The Doomsday Key and The Last Oracle with Bonus Excerpts

by James Rollins

  All around the bowl, the sandstone walls had been dug out into notched tiers. Each level sheltered cliff-dwelling homes. They climbed from floor to the lip that overhung the valley. Sections of homes had broken away over the centuries into boulders and rubble. It reminded Gray of the cliff dwellings of the Anasazi Indians. But from the style of architecture, no Indians—neither Native Americans nor the peoples of India—had built these dwellings.

  Gray stepped forward and turned in a circle. The facades of the homes were white marble, stark against the darker stone. The cliffs, composed of softer sandstone, had long been worn down by centuries of wind and rain. The homes looked like they grew straight out of the walls. The white marble reminded Gray of fossilized skeletons jutting out of a cliff face.

  Despite being half swallowed by the storm-melted walls, the basic architectural elements of the marble structures were still evident. Low triangular roofs supported fluted columns. Carvings and sculptures, long softened by age, decorated pediments and cornices.

  There was no doubt as to the source of the architecture.

  “It’s Greek,” Elizabeth said with awe. She stared around, water streaming down her face. “A Greek temple complex. Hidden here.”

  Masterson stood beside her. He had his sodden hat in hand and combed his fingers through his soaked white hair. “Simply amazing. Archibald, you old fool, you could’ve told me…”

  Gray also gaped, wonder washing away his exhaustion.

  Elizabeth pointed. “That’s a temple in antis, one of the simplest Greek architectural units. Over there’s a later-era prostyle structure. And look at that rounded facade of columns. It must mark a tholos, a circular temple, burrowed into the cliff.”

  While she spoke, Gray’s attention focused upon a structure on the far side of the bowl. His heart beat harder. A temple lay halfway up the cliff face. Boulders were strewn at the foot of it, marking where a part of the canyon’s lip had cracked and fallen. Rainwater flowed through the upper crack and streamed across the front of the temple, giving it a watery, illusory appearance.

  But there was no mistaking it.

  Six columns supported a triangular roof and framed a dark doorway.

  “Just like on the coin,” Rosauro said, noting his attention.

  Abe headed toward the tall temple. “That is not all.”

  Straining with curiosity, Gray followed and dragged the wet party with him.

  Once they reached the pile of boulders, Abe crossed to one side and waved them to follow. He mounted the stack of boulders and clambered higher. He seemed to know a path up the rubble.

  Climbing single file, they followed the Hindu man.

  Elizabeth and Masterson continued an ongoing dialogue. “Why do you think they built the temple complex here? And in such an odd manner?”

  “They were clearly hiding,” Masterson said. “It’s a bloody hard place to find, especially buried into these walls. But I’ve seen similar cliff-dwelling arrangements among the Harappan ruins deeper in the Indus Valley. Perhaps these builders took over an old Harappan site, modified it to their tastes.”

  “That could be. It was common for one civilization to build atop another.”

  As they talked, Gray stared at the temple. Closer now, he saw that what he’d thought were black shadows on the marble columns were actually old scorch marks. Finer details emerged. Cracks and fissures marred the facade; one large section of the upper pediment had broken away.

  Gray suspected the damage was not from age alone. It looked like an ancient battle had been fought here.

  Ahead, Abe jumped off the top boulder and climbed between two pillars. Gray went next and shimmied onto the marble floor of the temple, finally out of the rain. The six support columns stood a yard from the building they fronted, creating a small porch.

  He stood to make room for the others. Kowalski and Luca helped Elizabeth and Masterson. Rosauro came last, burdened with a pack. With everyone gathered, Gray headed to the door, but Abe knelt for a moment and whispered a prayer. Gray waited, sensing to do otherwise would be like trespassing.

  Abe stood and nodded.

  Gray took out a small flashlight and flicked it on. He entered first, his light blazing into the dark interior.

  The chamber was large and perfectly square, twenty feet on a side and again as tall. More columns lined the walls, several broken into rubble. Dug out of the center of the floor was a fire pit, deeply blackened. To either side, arched openings led into side chambers, like chapels in a church.

  Gray noted something piled in the smaller rooms. He shifted for a closer look as the others entered the temple. Abe kept to the side, his arms crossed nervously. He didn’t follow.

  As Gray pointed his flashlight, he understood the Hindu man’s reluctance. Bones filled the room, stacked like cords of wood, topped by hundreds of skulls. All human. From the rotted appearance and yellowing, the skeletons were ancient.

  Gray pictured the scorch marks on the building.

  Abe spoke. “We were told stories, passed from father to son, mother to daughter. Of a great battle here. A thousand years ago. It is told how our ancestors found this place full of bones. In honor of the dead, we gathered their remains and interred them in these temples.” He waved toward the bowl outside. “There are many more bones out there.”

  Gray turned away from the room. Someone had discovered these people and massacred them. He remembered Abe’s cryptic words from earlier.

  These walls do not guarantee protection. Not forever.

  The fate of the original inhabitants was a warning to Abe’s people. It was a good place to hide, but one could not escape the world forever.

  Gray stepped over to the only other feature in the room.

  Like the temple facade, this feature was also depicted on the coin.

  Gray crossed to the back wall and shone his light across its surface. The wall of creamy marble had been inset with stark black stone, forming a familiar symbol, climbing twenty feet tall.

  “A chakra wheel,” Elizabeth said, mystified. She pulled out a pocket-size digital camera and began taking pictures. “Like the other side of the coin.”

  Luca ran a hand along the wall. Gray could read his thoughts. Was this the ancient symbol that was the source of the Romani emblem?

  Had Archibald Polk wondered the same?

  Kowalski sighed, clearly not impressed with the room. “What a let-down.”

  “What are you talking about?” Elizabeth chided. “This is the archaeological and anthropological discovery of a lifetime.”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but so what? Where’s all the gold and jewels?”

  Gray hated to admit it, but he agreed with Kowalski. He stepped away. He swung the flashlight in a full circle around the chamber. Something was missing, but it wasn’t gold or precious gems.

  Rosauro joined him. “What’s wrong?”

  “Something’s not here,” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  Others heard them in the confined space. They stared over.

  Gray made one more circle. “On the coin…there was that prominent E? The Greek letter epsilon.”

  “He’s right,” Elizabeth said.

  Gray wiped drips of rain from his face. “Everything on the coin is found here—the temple facade, the chakra wheel—so where is the Greek letter?”

  “It’s one minor detail,” Masterson said. “What does it matter?”

  “It’s not minor,” Elizabeth argued. “Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to mimic the temple complex at Delphi. What we saw outside…the temple in antis was the shape of the Delphi’s treasury buildings, the round tholos temple looked like a fair facsimile of the one built to worship Athena at Delphi. And this place here. The exterior and interior are how the Oracle’s temple was laid out. And the E was one of its most prominent decorations.”

  Gray recalled his discussion with Painter, about how the Delphic E grew to symbolize a cult of prophecy, a code trailing throughout history in art and archite
cture.

  Luca stepped forward. “I may also know of this letter.”

  Gray turned to the Gypsy clan leader.

  “I told you of the children who were stolen from us,” he said. “Those of my people who first came upon the massacred camp spoke of a stone church there. The door had been broken open, but upon the shattered planks a large bronze E was found. No one knew what it meant. The only ones who knew were buried in that mass grave. The secret died with them. Perhaps this is the same E?”

  Marking the chovihanis, Gray thought. Gypsy fortune-tellers. Another cult of prophecy.

  “All well and good,” Masterson persisted, plainly growing tired, too. “But what does it matter if the E is missing here?”

  “Maybe nothing,” Gray admitted, but he said it with little conviction. He turned to Abe. “When did you first show Dr. Polk this site?”

  He shrugged. “I took Dr. Polk here the first time a year ago. He looked around, took notes, and left.”

  Elizabeth’s eyes looked wounded. “He didn’t tell me anything about this discovery.”

  “Because he respected our secrets,” Abe said stiffly. “He was a good man.”

  Gray studied Masterson’s sour expression. The professor had initially been surprised by the discovery, but after the shock faded and he found no real worth to his own line of research, his interest had waned. Had Dr. Polk experienced the same? The archaeological discovery was significant, but because he couldn’t connect it to his own research, he’d respected the achuta’s secret and had kept quiet about it.

  If so, why the sudden urgency to come out here just before he disappeared? He must have discovered some new connection, something bearing on his own line of study.

  Gray asked Abe, “Was there anything that triggered Dr. Polk’s sudden need to come here? Anything unusual that led up to that day?”

  The man shook his head. “He came to visit the village. Like he had done many times. We were talking about an upcoming election where an achuta candidate was up for a mayoral position. I had found a new coin and showed him, but he asked to see the one with the temple on it again. He glanced at it without too much interest, even spinning it on the table as we spoke. Then suddenly his eyes got huge, and he jumped up. He wanted to immediately come here, but I had obligations with the election. I asked him to wait until I returned…”

  His voice trailed off and was picked up by Elizabeth. “My father was not known for his patience.”

  Masterson nodded. “That was the day I got the frantic call from him. He claimed that he had discovered something that would shake our understanding of the human mind once it was known.”

  As an idea jangled through him, Gray turned to Rosauro. “Let me see that coin again.”

  She passed it over.

  Gray examined it: temple on one side, chakra wheel on the other. “Elizabeth, you said your father obtained that position for you at Delphi so you could explore how it might connect to his own research. What did you end up telling him about Delphi’s history?”

  “Just the basics,” she said. “He was less interested in the history than he was in the discovery of ethylene gases near the temple site. My father wanted more details into the Oracle’s rituals, looking again for physiological support for her intuitive powers.”

  “So if he wasn’t interested in the history, when did he learn about the significance of the Greek letter epsilon?”

  “I sent him a paper on it.”

  “When?”

  “About a month before he—” Her eyes suddenly widened.

  Gray nodded. He knelt on the marble floor and placed his flashlight down. Propping the coin up on its edge, Gray flicked it and sent it spinning on the floor, lit by the flashlight beam.

  He leaned down, studying it.

  The spinning coin formed a blurry, silvery globe. The E, positioned in the center of the coin, now rested at the core of the whirling globe. Gray sensed the symbolism. Painter had said that the E may have had its roots in the earliest worship of the Earth mother, Gaia. Now it rested at the center of the silvery sphere, like Gaia herself in the physical world. But the letter also represented human’s intuitive potential, rising out of the core of the human body, out of the brain.

  Gray let his own mind relax, seeking significance.

  What had Archibald Polk realized?

  The coin spun, a silvery mystery, hiding an ancient secret.

  But what—?

  Then Gray knew.

  Reaching out, he slapped the coin flat against the marble.

  Of course!

  11:35 P.M.

  Pripyat, Ukraine

  “The Americans have Sasha,” Nicolas said sharply as he stepped into the bedroom. He was naked under an open robe, but his anger kept him warm.

  Elena lay draped across the bedspread, nude. She had one leg up, and an arm draped to the side, waiting for him. They had returned from the gala to their hotel outside the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone, where many of the dignitaries were being housed prior to tomorrow’s event.

  Nicolas had spent the past half hour on a scrambled satellite phone, making sure every last detail was addressed before the morning. A call to his mother at the Warren revealed the latest bit of upsetting news. With her ties to former operatives in the KGB, she had heard the rumblings coming out of Washington’s intelligence communities. The city had been in turmoil over the past twenty hours, searching for a girl. It must be Sasha. Then things had gone deathly quiet. Even Yuri went silent. Both he and his mother knew what that implied.

  Someone had found her.

  And Nicolas suspected who it was.

  His fingers clenched into a fist.

  It was likely the same organization that had been plaguing him in India, dredging up Dr. Polk’s research, stirring something that Nicolas had thought had ended with the man’s death. One attempt to quash that trail had already failed. But maybe it was just as well.

  He’d had one communication, brief, after the failure.

  It seemed the team in India was closing in on a secret that Dr. Polk had kept from everyone. Something vital to the professor’s research. Something significant about the children. But what?

  Elena stirred on the bed and lifted to an elbow. Concern rang in her voice. “What will you do about little Sasha?”

  Nicolas knew all the children grew close. Raised together in the Warren, the older children often took on parental roles with the younger ones. Elena had been especially fond of little Sasha and her brother.

  The pair was important to Nicolas, too.

  He sank to the bed, and she curled into him, worried and angry. One of her hands slid up under his robe and rested on his thigh. Her skin was hot, feverish. He had kept her waiting too long.

  Then long fingernails suddenly clamped onto his thigh, stabbing deeply.

  Elena stared up at him. Fire burned behind her eyes, waiting to be unleashed. A trickle of blood ran down Nicolas’s inner thigh, as exciting as the tip of a hungry tongue.

  A hard certainty entered Elena’s voice. It brooked no argument, demanding, commanding. “Nothing must happen to little Sasha.”

  Her fingers tightened yet again, sending pain shooting to his groin.

  He gasped and promised her. “Measures are already under way. All we need—”

  Nails dragged up his leg, trailing pain.

  “—is something to trade.”

  11:45 P.M.

  Punjab, India

  As thunder boomed and lightning lit up the temple chamber, Elizabeth followed Gray to the giant chakra wheel on the wall. He laid his palm there. Since spinning the coin, he had clearly come to realize something.

  But what?

  Gray spoke as he stared upward. “From my studies of Indian philosophy, the center of a chakra wheel usually holds a Sanskrit letter, representing one of the energy centers. Muladhara, the root chakra at the base of the spine. Manipura, in the region of the solar plexus. Anahata, the heart.” He stared upward. “This one is empty. Blank.”
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  “The same on the coin,” Elizabeth said tentatively, not understanding where this was leading.

  “Exactly.” Gray had collected the coin and passed it to her now. “But flip the coin over. If you could stare through the center of the chakra wheel to the other side of the coin, what’s positioned there?”

  Elizabeth turned the coin back and forth. The capital epsilon lay in the center of the temple, in the exact position as the axle of the chakra wheel on the other side. “It’s the E,” she mumbled.

  “It stands on the reverse side of the wheel.” Gray turned to Masterson. “May I borrow your cane?”

  The professor passed it reluctantly.

  Gray stepped back, reached up, and pushed on the edge of the center circle of black marble. His muscles strained, and the small circle shifted out of place, pivoting around a vertical axis, like a valve in a pipe.

  “A secret door,” Masterson exclaimed.

  Gray waved to Kowalski. “Give me a leg up.”

  Kowalski crossed, dropped to a knee, and laced his fingers. Gray stepped into his grip and climbed high enough to shove the balanced slab of marble wider open. The lower edge of the secret door stood ten feet off the ground. With Kowalski’s boost, Gray wiggled through the opening.

  “There’re stairs!” he called back as his legs vanished. “Leading down! Cut into the sandstone back here!”

  Elizabeth could hardly wait. She crossed to Kowalski. “Help me.”

  She stepped to his knee, but he grabbed her by the waist and lifted her up. She squeaked a little in surprise. He was strong. She grabbed the edge of the opening to steady herself and blindly sought for a foothold to push through the door.

  “Ow, that’s my nose,” Kowalski griped.

  “Sorry.”

  He grabbed her ankle and shifted it to his shoulder. She shoved and fell the rest of the way through. She found Gray down a few steps, shining his light over the walls. Writing decorated all the surfaces, a mix of shapes and letters.

  “Harappan again,” she said with a strain, and gained her feet.

  “And look at this,” Gray said. He swung his flashlight and shone it on the reverse side of the black marble door. A large capital epsilon had been carved deep into the stone.