Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

Nina ran from the room, soon returning with two more lamps swiped from nearby offices. She plugged them in and placed them on her desk. “Warm them all up. We need to see the markings on every page.”

It took several minutes, but with the help of Popadopoulos each of the parchments was given the same impromptu heat treatment as the first. They all turned out to have faint marks hidden on them. “I can’t tell what it is meant to represent,” Popadopoulos complained, stepping back to get an overview of the whole collection.

“I can,” Nina told him. “Or at least, what it’s going to be. Look at this.” She indicated a group of small symbols on one page. “These are Greek letters-the bottom halves of Greek letters, at least. And the top halves are…” She searched the other pages, spotting more symbols along the edge of a different sheet. When they were brought together, the symbols matched up perfectly to form a word-βoθvó. Mountain . “The whole thing’s a map!It’s like a jigsaw-all we have to do is put it together and it’ll tell us how to find the Tomb of Hercules!”

Popadopoulos regarded the parchments in disbelief. “But that would mean…”

“The clue was right there, all along! ‘For even a man who cannot see may know the path when he turns his empty face to the warmth of the sun’! Empty face-blank page! Critias must have told Plato how to find the Tomb, but for whatever reason they wanted to obfuscate the details-maybe they didn’t want Plato’s students to run off and raid the place. So when Plato dramatized what he’d been told into the dialogue of Hermocrates , he put hints on how to find the map within the text itself-and hid the actual map right there on the master transcript!”

“Only for the ancient Brotherhood of Selasphoros to steal it,” mused Popadopoulos. “All they cared about was suppressing the section of the dialogue concerning Atlantis, but they never realized how much else was in it…”

“But now we do,” Nina reminded him. “Let’s put it all together.”

It took some time to assemble the puzzle, the faintness of the markings and damage to parts of the pages obscuring details, but eventually they succeeded. Mostly.

“Bollocks!” Nina burst out. Popadopoulos gave her a strange look. She blushed. “That’s, er, something I picked up from my boyfriend. He’s British. But look, we’re missing a whole section of the map.”

The assemblage of pages looked almost random, sheets of parchment overlaid upon one another at different angles, some nearly hidden under two or three others. But the image that was revealed was clear enough. It was a map, a path leading to a representation of a mountain annotated with a single Greek word.

Hρακλεφ. Heracles. Hercules .

The Tomb of Hercules. It existed, was an actual, physical place. Nina felt a surge of adrenaline at the sight. She’d been right .

But it was impossible to reach…

“I see,” said Popadopoulos, examining the map. “This river, it curves and twists as it widens, as if it is about to reach the sea. But… no sea.”

“The coastline,” Nina moaned. “The map of the coastline’s on the other pages, the ones we don’t have. And if we don’t have the coastline to use as a point of reference, there’s no way we can find the Tomb!”

“There is one good thing, though, hmm?”

“What?”

“Whoever stole the other pages cannot find the Tomb either!”

“You have a point.” Nina looked back at the map. So close to finding what she was looking for, yet she couldn’t take the very first step… “I’ll photograph this, make sure all the details are recorded.”

“Good! Then I can arrange for the return of what is left of the text to my archive, yes?” asked Popadopoulos hopefully.

Nina considered this. “Not yet,” she said, ignoring the historian’s glower. “I still think there’s more to it. There are other phrases in the text that Plato seems to have left as clues, like he did about the map. But I’m sure I’ll need the original copy of the text to work them out.”

Popadopoulos growled in frustration. “Very well, Dr. Wilde, very well. The parchments are already so badly damaged they will be difficult to preserve… But I do not see how you will be able to find the Tomb even if you do decipher other clues. You are still missing several pages.”

“Then we have to get them back.” Nina set her jaw in determination. “I already think I know who’s got them. We go after him and get them back.”

“Assuming,” Popadopoulos warned, “that he doesn’t come after you first.”

Come on in,” said Chase, opening the apartment door and leading Sophia inside. “Nina? You home?” No reply. “She must be at the office.” He gestured at the couch for Sophia to sit, then went to the kitchen area. “Cuppa?”

“I’d love one. Thank you.” Sophia, now wearing nondescript casual clothes that Chase had bought at Pudong airport, perched on the edge of the couch. “So this Nina… how did you meet?”

Chase put the kettle on the stove. “I was her bodyguard.”

Sophia raised an eyebrow. “That sounds rather familiar.”

He ignored the remark. “After the job was over, we got together. That was about a year and a half ago.”

“And how have things been going since then?” Again, Chase didn’t respond. “I see.”

“There’s nothing to see,” he said defensively.

“Hmm.” She looked around the room. “So this is your place.”

“Yeah. Been living here for five or six months.”

“I have to say, it makes me think more of Dr. Frasier Crane than of you. Well, except for that.” She glanced disdainfully at the Castro cigar-box holder on the counter. “I remember that awful thing all too well.”

“Well, interior decorating was never really my thing, was it? A settee and a decent TV was pretty much all I was bothered about.”

“Yes, I know.” There was a hint of sharpness in her words. “I take it she was in a different kind of job before she took on her position at the IHA.”

“I suppose,” Chase told her. “Same line of work, archaeology, but she was at a university rather than the U.N. Why?”

She shrugged airily. “Oh, no reason.”

“No-I know that voice, there is a reason. What?”

Sophia looked mildly annoyed at being challenged. “Oh, all right. It’s just that this apartment, the decor, all the little accoutrements”-she waved at the rack of Henckel knives on the counter by Chase-“they just come over as being rather… nouveau, if you know what I mean.”

“As in nouveau riche?” Chase’s frown deepened. “Well, I’m sorry our flat doesn’t live up to your standards, your ladyshipness.”

She jumped to her feet. “Eddie, I didn’t mean it like-”

“Forget it.” They regarded each other in silence for a moment. Then the kettle began to whistle. Chase took it off the stove.

Sophia gave him a hesitant smile. “Americans. They have a labor-saving gadget for absolutely every trivial task, yet they’ve never seemed to grasp the concept of the electric kettle. Ridiculous lot.”

Chase smiled back. “Yeah, I know. And you try getting hold of marmite over here! Nightmare!” They both laughed.

“Eddie?”

Chase looked across the room to see Nina standing in the bedroom doorway, wrapped in a dressing gown and looking bleary and bedraggled. He had no idea how long she’d been there. “Nina! I rang about five times. I thought you’d gone to work!” He hurried over to her.

“I was asleep, I had kind of a stressful day yesterday.”

“Yeah, Hector told me.” He hugged her, then sniffed her hair and jerked his head back sharply. “Ugh!”