The Cradle of Life (3 page)

Lara hadn't spoken a word to her guardian for a week.

It wasn't that long afterward that they'd found themselves on the road to Naples, and suddenly, there was Pompeii—Pompeii, for God's sake, she didn't need her father to tell her stories to know about Pompeii—though she did have to refresh Miss Stehlik's memory about the town in order to get her to pull off the road for even an hour so Lara could run through the site, which had resulted in a temporary truce between the two of them…

Until they were on the road to Athens, heading south from Thessaloniki, and drove right past Philip II's tomb—Philip of Macedon, Alexander the Great's father, inventor of the phalanx, the cavalry formation with which his son conquered the world. Without Philip, Lara's own father had been fond of saying, there would have been no Alexander.

“Daddy surely would have wanted me to see this, Miss Stehlik,” Lara had pleaded—all to no avail, no chinking her guardian's armor on this one because they were on a tight schedule, on the clock. So she never got to see Philip's tomb—not that summer, at least.

Though she soon forgot about that disappointment, because a few hours later they were in Athens, and that was the worst of all. They were scheduled to lay over in the city for only two days—and she spent the better part of the first of those trapped in a hotel ballroom, mingling with her “peers” as they listened to speaker after speaker drone on about the benefits staging the Olympics would bring to Greece. Dinner turned out to be on the agenda, as well, so by the time Lara got back to her hotel it was nine
P
.
M
., and there was no time to do anything, Miss Stehlik told her, except get ready for bed and prepare for her busy day the next morning.

Lara said good night, locked her door, and raced to the hotel window.

She was three stories up, there was a tile roof just beneath her, pitch not steep at all, and a drainpipe that looked sturdy enough leading down to the ground.

Lara was going to the Acropolis, she was going to the Parthenon, she was going to the Piraeus, and any other sight that struck her fancy once she was out and about in Athens, come hell or high water.

She had just changed out of her nightgown into black jeans and a T-shirt when someone knocked on the door. Miss Stehlik, as it turned out, who announced that they had a visitor, an old friend of her father's who wanted to see Lara “all grown up.”

“Just for a moment, of course,” Miss Stehlik had said, an odd lilt in her voice, “because you need your rest,” and then the door had swung open, and Gus Petraki walked in.

He'd stopped dead in his tracks when he saw her, and laughed out loud.

Lara looked to Miss Stehlik, trying to understand his reaction, and was surprised to see her smiling, as well. Odd behavior from her guardian.

“A perfect combination of your parents,” he said, smiling. “You don't remember me, do you?”

“No.” Lara shook her head, and to her surprise found she was smiling, as well. She didn't remember him, but she liked him instantly, this smiling stranger with the full head of dark, dark hair, the olive skin, and the infectious laugh.

“I'm Gus Petraki,” he said. He held out his hand, and the two shook. “Last time I saw you, you were two months old, and glued to your mother's breast.”

Lara flushed crimson. Few adults in the circles she traveled in used the word
breast
. She expected Miss Stehlik to remark on this, as well. But instead her guardian merely giggled. More odd behavior.

Lara ignored it, and focused her attention on Gus again.

“You knew my mother?” she asked.

He nodded. “And your father, as well. You stayed in my house for a month, the two of you, while your father and I worked at Akrotiri with Professor Marinotos.”

“Akrotiri?” Lara asked, unable to keep the excitement out of her voice. “You were at Akrotiri?”

Yes, Gus had replied, and then Lara couldn't stop the questions, about Akrotiri, about her parents, and once she learned that Gus had worked with her father on several other occasions, about every moment the two of them had spent together. They'd talked for hours that night, about all of it, and Lara went to sleep no longer angry over what she was missing, but excited about what she'd learned.

The next morning, things got even better. Somehow Gus had talked Miss Stehlik into canceling their plans for the week, and visiting his home on Santorini instead. It was another day of sharing memories, of good food and good times for both Lara and her guardian (it took Lara until the following winter to realize the obvious, that Miss Stehlik and the recently divorced Gus had been having a torrid affair that entire summer, one that lasted for several years afterward). Those good times continued for several weeks thereafter, as the two of them stayed the remainder of the summer season on Santorini with Gus and his young sons, Jimmy and Nicholas, eight and nine at the time. At first the two boys had been a constant nuisance, harassing Lara endlessly. They were the younger brothers she'd never had, constantly in her face with requests to take them here, take them there, do this, do that, and every time she'd complain to Gus about his sons, he would smile and ruffle their hair and simply shrug at Lara, as if to say “boys will be boys.”

She smiled, thinking about Gus then, and realized that he had been the spitting image of his sons.

Now the thick black hair she recalled was gone, and he was—well, to put it charitably, thicker—and nowhere near as imposing a figure. He looked tired, looked—as he'd put it in their conversation last night—ready to retire to a little island somewhere, and hand the business over to the boys.

Well. If she was right about what was down there, he'd definitely be able to do that. Maybe even buy an island all of his own.

She followed him now to the back of the boat, where there was a table set up. The four of them—her, Gus, the two boys—gathered around it.

“So fill me in,” Lara said.

“They've brought up two statues,” Gus said. He pointed at one of the charts. “Found here, and here. That's about all we know that you don't.”

“Mmm,” Lara said. “Did you get a look at them? The statues?”

The three Petrakis exchanged glances, shook their heads.

“No, not really,” Gus said.

“What does it matter what they found?” Nicholas interrupted. “They don't have sleds. We have the sleds. We can cover more ground, we should get down there, we should—”

“You should know what it is that we're chasing,” Lara said.

Gus nodded. “All right, Lara—tell us. What's all this fuss about? What do they think is down there?”

In answer, she reached down into her pack and pulled out a stack of paper. On top were copies of the images Bryce had shown her yesterday, pictures of the wooden vessel that had bobbed to the surface immediately after the quake. The eight-pointed star, the image of Alexander in the moon…she dropped the entire stack of paper on the table in front of them. Gus and the boys all leaned in close to get a good look.

The elder Petraki was the first to speak.

“The eight-pointed star. Alexander.” Gus smiled, and clapped his hands together. “What is it, you think? A shipwreck? Something from one of the garrison towns?” He looked around the table, at Lara and his sons. “This could be big. We should—”

“Gus.” Lara shook her head. “You're missing it.”

“What?”

“Look.” She jabbed a finger at the image again.

“The moon.” He frowned. “I see it, so what does the moon—”

Abruptly, he stopped talking and leaned forward again.

“The moon,” he repeated. Lara saw his hands tighten, grip the edge of the table until the veins on the back of them stood out. “Lara, is it…”

She nodded. “The Luna Temple.”

“The Luna Temple?” he whispered.

“I think so, yes.”

Nicholas and Jimmy looked at her, then their father, and then finally at each other. Both were frowning.

Lara realized they had no idea what she was talking about.

Gus looked at them and realized the same thing. He rolled his eyes.

“My sons, if it's not on TV, forget it!”

Lara smiled.

“The Luna Temple was built by Alexander the Great.”

“Who was Greek, in case you don't know!”

Now it was Jimmy's turn to roll his eyes. “We know who Alexander the Great was, Papa.”

“You know what he did, then,” Lara continued. “Conquered the known world, at the age of thirty. Europe, Persia, India…”

She pulled another piece of paper from the bottom of the stack, and laid it on top so all could see. It was a map—showing Greece, and Macedonia, Cappadocea, and Armenia, Northern Africa and the Middle East, stretching out into what was now Afghanistan, and into the Hindu Kush. Athens, and Gaza. Babylon, and Persepolis. Damascus, and Nicea.

She pointed from one edge of the paper to the other.

“This is his empire, at its height. He collected treasures from all over the world. He stored them in two places. The majority went here, to his library at Alexandria—” she pointed to the Northern Coast of Africa—“which the Romans torched in an act of historical stupidity. But his most prized possessions went here…”

She set aside the map, pulled out another set of images. These were sketches of a massive temple, typical Greek construction, columns on either side, and at the center, a statue. This statue, however, was not of Zeus, or Herakles, or Apollo, or any of the other Greek gods, but of Alexander himself, seated on a throne. Presumptuous, one might say.

Or given the man's accomplishments, perhaps not.

“This is the Luna Temple. By law, no one was allowed to record its location. Then, in 350
B
.
C
. it was—”

“Swallowed by the sea,” Gus put in.

Lara nodded. “Destroyed by a volcanic eruption. Lost forever. Until yesterday.” She looked around the table, making eye contact with first Nicholas, then Jimmy. “If the temple contains even half of what was rumored to be in it—if even half of that temple is intact—this will be the greatest find since Tutankhamen.”

The brothers exchanged a look.

“So what are we waiting for now?” Nicholas asked. “Let's get down there.”

“Yes—we're already way behind,” Jimmy chimed in. He reached underneath the table, and pulled out a set of nautical charts, laid them over the temple drawings. “All morning, the others are heading here, along this shelf—going almost due west.”

Lara looked at the charts. Jimmy had penciled in the exact locations where the other boats had stopped, and the length of time they'd spent there.

“Right here,” he said, pointing to two Xs on the chart, “these are the places where they found the statues.”

“They're following the currents,” Lara said.

Jimmy nodded. “Of course.”

Lara smiled. “No they're not.”

All three of the Petrakis looked at her quizzically.

Lara pulled out a photograph from the stack on the table. It was a satellite image of the Santorini group, the one she'd waited for Bryce to get for her from his friend in Jiquan this morning.

“This is why I was late,” she said, showing them the image. “It's a geological taken two hours after the quake. The epicenter was here, five miles northeast of us. Look at the currents along the shelf now.”

She drew a finger across a reddish swirl that went from the upper left-hand corner of the photo to the lower right.

Nicholas was the first to see it.

“They've shifted.”

“That's right,” Lara said. “I don't know how long it will last, but for right now, the currents are moving north—not west.”

“So…” Jimmy looked from Lara's photo to his charts. “So while they're all diving there, the ruins will actually be—”

Lara put her forefinger down on the other side of Therasia—out in the open Aegean.

“Oh boy,” Jimmy said. “They're nowhere near it.”

“But we will be,” Lara said.

Nicholas and Jimmy looked at each other, and grinned.

“I'll do the tanks,” Jimmy said.

Nicholas nodded. “I'll do the sleds.”

They took off like a shot.

Gus smiled, watching them go. “That is the fastest I've ever seen them move.”

“I'm moving, too.” She picked up her backpack, hefted it over her shoulder. “Where can I change?”

“Any cabin you want,” Gus said. He picked up the charts, and the satellite image. “I'll go plot our course.”

 

Twenty minutes later, the
Konstantinos
was anchored off the southern coast of Therasia, and Lara was standing on the deck in her wet suit, frowning. She'd used the time not only to change and get her gear unpacked, but to call Hillary at the manor. No one had been there to answer the phone—which was strange. The way Hillary had been fussing over her last night when she was getting ready to leave, the way he'd insisted on her taking full GPS equipment, so they could find her if there was any trouble…