The Cradle of Life (2 page)

Lara leaned forward, and studied the carving intently.

The first thing that struck her was how sharp the lines of the carving were.

“No decomposition,” she said.

“It can't be very old then, can it?” Bryce asked.

“One would think so.” It couldn't be from a shipwreck, either, she thought. So then what—

“It has that look, though—something out of another time,” he said. “That's why I came to you.”

“It does at that,” Lara said, trying to remember if had Alexander ever traveled to Thera during his lifetime, which of his generals had inherited that portion of the empire. Her memory of
Plutarch,
clearly, was not as up to snuff as she'd thought.

She looked at the artifact on the screen again, watched as it rolled over slowly in the current, as the eight-pointed star disappeared beneath the ocean…

And Lara gasped.

On the other side of the piece, just coming into view, was another carving, even more detailed. This was of the moon—and etched within it, the instantly recognizable image of Alexander himself.

Now she knew what the earthquake had disturbed. Where the artifact had come from.

Lara smiled, and stood up again. The aches and pains she'd been all too aware of for the last few days were suddenly no longer with her.

“I've got to go pack,” she announced. “Make a few phone calls.”

On her way out the door, she brushed past a surprised-looking Hillary, carrying another pot of tea and more scones.

“Lara?” he called after.

“Lara?” Bryce chimed in, his voice just reaching her as she reached the foot of the main staircase. “What is it? It's obviously something.”

“Oh, yes indeed,” she called back. “It's something, all right.”

Gus Petraki came down the ladder from the wheelhouse to find his eldest son Nicholas waiting for him on the deck.

“Papa, hey. Papa, listen.” Nicholas had stripped to the waist. He had diving tanks on, and held a mask in his right hand. “Let me go down, scout things out for you, all right? Take a quick look, come back, give you the lay of the land, okay?”

Gus shook his head. “No. I said we'd wait, and we'll wait.”

“But—”

“No.” Gus glared at his son. “Take the tanks off, and go keep watch off the back, all right?”

Nicholas glared, then spun on his heels, heading for the stern, cursing under his breath. Gus smiled, watched as his son shrugged off the tanks. Nicholas was a good boy, even if he was a little impatient. Not without cause—time was of the essence here, but it wouldn't do any good for Nicholas to go down, he didn't have the expertise, the knowledge to know what he was looking for. Or looking at, for that matter.

Gus turned his back on Nicholas and headed toward the front of the boat.

His youngest, Jimmy, staring off the bow through a pair of binoculars, turned at his approach.

“Anything?” Gus asked.

“No.” Jimmy passed the binoculars to his father. “They're all still down there.”

Gus took the glasses and scanned the horizon, then focused downward, into the ocean itself. The water was a deep, dark blue, and clear down to three meters, which was about as good as it ever got. There was no sign of Kristos, or Leyden, or any of their divers.

He passed the glasses back to Jimmy and looked at his watch. Half an hour since the divers had gone in the water. Too long—he had a sinking feeling in his stomach that they'd found something else.

“You know, Papa, we could call Kristos.”

Gus glared, and started to open his mouth. Before he could squeeze out a word, Jimmy went on hurriedly.

“No, no, hear me out. I know him—you know him, twenty years, right? You know he'd rather work with us than with Leyden, Papa. Yes?”

Gus could only frown and nod reluctantly.

“Yes, but—”

“Yes, you see?” Jimmy smiled. “And we've got those, right? He doesn't have anything like those.”

Jimmy pointed off toward the back of the ship, and Gus didn't have to look to know he was talking about the DPVs. Personal diving vehicles, three of them, the pride and joy—and the bread and butter—of his salvage business. Gus had been doing salvage for three decades now, hiring out the
Konstantinos
and himself to treasure seekers, fortune hunters, family members looking to find loved ones (or their remains) lost at sea—and only during the last five years, with those sleds, had he been able to turn a consistent profit.

Gus nodded. “Yes, Kristos doesn't have anything like the sleds. But neither did we before that business with the Natla woman, and the Scion. And don't forget who's responsible for that, hey?”

“I didn't forget,” Jimmy said. “But look at how many ships there are. How many divers are going down. We have to—”

“Wait,” Gus interrupted. “We have to wait.”

Jimmy frowned.

Gus ruffled his son's hair.

If Nicholas was impatient, Jimmy was just the opposite. Considered and calm—a little too much of the thinker, for his taste. Join forces with Kristos? Hah. That would be the day.

Thing was, his sons were right. He didn't know how much longer he could afford to stand by and watch. There might not be anything left to find by the time—

“They're moving,” Jimmy said.

He pointed off the starboard side of the
Konstantinos,
to the other boats. They had indeed started moving, heading northwest, toward the straits between Thera and Therasia.

“Let's stay close!” Gus shouted up to his pilot, Stefano, in the wheelhouse.

A few seconds later, he heard the motor come to life, and the
Konstantinos
inched forward. Gus went and stood by the railing. Something was happening, that was for sure—the other boats were all converging on a single spot in the ocean.

He pulled out his cell phone, punched the redial button, and waited.

“We're sorry. All circuits are busy at this time. Please try your call again later.”

He restrained himself—barely—from throwing the phone in the ocean and looked at his watch. It only confirmed what he knew already.

Close to two hours past their scheduled rendezvous time. He didn't think they could wait much longer.

“They found another one!”

That was Nicholas, behind him, pointing off into the distance. Where a handful of divers had just surfaced, holding something roughly the size and shape of a man propped up between them.

The divers passed it along to waiting crew on one of the other boats, who started lifting it up out of the water.

Another statue. Damn it.

“Mark their location!” He shouted up to Stefano as he walked around the wheelhouse again, to the back of the boat. Jimmy followed him, his binoculars out and trained on the divers.

“Can't make out the statue, but—that's the Frenchman,” Jimmy said. He swung the binoculars around to focus on the other ship. “And over there…Kristos.”

Gus shook his head. He picked up the cell phone again and punched redial. Got the same recording.

He sighed, and stared out to sea.

“They're all here…all except one.” He made a decision. “Follow Kristos. When he dives, we dive. Maybe we'll get lucky and find whatever it is…”

He frowned. The phone was making a buzzing noise now. No. Not the phone.

He turned, behind him, in the direction of the harbor.

Something was coming up behind them. Fast.

Gus squinted into the distance. It was a boat—three boats, very small, moving very quickly, and—

No. Not boats at all. Jet-skis. Three of them. The one in the middle, now pulling ahead of the other two, going way too fast, but whoever was riding it was an expert, he was—

No. Not he.

Gus broke into a big smile.

“Hey!” he heard Jimmy shout. “Isn't that—?”

Gus laughed. “You're damn right it is.”

“Better late than never….” Nicholas said.

Gus nodded, still watching as the jet-skis got closer. Still moving very quickly.

Too quickly, he realized.

“She's not slowing down.” Jimmy frowned. “Why isn't she slowing down?”

Jimmy turned to his brother, whose eyes went wide as the lead jet-ski approached the
Konstantinos.
Barreling straight toward them. Collision course.

Except at the last second, the skier cut her engine, and started to brake—sharply to the right, away from the ship.

Gus saw what was about to happen, and leaned back from the railing.

Jimmy and Nicholas watched, transfixed—

And got showered with a few dozen gallons of seawater. Jimmy sputtered, wiped his face.

“You were asking? Why she wasn't slowing down?” Nicholas said, glaring at his brother.

“Pay attention, boys,” Gus said. “The wake.”

He pointed off the side of the boat with one hand, holding onto the railing with the other. Jimmy and Nicholas just managed to get handholds, as well, and then the wake from the jet-ski caught up to the
Konstantinos,
and the ship rolled. Big wake. Big waves.

The skier wasn't done with her fancy moves yet.

She came in hard again, used one of the wake waves as a ramp, and shot high up in the air.

Gus's mouth dropped open as his head leaned back and he followed her flight. Up in the air, into a flip—a flip, with a jet-ski!—and then back down again, at a dead stop, six inches from the
Konstantinos'
s ladder.

The skier brushed the hair out of her eyes and looked up at the boat.

“Hello, Gus.” She looked over at Nicholas and Jimmy. “Boys.”

She climbed up on deck. Gus folded his arms, and tried to look angry. “Half the world's raiders are already here. You make us wait.”

“You know I can't resist a bit of fun…forgive me?”

The skier stood before him, waiting.

“Lara Croft,” he said, shaking his head. “All grown up.”

Gus glanced from her, then over to his soaking wet sons, and back again.

Then he broke into a big smile.

He could never stay mad at Lara Croft.

“Of course, Lara. You're here. All is forgiven.”

He patted her on the cheek.

Lara smiled, then turned to look at Nicholas and Jimmy, who were helping unload her things.

“How are you two?”

“Wet,” Nicholas called back, without looking up. “And I don't forgive you—not just yet.”

Jimmy grunted his assent.

“You two ought to know me better,” Lara said, bending down to give the boys a hand. Seeing the three of them, together again—Gus thought back to the summer that Lara had spent with the Petrakis, in Merovigli—Lara and Jimmy and Nicholas had been practically inseparable. Always fooling around. Diving off the boat, pushing one another into the water. It seemed like yesterday.

It was, he realized, close to fifteen years ago.

Lara straightened up again and smiled.

“It's good to see you again, Gus.”

“It's good to see you, too, Lara.”

“Thanks for waiting. I'm so sorry I was late.” She looked off the starboard, to where the other divers were going down again, and laid a hand on his shoulder.

“It's all right.” Gus covered her hand with his own, then turned toward the back of the boat. “Come on. Let's get to it.”

Lara had been up before dawn this morning, just in time to pass Bryce on his way to bed, and stop him, ask him obtain one more series of images she realized might be helpful in her task. Getting those pictures proved more time-consuming than she'd thought, so she'd missed her flight at Heathrow, had to grab a second, later one, which hadn't gotten her into Athens till eleven, local time. Still, she'd been at Thera by one, and alongside the
Konstantinos
on her jet-ski half an hour later. Yes, two hours behind the schedule she and Gus had agreed to the night before, which she was sorry for, but there'd been no way of avoiding the delay. And Gus's anger had been almost entirely feigned, she decided—and the boys were simply mad at her for one-upping them with the jet-ski stunt. She was sure they'd be seeking revenge for that soaking soon enough.

It was wrong to think of Nicholas and Jimmy as boys—they were grown men now, and Gus—

Well, Gus was older. Five years since she'd last seen him, and he'd aged twenty in that time. Not recognizable at all as the man she first met, during that long-ago summer when she was thirteen and in the middle of a cross-continent “excursion” arranged by her guardian at the time, Miss Stehlik. The excursion consisted of attending every stuffy society event on the continent, doing the things that were expected of a “proper” young English girl, heir to the renowned Croft name, a few scant years away from her majority.

Lara had been bored to tears by all of it—the dances, the teas, the dinners, the talk of who was spending the summer where, which plays were must-sees, which restaurants must-experiences, what clothes were in style and what weren't…she just wasn't interested.

What made it even worse, of course, was that their travels had taken them so close to places she'd been dreaming about all her life, places her father, Lord Richard Croft, had drawn for her in bright, vivid detail in the stories he used to tell her before bedtime. Stories about Lascaux, and the cave paintings found there—the Great Hall of the Bulls, the Shaft of the Dead Man, the most miraculous example of paleolithic art on the planet—

—And they'd passed a sign for it,
Lascaux Cave
, right on the highway from Bordeaux heading east, and Lara shouted for the driver to stop, and Miss Stehlik ignored her request completely, insisting they were on a tight schedule.