Map of Bones (33 page)

And now he had to take a leak.

He’d better cut off the diet Cokes.

Motion caught his eye. Coming around the far side of the peninsula. A large sleek ship, midnight blue. Thirty-footer. He read the lines. Not an ordinary ship. Hydrofoil. It raced over the waters, slightly raised on its surface-piercing skids. It flew unimpeded over the slight waves, skimming like a sled on ice.

Crap, it was fast.

He followed its curve around the spit of land, a quarter klick out. It aimed toward the East Harbor. It was too small for a ferry shuttle. Maybe some rich A-rab’s private yacht. He raised a pair of binoculars and searched for the ship. It took an extra moment to pin down the boat.

In the bow, he spotted a pair of girls in bikinis. No burka-wrapped modesty here. Monk had already surveyed a few of the other boats around the harbor, fixing them in place in his mental chessboard. One mini-yacht had a party in full swing, champagne flowing. Another houseboat-like craft had an older couple lounging about buck naked. Apparently Alexandria was the Fort Lauderdale of Egypt.

“Monk,” Kat called from the radio.

He wore a headset connected to the underwater transceiver. “What is it, Kat?”

“I’m picking up a pulsing note of static over the radio. Is that you?”

He lowered the binoculars. “It’s not me. I’ll run a diagnostic on the transceiver. You might be picking up someone’s fish finder.”

“Roger that.”

Monk glanced across the water. The hydrofoil slowed and settled deeper into the water. It had drifted to the far side of the harbor.

Good.

Monk fixed its berth among the other boats in his head, one more piece to the chessboard. He turned his attention to the Buddy Phone transceiver. He twisted the amplitude control, earning a feedback whine in his ear, then reset the channel.

“How’s that?” he asked.

Kat answered. “Better. It’s gone now.”

Monk shook his head.
Damn rental equipment
…

“Let me know if it returns,” he said.

“Will do. Thanks.”

Monk eyed the length of her form on the camera screen and sighed. What was the use? He picked up his binoculars. Where were those two bikini-clad girls?

1:10
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R
ACHEL STEPPED
last into the chamber. The two men parted to either side in front of her. Despite Gray’s warning to conserve their batteries, Uncle Vigor had flicked on his own flashlight.

The spears of light illuminated another drum-shaped room, domed above. The ceiling plaster had been painted black. Silver stars glowed brightly against the dark background. But the stars had not been painted onto the ceiling. They were metallic inlays.

The ceiling was reflected in a still pool of water that covered the entire floor. It looked knee-deep. The effect of the mirrored image in the water created a mirage of a perfect sphere of stars, above and below.

But that still wasn’t the most amazing sight.

Resting in the middle of the chamber, rising from the pool of water, stood a giant pyramid of glass, as tall as a man. It seemed to float in the center of the phantom sphere.

The glass pyramid glinted with a familiar golden hue.

“Could it be…?” Uncle Vigor muttered.

“Gold glass,” Gray said. “A giant superconductor.”

They spread out along the narrow lip of stone that surrounded the pool. Four copper pots rested in the water at the edges of the pools. Her uncle inspected one, then moved on. Ancient lamps, Rachel guessed. But they had brought their own illumination.

She studied the structure in the middle of the pool. The pyramid was square-bottomed, four-sided, like the pyramids of Giza.

“Something’s inside it,” Rachel said.

The reflection off the glass surfaces of the pyramid made details inside difficult to discern. Rachel hopped into the water. It was a little deeper than her knees.

“Careful,” Gray said.

“Like you’d take that advice,” she shot back, wading toward the pyramid.

Splashes behind her announced the others were following. They crossed to the glass structure. Her uncle and Gray repositioned their lamps to penetrate the pyramid.

Two shapes appeared.

One stood in the exact center of the pyramid. It was a bronze sculpture of a giant finger, raised and pointing up. So large, she doubted she could get her arms around it. The detail work was masterful, from the trimmed fingernail down to the wrinkles at the knuckles.

But it was the shape below the raised finger that drew most of her attention. A figure, crowned and masked in gold, robed in a flow of white gown, lay atop a stone altar. The arms outstretched to either side, Christlike. But the golden face was distinctly Greek.

Rachel turned to her uncle. “Alexander the Great.”

Her uncle stepped slowly around, getting a view from all angles. His eyes glistened with tears. “His tomb…the historical record mentioned his last resting place was in glass.” He reached to touch one of the outstretched hands, buried only a few centimeters into the glass, then thought better of it and lowered his arm.

“What’s with the bronze finger?” Gray asked.

Uncle Vigor stepped back to them. “I…I think it’s from the Colossus of Rhodes, the giant statue that spanned the island’s harbor. It represented the god Helios but was modeled after Alexander the Great. No part of the statue was thought to still exist.”

“Now this last remnant has become Alexander’s headstone,” Rachel said.

“I think
all
of this is a testament to Alexander,” her uncle said. “And to the science and knowledge he helped foster. It was at the Library of Alexandria that Euclid discovered the rules of geometry. All around here are triangles, pyramids, circles.”

Uncle Vigor then pointed up and down. “The reflected sphere split by water harkens to Eratosthenes, who at Alexandria calculated the diameter of the Earth. Even the water here…it must be fed through small channels to keep this pool full. It was at the library that Archimedes designed the first screw-shaped water pump, which is still in use today.”

Her uncle shook his head at the wonder. “All of this is a monument to Alexander and the lost Library of Alexandria.”

That reminded Rachel of something. “Weren’t there supposed to be books down here? Didn’t Septimus bury the most important scrolls of the library down here?”

Vigor searched around. “They must have been cleared out after the quake. When the clues were planted here. The knowledge must’ve been taken and sent to whatever hidden vault we seek. We must be close.”

Rachel heard the quaver in her uncle’s voice. What else might they discover?

“But before we move on,” Gray said, “we first must solve this riddle.”

“No,” Uncle Vigor said. “The riddle is not even exposed yet. Remember at St. Peter’s. We must pass some test. Prove our knowledge, like the Dragon Court did with their understanding of magnetism. Only after that was the secret revealed.”

“Then what are we supposed to do?” Gray asked.

Uncle Vigor stepped back, his eyes on the pyramid. “We have to activate this pyramid.”

“And how do we go about doing that?” Gray asked.

Vigor turned to Gray. “I need some soda.”

1:16
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G
RAY WAITED
for Kat to ferry up the last of the cans of Coke. They needed two more six-packs. “Does it matter if it’s diet Coke or regular?” Gray asked.

“No,” Vigor said. “I just need something acidic. Even citrus juice would work, or vinegar.”

Gray glanced to Rachel. She just shook her head and shrugged.

“Would you care to explain now?” Gray asked.

“Remember how magnetism opened the first tomb,” Vigor said. “We know that the ancients were well aware of magnetism. Lodestones were widely distributed and used. Chinese compasses date back to 200
B
.
C
. To move forward, we had to prove our understanding of magnetism. It even led us here. A magnetic marker left underwater.”

Gray nodded.

“So another scientific wonder must be demonstrated here.”

Vigor was interrupted by the arrival of Kat. She rose up into the entry pool, bearing aloft two more six-packs, making it a total of four.

“We’re going to need Kat’s help for a few minutes,” Vigor said. “It’ll take four people.”

“How are things topside?” Gray asked Kat.

She shrugged. “Quiet. Monk fixed a radio glitch. That was the extent of any excitement.”

“Let him know you’ll be off the air for a couple minutes,” Gray said, uneasy, but they needed whatever was hidden here.

Kat dunked under, passing on the message. She then quickly climbed out and they all returned to Alexander’s tomb.

Vigor waved for them to disperse. He pointed to a copper urn at the pool’s edge. There were four of the pots. “Each of you take a six-pack of soda and take up a post by the jars.”

They spread out.

“Care to tell us what we’re doing?” Gray asked as he reached his copper jar.

Vigor nodded. “Demonstrating another scientific wonder. What we must show here is the knowledge of a force known even to the Greeks. They called it
electrikus
. A name for the static charge of a cloth rubbed over amber. They witnessed it in the form of lightning and along the masts of their sailing ships as Saint Elmo’s fire.”

“Electricity,” Gray said.

Vigor nodded. “In 1938, a German archaeologist named Wilhelm Koenig discovered a number of curious clay jars in the National Museum of Iraq. They were only fifteen centimeters tall. They were attributed to the Persians, the homeland of our biblical Magi. The odd thing about the tiny jars was that they were plugged with asphalt, and from the top protruded a copper cylinder with an iron rod inside. The conformation was familiar to anyone with knowledge of voltaic sciences.”

Gray frowned. “And for those not familiar?”

“The jars…they were the exact conformation of battery cells, even earning the name ‘the Baghdad Batteries.’”

Gray shook his head. “Ancient batteries?”

“Both General Electric and
Science Digest
magazine in 1957 replicated these jars. They primed them with vinegar, and the jars gave off significant volts of electricity.”

Gray stared down at the jars at his feet, remembering the monsignor’s request for soda, another acidic solution. He noted the iron rod sticking out of the top of the solid copper jar. “Are you saying these are batteries? Ancient Duracell Coppertops?”

He stared at the pool. If the monsignor was correct, Gray understood now why jars were resting in the seawater pool. Whatever shock was generated by the batteries would flow through the water to the pyramid.

“Why don’t we just jump-start the pyramid?” Kat said. “Bring down a marine battery from the boat?”

Vigor shook his head. “I think the activation is tied to the amount of current and the position of the batteries. When it comes to the magnitude of power in these superconductors—especially one this size—I think we should stick to the original design.”

Gray agreed. He remembered the quake and the destruction inside the basilica. That had been with only a single cylinder of m-state powder. He eyed the giant pyramid and knew they’d better heed the monsignor’s recommendation.

“So what do we do?” Gray asked.

Vigor popped the top to one of his sodas. “On my count, we fill up the empty batteries.” He stared around the group. “Oh, and I suggest we stand well back.”

1:20
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M
ONK SAT
behind the boat’s wheel, tapping an empty can of soda on the starboard rail. He was tired of all this waiting. Maybe scuba diving wasn’t so bad. The water looked inviting as the day’s heat rose.

The loud rumble of an engine drew a glance across the harbor.

The hydrofoil, which had seemed to drop anchor, was on the move again. He listened to the engine throttle up. There seemed to be a bit of commotion on the deck.

He reached for his binoculars. Better safe than sorry.

As he raised the binoculars, he glanced to the monitor of the Aqua-Vu camera. The tunnel continued to be unmanned.

What was taking Kat so long?

1:21
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G
RAY EMPTIED
his third can into the cylinder core of his jar. Soon Coke was bubbling down the copper side of the battery. Full.

He stood up and took the last swig from his soda can.

Ugh
…
diet
…

The others finished about the same time, standing and moving back.

A bit of carbonation frothed out the tops of all the cylinders. Nothing else happened. Maybe they had done it wrong, or the soda wouldn’t work—or even more likely, the monsignor’s idea was simply full of crap.

Then a spark danced from the tip of the iron rod of Gray’s jar and cascaded down the copper surface to fizzle out in the seawater.

Similar weak pyrotechnics drizzled from the other batteries.

“It may take a few minutes for the batteries to build and discharge a proper voltage.” Vigor’s voice had lost its confident edge.

Gray frowned. “I don’t think this is going to—”

Simultaneously from all four batteries, brilliant arcs of electricity crackled through the water, fire in the deep. They struck the four sides of the pyramid.

“Back against the wall!” Gray yelled.

His warning was not needed. A blast of force thumped outward from the pyramid, throwing him bodily against the wall. The pressure made it feel like Gray was on his back, the drum-shaped chamber circling over him, the pyramid above him, a topsy-turvy amusement ride.

Yet Gray knew what held him.

A Meissner field, a force that could levitate tombs.

Then the true fireworks began.

From all surfaces of the pyramid, crackling bursts of lightning shattered to the ceiling, seeming to strike the silver stars imbedded there. Jolts also lanced into the pool, as if attempting to attack the reflected stars in the water.