Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth (21 page)

“Yeah,” Drake said, shrugging, the beam of his flashlight bouncing on the wall. “Akrotiri.”

“Which was a Minoan settlement,” Welch said. “One that many modern scholars believe once went under a different name.”

Drake heard the strange rustling again but barely noticed. He stared at Welch and Sully and grinned.

“You can’t be serious.”

“It all fits, Nate,” Sully said.

Jada punched Drake in the arm to get his attention. When he shot her an angry look, she hit him again.

“Hit
him
!” Drake said, pointing at Sully.

“Tell me!” she demanded.

Drake gestured at the other two men. “These two—they think this language was lost because all of the people who spoke it were killed in that volcanic eruption. They think the third labyrinth was in Akrotiri, on Thera.”

“So?” Jada asked.

Drake smiled. “They’re talking about
Atlantis.
”

She hit him a third time. “I’m serious. Tell me.”

“Ow!” Drake shouted. “I just did.”

Jada turned to Sully. “Tell me he’s kidding.”

“You didn’t hear the stories about the dig at Akrotiri when you went to Santorini?” Sully asked.

“I went shopping and to the beach. I flirted with guys and drank too much ouzo and rode bicycles with my friends,” she said. “We didn’t have the kind of fun time I seem to have with you, Uncle Vic.”

“Sarcasm? Now?” Drake asked.

“Seems like it’s always time for sarcasm with you,” she said.

“Okay. That’s mostly true,” he replied. “But a lot of people think Akrotiri is what remains of Atlantis—that Atlantis was a branch of Minoan culture—the perfection of it, really. And whether that’s true or not, if the third labyrinth was on Thera, the only chance we have of finding any trace of it or any records of it would be in Akrotiri.”

Welch gazed at the jar, studying it closely. He spoke without looking up.

“It can’t be Akrotiri. They’ve been excavating there since the sixties and have they found any hint of a labyrinth? I don’t think so. If there’s any trace of it left, it has to be somewhere else on the caldera.”

The caldera—the cauldron—was how the locals referred to the part of the deep circle of water ringed by the islands of Thera.

“So we’re going to Santorini,” Sully said, wearing a dubious expression, “and we’re going to search every crevice in each of those islands for the ruins of a labyrinth that no one—in thousands of years—has stumbled across before?”

Jada gave a small shrug, refusing to be defeated. “No one’s ever known what they were looking for.”

But Drake had been watching Welch and could see the man’s lips moving while he studied the jar.

“You’re reading,” Drake said.

Welch nodded, a smile stealing across his face. “Yeah.” He gestured in the direction of the other chambers. “The room dedicated to Dionysus—the writing in there is Linear B, an ancient syllabic script used primarily by the Mycenaean Greeks. Now that I’ve had a minute to look at this, it’s really not very different. Linear B-2, let’s call it.”

“So?” Sully asked. “You got a point?”

“Oh, yes,” Welch said happily. He lifted the jar as if it were a trophy. “Here’s your link. I should’ve thought of this immediately, but I’m a little overwhelmed today, y’ know?”

Jada smiled at him. “We know.”

Welch looked grateful. “Anyway, there were texts found in the excavation of the temple at Knossos, written in Linear B, that decreed that all the gods were secondary to something called
qe-ra-si-ja
. Scholars have argued whether or not this was a god or a king or a kingdom. One school of thought translates
qe-ra-si-ja
as Therasia, a settlement on the precataclysm island of Thera.”

The archaeologist looked up, inspired. “But Therasia still exists. It’s small, and the side facing the caldera is all cliffs. Only a few hundred people live there.”

Drake felt an old, familiar excitement building. Whatever perils they had faced, whatever tragedies had led them here, they were on the trail of a secret.

“So we’re headed to Therasia,” he said.

“I’m coming with you,” Welch said quickly. “After Melissa’s done telling Hilary what went on today, I’ll be fired anyway.”

“First we have to get out of here without Henriksen’s goons killing us,” Sully said.

Jada scoffed. “He’s not going to shoot you with the expedition staff and workers around as witnesses. Rich people can get away with almost anything, pay off anyone, but it’d be pretty damn hard to cover up killing the entire crew up there.”

“I hope you’re right,” Sully said. “Still, we need to go.”

Welch held the jar he’d taken from the shelf as he stood. “All right. But I’m taking this with us. I want to have a closer look, and if we don’t have time now—”

“Where’s the gold?” Drake asked suddenly.

They all looked at him.

“The gold,” Drake went on. “Midas or Minos or whoever was supposed to be an alchemist, right? Daedalus paid the workers in gold. The cult of Sobek put gold crests on crocodiles.”

“We found some of those already,” Welch said.

“Yeah, okay,” Drake replied. “But if the mistress took the offering of honey from the worshippers and fed it to the Minotaur and the Minotaur was here to protect the gold, then where is the gold?”

“Gone, apparently,” Welch said thoughtfully.

“From here,” Jada said. “But if Daedalus and his people moved the gold from here—maybe from all three of these chambers—the logical place for them to have moved it is to one of the other labyrinths. Maybe they moved it around to keep it safe. It could have been on Thera, maybe destroyed in the eruption.”

Drake nodded. “Maybe. Or maybe it’s in the fourth labyrinth.”

“Look around you,” Welch said, gesturing at the walls and the altar. “Do you see any reference to a fourth?”

“I can’t read this,” Drake replied. “And no one alive is exactly fluent in ancient Atlantean.”

“I told you, it’s a variation on Linear B,” Welch said. “I could muddle my way through a basic translation, but so far I haven’t seen any indication of a fourth labyrinth. And the three-labyrinth symbol is everywhere.”

“So the fourth one came later,” Drake said. “Companies change their logos all the time. Daedalus didn’t get a chance to do the rebranding he needed down here before he died. The point is, Jada’s father thought there was a fourth one, and somebody killed him because he was investigating the possibility. That’s evidence right there, as far as I’m concerned.”

Welch cradled the jar against his chest, looking like he was in the mood to argue. Not too bright, Drake thought, considering how urgent it was that they get out of there.

When Sully drew his gun, whatever Welch had been about to say was forgotten.

“Nate. Did you say you heard something?” Sully asked, the question almost a snarl around the cigar clamped in his teeth.

Drake reached for his gun, turning to face the entrance to the Thera worship chamber. “I did, yeah.”

Both weapons were trained on the doorway. Drake narrowed his eyes and peered at the darkness out in the antechamber. Jada looked at them in confusion and then reluctantly pulled out her pistol. Welch wore a worried expression but didn’t ask them about the guns, smart enough not to want to tip off whoever might be out there listening to their conversation. Drake figured if it was Henriksen or the dig director, Hilary Russo, they would have been interrupted already.

Drake padded quietly toward the door, gun at the ready. Sully used his flashlight to wave Welch back. The archaeologist shuffled backward past the altar, looking faintly ridiculous with his unruly hair and glasses.

Drake wondered if he held the vase because of its value or for comfort, the way a toddler clutches a stuffed animal.

That rustle of cloth came again. Drake frowned, all his attention on the open doorway now. He and Sully moved in, one on either side of the three stairs that led up into the darkened antechamber. They had guns in one hand and flashlights in the other, trying to figure out if there was anything for them to shoot at or if they had been spooked by nothing. They kept their flashlights aimed away from the opening, hoping that whoever lurked out there would show themselves. Jada hung back, just in front of the altar, her gun and flashlight both pointed at the floor.

Drake glanced at her, on the verge of issuing a snarky remark about how useless it would be to shoot a bullet into the floor. But when he glanced back at the doorway, he caught the shadows moving, one separating from the others, and whipped his flashlight beam up to spotlight the open doorway.

Something dashed by. Someone. No question now. They weren’t alone.

“Sully,” Drake said.

“Yeah.”

More motion, deeper into the antechamber, shadows within shadows. Drake whipped his flashlight beam up, illuminating the man dashing across the opening so quietly that he might have been a ghost. Only he
wasn’t
a ghost; they had seen him before. He was one of the killers who had stopped Jada from being abducted and killed by the hit squad Henriksen had sent to do it. Hooded and veiled, the man froze, glancing into the worship chamber at them.

They told us to go home, Drake had time to think.

The assassin narrowed his eyes and then leaped into the room, drawing a short curved blade as he raced at Sully. Drake and Sully fired at the same time. Though Drake’s bullet missed, Sully’s shot took the assassin in the chest, and he staggered backward, wheeling toward the steps. For a second, Drake thought he would run out of there as fast as he’d jumped in, but then the wounded, bleeding man spun and lifted his blade, about to hurl it at Drake.

Jada shot the assassin twice, once in the thigh and once in the abdomen. The blade whickered out of his hand with the speed of a boomerang, but she’d ruined his aim and the curved dagger clanged off the altar inches from her. He fell on his back, rolled, and began to drag himself out of the worship chamber.

“Don’t let him get out!” Sully barked.

“
Him?
I’m worried about us getting out,” Drake said.

“Where did he come from?” Jada asked.

Other rustling noises came from the anteroom, and Drake swore loudly, pressing himself against the wall beside the stairs.

“There are others!” he said. “
Of course
there are others!” It was their luck.

A scraping noise came from behind him. For a second he thought Jada was the cause, but then his mind sorted out the distance and the weight of stone on stone and realized the sound came from farther back. He glanced over his shoulder and saw that Welch’s flashlight had died. In the gloom at the back of the chamber he saw shadows that did not belong, then heard the scuffle of a struggle. He swung his flashlight beam over in time to see another of the hooded assassins dragging Ian Welch through the partially open stone door at the rear of the room.

The archaeologist’s hands twitched and dropped the jar, which shattered on impact.

“Welch!” Drake shouted, turning to Sully. “They’re getting in through the other door!”

Jada rushed toward the stone door, beating Drake there. He wanted to tell her to back off, afraid they’d drag her in as well, but she wouldn’t have listened and he didn’t have time to get the words out before she was already there. She aimed her flashlight and gun together, not firing for fear of hitting Welch, and started to take a step through the gap in the door.

“Dr. Welch!” Jada called. “Ian!”

A hooded figure rushed from the darkness and grappled with her, pushing her gun away, trying to twist it from her grasp. Drake shot him in the shoulder. The attacker spun, blood spraying from the wound, and staggered back against the wall. In the shadows where Welch had vanished, others were moving. Welch was gone—maybe dead—and they had to get the hell out of the labyrinth before they joined him.

“Come on!” Drake shouted. “Jada, let’s go!”

They bolted, racing around the altar on either side and then toward Sully and the three steps to the exit together. Sully had his back to the wall on the left, but when he saw them coming, he led the charge, rushing up the stairs into the antechamber.

Drake heard the first shot but didn’t see it. Then he and Jada were out of the Thera worship chamber. The assassin they’d shot lay on the floor of the anteroom, bleeding but alive, but he was the least of their concerns. Two others were in the anteroom, and Drake saw motion off to his right. Several other hooded men were emerging from the darkness of the other doors.

“Look, if you want us to go home that bad, we’ll go home!” he shouted, swinging his aim over to cover them.

Loud footfalls came echoing along the tunnel through which Drake and his companions had arrived. A glance showed flashlight beams bouncing off the walls. They were about to have even more company.

A woman’s voice shouted in Italian and then in English.

“Who’s there? Ian, what the hell is going on down here?” she called angrily.

Hilary Russo, Drake thought. But her deputy, Welch, wasn’t going to answer. He was a captive of those hooded men or had become just another part of the labyrinth’s history, another thing that needed to be excavated from this place.

There were a lot of voices and a lot of footfalls, and Drake had the idea that at least a dozen people were headed their way. Maybe that was more people than the assassins were ready to kill at the moment or more people than they could risk letting live after having seen them down there in the secret corridors under the labyrinth. Drake and Sully and Jada weren’t even supposed to be there. Who would believe them?

One of the hooded men Sully and Jada were aiming at lunged, and Sully shot him.

“Go!” Sully shouted, and started to run.

Trust saved Drake. He couldn’t see if the way was open, couldn’t tell if Sully had done any real damage to the guy he’d shot or if they had the second or two they needed to get clear, but he and Sully had been friends since Drake was a kid. They might not have always gotten along and sometimes they frustrated the hell out of each other, but Sully had been his mentor for almost twenty years. In a moment like this, they had to trust each other or they’d both have been killed years ago.