“Dr. Welch the little tent,” he said.
His English was functional at best, but Drake didn’t judge. How could he, when he knew barely a dozen words in Arabic?
They thanked the man and hurried on, cognizant of the sun crawling overhead, the morning burning away. They found Welch in a small tent, drinking from a canteen. The heat was brutal, and the archaeologist already had started to sweat. Drake thought the skinny archaeologist, with his mess of hair and his antic, nervous energy, might be the kind of guy who did a lot of sweating.
“I’m glad you’re here,” Welch said, standing to greet them. He had his glasses slipped into the crook of his shirt collar, but now he slipped them on. “I couldn’t put off going into the dig much longer.”
“Did you see anything strange when you left the restaurant last night?” Sully asked him. “Or anyone?”
Welch frowned. “No, why? Did something happen?”
Sully shook his head. “Never mind.”
Drake studied Welch. “You’re a little twitchy this morning, Ian. What’s troubling you?” Twitchier than normal, Drake had wanted to say, but he chose his words carefully.
“Oh, just a small thing,” Welch said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. “The dig’s got a new sponsor as of last night. Care to guess who it might be?”
Jada blanched. “Phoenix Innovations.”
Welch pointed at her. “Got it in one try.”
“Henriksen,” Sully growled, looking around. “Is he here?”
“I’m surprised you didn’t cross paths,” Welch said.
He snatched up a canvas hat and perched it on his head, then led the way out of the tent, leaving them to follow. Drake glanced at Sully, not liking this turn of events at all. Henriksen here? He had figured they would cross paths with the man eventually but had been hoping to get in and out of the dig with Welch before that happened.
“It might not be the worst thing,” Jada said as she followed Drake out of the tent. “He can’t kill us in front of this many witnesses.”
Outside the tent, with sand blowing around them and the sun glaring, Sully had to shield his eyes to give her a surprised look.
“What?” Jada said. “I’m just looking on the bright side.”
“Your bright side is pretty dark,” Drake muttered. Then he smiled. “It’s strangely appealing.”
Jada jabbed him with her elbow as they walked after Welch. The archaeologist led them between a pair of tents and into a place where they could see the entire dig while remaining mostly hidden. A group of men and women were making their way around the outer circle of the depression, a man with a camera filming a woman who was gesturing toward the implied outline of the labyrinth and talking to the camera. The others trailed behind them, including a dark-haired woman in loose clothing and a tall, broad-shouldered blond man in a crisp white shirt and gray trousers. He looked like a politician attempting and failing to dress casually. A man constantly campaigning even if he was not running for office, Drake thought.
“Is that Henriksen?” he asked.
Jada mumbled her assent, staring at the group. She had gone pale despite the flush of the heat, and when he touched her arm to comfort her, she flinched. Her skin was cold.
“The tall woman with the dark hair is Hilary Russo. She’s the director of the expedition, in charge of the whole dig,” Welch said. “I take it you know the blonde.”
Drake said nothing. They did indeed know the woman trailing the rest of the group. Her golden hair had been tied back in a ponytail, and she looked more suited for a safari than an archaeological dig, her clothing the female equivalent of Henriksen’s Lands’ End perfection.
“I guess she’s a better actress than you thought, huh, kid?” Sully muttered, glancing at Drake.
“What the hell are they doing here?” Jada whispered, hugging herself now as if she were in an icebox instead of the desert.
“I told you, Henriksen’s taking over funding the dig,” Welch replied, hands fluttering up to tug at his hat and adjust his glasses, squirrelly as ever. “Phoenix is the sole sponsor now. He’s financing this dig and the next three that Hilary undertakes-years of funding for her and her team, which includes me if you being here doesn’t get me fired-but in exchange he gets control of the disposition of the relics, all media rights, and rights to museum exhibits. All of that. The documentary team is supposedly putting together some footage to prepare for a TV series he wants to make about all of this. Last night you mentioned how big a discovery this is, and you weren’t wrong.”
Drake paced back and forth between the tents. Jada kept staring at the group across the depression from them, but he caught Sully looking at him.
“We’ve gotta get down there before they do,” Sully said.
Drake nodded. He turned to Welch. “What you said about your job. Are you going to bail on us, Ian? We need to know. Luka and your sister’s boyfriend are dead, and we think Henriksen is the guy behind it. But it sounds to me like you’re having second thoughts about helping us.”
Jada turned to watch the exchange, her eyes wide with hurt. It had not occurred to her that Welch might go back on his word.
Welch hesitated, squirming, a man caught between the points of his moral compass. After a few seconds, he gave a small shrug. “Gretchen would kill me if I didn’t help.”
Drake thought how fortunate the man was that Henriksen’s goons had been after Jada the night before and not him. His sister would kill him if he didn’t help, and Henriksen might have him killed if he did. They had to warn him what kind of danger he was in-as soon as he showed them the labyrinth.
“So, how do we beat Henriksen into the labyrinth?” he asked. “They’ll be going inside any minute now.”
Welch smiled, nodding to himself. “Hilary wants to give them the whole tour, make a show of it. They’re supposed to be filming, right? She wants to impress, which means she is going to take them in through the front.”
Drake stared at him. “You’re saying we go through the side door?”
Jada pointed at the larger excavation, the original part of the dig, where the wall of the labyrinth had collapsed. “Can we get in that way? Is it clear?”
“Not only is it clear, it’s a hell of a lot closer to the worship chambers and the anteroom we just started digging out. One of the grad students working down there told me this morning that they’ve started to unearth clay jars and tablets that might be connected to whatever rituals were performed there by the Mistress of the Labyrinth.”
“No one’s going to stop us?” Sully asked.
Welch frowned thoughtfully, then shook his head. “For today, all three of you work for the Smithsonian.”
“We’re already traveling under false identities,” Sully said. “You can use those names.”
If Welch thought this odd, he barely frowned at the revelation. “All right. Hilary’s the only one who’d know we don’t have any visitors from the Smithsonian, and if we play our cards right, we won’t even cross paths with her.”
“I wouldn’t mind crossing paths with Henriksen,” Jada said.
Her hand fluttered toward the small of her back as if she were about to tap the gun she had hidden there to reassure herself of the solidity of its presence and its mortal promise. She hesitated and dropped her hand, but Drake had seen her reaching and found himself hoping they didn’t run into Henriksen at all. Even if Jada managed to kill him, she would only be assuring herself a prison sentence, and the secrets her father had died over might never see the light of day.
They watched as Hilary Russo led the group from Phoenix Innovations under the awning and in through the entrance to the labyrinth of Sobek.
“Let’s move out,” Sully said.
They hustled out from between the tents and across a patch of desert toward the excavation of the collapsed outer wall of the labyrinth. It was a brisk walk so that they would not draw undue attention, but the men working at the dig frowned and wiped their brows as they stared at the newcomers.
There were ladders in the ditch beside the excavated wall, but Drake was surprised to find that the expedition had installed temporary stairs as well, leading down from the edge of the dig to the remaining rubble just outside the shattered wall. He wondered how many tons of sand already had been removed in the excavation. In a dig like this, archaeologists would uncover certain sections, map and photograph and study them, retrieve artifacts, and then fill in the areas they had excavated to prevent them from being damaged by the elements and by entropy trying to catch up with them. But the way Welch had described it to them, much of the labyrinth was being excavated from within instead of uncovered from above; so as long as they shored up the ceilings, they might be able to explore a great deal of the interior maze without ever having to fill it in.