The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  She sighed and glanced down. The guilt had softened in her eyes, but he feared it was not gone. He could tell she remained unresolved, and it set his heart to pounding harder, worried.

  The cruise director’s voice came over the ship-wide intercom, announcing that they’d reached port and that disembarkation was available for tour groups and individuals.

  Seichan patted her palms on his chest, as if tabling the matter. “Let’s go.”

  They headed out of the bedroom into the common areas, greeted by the music of Tchaikovsky from the suite’s Steinway piano. Gray had heard the muffled bits of various classical pieces and assumed it was the self-playing feature on the instrument. But Father Bailey was sitting at the keyboard and playing the final chords.

  Mac stood next to the piano, his arm back in its sling. He cradled a mug of coffee and nodded to the table. “The butler brought in lunch and a tea service.”

  Seichan crossed over to the tower of little cakes and finger sandwiches.

  Gray joined Mac and Bailey as the priest stood up, massaging his hands and wrists.

  “A bit rusty,” Bailey said. “But it helps me think.”

  Gray knew what puzzled the man. It sat on the lounge’s coffee table. The lid of the bronze box stood open. The gold map and silver astrolabe shone brightly in the streaming sunlight. He also noted Maria out on the cabin’s public deck, staring toward the bustle of Palma’s port. Gray knew she wasn’t appreciating the sights, but keeping watch.

  “Still, haven’t learned anything new,” Bailey admitted, frowning at the map. “And without Monsignor Roe to help offer guidance . . .”

  They had reached a dead end.

  Gray knew this, too. Even the bright sunlight could not dispel his growing gloom. As he stared down at the map, he again felt that sense of being lost at sea, with no compass to guide him safely home.

  A knock drew all their eyes to the foyer, to the cabin door.

  Someone else heard it, too.

  12:10 P.M.

  Oh, thank god . . .

  A few minutes ago, Maria had thought she’d spotted a familiar large bulk climbing the gangway by the dock, but she couldn’t be sure. So she was already in motion before the second polite rap on the door. She burst from the balcony and rushed across the breadth of the suite, past the others in the lounge.

  She headed straight to the door.

  Gray called after her. “Check the security cam before—”

  Don’t need to.

  She knew who it was. With every step, she felt the pressure inside her easing, the weight on her shoulders growing lighter. Unable to stop herself, she grabbed the handle and yanked the door open.

  Startled, the room steward at the threshold stepped back.

  She shouldered past him and leaped at the guest next to him.

  Joe dropped a large duffel bag and caught her in his arms with a loud oof.

  She clung hard to him, trying to squeeze away her guilt. “I’m so sorry, Joe.”

  “Sheesh, for what?”

  She tried to answer, to explain about leading him astray back at Castel Gandolfo, for sending him off with any empty case. But she knew that wasn’t the true source of her remorse. She knew it in this moment, in his arms. Her shame and guilt rose from the doubts she had harbored, that she had let build—for him, maybe even for herself—about their relationship, about their future.

  Fear of losing him had burned that all away.

  Her love for him ached inside her.

  I don’t ever want to lose you.

  Unable to put this into words, she buried her face in his chest, inhaling his sweaty aroma, feeling the train-engine heat of his body. The arm around her was an iron strap.

  How could I have ever doubted this?

  Joe carried her inside before finally setting her down, somewhat roughly. She kept hold of his hand. His other palm rubbed his lower back, his expression pained.

  “I’d carry you to the ends of the earth, babe. You know that. But maybe not right now. Not after someone tried to break my spine.”

  “Sorry,” she said again lamely.

  She stared up, noting his taped nose, the nostrils stuffed with cotton. She had heard all that he’d gone through, the tortures endured. And as much as she was beyond happy to have him back, his injuries tempered her jubilation, reminding her that Elena was still in the hands of those same people.

  If she was even still alive.

  This thought sobered her up.

  Joe nodded as Gray carried the large duffel. He needed both arms to haul it over to the lounge. “Gifts from Painter,” Joe explained. “Found the bag waiting dockside. Hope it’s everything you asked for.”

  Gray knelt down, unzipped it, and took a brief inventory. Maria spotted a stack of black polymer cases, the topmost stamped with SIG SAUER. There was also a stubby rifle of some sort, sitting atop boxes of ammunition.

  Gray ignored the armaments and pulled out a ten-inch e-tablet. “For now, we’re going to leave the search for Dr. Cargill to Painter and Kat. They’re also following up Kowalski’s lead about that underground encampment where he and Elena had been held, somewhere near the Turkish coast.”

  Gray stood up with the e-tablet and turned to the group. “As for us, we still don’t know who the enemy is, but we know what they’re after. The cruise ship will be overnighting here, so we have less than a day to figure out where to go next.” Gray turned to Joe. “To help with that, I want to hear every detail about what happened aboard that yacht, everything Dr. Cargill told you, or hinted at, or even muttered under her breath.”

  Joe ignored him and stepped over to the coffee table. “You have one of these, too.” With his fists on his hips, he studied the map and astrolabe with a frown. “Where did you get it?”

  Father Bailey explained about the Holy Scrinium, about Leonardo da Vinci.

  Joe waved the history lesson aside. “Yeah, fine, but did you get it to work?”

  “Well, no,” Bailey admitted.

  Joe sighed in exasperation, unbuckled his belt, and dropped his trousers to his ankles. Luckily, he was wearing boxers. He reached to a thick bandage around his thigh. Maria had heard about him being burned by branding irons.

  Joe fiddled with the wraps, then unsheathed a trio of thin bronze rods that were pinned and secured under his bandage. “Elena found these. Gave them to me for safekeeping. She didn’t want those bastards finding ’em. Maybe feared she might give them up under torture or something.”

  “What are they?” Maria asked.

  “Elena called them ‘the Beams of the Death Star’ . . . or something like that.” Joe pointed to the astrolabe. “You stick ’em in there to make the map work.”

  Gray took and inspected the rods.

  Bailey looked over his shoulder, his words breathless. “They’re the tools to unlock the Daedalus Key.”

  12:28 P.M.

  Kowalski did his best to explain all that had happened with the other map. He paced in a circle around the coffee table. Gray and Father Bailey sat on their knees before the map. The two searched together to match the proper symbols to the flags on the bronze pins.

  Everyone else hovered around them.

  Kowalski finished his account, “Before the damn thing could complete its run, we were interrupted.”

  “So, you never saw where the ship ended up?” Gray asked as he inserted a second pin.

  “Like I said, we were interrupted. Maybe Elena saw something that I missed. She was closer, willing to risk getting radiation poisoning.” He shrugged. “I plan to have kids someday.”

  He gave Maria a quick glance.

  Right?

  She frowned and waved him back toward Gray.

  Bailey rotated the astrolabe in one hand, then pointed to a spot on the inner sphere. “Here. That’s the last symbol, isn’t it?”

  Gray squinted closer and nodded. “Hold it steady.” With great care, he slid the third rod into place.

  Bailey then twisted on his knees and gen
tly lowered the astrolabe into its gold cradle. Bailey bit his lower lip and glanced at Gray.

  Kowalski knew everything depended on what happened next. “Now you just have to flip the lever on the side,” he said. “And stand back.”

  Bailey frowned at the map. “If only it were that easy. I’m afraid it’ll take a little more elbow grease.”

  “I’ll let you do the honors,” Gray told the priest.

  “Okay.” Bailey shifted to the side and reached to a little wheeled crank. He began to slowly turn it and explained to Kowalski. “Without that fiery fuel source, we have to do this manually.”

  Still, Kowalski took a cautious step back.

  He did want kids.

  He ended up next to Maria and took her hand. They watched together as the priest wound and wound the crank. On the map, the tiny silver ship set sail from the golden coast of Turkey and over the azure gem of the Aegean Sea.

  “It’s working,” Maria whispered, her fingers tightening.

  The ship bounced around some islands, pausing here and there, then spun away from Greece and across the Ionian Sea. It then ducked under Italy’s boot and slipped between the toe and the island of Sicily.

  No one breathed, all eyes on the map.

  “Next stop, Vulcano,” Kowalski whispered.

  “Hush,” Maria scolded, as if he were spoiling the plot.

  The boat rounded Sicily and stopped at the chain of islands with little rubies on top of them. Maria glanced at him.

  He shrugged. Told you so.

  Bailey continued to turn, but nothing happened. His brow furrowed. “I think something’s wrong.”

  Kowalski waved for him to continue. “This next part takes a bit longer.”

  Nodding, trusting him, the priest wound the little crank. Finally, the map box jolted on the coffee table as some spring-loaded mechanism gave way inside.

  Kowalski drew Maria back a step. “Don’t get too close.”

  As before, the lapis lazuli of the Mediterranean split along invisible lines, shattering apart in a maze of cracks, spreading outward from the volcanic islands in a complex, byzantine pattern.

  “The false paths,” Kowalski explained.

  Bailey slowed his cranking, his expression both pained and awed. “I wish Monsignor Roe were here to see this.”

  Gray warned him, “Keep going. Don’t stop.”

  The priest sped up his turning. As he did so, the seams drew together and closed, returning a perfect surface to the sea. Only one crack remained and slowly widened and extended. It stretched from Vulcano, to southern Sardinia, then down to northern Africa. The tiny ship set off, dipping into the seam, carried by a tiny rod, maybe magnetized to some bit of iron hidden in the keel of the silver ship.

  “That’s disappointing,” Kowalski mumbled.

  “What?” Maria asked.

  “Where’s all the steam? The fire?”

  “No fuel,” she reminded him.

  He harrumphed, dissatisfied.

  The ship ran along the exposed crack, sailing west across the coast of Africa, catching up with the extending seam at the Strait of Gibraltar.

  “That’s where it went before,” Kowalski commented. “From there, I don’t know where—”

  Bailey cranked and something metallic popped loudly from inside the map. The box jolted again, hard enough to fracture the Mediterranean Sea. Pieces flew out. The rest of the lapis lazuli jigsaw puzzle collapsed in on itself, leaving a few blue shards still hanging askew. Bronze gears and wires shone from inside, revealing the trick behind the magic.

  Mac shook his head. “Maybe it’s best Monsignor Roe wasn’t here to see this.”

  The priest looked sickened, continuing to wind the wheel. “There’s no more tension.”

  Gray simply admitted what they all knew. “It’s broken.”

  Proving this, the tiny silver ship tipped from its magnetic perch and toppled into the clockwork mechanism and vanished.

  “There goes Odysseus,” Kowalski mumbled.

  Bailey sagged. “Maybe we damaged it bringing it here.”

  Seichan put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “Or maybe it was never complete. Didn’t you say Da Vinci was working from partial plans? That he had to improvise sections?”

  Bailey just sighed.

  “No matter.” Gray stood up. “There’s nothing to be done about it. We go back to where we started.”

  He turned to Kowalski with a clear intent. Any hope from here depended on how much Kowalski could remember.

  Great.

  Kowalski glared at the ruins of the map.

  Stupid Da Vinci.

  25

  June 25, 12:35 P.M. CEST

  Off the coast of Tunisia

  Who can I trust here?

  Elena sat at a desk in an opulent two-story library that stretched between decks three and four of the Morning Star’s superstructure. The space was paneled in tigerwood and mahogany, the railings sculpted of wrought iron in an angular Moorish design. A wealth of books and curated artifacts from Arabian navigational history were protected behind glass doors. A spiral staircase led up to the second level, where gilded ladders reached the tops of the tallest shelves.

  She rubbed her sore eyes, ignoring her reading glasses sitting on a stack of books. She had not slept all night after boarding the yacht and being greeted by her father.

  Why is he here? How could he be involved with these murderous people?

  None of it made any sense. And her father had offered no explanation upon arriving, only giving her a hug and a promise to explain everything in the morning. Then he had vanished into the yacht with the man called Mūsā, his arm around the ambassador, as if they were the dearest friends.

  Afterward, Nehir and Kadir had taken her to a sprawling stateroom, as richly appointed as this library. While being hauled there, Elena had noted the number of armed men and women in the halls. She had been marched through an entire level that doubled as a shipboard armory, seemingly equipped with enough firepower to take down a small nation. Clearly, beneath its skin, the Morning Star was an opulent war vessel.

  Before locking her in the stateroom, Nehir had removed her ankle chains—though from the woman’s silence and dark countenance, she had not been happy to obey these instructions from her father. Still, Kadir had remained posted at her door all night. Even now he stood outside the library, his arms crossed, his back to the set of glass double doors.

  A low murmur drew her attention to the side. The only section of the library not lined by bookshelves was an area cantilevered out from the superstructure, hanging over the water. A curve of windows offered a panoramic view of the seas and the nearby Tunisian coast of North Africa.

  Two men sat at a table across from each other, as if playing a game of chess, only their board was the golden map. Earlier, the pair had introduced themselves to her, and they had all shared their respective stories. The injured man, Rabbi Howard Fine, had been cared for overnight. The bloody wad of cotton bandaged over his ear had been replaced with a clean, tidy wrap. His eyes this morning remained glassy from pain relievers. The other new arrival was Monsignor Sebastian Roe.

  It was the priest who had told her how he—along with colleagues of Joe—had been ambushed on Sardinia. She had also discerned why these two men hadn’t been killed. Both were archaeologists, steeped in the line of mythology and history important to the task at hand. They were intended to serve as her research aides—and likely as hostages to be tortured if she failed to deliver.

  Elena was under no misconception that the fundamentals of her situation had changed with the arrival of her father. While the accommodations were better, everything else was the same.

  She stared in silence as the two whispered over the map. Monsignor Roe had told her about the Da Vinci replica of the device, of the original Daedalus Key joined to it. Apparently Joe’s colleagues still possessed that.

  Elena placed great hope in this information.

  Joe, don’t let me down.


  Earlier, she had skipped over one part of her story—about what she and Joe had witnessed with the map after unlocking the astrolabe. While she sensed no malice or dissembling from these two, she had been too shaken up by her father’s arrival.

  Who can I truly trust? The safest answer. Only myself.

  So she had stayed silent about the map’s revelations.

  Not that any of this relieved her of the obligations imposed on her. Nehir made sure of this over breakfast in the library. She had demanded to know where Elena believed Captain Hunayn had sailed to after leaving Daedalus’s home in Sardinia.

  She knew the answer. The map had already revealed it. She pictured the tiny silver ship of Odysseus sweeping south from Sardinia, in a river of tectonic fire, only to briefly come to port along the Tunisian coast. Again, Elena had needed some other excuse, a line of reasoning to point in that direction, to bury what she truly knew under a mountain of facts. She had wanted to balk, to refuse, but she had no fight left in her. She was too tired and too shaken by her father’s arrival. And in the end, what would it matter if she gave up this next port?

  Elena stared past the two men to the distant coast of North Africa. Yesterday—before her aborted escape attempt—she had searched through the stacks of ancient books, returning again to Strabo’s Geographica to come up with the rationale to sail to Tunisia.

  She had explained everything to Nehir over breakfast, relating scores of rumors about an island off the African coast. It was said to be the home of Homer’s Lotophagi, the infamous Lotus-eaters who fed Odysseus’s men a narcotic nectar and lulled them into sleep. Ancient writers—both Herodotus and Polybius—advocated that the Tunisian coast was where that island would be found.

  Elena reinforced this by referencing Strabo, whose wisdom Hunayn had placed great stock in. Elena had shown Nehir the line in Geographica where Strabo stated the true location of the Lotus-eaters: Λωτοφαγῖτις σύρτις Lōtophagîtis sýrtis, which translates as “Syrtis of the Lotus-eaters.”