But Fiona was missing, and all the battles they had won meant nothing.
As Pierce walked them through the facility, Gallo realized that she had seen only a small fraction of the place. Aside from an entire floor of guest quarters, several of which were much more accommodating than the room where she had been kept, there were libraries and laboratories, conference rooms, even a movie theater.
There was an entire lab devoted to genetics research, which prompted Carter to ask Pierce if he had kept the receipt for the SMRT sequencer he’d bought for her. “Because there’s no way I’m going back to that cave.”
Lazarus flashed a smile at the comment, but said nothing. He was a strange man, and although she had known him for only about a day, Gallo sensed that even Pierce, whose history with the man went back several years, had barely scratched the surface.
They moved on to a computer server room with hardware that almost brought Dourado to tears. “Can you hack your way into this?” Pierce asked her. “And figure out where they went? Where Fiona is?”
“I am looking forward to trying,” she replied with an eagerness bordering on hunger.
Pierce let her skip the rest of the tour.
After they passed through a gallery filled with priceless art and artifacts ranging from Neolithic to neo-classical, Pierce held them back for a moment. “The next room isn’t going to be easy,” he said. “But I think it will explain a lot about who we’re dealing with.”
With that ominous warning, he led them into a room that was filled with the stuff of nightmares. Gallo immediately realized that she was looking at images from the Holocaust, but it took a little longer to grasp the ghastly intent behind the collection. After that, she stopped looking until Pierce brought them to a trophy case filled with Nazi memorabilia.
Kenner, who had been unusually quiet up to that point, let out a gasp. He nodded at the photographs in the case. “Oh, God. It’s him. That’s Tyndareus.”
The outburst prompted Gallo to take a closer look at the pictures and documents in the display. One name stood out. “That’s not possible. He’s dead.”
“Are you certain?” Pierce locked eyes with Kenner, but Gallo got the sense that he was not at all surprised by the news. “Augustina’s right. Josef Mengele died over thirty years ago. His remains are locked in a safe in Brazil. The DNA was checked against known relatives.”
Kenner shook his head. “No. That’s Tyndareus. He’s older now, of course, but I’d recognize that…” He looked as if he was about to throw up. “That smile. My God. What have I done? I was helping that monster.”
“So kidnapping and attempted murder were okay when you weren’t working for a Nazi?” Pierce asked. Kenner feigned disgust for a moment, but Pierce cut him off with a raised hand. “Liam, I just want to know one thing. Where is he now?”
Kenner shook his head. “I promised him the source. The Well of Monsters. I thought I would find the location in the Amazon city, but there was nothing there.”
“In the myths, the monsters came from the Underworld,” Gallo said. “That’s where their mother Echidna lived. If there is some kind of…something…that can create monsters, that’s where we’ll find it.”
Pierce considered this, then lowered his voice as if sharing a secret. “Hercules—the real Hercules—did visit the Underworld. I don’t mean Hell. A real place. We have records of a massive underground network—we’re talking global in scope—that almost certainly corresponds to the Underworld of Greek mythology. There are dozens of entrances though, and probably thousands of miles of connecting passages. It would be virtually impossible to simply stumble onto a specific location.”
He paused, looked at Kenner again and then at Gallo. “He learned the location of the entrance from the Amazons, right? So the answer has to be on the map.”
Gallo shot an accusing glance at Kenner, but she knew she shared some of the blame. “Tyndareus must have forced Fiona to translate it for him.”
“We need to figure out how to read it, too,” Pierce said. “Were there any clues in the Heracleia that might narrow it down?”
“If it’s still here, I’ll go through it again.”
“I might be able to help,” Carter said, raising a tentative hand. “Remember how I told you that the DNA of the hybrids might help us narrow down the geographical location of the parent animals? Well, I haven’t had a chance to sequence that bird I brought back yet, but I can tell you that it looks like a cross between a great egret and a porcupine. Probably a lot of other contributors as well, but those two species account for most of the dominant traits. Now, egrets don’t help us since they’re found on every continent, but the quills are similar to those found on the body of the North American porcupine.”
“North American?” Pierce said. “Just like the Lion?