Then a spark danced from the tip of the iron rod of Gray’s jar and cascaded down the copper surface to fizzle out in the seawater.
Similar weak pyrotechnics drizzled from the other batteries.
“It may take a few minutes for the batteries to build and discharge a proper voltage.” Vigor’s voice had lost its confident edge.
Gray frowned. “I don’t think this is going to—”
Simultaneously from all four batteries, brilliant arcs of electricity crackled through the water, fire in the deep. They struck the four sides of the pyramid.
“Back against the wall!” Gray yelled.
His warning was not needed. A blast of force thumped outward from the pyramid, throwing him bodily against the wall. The pressure made it feel like Gray was on his back, the drum-shaped chamber circling over him, the pyramid above him, a topsy-turvy amusement ride.
Yet Gray knew what held him.
A Meissner field, a force that could levitate tombs.
Then the true fireworks began.
From all surfaces of the pyramid, crackling bursts of lightning shattered to the ceiling, seeming to strike the silver stars imbedded there. Jolts also lanced into the pool, as if attempting to attack the reflected stars in the water.
Gray felt the image burning into his retina, but he refused to close his eyes. It was worth the risk of blindness. Where the lightning struck the water, flames erupted and danced across the pool’s surface.
Fire from water!
He knew what he was witnessing.
The electrolysis of water into hydrogen gas and oxygen. The released gas then ignited, set to flame by the play of energies here.
Trapped by force, Gray watched the fire above and below. He could barely comprehend the power being unleashed here.
He had read theoretical studies on how a superconductor could store energy, even light, within its matrix for an infinite span of time. And in a perfect superconductor even the quantity of energy or light could be infinite.
Was that what he was witnessing?
Before he could grasp it fully, the energies suddenly died away, a lightning storm in a bottle, brilliant but brief.
The world swung back upright as the Meissner field expired and his body was released. Gray stumbled a step forward. He caught himself from falling into the pool. Fires died back into the water. Whatever energy had been trapped inside the pyramid had been expended.
No one spoke.
They silently gathered together, needing the company of others, the physicality of one another.
Vigor was the first to make coherent motion. He pointed to the ceiling. “Look.”
Gray craned. The black paint and stars persisted, but now strange letters glowed in a fiery script across the dome of the roof.
“It’s the clue,” Rachel said.
As they stared, the letters faded rapidly. Like the fiery pyre atop the black hematite slab at St. Peter’s, the revelation only lasted a brief time.
Gray hurried to free his underwater camera. They needed a record.
Vigor stayed his hand. “I know what it says. It’s Greek.”
“You can translate?”
The monsignor nodded. “It’s not difficult. It’s a phrase attributed to Plato, describing how the stars affect us and are in fact a reflection of us. It became the foundation for astrology and the cornerstone for Gnostic belief.”
“What’s the phrase?” Gray asked.
“‘As it is above, so it is below.’”
Gray stared at the starry ceiling and at the reflection in the water. Above and below. Here was the same sentiment expressed visually. “But what does it mean?”
Rachel had wandered from the group. She slowly made a complete circuit of the room. She called from the far side of the pyramid. “Over here!”
Gray heard a splash.
They hurried over to her. Rachel waded toward the pyramid.
“Careful,” Gray warned.
“Look,” she said, and pointed.
Gray made it around the edge of the pyramid and saw what had excited her. A tiny section of the pyramid, six inches square, had vanished midway up one face, dissolved away, consumed during the firestorm. Resting inside the hollow lay one of Alexander the Great’s outstretched hands, closed in a fist.
Rachel reached for it, but Gray motioned her away.
“Let me,” he said.
He reached to touch the hand, glad he was still wearing his diving gloves. The brittle flesh felt like stone. Between the clenched fingers, a bit of gold glinted.
Teeth gritted, Gray broke off one of the fingers, earning a gasp from Vigor.
It couldn’t be helped.
From the fist, Gray removed a three-inch-long gold key, thick toothed, one end forged into a cross. It was surprisingly heavy.
“A key,” Kat said.
“But to what lock?” Vigor asked.
Gray stepped away. “To wherever we must go next.” His eyes wandered to the ceiling to where the letters had faded away.
“As it is above, so it is below,” Vigor repeated, noting the direction of his gaze.
“But what is the significance?” Gray mumbled. He pocketed the key into his thigh pouch. “Where does it tell us to go?”
Rachel had moved a step away. She slowly turned in a circle, surveying the room. She stopped, her gaze fixed on Gray. Her eyes shone brightly. He knew that look by now.
“I know where to start.”
1:24 P.M.
IN THE raised pilot compartment of the hydrofoil, Raoul zipped into his wet suit. The boat was owned by the Guild. It had cost the Dragon Court a small fortune to rent it, but there could be no mistakes today.
“Bring us in along a sweeping curve as near as possible without raising suspicion,” he ordered the captain, a dark-skinned Afrikaner with a pattern of pinpoint scars over his cheeks.
Two young women, one black, one white, flanked the man. They were dressed in bikinis, their equivalent of camouflage gear, but their eyes glinted with the promise of deadly force.
The captain didn’t acknowledge Raoul, but he shifted the wheel and the craft angled to the side.
Raoul turned away from the captain and his women. He headed out to the ladder to the lower deck.
He hated being aboard a craft not directly under his authority. He clambered down the ladder to join the twelve-man team that would undertake the dive. His other three men would operate the strafing guns cleverly engineered into the bow and both flanks of the stern. The last member of his team, Dr. Alberto Menardi, was ensconced in one of the cabins, preparing to unravel the riddles here.
And there was one unwelcome addition to the team.
The woman.
Seichan stood with her wet suit half-unzipped, down to her belly button. Her br**sts were barely concealed behind the neoprene. She stood by her tanks and her Aquanaut sled. The tiny one-person sleds were propelled by twin propulsion jets. They would skim a diver through the water at breakneck speeds.