the corridor outside. The security director and the police investigators had been polite enough, though their manners came with a frosty demeanor. Polite or not, though, there could be no mistaking this for anything other than a detention area. As far as Drake could tell, nobody had said they were in custody, but until they were released, they might as well be behind bars.
His thoughts turned constantly to Sully. While they were locked up here, spinning lies and deception, where was he? Drake had put all his faith into the belief that the Protectors of the Hidden Word had taken Sully with them back to the fourth labyrinth, and all signs pointed to the labyrinth being here. But until they found the labyrinth, he wouldn’t know for sure if Sully was still among the living. What bothered him most was that they were prisoners not only of the authorities but of their own ignorance. They were in Nanjing, but in reality they were no closer to the labyrinth. Until they knew exactly where it was, the facts they did know were useless.
So, while Jada slept and Corelli zoned out, Drake had been racking his brain for what he knew about Nanjing, trying to bring logic to bear on the problem. They had no Internet access. Corelli couldn’t even contact Yablonski back at Phoenix Innovations to see if the brilliant recluse had come up with anything else that might be helpful. For the moment, Drake was alone with the puzzle.
While the security team was hustling them in from the tarmac, they had passed down a corridor with advertisements on the walls. One of them had shown a subway train and had a map of various underground transportation lines. Drake couldn’t read Chinese, but the words “Nanjing Metro” were in English, and the poster had gotten him thinking. If the city had been built on top of the fourth labyrinth, there had to have been thousands of opportunities over the years for builders to break through into the ancient maze. There were basements, subway lines, underground malls, and, most recently, subterranean bomb and earthquake shelters.
He suspected that if they did the research, they would find all sorts of stories about workers vanishing while engaged in excavation for those projects. If the Protectors of the Hidden Word had been active for two thousand years before the foundations of the first real city had been built in Nanjing, they would have been careful all along to keep excavators away. The labyrinth might be deep underground, but Drake doubted it would have been deeper than the subway.
They needed a map of the Nanjing Metro. They had to find a piece of the city with no tunnels underground, a space wide enough for a labyrinth the size of the one on Thera. He had been thinking about the legend of the demon that supposedly had lived under the city gates during the construction phase of the Ming Dynasty. Once upon a time, Nanjing had had thirteen gates, but now only one remained. Drake knew it had another name, but it was known simply as the China Gate, a major tourist attraction. He’d only ever seen pictures, but he had to wonder.
He turned to find Corelli still watching him. Jada began to stir and opened her eyes. For a moment she smiled at Drake, but then it was as if a veil of hurt had been drawn over her eyes, and he knew that she had remembered where they were and why and all the events of the last week. He thought of that blissful moment she’d had in the haze between sleeping and waking, and he envied her.
The door to the inner office swung open, and the three of them looked around to see a security guard emerge. Drake exhaled with disappointment, but the guard didn’t let the door close behind him. Instead, the man held it open for Henriksen and Olivia, who wore matching facial expressions, a mixture of arrogance and irritation at the inconvenience they had been forced to endure. The two diplomats followed, along with a Nanjing police officer. Through the glass partition, Drake could see the dark-suited government agent speaking with the director of airport security. They did not look happy, which confirmed Drake’s suspicion that they were being allowed to leave.
“Come on,” he said to Jada. “We’re going.”
A limousine awaited them outside. Porters carried their bags out and put them into the trunk, and Corelli slammed it shut. Drake and Jada