The Last Odyssey (Sigma Force #15) - James Rollins Page 0,63

on her table. “But here a Greek historian calls it Hiera of Hephaestus or ‘the Sacred Place of Hephaestus.’ Which could also be translated as ‘Sacred Fire,’ depending on the context.”

Kowalski turned back to the view. The sun had dropped lower, further igniting those crystalline cinder cones. “It does look like it’s on fire.”

Elena stood up and joined him at the window. “Maybe that’s why the Greeks thought Hephaestus was still working here. They believed this place was where he crafted weapons for Ares, the god of war. Deep beneath the island, Hephaestus would hammer and stoke his fires. The Greeks believed the periodic explosions of smoke and ash from the island’s volcanos were due to the mighty blacksmith clearing out his chimneys. But really all the volcanic activity here is just the African tectonic plate jamming itself northward into the Eurasian plate.”

“Not quite as romantic,” Kowalski said.

“No, it’s not,” she admitted.

As they watched, the sun finally sank away and winked out.

Kowalski shared a worried look with her. “Sun’s down,” he said. “You know what that means.”

She nodded and hurried back to her desk.

He followed her, clanking his chains. “I don’t think any last-minute cramming is going to help.”

After they had boarded the yacht, their captor—the cold-eyed woman named Nehir—had marched them up to this lounge, where several of her crew dumped boxes of books. She had then locked them both in here, with a simple instruction: Impress me by sundown or he’ll suffer.

It was clearly a test.

And I’m the whipping boy.

Though they weren’t exactly planning to whip him.

While being put into chains, he had noted a crate being opened. The hulking brute, Kadir, removed a brazier, a tripod, and a heavy sheaf of branding irons. As he did so, the giant never took his dead eyes off Kowalski.

Even now, as Kowalski reached Elena’s desk, his left thigh throbbed from the red-hot poker burned into him this morning. The bastards, at least, had done him the courtesy of bandaging the wound. Not out of kindness, he figured, but more out of a concern that their whipping boy might die prematurely of blood poisoning. They certainly didn’t bother to set his broken nose, only taped it. Nor did they address the giant bruise across his lower back after almost breaking his spine.

I mean, how much can a few goddamn ibuprofens cost?

The double doors to the lounge swung open behind Elena. She turned with a slight flinch. Armed guards could be seen posted out in the hall, along with the shadowy mountainous threat of Kadir, who stood with his thick arms crossed.

Nehir swept into the room, all in black, even the scarf over her hair. She was accompanied by two men with stubby assault rifles in their hands. They were taking no chances with Kowalski.

Nehir’s dark eyes took in the room, lingering on the sprawl of books and papers on the desk. “I see you’ve been busy.”

Elena turned back to Kowalski, her eyes bright with fear as she looked up at him. They both knew what came next.

Test time.

9:06 P.M.

I’m not ready.

Elena looked aghast at the piles of books. She knew they must have come from the subterranean library back in Turkey. The collection had been brought to her without any preamble or explanation. There were works by Greek, Roman, and Persian scholars. Hundreds of books. She barely had time to sort them, let alone digest them.

In the crates, she found Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, which dealt with his theories on Atlantis. Then there was Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, which offered another view of the Trojan War. Then Medea by Euripides, the tragic story of a witch who fell in love with the mythic warrior Jason. Elena barely had time to skim through the two fat books of Histories by Herodotus.

And that was just the Greeks.

Still, she knew what was expected of her without being told.

Nehir voiced it with her first question, as she waved out to sea. “Do you know why we’re here?”

Elena licked her lips and stood, feeling better without this woman looming over her. “That’s Vulcano, home to the mythic foundry of the god Hephaestus.”

A nod.

Elena stared down at the three works she had decided were the most important. The first two were obvious. Nehir had given her photocopies of the two books found aboard the ancient dhow. Elena added another: a two-thousand-page treatise by the Greek historian Strabo, titled Geographica.

She reached down and placed a palm on the copy of the captain’s journal. “Hunayn’s account stops shortly after it starts,