitely a tiger mom . . .

  10:02 A.M.

  Washington, D.C.

  “Welcome back to the lion’s den,” Painter Crowe said.

  Gray stepped into the director’s office. Nothing had changed over the past five months. The windowless room was spartan. The only pieces of furniture were a couple of chairs and a wide mahogany desk in the center of the room; the only decoration was a Remington bronze seated on a pedestal in the corner. It featured an exhausted Native American warrior slumped atop a horse, a reminder of the director’s heritage and a testament to the cost of battle for any soldier.

  Painter stood before a trio of flat-screen monitors that glowed on three of the walls. The director had shed a navy suit jacket, which now hung over the back of his chair. The sleeves of his starched white shirt were rolled to his elbows, a sign that he’d likely been up for hours if not all night. The entire command center, buried under the Smithsonian Castle on the National Mall, buzzed with activity. Even Kat down the hall had only waved to him as he passed Sigma’s intelligence nest. She had been bent over a monitor with her second-in-command.

  Something definitely has everyone stirred up.

  Envy and irritation flickered through him. Before going on paternity leave, he had always been in the thick of things, one of Sigma’s top field operatives. Now he felt like someone stumbling into the middle of a story. Not only was he out of the loop, but he felt out of step with the rhythm here.

  He didn’t like it.

  As Painter crossed toward his desk, Gray noted the flat-screen that the director had been studying. It showed a topographic map of Greenland’s eastern coast. A pattern of red Vs crisscrossed the neighboring sea. Call signs next to them suggested they were military planes.

  “Take a seat,” Painter said. “Kat will join us in a moment after she loops in a video call.”

  Gray sank into a chair, as the director settled behind his desk. Though more than a decade older, Painter kept his frame trim and muscular. There was never any waste to the man. The only notable change was that he’d grown his jet-black hair longer, nearly to his collar. His face was more deeply tanned, highlighting his Native American heritage.

  Gray knew the source for these physical changes. Monk had told him that Painter had spent a break with his wife, Lisa, on a horse trek through Arizona, such was the carefree life of a married couple without kids.

  I remember such times . . .

  Though it felt like a lifetime ago.

  Director Crowe had returned last week—apparently arriving in time to deal with this crisis. Before Painter spoke, he combed a single snowy lock behind one ear, like tucking in an eagle’s feather, and sized Gray up.

  “Fatherhood seems to agree with you,” he finally said.

  “You should’ve seen me a couple months ago.” Gray rubbed the dark stubble on his chin. He remembered the beard he’d briefly sported. For a while, he’d been too exhausted to shave, his hygiene routine intermittent at best. Even now, he wore a pair of black jeans pulled from the hamper and a hooded gray sweatshirt.

  Painter nodded. “Still, thanks for interrupting your leave.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “Apparently a situation in Greenland has blown up in our faces. A few days ago, we got word of the discovery of a shipwreck buried within the heart of a glacier.”

  Painter picked up a remote and swiveled his chair. He pointed to the flat-screen monitor to his left. A poor, pixelated image appeared on the screen, showing a broken-masted ship half trapped in ice.

  “A pair of researchers up there—a climatologist and geologist—discovered it by accident. Along with a treasure inside.”

  Painter clicked the remote and showed a photo of a gold map in a dark box with a spherical object imbedded in it.

  Gray stood up and crossed over to get a better look. “I don’t understand. Why does this discovery concern Sigma?”

  “I’ll get to that in a moment. Just know we needed to confirm the discovery’s authenticity and secure it quickly. After a few inquiries, I learned that Maria Crandall knew a colleague, a nautical archaeologist working in Egypt, who we convinced to investigate the ship.”

  “Maria? Kowalski’s girlfriend?”

  “That’s right. Those two were already in Africa. I had them follow behind the archaeologist, so that if what was discovered was authenticated, they’d be able to secure it and extract it.”

  Gray began to suspect why this situation in Greenland had blown up, as Painter described.

  If Kowalski was involved . . .

  Painter continued, sharing a tale of a deadly ambush, the theft of a map, and the kidnapping of an archaeologist. But the story also told of something unleashed from the hold of the ship, something horrific and impossible.

  “Details are still coming in,” Painter admitted. “A brutal storm made communication with Greenland sketchy. Now that the weather’s let up, we have f
ive Poseidons flying a search grid, hunting for that submarine.”

  Gray glanced over to the Greenland map with its crimson Vs moving slowly over the Arctic Ocean. He pointed to one veering away from the others. “Did they pick up a trail?”

  Painter glanced back. “No. A set of sonobuoys detected the sub as it headed north along the coast. It traveled beyond the buoys’ range, but from the trajectory and speed, we suspect it sought the cover of the Arctic ice cap.”

  “From under there, it can travel anywhere without being seen.”

  “Exactly.”

  “You said the assault team spoke Arabic. Do we have any intel on who they might be?”

  “Not as of yet. Kat has every international intelligence agency trying to answer that question. She was able to determine that Conrad Nelson—the murdered geologist—shared the photos I showed you with his employers, Allied Global Mining. After that, anyone there could have shared them far and wide.”

  “Where they reached the wrong eyes.”

  “And the right ones. Those same photos drew another agency’s attention. They asked for our help and drew Sigma into this mess.” He glanced significantly at Gray. “It’s that group who asked for your assistance.”

  “Me? Why?”

  “They want—”

  Painter was cut off as sharp voices carried from the hall. Gray recognized Kat’s voice, trying to calm someone. The man with her sounded both flabbergasted and angry, his accent distinctly Bostonian: “Who the hell knew all this was down here? Right under our noses.”

  Painter stood up and checked his watch. “He’s early.” He sighed to Gray. “The president asked that Sigma personally accommodate his visit, especially considering the circumstance.”

  Gray frowned. Only a handful of people outside of DARPA knew of Sigma’s existence, let alone the presence of these covert headquarters at the edge of the National Mall.

  Kat arrived first, leaning on a cane. Though mostly recovered from her ordeal last Christmas, she still remained weak on her left side. She was dressed in navy blues with an emerald frog pin in her lapel, a remembrance of teammates lost.

  She moved aside to let the visitor enter. “This way, Senator.”

  Into the office stepped a tall, broad-shouldered man, outfitted in a trim Armani suit with a blue tie and black leather shoes polished to a sheen. Gray suddenly felt way underdressed in his jeans and hoodie, especially considering who had just arrived.

  Painter came around his desk and shook the man’s hand. “Senator Cargill, welcome to Sigma command.”

  Gray inwardly kicked himself. Earlier, engrossed in Painter’s story, he had failed to make the connection. It was perhaps a testament to how rusty he’d gotten during his leave. The name of the kidnapped archaeologist—Dr. Elena Cargill—had not clicked with him.

  Is this the reason Sigma is all riled up?

  Senator Kent Cargill took in the room with a glance. His focus briefly fixed on the map of Greenland, then returned to Painter. The fifty-year-old man stood over six feet tall, all lean muscle, honed by two combat infantry tours in the Middle East, one during Desert Storm. His dark blond hair was slightly curled, disheveled but in a manner that made him seem approachable.

  Few in the country didn’t know his face. Some considered him the JFK of the new millennium, especially with his Bostonian accent. Like Kennedy, he was also Roman Catholic, but unlike the former president, he was not polarizing. People on both sides of the political aisle loved him. He was devout in his faith, but open-minded. He was firm in his convictions, but willing to compromise. A rarity on Capitol Hill. There was talk of him running for president, to fill the soon-to-be-empty White House.

  Gray shared a look with Painter. It was the director who had recruited Elena to investigate the ship in Greenland, who put her in harm’s way and got her kidnapped as a result.

  Senator Cargill’s eyes were cold and hard, and in this matter, uncompromising.

  “Where the hell is my daughter?”

  9

  June 22, 5:32 P.M. TRT

  Airborne over the Aegean Sea

  Looks like I’ve come nearly full circle.

  Elena stared out the private jet’s window at the sun glinting off blue seas, the spread of islands. Having researched this region for her entire career, she had no trouble identifying landmarks, enough to roughly estimate her location.

  I’m back in the Mediterranean . . . likely over the Aegean Sea.

  She guessed a little over twenty-four hours had passed since she had been taken aboard that infernal submarine. But she couldn’t be certain. Her captors had locked her in a cabin with a lone bunk, where without portholes she could not sense the passage of time. They had fed her and treated her brusquely but not cruelly. Despite the tension, she had napped fitfully—only to be shocked awake when the entire sub shook violently.

  Panicked, heart pounding, she had feared they’d been torpedoed or blasted by a depth charge. Then that hulking brute of a bodyguard had come and hauled her out of the cabin and over to the sub’s command center. Bright sunlight flowed down through the open hatch of the conning tower, along with a blast of freezing air. She was forced at gunpoint up the ladder, where she discovered a featureless world of windblown snow and blindingly white ice. She realized the earlier crash had been the sub cracking through the Arctic ice cap.

  Not far from the sub, a turboprop plane sat on a makeshift runway scraped into the ice. After she and six members of the assault team had offloaded, the submarine quickly submerged, plainly not wanting to be spotted. She was transferred to the turboprop, which took them to a nondescript island. There she had been forced into this jet.

  Movement drew her attention back to present. The assault team leader came down the cabin’s aisle. The jet’s interior was appointed in rich finishes of ash wood and blond leather. A bar at the back was lined with Baccarat crystal. She only knew that because of the fancy water goblet resting on the table between her and the seat facing her. Clearly the attack in Greenland had nothing to do with the value of the ancient map’s precious metals.

  Something bigger was afoot.

  The woman dropped into the seat opposite. Elena noted how drawn and silent the team leader had become. The caramel of her features had paled; her eyes looked haunted. After the rush of escaping Greenland, she clearly must have been dwelling on the events, digesting them more fully, trying to come to terms with the horrors unleashed from the ancient dhow’s hold.

  “We will be landing soon,” the woman said.

  Elena stared back at her, too curious to stay silent, willing to risk punishment, suspecting that now might be the time to get some answers. “Who are you?”

  The leader answered with a stretch of silence, studying Elena, as if judging whether she was worthy of such knowledge. She finally spoke. “You can call me Bint Mūsā.”

  Elena translated the name. “Daughter of Moses.”

  She got a nod of confirmation. The woman absently traced a finger along the scar. “A title that is hard-earned.”

  Elena swallowed, not doubting the woman. She also fought to keep her face expressionless. She was suddenly too conscious of the pressure at her lower back. So far, the others had not discovered what she had kept hidden. Apparently assuming she was no threat, they had only patted her down, making sure she had no weapons, and confiscated her phone before locking her up in the sub.

  They had failed to find the small sealskin-wrapped package tucked in an inner pocket of her parka, the artifact she had taken from the ship captain’s corpse. While aboard the submarine, anxious and needing a distraction, she had risked examining the object. She cracked its wax seal, parted the old skin, and found two preserved chapbooks inside, with leather covers stitched together with thick cords.

  She had been too afraid of damaging the brittle books to open them, but long ago their titles had been burned into the ancient leather and remained legible. Both were inscribed in cursive Arabic. The first was a single word—ملحمة—whi
ch meant Odyssey. At the time, she wondered if it could be a written translation of Homer’s epic poem, but she could not risk opening it to find out.

  Especially as the second title was even more intriguing.

  Even now that line of Arabic burned in her mind’s eye, along with its translation.

  The Testament of the Fourth Son of Moses.

  Elena had imagined it must be the dead captain’s log, an account of how his ship ended up in a sea cave along the coast of Greenland, why it had stayed there, and where it had come from to be carrying such horrific cargo. She had wanted to crack that journal open, but she feared damaging such a vital historical record, the final words of a Son of Moses.

  She stared at the scarred woman across from her, who claimed the title of Daughter of Moses. What could be the connection? She had no doubt there was one. Her kidnappers certainly seemed to know far more about the dhow and the golden map than anyone else.

  The pilot radioed back to the passenger compartment, speaking Turkish, which surprised Elena, considering everyone else spoke Arabic. “We’ll be landing in ten minutes. Fasten your seat belts.”

  Elena had already done that, so she turned to the window and stared below. A coastline appeared ahead. If she was right about the blue waters below being the Aegean Sea, she guessed that the rocky shore ahead marked the coast of Turkey. To keep her fears in check, she tried to determine where along the coastline they were headed. She searched for landmarks, took account of the sun’s position, and felt a chill, born of certainty and trepidation.

  A wide waterway cut to the northeast. That has to be the Dardanelles Strait. In classical antiquity, it was named the Hellespont, or the Sea of Helle. The strait cut through northwestern Turkey and connected to the Sea of Marmara.

  It seems I truly have traveled full circle . . . from Helheim to the Sea of Helle.

  She returned her attention to the approaching coastline. She recognized that deep carve of a bay, the towering cliffs sweeping to either side. She had recently seen a depiction of this port. She pictured the golden map’s tiny silver ship resting along this very stretch of coast. Back at the dhow, she remembered naming this place and getting confirmation from the woman seated across from her.