The Cradle of Life (8 page)

The Orb.

“And?” he asked Sean.

“Chen Lo got the Orb, but M-I-Six is on to him.”

Reiss was stunned. “How…?”

He had just gone over this, in all possible permutations. There was no way for MI6 to have known about the Orb. Or Chen Lo.

“He doesn't know,” Sean said. “But rather than risk bringing the Orb here, he's waiting.”

Reiss shook his head. This was unacceptable.

“I just told a cabin full of people about Pandora. That clock cannot be reset. Tell Chen Lo to bring the Orb at once.”

“Are we sure that's wise?” Sean asked. “Let me find out more from him—what M-I-Six knows, check my sources, as well…”

“No,” Reiss interrupted. If he had to gather those five again, ask for more time to make good on his promise to them…he would never get the money he'd asked for. Besides, the Gulfstream was gone, taking off behind them even now. Not that he couldn't have told them to turn around, but…

No. He had set his plan in motion. He would see it completed.

“Have Chen Lo bring the Orb,” Reiss repeated. “Now.”

Sean nodded, and took out his satellite phone, dialing even as he walked toward a waiting car. Reiss followed, so preocuppied with the impossibility of MI6's knowledge that he accidentally dragged the cuff of his trousers against the side of the car as he climbed in.

Grease. That would stain.

Reiss frowned.

At that moment, he was not a happy man.

The funeral was to be in Merovigli—a week from today. Lara had already rescheduled her entire calendar so that she could attend. A single ceremony, for all three men.

She'd heard from Miss Stehlik this morning, the first time in years, asking for transport down to the island. Lara hadn't been able to face calling her back yet, risk a conversation that would certainly turn very emotional. She couldn't do emotional yet, not now. She had things to do. Revenge.

Hillary thwacked her on the arm.

“Pay attention,” he said.

It was midmorning. They were in Lara's study, at Croft Manor, drilling with kenzai staves—wooden sticks five feet long. Hillary was wearing a padded vest and trousers for his safety. Lara was in a long flowing skirt.

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Hillary asked. “Doctor Johnston said the only reason you're still alive is because you're in such good shape.”

“No comments about my shape, please.” Lara feinted to her left—Hillary went for it, and she thrust to the right, hard.

He took the blow square in the gut.

“Whoof,” he said, and stumbled backward.

Lara pressed the attack.

Hillary righted himself, looking a little green, and blocked her next thrust. He thwacked her again, hitting her left forearm. Right where she'd cut herself yesterday. The wound sang with fresh agony.

Lara smiled.

This was exactly what she needed: action. To be moving, to get her blood flowing again so that when she tracked down the men who'd killed the Petrakis—

She thrust forward again, propelling Hillary back through the study door and into the library—

She would be ready.

Lara pushed through the library doors. Hillary stood in the middle of the room, holding his stave defensively, waiting for her.

Bryce was sitting in the red leather chair, fussing with her digicam, his laptop open on the table next to him.

“Bryce. What have you got?” Lara asked.

He snorted in frustration. “Well. I haven't even finished loading the images from your camera yet.”

Lara pursed her lips in frustration. That wasn't what she wanted to hear.

She stepped forward and smacked Hillary good.

“Hey!” Hillary looked at Bryce, sensing the reason for Lara's attack. “Thanks.”

He glared at Lara, and raised his stave once more.

They started drilling again.

Lara had to give him credit—Hillary had been practicing. A few months back, when he'd first volunteered to help with her training, she'd thought the idea preposterous. Hillary's performance during those first sessions hadn't convinced her any differently.

Now, though…he'd improved tremendously. Enough so that she had to give him her full attention. Well, ninety percent of her attention anyway.

“Bryce,” she called out as Hillary danced around her. “What about references to an Orb? If we find out what it was, it might help us find who attacked me.”

“Shite,” Bryce mumbled, hunched over in his chair. “Damn camera.”

“I took the liberty of checking,” Hillary interrupted. “What historical inventories there are of the Luna Temple do not list any Orb.”

Lara frowned.

Hillary smacked her on the side—hard.

She looked at him and raised an eyebow.

He smiled back. “I believe I was fairly thorough in my examination.”

“Fairly thorough won't cut it,” Lara said, deciding to devote her full attention to him. She stepped forward, raising the stave in front of her.

“I want both of you to make a list of every Orb mentioned in Greek history.”

“Every one!?” That from Bryce, behind her.

“Every one,” Lara repeated.

“But,” Hillary began, feinting forward, “that's—”

Lara, seeing his weight remaining on his back foot, ignored the feint and stepped forward herself, through his defenses, and struck his stave hard.

“Liable,” Hillary continued, fending off her assault. “To—”

She whapped his right hip.

“Be—” He stepped back, and she brought her stave forward again, then jabbed out.

“Thousands!” he finished, stumbling backward to avoid the point of her stave.

She changed the forward motion to an upward one, sending his stave flying out of his hands. Hillary continued to move away, till his back was pressed up against a wall of books and he could move no farther.

“Then we'll read thousands.” Lara drove her sharpened stave just past Hillary's ear, into the spine of a volume whose title had caught her eye.
Greek History
by Biester and Conant.

She pulled the book off the shelf with her spear, and flipped it to Hillary.

“You can start with that one,” Lara said, lowering her stave. “I'll be in my office, making a call.”

On the way out of the library, she whapped Bryce across the back of the head.

“Ow,” he said. “What was that for?”

“Speed it up,” she told him. “You've got a lot of reading ahead of you.”

 

Lara wasn't able to make her call right away though. She had to wait almost an hour—time needed for the embassy not only to locate her party, but to set up a secure line. She had time to shower, change into her riding clothes, and sort through the day's correspondence before her phone rang softly.

“Hello?”

“Is this Lady Croft?” The voice was clipped and very upper-crust.

“Yes.”

“We have your call.” A moment's silence, then a click over the line, and then—

“Lara?”

“Kosa. My God, it's good to hear your voice.” Lara smiled, thinking of the man on the other end of the line, at the British Embassy in Nairobi. Kosa Maasai—one of the chieftains of that near-legendary African tribe, the Maasai. Tall, elegant, skin as black as night, and a sense of humor just as dark.

“And yours,” Kosa said. “I'm so sorry about the Petrakis.”

“Not as sorry as whoever did it is going to be. You received my fax?”

“I did, yes.”

Lara had woken early this morning, with the sudden knowledge of what it was that the petroglyphs in the Luna Temple had reminded her of. She'd had Bryce (who'd finally finished downloading the images from her digicam) print out the relevant shots, and faxed them off to the British Embassy, for Kosa's attention.

“I appreciate the look, Kosa. The drawings reminded me of work you showed me in Kenya.”

“The Gloman exhibit? Yes, they are reminiscent. And I am happy to help.” He chuckled. “Any excuse to give your diplomats a scare.”

She laughed, too—the first genuine laugh she'd had since what had happened in the temple. She could just picture Kosa, prowling the halls of the embassy, wearing traditional robes and headdress, the bureaucrats scurrying by him, trying not to look fearful, while keeping a respectful distance.

“I'm looking at the fax now, Lara,” Kosa said. “Page three.”

Lara picked up her copy, flipped to the third page. It was an image of the mosaic of Alexander's journey across Asia—specifically, the scene that had puzzled her, the one of Alexander's army, lying dead on the battlefield.

“What do you think?” she asked.

There was silence for a moment. As Lara waited, she opened a drawer in her desk, and pulled out her hunting rifle. To call it hers was perhaps inaccurate, it was a family heirloom, an Enfield full-bore, dating back to the mid-nineteenth century. Originally the property of Lord Winston Croft, her great-great-grandfather. Made an even more satisfying recoil than her Colts—when you fired the Enfield you knew whatever you shot was going down, and was staying down. Winston had used it to hunt boar—specially freighted in for the occasion on the grounds.

Lara was planning on using it for a little target practice of her own.

“I'm looking at the glyphs beneath the drawing,” Kosa finally said. “The symbols are a primitive version of Ol Maa. They read: ‘with life comes death.'”

“Ol Maa?” Lara thought for a second she'd misheard. “I'm sorry, did you say Ol Maa?”

“Yes.”

“That makes no sense.” Ol Maa was the Maasai language—scant wonder the drawings from the temple had reminded her of the ones Kosa had shown her in Kenya.

But why were there Ol Maa inscriptions in a temple built by Alexander the Great? Yes, his triumphal march through Egypt had included a brief visit to the African continent, but history recorded no contact between Alexander and the Maasai, or any other African peoples. He had stopped there for all of three months, at most, and then headed eastward, never to return.

“I can't explain it, either,” Kosa replied. “I can only give you the translation. Now. Turn to the next page of the fax.”

She did. It was an image taken while she was suspended high above the temple floor, trying to get at the Orb.

“The figure on the floor is a shadow guardian. A mythical creature brought to earth to protect the treasures of the gods.”

“This is from Maasai mythology?”

“Maasai, Chagga, Hadzabe—all tribes in this part of the world have legends pertaining to the shadow guardians.”

“What are they guardians of?” Lara asked, turning the Enfield in her hand while she did so. The barrel shone, and the stock had been recently oiled, as well—Hillary had obviously been taking care of it.

“I don't know. I'm sorry, that's all I can tell you.”

She sighed. “Well. It's somewhere to start. Thank you, Kosa. Try not to scare anyone on the way out.”

“I'll do my best, Lara.”

He hung up.

Lara stood there a moment, phone in hand, frowning.

Ol Maa? How could that be? What did the Maasai have to do with Alexander the Great? Who were the shadow guardians? And the Orb—where did that fit in?

Lara glanced down at the desk, at an image of the Orb Bryce had left lying there for her. Staring up at her like a great shining eye—

She dropped the rifle to the floor with a clatter.

An eye. That was it.

The
mati.

“Hillary!” she called, heading for the library.

 

She found the volume in short order. Huge, massive pages coming out of the binding, she lifted it carefully from the shelf and set it down on the table.

“
Apocrypha of the Hellenic Age
,” Hillary read off the spine. “I've been through this, you know. There's no mention of an Orb.”

“It's as I said,” Lara told him, as she began flipping pages. “The reference is not to the Orb at all. It's my fault for not seeing the resemblance sooner.”

Hillary held up the image of the Orb, and turned it sideways.

“An eye? I don't see it at all,” he announced.

“You have no imagination,” Lara said. “Ah. Here we are.”

She'd come to the section on Alexander the Great, and now began scanning the text, translating from the Greek as she read. Assembled in the early fourth century, the book was a collection of stories and myths associated with Alexander, offered by various writers as proof of his divinity. Like the tale of the two snakes who had magically appeared to lead him and his army safely through the Sahara to the oasis at Siwa. The Gordian knot. His victory over the Persians.

The
mati.

Lara cleared her throat, and read out loud.

“It was at this time that word reached Antipater of Alexander's decision to turn for home. The messenger who brought word of this also brought a leather pouch he had taken directly from the king's hand, and borne in secret across the continent. Alexander had commanded him to give this pouch only into the hands of Antipater, and failing that, to see it destroyed.”

“Within this pouch,” she continued, “Alexander had placed the key to a terrible secret. He called this key the
mati,
and commanded Antipater to hide it far from the sight of men, forbidding anyone to look upon it. For according to the king—”

She stopped reading.

“What?” Hillary leaned over her shoulder. “What does it say?”

Lara paused a moment before answering.

“Some things are not meant to be found.”

Alexander's words, now nearly two millenia old, were an exact echo of Gus's last words to her.

The resonance made her uncomfortable.

She closed the book.

“The literal translation of
mati
is eye. It, and the Orb, are one and the same.”

Hillary nodded.

“So the Orb is the key to some terrible secret?”