The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  “Fat lot of good it’ll do them,” she said bitterly.

  Roe turned to her, a quizzical look on his face. “What do you mean?”

  She waved away his question. “Nothing. Just irritated.”

  He nodded and placed his palms on his hips. “Then where do we even begin?”

  “I don’t have a clue.”

  And I need one desperately.

  11:31 A.M.

  The forty-eighth Mūsā enjoyed the privileges afforded him—not just from his ambassadorship but also from his rank among the Apocalypti. He sat before the remains of a late breakfast, which included Beluga caviar on toast points, eggs with shaved black truffles. The plates and dinnerware were silver and gold.

  Over the years, he had used his official role in the Turkish government to grift millions from his own country, from its military, from those who would trade with the United States. From the Apocalypti—with their near-bottomless global financial resources—he embezzled funds for personal gain, while building his own army to serve the cause.

  Firat knew the man seated across the dining table did the same. Senator Cargill had his own aspirations. He had siphoned Apocalypti money into his personal campaign coffers—after some diligent laundering, of course. Firat did not begrudge Cargill his share of such riches, nor his ambitions. In fact, if the man ever became president, it would strengthen Firat’s ambassadorship as much as it would serve the Apocalypti.

  Cargill finished his glass of Syrah and checked his gold Patek Philippe wristwatch. “I should return to the communication room. The morning break at the EU summit must be close to ending. I have a noon panel on economic development in former East Bloc countries.”

  Firat stood and waved toward the doors of the suite, which occupied the entire top level of the yacht’s superstructure. “I understand.”

  “As to the search along the Spanish coast, I may not be able to stay longer than another day. At some point, I’ll need to fly back to Hamburg to take a few face-to-face meetings.” He shrugged. “And I believe I’ve done all I can to motivate Elena.”

  Firat gave a brief bow of his head. “And we certainly have the tools at hand to keep her properly motivated.”

  “But I still insist that no harm come to her.” Cargill’s eyes flashed with an unspoken threat. “Is that also understood?”

  Firat bristled but merely bowed his head again. “Of course.”

  Silently, Firat fumed. To calm himself, he imagined all manner of tortures he planned to inflict upon the woman. The last would be to leave her with Kadir for a night. But first, he would wring all he could from the senator’s daughter. After that, after the tortures, the seas would wash away his crimes after he dumped her body. He would blame it on suicide.

  What could this kuffār do?

  The two of them stared at each other, as if each knew the other’s heart.

  The spell was broken by a knock on the door. Firat nodded to his personal butler, who crossed and opened the door. Nehir stalked in, leading another.

  The newcomer pushed past, his face flushed with anger.

  What’s he doing here? What’s wrong now?

  Before Firat could inquire, the man blurted out, “Elena Cargill is lying. She’s been playing you for fools all along.”

  12:18 P.M.

  Elena already knew something was wrong.

  Twenty minutes ago, Monsignor Roe had been dragged out brusquely by Kadir. The two had not yet returned. And now Nehir appeared behind the glass, her face glowing with a self-satisfied smirk that set Elena’s heart to pounding. As the library door was unlocked, the yacht lurched, sending Elena dancing toward the bow to keep her feet.

  Uh-oh.

  Elena glanced out the windows. The Morning Star continued to slow, dropping swiftly as its twin foils sank into the sea.

  Why are we stopping?

  But she knew.

  Nehir entered. “Follow me.”

  Elena had no choice, especially as the woman had come with two armed escorts out in the hall. Elena set down her reading glasses and headed out. Her limbs trembled as she followed. Her mouth had gone stone dry.

  Nehir marched her over to the main stairwell and down into the ship’s bowels. By the time they left the stairs, Elena could hardly breathe; tension strapped her chest in iron bands. They passed a few of Nehir’s fellow Sons and Daughters, but none of them would make eye contact.

  At last, they reached a steel hatch that stood ajar. Nehir opened it wider and waved her through first. Even now, Elena wanted to balk. She smelled burning coals. But guns pushed her across the hatch and into a room transported from some circle of Hell.

  The walls were black steel. The floor was the same, with multiple drains for easy cleanup. All manner of blades—both small enough to dissect a frog and large enough to remove a limb—lined one side. On another wall hung studded whips, chains, and tools whose uses she was afraid to even imagine.

  Across the room, the open mouth of a furnace glowed with a pile of coals, burning in gas-fed flames. It roared as she entered, heating the room to a stifling temperature. Before that fire, a steel X stood upright, angled slightly toward the furnace.

  Upon that cross hung Monsignor Roe, his ankles and wrists cuffed in leather to the ends of the beams. They had gagged him and stripped off his shirt, exposing his thin chest, the concavity of his rib cage. His skin was already beaded with terror-borne sweat. His eyes looked with desperation at her, but also pity, as if she were the one about to suffer.

  Kadir hunched behind the cross, stirring the coals with a long poker. To either side stood her father and Ambassador Firat.

  Elena knew why she was here, what they wanted from her, what they would do to Monsignor Roe. “Daddy, don’t do this.”

  Her father looked mournful but determined. “You are forcing our hand, my dear. You know that. We have it on good authority from an outside source that you have not been entirely truthful with us.”

  She swallowed, struggling for anything to say. “What . . . what do you . . . ? ”

  Firat swore in Arabic and waved to Kadir. The giant swung around with the poker, its end glowing a dark crimson. He stepped around the steel cross.

  “Daddy, don’t,” she pleaded.

  Her father turned his shoulder to her.

  Kadir didn’t taunt or tease. With a machinelike coldness, he pressed the end of the poker to the priest’s right nipple. Flesh sizzled and smoked. Roe screamed through his gag, his back arching off the cross.

  “Stop it!” she yelled. “Please stop it.”

  Kadir removed the poker, taking skin with it. Roe collapsed back down, hanging limply in his shackles. Tears ran down his face, blood down his belly.

  “I have been lying,” Elena admitted, choking down a sob.

  She felt hollowed out, empty. She was too terrified, too guilt-ridden to offer any complicated fabrications. She dared not even try.

  Firat stepped closer, scowling at her. “Then tell us where Hunayn truly went, where he discovered Tartarus.” The man pointed to Monsignor Roe. “Or next will be his left eye. Then his tongue.”

  Roe lifted his chin, breathing raggedly. Still, he gave a small shake of his head, urging her not to speak.

  Elena ignored him and did as she was told. In halting stops and starts, she explained everything, about activating the map, about what the fiery display revealed, about the ruby discovered along the Moroccan coast.

  By the time she was done, she was on her knees, tears flowing down her face.

  Her father patted her shoulder. She batted his hand away.

  Firat turned to Nehir. “Ready the helicopter. I’ll arrange a second one to transport a strike team with you. You’ll need to find this place and lock it down. We’ll follow behind in the Morning Star and be there by sunset.”

  Elena barely heard any of this. Men freed Monsignor Roe’s limbs and removed the gag over his mouth. He could barely stand. Elena regained her feet and stumbled to the old man’s aid.

  �
�I’m sorry,” she moaned. “So sorry.”

  Still gasping, Monsignor Roe lifted his head and turned to Firat.

  “I told you she was lying.”

  Fifth

  The Gates of Tartarus

  And he bade famous Hephaestus make haste and mix earth with water and to put in it the voice and strength of human kind, and fashion a sweet, lovely maiden-shape, like to the immortal goddesses in face. . . . And he called this woman Pandora, because all they who dwelt on Olympus each gave a gift, a plague to men who eat bread.

  —FROM HESIOD’S WORKS AND DAYS, 700 B.C. (TRANSLATION BY HUGH G. EVELYN-WHITE. HESIOD, THE HOMERIC HYMNS, AND HOMERICA. CAMBRIDGE, MASS., HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS; LONDON, WILLIAM HEINEMANN, 1914)

  31

  June 26, 3:33 P.M. WEST

  High Atlas Mountains, Morocco

  The lost city must be here somewhere.

  Inside the cabin of the cruiser, Gray studied the satellite scans on his e-tablet. Over the past three hours, his team had stopped at four sites along the channel, where ground-penetrating radar had picked up cavernous pockets. But each proved to be a dead end. Literally. Just deep caves that petered out after short hikes.

  Doubts had begun to set in.

  He fought against them, trusting his instincts.

  He shaded his eyes and surveyed their surroundings.

  The drone of the outboard echoed off sheer limestone cliffs. The rock walls closed off the gorge to either side, climbing high in stratified layers of purples, whites, and multicolored hues of reds, topped by overhanging lips and broken-toothed edges.

  Below and to either side, a dense forest of cedar and Algerian oak spread outward from the banks to the cliffs. As the channel carved higher into the mountains, its path grew more circuitous, its flow interrupted by cataracts. Its color was no longer the sluggish green of the Sous, but a cerulean blue of melting snow and spring-fed streams.

  Charlie continued to expertly guide her boat up the narrowing channel, but she had to concentrate now. Her chatter had died away; even the macaque Aggie had grown quieter. Occasionally the cry of monkeys reached them, wild relatives of the little one here. Aggie’s tiny ears would perk, but he only clung tighter to Charlie.

  A new noise intruded, a thumping beat felt in the gut. A helicopter passed by overhead, crossing over the chasm and continuing north. Gray watched it pass. It was the third he’d seen.

  “There’s a popular tourist spot a few mountains over,” Charlie explained with a deep frown. “Paradise Valley, it’s called. Very beautiful. At least, it once was. Now it’s becoming more and more polluted, like much of the region.”

  Ahead, disturbed by the noise of the helicopter, an ibis took flight from the shallows ahead and vanished over the treetops.

  Charlie’s gaze followed it. “There used to be much more wildlife in these mountains,” she said with a forlorn tone. “Many have gone extinct. Atlas bears, North African elephants, and aurochs. And more threatened.” She gave Aggie a little scratch with a finger. “With my degree, I hope to help stop that from happening in the future. But it’s not just tourism impacting the area; more and more mines are opening up throughout these mountains.”

  “What are they mining for?” Gray asked, glancing again to the stratified cliffs.

  “There’s a lot of wealth buried here.” She scowled. “Iron, lead, copper, silver.”

  As Gray stared out, he wondered what else might be buried here.

  Seichan asked a question pertaining to that very matter. “What about uranium? Or other radioactive elements?”

  The odd question drew Charlie’s attention off the river. Her eyes squinted with suspicion. “Is that why you’re here? Are you field scientists for a mining conglomerate? I saw you unpack what looked like a Geiger counter at that last stop.”

  Gray should have known nothing slipped past their keen-eyed river guide. In preparation for this excursion, he had asked Painter to supply the team with more than just weaponry. Boxed up along with their guns and ammunition had been a small Geiger counter.

  Gray raised a hand against the angry look on Charlie’s face. “No, I promise. We don’t work for any mining company. But why the strong reaction?”

  “Pardon. My apologies then.” Charlie returned her attention to the river. “One of Morocco’s major exports has always been phosphate rock. But interest in such deposits has spiked these past few years.”

  “Why is that?” Seichan asked.

  “Because Moroccan phosphate contains uranium. In significant concentrations. Three-quarters of the world’s phosphate is buried in these mountains. And it’s said, the uranium held in those deposits is twice that of the entire rest of the globe.”

  Seichan glanced over to Gray and lifted an eyebrow.

  Gray remembered Monsignor Roe’s theory about the fuel powering the mechanical constructs aboard the ancient dhow. Roe believed the substance—which Hunayn and his brothers called “Medea’s Oil”—could be a more powerful version of Greek Fire.

  It was impossible to know for sure, since the recipe for making Greek Fire had been lost to antiquity, though it was generally believed to be some volatile combination of naphtha, quicklime, resin, and sulfur. But one other vital component was calcium phosphate, the main element in phosphate rock.

  It made Gray wonder: Could some ancient alchemist—using the phosphate rock here—have inadvertently enhanced this ancient recipe due to the uranium or some other radioactive contaminant found in these Moroccan deposits?

  A loud, grinding scrape of the boat drew his attention back to the river. Charlie cursed and fought the cruiser away from a submerged rock.

  “Getting too shallow from here,” Charlie said. “I can’t take you any farther.”

  Gray checked his tablet. “There’s another spot we’d like to check. A quarter mile up.” He pointed ahead. “Around that next bend.”

  Charlie throttled down. “I can’t risk my boat.”

  “We’ll pay for any damages,” Gray promised, knowing Painter would make good on it.

  She scowled at him for a long breath, then inched the throttle forward. “One more stop.”

  The cruiser headed upriver, going half speed. It zigzagged around shoals of whitewater as Charlie stuck to deeper water. Even in those stretches, Gray could see the rocks and sand of the riverbed through the clear water. As they continued, the waters grew shallower. Rather than slowing further, Charlie sped the cruiser up.

  He glanced over to her.

  She never took her eyes off the channel, but she noted his attention. “Planing the hull,” she explained. “Faster I go, the more this lady will lift out of the water. Gives me a bit more clearance from the bottom.”

  It looked like she needed every inch.

  Gray gripped the rail along the starboard side of the cabin.

  Charlie reached the bend in the waterway and expertly sailed her cruiser around it. Gray rechecked his coordinates on his e-tablet, then looked ahead.

  “There,” he said and pointed to a deeper pool of dark blue water to the right, where another stream flowed into the channel.

  “Got it,” Charlie said.

  She sped her boat toward the bank, and with a final grind of the boat’s keel over rock, slid into the deeper pool.

  “Nice,” Seichan said.

  Charlie cut the throttle and glided the boat’s bow to a gentle stop, nudging the nose onto a cushion of sand. She turned to Gray. “Last stop, oui?”

  Gray looked up the main channel, which ran with whitewater from one bank to the other. “I think we’ve pushed our luck as far as it can go.”

  He turned to search up the tiny tributary stream. The clear water ran over polished black pebbles and stretches of brighter sand, passing through a fringe of cedar forest. Upstream, a cascade tumbled over a ten-story cliff.

  He shaded his eyes and searched the rippling strata of red and ochre rock to either side of the falls, trying to read those pages of stacked stone.

  “Is this th
e place?” Seichan asked.

  “According to the radar data, there’s a cavernous pocket ahead, but it’s impossible to say if it goes anywhere. After thirty yards in, there’s too much mountain on top to get a good read.”

  “So we go look,” Seichan said.

  He nodded. “Let’s grab our packs and head out.”

  In short order, Gray left Charlie and Aggie with the boat and led the others upstream. The low rumble of the waterfall grew louder. A fine mist hung in the forest air. By the time they reached the base of the cliff, their clothes and gear glistened with fine droplets.

  Past a sandy strand, the fall—a twelve-foot-wide veil—cascaded into a cobalt pool that fed the stream. Afternoon sunlight refracted into a rainbow over its surface. Each breath felt cleaner, washed by the mists, and far cooler. A small grove of palms on one side leaned their fronds toward the spray.

  “It’s beautiful,” Maria commented, staring along the length of the falls.

  Kowalski grunted his agreement. “I wouldn’t mind a swim. Wash all this dust off me.”

  “That’s not why we’re here.” Gray checked his e-tablet. “According to the scan, the pocket should be in this cliff face somewhere, but I don’t see any entrance.”

  Father Bailey pointed. “What about behind the falls? Are my eyes playing tricks, or does it look like there might be a cave back there?”

  Gray had also noticed it. “Let’s check it out.”

  The group edged around the pool and ducked under the pounding cascade. The icy water immediately drenched Gray to his skin. He hurried through and into a cave behind the falls, taking care of the slick rock.

  Behind him, Kowalski shook himself off like a wet dog. “Brr. Talk about a cold shower.”

  They all gathered in the cave, lit by sunlight streaming through the falls.

  Gray crossed to the back wall and made a full turn, searching around. The cave was high, but not deep.

  Another dead end.

  He turned to Mac. “Anything?”

  The climatologist held the team’s Geiger counter and sighed with a scowl. “Some background radiation, but no more than what was detected at the other four stops.”