Jada scoffed. “No such thing as alchemy.”
Henriksen leaned against the wall, wincing at the pain from his wound. “Then where did all that gold come from?”
“Not from magic,” Jada said. “Or even some pseudo-science. You can’t make gold.”
“Maybe not,” Olivia replied. “Probably not. Your father believed that Daedalus must have been some kind of charlatan, but he kept an open mind because he had no other explanation. And the more he researched Daedalus and alchemy, the more he began to see other connections that defied explanation. There were stories of the ancient alchemist Ostanes-”
“The Persian,” Drake said. “Sure, there were similarities in his background. Same with St. Germain and half a dozen others. They were all alchemists. Half of what they did was about creating the illusion that they had abilities they didn’t have to give them that mysterious, mystical aura. They all claimed to be immortal. Fulcanelli even claimed he was St. Germain.”
“What if he was?” Olivia asked.
“Seriously?” Drake scoffed. “You are an entire jar of nuts.”
Henriksen started to speak up, but he hadn’t gotten half a word out when there came a boom and rumble from far above them and the whole chamber began to shake. A jagged crack raced across the ceiling. Dust and debris rained down, and a jar fell to shatter on the floor.
Olivia screamed and pressed herself against the wall as Drake grabbed Jada and ran toward the doorway. Nico’s son looked around in fear and surprise but did nothing to stop them as they joined him in the corridor. They froze there, unsure what to do. The rumbling continued, a grinding roar from far off but loud enough that the muffled noise reached them despite how far they had come into the subterranean maze.
Olivia staggered toward Henriksen, and he put a protective arm around her.
“Is it the volcano?” Olivia shouted, looking at Nico.
The old Greek did not move. He seemed resigned to whatever fate held in store for him. His eyes were narrowed as he tried to make sense of the noise from above.
Then the rumbling subsided and the last bits of grit rained down from the ceiling. Whatever had happened, it was over as abruptly as it had begun.
“If it was the volcano, we’d be dead already,” the short, stocky thug muttered. “It’s the fortress.”
Henriksen flashed him a dark look. “Corelli?”
The stocky man-Corelli-looked at him, dark certainty in his eyes. “Explosives, Mr. Henriksen. The assholes brought the whole place down on top of us. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh, my God,” Olivia whispered. Her gaze turned haunted. “I can’t die down here.” She looked around at the walls as if they were about to start closing in.
Drake frowned, shaking his head. No way. He couldn’t even let himself wrap his mind around it. The hooded men had used explosives to destroy the rest of the fortress ruins, trapping them down here? They used daggers. They were killers from another era, all about stealth and secrecy. Explosives?
But there was no other answer. It wasn’t as if Henriksen would have trapped himself down here voluntarily.
“What do we do?” Nico’s son said, his Greek accent think and frantic. He stared not at Drake or Henriksen but at his father. “What are we going to do?”
“There are other ways out,” Jada said, turning to Henriksen. “Those hooded men-they got out with my godfather, and they didn’t go back the way we came in.”
Henriksen trembled, gaze shifting around the room. Drake thought others, watching him, might have thought he shook in fear, but he understood that the man was filled with anger at having been trapped like this-at having his will thwarted. At length, Henriksen aimed his flashlight at the huge stone slab of the door to the secret passage at the rear of the chamber.
“We figure out how to open that door.”
“And what if we can’t figure it out in time?” Olivia demanded.
“There’s another way,” Drake said. As they all turned to him, he pointed at Olivia. “Please tell me that camera is waterproof.”
17
Drake raced out of the Chinese worship chamber ahead of them. A crack had appeared in the wall of the corridor outside and chunks of stone had broken off the support pillars in the hall, but he knew that would be nothing compared with the damage they would encounter if they attempted to retrace their steps. They had only one chance of getting out of the labyrinth quickly-perhaps at all.
There had been four worship chambers in Daedalus’s original design for this junction in the secret heart of this labyrinth. Two of them had been destroyed, collapsing into the cavern formed by the earthquake of 1954. Now even more of the stone floor had calved off into the large cavern. The others followed Drake with their flashlights as he led them to the sheer ledge. Below, the sea churned in and out like a watery bellows.
“You can’t be serious,” Corelli said. “And you thought Olivia was nuts?”
Henriksen shot him a dark look. “Shut your mouth, idiot. We could all die down here.”
“Yeah. I’d like to avoid that,” Drake said.
Jada stood on the verge of the chasm. Drake took her arm and pulled her back a foot or two. Part of that ledge had given way already. After the explosion, cracks might have formed to make it even more unstable.
She did not try to pull her arm away but glanced up at him.
“How far do you think we’d have to swim underwater?”
Nico and his son were back in the entrance to the Chinese worship chamber, whispering quietly to each other. Corelli shook his head, scratching the back of his skull in doubt. But Henriksen’s eyes were lit with anticipation. Drake had to hand it to him; the man was motivated.
“There’s no way to tell,” Drake said.
“I don’t know how long I can hold my breath,” Olivia said, walking up to the edge and looking down into the roiling water.
“Look, the tide is low,” Drake said. “It could still be going out; I don’t know. But we’re not going to get a better shot than this for another twenty-four hours.”
Jada, Olivia, and Corelli all looked dubious. But Drake noticed the Greeks watching him and thought he saw interest and encouragement in their gazes. They were locals, and they looked as though they thought he might not be entirely crazy, after all.
“The camera,” Drake said, looking at Olivia. “I asked you before, is it waterproof?”
Olivia nodded. “Supposedly.”
“And there’s a waterproof pouch in my pack,” Henriksen said, gesturing to the backpack Corelli carried. With his wound, Henriksen apparently had given up the burden. “We can double up protection.”
“And if the camera’s ruined?” Olivia complained. “What then?”
“Then we come back,” Henriksen said sharply. “Or I do, with or without you.”
“We could try through those stone doors,” Corelli argued. “There’s gotta be a way to trigger them open.”
“If there were any easy way, we’d have found it in the Temple of Sobek,” Henriksen argued. He looked at Drake and nodded. “We go.”
Drake shook his head. “No. I go.” He made his way to the edge and sat down, taking off his boots and then stripping his khakis off. He balled up the trousers and stowed them in his pack, hesitated, and then decided to put the boots back on. The climb down would be jagged, and even underwater he’d hesitate to be barefoot. Despite their weight, he decided he was better with the boots than without them, although he knew he looked ridiculous in his boxer briefs and boots.
He swung his legs over the edge of the broken floor, then turned back to Henriksen. “You’re filthy rich, right?”
Henriksen nodded gravely. “Yes. Yes, I am.”
