The Tomb of Hercules_A Novel

  Chase looked mournfully down at the smoldering leather at his feet. “Lost my jacket, lost my gun,” he complained. “This hasn’t been a good week.” But his expression lifted—slightly—when he saw Nina behind Sophia. “Haven’t lost everything, though,” he told her. She didn’t quite smile, but her relief at seeing him again was plain.

  Corvus turned to Nina. “Is this it? Was that the last obstacle?”

  “I’ve still got one more page to translate. But yes, that was the last trial. The Tomb of Hercules is through there.” She indicated the new opening.

  Corvus stepped eagerly towards it, but Sophia held his arm. “I think we should send Yorkshire Jones in first. Just in case.”

  Komosa prodded Chase with his gun. Wearily, Chase moved to the hole.

  “Wait,” said Nina. “Send me instead.”

  Sophia snorted mockingly. “I don’t think so.”

  Nina turned to Corvus. “This is my discovery. You wouldn’t be here without me. You wouldn’t even know this place existed without me. At least let me be the first to see it.”

  After a moment, Corvus nodded. Sophia shot him a warning frown. “René…”

  “If she tries anything, kill Chase,” he ordered Komosa. The Nigerian gave Chase an expectant grin as he handed his flashlight to Nina.

  “Good luck,” Chase told her as she bent down and clambered through the hole.

  The low passage ran under the statue before opening out in the chamber behind it, the cogs and chains and counterweights that had driven Cerberus now still and silent. She ignored them, her flashlight beam falling upon another archway at the far end.

  Much larger than the previous exits, this one was far more ornate, decorated in silver and gold and precious stones.

  Nina walked to it, shining the light through the opening. More treasures glinted back at her.

  “I think this is it,” she called as she reached the opening—and stepped through.

  With that, Nina became the first person in thousands of years to enter the Tomb of Hercules.

  23

  Wow,” Nina whispered.

  The tomb was square, 150 feet to a side with a ceiling rising to form a flattened dome that topped out thirty feet above the center of the huge chamber. Four broad pillars around a central plinth supported it; sloping walls rose diagonally from the foot of each pillar up to the base of the dome at each corner, great stone wedges dividing the room.

  But the architecture wasn’t at the forefront of Nina’s mind. It was what lay around it, literally piled head-high against the tomb walls.

  Gold.

  And more besides—other precious metals gleamed as she panned her light around the chamber. Silver, platinum, even the reddish hue of orichalcum, the gold-copper alloy favored by the Atlanteans. Some was in the form of ingots, but much had been worked into what seemed to Nina like an almost infinite variety of treasures, large and small—statues, cups, shields, bracelets, crowns, plates, ceremonial pieces even she struggled to name…

  Among it all glittered precious stones of every color imaginable, scattered like snowflakes. While the tomb was smaller, the value of the treasures within outshone by far the Temple of Poseidon that Nina had discovered a year and a half earlier. She couldn’t begin to work out how much it would all be worth. Billions of dollars, easily.

  Footsteps echoed behind her. She turned to see Sophia and Corvus leading the group into the tomb, their expressions turning to utter astonishment as they took in the sight.

  “My God,” breathed Corvus, “it’s more than I ever imagined. Look at it!”

  Even Sophia, for once, seemed overawed. “Real treasure,” she said softly, moving for a closer look at a nearby golden pile. “Real wealth.”

  “Nina!” Chase pushed past Komosa and ran to Nina. She threw her arms around him. Chase returned the gesture, holding her tightly. Komosa regarded them coldly and looked to Sophia, but she was too engrossed by the riches of the tomb to care what her ex-husband was doing.

  “My God, oh my God!” said Nina. “Are you okay?”

  “Bit burned, but that doesn’t matter,” Chase told her. “Main thing is, you’re all right.”

  Still holding him, Nina took another look around the tomb’s interior as Corvus’s remaining men spread out, flashlight beams dancing over the golden hoard. Her eyes widened in amazement as still more treasures were revealed. “Jesus, this is incredible!” She released Chase and turned to take in the entire space, almost skipping with excitement. “My God, look at this! This … this practically rewrites ancient history! The Tomb of Hercules, almost completely intact. And look at all this treasure! This is probably the biggest find ever!”

  “You can’t take it with you,” Chase said, “but Herc had a bloody good try.”

  “He might not even have known about it. This is all tribute, gifts from a grateful people to honor their hero.” She raised her flashlight and led him to one of the ramplike sloping walls. Komosa followed a few steps behind, gun in hand. Running along the wall was an elaborate frieze made from thousands of small colored tiles, forming a series of pictures. “See, these are all scenes celebrating his life and his adventures.”

  Chase examined them. “So we’ve got Hercules killing some bloke, Hercules killing several blokes and a couple of dogs, Hercules in…an orgy.” He looked more closely and raised an eyebrow. “Kind of a gay orgy.”

  “Hercules had as many male lovers as female,” Nina pointed out. “And yes, he did kill an awful lot of people, often quite casually. He also played a major part in the sacking of Troy and the massacre of its inhabitants, and that was just one of his campaigns. One civilization’s legendary hero is another’s marauding psychopath.”

  “Funny how they didn’t show any of that in the Disney version, isn’t it?”

  “So where is Hercules himself?” Corvus asked, finally tearing his gaze away from the treasures around him to address Nina. “If this is his tomb, then where is he?”

  Nina pointed to the plinth between the four pillars. “There, would be my guess.”

  On the plinth was a golden sarcophagus; at its head a statue, again in gold, of a man.

  Hercules.

  The mythological hero in physical form, tall and muscular, head raised in triumph. In one hand he held a large club, and draped from his shoulders was a cloak. At his side was a quiver of arrows. All three golden accessories were inset with thousands of gemstones, on the club lined up to resemble grained wood, on the cloak more randomly like the rawness of animal hide, each arrowhead made from a single large gem cut to a sharp point.

  Nina also noticed that they were separate entities, removable from the statue itself …

  She looked up at the sloping wall. At its top was a dark alcove in the corner of the ceiling, an object lurking inside. The outer edges of the ramp were raised, as if to guide something down it.

  “Eddie, look up there,” she whispered, aiming the light upwards. The circle of light briefly passed over the alcove before moving on, Nina not wanting to draw attention to her discovery. Within it was a thick stone disc, easily weighing several tons, balanced on its edge.

  “Booby trap?” Chase whispered back. Nina nodded slightly, pretending to examine the gilded decorations on the ceiling while actually illuminating each of the ramps in turn. They all had discs poised at their tops.

  As Corvus walked towards the sarcophagus, Nina placed the final page of Hermocrates under the red plastic sheet and scribbled down the last letters that were revealed. Her eyes widened slightly as she read the words, then she whispered to Chase, “Get ready.”

  He nodded, taking in the positions of everyone else in the tomb.

  “Those are representations of Hercules’s cloak, arrows and club,” Nina said loudly when Corvus reached the plinth. Everyone turned to her as she walked towards him, Chase gradually falling behind as she continued her lecture. “As much as his physical strength, they were the symbols of his power. The cloak could fend off any blow, the arrows p
enetrate any hide or armor and the club crush any enemy. I’d imagine that of all the treasures in the tomb, those three have the highest individual monetary values in terms of the craftsmanship that went into them and the materials used. If you take their value in a historical context into account as well, each of them could be worth more than the Mona Lisa or the mask of Tutankhamen.” She stopped near Corvus, Chase now several feet behind and not far from Komosa. “Imagine holding something that valuable in your hand. It must be an incredible feeling.”

  The greed in Corvus’s eyes was plain. “It must,” he agreed. He climbed up onto the plinth and walked around the sarcophagus, gazing up into the face of the statue for a moment before reaching out to take one of the arrows—

  Sophia’s sharp command of “Stop!” and the click of her gun as she thumbed back the hammer and pressed it against the side of Nina’s head came simultaneously. Corvus froze.

  With her other hand, Sophia took Nina’s notebook. “Nice try,” Sophia told her coldly. “But just because I said ancient Greek wasn’t my speciality doesn’t mean that I didn’t pass it. I can translate the word ‘trap.’”

  Corvus flinched back as if he’d received an electric shock. “What?”

  Sophia stepped away from Nina, keeping the gun trained on her. “She’s absolutely right that those are the most valuable items in the entire tomb—which makes them the perfect final trap. No thief would be able to resist them … but taking them triggers the last booby trap and brings down the entire tomb! Look at the top of the ramps.” Flashlights snapped up to light the alcoves. “If those stones roll down, they’ll smash the support pillars and the roof will collapse.”

  Corvus wiped his brow. “My God! She would have killed us all!”

  “Oh, I think she was more hoping that we’d be distracted long enough for them to run for the exit. Look at how Eddie was trying to sidle close enough to Joe to take a swing at him.” Komosa looked at Chase, then whipped up his gun and jumped back with an almost outraged expression.

  Chase shrugged nonchalantly. “Ah well. Gave it our best shot.”

  “I think ‘shot’ is the right word,” said Corvus angrily. “Kill them!”

  His men raised their guns—

  “Oh really, René,” Sophia said with a mischievous smile, waving at the gunmen to stand down. They paused midmotion, weapons raised but not aimed. “Aren’t you at least going to tell them why you’ve gone to all this trouble to find the Tomb of Hercules? It would be terribly disappointing if they died thinking it was merely about money.”

  Corvus frowned. “I am not Dr. No or Blofeld, Sophia,” he said. “I am not going to waste time telling them my plans before I have them killed.”

  Sophia climbed onto the plinth and slunk seductively over to him, running her hands around his waist and placing her chin teasingly on his shoulder. “Oh come on. I know you’re dying to tell somebody. Go on, impress them with your vision of the new world order.” Her voice dropped to a breathy near-whisper. “I know it impressed me.”

  Chase made a gagging sound, but Corvus smiled. “Very well. But first, we should get things moving.” He looked down at one of his men at the foot of the plinth. “Have you got our precise location?”

  The man checked the screen of a tablet computer. “According to the inertial mapper, we’ve traveled one hundred and seventy-six meters west from the entrance.”

  Corvus looked surprised. “That would take us right under the other side of the hill!”

  “It’s not a hill,” Nina explained. “The tomb, the labyrinth, all the trials—the builders constructed them first, and then they buried them. The whole hill is man-made—that’s why it doesn’t fit the topography of the region.”

  Corvus looked up at the ceiling. “You mean everything above us is artificial?”

  “Yeah. As ancient feats of engineering go, it’s not that impressive—all they needed to do was pile up enough rubble. It wasn’t like building the Pyramids. But it’s what was beneath it that was important.”

  Corvus addressed the man with the computer again. “Contact the team outside, have them fly to directly above this location. How deep underground are we?”

  The man tapped a stylus on the screen, making calculations. “There should be no more than a meter between the ceiling of the tomb and the ground above. Perhaps even less.”

  “Easy to blast through, then. We can open a hole in the roof and use the winch platform to lift the gold to the surface.” The billionaire tipped back his head to examine the ceiling again. “Make the arrangements. We will transport as much as the helicopters can carry, then return with more heavy-lift aircraft for the rest.”

  “So, Auric, what do you want with the gold?” Chase taunted.

  Corvus apparently didn’t understand the Goldfinger reference, but still took up position at the edge of the plinth, staring down at Chase and Nina. Sophia stood behind his left shoulder. “Sophia was correct—I want to establish a new world order. One where men like myself, the elite of humanity, are able to create wealth and exercise our power without hindrance from small-minded bureaucrats and petty populist vote-grubbers. I am going to establish …” He paused, raising his voice grandly. “A new Atlantis.”

  Nina and Chase shared a look. “Been, seen, done,” said Nina, unimpressed.

  Corvus smirked. “This is not some insane plan to ethnically cleanse the world, Dr. Wilde. What use is a business empire when three-quarters of your potential customers and labor force are dead? No, my Atlantis will be something else. The new capital of the world.”

  “Sorry,” said Nina, shaking her head, “but New York’s not gonna give up the title without a fight.”

  “London,” Chase corrected her.

  “New York!”

  “Atlantis,” said Corvus, looking slightly irritated by their distraction, “will rule the world. An entirely new city, a home to the world’s wealthiest and most powerful people—subject to my personal invitation. A city from where their global empires can be run free from interference from governments, free of taxes, free to do business as business should be done.”

  “There’s nowhere on earth that’ll let you set up your own little free state on their territory,” Nina pointed out. “Or were you just planning to buy an entire country with all this?” She waved a hand at the treasures around them.

  “My Atlantis will be built where the name suggests,” said Corvus. “In the Atlantic. Or, more precisely, beneath it. The technology has already been proved with my home in the Bahamas, and with my underwater hotel in Dubai. It is merely a matter of scaling it up to create a city capable of supporting thousands of people. It will be the coming together of the most powerful group of men in human history.”

  “Oh, so you’re not Goldfinger,” said Chase. “You’re Stromberg.”

  “It won’t work,” Nina scoffed. “You seriously think the world’s governments are going to let their richest citizens swan off to some self-proclaimed new city-state so they can play Masters of the Universe without paying any taxes? The first visitor you’ll get will be the U.S. Navy, and your housewarming gift will be a ton of depth charges!”

  “The independence of Atlantis will be quickly granted by the United Nations,” Corvus said smugly. “I have an incentive. Yuen’s atomic bombs, which now belong to me. Nothing ensures international concessions, particularly from the United States, more quickly than a nuclear deterrent.”

  Chase grinned. “Except you’ve only got one bomb. I fucked up the factory in Switzerland.”

  “You destroyed the lasers, Chase. Not the factory. The lasers are just components, nothing more. They have already been replaced.”

  Chase’s face fell. “Oh. Buggeration and fuckery.”

  “So why would the world’s richest men need the treasure from the Tomb of Hercules?” Nina asked.

  “As a guarantee of financial independence,” explained Corvus. “The world’s major currencies are now backed by little more than government promises—the days when
every paper dollar issued by the U.S. government was matched by a dollar’s worth of gold are long gone. So not only is the entire global economy nothing more than a bubble supported by faith in those currencies, but governments can—and do—use their power over currency and the stock markets to attack corporations. If the Securities and Exchange Commission suspends a company’s stocks, then that company and its shareholders are wiped out in a moment by nothing more than loss of faith, billions of dollars reduced to zero.” He swept out his arms, taking in the unimaginable riches surrounding him. “But all of this … this will be the base for Atlantis’s currency. It will be backed up by physical wealth, by gold, which retains its value even if the world economy collapses.”

  Nina looked sickened. “So you find the greatest archaeological treasure in human history, and all you want it for is bullion?” She frowned. “That means you and your billionaire buddies could make yourselves even richer if you deliberately triggered an economic crash by selling all your stocks—the value of your physical assets would increase in relative terms as the markets fell. Then you could use those assets as collateral to buy up the fallen stock at a massively reduced price—it’d be the biggest bear market of all time!”

  Chase looked pained. “I have no idea what you just said, but it sounds bad.”

  “It is. It’s ‘the rich get richer and the poor get poorer’ taken to the extreme—the only people who wouldn’t be completely destroyed by the crash are Corvus and whoever else he invites to his little undersea kingdom.”

  “That will not happen,” said Corvus, shaking his head. “I am a businessman, after all. It is in the interests of myself and those I intend to invite to join me in my new Atlantis to see a healthy and growing world economy from which we can all profit. I would not do such a thing.”

  “But I would,” said Sophia from behind him. Surprised, Corvus looked around at her—as a gory bullet hole exploded in his chest.