Christopher Golden - Uncharted - The Fourth Labyrinth

Internet access was limited in China, so that was no good, but a quick call to London information services got him the phone number for the archaeology department of Oxford University, and moments later he sat listening to the phone ringing half the world away.

“Margaret Xin, please,” he said when a male voice answered.

Henriksen’s eyes widened in alarm, and he reached for the phone. Drake slapped his hand away, though he was impressed that the man had recognized Margaret Xin’s name.

“Relax, blondie,” Drake said. “We’re in this together for now.”

He hated saying the words, wanted to spit to clear the taste of them out of his mouth. As far as he was concerned, they were in it together as long as their fate was twined together and not a moment longer. He figured Henriksen felt the same way.

A quiet female voice came on the line. “Hello?”

“Maggie, it’s Nathan Drake.”

“Nate? This is a surprise. Are you in London?”

“No, Maggie, listen-Sully’s in trouble,” Drake said. “I know you two ended kind of messy, but I need your help.”

He heard a deep intake of breath, and when she spoke again, there was a tremor in her voice.

“This isn’t cheating-at-cards sort of trouble, is it?”

“Would I be calling you if it was?”

“I guess not,” Maggie said softly. “You’re right, Nate. It ended messy between Victor and me. In fact, messy probably doesn’t begin to cover it. I wish he was a different sort of man, but I can’t blame him for that. How can I help?”

Drake let out a breath, relieved. He gave a slight nod to Jada.

“Nanjing,” he said. “Something old. Maybe underground. Catacombs, maybe, or a fortress or palace.”

“You’re in China?” Maggie said. “What are you doing in-”

“Now’s not the time. When it’s all over, I’ll call you and tell you everything. Right now I just need to know what you can tell me.”

Maggie hesitated, thinking. “Well, you’re not going to find real catacombs there. The rest-I mean, fortresses, palaces-there are all sorts of things. But underground, the only thing that comes immediately to mind is the palace of Zhu Yuanzhang, who you might know as the Hongwu Emperor. He was the first emperor of the Ming Dynasty. The palace is supposed to be under the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum, inside the Treasure Mound.”

Drake froze, his heart thrumming in his chest along with the limousine’s engine. “Treasure Mound,” he repeated, wanting to be sure he’d heard her right.

“Well, there isn’t any actual treasure there,” Maggie explained. “It’s a reference to the emperor’s tomb and whatever might have been buried with him.”

“Why do you say it’s supposed to be there? Don’t you know?” Drake asked.

“Nobody does for sure. The mausoleum is a complex of twenty buildings that took decades to complete. The Treasure Mound is a hill in the midst of the complex, which is east of the city. Archaeologists have used geomagnetic surveying equipment to confirm the presence of tunnels under the mound. Turned out the whole mound was covered with large bricks from the Six Dynasties, dated to the fifth century, which suggests there was another structure there at some point.

“In any case, the team analyzing the Treasure Mound found tunnels that go right to its heart. Part of the mausoleum complex is a structure called the Soul Tower, the base of which goes fairly deep into the mound. They were able to map the tunnel, and it leads to the base of the Soul Tower and some kind of opening, but couldn’t go any further.”

Drake frowned. “What do you mean they couldn’t go any further? Was there a cave-in?”

“I’m not clear on some of the details,” Maggie said. “I found the research fascinating, but I haven’t written about it or taught it in class, so I can only tell you what I remember, which is that some kind of room was found but no real entrance. Still, the archaeologists working at the mound were convinced they’d found the actual burial site of Zhu Yuanzhang.”

Drake gazed out at the glittering lights of Nanjing. “I don’t get it. Why didn’t they excavate?” he asked.

“It’s against the law.”

“What?”

“The only one of the Thirteen Imperial Tombs of the Ming Dynasty that’s been excavated is the tomb of Emperor Wanli in Beijing, and that was back in the 1950s. After that, the government forbade the excavation of any of the other ‘underground palaces.’ ”

Drake was silent as he felt puzzle pieces clicking into place in his mind. He glanced at Jada and Olivia, then at Henriksen.

“Nate, are you still there?” Maggie asked.

“I’m here. But I should go now.”

“Is that helpful at all?”

An image flashed through Drake’s mind of the hooded men dragging Sully down into the darkness of the labyrinth of Thera.

“I sure as hell hope so,” he said.

“So do I,” Maggie replied. “When you catch up to Victor-”

“Yeah?”

“Give him my love.”

Drake could feel years of regret in those four words, but he could offer her no comfort other than to promise that he would pass the message on. In a way, it was a promise to himself as well, a vow that he would see Sully again and be able to tell him that Margaret Xin sent her love.

He reiterated his assurance that he would tell her the whole story when he could and then ended the call and handed the phone back to Henriksen.

“What was all of that?” Henriksen asked.

“What’s this ‘Treasure Mound’?” Olivia added.

Drake leaned back in his seat, feeling the soft leather crinkle beneath him. “What would you say if I told you the tomb of the first Ming emperor is under a hill not far from here but archaeologists have never been inside it because the Chinese government has forbidden them to excavate it?”

Henriksen and Olivia stared at him. In the front seat, Corelli swore.

Jada smiled. “I’d say somebody in the government is either well paid to keep a secret or too afraid not to.”

“I don’t know,” Olivia said. “It doesn’t prove anything.”

“Maybe not, but it’s a start,” Drake said. “And you can bet there’s no subway underneath it.”

Henriksen seemed reluctant to go along with Drake and Jada’s insistence that his men not kill the guards at the Ming Xiaoling Mausoleum. Corelli, in contrast, seemed actively disappointed.

Seven hours had passed since Drake’s phone conversation with Margaret Xin, and Henriksen had used the intervening time wisely. Two separate mercenary groups had arrived to report for duty, a total of sixteen men and women willing to take orders without questioning things such as morality and legality. They were introduced to Drake and Jada as employees of private security firms on loan to Phoenix Innovations, but that was just a fancy way of saying they were ex-military personnel willing to put their training to use in the service of whoever could afford to pay.

Henriksen’s latest thugs came complete with an arsenal of weapons that would have made the Nanjing police officers who’d questioned them at the airport go into cardiac arrest. When Drake had asked for guns for himself and Jada, Henriksen had started to speak up, on the verge of telling Perkins, the ranking officer, not to give them weapons. Then he apparently had remembered that they were all still pretending to be on the same side and gave Perkins the nod.

It had underscored the question that had been on Drake’s mind for a while. Henriksen knew they weren’t looking for the same result from this mission. Yes, Drake’s first priority was Sully’s safety, but he and Sully had promised Jada that they would follow through on Luka’s last wish and make sure the world learned the secrets of the fourth labyrinth. If Henriksen planned to loot Daedalus’s hoard, how did he expect to hide that theft from the public?