At the instant of collision, Pierce curled into a fetal ball, protecting his head and vital organs. His shoulder caught the unsuspecting guard squarely in the chest, and the man was driven back as if hit by a wrecking ball. The impact sent Pierce flying as well, but because he was prepared for it, he recovered quickly, regaining his feet and whirling around to mount the stairs.
Beneath the knit weave of his ski-mask, Pierce was grinning like an idiot.
Growing up, he had not exactly struck an ideal balance between intellectual and physical pursuits. While the dream of being a two-fisted adventurer like his hero, Indiana Jones, had set him on the path to a career in archaeology, he had avoided athletic pursuits and focused on academic excellence, which had made him a top-notch professor but a piss-poor action hero.
Fortunately, since taking the directorship of the Herculean Society, he had been working to correct that deficiency, with a regimen of exercise and mixed-martial arts training. It was slow going, but evidently it was possible for an old dog to learn a few new tricks.
He bounded up the stairs, shaking out the mild pain in his shoulder. As he rounded the landing, he saw no sign of pursuit. The watchman was either still recovering or knocked out cold. Pierce’s elation faltered a little as he considered the possibility that he might have seriously injured the man.
Nothing you can do about it now, he told himself. Focus on the mission.
The mission.
Burglary and brawling weren’t the only new tricks he’d had to learn since taking on his new role as the leader of the Herculean Society.
As an archaeologist and a historian, he had been committed to advancing the cause of knowledge. Only by learning about the past could mankind chart the course to a better future. Or so he had always believed. But experience had taught him a lesson that no textbook ever could. Some secrets needed to stay buried.
Six years earlier, this point had been driven home when the truth he had wanted so badly to discover had nearly cost him his humanity.
Ultimately, only the intervention of the Herculean Society had saved him. Alexander Diotrephes had pulled him from the brink. Only later would Pierce learn another astonishing secret: Diotrephes was the immortal Hercules, and he’d created the vast organization, which had literally rewritten history over the course of thousands of years. Pierce had made a career of uncovering history, but it had now become his job, his mission, to conceal it. The old saying about being doomed to repeat history if you didn’t know it, wasn’t always true. Sometimes the only way to not repeat history was to have no idea it had ever existed.
The second floor of the museum was laid out in a sideways H-shape. The gallery where Pierce now found himself formed one side of the H, with stairs at either end. Two parallel rooms bisected the exhibit hall and provided access to the rooms that comprised the other side of the H. There was an emergency door in the far corner of one of those rooms. The only problem was the door alarm. He could use the induction field generator — his black box — to fool it, but that would take time.
The alarm!
Pierce’s guts twisted into a knot of dread as he realized that Fiona would be facing a similar problem, and without the black box to help her. He imagined her standing in front of the door through which they had entered, wondering what to do. This was something that had not come up during their rehearsal.
Damn it. I screwed up.
He briefly considered trying to send Fiona a text message, acknowledging the problem, but it occurred to him that there was a more direct way of communicating with her. He just hoped she would be able to interpret the message.
He ran headlong through the galleries, following the illuminated signs to the emergency door, but he did not take out the black box. Nor did he slow down. Instead, he hit the door at a full run.
A piercing siren shattered the deceptive stillness. A moment later, a second alarm joined the shrieking symphony.
Fiona had received the message: Screw the alarm. Just go for it.
Now it was time for him to do the same.
Ignoring the commotion, Pierce flipped on his flashlight and scanned the corridor in which he now found himself. An illuminated arrow on an overhead ‘Exit’ sign pointed the way to a door marked in both Greek and English with the words: Fire Stairs.
He weighed his options. The fire stairs would be the most direct path to freedom, but that also made it a dangerous choice. Would the guard be waiting for him to emerge? Were the police already on their way?
Too risky, he decided. But maybe there was another way out of the building. He dashed down the corridor, checking each door until he found one marked with the word:
Roof.
Perfect.
He twisted the doorknob but it refused to turn. Locked.
Damn. Not perfect.
Fiona still had his pick set, though even if he’d brought a spare, there probably would not have been time for him to mess around with the lock. There was a reason he had allowed her to use the picks earlier, and it wasn’t to give her more experience. She was a natural with locks, faster and smoother than he would ever be.
Fine, he thought. There were other ways to deal with locked doors.
He drew back a step, lowered his shoulder and started to charge…but then stopped short. Bashing down doors always looked easy in movies, but something told him that real life might not be so accommodating. A second look at the door revealed three sets of hinges; the door opened toward him. He could have thrown himself against it all night long and the only thing he would have to show for it would be a bruised shoulder.
He glanced back down the corridor. The stairs were starting to seem like a much better idea.
Okay, if I can’t pick the lock and I can’t break it down…what can I do?
There was a sliver-thin gap between the door and its frame. With a blade, or even a credit card, it might be possible to jimmy the lock open, but he had neither.
Note to self. In the future, always carry a knife.
What he did have was the black box device, and that was almost as good as a blade. He took it out and placed it against the door, between the knob and the strike plate, and then hit the button to activate the induction field. There was a click as the electromagnet engaged and pulled the device tight against the metal. Something moved against his shoulder, and before he could even think to be surprised, he felt something strike the back of his hand.
His satchel, or more precisely, its contents — the Phaistos Disc — had been drawn into the powerful magnetic field.
That’s interesting.
But there was no time to explore the mystery. Ignoring the satchel, he gripped the black box in both hands and slid the device toward the door knob. As the electromagnet moved, it pulled the metal latch bolt clear of the strike plate, and the door popped open.
“Top that, Dr. Jones,” he said.
As soon as he switched off the device, the satchel fell away, but Pierce barely noticed. He stuffed the device back into his pocket and ventured through the door onto the rooftop, above the museum’s first floor. The low wail of police sirens greeted him. Close but not yet too close.
Pierce ran to the edge of the rooftop, trying to get oriented. He could just make out the harbor off to his left, a couple of miles distant, at the base of the slope upon which the city of Heraklion had been founded. That meant he was on the east side of the museum complex. If she stuck to the plan, Fiona would be leaving from the south, only a few hundred yards away. Pierce would have preferred a route that led him further away from her, but there was nothing to be done about it now. He looked down, focusing his attention on the more immediate problem of his own escape.