‘What was that?’ Pooh Bear asked.
Stretch said, ‘Jack mentioned it once, back when we were finding the Six Ramesean Stones. It was a race between warriors. They had to swim across the shark-infested strait between Easter Island and the little islet, grab a bird’s egg from up near its summit and then return with the egg. Whoever won the race became the chief of Easter Island for the next year. Something like that.’
‘Close,’ Mae said, ‘but not quite. It was indeed a race between warriors, but it wasn’t the warrior who got to be the chief of Easter Island. It was his sponsor. That man became chief of chiefs, first among the various chiefs of Easter Island, a king of kings, so to speak . . .’
Her voice trailed off.
‘What is it?’ Pooh Bear asked.
Mae frowned, thinking. ‘The king of kings,’ she said absently.
She looked up sharply.
‘Four kings rule the four legendary kingdoms, but who is the first among them, the king of kings? In royal matters, someone is always pre-eminent. How do they choose him?’
She opened her laptop and scrolled through many photographs until she found a certain image: one of a striking Greek urn.
Mae said, ‘This is an ancient Greek urn that Jack discovered at the lost library of Alexandria. As you can see, painted on the urn is a beautiful artistic rendition of the Twelve Labours of Hercules. See those words written around the rim in Greek? They translate as:
‘this urn commemorates the coming together of the four kings to celebrate the great games. each brought champions to represent him to decide who would be the king of kings.’
‘The king of kings . . .’ Pooh Bear said.
‘They brought champions to represent them,’ Mae said, ‘just like the Easter Islanders did. Like the moai, the Birdman Race is a unique peculiarity of Easter Island. There is no record of anything like it being performed anywhere else in the world.
‘Where did the race come from? Why did the Easter Islanders perform such a ritual? And for our purposes, knowing the connection Easter Island has to the advanced civilisation that built the Machine, was the Birdman Race derived from that civilisation?’
‘So what are these Great Games?’ Stretch asked, nodding at the urn.
Mae said, ‘As far as we know, they’re a myth. The concept of “games” in the ancient world could mean many things: gladiatorial battles, chariot races, or even the series of athletic events like those put on by the ancient Greeks which became the Olympic Games.
‘I’ve only encountered one reference to any kind of Great Games in all of my research, and that was a mention by Plato. He said the Great Games were a mythical series of deadly challenges held in the Underworld and reputedly hosted by Hades himself. Of course, I took that with a grain of salt since Plato is also the source of the Atlantis legend.’
‘Interesting,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘After you showed us that page from Isaac Newton’s book mentioning the Hydra Galaxy, I had a hunch: if Newton, as a member of the Invisible College, was an advisor to one or all of the four legendary kingdoms and knew all about their astronomical wisdom like the Hydra Galaxy, I thought that maybe the present-day members of those kingdoms might be in the business of acquiring Newton’s writings. So I looked up recent auctions of Newtonian works.’
‘And?’ Mae said.
‘There’s a French family, a very wealthy family by the name of DeSaxe, that over the last decade has bought several original works by Isaac Newton. One of them was the only drawing done by Newton in his most famous book, the Principia. This drawing.’
Pooh Bear turned around his laptop so the others could see its screen:
On it was a picture of a planet, presumably the Earth, with a mountain sticking up from the northern pole. A series of arcs, circles and ellipses ringed the planet.
‘It’s called Newton’s Mountain,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘It’s a thought experiment about gravity and orbits. If you fire a cannonball from the top of the mountain at different speeds, it will do different things because of the Earth’s gravitational pull. Fire it softly and it’ll drop to the Earth. Fire it faster and it will fly in an orbit around the world. Fire it faster still and it will escape Earth’s gravitational pull completely and fly off into space.
‘Last year, the head of the DeSaxe family, Monsieur Anthony DeSaxe, bought Newton’s original drawing at a private auction for a cool $22 million.’
‘Twenty-two million bucks?’ Stretch whistled. ‘Must be a hell of a drawing.’
Pooh Bear turned to Mae . . .
. . . and he paused.
She was looking at him with her mouth open and her eyes wide.
‘What?’ Pooh said. ‘What did I say?’
‘The DeSaxe family,’ Mae said slowly. ‘I haven’t heard that name in years. I encountered them several times in my early research. It is a very old family, very highly regarded in French society, and very mysterious.
‘Their lineage goes way back. Several of the DeSaxe men were Marshals of France. The patriarch of the family, Anthony “Tony” DeSaxe, attended several royal weddings in Europe back in the 90s, which made me wonder if he was a member of the Deus Rex, the Land Kingdom. I still don’t know if that’s the case, but at the time I thought he must at least know them. I didn’t know about the purchase of the Newton drawing, though.’
‘It wasn’t reported in the media,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘I found it through French tax records. Mr DeSaxe kept the purchase very quiet.’
‘He’s a secretive man,’ Mae said.
‘He is indeed, so I looked him up,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘Anthony Michael Dominic DeSaxe IV. Fifty-six years old. Estimated net worth: twelve billion dollars. Inherited two billion from his father, but turned that into twelve billion through two primary businesses: mining and shipping.
‘His private family company owns over forty mines around the world, ranging from coal to gold to rare-earth minerals. There are a couple of mines in Brazil and a few in South Africa, but most of his mines are in India, in and around the Thar Desert.
‘As for shipping, the DeSaxe Shipping Corporation both constructs and deconstructs container ships and oil tankers. They build them at a shipyard in Toulouse and rip them apart on a thirty-mile-long stretch of private beach in the remote northwest of India, in Gujarat Province, where the Thar Desert meets the Arabian Sea.’
‘I saw that ship graveyard on the news once,’ Stretch said. ‘It’s amazing: a whole line of massive rusting ships beached on the shoreline, all slowly being broken up. The story was about an environmental controversy, some kind of spill.’
‘That’s right,’ Pooh Bear said. ‘DeSaxe Shipping employs poor Indian workers to strip decommissioned vessels on that stretch of the Indian coast. Often when they’re stripped, the ships leak oil, arsenic and all manner of other toxins into the ocean. There was a leak last December. Greenpeace protested and tried to drum up media support, but the DeSaxes don’t like publicity and the matter was resolved very quickly with a call to the Indian Prime Minister.’
Mae pulled up an image on her laptop.
‘Mr DeSaxe also has a connection with our Hydra symbol. Ten years ago he purchased a 3,000-year-old Assyrian lion statue. The statue is generally unremarkable—the Assyrians carved a lot of lion statues—but one of my search algorithms found the Hydra symbol carved into its base. This is what the symbol looked like.’
Stretch and Pooh Bear peered at the image.
‘It looks sort of like a coat of arms,’ Stretch said.
‘What’s that weird mountain covering the Hydra symbol?’ Pooh Bear said.
‘No-one knows,’ Mae said.
Pooh Bear turned to her. ‘Tell me, what was the purpose of the lion statue? Ancient statues always had a purpose, a meaning. What was this statue’s purpose?’
‘You’re absolutely right, Zahir,’ Mae said. ‘The statue was one of a
pair of lions, but its twin has long been lost. Its podium proclaimed in ancient Urdu: I AM CHAOS, ONE OF THE TWIN GUARDIANS OF THE UNDERWORLD. According to Assyrian legends, two lions guarded the gates to Hell. The other lion’s name was Fear.’
Pooh Bear pulled out his cell phone. ‘I want some more information on the mysterious Mr DeSaxe. I’m going to call in some favours. See if my father’s intelligence agency has anything on him: government mentions, suspect donations, phone intercepts, anything.’
After Pooh Bear had left the room to make his call, Stretch said, ‘Since we’ve been looking into the Hydra Galaxy, I looked up places dedicated to the Hydra. Two stand out: two cities in central Asia that are both named Hyderabad—one is in India and the other is in Pakistan. Carvings of the symbol for our Hydra Galaxy have been found at both.’
‘Interesting,’ Mae said.
At length, Pooh Bear returned from the other room. ‘I just spoke with UAE Intelligence. I asked them to patch into America’s ECHELON system—it monitors every phone conversation around the world—and do a cross-check of several names: DeSaxe, games, Hydra, kingdom, Underworld, Iolanthe Compton-Jones. We got two hits straight away.’
He read from his notes: ‘The first call to mention some of the search terms was intercepted two months ago. In it, a male voice speaking with an Indian accent and identified as Mr Sunil Malik said, “It’s a wonderful specimen, Mr DeSaxe, one of the best I’ve ever seen. The tablet dates from the 14th century BC and is completely intact, which makes it exceedingly rare. It’s a collector’s dream.”’
Mae’s eyes narrowed. ‘Sunny Malik . . .’
‘You know him?’ Stretch said.
‘Oh, yes. You could say that Sunny and I work in the same field—the world of ancient history—only he operates in a very murky corner of it,’ Mae said. ‘Sunny Malik is one of the world’s premier dealers in blood antiquities. He is also a very dangerous individual, a ganglord and a gunrunner. Works out of Karachi, Pakistan.’
‘Blood antiquities?’ Pooh Bear asked.
‘Ever heard of conflict diamonds or blood diamonds?’
‘Sure.’
‘Same thing. When they attack an ancient city, militant groups like the Taliban and ISIS raid all the museums and wealthy homes and grab any artefacts or antiquities they can find. Then they sell those artefacts—“blood antiquities”—to people like Sunny Malik who onsell them to collectors on the black market. This is worth following up. And the second call, Zahir?’
Pooh Bear said, ‘The second call was intercepted only eight days ago. In it, an adult male voice said, “Iolanthe, it’s Anthony DeSaxe. Of course, you may substitute a new champion for the Games. It will be lovely to see you again next week.”’
They were all silent for a moment.
Mae said, ‘That was eight days ago, you say? Iolanthe Compton-Jones and Anthony DeSaxe spoke about arranging a substitute for the Great Games? That would mean the Games are being held now . . .’
Stretch said, ‘You think the Great Games of the Hydra are being held right now . . . in the Kingdom of the Underworld . . . and that Iolanthe grabbed Jack to compete in them?’
‘That’s exactly what I think,’ Mae said. ‘Zahir, Benjamin. We may have just stumbled upon the greatest gathering of the four royal kingdoms in the last three thousand years and my son has been thrust into it. We need to find out where it’s happening.’
‘How do we do that?’ Stretch asked.
Mae stood. ‘We go to Karachi and pay Sunny Malik a visit. And we find out exactly what it was he sold to Mr DeSaxe.’
The Underworld
somewhere in India
After surviving the vertical maze, Jack, Alby and Roxy were escorted back to their hostage carriage by some armed minotaur guards. For some reason that no-one deigned to tell Jack, the two winners of the wall-maze challenge—Zaitan and the Brazilian, Vargas—would not be given their rewards straight away. That would happen later.
Scarecrow and his two Marines—Astro and Tomahawk—were likewise taken back to the hostage train.
‘I just gotta say it,’ Scarecrow said to Jack as they walked together. ‘You’re one bloody-minded son of a bitch. Going after that jester was ballsy.’
Jack nodded. ‘You do what you’ve got to do.’
Astro laughed grimly. ‘Scarecrow knows all about that. Over the course of some crazy-ass missions, his heart has stopped twice and he’s still alive and kicking.’
Scarecrow said, ‘I just wanted to say it now, because I’ve got a feeling things are going to get nastier. If they put the two of us in a pit and tell us to fight to the death, well . . .’
‘Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Jack said.
They arrived at Scarecrow’s carriage, where Mother was waiting.
‘You both survived!’ she said. ‘Woo-hoo! Hashtag: my boys survived another ancient death-challenge.’
Jack said his goodbyes and kept walking.
Scarecrow and Mother watched him go.
When Jack was out of earshot, Scarecrow said, ‘This can’t end well. This whole thing is one giant elimination. The sixteen champions are slowly being whittled down to one. It’s got to get to a point where he and I will have to fight it out. What do I do?’
They both watched Jack walking away, heavy with fatigue.
Mother said, ‘You know what I think of you, boss. As far as I’m concerned, you’re the fucking man. You won’t stop fighting till your last breath. That guy’—she jerked her chin at Jack—‘is just like you. He may not be the soldier you are now, but once upon a time, he was one of the best. And he’s determined. He can dig deep. My official opinion? If you two have to fight it out hand-to-hand, you can take him . . . but he’s gonna take some killing.’
Scarecrow eyed Jack closely from behind.
The remaining champions all arrived back at their hostage carriages, where they were once again locked inside.
No sooner were they in their chambers than two downpours of liquid stone came blasting out of the roof of the train tunnel and drowned the hostages of the two champions who had died during the challenge: the Brazilian, Corazon, and the Indian MARCOS commando.
When the foul deed was done, the carriages shunted forward on their tracks and moved once again around the base of the mountain.
Jack turned away from the sight of the recently flooded hostage chambers. He didn’t want to think about that. To take his mind off it, he gazed out through the bars of his moving cell.
Alby came alongside him. ‘Jack, I don’t know if you’re noticing it, but I’m starting to see a pattern in all these challenges.’
‘They’re rituals,’ Jack said softly, still looking outward.
‘Yes,’ Alby said. ‘Elaborate rituals. A minotaur charging into your cell. Special assassins wearing lion, dog and snake helmets. That jester dressing as a deer. There’s more to this than we know right now. It might all be one big ritual. If we can figure out what that ritual is, we might just improve our chances of surviving.’
At that moment, the hostage train rounded a corner and began clanking to a halt.
Jack leaned forward as a new arena came into view below them.
‘Oh my Lord . . .’ he breathed.
It was colossal, easily the largest arena they had seen so far.
Alby gasped. ‘It looks like the Circus Maximus.’
It did indeed, Jack thought.
An enormous racetrack opened up below them. High stone walls flanked its dirt floor.
The track, however, did not run in a circle or oval. Rather it had three straights that switched back and forth in an S-shape until the final straight shot into a great yawning tunnel bored into the wall of the crater.
Jack swapped a glance with Scarecrow over in his cell.
‘What do you think?’ Scarecrow said.
‘I think,’ J
ack said, ‘that the next challenge is going to be big.’
Moments later, the train thunked to a gaseous, wheezing halt.
Vacheron appeared in front of it and addressed the eight remaining champions in their cages.
‘Hello, maggots! Rejoice, for today, you are all the recipients of a great and rare honour. Before the Fifth Challenge begins this afternoon, you have all been invited to a lunch hosted by Lord Hades himself. Here the rewards for the last challenge will be dispensed. But we can’t have you dining with royalty covered in blood and sweat and smelling like animals. Clean yourselves.’
Buckets of water and sponges were brought to each carriage.
Vacheron himself brought a bucket to Jack’s hostage carriage.
He sneered down his nose at Jack. ‘For some reason, you have earned a special pre-luncheon audience.’
‘With who?’ Jack said.
‘A king has asked to meet you in person,’ Vacheron said. ‘To see you for himself.’
‘Which king?’
‘His.’ Vacheron jerked his nose at E-147. ‘He asked for you and the minotaur to meet with him.’
‘A minotaur king?’ Jack said, thinking. Then he looked up sharply. ‘I want to bring one of my people with me,’ he said, glancing at Alby.
‘For this audience, bring whomever you like. I care not.’ Vacheron waved a hand dismissively. ‘But for your lunch with Hades, you come alone.’
They came for Jack ten minutes later: eight minotaur guards wearing crimson-and-gold sashes over their shoulders.
Having quickly washed himself with the water and sponge, Jack still wore his Homer Simpson t-shirt and jeans. He still had no shoes, so he went barefoot.
The Four Legendary Kingdoms Page 16
