She raised her head, looking over the edge of the skiff toward the shore, about thirty yards away. Though it was twenty minutes to midnight, and a thick fog had just begun to settle in over the water around them, there was no missing the spectacular Wonder, rising up in the darkness—the huge, curved onion of a dome with its golden finial spiking out of its peak, the vast arch at the center, the matching, smaller arches that signaled doors, windows, and apertures across the glimmering white marble façade, and of course, the four immense minarets, daggers reaching right up into the cloudless sky.
Even in the darkness, it was enough to make Sloane gasp. When she noticed Jack looking at her, she quickly shook the awe away. She wasn’t sure what it was, exactly, about him—aside from the obvious—that pushed her buttons, but she found herself even more guarded than usual in his presence.
“You’re serious?” she asked.
He smiled, then turned his right palm over, showing her his smartphone, running a GPS app. She blushed, feeling foolish. Of course a field anthropologist would know how to use GPS. That disgusting grave robber, Unger, had gotten a precise location off of his blueprint after he’d told them the only viable way into the historic monument. If he was right, and Jack’s phone wasn’t misleading them, all that was left was the hard part.
“Here we are,” Jack said, cutting the skiff’s engines.
The air around them went near silent, except for the water against the wood. The bobbing increased, and Sloane felt a surge of nausea in her stomach, which she quickly pushed back down. Jack reached behind himself and retrieved a pair of oxygen tanks attached to regulators, along with matching clear plastic masks. It took him less than a minute to expertly slip his tank over his shoulder, letting his mask hang down around his neck. Then he glanced at Sloane.
“Ah, you need a little help?”
“I took scuba in high school. I know how to put on an oxygen tank.”
“I mean with the zipper,” Jack said.
Sloane looked down and saw that the damn thing had receded almost to the bottom of her rib cage. She blushed, then yanked the zipper upward as hard as she could, until it clicked into its proper place, flush with her throat. Then she took the oxygen tank out of his hands and with some difficulty angled it over her shoulders. She was still working on the mask and regulator when Jack propped himself up onto the edge of the skiff, his back to the sparkling Taj Mahal. To his left, Sloane could just make out the beginning of the thousand-foot-long, carefully cultivated greenery that stretched out beyond the marble tomb, divided into its four quarters by the cross work of raised paths.
It was not lost on Sloane that here in front of them was yet another spiritually significant garden—supposedly, a representation of the green Paradise written about in the Koran,
Jannah
, the Islamic version of heaven—described as a garden of infinite abundance fed by four rivers, much as the Garden of Eden in Genesis was fed by four rushing tributaries. And considering what Unger had told them about the Taj perhaps having an even older history lodged in Hinduism, the garden could also be seen as an interpretation of the four-fold garden described in the Vedas, the Sanskrit text dating back to 1500 BC—considered the original scripture of Hinduism.
Sloane wasn’t sure what it all meant, but somehow, it felt significant. The painting she’d seen at the Colosseum, the tablet Jack had found beneath Christ the Redeemer, the same image he’d reported seeing beneath the Temple of Artemis—they all revolved around garden imagery. And here they were, in front of the Taj Mahal, facing yet another garden with ancient, historical significance.
What could it possibly mean? Sloane knew that Jack believed his brother had uncovered a link between the Seven Wonders of the Modern World—something important enough that he had been murdered because of it. Could that link have something to do with the garden imagery in the paintings? The garden that seemed to pop up in so many different religions, in so many vastly different cultures around the world?
Sloane didn’t have time to ponder the question any longer as Jack gave her a thumbs-up, then flicked on a waterproof flashlight he’d attached to his left wrist.
“Stick close, it’s going to get very thick down there. And watch out for alligators.”
Sloane stared at him.
“Another joke?” she said, stiffly.
Jack laughed, then yanked his mask over his eyes.
“Yes. There aren’t any alligators in India.”
Right before he put the regulator in his mouth, he gave her a wink from behind the transparent plastic.
“Around here, they call them crocodiles.”
And with that, he kicked himself over the edge.
Breathe in. Breathe out
.
Ten feet below the surface of the river, Jack kicked against the current, chasing the eerie yellow cone from his flashlight through the murky water. He couldn’t see Sloane next to him, but he could feel her presence, the way the bubbles from her regulator swirled around her elongated body, mingling with his own, spiraling upward toward the chop above their heads. Every now and then he felt her hand against his wetsuit, but overall he was relieved to see she had no trouble keeping up with his pace; she was in much better shape than he would have expected from a botanist. Still, it was obvious from the moment she’d followed him into the room-temperature water and hung there in the murk, kicking furiously until she’d caught sight of his light and relaxed, that she was far out of her comfort zone.
Jack slowed for a brief moment to check their progress on his waterproof phone, tucked into a pocket next to the flashlight. Though he’d lost satellite reception the minute he’d broken the surface, the electronic compass was still operational, and he could see that they were more than halfway to their target. That is, if Unger had been telling them the truth—and if his sources had been selling more than some faked photographs and
a bullshit story. Jack didn’t trust Unger any more than he trusted the rat outside of Unger’s shop. The fact that Unger had offered to meet them on the other side of the river to escort them back to their hotel when they’d returned from their expedition wasn’t exactly comforting. But Jack figured he could handle the antiquities smuggler. He was more concerned about returning empty-handed.
After a slight adjustment in direction, he kicked off again, Sloane’s flippers parallel with his own. Another ten minutes piloting through the murk, and he began to see a shape take form ahead, a cliff-like slope of rocks and mud rising up from the bottom of the river, a sign that they were getting close to the shore. Jack knew from Unger’s blueprints that they were now swimming in the shadow of the backside of the Taj, to the right of the center of the building and the massive onion dome, which would be looming a hundred and fifteen feet above the river, set a dozen yards back from a low breakwall. Though most of the mausoleum complex was bordered by a red stone fence, the architects who had built the Wonder had used the river itself as a natural fourth wall. No doubt, scuba gear had not been on their minds.
Jack slowed his kicking as they approached the slope, reaching out to gently grab Sloane’s wrist. He held his other arm straight out, using the flashlight to scan the rocks and mud, first horizontally, and then vertically. An errant fish flashed through the cone of yellow, but otherwise it was all thick mud and jagged stone, leading down God only knew how far. Jack was beginning to get concerned, when Sloane jerked her wrist free of his grip and jabbed a finger at a downward angle to the very bottom corner of the cone of light.
Jack’s eyes widened behind his mask. There it was, almost invisible between two jutting edges of rock: a circular opening, two feet across, bordered in chipped marble. Jack kicked twice with his flippers, exhaling as he pushed himself the last few feet downward until he was flush with the marble lip of the opening. Sloane floated down next to him, then began tracing
the dark stains of moss and river algae that ran down from the edges of the marble. No doubt she could identify every strain of flora that had exploited whatever drainage the ancient inhabitants of the immense mausoleum had generated. If exploiting what was essentially a three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old drainpipe was good enough for moss and algae, Jack figured it was good enough for him.
Grinning, he put his hands on the base of the opening and started to pull himself inside when a dull clang reverberated through the water around him. He jerked back—and saw that Sloane was pointing at his oxygen tank. He looked back at the opening and realized she was right; there was barely enough room for his shoulders, let alone the breathing contraption on his back.
He leaned forward, holding the flashlight inside the opening, following the light with his eyes as far as it went. The marble-lined drainpipe seemed to be sloping gently upward, maybe five or ten degrees from the horizontal, but it also appeared to be full of water for as far as he could see—not far in the murky water. From Unger’s blueprints, Jack doubted the cylindrical marble pipe was much longer than fifteen yards—but then again, there was no way to know how much might have changed in more than three centuries.
Still, Jack didn’t see any other choice. He swam a few feet over from the opening and found a ledge along the muddy slope that he figured was big enough to hold his gear. Then he beckoned to Sloane, using his hands to try and communicate what he was going to do. When she began reaching for the clasps of her own tank, he grabbed her wrist and shook his head, hard. She had more than enough air to wait for him down here. But she shook her head right back, her eyes fierce behind her mask. He didn’t know if it was her fear of staying alone in the dark water or her determination to stick with him, but she wasn’t going to be left behind.
Finally, Jack nodded. He tapped his fingers against his cheeks, miming
a blowing motion to remind her to exhale on the way up. Then he unhooked the clasp of his own oxygen tank, pulled the straps off of his shoulders, and watched as Sloane did the same. He rested the equipment on the ledge, still breathing through the attached regulator, and faced the opening. When Sloane was ready next to him, he gave her hand a quick squeeze. Then he yanked the regulator out of his mouth, switched off his air, and pushed off with all of his strength, thrusting himself headfirst into the opening of the marble drainpipe, Sloane one kick behind, exhaling bubbles as she went.
• • •
Thirty seconds that felt like a lifetime later, Jack was still tearing upward through the tight, claustrophobia-inducing marble drainpipe, his lungs beginning to burn, his shoulders, arms, and chest aching from the half crawl, half swim up the too-gentle incline. The water was still just as thick and murky as it had been in the river, and even with the flashlight, he could only see a few feet ahead: more drainpipe, more water. He could feel Sloane pushing herself forward just behind his flippers. When he glanced back, he could see that she was having a slightly easier time than he was, because of her narrower form. But the look in her eyes through her mask mirrored his own growing sense of panic. Another few seconds, and they were going to have to try and turn back—hopefully, they’d make it to the tanks before either of them blacked out and drowned.
Jack cursed to himself, his fingers clawing at the marble. He couldn’t be sure, but they had to have gone fifteen yards by now. Either the blueprints were wrong, or there had been some construction since they were drafted; if those photographs that Unger had shown them had really come via this route, then the men who had taken them were small enough to get through
a drainpipe wearing scuba gear, or they had lungs like goddamn dolphins.
Jack nearly choked as the top of his head suddenly touched metal. He whirled upward, his mask inches from a circular metal grate. In front of him, the drainage tube ended in a chipped marble wall.
Jack reached up and gripped the metal with his fingers. No time to pray, he thought to himself. And then he pulled with all of his strength.
Nothing happened. He was about to give it another shot when Sloane reached past him and pointed to a latch at the top of the circle. Jack was thankful it was too dark for her to see him blush as he flicked the latch with his finger, then used his entire weight against the metal.
There was an audible creak, and then the grate swung downward on rusted hinges. Jack crouched low, then lunged upward through the opening, exhaling the last of his air as he went.
• • •
“Not exactly pine fresh,” Jack gasped as he pulled Sloane up out of the water, “but it beats drowning.”
She collapsed next to him on the marble floor, her chest heaving beneath her wetsuit. He could see her blinking hard behind her mask, and he understood her disorientation. If anything, it should have been even darker in the underground chamber than in the drainage tunnel, considering they were at least six stories underground. But somehow, the small chamber was lit by a soft, greenish glow that seemed to be coming right through the walls. Not that there was much to see; other than the grated hatch they had just come through, the chamber was a perfect cube, seemingly made of sheer marble—the same type of marble that had been used to build the onion dome, now many stories above their heads.
Jack took off his flippers and mask and stretched his cramping shoulders,
trying to breathe shallow breaths as he reoxygenated his lungs. The smell in the small chamber was unlike anything he had ever experienced before; musty and acrid at the same time, with a hint of something noxiously floral. As he rose to his feet and took a couple steps away from the hatch, he noticed that the smell got even stronger, making his eyes start to water.