James Rollins - Map of Bones

Behind her, the others were gathered over the pile of scuba gear, checking tanks, regulators, and weight belts.

“Do we really need all this gear?” Gray asked. He picked up a full-face mask. “Thick dry suits and all this special head gear?”

“You’ll need it all,” Vigor said. Her uncle was an experienced diver. Being an archaeologist in the Mediterranean, there was no way not to be. Many of the region’s most exciting discoveries were found underwater, including here in Alexandria, where the lost palace of Cleopatra had recently been discovered, sunk under the waves of this same bay.

But there was a reason these underwater treasures had remained hidden for so long.

Her uncle explained. “The pollution here in the East Harbor, coupled with the sewage, has made these waters dangerous to explore without proper protection. The Egyptian tourist board has floated concepts for opening a marine archaeological park here, serviced by glass-bottomed boats. Some unscrupulous tour operators already offer dive trips. But exposure to heavy-metal toxins and the risk of typhoid is real for those entering the water.”

“Great,” Monk said. He already looked a tad green around the gills. He clutched the starboard rail, teeth clenched. He kept his head a bit over the side, like a dog hanging his head out a window. “If I don’t drown, I’ll end up catching some flesh-melting disease. You know, there’s a reason I joined the Army Special Forces versus the Navy or Air Force. Solid ground.”

“You could stay on the boat,” Kat said.

Monk scowled at her.

If they were going to find some underwater tunnel leading to a secret treasure chamber under the fort, they would need everybody. They were all certified divers. They would search in shifts, rotating one person out to rest and guard both boat and gear.

Monk had insisted on the first shift.

Rachel sped their boat along the eastern edge of the spit of land. Ahead, the citadel of Qait Bey grew in size, filling the horizon. It hadn’t looked so massive from the pier. It would be a daunting task to explore the depths surrounding the fort.

A worry began to nag her. It had been her idea to attempt this search. What if she was wrong? Maybe she had missed a clue pointing somewhere else.

She slowed the boat, nervous energy growing.

They had mapped out the regions into quadrants for a systematic exploration of the bay around the fort. She throttled down, approaching the first dive spot.

Gray stepped next to her. He rested one hand on the seatback. His fingertips brushed her shoulder. “This is quadrant A.”

She nodded. “I’ll drop anchor here and raise the orange flag warning of divers in the water.”

“Are you all right?” he asked, leaning down.

“I just hope this isn’t a wild-goose chase, as you Americans say.”

He smiled, determination warming into reassurance. “You gave us a start. It was more than we had going into the matter. And I’d rather be chasing wild geese, as we Americans say, than doing nothing.”

Without realizing it, she shifted her shoulder so it pressed against his hand. He didn’t pull away.

“It’s a good plan,” he said, his voice softer.

She nodded, at a loss for words, and glanced away from those damn eyes of his. She cut the engine and thumbed the release for the anchor. She felt the shudder under her seat as the chained rope dropped.

Gray turned to the others. “Let’s suit up. We’ll drop here, check our marine radios, then begin the search.”

Rachel noted that he kept his hand at her shoulder.

It felt good there.

GRAY FELL backward into the sea.

Water swamped over him. Not an inch of skin was exposed to the potential pollution and sewage. The seams of the full-body suit were double-taped and double-sewed. The neck and wrist seals were heavy-duty latex. Even his AGA mask completely covered his face, sealing the Viking hood over his head. The regulator was built into its faceplate, freeing his mouth.

Gray found the spread of peripheral vision through the mask worth the extra time it took to suit up, especially since visibility was poor here in the harbor. Silt and sediment clouded the view to a range of ten to fifteen feet.

Not bad. It could be worse.

His BC buoyancy vest bobbed him back to the surface, full of air, compensating for the weight belt. He watched Rachel and Vigor drop into the sea on the other side of the boat. Kat was already in the water on his side.

He tried the radio, a Buddy Phone, ultrasonically transmitting on an upper single sideband. “Can everyone hear me?” he asked. “Check in.”

He got positive responses all around, even from Monk, who was taking up the first guard shift on the boat. Monk also had an Aqua-Vu marine infrared video system to monitor the group below.

“We’ll drop to the bottom here and sweep toward shore in a wide spread. Everyone knows their positions.”

Affirmatives answered.

“Down we go,” he said.

He vented the air in his BC vest and lowered into the water, dragged down by his weight vest. This was the point where many novice divers experienced a panicked claustrophobia. Gray never had. Instead, he felt the opposite, a total freedom. He was weightless, flying, capable of all sorts of aerial acrobatics.

He spotted Rachel dropping on the opposite side of the boat. She was easy to spot by the broad red stripe across the chest of her black suit. They each had a different color for ease of identification. His was blue, Kat’s pink, Vigor’s green. Monk had already climbed into his suit, too, ready for his shift. His stripe was yellow, somehow fitting considering his attitude toward diving.

Gray watched Rachel. Like him, she seemed to enjoy the freedom below the waves. She twisted and flew, spiraling down with a minimal flicker of fins. He took a moment to enjoy the curves of her form, then concentrated on his own descent.

The sandy bottom rose up, cluttered with debris.

Gray adjusted his buoyancy to keep him drifting just above the seabed. He searched right and left. The others settled into similar postures.

“Can everyone see each other?” he asked.

Nods and affirmatives all around.

“Monk, how’s the underwater video camera working?”

“You look like a bunch of ghosts. Visibility is crap. I’ll lose you once you head out.”

“Keep in radio contact. Any problems, you raise the alarm and haul ass over to us.” Gray was pretty confident that they had the jump on the Dragon Court, but he was not taking any chances with Raoul. He didn’t know how much of a head start they had gained. But there were plenty of other boats about. It was broad daylight.

Still, they needed to act quickly.

Gray pointed an arm. “Okay, we’ll head to shore, keep no greater distance than fifteen feet apart. Visual contact with each other at all times.”

The four of them could sweep a swath of about twenty-five yards across. Once at shore, if nothing was detected, they would shift down the coastline another twenty-five yards and swim back toward the waiting boat. Back and forth, quadrant by quadrant, they would comb the entire coastline around the fort.

Gray set out. He had a dive knife attached to a sheath on the back of his wrist and a flashlight on the other. With the sun directly overhead and the water only forty feet deep, there was no need for the extra illumination, but it would come in handy to explore nooks and crannies. He had no doubt that the passage they sought would not be plain or it would have already been discovered.

It was another riddle to solve.

As he swam, he pondered what they had missed. There must have been more of a clue to the map drawn on the stone than merely pointing to Alexandria. It must have also held some clue embedded about the location here. Had they missed something? Had Raoul stolen a clue out of the cave below Saint Peter’s tomb? Did the Dragon Court already have the answer?