The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,53

down, she had run her fingertips along the walls, imagining the effort to dig out this city, and the hundreds like it. While the rock here was relatively soft—made up of volcanic tuff that could be carved and sculpted into these subterranean cities—the sheer manpower needed and scope of the excavation seemed excessive.

Questions slowly arose: Why were these cities so hastily built during those dark ages? What were they all hiding from? What had terrorized them to such an extent that they had felt the need to claw their way down into the rock to escape it?

In the deeper levels of the complex, she passed dormitories smelling of grease and grilled meats, another that served as a storage facility, stacked with crates, barrels, and sacks of dry goods. She estimated there was enough foodstuffs to last years. Below that, they reached a section that seemed to be a whole warren of mazelike rooms crammed tightly with dark bookshelves and cabinets full of shadowy artifacts. Curiosity about this buried library had slowed her feet, but her captors forced her even deeper, to a region lit only by candles and finally into this cell where she had spent the night.

They had left her with a cold dinner and fed her breakfast again this morning.

But Elena knew something had changed overnight. This morning, she had heard yelling echoing down from above. She had tried to question the red-clad recruit—a young woman, barely older than a teenager—who delivered her breakfast tray. When Elena asked about the commotion, the server’s eyes had flashed with worry.

All Elena got was a terse warning from the recruit: Do what they say. Tell them what you know.

After that, Elena had paced her cell, plagued by a question.

What do they expect me to know?

Her hands finally found what she had hidden under her mattress. She withdrew the two small books—a copy of Homer’s Odyssey and the journal of the dead captain—the contents of the package guarded over by the frozen corpse. With the books secretly tucked into the back of her trousers for the flight here, her body heat had thawed the frozen volumes. The leather covers were now pliant, the cords binding them pliable.

Whatever her captors wanted from her had to involve that ship and its history. Why else kidnap an expert on nautical archaeology, one who specialized in the Mediterranean? She knew her life depended on her continuing usefulness. She also knew her father would shake the very foundations of the world to find her, but until then—

I must survive.

To that end, she needed to be armed with as much information as possible.

No matter the risk.

She took the books to the crude table where her breakfast sat untouched. She had no fear of being watched, of hidden cameras spying upon her. Every surface of her cell, except for the stout wooden door, was solid rock. In fact, this entire dungeon was only lit by candles or flickering torches.

With no electricity and the stone too thick to allow even a wireless device to transmit, she felt secure enough to place the books on the table and cautiously peel back the cover of the one entitled The Testament of the Fourth Son of Moses. Originally wrapped in sealskin and sealed in wax, the pages had been kept dry over the centuries, the ink preserved. Though they were brittle with age, she could still turn the vellum pages if she was careful.

She began reading an account of its author, Hunayn ibn Mūsā ibn Shākir, the fourth son of a man named Mūsā—or Moses. She skimmed through the initial pages, which related to handwritten details of the ship’s preparation, the picking of a trusted crew, followed by the first week of travel. It also held the captain’s ruminations about Homer’s work, including translated sections from the ancient Greek text Geographica, written by Strabo, a Greek historian from the first century who believed Homer’s epics recounted historical events.

According to the journal, the ship reached an island described by the captain as “the forge of Hephaestus”—then the story suddenly stopped. A large section of pages in the middle had been sliced out.

Likely deliberately destroyed.

She frowned with disappointment at the missing pages—though in truth, she was more interested in the last section, which remained intact. She wanted to know what befell the ship, how it ended up in Greenland. The story picked up again with a huge storm and a hard voyage to what sounded like Iceland (“an island of fire and ice, of steaming