The Last Odyssey: A Thriller

by James Rollins

  “Nothing’s here,” Seichan said.

  Maria moved closer. “What about farther up the river channel? If the boat can’t take us, we could hike in from here?”

  Gray shook his head. “We’d be searching blind. The radar scans don’t show anything promising from here, especially as the mountains pack in more tightly and steeply to the north.”

  Father Bailey blew out a long, exasperated breath. “Then we’ll have to return to the Sous and check the tributaries to the east and west of this one. The ruby on the gold map couldn’t have been that precisely placed. Likely just marked a general location.”

  Kowalski shrugged. “At least, this place is named right. River of Sorrow. Because I’m feeling pretty sorrowful right now.”

  Gray couldn’t argue with him and waved to the falls.

  “Back we go.”

  4:04 P.M.

  Mac lingered by the pool as the others headed downstream. He stood in a patch of sunlight, warming himself after the cold drench of the falls. He shaded his eyes and stared across the breadth of the cliff face.

  As a climatologist, he was accustomed to studying landscapes, rocks, and forests to get a better understanding of how changing climate altered a terrain, how as one ice age ended or another started, it left a record behind for a sharp eye to read.

  Maria noted he had not followed and returned to his side. “What is it, Mac?”

  He pointed to the top of the falls. “See how the rock is scalloped at the cliff’s edge, worn by centuries of flowing water over its lip? It’s far wider than can be accounted for by the volume of the stream tumbling over the rock.”

  “That’s consistent with what Charlie told us, how this whole area was once far wetter. The Sous River more of a bay. And its tributaries robust torrents.”

  Mac took several steps away and drew Maria with him. “Look at this.” He pointed up toward the cliff and swept to the north. “Follow the cliff edge and what do you see?”

  By now the others had returned, drawn by their voices.

  “What are you all looking at?” Gray asked.

  Maria finally saw it, too. “Other scallops along the rim of the wall.”

  He nodded. “Long ago, not only was this stream larger, but there were others that once flowed down here that have long since dried up. By my count, five.”

  Mac pictured how this must have once looked, with five mighty waterfalls flooding into a large river flowing down to a wide bay. The whole area must have shone with scores of rainbows. The mist-shrouded cliffs were likely covered in greenery and full of nesting birds. The forests taller, roamed by lumbering elephants and lions.

  Father Bailey interrupted his reverie. “Five rivers . . .” he mumbled.

  Mac glanced over. “What about them?”

  Bailey pointed from the falls back to the channel where the cruiser and its captain waited for them. “Charlie called this tributary Assif Azbar. The River of Sorrow. But there was another river that bore a similar name. It struck me before, but I didn’t place much significance on it, attributing the association to simple poetic license, especially with the history of people vanishing up here. But now, knowing that another four rivers had once flowed through this area, it makes me wonder.”

  Gray pressed him. “About what?”

  “Another river once went by that same name as the tributary behind us. The mythic Acheron. Known to be the river of sorrow, pain, and woe.” The priest turned to the group. “It was one of the five rivers that passed through Tartarus leading to the heart of Hades. They were the Acheron, the Lethe, the Phlegethon, the Cocytus, and lastly, the river Styx.”

  Gray took a deep breath, stepping forward, craning up. “Whether you’re right or not, Mac’s keen eye has offered us another four places to search. And if those five waterfalls once graced this corner of the chasm, I know where I’d place the entrance to my underground city.”

  He pointed to the centermost scallop in the cliff.

  Seichan drew alongside him. “It appears to be the widest and deepest, too.”

  Mac pictured a huge waterfall flanked by two more on either side.

  Gray clapped Mac on his good shoulder. “That’s where we need to go.”

  32

  June 26, 4:42 P.M. WEST

  Marrakesh, Morocco

  From the back of the helicopter, Elena watched the city of Marrakesh drop away as their chopper headed off from a refueling stop in the city. As it climbed higher, she spotted a glint of a snow-crowned mountain forty miles to the south. It was Mount Toubkal, the tallest peak of the High Atlas range, rising nearly fourteen thousand feet into the sky.

  The helicopter angled away from that notable peak. A second aircraft—an identical Eurocopter EC155—followed behind. Both helicopters headed in a southwesterly trajectory toward those same mountains, aiming for where that jagged range tumbled into the Atlantic Ocean.

  Another hour at best, maybe less.

  That’s how long Elena had to come up with some plan.

  She leaned back into her seat. The Eurocopter’s cabin held a dozen passengers, mostly the Sons and Daughters of Mūsā, including Nehir, who was seated by the far window, and Kadir, hunched opposite his sister. But directly across from Elena, the traitor Monsignor Roe drowsed within his seat’s restraints, his head lolling back and forth in motion with the flight. When he had boarded, his pupils had been huge, indicative of a strong dose of morphine. The large bulge seen through his thin shirt was a thick wad of bandage.

  Elena had no choice in making this trip, but from the conversation that the cleric had with Ambassador Firat before boarding, Roe had insisted on coming. He intended to see where his treachery led, believing he could still be of help in pinpointing the location marked with a ruby on the Banū Mūsā map.

  The one person she had not spotted before the helicopter lifted off the yacht’s helipad was her father. There was no final farewell with him. Had shame kept him away or simply matters of state at the EU summit? She wondered if she’d ever see him again. She even felt a reflexive pang at this thought. She still had trouble reconciling the man she had known for thirty years with the one who’d shown his true colors these past two days. It was hard to let go of that past.

  And maybe we will meet again.

  She pictured the Morning Star racing south from the Strait of Gibraltar, flying along the Moroccan coast atop its twin hydrofoils. She knew neither Firat nor her father would miss out being close if anything was discovered hidden in those mountains.

  The helicopter hit a turbulent air pocket, jarring up and down, enough to stir Monsignor Roe, who winced and straightened. His glassy eyes noted Elena’s dark attention toward him.

  “Do not be so troubled, my child,” Roe said, his words slurring slightly. “You will help us herald the return of the Lamb to this foul world. The shattering of the gates of Tartarus will mark the beginning of Armageddon. The infernal weapons and radioactive hellfire will be unleashed at hot spots around the globe, destabilizing region after region, igniting war after war, until the very seas are set aflame. Only then will the world be purged of its wickedness and the Lord’s throne purified for His return. With His coming, a true and lasting peace can finally be upon us all.”

  Elena scowled. “Tell that to all those killed at Castel Gandolfo. Tell that to Rabbi Fine.”

  “All martyrs.” Roe waved a hand, dismissing her concern. “Howard knew what he was doing, knew the importance of sacrifice. He even shot his own ear, both to convince the Americans we were kidnapped and to help earn your sympathy.”

  Elena leaned her head back, suddenly dizzy. Even Rabbi Fine. She knew the two clerics had known each other since their university days, but she had never suspected the rabbi was part of all of this, too. Still, she should have. She remembered her father’s story, how the Apocalypti had members in all religions, even others who had no faith.

  Roe continued: “Your father acted rashly—more in fury than rationality—in taking Howard’s life so suddenly. But
it was an effective demonstration of our commitment.”

  Aghast at such coldheartedness, Elena turned away. She had been a fool earlier in the library. Exhausted, she had an unfortunate slip of the tongue. When the monsignor had pressed her about where to search along the Spanish coast, she had said something stupid: Fat lot of good it’ll do them. It must have been enough to show her hand, to reveal the search for the city of Tartessus had been a ruse. Shortly after that, Roe had taken one of his many restroom breaks—he was an old man. She had no reason to make anything of it. And it wasn’t another fifteen minutes after he returned that Kadir had dragged him off again.

  I never put two and two together.

  “Still, Howard was not the only one who understood sacrifice.” Roe glanced down at his chest, heat entering his words. “In your stubbornness, you failed to learn the lesson your father tried to teach you with that gunshot. You still lied. And it was I who had to bear the pain of your deceit.”

  His eyes found hers again. Only now a fire burned behind the glaze of the morphine. “But sacrifices are necessary. I know this well. I was the one who convinced the Americans to bring the Daedalus Key to Castel Gandolfo, to see if it could be useful to us. When it proved not, when the Americans could offer no better insight, I was the one who called down the air strike upon my own head.”

  Elena noted the fervent passion growing in the monsignor’s voice, the speckle of spittle on his lips. The glow in his eyes had turned fanatical. The pain meds had clearly let loose what the man had hidden for so long, clearly also making him more talkative.

  “Only when the Americans proved clever enough to escape the vaults below Castel Gandolfo did my faith in them momentarily return. Needing to remove them from the protective shield dropped around Castel Gandolfo, I brought them to Sardinia, to my ally Rabbi Fine. I wanted to test them one last time, offering what we knew, seeing if they could come up with any new insight. But alas, again nothing.”

  “So you tried to eliminate them and secure the Da Vinci map.”

  “And the original Daedalus Key. How could I not?”

  “When that failed, you came to Firat’s yacht to run the same scam on me.”

  “Yes, but you proved far more clever.” His gaze sharpened, his eyes ablaze with a zealous fire. “You shall see. Soon all my sacrifices will bear righteous fruit. My pain will be my badge when the Lord returns.”

  She turned away from those fanatical flames. She imagined the monsignor had been a member of the Apocalypti far longer than Firat or her father—two who believed themselves to be either Mahdi returned or King David reborn. Still, neither of them could match the manic zeal in the man seated across from her.

  And I’ve pointed them all to a cache of mythic weapons, along with an unknown power source, that could in the wrong hands ignite a holy war.

  She held out one hope.

  She prayed Joe and the others had used the bronze rods to unlock their version of the map, that they’d somehow already secured the site.

  Don’t let me down, Joe.

  33

  June 26, 5:02 P.M. WEST

  High Atlas Mountains, Morocco

  “Over here!” Kowalski called to the others.

  The group had spread out along the base of the cliff and gathered toward him.

  With his fists on his hips, he studied the stretch of wall. The rocky layers looked like a scattered stack of newspapers, crookedly aligned, some rippled, others torn. The team had already searched the dry spillway closest to the waterfall and had moved on to the next, the centermost of what was once five rivers toppling over the cliff.

  This one had plainly been a monster from the size of the divot in the cliff’s edge. Easily thirty yards across.

  “What did you find?” Gray asked.

  Kowalski pointed fifteen feet up the cliff face. “Look at that pile of rocks sitting on that broken ledge. To the left of it, I think there’s a crack in the wall.”

  Gray squinted.

  Seichan shaded her eyes. “He’s right. I’ll go check.”

  Before anyone could object, she scaled her way up. The strata below the ledge stuck out haphazardly, creating a series of crooked giant steps, offering a crude stairway up to the crack.

  “I guess I could’ve done that,” Kowalski groused.

  Seichan reached the top and vanished inside. Gray paced a few nervous steps back and forth.

  Mac stared up. “If this valley truly had been flooded long ago, the water level here might have reached that ledge. Look at the slight difference in coloration of the rock layers below the ledge compared to above it. They’re a more grayish white. Even the lower strata look smoother than those above. Likely worn by waters long dried up.”

  Kowalski tried to imagine it. He pictured a ship sailing over his head and tying up to the ledge above.

  Maybe the guy’s right.

  Seichan popped back into view and burst all their bubbles. “It’s a dead end here, too.”

  Gray swore under his breath.

  Seichan waved. “But I think you all should come up and see this anyway.”

  Gray cupped his mouth and called. “What did you find?”

  “Just come see.” She turned and slipped back through the crack.

  Gray looked at the group.

  Kowalski shrugged. “I could stand to get out of the sun.”

  With the matter settled, they all clambered up the broken steps. Up top, the ledge was bigger than it looked from below, some sixty feet across. The rock pile filled most of it, likely from an old landslide. Directly above, the lip at the cliff edge had a huge section missing.

  Gray led them to the edge of the pile. Kowalski’s crack was actually an opening between the broken rocks and the limestone wall of the cliff. A precarious boulder had jammed above it ages ago, holding this narrow way open.

  Gray went first, then Kowalski ducked under the boulder, holding his breath. Once past it, he hurried into a large cavern on the far side. It was as wide as the ledge and twice as deep. Seichan already had her flashlight out and splayed its bright beam across the arch of roof and the curve of its walls, all a coarse dark brown, a little pocket worn long ago into the rock.

  The others crowded in behind Kowalski.

  Father Bailey scowled back at the hanging boulder. “Like passing under the Sword of Damocles.”

  Mac grinned. “It’s actually called a boulder ruckle, where a rockfall creates a precarious jam of stones. Can be dangerous, but I suspect that particular pile of rocks has been there for several centuries, so it’s not likely to fall anytime soon.”

  “What did you want us to see?” Gray asked, clearly dejected to reach yet another dead end.

  “Over here,” Seichan said.

  She stepped toward the back of the cavern. On the left side stood a row of clay pots, each standing waist-high with little dusty lids on top.

  “There’s more over there,” Seichan said, pointing her beam to the other side, where another cluster of jars stood.

  Mac drew closer to one, a grimace carved deep on his face. “These look like smaller versions of what I saw aboard the dhow in Greenland.”

  “They’re amphorae,” Bailey said. “Greek and Roman storage pots. For wine, for olive oil.”

  “Or something far worse,” Mac said, straightening.

  The priest turned to Kowalski. “Didn’t you mention that Captain Hunayn, in his journal, called them Pandora’s pots?”

  “That’s what Elena told me.”

  Bailey looked at the others. “According to the myth, Pandora was not a real woman, but something artificially created by the god Hephaestus.”

  “Like those bronze slaves of his,” Kowalski said, remembering Elena’s story of the mechanical women who served Hephaestus at his forge.

  “The gods of Olympus each put curses into a pot,” Bailey said. “And gave it to Pandora to deliver to mankind. Sort of a pretty Trojan horse full of death, disease, and misery.”

  “Definitely matches the d
escription of what was in the dhow’s hold,” Mac said.

  Maria frowned. “But I thought it was Pandora’s box, not Pandora’s pot.”

  “No, that came about because of a mistranslation of Greek,” Bailey explained. “The original Greek word was pithos, a sealed jar for storage. But in the sixteenth century, that word got bastardized into pyxis, which means ‘box,’ and it never got corrected.”

  “Box or pot,” Kowalski said. “It looks like we’re at the right place or close to it.”

  “Maybe,” Gray said. “But not without checking what’s in those jars.”

  “You want to open one of those damned things?” Mac asked.

  Gray stepped forward. “It’s the only way we’ll know for sure.”

  Mac tried to block him. “Don’t—”

  Gray sidestepped him and kicked out with his leg, slamming his heel hard into one of the pots. Even with the guy’s considerable strength, the impact only rocked the pot and managed a thin crack.

  “Maybe you should heed Mac’s warning,” Bailey said.

  Gray ignored them both and tried again, hitting square into the crack. The pot finally shattered into halves. A black oil spilled across the floor. They all danced away as if a nest of snakes had been let loose.

  A strong petroleum odor filled the cavern.

  Mac pointed. “That’s the same stuff that came flowing out of the pots in Greenland.”

  “But that’s all there is,” Seichan commented, the only one to draw closer.

  Kowalski followed her. “She’s right. No bronze crabs, no green fiery goo.”

  As a group, they all turned toward the clutch of pots on the other side of the cave. Glances were exchanged, and they all headed over there.

  Except for Father Bailey, who stopped to examine a two-foot-high slab in the center of the floor. He ran his hand over a scooped section in the middle. “Like a sacrificial altar,” he mumbled.

  Kowalski gladly skipped past there.

  As they drew near the other set of pots, no one spoke.