James Rollins - Map of Bones

“What if the stone isn’t out here?” she whispered to Gray, who kept a vigil on the compass. “What if it’s inside the fort?”

“Then we’ll search there next,” Gray said, squinting toward the stone citadel. “But I think you’re right about a secret entrance. The hematite slab sat over a secret tunnel to the cavern that led down to a river channel. Water. Perhaps that’s another layer of the riddle.”

Kat heard them, a book open on her lap. “Or we’re reading too much into it,” she said. “Trying to force what we want to match the riddle.”

Up in the bow end, Vigor massaged a sore calf muscle from the swim. “I think the ultimate question of where the stone might lie — on land or in the water — depends on when the alchemists hid the clue. We estimated the clues were hidden sometime around the thirteenth century, maybe a little before or a little after, but that’s the critical era of conflict between Gnosticism and orthodoxy. So, did the alchemists hide their next clue before or after the Pharos Lighthouse collapsed in 1303?”

No one had an answer.

But a few minutes later, the compass needle gave a shaky twitch.

“Hold it!” Gray hissed.

The needle steadied again. Kat and Vigor glanced to them.

Gray placed a hand on Rachel’s shoulder. “Go back.”

Rachel tweaked the throttle into neutral. Forward momentum stopped. She let the waves bob them backward.

The needle pitched again, swinging a full quarter turn.

“Drop anchor,” Gray ordered.

She pressed the release, hardly breathing.

“Something’s down there,” Gray said.

Everyone began to move at once, grabbing for fresh tanks.

Monk woke with a start, sitting up. “What?” he asked blearily.

“Looks like you’re going on guard duty again,” Gray said. “Unless you want to take a dip?”

Monk scowled his answer.

Once the boat was secure and the orange flag raised, the same four divers fell back into the water.

Rachel bubbled out her buoyancy and sank under the waves.

Gray’s voice reached her through the radio. “Watch your wrist compasses. Zero in on the anomaly.”

Rachel studied her compass as she descended. The water was fairly shallow here. Less than ten meters. She reached the sandy bottom quickly. The others dropped around her, hovering like birds.

“Nothing’s here,” Kat said.

The seabed was a flat expanse of sand.

Rachel stared at her compass. She kicked a body length away, then back again. “The anomaly is right here.”

Gray lowered to the bottom and swept his wrist over the floor. “She’s right.”

He reached to his other wrist and unsheathed his knife. With the blade in hand, he began stabbing into the soft sand. The blade sank to the hilt each time. Silt stirred up, clouding the view.

On his seventh stab, the knife plainly jarred, failing to penetrate more than a few centimeters.

“Got something,” Gray said.

He sheathed the knife and began digging in the sand. The view grew quickly murky, and Rachel lost sight of him.

Then she heard him gasp.

Rachel moved closer. Gray swept back. The disturbed sand dispersed and settled.

Protruding from the sand was a dark bust of a man.

“I think that’s magnetite,” Kat said, studying the stone of the sculpture. She swept her wrist compass over the bust. The needle twirled. “Lodestone.”

Rachel edged closer, staring at the face. There was no mistaking the features. She had seen the same countenance a couple of times today.

Gray recognized it, too.

“It’s another sphinx.”

GRAY SPENT ten minutes clearing the shoulders and upper torso, reaching the lion’s shape below. There was no doubt it was one of the sphinxes, like the others littered on the seabed.

“Hiding it among the others,” Vigor said. “I guess that answers the question of when the alchemists hid their treasure here.”

“ After the lighthouse collapsed,” Gray said.

“Exactly.”

They hovered around the magnetic sphinx, waiting for the disturbed silt and sand to settle.

Vigor continued, “This ancient society of mages must have known the location of Alexander’s tomb after Septimus Severus hid it in the third century. They left it undisturbed, letting it safeguard the most valuable scrolls from the lost library. Then perhaps the quake in 1303 not only brought down the lighthouse, but exposed the tomb. They took the opportunity to hide more down there, using the chaotic time after the earthquake to plant their next clue, bury it, and allow the centuries to cover it up again.”

“And if you’re right,” Gray said, “that pinpoints the date when these clues were planted. Remember, we’d already estimated that the clues were laid around the thirteenth century. We were off by only a few years. It was 1303. The first decade of the fourteenth century.”

“Hmm…” Vigor drifted closer to the statue.

“What?”

“It makes me wonder. In that same decade, the true papacy was chased out of Rome and exiled in France. The antipopes ruled Rome for the next century.”

“So?”

“Similarly, the Magi bones were moved from Italy to Germany in 1162, another time when the true pope was chased out of Rome and an antipope sat on the papal seat.”

Gray followed this train of thought. “So these alchemists hid their stuff whenever the papacy was in jeopardy.”

“So it would seem. This would suggest that this society of mages had ties to the papacy. Perhaps the alchemists did indeed join the Gnostic Christians of those turbulent times, Christians open to the quest for arcane knowledge, the Thomas Christians.”

“And this secret society merged with the orthodox church?”

Vigor nodded in the murky water. “When the overall church came under threat, so did the secret church. So they sought safeguards. First moving the bones to safety in Germany during the twelfth century. Then during the embattled years of the exile, they hid the true heart of their knowledge.”

“Even if this is true, how does this help us find Alexander’s tomb?” Kat asked.

“Just as the clues that led to Saint Peter’s tomb were buried in the stories of Catholicism, the clues here might be tied to the mythologies of Alexander. Greek mythologies.” Vigor ran a gloved finger down the face of the statue. “Why else mark the gateway with a sphinx?”

“The riddle masters of the Greeks,” Gray mumbled.

“And the monsters killed you outright if you didn’t answer them correctly,” Vigor reminded them. “Perhaps choosing this symbol is a warning.”

Gray studied the sphinx as the sand cleared, its expression enigmatic. “Then we’d better solve this riddle.”

THE GULFSTREAM IV private jet received clearance from the tower to land. Seichan listened to the chatter of the cockpit crew through the open doorway. She sat in the seat nearest the door. Sunlight blazed through the window on her right.

A large form stepped to her left.

Raoul.

She continued to stare out the window as the jet tilted on a wing over the violet-blue of the Mediterranean and lined up for the final approach to the runway.

“What’s the word from your contact on the ground?” Raoul asked, biting off each word.

He must have noted her using the jet’s air-phone. She fingered the dragon charm on her necklace. “The others are still in the water. If you’re lucky, they may solve this mystery for you.”

“We won’t need them for that.” Raoul stepped back to join his men, a team of sixteen, including the Court’s master adept.