The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

by Andy McDermott

  “I’ve been watching you for some time,” said Komosa, flashing his glinting smile again.

  “You were the guy in Botswana,” Chase said, remembering the figure he’d briefly seen through the skylight. “At the crusher, you shot the guards.”

  “I couldn’t very well let Nina die when I still needed her, could I?” explained Sophia. “And I needed you to get her out of the mine safely. I didn’t expect you to get all the way to London, though! As for parachuting into the factory … It’s a good job I’d planted that tracker on you, or we would never have known you were coming. Still, it all worked out for the best.”

  “Except for Dick,” Chase said sarcastically.

  “Not all marriages have a fairy-tale ending. As you know. But on the bright side, he left everything to me in his will.”

  “I think that you murdering him might sort of invalidate it.”

  Sophia laughed. “But I didn’t kill him, Eddie! You did!”

  Chase stood up sharply, prompting Komosa to raise his gun. “What?”

  “In a fit of jealous rage. It’s quite romantic, actually, in a twisted way. You were so overcome with fury when you found out I’d married Richard that you chased him to two different countries in an attempt to kill him and win me back. At least, that’s what the witnesses to his death will say, once I choose them. And of course, it’ll be a huge embarrassment to the IHA, especially after you assassinated that Botswanan minister. Which,” she added, “was entirely Richard’s doing. I had no part in that… but again, it worked out for the best. After losing that rig at Atlantis as well, I wouldn’t be surprised if the U.N. decides to cut its losses and disband the entire agency.”

  “Leaving you free to look for the Tomb of Hercules without anyone knowing, I suppose.”

  Sophia raised a patronizing eyebrow. “Well done, Eddie. I honestly wasn’t sure if you’d figure it out.”

  “I’ve had all day to think about it.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry about that. The owner of this château—well, co-owner now, I suppose,” she gave him a sly smile, “couldn’t get here immediately, and then we had something to take care of during the day. But now you have our undivided attention.” She stepped back through the door, Komosa gesturing with his gun for Chase to follow. He saw for the first time that the hulking man was bare-chested beneath his waistcoat, more lines of piercings running down his chest into the waistband of his leather jeans, a huge silver ring through each of his nipples. “Come along.”

  “Do they go all the way down, Sophia?” Chase asked, pointing a thumb at the glinting studs. “Why are you asking me?”

  “I just get the feeling you know from personal experience.”

  Sophia merely smirked suggestively and walked away. Komosa raised his gun towards Chase’s face as he passed. “Show her ladyship the respect she deserves, hey?”

  “I was,” Chase said, grinning coldly.

  Komosa smacked him on the side of his skull with the butt of his pistol. Chase staggered, clutching his head. “Now, boys,” Sophia called back to them, “let’s not have any unpleasantness on this special day, shall we?”

  Chase glared at Komosa, jabbing a finger at the ring piercing his left nipple. “When you least expect it, mate, I’m going to rip that thing right off and pull your fucking heart out with it.” The Nigerian just gave him a sarcastic smile and followed him out of the room. “And what do you mean, ‘special day’?”

  Sophia didn’t reply, leading the way up a flight of stairs to a large and ornate hall. More men lurked at the sides of the room, hands resting on their holstered guns, but Chase lost all interest in them when he saw Nina, wearing jeans and a khaki shirt, at the opposite end of the hall.

  “Eddie!” She tried to run to him, but the guards flanking her pulled her back.

  Relief flooded Chase. “Oh my God, you’re all right, you’re okay!” The image of Nina from Sophia’s phone, her frozen face of fear, had haunted him the entire time since leaving Switzerland.

  “Well, now that we’ve got the reunion out of the way,” said Sophia, hands on her hips, “we can get down to business. Nina, Eddie’s alive and well; Eddie, Nina’s alive and well. If you want that situation to be maintained, you’ll do as I say.”

  “Find the Tomb of Hercules for you, you mean,” said Nina, shooting Sophia a look of utter hatred.

  “What do you want with it?” asked Chase. “You’ve already got Yuen’s money and a nuclear bomb—what else is there in the Tomb that you could want?”

  “A nuclear what?” Nina yelped.

  “Actually,” said a new voice from above, “it’s what I want.”

  Nina and Chase looked up. Curving staircases swept upwards on each side of the hall to a balcony above. Standing imperiously at its center was …

  “Well, well,” said Nina coldly. “René Corvus.”

  The billionaire descended the stairs. “Everything that has happened has been according to my design,” he said, moving to join Sophia. “The sinking of the SBX rig, your discovery of the uranium mine, even Sophia’s marriage to Yuen. All part of my plan.”

  Chase was shocked. “Wait, you sank the SBX?”

  “I built it,” said Corvus, “or rather, one of my companies did. It seemed only fitting that I should destroy it.”

  Sophia nodded at Komosa. “Actually, Joe did the hands-on work.” Komosa smiled his diamond smile.

  “There were over seventy people on that rig!” Nina shouted.

  “Regrettable, but necessary,” said Corvus. “As a non-executive director of the IHA, I knew you were using the Hermocrates text to find the Tomb of Hercules, but I had no access to the IHA’s classified servers. Using the rig’s direct satellite link allowed my people to get that access—and the sinking of the rig then removed all evidence of the intrusion.”

  “Then you set Yuen up to make it look like he was responsible,” Chase said. “And set me up to make it look like I killed him.”

  “He’d served his purpose,” Sophia remarked, as casually as if she’d killed a fly. “Now all of his businesses belong to me.”

  “Which means they also belong to me,” Corvus said, smiling.

  Nina frowned. “What?”

  Sophia held up her left hand. For a moment, Nina thought she was flipping her the bird—until she realized that Sophia was holding up her ring finger.

  Which had a new and very large diamond ring on it.

  “Well?” said Sophia. “Aren’t you going to congratulate the new bride?”

  “You fucking married him?” Chase spluttered.

  “About an hour ago,” Sophia told him. “A little civil ceremony, nothing gaudy.”

  Corvus slipped an arm around Sophia’s waist. “A perfect union, a merger of both personal and business interests. Yuen’s companies will now become part of the Corvus empire. And Sophia,” he beamed at her, “will at last be with me. I’ve waited a long time for this day. You have no idea how hard I found it to see her married to another man, even if it was necessary.” He paused. “Well, perhaps you know, Mr. Chase.”

  “Au contraire, mate,” Chase growled, folding his arms. “Far as I’m concerned, you can fucking have her. Word of advice, though.”

  “And what would that be?”

  “Don’t turn your back on her. She’s got a habit of screwing over her husbands.”

  Corvus sniffed dismissively as Sophia wrapped her arms around him. “Bitterness doesn’t suit you, Eddie,” she said. “Now, Nina, this is where you come in. A wedding isn’t a wedding without a honeymoon. The thing is, we simply don’t know where to go. I’d like you to help us find a destination.” Her voice became pointed.

  “Somewhere with a lot of history …”

  Nina carefully aligned the pieces of ancient parchment, matching up the faint brown markings, then leaned back to take in the entire image. For the first time in more than two thousand years, the map concealed on the pages of Plato’s Hermocrates was complete.

  She gave Chase a nervous gla
nce. The Englishman sat in a chair in a corner of the château’s library, hands cuffed behind his back, Komosa and another guard flanking him. It had been made very clear to Nina that any delay or mistake in assembling the map would result in Chase’s suffering severe pain. As emphasis, Komosa had lined up various implements on a little table nearby, ranging from a blackjack through pliers to an electric masonry drill.

  Chase returned the look. He knew as well as Nina that once the Tomb was found, their usefulness to Corvus and Sophia would be at an end. All they could do for the moment was play along and look for any opportunity to escape…

  “Well?” Sophia asked impatiently, striding across the room to look at the map. “Where is it?”

  “Jesus, give me a chance,” Nina complained as she opened an atlas. “I don’t have every coastline in the world memorized.”

  She did, however, have a reasonably good idea of where to start looking. One of the previously missing pages featured a compass rose, so now she knew the coastline was at the southern edge of a sea. Considering the limits of exploration for the ancient Greeks, it was almost certainly the Mediterranean, placing the Tomb in North Africa.

  Which made sense, she realized. According to legend, Hercules had spent much time traveling through ancient Libya—a far greater expanse than the boundaries of the modern country of that name. The Tomb could well be located at the site of some great deed from those years.

  It only took a brief examination of the atlas to narrow down the list of possible locations. The coastline ran roughly southeast to northwest, but at its northern end it made a sharp turn to head almost directly northeast. Given the scale of the ancient map, just one area matched that description.

  Nina’s finger fell upon the coast of Tunisia, the Gulf of Gabès. “Is that it?” Sophia demanded.

  “It matches, yes,” said Nina, looking back and forth between the two maps. “River mouths here and here, this island just off the coast to the east…”

  Corvus stepped up to the table. “Tunisia?”

  “Maybe not,” Sophia told him, tracing the route over the parchment from the coast to the site of the Tomb. “The scale doesn’t—”

  “Do you mind?” snapped Nina, academic annoyance at being second-guessed overcoming any worries about retribution. “Let’s see, this lake off to the west must be this one here on the modern map, which is about fifty miles from the coast. Even taking inaccuracies of scale into account, it’s roughly a third of the way from the coast to the end of the route, so the Tomb must be about a hundred and fifty miles inland, southwest of Gabès. Which would place it in—”

  “Algeria,” Chase announced from across the room. “Know it well.”

  “Oh yes,” said Sophia with a disparaging sigh, “stargazing in the Grand Erg, the most incredible sky you’ve ever seen, how many times did I hear that story?”

  “Photograph it,” Corvus ordered one of his men, who clambered onto a stool to take pictures of the completed map from above. “Thank you, Dr. Wilde. Now that you have located the Tomb of Hercules, I believe my people will be able to take things from here.”

  “Let me guess,” said Nina, eyeing him defiantly. “You’re going to fly us back to New York in your private jet?”

  “Hardly.” He turned to Komosa. “Dispose of them.”

  “No.” The authority in Sophia’s voice surprised even Corvus; an absolute command. “We still need them.”

  “Why, my dear?” Corvus asked slowly.

  “Because, my dear, Dr. Wilde hasn’t told us everything.” She grabbed Nina’s ponytail and pulled her head back. Nina gasped in pain. “Have you, Nina?”

  “Don’t know what you mean,” Nina said through her teeth.

  “Oh but you do. Remember on the flight to Botswana, you told me how you thought there were more clues hidden within the text of Hermocrates, clues that didn’t just concern the location of the Tomb, but also how to get inside it?” Sophia twisted her wrist, pulling Nina’s hair still harder. “I think you’re holding back, that you’re hoping that even if we find the Tomb we won’t be able to gain entry—or even fall victim to booby traps.”

  “Booby traps wouldn’t still be working after thousands of years,” Nina growled. “This isn’t a game of Tomb Raider.”

  Chase cleared his throat. “Er, actually, there were some in Tibet that still worked. Sort of. They nearly killed me and Jason on the way out.” Despite her pain, Nina glared at him. “Yeah, I know. Should have told you about that. Sorry.”

  “This is why your relationship isn’t working,” said Sophia to Nina. “Lack of communication.” She let go of her hair. “So, enlighten us. How do we get in?”

  “I don’t know,” Nina told her truthfully.

  Sophia nodded to Komosa, who swept down his huge fist to punch Chase in the stomach. He whooped for breath. “How do we get in?” she asked again.

  “Jesus!” said Nina, horrified. “I don’t know!”

  Another nod, and Komosa took the blackjack and smacked it viciously down on Chase’s neck. He let out a cry of agony as he fell from the chair, banging his head on the library’s hard wooden floor.

  Sophia stared down coldly at him. “How do we get in?”

  “You fucking bitch!” Nina screamed. “I told you, I don’t know! Leave him alone!”

  Sophia didn’t need to nod this time for Komosa to turn to the little table and pick up the masonry drill. He pumped the trigger twice, the device making a sinister robotic whine each time, then bent down and placed the tip against Chase’s shoulder blade. Before Nina could say a word, he squeezed the trigger.

  Chase screamed as the heavy-duty drill bit tore into his flesh. Blood sprayed out, spattering the floor. Even Corvus seemed shocked.

  “Stop!” Nina wailed, begging Sophia. “Stop, stop it! I don’t know, I don’t fucking know! But I’ll find out, I’ll tell you, just please stop!”

  Sophia considered for a moment, then flicked a finger back at the little table. Looking disappointed, Komosa returned the drill to its place, blood dripping from the tip.

  Not caring if anyone tried to stop her, Nina ran to Chase. The wound in his back was about a half inch wide, a torn hole running with blood, so much that she couldn’t see how deeply the drill had penetrated. Chase shivered, face twisted with mute pain. She knelt and pressed one palm over the brimming gash, feeling hot liquid ooze between her fingers as she looked up at Sophia. “For God’s sake, help him! I’ll do what you want, I’ll work out how to get into the Tomb!”

  “Fix him up,” ordered Sophia. Komosa pulled Nina away from Chase. She protested and struggled, but then two more men lifted the barely conscious Chase and took him from the room.

  “Glad to have you aboard,” Sophia told her with frosty triumph. “Get to work—you have until we find the Tomb to decipher the text. Otherwise Eddie will need more than a few bandages to fix what Joe does to him.” She started across the room as if to follow the men carrying Chase, then suddenly stopped and kicked Nina hard in the side with the pointed toe of her boot. Nina doubled over in agony. “And if you ever call me a bitch again, I’ll cut out your fucking tongue.” With that, she turned on her high heels and left the library.

  “Get up, Dr. Wilde,” ordered Corvus. “You have work to do. I shall arrange for an expedition to Algeria as soon as possible.” He too left the library, pausing at the door. “By the way, go and wash. I don’t want you to ruin the parchments.”

  With that he exited, leaving Nina to stare at the blood on her hands.

  21

  Algeria

  The three helicopters thundered over the Sahara, nothing in sight below but mile after mile of gnarled, shimmering sand dunes. In the shade, the temperature would have been around eighty-five degrees Fahrenheit…but there was no shade, the merciless glare of the sun baking everything with an extra twenty degrees of sickening heat.

  The cabin of the lead helicopter, a large Sikorsky S-92 transporter, was air-conditioned, but neither Nina nor Chase took any comfo
rt from the fact. It had been two days since they were reunited, but in that time Nina had come no nearer to uncovering the final secrets hidden within the Hermocrates text.

  And her time was rapidly running out.

  “Ten minutes,” announced Sophia. She and Komosa were in the rear section of the cabin with Chase and Nina, Corvus riding in the copilot’s seat up front. “I hope you have a brainstorm soon, Nina.”

  “These aren’t exactly ideal conditions,” Nina complained. Her hands were cuffed in front of her so she could still work with the parchments. Chase’s hands were locked behind his back. The wound to his shoulder had been treated and bandaged, but he was still in considerable pain. For no apparent reason other than her own sadistic amusement, Sophia had given him back his leather jacket—which because of the handcuffs he could now not take off, sweating even under the cooling breeze from the air conditioner.

  The same breeze ruffled the pages Nina was holding, to her irritation. But the distraction was a minor one, her mind focused as fully as it could be on her task.

  She was more convinced than ever that there was a clue within Plato’s words, a cryptic linguistic key that would unlock the puzzle. With each new reading of the ancient Greek text, that key seemed to come a tantalizing step closer.

  But not close enough for her to turn it. She frowned.

  “No joy?” asked Chase. Compared to his usual self, he had been distinctly muted since his injury.

  She shook her head. “All I can think of is that there’s some kind of cipher code which is used to find the relevant words describing how to get into the Tomb—like if word three, line six, page one is ‘turn,’ word seven of line twelve is ‘key,’ and so on. I mean, it flat-out says that there are words hidden among other words! But I can’t find anything that could be the cipher itself. There needs to be a starting point, a way to know where to begin and how to proceed, otherwise it would be impossible even for the intended recipient to work it out. Only … there isn’t one.”