gold and gems?”
Jada nodded.
“So they’ve got gold and gems,” Sully said. “Enough gold that they can make new—what, armor?—for generations of alligators to represent their god. The gems they can maybe pry off, use again, but if they’re making gold plating for the gators, they might be making a new one each generation.”
“How did they get that much gold?” Drake said. “This place isn’t exactly El Dorado.”
Jada sighed. “We’re not getting any answers from this thing,” she said, flipping another page.
“Maybe not,” Drake said. “But at least we’re getting a better idea of what the questions should be.”
Jada turned another page and hesitated. A note had been scrawled hastily there, and when she quickly flipped ahead, she found that the rest were empty. She went back to the final scribble in the journal. It had been written weeks ago, but in a way it was her father’s last message to her.
“Talk to Welch,” Luka had written. “Golden touch? Maybe Daedalus. Where’d he go? That’s the question. Henriksen doesn’t care about the Three Labyrinths, he’s after the treasure of the Fourth.”
“Fourth?” Drake read aloud. “Didn’t he say, right at the beginning, that Daedalus designed three labyrinths?”
“Welch,” Jada said. “That’s got to be Ian Welch, Gretchen’s brother.”
“Call him, Sully,” Drake said. “We need to see this guy tonight. Henriksen’s trying to kill everyone who might know whatever it is Luka found out.”
“There’s no big secret in here,” Jada protested, waving the journal. “They trashed his room looking for it, but whatever he found, it’s not here.”
“Henriksen must think it is,” Sully said, going to sit at the edge of the bed and picking up the phone.
“Jada,” Drake said softly, “we might not have it figured out, but your father wouldn’t have hidden this stuff if he didn’t think there was something important in what he’s written.”
“You’re right,” she said, crouching down to smooth out the map Sully had opened on the bed. Jada shook her head. “But whatever it is, we’d better figure it out before Henriksen does.”
“If he hasn’t already,” Drake said. “It could be that he already has all the secrets and wants to make sure nobody else does.”
Sully dialed the phone, referring to a scrap of paper he’d pulled from his wallet.
Jada flipped open the journal, turning again to that last page. Drake didn’t like the furrow of her brow.
“What’s wrong?” he asked.
“Just reading it again. ‘Talk to Welch.’ Is that a message to me? An instruction? Or is it a note to himself, like his one-task to-do list? If so, then whatever mystery he unraveled, he might’ve told Ian Welch. It would’ve been right before he left Egypt to head back to New York to continue his research.”
Sully had a quick conversation on the phone, and Jada kept her voice low.
Drake frowned. “You’re saying maybe we can’t trust Welch?”
“I’m saying my father seems to have trusted him, and now he’s dead. I’m saying we should be careful.”
Sully hung up the phone. They turned to look at him.
“Guess we’ll find out soon enough whose side Welch is on,” Sully rasped. “We’re meeting him for a drink in Fayoum City in two hours.”
8
The sun went down as Drake drove them into Fayoum City, the sky becoming a vast indigo field of stars. They passed the ancient waterwheels that kept the narrow canals moving in the city, then crossed a bridge into the city proper.
Drake tapped the brake when he spotted a police car parked beside a building that resembled an upside-down pyramid. In some parts of Egypt it was customary for Westerners to be accompanied by police in the larger cities. Chigaru had assured them that the insignias he had pasted on the bumper and the dashboard would keep most cops away. Either he had been as good as his word or this particular cop didn’t feel like rousting Westerners. The police car remained where it was, and Drake kept driving.
The desk clerk at Auberge du Lac had given them directions, which meant Drake wasn’t sure if they would end up in the right place until he actually had pulled into the parking lot. He had half expected the little man in the red jacket to send them the wrong way on purpose, but the directions turned out to be impeccable. The only distraction was the small black van that had picked them up as they passed the waterwheels and stuck with them as they drove through the city.
“You see it?” Drake asked.
Sully, in the passenger seat, glanced back. “Got