The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  His assessment wasn’t entirely accurate.

  The road ended ahead at a small riverside marina. The green expanse of the Sous widened here, stretching two football fields across to the far bank. An L-shaped dock sheltered twenty slips, packed with sleek pleasure crafts, worn commercial fishing schooners, and several charter boats.

  Joe parked in the lot, and they all clambered out of the SUV and gathered their gear, stored in new backpacks. Ever the optimist, Gray had raided hardware and sporting goods stores this morning. He bought flashlights and electric lanterns. Even found caving gear: ropes, helmets, rappelling equipment. Apparently the sport was popular here, what with all those cavern systems. So was canyoning into the deep gorges that hid perfect little oasis gems of cerulean pools and palm trees.

  From the back, Joe hauled out their most important bag. He grunted as he shouldered the heavy weapons duffel, loaded with ammunition—along with a short-barreled shotgun, which Joe already called dibs on.

  Back at the hotel, Gray had passed around the team’s stock of SIG P320s, along with thin ballistic nylon holsters. Only Father Bailey had balked at taking one, but Gray had convinced the priest, telling him, if you don’t want to shoot to kill, at least shoot to defend.

  Joe straightened with his load. “Where the hell’s our guide?”

  “This way,” Gray said and led them from the parking lot to the marina.

  The boat they were looking for was tied in the last slip. It was a thirty-foot aluminum cruiser with an enclosed stand-up cabin welded to it. It looked well used and from the polish to its bulkheads and hull, well loved. The captain of the little craft, a young woman—maybe not even twenty—leaned over the stern, tinkering with a raised outboard motor.

  She straightened when their group reached the slip. She wore oil-stained coveralls, belted tight at the waist, and a cowboy hat. Her flawless skin was a light ebony, her curly hair a dark cinnamon-brown, her eyes a stunning blue. She looked like she had stepped out of the pages of Vogue, but this was no pampered model who worked out at a Pilates studio.

  The men around her didn’t fail to note her looks, even Father Bailey. All of them were stunned into momentary silence.

  Maria took the lead and stepped forward. “Charlie Izem?”

  The woman pushed the sleeves of her coverall up, revealing powerful forearms. She reached across the rail to shake Maria’s hand.

  “That’d be me,” Charlie answered, with a hint of a French accent.

  Maria guessed she was of local Berber descent, maybe with a little European blood, too.

  “From your companions’ expressions, you were perhaps expecting a man, oui?” Charlie said and waved them aboard with an amused wink. “Or maybe someone older, non?”

  The others picked up their jaws and climbed into the stern of the cruiser.

  “No complaint here,” Joe muttered under his breath.

  Maria cast him a scolding glare.

  Seichan boarded, giving the woman a side-eyed appraisal. Her gaze lingered a beat on the pistol holstered at Charlie’s hip, then she gave a small nod of approval.

  “You come highly recommended,” Gray commented, also shaking the woman’s hand. “They say you know the Sous and its tributaries better than anyone.”

  “My family’s been running this river for over a century. And me since I was nine. The Sous, she is temperamental, crafty, mischievous, but we get along. At least, most days.”

  Charlie stepped over to help Mac with his pack. He had shed his sling but it was obvious his shoulder still hurt. Though he didn’t wince or groan, the woman seemed to innately sense his distress.

  “How long have you been captain of this boat?” Father Bailey asked.

  Charlie surveyed the group, making sure everyone was settled. “Ah, but I am not the captain.” She shifted over to remove the stern mooring line. “He is in the cabin, making sure all is ready before we depart. Always busy, that one.”

  The woman whistled sharply.

  From the open door of the enclosed little wheelhouse, a small shape bounded out, rabbit-hopping on its hind limbs, and bracing on its front. The small monkey leaped from the deck and onto Charlie’s shoulder as she straightened from freeing the rope.

  Everyone was amused by the new arrival—except for one passenger.

  Joe groaned and stepped farther back.

  10:55 A.M.

  What is it about women and monkeys?

  Kowalski grimaced. He’d had bad experiences with these little savages in the past. While he had learned to love Baako, at least the gorilla was regular sized and knew sign language—and even so, it took Kowalski a while to warm up to the kiddo. Whereas this little guy creeped him out, with its tiny old-man face, like a wizened apple, and those beady black marbles for eyes.

  No, thank you.

  While he backed away, everyone else drew closer.

  “This is Aggie,” Charlie introduced. “Short for aghilasse, which means ‘lion’ in Tashelhit, the local Berber dialect.” She made a growly face at the creature, and Aggie mimicked it, showing sharp teeth and long fangs.

  Kowalski shivered with disgust.

  “See,” Charlie said with a big smile, “he’s very tough, a real Barbary lion.”

  Maria examined the monkey closer with the eyes of an experienced primatologist. She checked out his brown fur, which turned more yellow over the belly. “But he’s really a Barbary macaque, isn’t he? Native to this region, endangered, too, as I recall.”

  “Very much so. Aggie was orphaned. His parents killed by poachers. Barely four months old at the time. He came to a rescue center with a broken arm.”

  “How old is he now?”

  “Shy of a year. So he’s got a way to go until he’s mature enough to join a troop.”

  “When is that, around four years for males?”

  “Indeed, for sexual maturity, but we’ll look to start reintroducing him in half that time.”

  The two women continued to talk about Aggie in more detail and headed toward the cabin. Besides being an experienced riverboat pilot, Charlie was a zoology student, currently on summer break. But she clearly knew boats, which Kowalski appreciated.

  In short order, the cruiser was untied, slipped free of its berth, and headed upriver with a rumble of its outboard motor.

  Maria eventually came back to join him, leaving Charlie to navigate up the narrowing channel. “Cute, huh?” Maria said with a grin.

  “Charlie? Sure. A stunner.”

  Maria punched him in the shoulder. “I meant Aggie.”

  He rolled his eyes and pointed to the cabin. “I heard you call it a monkey. But it’s got no—” He motioned to his backside.

  “A tail?”

  “Without that, doesn’t that make it an ape? Back in Africa, you kept correcting me whenever I called Baako a monkey.”

  “Macaques do have tails, only vestigial, maybe half an inch long.”

  He shuddered. “Somehow that’s even worse.”

  Maria sighed and shook her head. Mac and Father Bailey settled down onto benches along the gunwales. Gray and Seichan stayed with Charlie in the tiny enclosed wheelhouse. The door was propped open, so Kowalski overheard some of their talk, mostly about the river itself.

  He only half-listened. He stared out at the chain of mountains, rising in jagged peaks, cut through by tributary streams and cascading waterfalls. He caught glimpses of deep wooded gorges, glints of lakes and pools, the sunlit glow of green pastures and meadows.

  According to what he overheard, the Sous drained for hundreds of miles out of these mountains, but its flow was strangled and controlled by the Aoulouz Dam, some ninety miles upriver.

  Kowalski heard Charlie’s view on it. “Before the dam was built in the late eighties, the river was both stronger and more capricious. It flooded regularly—after winter storms or during the snowmelt of spring—but by summer’s end, it could fade into a trickle, making it hard for farmers to irrigate. So, while the Aoulouz has certainly tempered the
river’s extremes, it’s also a bit sad to have her so tamed.”

  Kowalski found himself nodding at this sentiment, preferring nature wild and as little touched by man as possible. Let a river be a river. But then, he wasn’t the one whose house risked floating away during a flood or whose fields could dry up from lack of water.

  Charlie continued with a wave to encompass the entire fertile valley between the High Atlas range to the north and the Anti-Atlas to the south. “It’s said that long ago, millennia in the past, the Sous used to fill this entire area, making it a bay more than a river.”

  In the cabin, Gray glanced over at Seichan.

  Even from the stern, Kowalski knew what the guy was thinking.

  11:17 A.M.

  Making it a perfect harbor for a seafaring people.

  As the cruiser rumbled up the river, Gray imagined this whole valley flooded with water, mixing snowmelt with salty sea. He pictured a massive fleet anchored here, waiting to lay siege upon the Mediterranean.

  In addition to the wide bay, each tributary cascading out of the mountains was likely its own river back then. He examined a stream they passed, leading up to a gorge lined by towering limestone cliffs. The sheer rock walls were set well back from the current flow, suggesting that the chasm had been cut ages ago by waterways much wider and stronger than today.

  He checked the e-tablet in his hand, which glowed with a detailed chart of the Sous River system. He had done his best to estimate which tributary led into the mountains closest to the ruby marked on the gold map. He held it out toward Charlie.

  “Do you know where this side channel is?”

  Charlie took the tablet in one hand.

  On her other side, Seichan offered an olive to Aggie. The monkey jumped to Seichan’s shoulder to take it, then set about delicately peeling the skin off the fruit and nibbling the flesh around the pit.

  Seichan hid an amused smile.

  Quickly finished with the olive and spitting the pit aside, Aggie climbed down from his perch and clambered across Seichan’s chest. He paused to sniff at one of her breasts, likely noting the slight whiff of milk, even though Seichan had pumped this morning.

  Seichan’s smile turned into a scolding frown. “No, you don’t.” She lifted the monkey up and returned the little guy to Charlie’s shoulder. “That bar is closed for now.”

  Charlie passed back the tablet and gave Aggie, who looked deeply wounded, a small squeeze. “It’s okay, mon ami. I’ll get you a proper meal in a bit.” She turned to Seichan. “Sorry about that. He’s still barely out of his infancy. In macaque troops, the entire group raises their kids. Multiple females will even nurse the same baby.”

  “Not this wet nurse,” Seichan said.

  Aggie seemed to sense this rejection and tucked his face against Charlie’s neck.

  The captain turned to Gray. “That side river you marked. Oui, I know it. It is not far, another two miles up. It cuts far into the mountains, but my boat can only motor a mile into the ravine, maybe a bit farther if the snowmelt is strong.”

  He nodded.

  Hopefully that’ll be far enough.

  Gray stepped out of the cabin to check in with Commander Pullman, letting him know their status. He also double-checked the ground-penetrating radar data from the last satellite pass. He zoomed in on the river gorge they were approaching. Like much of the mountains around here, the peaks and jagged massifs bordering the chasm were riddled with pockets. He picked out a couple of promising spots, but ultimately there was only one way to know for sure.

  Go out there and have a look.

  He stared at the river, again imagining this valley full of water, creating a massive bay and transforming these landlocked mountains into coastal ranges. If the channel marked on the map had been larger back then, too, it would have made for easy access to the sea.

  Finally, Seichan called and waved him back.

  He returned to the cabin. Ahead a wide, inflowing waterway entered the green expanse of the Sous. “Is that the one?” he asked.

  Charlie nodded and expertly swung the cruiser around and aimed the bow into the mouth of the channel. The current in the narrower tributary proved stronger than the sluggish Sous. The outboard engine rumbled louder; the boat bobbled then straightened. Moments later, they were motoring up the side channel.

  Gray leaned down to get a better view of the lay of the land ahead. Cliffs were set well back from either bank, suggesting the channel had indeed once been much wider. Past the band of farmland closest to the Sous, a surprisingly dense cedar forest climbed and spread across the floor of the shadowy gorge.

  “Does this tributary have a name?” Seichan asked.

  Charlie shrugged. “Nothing that’s marked on any maps, but we Berbers have lived here for thousands of years. We have older names for every peak, valley, and rock around here.” She nodded ahead. “This is called Assif Azbar.”

  “Which means what?”

  “Roughly River of Sorrow.” She glanced over. “For centuries, there have been stories of people vanishing up there. Place is considered to be haunted. Few come this way anymore.”

  Seichan glanced toward Gray. Her expression was easy to read:

  If you’re looking for the entrance to Hell . . . you picked the right river.

  30

  June 26, 11:20 A.M. CEST

  Strait of Gibraltar

  Still trapped aboard the Morning Star, Elena stood before the library’s half circle of panoramic windows. She gaped at the monolithic limestone rock jutting four hundred yards above the sea. As the yacht passed close by it, the Rock of Gibraltar filled the entire expanse of glass.

  “One of the Pillars of Hercules,” Monsignor Roe commented beside her. “Easy enough to see how it got its name. Just the sheer size of it.”

  As the superyacht sped onward, the western side of the Rock came into view, revealing a sprawl of dockyards, piers, and the small city of Gibraltar huddled beneath the limestone cliffs and facing a little bay. She stared farther to the west. They’d be out of the strait in another thirty miles.

  A little less than an hour.

  From there, the city of Cádiz on the southern coast of Spain was the same distance again—which meant she was running out of time.

  Monsignor Roe reminded her, “They’ll want some better guidance soon. There are over sixty miles of coastline between Cádiz and Huelva.”

  She turned to the sprawl of books, notes, and maps spread across the library. Her heart pounded harder. Yesterday she had convinced her captors that the semi-mythic city of Tartessus—a site that much of the ancient world believed was Tartarus—lay somewhere along that stretch of the southern Iberian coast. Today her captors would want her help to narrow that search. Or at least offer some possible sites to explore.

  But where?

  She had hoped to have more time to come up with possible answers. Unfortunately, the Morning Star had a few tricks up its sleeve—or in this case, under its hull. She turned to the windows. With this section of the library cantilevered out from the main superstructure, she could make out the port-side foil cutting through the blue water.

  Yesterday, after she had directed her captors here, the yacht had not spared its engines. It had sped away from the Tunisian coast, revealing what the prior three-hour cruise to Africa had not—that the yacht was a hydrofoil, a big brother to the little one that had ferried her here. Once under way at full speed, the Morning Star had risen up on twin foils and cut like a silver dagger across the Mediterranean.

  Still, even under full power, it took the yacht more than sixteen hours to make the voyage to the strait. Elena had been hoping it would’ve taken longer, not only for her sake, but also to buy Joe’s group extra time to solve a mystery going back millennia.

  In the end, though, will it make any difference?

  She had no idea if Joe and the others were making any progress. To help them, she needed to keep these bastards searching southern Spain for as long as possible, which meant sen
ding them on a scavenger hunt, one convincing enough to keep them from looking in the true direction.

  Even now, she cast her gaze to the south, trying to peer through the ship and down the west coast of Morocco. When the gold map had activated, she had been close enough to see the fiery river pass through the Pillars of Hercules and begin to bend south—not north.

  She pictured the little ruby she had discovered along the Moroccan coast on the gold map, where according to the geologic record, no volcano existed. Its location was also consistent with the mazelike path between tectonic plates.

  The latter still mystified her.

  But she was certain about one thing. During Captain Hunayn’s first voyage across the Mediterranean—when he sought Tartarus—he must have visited southern Iberia. Maybe he even discovered the rich city of Tartessus. How could he not at least go look for the place? Especially with all the history pointing this way. And if he did discover it, perhaps he learned something from Tartessus that directed him to the true home of the Phaeacians—or whatever that advanced culture was called. She could even guess what it was that he might have learned. From the stories of Tartessus, it was indeed a major bronze producer. Could they have been the ones who supplied the Phaeacians with the bronze necessary to help with the manufacture of the Phaeacians’ mechanical constructs? Had the Phaeacians in turn paid the people of Tartessus with knowledge and tech? Was that why the city of Tartessus had been described as being Atlantis-like in advancements?

  Elena’s mind spun, making it hard to concentrate on the misdirection she needed to build, layer by layer, mixing truth and fiction until they were indistinguishable.

  If I fail to deliver . . .

  She pictured Rabbi Fine’s body crumpling to the ground, the pool of blood spreading. She stared over to Monsignor Roe, remembering her father’s threat: the next death will not be so quick and merciful.

  Knowing this, she left the windows and returned to her stacks and piles of books. Somewhere in there were the answers she needed.

  Roe joined her with a sigh. “If we don’t figure something out, I fear our captors will lose patience, especially after days of searching the Spanish coast.”