“I didn’t even know the Chinese believed in hell,” Jada said.
Olivia shook her head. “It’s not the Christian hell. Diyu was said to exist underground and be composed of many levels, each with its own ruler. But above them all was a kind of king.” She snapped another picture. “I wish I could remember his name, because I’m guessing he’s the god this chamber is meant to worship.”
Henriksen had been studying the paintings on the walls more closely while she talked, but now he turned.
“Don’t worry about that. Yablonski will figure out what all of this means,” he said. “Let’s just get it all photographed and take our leave. The police have been well paid to stay away, but I would rather not be discovered in the presence of men who have been murdered.”
Drake saw Nico flinch at that, but the old Greek kept his grief to himself.
“We’ll bring our own people out, of course,” Henriksen continued. “And see to it that they’re properly buried.”
Jada sneered at him. “How noble of you.”
Olivia snapped one last photograph of a jar the short man held, then gestured for him to return it to the shelf. She turned to regard the rest of them.
“There’s something else,” she said.
Drake didn’t like the smugness of her tone. “Just spill already.”
Olivia traced her finger over one of the most repulsive paintings of the Chinese hell.
“I told you that Diyu was believed to be underground,” she said, a thin smile forming on her lips as she glanced at Henriksen. “According to the myths, it was also a maze. ”
“You’re not saying you think this place actually existed?” Drake asked, the idea of such tortures in the real world making him sick.
“Some real-life version?” Olivia replied. “I think we have to conclude that it did. Look at all of the evidence around you. What does it say, Mr. Drake?”
Jada pushed her hair from her face and wiped sweat from her eyes. “It tells us that Diyu was the fourth labyrinth.”
“Exactly,” Olivia replied.
“Hell?” Drake said, turning to Henriksen. “We’re saying hell is the fourth labyrinth?”
“Hell or something like it,” Henriksen replied. “And when Crocodilopolis was abandoned and the volcano destroyed Thera, where do you think Daedalus and his followers brought all of their accumulated wealth? What better place to hide it than an underground maze where the people believed they were already dead? It’s insane, but what other conclusion can we draw?”
Speechless, Drake had no reply. He turned it over and over in his head, examining it from every angle, and he couldn’t deny that it felt like there were at least shards of truth to the theory, as crazy as it sounded. The frescoes on the wall said as much.
“How did my father know?” Jada asked, her gaze locked on her stepmother.
Olivia managed to look sad at the mention of her late husband, but Drake knew that might well be just part of the mask she wore.
“In researching the historical origins of the myths connected to the labyrinths, he developed the theory that King Minos of Crete and Midas were the same man-”
“We got that much,” Drake interrupted. “But the archaeologist at the labyrinth of Sobek thinks it wasn’t Midas who was the alchemist. It was Daedalus.”
Olivia narrowed her gaze, smirking. “Aren’t you clever.”
Jada scoffed. “No such thing as alchemy.”
Henriksen leaned against the wall, wincing at the pain from his wound. “Then where did all that gold come from?”
“Not from magic,” Jada said. “Or even some pseudo-science. You can’t make gold.”
“Maybe not,” Olivia replied. “Probably not. Your father believed that Daedalus must have been some kind of charlatan, but he kept an open mind because he had no other explanation. And the more he researched Daedalus and alchemy, the more he began to see other connections that defied explanation. There were stories of the ancient alchemist Ostanes-”
“The Persian,” Drake said. “Sure, there were similarities in his background. Same with St. Germain and half a dozen others. They were all alchemists. Half of what they did was about creating the illusion that they had abilities they didn’t have to give them that mysterious, mystical aura. They all claimed to be immortal. Fulcanelli even claimed he was St. Germain.”
“What if he was?” Olivia asked.
“Seriously?” Drake scoffed. “You are an entire jar of nuts.”
Henriksen started to speak up, but he hadn’t gotten half a word out when there came a boom and rumble from far above them and the whole chamber began to shake. A jagged crack raced across the ceiling. Dust and debris rained down, and a jar fell to shatter on the floor.
Olivia screamed and pressed herself against the wall as Drake grabbed Jada and ran toward the doorway. Nico’s son looked around in fear and surprise but did nothing to stop them as they joined him in the corridor. They froze there, unsure what to do. The rumbling continued, a grinding roar from far off but loud enough that the muffled noise reached them despite how far they had come into the subterranean maze.
Olivia staggered toward Henriksen, and he put a protective arm around her.
“Is it the volcano?” Olivia shouted, looking at Nico.
The old Greek did not move. He seemed resigned to whatever fate held in store for him. His eyes were narrowed as he tried to make sense of the noise from above.
Then the rumbling subsided and the last bits of grit rained down from the ceiling. Whatever had happened, it was over as abruptly as it had begun.
“If it was the volcano, we’d be dead already,” the short, stocky thug muttered. “It’s the fortress.”
Henriksen flashed him a dark look. “Corelli?”
The stocky man-Corelli-looked at him, dark certainty in his eyes. “Explosives, Mr. Henriksen. The assholes brought the whole place down on top of us. We’re not going anywhere.”
“Oh, my God,” Olivia whispered. Her gaze turned haunted. “I can’t die down here.” She looked around at the walls as if they were about to start closing in.
Drake frowned, shaking his head. No way. He couldn’t even let himself wrap his mind around it. The hooded men had used explosives to destroy the rest of the fortress ruins, trapping them down here? They used daggers. They were killers from another era, all about stealth and secrecy. Explosives?
But there was no other answer. It wasn’t as if Henriksen would have trapped himself down here voluntarily.
“What do we do?” Nico’s son said, his Greek accent think and frantic. He stared not at Drake or Henriksen but at his father. “What are we going to do?”
“There are other ways out,” Jada said, turning to Henriksen. “Those hooded men-they got out with my godfather, and they didn’t go back the way we came in.”
Henriksen trembled, gaze shifting around the room. Drake thought others, watching him, might have thought he shook in fear, but he understood that the man was filled with anger at having been trapped like this-at having his will thwarted. At length, Henriksen aimed his flashlight at the huge stone slab of the door to the secret passage at the rear of the chamber.
“We figure out how to open that door.”
“And what if we can’t figure it out in time?” Olivia demanded.
“There’s another way,” Drake said. As they all turned to him, he pointed at Olivia. “Please tell me that camera is waterproof.”
17
Drake raced out of the Chinese worship chamber ahead of them. A crack had appeared in the wall of the corridor outside and chunks of stone had broken off the support pillars in the hall, but he knew that would be nothing compared with the damage they would encounter if they attempted to retrace their steps. They had only one chance of getting out of the labyrinth quickly-perhaps at all.