He crouched to shake Jada awake. When he saw that she had been drooling as well, he smiled and used the edge of his shirt cuff to wipe her mouth.
“Wake up, sleeping beauty.”
She blinked and then sat up quickly, pulling away from him in a tangle of blanket, eyes wide. For a second she seemed almost not to recognize him, and then she relaxed, remembering where she was and how she had gotten there.
“Bad dreams?” he asked.
“No. Good ones,” she replied, but she didn’t elaborate. Jada glanced around. “And now I wake up to the nightmare.”
Drake nodded, giving her a moment to come more fully awake. Then he hooked his thumb toward the rear of the plane.
“Henriksen just went into the back. I guess Olivia’s got something new.”
At the mention of her stepmother’s name, Jada’s eyes darkened. She didn’t bother using the control to put her seat upright, just shoved the blanket aside and joined Drake in the aisle. She ran her fingers through her sleep-mussed hair and nodded to him, then led the way to the door to the rear cabin.
Jada didn’t knock, just opened the door and stepped through.
Olivia and Corelli were seated at the narrow conference table and glanced up from the laptop open in front of them when Jada and Drake entered the cabin. Henriksen had expected them and did not bother to turn away; he stood over the nearer end of the table, studying one of the maps Luka had left with his journal for Jada to find. Drake knew the sight must have given Jada pause-her father had hidden his research to keep it out of Henriksen’s hands, and now she had handed the journal and maps over to the man who’d been his rival. It had been the right choice at the time, the only choice-they had more dangerous enemies to be wary of-but Drake could tell the decision didn’t sit right with Jada at all.
Drake had no doubt they would come to regret it. The only question was when that moment would arrive and whether they would be ready for it.
“What’ve you got?” Jada asked, staring at her stepmother. Henriksen might be Olivia’s boss, but when the two women were in the same room, the bitterness and tension existed for the two of them alone.
Olivia smiled thinly. Either she had wearied of her stepdaughter’s hatred and suspicion or she had decided it was time to stop pretending she gave a crap what Jada thought. Whatever happened now, it was all business. They shared certain goals-all of them-and for the moment that was enough to keep them cooperating.
“Quite a lot, actually,” Olivia said. “Why don’t you have a seat.”
Drake waited for a cue from Jada, wondering if she might refuse to sit. But she hesitated for only a moment before sliding into one of the remaining chairs around the table. Drake sat next to her, glancing for a moment at the large screen at the rear of the cabin, which flickered with blank light. The monitor was on but displayed nothing at the moment.
“Are we gonna have a slide show?” he asked. “Fair warning, I tend to fall asleep. Unless it’s the one on fire safety. I like the sirens. And the Dalmatian.”
Henriksen shot him a disapproving glance, and Corelli scoffed like a man about to start a fight in a bar. The women ignored them all. Jada stared impatiently at Olivia, who tapped a couple of keys on the laptop. The plane’s engine whined loudly enough that they had to raise their voices slightly to be heard, and the pungent smell of urine and industrial cleanser came from the bathroom. Drake figured no amount of money could build an airplane without those two elements, but wealthy people liked to pretend they didn’t notice them. The thought crystallized a feeling he’d had in the back of his mind all day: Henriksen was a brat, just a spoiled rich kid grown up into a spoiled rich man. He wanted the secrets and treasures of the fourth labyrinth because he liked to own things that nobody else could have.
“Phoenix Innovations employs a man named Emil Yablonski,” Olivia said. “Yablonski is the most brilliant man I’ve ever met, but he’s almost incapable of functioning socially. He’s a historian and archaeologist, but he hadn’t done fieldwork in more than twenty years. He doesn’t mind e-mail or even the phone, but he doesn’t like talking to people in person. He’d rather you be in the next room than in his office.”
Henriksen waved a hand to indicate she should move along. He slipped into a chair, though still studying the map unfolded in front of him.
“They don’t care about Yablonski,” Henriksen said. “The guy works for me, and I don’t care, either.” He shot a look at Jada. “Part of my company is a think tank. Yablonski has his own division. Now we move on.”
Olivia smiled at her employer, but there were sharp edges to her expression and it was clear she didn’t like being spoken to so brusquely. Drake couldn’t muster much sympathy.
“Yablonski is practically paralyzed with geek joy over the information he’s getting from these translations,” Olivia said. “His exact words were, ‘This changes everything.’ Frankly, I think that’s a rash overstatement. The ancient Chinese writing on the walls and on the ceremonial jars clarifies certain things, confirms others, and gives us some vital clues as to our next step.
“We start with Daedalus. With the writings from the three chambers in the labyrinth of Sobek for comparison, Yablonski has confirmed that Daedalus designed the first three-Knossos, Crocodilopolis, and Thera-though if you want to refer to the Thera structure as the labyrinth of Atlantis, it would make Yablonski very happy.”
“He really thinks Atlantis was there?” Drake asked.
Olivia shot him a withering look, cold and beautiful. “Atlantis is a myth, Mr. Drake. The labyrinth of Poseidon on Thera is the seed from which the roots of that myth grew.”
“Are you saying Daedalus didn’t design the fourth labyrinth?” Jada asked.
Olivia arched an eyebrow. “Someone was listening. Let me back up, though. The temple at Knossos was built around 1700 B.C., the same era in which the Egyptians built Crocodile City. But what’s become clear here is that these cities were already under way or already built by the time the labyrinths were constructed. We’re putting our best guess at around 1550 B.C. Knossos came first. Daedalus tried to impress Minos-or Midas-in order to win his approval so that he could marry Ariadne. But one entire wall of the Chinese worship chamber on Thera is given over to telling the story, and it’s clear that Daedalus only met Ariadne when he went to the king with his plans to build the labyrinth.”
Henriksen grunted. “The labyrinth came first.”
Olivia nodded. “It did.”
“So what was Daedalus? The traveling inventor?” Drake asked. “He just wandered around the ancient world saying, ‘Hey, want me to build you something cool?’ ”
“He was an alchemist, of course,” Olivia said, her smile genuine for once.
“That’s crap,” Jada snorted.
Corelli hit a key on the laptop, and an image appeared on the monitor screen on the rear wall of the cabin, showing several paintings and a lot of ancient Chinese characters.
“The people who wrote this disagree,” Corelli said.
Drake stared at him. “Relax, junior. The grown-ups are talking.”
Corelli froze, his features practically turning to stone. For a moment, Drake thought he might lunge across the table or pull a weapon, but then Olivia put a firm hand on his arm and he relaxed, forcing a smile.
“Go on, then. Why don’t you tell me what it says?” Corelli said.
Drake shrugged. “It’s all chicken scratches to me,” he said, looking back at Olivia. “But I know a little bit about alchemists. You can’t make gold.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Henriksen said. He pointed to the screen. “They believed it could be done, and they believed Daedalus could do it.”
Olivia leaned back in her chair. “Exactly.”
“So Daedalus was a snake-oil salesman,” Jada said. “He didn’t fulfill a need; he invented it.”
Drake glanced down at Luka Hzujak’s journal, which had been in the center of the table since they’d entered. He picked it up and flipped to the first maze sketches he found, and then he looked up at Jada, ignoring the others.