“Leaving you free to look for the Tomb of Hercules without anyone knowing, I suppose.”

Sophia raised a patronizing eyebrow. “Well done, Eddie. I honestly wasn’t sure if you’d figure it out.”

“I’ve had all day to think about it.”

“Yes, I’m sorry about that. The owner of this château-well, co-owner now, I suppose,” she gave him a sly smile, “couldn’t get here immediately, and then we had something to take care of during the day. But now you have our undivided attention.” She stepped back through the door, Komosa gesturing with his gun for Chase to follow. He saw for the first time that the hulking man was bare-chested beneath his waistcoat, more lines of piercings running down his chest into the waistband of his leather jeans, a huge silver ring through each of his nipples. “Come along.”

“Do they go all the way down, Sophia?” Chase asked, pointing a thumb at the glinting studs. “Why are you asking me?”

“I just get the feeling you know from personal experience.”

Sophia merely smirked suggestively and walked away. Komosa raised his gun towards Chase’s face as he passed. “Show her ladyship the respect she deserves, hey?”

“I was,” Chase said, grinning coldly.

Komosa smacked him on the side of his skull with the butt of his pistol. Chase staggered, clutching his head. “Now, boys,” Sophia called back to them, “let’s not have any unpleasantness on this special day, shall we?”

Chase glared at Komosa, jabbing a finger at the ring piercing his left nipple. “When you least expect it, mate, I’m going to rip that thing right off and pull your fucking heart out with it.” The Nigerian just gave him a sarcastic smile and followed him out of the room. “And what do you mean, ‘special day’?”

Sophia didn’t reply, leading the way up a flight of stairs to a large and ornate hall. More men lurked at the sides of the room, hands resting on their holstered guns, but Chase lost all interest in them when he saw Nina, wearing jeans and a khaki shirt, at the opposite end of the hall.

“Eddie!” She tried to run to him, but the guards flanking her pulled her back.

Relief flooded Chase. “Oh my God, you’re all right, you’re okay!” The image of Nina from Sophia’s phone, her frozen face of fear, had haunted him the entire time since leaving Switzerland.

“Well, now that we’ve got the reunion out of the way,” said Sophia, hands on her hips, “we can get down to business. Nina, Eddie’s alive and well; Eddie, Nina’s alive and well. If you want that situation to be maintained, you’ll do as I say.”

“Find the Tomb of Hercules for you, you mean,” said Nina, shooting Sophia a look of utter hatred.

“What do you want with it?” asked Chase. “You’ve already got Yuen’s money and a nuclear bomb-what else is there in the Tomb that you could want?”

“A nuclear what?” Nina yelped.

“Actually,” said a new voice from above, “it’s what I want.”

Nina and Chase looked up. Curving staircases swept upwards on each side of the hall to a balcony above. Standing imperiously at its center was…

“Well, well,” said Nina coldly. “René Corvus.”

The billionaire descended the stairs. “Everything that has happened has been according to my design,” he said, moving to join Sophia. “The sinking of the SBX rig, your discovery of the uranium mine, even Sophia’s marriage to Yuen. All part of my plan.”

Chase was shocked. “Wait, you sank the SBX?”

“I built it,” said Corvus, “or rather, one of my companies did. It seemed only fitting that I should destroy it.”

Sophia nodded at Komosa. “Actually, Joe did the hands-on work.” Komosa smiled his diamond smile.

“There were over seventy people on that rig!” Nina shouted.

“Regrettable, but necessary,” said Corvus. “As a non-executive director of the IHA, I knew you were using the Hermocrates text to find the Tomb of Hercules, but I had no access to the IHA’s classified servers. Using the rig’s direct satellite link allowed my people to get that access-and the sinking of the rig then removed all evidence of the intrusion.”

“Then you set Yuen up to make it look like he was responsible,” Chase said. “And set me up to make it look like I killed him.”

“He’d served his purpose,” Sophia remarked, as casually as if she’d killed a fly. “Now all of his businesses belong to me.”

“Which means they also belong to me,” Corvus said, smiling.

Nina frowned. “What?”

Sophia held up her left hand. For a moment, Nina thought she was flipping her the bird-until she realized that Sophia was holding up her ring finger.

Which had a new and very large diamond ring on it.

“Well?” said Sophia. “Aren’t you going to congratulate the new bride?”

“You fucking married him?” Chase spluttered.

“About an hour ago,” Sophia told him. “A little civil ceremony, nothing gaudy.”

Corvus slipped an arm around Sophia’s waist. “A perfect union, a merger of both personal and business interests. Yuen’s companies will now become part of the Corvus empire. And Sophia,” he beamed at her, “will at last be with me. I’ve waited a long time for this day. You have no idea how hard I found it to see her married to another man, even if it was necessary.” He paused. “Well, perhaps you know, Mr. Chase.”

“Au contraire, mate,” Chase growled, folding his arms. “Far as I’m concerned, you can fucking have her. Word of advice, though.”

“And what would that be?”

“Don’t turn your back on her. She’s got a habit of screwing over her husbands.”

Corvus sniffed dismissively as Sophia wrapped her arms around him. “Bitterness doesn’t suit you, Eddie,” she said. “Now, Nina, this is where you come in. A wedding isn’t a wedding without a honeymoon. The thing is, we simply don’t know where to go. I’d like you to help us find a destination.” Her voice became pointed.

“Somewhere with a lot of history…”

Nina carefully aligned the pieces of ancient parchment, matching up the faint brown markings, then leaned back to take in the entire image. For the first time in more than two thousand years, the map concealed on the pages of Plato’s Hermocrates was complete.

She gave Chase a nervous glance. The Englishman sat in a chair in a corner of the château’s library, hands cuffed behind his back, Komosa and another guard flanking him. It had been made very clear to Nina that any delay or mistake in assembling the map would result in Chase’s suffering severe pain. As emphasis, Komosa had lined up various implements on a little table nearby, ranging from a blackjack through pliers to an electric masonry drill.

Chase returned the look. He knew as well as Nina that once the Tomb was found, their usefulness to Corvus and Sophia would be at an end. All they could do for the moment was play along and look for any opportunity to escape…

“Well?” Sophia asked impatiently, striding across the room to look at the map. “Where is it?”

“Jesus, give me a chance,” Nina complained as she opened an atlas. “I don’t have every coastline in the world memorized.”

She did, however, have a reasonably good idea of where to start looking. One of the previously missing pages featured a compass rose, so now she knew the coastline was at the southern edge of a sea. Considering the limits of exploration for the ancient Greeks, it was almost certainly the Mediterranean, placing the Tomb in North Africa.

Which made sense, she realized. According to legend, Hercules had spent much time traveling through ancient Libya-a far greater expanse than the boundaries of the modern country of that name. The Tomb could well be located at the site of some great deed from those years.

It only took a brief examination of the atlas to narrow down the list of possible locations. The coastline ran roughly southeast to northwest, but at its northern end it made a sharp turn to head almost directly northeast. Given the scale of the ancient map, just one area matched that description.