The gun thundered again, and again, as Rohn pumped shot after shot into the darkness, where Pierce had stood. Kenner waited until the noise stopped, and then a few seconds more before raising his head and playing his light around the room. The air was filled with smoke and the stink of sulfur, but through the haze, he saw the big man heading for one of the exit openings.
“Stop!”
Rohn turned, his already unbearable visage twisted with disgust. “They’re getting away.”
“You missed?”
“No.” The reply was immediate, defensive. “I don’t think so. But a wounded animal can run for many miles before dying.”
Kenner felt an unexpected surge of emotion. He had known all along that Rohn intended to kill Pierce and the girl, and while he found the prospect distasteful, he had come to terms with it. Sacrifices had to be made sometimes. Now, he felt a measure of relief. This was a better outcome. Not as cold-blooded. “Let them go. They’ll never make it out of here.”
“How do you know that? They know how to read the signs.”
Kenner frowned. Rohn was right. The connection between the Disc and the correct path through the Labyrinth had been easy enough to figure out, and he had pictures of the Disc to help him navigate. “Which way?”
Rohn pointed to one of the exits. Kenner swept the floor with his light, hoping to see tell-tale drops of blood — there were none. Then he moved the beam up to shine on the walls beside the passage. As expected, there was a Phaistos glyph, but it did not match any of the combinations on the Disc. “This is not the right way,” he said, then he moved quickly around the perimeter, checking the other exits until he found one that matched the character stamped in the center of the reverse-side of the artifact.
“Here. This way will take us out.”
Rohn jabbed his gun into the passage Pierce and Fiona had used. “What about them?”
“Forget them. The Labyrinth will take care of them. And we’ll close the door on the way out. Even if they find their way back here, they’ll never be able to leave.”
The big man growled his displeasure but complied. Kenner suspected his reluctance had less to do with uncertainty about Pierce’s fate and more to do with Rohn’s belief that he had failed. Missing his targets at such close range must have been a bitter pill. Kenner wanted only to be done with it alclass="underline" out of the bizarre iron maze and back to civilization, where he could exploit what he had just discovered.
He allowed himself a satisfied grin as he trekked down the passage to the next junction. Pierce had no idea how significant the Labyrinth’s treasures were. He had not even recognized Queen Hippolyte’s belt, much less studied the image engraved upon it.
Pierce had always been a dreamer, an idealist. For him, archaeology was some kind of game, an intellectual puzzle. The man had no sense of how to leverage his discoveries into something more meaningful — wealth, influence, power. Pierce could have written his ticket seven years earlier when he had found the Argo manifest, but he had chosen to share it with only a few colleagues, instead of telling the world and launching his career as a celebrity archaeologist and TV star. And that was only the tip of an iceberg of opportunities that he could have seized.
Kenner had parlayed the mere knowledge of the document’s existence into a more discreet kind of success. He had been paid a hefty finder’s fee and a lucrative annual retainer simply to keep an eye on Pierce, in hopes that the archaeologist might stumble upon something even more impressive. For six years, Kenner had done just that, watching Pierce from a distance, following his movements, reporting everything back to his benefactor, the same man who had sent Rohn to join him on Crete.
From the outset, it had been clear that Pierce was continuing his search for the historic Hercules. Equally obvious, the investigation was connected to a series of global upheavals and natural disasters, though Kenner could not tell to what extent Pierce had been involved in some of those situations.
One clear picture that had emerged was that the Herculean Society, the faceless conspiracy about which Pierce had once speculated, was very real. Moreover, Kenner was now certain that Pierce was working for them. Pierce’s decision to visit Crete after the strange discovery in the Cave of Zeus was the opportunity Kenner had been waiting for. He could expose both Pierce and the Society, and cash in on the subsequent revelations.
What he had found in the Labyrinth had surpassed his wildest expectations. Rohn’s employer would be very pleased, and the man’s gratitude was not something Kenner regarded lightly.
He was barely conscious of the journey out of the maze. The only time he paid any attention to their route was at the various crossroads, where he had to select the correct passage onward. It was only near the end that anxiety crept in to darken his mood. In his eagerness to follow Pierce, it had not occurred to him to think about the possibility that the exit from the Labyrinth might be buried, just as the entrance had been until recently. He did not share this thought with Rohn, who trudged along behind him, watching to see if Pierce was following them.
Ultimately, neither man had cause to worry. The sequence of turns indicated by the Disc brought them to another stairwell like the one that had brought them to the trophy room. As before, a magnetically regulated descent delivered them into a new chamber facing the maze entrance. They had come full circle.
After they emerged into the cave, Kenner reached for the Phaistos Disc, intending to seal the passage, but Rohn stopped him.
“Not yet,” the big man said. He pressed his pistol into Kenner’s hands. “Wait here. If they come out, shoot them.”
Kenner blanched. “Where are you going?”
Rohn did not answer. Instead, he jogged away, leaving the uncomprehending Kenner to stand vigil at the open door. A few minutes later, Rohn returned bearing a canvas satchel. He went directly to the opening and re-entered the maze, but quickly came back out without the bag.
“Now we go,” he told Kenner, extending an open hand to reclaim his sidearm.
Kenner parted with it happily. “What did you leave in there?” he asked, as he pried the Phaistos Disc loose from the rolling door.
“Semtex. We have ten minutes.”
Kenner did not need to ask for an explanation. The Phaistos Disc was the only key to the Labyrinth, but there were other ways to get through locked doors, and Pierce was certainly resourceful enough to figure something out. At the very least, Rohn’s bomb would cave in the entrance, blocking the way to the door, but there was a very good chance that the entire maze of passages worming back and forth under the mountain would be collapsed by the blast, pulverizing anyone still inside.
“Tough break,” Kenner muttered with a shrug, and then he followed Rohn out of the cave.
10
Fiona lay in the darkness, half-crushed beneath Pierce’s weight, holding her breath. Pierce did not seem to be breathing either, and as much as she wanted to believe that he was just trying to remain quiet, she knew better.
How many shots had there been? Four? Five? More? It seemed impossible that the ugly gunman, Rohn, had missed that many times.
She struggled to recall exactly what had happened. The room had plunged into darkness, and she had felt someone — it could only have been Pierce — grab hold of her, almost lifting her off her feet. That was when the shooting had started.
All was quiet now. She lay motionless, pinned down and immobilized by Pierce’s—don’t say it, don’t even think it—dead weight.