Andy McDermott - The Tomb Of Hercules

But something else suddenly leaped from the page in perfect clarity.

Within the ghost words of the original text, individual letters stood out, what had previously seemed like discolored ink turning almost black…

“That’s what the line about seeing the world through erubescent glass meant,” Nina said, awed. “I thought the darker spots were just impurities in the ink-but they must have been added after the main text was written. Red glass was incredibly rare and valuable in Plato’s time, so very few people would have been able to find the hidden text. Somebody traced over the letters with a watered-down blue ink to hide a message, words within words. It could have been octopus ink, I suppose, or maybe-”

“They could have done it in ballpoint for all I care,” said Sophia impatiently. “What does it say?”

“Notebook, notebook.” Nina snapped her fingers. Chase couldn’t help but smile slightly at Sophia’s aggrieved expression as she passed Nina a notebook and pen. “Okay, let’s see…”

Somewhat awkwardly thanks to the handcuffs, she wrote down each highlighted letter in turn, a sentence in ancient Greek characters gradually taking form. “Well, that’s a promising start,” she said, translating it in her head. “It says the entrance faces the dawn.”

“Land by the eastern face of the mountain,” Corvus told the pilot. “What else?”

“I don’t know, that’s all I’ve got so far,” Nina told him testily. “I’ll need to keep working on it.”

“You’ll have to do it on the move,” Sophia said. “We’re here.”

Everyone looked ahead. Before them was a small rocky hill, a darker mound against the unending pale grays and browns of the dunes.

“That’s not exactly a mountain,” observed Chase, sounding let down. “It’s more like a zit. I thought Hercules would have something a bit more impressive.”

“Unlike some men, I doubt Hercules would feel any need to overcompensate,” said Sophia dryly. “Besides, I’m sure that the contents of the Tomb itself will be rather more impressive.”

The helicopter moved into a hover at the bottom of the hill’s eastern face, landing in a vortex of dust and grit. The other choppers followed it down.

“Spread out,” Corvus ordered over the radio. “There is an entrance somewhere-find it.” Armed men in desert camouflage jumped from the helicopters to begin the hunt. He turned back to Nina. “Dr. Wilde, keep working. I want as much information as possible about the interior of the Tomb by the time the entrance is located. Once it is found, I’m afraid you will have to work on the move.”

“Why the rush?” Chase asked. “It’s not like this is a race-nobody else even knows where the thing is.”

“I doubt that you would understand, Chase,” said Corvus, voice full of scorn. “You are a small man, with small and insignificant dreams. But when you have a dream like mine, and stand on the verge of seeing it become a reality… you too would not want to wait.”

“Hey, I have dreams that I want to see come true an’ all,” Chase told him. “Had one last night, in fact. You were in it. And so were you,” he added, nodding to Sophia, “and Joe Ring-Tits there.” He smiled coldly. “And I had a baseball bat. With nails in it.”

“Oh, do be quiet, Eddie,” Sophia huffed. She turned to Nina. “This is one of the reasons why I left him. He would never shut up. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”

“If everyone would shut up, I might be able to concentrate,” said Nina, annoyed.

With the power off, the temperature in the cabin rose quickly. Nina was the only one who didn’t notice, focused entirely on picking out the letters hidden among the text. She was on the ninth page of parchment when a call came in from one of Corvus’s men over the cabin speaker.

“Sir, this is Bertillon,” he said excitedly. “We found it, about two hundred yards to the north behind the tall rock.” Everyone looked to see a weather-worn stone pillar protruding from the hillside.

“Excellent,” said Corvus, stepping out of the cabin and donning a wide-brimmed sun hat. Komosa climbed through the rear door and held it open for Sophia, then dragged Chase from his seat and threw him onto the hot sand. Nina reluctantly followed, clutching the Hermocrates manuscript.

She squinted at the surrounding landscape, the glare of the sun against the ground dazzling her. Stinging sweat beaded around her eyes. Apart from the rolling dunes, which stretched to the horizon in every direction, the low hill was the only landmark to be seen.

The nearest town, Nina knew from the satellite images used at Corvus’s château to pinpoint the location of the Tomb, was almost a hundred miles away. Nobody came out here without a very good reason. While it was not the hottest desert on earth, the Grand Erg was still desolate and unforgiving.

A good place to hide a great treasure…

Corvus’s men returned to the helicopters to collect more equipment as their leader headed for the distinctive rock, the others following. Nina found herself drenched in sweat in barely a minute. She asked Sophia to let the sweltering Chase take off his jacket, but as she’d expected, the request was rejected-with a degree of pleasure.

They reached the rock and found a smaller boulder lying half buried next to it. The gap between them formed a passage some four feet wide, which led deeper into the hillside. Corvus’s man, Bertillon, peered out of the shadows within as the group arrived. “It goes back quite a way, sir. And there’s something you should see. We’re not the first people to come here.”

Using flashlights, they entered the tunnel mouth. “Not very impressive,” sniffed Sophia as she shone her light around the chamber inside.

“There’s more back here, ma’am,” said Bertillon, moving deeper. An archway marked the entrance to a second chamber, the air cool and still. Nina immediately identified the architecture as ancient Athenian in design, still elegant despite the wear of millennia. They were almost certainly in the right place, then, but what else would they find?

“Oh wow,” she gasped as she saw the awesome sight for herself.

Sophia stopped next to her, playing her flashlight beam over the huge object. “All right, I admit- that’s impressive.”

It was a statue, a stylized representation of a lion close to twelve feet high and almost as wide, blocking the end of the chamber. Its mouth was open in a silent roar, one clawed paw raised as if to strike, the other flat on the stone floor.

Beneath that paw was a body.

“Dead a long time,” Nina said, kneeling for a better look. The crushed corpse was little more than a dusty skeleton, desiccated scraps of skin clinging to it. “A thousand years, at least. Maybe even longer.”

“What happened to him?” asked Corvus, shining his light at the lion’s mouth, which was almost eight feet off the ground. While the statue itself was stone, its teeth were tarnished bronze… with faint stains of blood still visible on them, more having gushed down the lion’s jaw as if it had bitten somebody’s arm off.

“Isn’t it obvious?” said Chase, nodding at the heavy stone paw that had flattened the luckless explorer. “Clarence here squashed him. The thing’s a booby trap.”

Everyone quickly stepped back to a respectful distance from the statue, and all eyes turned to Nina. “I think it’s time you told us what else you’ve found in your translations,” Sophia said, resting a hand on her holstered gun.

Nina flicked back through her notebook. “I guess this is the Nemean lion-the first of the ten trials of Hercules.”

“Ten?” Sophia raised a dubious eyebrow. “I thought there were twelve.”