Map of Bones: A Sigma Force Novel

by James Rollins

  Gray took a step forward, hunched beneath the low roof. A twinge pricked his back from one of the bruising slugs he had taken back in Milan. He felt like an old man.

  He froze.

  Crap.

  Vigor bumped into him from behind.

  “Back, back, back…” he urged.

  “What?” Vigor asked but obeyed.

  Gray retreated into the pool chamber.

  Rachel eyed him oddly. “What’s wrong?”

  “You ever hear of the story about the man who had to choose between two doors, behind one hid a tiger, the other a lady?”

  Rachel and Vigor nodded.

  “I could be wrong, but I think we’re faced with a similar dilemma. Two doors.” Gray pointed to each dark tunnel. “Remember the riddle of the Sphinx, marking the ages of man? Crawling, upright, and bent over. It took crawling to get into here.” Gray recalled thinking that when he entered the tunnel.

  “Now two ways lead forward,” he continued. “One where you can walk upright, another which requires you to hunch. Like I said, I could be wrong, but I’d prefer we take that other tunnel first. The one where you walk upright, the second stage of man.”

  Vigor eyed the tunnel they had been about to enter. In his profession as an archaeologist, he must know all about booby-trapped tombs. He nodded. “No reason to be hasty.”

  “No reason at all.” Gray circled the pool to the other tunnel.

  He shone his flashlight and led the way. It took about ten steps until he breathed again.

  The air grew a bit musty. The tunnel must be leading into the depths of the peninsula. Gray could almost sense the weight of the fort above him.

  The passage made a series of sharp jags, but eventually his light revealed the tunnel’s end. A larger space opened ahead. The glow of his flashlight reflected off something beyond.

  Gray continued more slowly.

  The others crowded behind him.

  “What do you see?” Rachel asked at the end of the line.

  “Amazing…”

  1:08 P.M.

  ON THE monitor of the Aqua-Vu camera, Monk watched Kat cooling her heels by the tunnel entrance. She sat perfectly still, hovering with minimal effort, a conservation of energy. As he spied, she shifted ever so subtly, underwater tai chi. She stretched a leg, turning a thigh, accentuating the long curve of her body.

  He trailed a finger down the screen of a monitor.

  A perfect S.

  Perfect.

  He shook his head and turned away. Who was he fooling?

  He searched the flat expanse of blue water. He wore polarized sunglasses, but by now, the constant noonday glare made his eyes ache.

  And the heat…

  Even in the shade, it had to be over a hundred degrees. His dry suit chafed. He had unzipped and peeled down the upper section of suit, and stood bare-chested. But all the sweat seemed to have pooled in his crotch.

  And now he had to take a leak.

  He’d better cut off the diet Cokes.

  Motion caught his eye. Coming around the far side of the peninsula. A large sleek ship, midnight blue. Thirty-footer. He read the lines. Not an ordinary ship. Hydrofoil. It raced over the waters, slightly raised on its surface-piercing skids. It flew unimpeded over the slight waves, skimming like a sled on ice.

  Crap, it was fast.

  He followed its curve around the spit of land, a quarter klick out. It aimed toward the East Harbor. It was too small for a ferry shuttle. Maybe some rich A-rab’s private yacht. He raised a pair of binoculars and searched for the ship. It took an extra moment to pin down the boat.

  In the bow, he spotted a pair of girls in bikinis. No burka-wrapped modesty here. Monk had already surveyed a few of the other boats around the harbor, fixing them in place in his mental chessboard. One mini-yacht had a party in full swing, champagne flowing. Another houseboat-like craft had an older couple lounging about buck naked. Apparently Alexandria was the Fort Lauderdale of Egypt.

  “Monk,” Kat called from the radio.

  He wore a headset connected to the underwater transceiver. “What is it, Kat?”

  “I’m picking up a pulsing note of static over the radio. Is that you?”

  He lowered the binoculars. “It’s not me. I’ll run a diagnostic on the transceiver. You might be picking up someone’s fish finder.”

  “Roger that.”

  Monk glanced across the water. The hydrofoil slowed and settled deeper into the water. It had drifted to the far side of the harbor.

  Good.

  Monk fixed its berth among the other boats in his head, one more piece to the chessboard. He turned his attention to the Buddy Phone transceiver. He twisted the amplitude control, earning a feedback whine in his ear, then reset the channel.

  “How’s that?” he asked.

  Kat answered. “Better. It’s gone now.”

  Monk shook his head. Damn rental equipment…

  “Let me know if it returns,” he said.

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  Monk eyed the length of her form on the camera screen and sighed. What was the use? He picked up his binoculars. Where were those two bikini-clad girls?

  1:10 P.M.

  RACHEL STEPPED last into the chamber. The two men parted to either side in front of her. Despite Gray’s warning to conserve their batteries, Uncle Vigor had flicked on his own flashlight.

  The spears of light illuminated another drum-shaped room, domed above. The ceiling plaster had been painted black. Silver stars glowed brightly against the dark background. But the stars had not been painted onto the ceiling. They were metallic inlays.

  The ceiling was reflected in a still pool of water that covered the entire floor. It looked knee-deep. The effect of the mirrored image in the water created a mirage of a perfect sphere of stars, above and below.

  But that still wasn’t the most amazing sight.

  Resting in the middle of the chamber, rising from the pool of water, stood a giant pyramid of glass, as tall as a man. It seemed to float in the center of the phantom sphere.

  The glass pyramid glinted with a familiar golden hue.

  “Could it be…?” Uncle Vigor muttered.

  “Gold glass,” Gray said. “A giant superconductor.”

  They spread out along the narrow lip of stone that surrounded the pool. Four copper pots rested in the water at the edges of the pools. Her uncle inspected one, then moved on. Ancient lamps, Rachel guessed. But they had brought their own illumination.

  She studied the structure in the middle of the pool. The pyramid was square-bottomed, four-sided, like the pyramids of Giza.

  “Something’s inside it,” Rachel said.

  The reflection off the glass surfaces of the pyramid made details inside difficult to discern. Rachel hopped into the water. It was a little deeper than her knees.

  “Careful,” Gray said.

  “Like you’d take that advice,” she shot back, wading toward the pyramid.

  Splashes behind her announced the others were following. They crossed to the glass structure. Her uncle and Gray repositioned their lamps to penetrate the pyramid.

  Two shapes appeared.

  One stood in the exact center of the pyramid. It was a bronze sculpture of a giant finger, raised and pointing up. So large, she doubted she could get her arms around it. The detail work was masterful, from the trimmed fingernail down to the wrinkles at the knuckles.

  But it was the shape below the raised finger that drew most of her attention. A figure, crowned and masked in gold, robed in a flow of white gown, lay atop a stone altar. The arms outstretched to either side, Christlike. But the golden face was distinctly Greek.

  Rachel turned to her uncle. “Alexander the Great.”

  Her uncle stepped slowly around, getting a view from all angles. His eyes glistened with tears. “His tomb…the historical record mentioned his last resting place was in glass.” He reached to touch one of the outstretched hands, buried only a few centimeters into the glass, the
n thought better of it and lowered his arm.

  “What’s with the bronze finger?” Gray asked.

  Uncle Vigor stepped back to them. “I…I think it’s from the Colossus of Rhodes, the giant statue that spanned the island’s harbor. It represented the god Helios but was modeled after Alexander the Great. No part of the statue was thought to still exist.”

  “Now this last remnant has become Alexander’s headstone,” Rachel said.

  “I think all of this is a testament to Alexander,” her uncle said. “And to the science and knowledge he helped foster. It was at the Library of Alexandria that Euclid discovered the rules of geometry. All around here are triangles, pyramids, circles.”

  Uncle Vigor then pointed up and down. “The reflected sphere split by water harkens to Eratosthenes, who at Alexandria calculated the diameter of the Earth. Even the water here…it must be fed through small channels to keep this pool full. It was at the library that Archimedes designed the first screw-shaped water pump, which is still in use today.”

  Her uncle shook his head at the wonder. “All of this is a monument to Alexander and the lost Library of Alexandria.”

  That reminded Rachel of something. “Weren’t there supposed to be books down here? Didn’t Septimus bury the most important scrolls of the library down here?”

  Vigor searched around. “They must have been cleared out after the quake. When the clues were planted here. The knowledge must’ve been taken and sent to whatever hidden vault we seek. We must be close.”

  Rachel heard the quaver in her uncle’s voice. What else might they discover?

  “But before we move on,” Gray said, “we first must solve this riddle.”

  “No,” Uncle Vigor said. “The riddle is not even exposed yet. Remember at St. Peter’s. We must pass some test. Prove our knowledge, like the Dragon Court did with their understanding of magnetism. Only after that was the secret revealed.”

  “Then what are we supposed to do?” Gray asked.

  Uncle Vigor stepped back, his eyes on the pyramid. “We have to activate this pyramid.”

  “And how do we go about doing that?” Gray asked.

  Vigor turned to Gray. “I need some soda.”

  1:16 P.M.

  GRAY WAITED for Kat to ferry up the last of the cans of Coke. They needed two more six-packs. “Does it matter if it’s diet Coke or regular?” Gray asked.

  “No,” Vigor said. “I just need something acidic. Even citrus juice would work, or vinegar.”

  Gray glanced to Rachel. She just shook her head and shrugged.

  “Would you care to explain now?” Gray asked.

  “Remember how magnetism opened the first tomb,” Vigor said. “We know that the ancients were well aware of magnetism. Lodestones were widely distributed and used. Chinese compasses date back to 200 B.C. To move forward, we had to prove our understanding of magnetism. It even led us here. A magnetic marker left underwater.”

  Gray nodded.

  “So another scientific wonder must be demonstrated here.”

  Vigor was interrupted by the arrival of Kat. She rose up into the entry pool, bearing aloft two more six-packs, making it a total of four.

  “We’re going to need Kat’s help for a few minutes,” Vigor said. “It’ll take four people.”

  “How are things topside?” Gray asked Kat.

  She shrugged. “Quiet. Monk fixed a radio glitch. That was the extent of any excitement.”

  “Let him know you’ll be off the air for a couple minutes,” Gray said, uneasy, but they needed whatever was hidden here.

  Kat dunked under, passing on the message. She then quickly climbed out and they all returned to Alexander’s tomb.

  Vigor waved for them to disperse. He pointed to a copper urn at the pool’s edge. There were four of the pots. “Each of you take a six-pack of soda and take up a post by the jars.”

  They spread out.

  “Care to tell us what we’re doing?” Gray asked as he reached his copper jar.

  Vigor nodded. “Demonstrating another scientific wonder. What we must show here is the knowledge of a force known even to the Greeks. They called it electrikus. A name for the static charge of a cloth rubbed over amber. They witnessed it in the form of lightning and along the masts of their sailing ships as Saint Elmo’s fire.”

  “Electricity,” Gray said.

  Vigor nodded. “In 1938, a German archaeologist named Wilhelm Koenig discovered a number of curious clay jars in the National Museum of Iraq. They were only fifteen centimeters tall. They were attributed to the Persians, the homeland of our biblical Magi. The odd thing about the tiny jars was that they were plugged with asphalt, and from the top protruded a copper cylinder with an iron rod inside. The conformation was familiar to anyone with knowledge of voltaic sciences.”

  Gray frowned. “And for those not familiar?”

  “The jars…they were the exact conformation of battery cells, even earning the name ‘the Baghdad Batteries.’”

  Gray shook his head. “Ancient batteries?”

  “Both General Electric and Science Digest magazine in 1957 replicated these jars. They primed them with vinegar, and the jars gave off significant volts of electricity.”

  Gray stared down at the jars at his feet, remembering the monsignor’s request for soda, another acidic solution. He noted the iron rod sticking out of the top of the solid copper jar. “Are you saying these are batteries? Ancient Duracell Coppertops?”

  He stared at the pool. If the monsignor was correct, Gray understood now why jars were resting in the seawater pool. Whatever shock was generated by the batteries would flow through the water to the pyramid.

  “Why don’t we just jump-start the pyramid?” Kat said. “Bring down a marine battery from the boat?”

  Vigor shook his head. “I think the activation is tied to the amount of current and the position of the batteries. When it comes to the magnitude of power in these superconductors—especially one this size—I think we should stick to the original design.”

  Gray agreed. He remembered the quake and the destruction inside the basilica. That had been with only a single cylinder of m-state powder. He eyed the giant pyramid and knew they’d better heed the monsignor’s recommendation.

  “So what do we do?” Gray asked.

  Vigor popped the top to one of his sodas. “On my count, we fill up the empty batteries.” He stared around the group. “Oh, and I suggest we stand well back.”

  1:20 P.M.

  MONK SAT behind the boat’s wheel, tapping an empty can of soda on the starboard rail. He was tired of all this waiting. Maybe scuba diving wasn’t so bad. The water looked inviting as the day’s heat rose.

  The loud rumble of an engine drew a glance across the harbor.

  The hydrofoil, which had seemed to drop anchor, was on the move again. He listened to the engine throttle up. There seemed to be a bit of commotion on the deck.

  He reached for his binoculars. Better safe than sorry.

  As he raised the binoculars, he glanced to the monitor of the Aqua-Vu camera. The tunnel continued to be unmanned.

  What was taking Kat so long?

  1:21 P.M.

  GRAY EMPTIED his third can into the cylinder core of his jar. Soon Coke was bubbling down the copper side of the battery. Full.

  He stood up and took the last swig from his soda can.

  Ugh…diet…

  The others finished about the same time, standing and moving back.

  A bit of carbonation frothed out the tops of all the cylinders. Nothing else happened. Maybe they had done it wrong, or the soda wouldn’t work—or even more likely, the monsignor’s idea was simply full of crap.

  Then a spark danced from the tip of the iron rod of Gray’s jar and cascaded down the copper surface to fizzle out in the seawater.

  Similar weak pyrotechnics drizzled from the other batteries.

  “It may take a few minutes for the batteries to build and discharge a proper voltage.” Vigor’s voice had
lost its confident edge.

  Gray frowned. “I don’t think this is going to—”

  Simultaneously from all four batteries, brilliant arcs of electricity crackled through the water, fire in the deep. They struck the four sides of the pyramid.

  “Back against the wall!” Gray yelled.

  His warning was not needed. A blast of force thumped outward from the pyramid, throwing him bodily against the wall. The pressure made it feel like Gray was on his back, the drum-shaped chamber circling over him, the pyramid above him, a topsy-turvy amusement ride.

  Yet Gray knew what held him.

  A Meissner field, a force that could levitate tombs.

  Then the true fireworks began.

  From all surfaces of the pyramid, crackling bursts of lightning shattered to the ceiling, seeming to strike the silver stars imbedded there. Jolts also lanced into the pool, as if attempting to attack the reflected stars in the water.

  Gray felt the image burning into his retina, but he refused to close his eyes. It was worth the risk of blindness. Where the lightning struck the water, flames erupted and danced across the pool’s surface.

  Fire from water!

  He knew what he was witnessing.

  The electrolysis of water into hydrogen gas and oxygen. The released gas then ignited, set to flame by the play of energies here.

  Trapped by force, Gray watched the fire above and below. He could barely comprehend the power being unleashed here.

  He had read theoretical studies on how a superconductor could store energy, even light, within its matrix for an infinite span of time. And in a perfect superconductor even the quantity of energy or light could be infinite.

  Was that what he was witnessing?

  Before he could grasp it fully, the energies suddenly died away, a lightning storm in a bottle, brilliant but brief.

  The world swung back upright as the Meissner field expired and his body was released. Gray stumbled a step forward. He caught himself from falling into the pool. Fires died back into the water. Whatever energy had been trapped inside the pyramid had been expended.

  No one spoke.

  They silently gathered together, needing the company of others, the physicality of one another.