‘Not by that much.’ He returned to the entrance and faced into the chamber, pointing directly across it at a patch of plastered wall over six feet from the doorway’s edge. ‘Even if it were twisting, the tube should have come in somewhere over there.’
‘What are you saying – that there’s another door?’
‘No – they didn’t want anyone to get in, so it’s probably blocked off. But I bet the tunnel carries on behind that wall.’ He crossed the room again and stood before the inscriptions. ‘This is a closed room, but I can still feel a breeze blowing through. Where’s it going?’
Nina directed her light higher up the wall. At the top of the plastered section were several holes, each a few inches in diameter. ‘Through those, maybe.’ She gathered a handful of dust and tossed it at the small openings. The motes swirled in the torch beams – then were sucked into a vortex and vanished through the vents. ‘There’s definitely something back there. How are we going to get to it?’ Eddie drew his gun. ‘Oh, I see. You’re going to shoot it open.’
‘Not exactly.’ He turned the gun round in his hand – and bashed its grip against the wall, cracking the plaster.
‘Aah!’ Nina cried, appalled. She rushed to him as he chipped away at the ancient inscriptions, larger chunks breaking loose. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Sorry, but if we want to get through here, this wall’s going to have to come down.’
‘Well, yes,’ she said, flustered, ‘but at least let me photograph it first!’ She hurriedly rummaged through the bag for her camera.
Eddie sighed, but moved back so she could take several pictures. ‘All right, you done?’
‘Yes, okay.’ She hung the camera’s strap round her neck and grimaced. ‘I really wish we didn’t have to do this, but . . . go ahead.’
He returned to the wall and continued his attack. After a few minutes, enough plaster had been smashed away to expose a section of what was hidden behind it.
A wall. But not solid volcanic rock. This was built from stone blocks – another barricade, sealing the entrance to the Temple of the Gods.
Eddie used his penknife again to explore the cracks between the stones. Unlike his examination of the fake door, this time the blade went all the way in without obstruction. He also noticed something else. ‘It’s warm.’
Nina put her hand against the exposed wall. It was noticeably hotter than the chamber’s ambient temperature. ‘Well, we are in a volcano . . .’
‘Yeah, but if it’s warm on this side, God knows what it’ll be like on the other. We don’t know how thick this wall is. Only one way to find out, though.’ He looked at the bag of explosives.
Nina’s shoulders slumped in dejection. ‘Guess I’d better take photos of the rest of the room . . .’
‘Ready?’ Eddie asked.
Nina cringed, covering her ears. ‘Yeah. Do it.’
He switched the channel selector to ‘1’, flicked up the protective cover over the detonation control . . . and pushed the red button.
Even though they were back outside the lava tube, the explosion from the underground chamber was still as loud as a shotgun blast. A gush of dust and smoke rushed out of the tunnel, loose stones clattering down the slope.
Eddie turned the detonator control back to ‘Safe’ and closed the trigger cover. ‘Looks like Alderley’s mate took good care of the explosives. That was a bigger bang than I expected.’ They waited for the dust to settle, then started back down the lava tube. ‘Feel that?’ he asked, after a few steps.
‘Yeah,’ said Nina. The breeze blowing down the shaft was now a gust, strong enough to ruffle their hair. The residual haze in the air was rapidly being cleared. ‘I think we definitely opened up the wall.’ They continued down the curving tunnel. Rubble littered the floor as they got closer to the chamber. The final bend, and they raised their torches to see what awaited them.
To Nina’s relief, the enormous hammer hadn’t fallen, but was still hanging ominously over the room. Below it, the floor was strewn with debris. The wall blocking the exit had been obliterated – as had almost everything else. The blast had stripped most of the plaster from the walls, wiping out for ever the last tale of the expedition from Atlantis . . . and also the remains of its members. The bodies in the burial nooks had been pulverised, ancient bones shattered to splinters. She regarded the devastation sadly. Photographs were little compensation for the loss of such a find.
‘Hey,’ said Eddie quietly, recognising her mood. ‘This was just the outer room, remember?’ He nodded towards the newly opened passage. ‘The Temple of the Gods is right through there.’
‘You’re right,’ she said, composing herself. Eddie headed for the exit; she gave a silent apology to what little remained of Nantalas and her acolytes before following.
Even with the stiff wind at their backs, the temperature beyond the chamber rose rapidly. And as they moved down the short tunnel, the light from their torches was joined by another source from ahead. Eddie at first thought it was daylight, but the colour was wrong: too orange.
Nina had noticed it too. ‘You know we thought the meteorite was in a volcano? I think it’s literally in a volcano.’
The tunnel opened out . . . and revealed that she was right.
They emerged on a large bowl-like ledge jutting from the inside of the volcano’s throat. High above was a circle of blue sky, but the orange light was coming from below. The volcano was still active, a lake of molten lava bubbling away deep underground.
For the moment, though, Nina’s attention was on the ledge itself. A dozen statues surrounded the centre of the bowl. All were mythological figures: gods. She recognised Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo, Athena, Hera and more . . . the Olympians, the most powerful figures in the shared pantheon of the ancient Greeks and the Atlanteans. They faced outwards to keep watch in all directions, their poses and expressions a stern warning against approaching the object they guarded.
The sky stone. The meteorite. The object that had brought life to earth, and now held the potential to change that life – not with the power of gods, but with the science of men.
Eddie made a face. ‘I don’t think we brought enough explosives.’
It was not the size of a couch, or a car, as he had hoped. It was the size of a house. In places threateningly jagged, in others smoothed off as if melted, the irregular hunk of rock was a good sixty feet along its longest axis, rising at its highest almost thirty feet above the floor. The whole thing was covered with a grimy layer of ash and sulphur, deposited over millennia by the fumes rising up from the bubbling lava below. The statues around it were similarly defiled.
Nina and Eddie moved closer. As they left the cover of the tunnel, the rush of wind from it lessened – and the stench and heat coming from the bottom of the volcanic conduit hit them for the first time. The enormous updraught of hot gases rising past the ledge was sucking clean air from outside down the lava tube, keeping the natural bowl at least partially clear of the worst of the toxic vapours. ‘Christ, that stinks,’ Eddie muttered, trying to hold in a cough. ‘So, this is what everyone’s been looking for?’
‘This is it,’ said Nina. She went up to the stone, about to touch it, but then drew back her hand.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘Considering what happened when Nantalas last touched the meteorite, it’s probably not a great idea for me to start messing with it.’
‘You’ve got a point.’ Eddie looked up at the statue of Poseidon, the god of the oceans holding a metal trident as if poised to hurl it at any intruder. ‘And he’s got three. This is the Temple of the Gods, then?’
Nina turned away from the meteorite – and froze in momentary shock as for the first time she took in the sheer wall that had been behind her. ‘No,’ she said. ‘That is.’
A vast structure had been carved out of the cliff, extending almost the full width of the ledge and rising in tiers to over a hundred feet above. The elaborate yet harsh architectural style was unmistakably Atlant
ean. The lava tube emerged from the wall at its base between a pair of large pillars; on either side were more statues. Each level of the grand temple above them was lined with more ancient figures.
‘God!’ exclaimed Eddie, awed. ‘Or gods, I mean. How many are there?’
‘All of them, I think,’ Nina replied. The Olympians were the big guns of the lost civilisation’s mythology, but there were hundreds of lesser deities below them . . . and it seemed that every single one was in attendance. The rulers of Atlantis had been unable to decide which of their gods they had angered by unleashing the power of the sky stone – so had tried to appease them all.
‘That’s pretty bloody impressive. How the hell did they build all that in here?’
‘Nantalas’s expedition must have been bigger than we thought. Atlantis was the greatest empire the world would see for another few thousand years, so if anyone had the resources, they did.’ She raised her camera again and started taking pictures of the temple. Through the telephoto lens, she saw stairs linking the tiers behind the rows of statues.
‘There isn’t time for that,’ said Eddie, setting down the rucksack and removing the explosives and detonators. ‘We’ve found the thing, so let’s blow it up.’
‘It’s the only time for it,’ she countered. ‘You saw what the first charge did to the outer chamber – there was nothing left. When we blow up the meteorite, it’ll wreck the temple. Even if I can’t save it, I can’t let this place go unrecorded.’
Eddie reluctantly conceded. ‘Get your snaps, then.’ He checked the remaining detonators, then circled the rock as Nina continued. When he returned, his expression was decidedly more downcast. ‘You know I didn’t think we’d brought enough explosives?’
‘Yes?’
‘We definitely didn’t. Remember what that geologist, Bellfriar, told us about the statues before we went to South America? He said the meteorite they came from had a lot of metal in the rock – and that’ll make it really, really tough. There’s no way these charges’ll be enough to destroy it. Best they’ll do is split it into smaller bits, but they’ll still be too big for us just to chuck ’em into the lava.’ He looked back at the entrance. ‘We need a Plan B.’
‘What kind of Plan B?’
‘My usual kind – blowing something up.’
‘But that’s Plan A as well!’
He smiled, then collected one of the explosive charges and a detonator and headed for the lava tube. ‘Get all your photos – soon as I come back, I’ll set the bombs on the rock and then we’ll get out of here.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘To make sure nobody gets through that tunnel after we leave.’ He jogged away, leaving Nina alone with the Atlantean gods.
She photographed the whole of the temple, then turned her attention to the statues around the meteorite. Whatever Eddie was doing, it was taking a while; he still had not returned by the time she had captured all of the Olympians. She considered taking a closer look at the temple, but curiosity about a more natural wonder won out and she made her way up the slope to the lip of the ledge.
The heat grew more intense the closer she got. Away from the fresh air coming through the lava tube, it also became harder to breathe. Coughing, she nevertheless climbed the last few yards to the edge and looked down.
It was like peering directly into Hell. The volcano’s conduit dropped dizzyingly down for hundreds of feet, a searing red eye at its end glaring back up at her. The level of the lava below had at some point sunk, leaving a seething molten lake churning in the subterranean magma chamber. The temperature was so great that she could only bear it for a few seconds before withdrawing, but she had seen more than enough. Even at its lowest level of activity, a volcano was still terrifying close up; she tried to imagine what it would have been like when Nantalas unwittingly released the full fury of the earth beneath Atlantis. It was almost too frightening to think about.
What made it more worrying was that she might be able to unleash a similar disaster – or be forced to do so. The sooner the meteorite was destroyed, and with it any chance of the Group’s using its destructive potential, the better.
The thought of the Group made her look back at the entrance, from which Eddie was finally re-emerging. Still coughing, she hurried back down to the much cooler centre of the bowl. ‘Are you done?’
He nodded. ‘I’ll show you on the way out. You got all your pictures?’
‘Yes, but I wouldn’t mind getting some close-ups of the temple. Do you need me to help with the explosives?’
‘I can manage. You go and get some more photos.’
‘It’s a shame they’ll probably be all that’s left of this place,’ she said glumly. ‘How long?’
‘I’ll need to find weak spots, so . . . fifteen minutes, maybe.’
‘Okay.’ Camera at the ready, Nina went to the temple as Eddie prepared the last three charges.
From the air, the volcano stood out from dozens of miles away, the column of steam from its peak standing tall in the sky like a marker flag.
An aircraft was heading straight for the beacon. Powering over the desert was an AgustaWestland AW101 helicopter, a civilian version of the military Merlin transport. The hold of this particular example had been fitted out with seats, all of which were occupied.
Alexander Stikes, seated directly behind the pilot, would have much preferred the twenty-four places to be filled with mercenaries under his command, but the surviving members of the Group had decided they wanted to witness the discovery of the meteorite first-hand. They had arrived in the Ethiopian capital the previous day and waited in Addis Ababa’s most luxurious hotel, such as it was, for the ongoing search to produce results. It was a harsh irony: one of the world’s poorest countries being visited incognito by a small group of people whose personal net worth outstripped that of the entire nation.
He turned to speak to Warden. ‘We’ll be there in a few minutes.’
‘Are you sure this is the place?’ the Group’s chairman demanded.
‘Not one hundred per cent, but considering the circumstances it seems highly likely. A volcano would fit nicely with the Atlantean priestess’s reference to the forge of Hephaestus. Benefits of a classical education,’ he added at Meerkrieger’s raised eyebrow. ‘And our aerial reconnaissance drone spotted a vehicle crossing the desert towards it some hours ago; it’s still there.’
‘Wilde and Chase?’ said Warden.
‘Who else?’ Sophia said from beside Stikes.
The former officer nodded. ‘Considering that there’s absolutely nothing in this part of the desert that would be of value to man or beast, they’re the only people I can think of who would have a reason for coming out here.’
‘But we don’t know they’re in the country,’ Brannigan said from behind Meerkrieger.
‘And we don’t know they’re not. Chase has proved very adept at getting around the world unnoticed.’
‘Good for him,’ said Larry loudly. Eddie’s father was seated towards the back of the cabin with the mercenaries, under guard. The man next to him had standing orders from Stikes if the prisoner made a nuisance of himself, and he carried them out by driving an elbow hard into Larry’s stomach. The older man curled up in pain, gasping for breath.
‘We know they left Switzerland,’ Stikes continued, dismissing the interruption, ‘and they didn’t return to the US, so it’s highly probable that they’re here. Wilde apparently has some sort of inbuilt direction finder, after all. And they have a very strong incentive to find the meteorite before we do.’
‘You’d better hope they haven’t,’ Warden said, with an undercurrent of threat.
Stikes concealed his look of derision until he had turned away to check the view ahead. The volcano was rapidly growing. His cold eyes scanned it, searching for anything standing out against the barren rock . . .
‘There,’ he said. ‘There they are!’ He pointed, indicating his find to the pilot, who turned the helicopter towards it.
>
Warden leaned forward to look. A small block of colour was visible on the mountainside: a vehicle. ‘Land as close to it as you can,’ he ordered, then addressed Stikes. ‘Will you be able to find them?’
‘Tracking is one of my specialities,’ the Englishman told him smugly.
The pilot brought the helicopter into a hover over the small plateau, its downwash whipping up a storm of dust and grit that buffeted the parked 4×4. He brought the aircraft down with a bump. ‘Right,’ said Stikes, addressing the members of the Group, ‘I think it will be best if you all wait in the chopper until my men and I find Chase and Wilde and locate the meteorite. It should—’
‘We’re not going to sit here baking in this thing,’ said Warden firmly. The pilot was in the process of shutting down the engines; once the cabin’s air conditioning was switched off, the temperature in the enclosed space would quickly become intolerable. ‘I want to be there to see the stone the moment it’s found.’
‘So do we,’ said both the Bull brothers simultaneously. The others agreed, even the elderly Meerkrieger undeterred by the prospect of negotiating the rough terrain.
‘As you wish,’ Stikes said. ‘In that case, if you’ll follow me . . .’ As Warden picked up the case holding the statues, the mercenary leader made his way down the narrow central aisle to his eight men at the rear. ‘Everyone arm up and move out. Remember that in no circumstances is Dr Wilde to be killed. Anyone else who might be there is fair game – except Chase. He’s mine.’ He reached past several parachutes on a rack to push a button, and the broad rear ramp lowered to the ground. ‘All right, let’s go.’
He strode down the ramp, the Group members – looking obviously out of place in the raw natural environment despite their newly bought expedition clothing – and Sophia following. The mercenaries pulled back tarps and collected their weapons and survival gear from behind the ranks of seats, then marched after their leader, two of them pushing Larry between them.
Gleaming Jericho drawn, Stikes checked that the Land Rover was empty, then surveyed the steep and barren landscape. There was nobody in sight.