to swim back and let Jada and the others know and then lead them through the underwater passage. His lungs hurt just from thinking about it. But they would be out, and that meant the real search could start. He would find Sully, and together they would expose the secrets of the hooded men to the world so that the murderous bastards couldn’t get their hands on anyone else. He thought about the paintings in the Chinese worship chamber, the hellish images of torment in Diyu, and he felt more determined than ever.
Drake clung to the wall, catching his breath for the swim back.
This time he would take off his boots.
He couldn’t help but wonder if, when they finally got back up to Akrotiri village, the taxi driver would be waiting.
18
Turbulence jostled Drake from an unsettling dream. He had been standing in the rain at Sully’s funeral, the only person without a black umbrella. Among the sea of faces he could see through the veil of dream and rain were many of the less savory characters he and Sully had encountered over the years. Thieves and cutthroats, smugglers and corrupt politicians—all of them had gathered to pay their respects. Jada stood by the grave, her magenta bangs now dyed a bloody crimson, and the priest who stood at the head of the gathering, one hand on the coffin, was Luka Hzujak.
The priest had looked at him, dry beneath his huge black umbrella.
“When you lie down with snakes, you’ve gotta learn to hiss,” the priestly Luka had said, his voice like a whisper in Drake’s ear. “But that doesn’t mean you have to slither.”
He had laughed then, and the entire gathering of mourners had laughed with him, their voices the shush of rain pattering on umbrellas. Drake, soaked to the skin, had not found it funny. Sully had used that line about snakes with him ten years earlier, the morning they had paid a ship’s captain in Valparaiso to carry them and their cargo home to the States. The man had had a huge cache of drugs on board, also headed for the USA, and Drake had needed to be persuaded not to throw them overboard. Sully had reminded him that if they didn’t want the captain to interfere in their business, they couldn’t interfere with his.
When he woke from the dream, he found Tyr Henriksen watching him.
Drake sat up, groggily reaching for his gun.
Henriksen nodded. “It’s all right, Mr. Drake. Your weapon is still there and still loaded.”
Drake’s hand closed on the butt of the gun, but he didn’t take it out of his waistband. The guttural drone of the engine made him blink, and only as he glanced around did he remember that they were on an airplane chartered by Henriksen for the journey from Greece to China. Out the oval window beyond Henriksen the sky was dark. He wasn’t sure how long they had been flying or how long he’d been sleeping, but it was still night.
The plane Henriksen had chartered was of a sort he rarely had been inside: a private jet with seating for twelve in the center and a cabin for business in the rear, complete with a narrow conference table. Henriksen, Olivia, and Corelli had been in the back when Drake had fallen asleep, and it disconcerted him to wake with the man studying him as if he were some kind of exotic pet.
“You slept soundly,” Henriksen said. “You snore.”
“Back off, pal. You’re freaking me out.”
Feeling something sticky on his chin, Drake wiped his mouth and realized he had been so deeply asleep that he had been drooling a little. Henriksen had had the good grace not to mention it.
“I guess I was more tired than I thought,” Drake said.
Henriksen leaned back in his seat. “We all were. I dozed for several hours myself. Jada is still sleeping.”
Drake craned his neck to look back along the aisle and saw her stretched out in her wide, fully reclined seat, a blanket over her. She looked peaceful, and Drake felt happy for her. Peace had been hard for Jada to come by of late. Only sleep offered any respite from her grief and the fears and tensions of recent days. Olivia and Corelli were nowhere to be seen, which he assumed meant they were still in the rear cabin. Whether they had gotten any sleep, he didn’t know. Not that he had a lot of concern for their well-being.
“How much longer?” Drake asked, sitting up straight.
He