Popadopoulos coughed slightly. Nina looked up at him, belatedly becoming aware that she was grinning like a fool. “You are impressed, Dr. Wilde?”

“Oh, God, yes!” she replied, nodding. For a moment, Popadopoulos looked amused rather than irate. “This is incredible! You’ve actually had these for over two thousand years?”

“In different locations, preserved in different ways, but yes. This book was bound in the nineteenth century. You are the first person from outside the Brotherhood ever to see it.”

“I’m honored,” she said, meaning it. Popadopoulos nodded.

“But,” he said, “I still do not believe you will find anything in person that you could not have got from photographs, no, no. There is nothing more to discover.”

Nina turned the page, finding with surprise that the back of the parchment was blank. “I disagree-I’ve already discovered something I didn’t know.” She tapped the glass. “The photos never suggested that only one side of the page had been written on. Parchment was expensive-it’s kind of unusual not to use both sides, don’t you think?”

“Unusual, yes, but not unknown,” Popadopoulos said dismissively. “I assure you, you will find nothing else.”

Nina gave him a crooked grin. “I like a challenge. Okay-let’s get started.”

But three hours later, reluctant as she was to admit it, Popadopoulos was right. Having already read the text from photographs and in translations many times over the past months, Nina was able to work through it quickly, turning each heavy page with the hope of discovering something new… and always being disappointed.

There were no hidden clues to the location of the Tomb of Hercules, no additional paragraphs completing the tale. Plenty about Atlantis, yes, and about the wars between the Atlanteans and the ancient Greeks, a splendid treasure trove of knowledge for historians… but nothing new about her current obsession.

“Dammit,” she muttered, defeated.

Popadopoulos sounded almost sympathetic. “As I told you, Dr. Wilde, there is nothing. Either the text was never fully transcribed, or Plato had no more knowledge of the Tomb.”

“He wouldn’t have brought it up in the first place if he didn’t mean to discuss it,” Nina objected. “Critias says he’ll tell Hermocrates and the others where it is, how he was told its location by Solon, who got it from the records of the Egyptian priests. Just like Atlantis. There are phrases in the text that seem to be clues, like this one-’For even a man who cannot see may know the path when he turns his empty face to the warmth of the sun.’ It doesn’t quite fit in with the rest of the dialogue around it.” She turned back through the pages, their frames clanking against each other. “There has to be something more.”

Popadopoulos stood. “It will have to wait. Now would be a good time to take a break, no?”

“I don’t need a break,” said Nina impatiently.

“But I do! I am an old man, and I had a very large meal last night.” He clucked disapprovingly. “American food, such huge portions. No wonder you are all so fat.”

“Wait, I know I agreed that I could only see it for a limited time,” protested Nina, ignoring the crack at her countrymen, “but now you’re going to take it away while you go to the john?” An idea came to her.

“Look, handcuff it to me if you’re worried. I can hardly just stroll out with it without anyone noticing, especially with a guy right outside the door. It must weigh twenty pounds, at least! And I’m not going to damage it-I want to preserve it every bit as much as you do.”

Popadopoulos narrowed his eyes behind his glasses, considering it. “I… suppose that could be done. But…” He unlocked the cuff, then looped the chain around one leg of the heavy table, making a steel knot.

“Are you serious?” Nina asked.

“I will not be gone long, perhaps twenty minutes.”

“Wow, I guess you really did have a big meal.”

He scowled. “This is my condition, Dr. Wilde. Either accept it, or I will take the text away with me.”

Nina relented. It was only for a short while, after all… “Oh…okay.” Popadopoulos held up the cuff. “But on my left hand. I want to be able to take notes.” She pulled her chair to the end of the table.

The handcuff closed around her wrist, the steel teeth clicking ominously. Nina felt a chill. The last time she’d been handcuffed, she’d been a prisoner, on her way to be executed. She raised her arm. With the chain wound around the table’s thick leg, it only had a few inches of movement.

“I will return soon,” Popadopoulos assured her as he went to the door.

She jangled the chain. “Well, I’m not going anywhere.”

The member of the Brotherhood keeping watch in the lobby looked up as a stranger entered. Instantly alert, he surreptitiously brought his hand closer to his concealed gun. “Can I help you?”

The unexpected visitor appeared to be Chinese, a gray-haired, bull-shouldered man in his fifties with a long ponytail swinging behind him. He walked with a black cane, tapping the metal tip on the tiles. “I hope so,” he said in a throaty voice as he stopped, both hands resting on the cane. “My name is Fang. I’m looking for the offices of Curtis and Tom?”

The guard frowned. That was one of the Brotherhood’s shell companies, ostensibly headquartered in the building, but as far as he knew the law firm never did any actual business. “This is the right place,” he began, “but-”

Fang’s right hand flashed upwards with lightning speed, a thin line of silver trailing it. The guard shuddered, then collapsed to his knees, his clothes sliced cleanly open from crotch to neck-as were the skin and organs beneath. Blood and entrails gushed from the wound.

In a single smooth movement, Fang returned his blade to its sheath inside the cane, the sword making a metallic ringing sound as pure as a musical note. “Thank you,” he said to the dying guard. He took a gun from inside his long black coat, a compact Heckler & Koch MP-7 machine pistol with a fat silencer attached to the barrel. Three more men entered, all Chinese, drawing identical weapons.

“Find her,” Fang ordered, heading for the stairs.

Nina was already regretting her decision. Every time she tried to turn a page of the ancient text, she instinctively reached out with her left hand-only to have it jerked to a stop by the chain. She wondered about lifting the desk to pull the chain out from under the leg, but after an experimental shove decided against it. The table was every bit as heavy as it looked.

Chase would have been able to lift it easily, she thought-and her anger at him, forgotten in her concentration upon the Hermocrates text, flooded back. She still couldn’t believe what he’d done. Storming out was one thing, but storming out to China…

She hadn’t believed a word of his story, but when she’d called Amoros to demand answers he’d told her the same thing-it was an IHA security issue. She didn’t need to know.

Which, of course, had only made her angrier.

Fuming, she rapped her manicured fingernails on the desk, now unable to focus on the text-or anything except the idea of strangling Chase when he finally returned.

A bell suddenly rang, making her jump.

Was it a fire alarm? Worried, she made another attempt to lift the desk. She managed to slide it a little across the floor, but actually raising the unyielding leg high enough to pull the chain free proved more difficult. “Hey! Rocky! I could use some help here!”

No reply. But she heard shouting elsewhere in the building. She pulled at the chain again. Maybe if she put the book on the floor to give herself more slack-

A noise, closer than the shout. She froze.

It sounded familiar. Frighteningly familiar. Like a bullet smashing into a wall.

But it couldn’t be! There had been no gunshots…

Another shout from nearby. Only it wasn’t a shout, it was a scream-cut off abruptly by more of the flat cracks of bullets against wood and stone.