Uncharted The Fourth Labyrinth - By Christopher Golden Page 0,110
themselves. It doesn’t seem likely there’d be a way into the labyrinth from somewhere so public.”
“Maybe it isn’t there at all,” Jada said. “How many people could vanish in that one spot without the authorities taking a much closer look?”
Drake nodded and stared out the window as the limo crossed a bridge over the Qinhuai River, the calm water replete with yellow-canopied riverboats. Jada’s argument made sense, and his momentary excitement had been extinguished.
“Regardless, we can’t simply go there and start searching,” Henriksen said. “Whatever we do, we require the cover of night, and if we find the labyrinth, its hooded killers are sure to be waiting for us, which means we need reinforcements. I have a security team on the way. They’ll be here by midnight. And of course the government and the police will be watching us. I need time to put the appropriate bribes in place to make sure they look the other way when the moment comes.”
Drake swore, hands clenched into fists as he thought of Sully.
Jada touched his arm. “He’s a tough old guy. He’ll be all right until we can get to him.”
“We go to the hotel,” Henriksen said, pulling out his phone. “Meanwhile, we get Yablonski looking at the Nanjing Metro map and see what else is as old as the China Gate.”
“He’s already compiling a database of disappearances,” Olivia said. “If we see a concentration of people going missing in one particular spot over the centuries, that’ll help, too.”
Drake couldn’t argue with any of them, and that made his frustration all the worse. Several long minutes passed as Henriksen phoned Yablonski, and then the interior of the limo fell into a silence broken only by the white noise of the engine and the hum of the tires on pavement. He stared out the window toward the east, where the city gave way to a forested mountain. When he glanced over at Jada, she looked as if she wanted to crawl out of her skin. She and her stepmother were on the same seat but sitting as far apart from each other as the space inside the limo would allow.
How did it come to this? Drake wondered. Relying on the people we were out to stop from the beginning? Henriksen and Olivia might not have killed Jada’s father, but Luka had wanted nothing more than to stop Henriksen from getting to the fourth labyrinth before him.
So what would you have done if you got here on your own? he thought. What would be the next step?
Drake turned to Henriksen and held out his hand. “Give me your phone.”
The big man narrowed his icy blue eyes. “What?”
Jada studied them both, a what-the-hell-are-you-doing look in her eyes.
“Phone?” Drake said.
Henriksen shrugged and handed him the smart phone. Olivia seemed nervous, as if she was worried Drake had something tricky up his sleeve. The limo slowed a bit as Corelli glanced in the rearview again, apparently thinking the same thing. Drake thought about reminding them that he wasn’t a ninja, either, and it wasn’t like he was going to be able to use the phone as a deadly weapon. He decided to let it go. If wondering what he had in mind kept them nervous, that was probably for the best.
Internet access was limited in China, so that was no good, but a quick call to London information services got him the phone number for the archaeology department of Oxford University, and moments later he sat listening to the phone ringing half the world away.
“Margaret Xin, please,” he said when a male voice answered.
Henriksen’s eyes widened in alarm, and he reached for the phone. Drake slapped his hand away, though he was impressed that the man had recognized Margaret Xin’s name.
“Relax, blondie,” Drake said. “We’re in this together for now.”
He hated saying the words, wanted to spit to clear the taste of them out of his mouth. As far as he was concerned, they were in it together as long as their fate was twined together and not a moment longer. He figured Henriksen felt the same way.
A quiet female voice came on the line. “Hello?”
“Maggie, it’s Nathan Drake.”
“Nate? This is a surprise. Are you in London?”
“No, Maggie, listen—Sully’s in trouble,” Drake said. “I know you two ended kind of messy, but I need your help.”
He heard a deep intake of breath, and when she spoke again, there was a tremor in her voice.
“This isn’t cheating-at-cards sort of trouble, is it?”