easily, completing the circle and the Herculean Society’s symbol. They let go and moved back. The stone began shifting back into its previously unaligned position. It clicked into place as a flashlight cast it in yellow light.
The first guard to arrive drew his weapon and pointed it beneath the low ceiling where he thought he’d seen moving shadows. But the pit was empty and looked untouched. He stood and scanned the area, finding no one but his partner. If someone had been there, they were gone now.
TWENTY-NINE
Washington, D.C.
DOMINICK BOUCHER HAD been wrong.
Not only had Marrs not backed down, but he’d responded to the vulture comment like something out of a Tazmanian Devil cartoon, spinning madly from rally to news station to rally again. With a beet-red face, he shouted at the media. At crowds. At the television audience. And despite the flying spittle and shaking jowls, people were listening.
He turned the self-serving vulture comment around on Duncan. “If one senator keeping the president accountable is enough to make him crack, how is he going to lead the nation?” he had said.
When the media picked up on the fact that Marrs was also responding in anger, he spun the story. “I’m responding to a man who has failed this nation several times. A man who’s inaction has led to the deaths of our children. I should be angry. Every good citizen of this nation should be angry. At Duncan for not preventing the attacks and at the people who perpetrated them. But who is our president angry at? Me! The office needs transparency. It needs accountability. If he can’t handle it, well…” With that he threw up his hands.
The man provided enough sound bites and accusations to keep the media and the public focused on Marrs and, as a result, on Duncan. His hands were bound more than ever now. The media requests didn’t stop coming. There were protesters surrounding the White House grounds and more arrived every hour.
Alone in the Oval Office for a few minutes before meeting with a slew of advisors on a range of issues arising because of the current crisis, Duncan looked out the row of windows. The south lawn, trim and neat like a marine’s head, stretched out before him. The trim grass annoyed him. Nothing was that clear cut anymore. In the Rangers there were good guys and bad guys. Black and white. Right and wrong. He had successfully carried on that tradition through the Chess Team. But now … now there were other battles, unnecessary battles that had to be fought. With Marrs. With the media. With public opinion.
And given the sensitivity of the Chess Team’s mission, he couldn’t fight back. He couldn’t say he had teams spread out around the world, infiltrating the territories of sovereign nations in order to kidnap the sole survivors of ancient languages. If that got out it might start a war. And it would certainly ruin his presidency and provide a lifetime of fuel to Marrs’s smear campaign. Hell, it might make Marrs look enough like a hero that he could be the next president.
But right now Marrs had freedom to act. Freedom to say what he wanted to whomever he chose. Freedom to disappear if he chose. And for those reasons, Duncan envied him.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in.”
He heard the door open, but he didn’t turn around. A woman’s voice said, “They’re ready for you, sir.”
“I’ll just be a minute,” he replied.
After the door shut, Duncan looked down at his right hand. He held his M9 Beretta; the same one he had used as an Army Ranger. The weapon had saved his life a few times, but it couldn’t help now. As much as he might like to have Marrs stare down the barrel of this gun, a different solution had to be found; one that would not only put an end to the recent attacks and catch those responsible, but also free the team up so they could really function as a cohesive unit. Only then would the American people be safer.
Duncan opened a drawer on the Resolute Desk, placed the handgun inside, and locked it. Before heading toward the door, he looked around the Oval Office, and for the first time during his presidency, the space felt cramped.
THIRTY
Rome, Italy
THE LAST THING King saw before descending into total darkness was a shrinking crescent of light above him. He realized that they’d fallen through a triggered hatch that was now quickly, and quietly, closing. All thoughts of the hatch left his mind as his body impacted against a cold stone floor. He landed at an odd angle, which compressed his ribs near to breaking and knocked the wind out of him.
Unable to speak, he listened as Pierce whispered his name. “Jack … Jack, where are you?”
A bright light struck his face a moment later as Pierce switched on his flashlight.
Seeing King squint from the light and in pain, Pierce said, “Sorry,” and moved the light away, revealing a nondescript stone tunnel. After King caught his breath and was helped to his feet, he looked at Pierce, who seemed unfazed by the fall.
Pierce noticed King’s attention and questioning gaze. He smiled. “I landed on my feet.”
King shook his head. The bookworm archaeologist was becoming a catlike Tomb Raider while he, an elite soldier, became a potato sack.
When Pierce’s grin turned cocky, King said, “At least I didn’t hit a girl.”
Pierce had opened his mouth to issue a retort, but stopped short and then deflated. “Hey, what happened to ‘you have to be a bad parent to be a good parent’?”
King shrugged. “I was trying to make you feel better.”
Pierce forced an unsure smile as King used his conscience against him. “B.S. You’ve hit girls.”
“Not like that,” King said. “You coldcocked the kid.”
“Kid!” With a laugh and a raised fist, Pierce said, “Better watch it, or you’re next.”
“Don’t make me tell Queen you hit a girl,” King said as he found his flashlight on the floor, picked it up, and switched it on.
The light cast a now serious George Pierce in bright, white light. “That’s not even funny.”
King gave him a firm pat on the back. “C’mon, let’s find out which layer of hell we’ve dropped ourselves into.”
King led the way, flashlight out, gun at the ready. The tunnel, a simple brown tube tall enough to stand in and just wide enough for the pair to stand side by side, led down at a steady angle.
“We must be under the Lacus Juturnae by now,” Pierce whispered.
But King wasn’t interested in what lay above. He wanted to know what waited below. The color of the tunnel ahead shifted from dark brown to a dirty, mottled white with splashes of color. Pierce’s eyes went wide with recognition and he rushed past King.
The walls of the tunnel were covered in mosaic tiles, many chipped or fallen away, but enough remained so that the pictures could be pieced together. Blocky shapes slightly more detailed than a sixteen-bit Nintendo game formed pictograph story lines. King couldn’t make them out, but Pierce deciphered it aloud.
“Look here, at this swamp,” Pierce said. “This must be the land Rome was founded on.” He counted the hills in the image, whispering the numbers to himself. “The seven hills of Rome. The original settlers had villages on each hill, but they eventually drained the swamp and formed the city.”
He moved on, looking at a large image of a woman, whose beauty was impossible to hide, despite the rough condition of the wall.
“Who is she?” King asked.
