Pandora's Temple by Jon Land

Author:Jon Land [Land, Jon]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Thriller
ISBN: 9781453224656
Publisher: Open Road Media
Published: 2011-12-31T13:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 44

New Orleans

“So who was it that sent you to the Mediterranean five years ago?” Folsom asked.

“Who do you think? They’re all just names to me. I don’t pay much attention to which uniform or three-letter department is paying my freight. They say jump, I say I like being high,” Captain Seven said with a twinkle in his eye. “Started with me reading some recently uncovered lost works of the Greek historian Herodotus, containing the truth behind something that might not have been a myth or legend after all.”

“Herodotus wrote about dark matter?”

“Not exactly, B-rat; more like the only place I’m pretty certain it can be found and what I was looking for in the Med: Pandora’s Temple.”

Greece, 1672 B.C.

“Your king has a job for you, Pathos Verdes.”

Verdes knelt on the hard gravel floor before the king’s messenger, his knees already aching from the strain he would never let show on his features. He squinted from the afternoon sun streaming in through the open door and wall slats, edges of the light casting the messenger’s face in what looked like a halo.

Verdes had dismissed his wife, who was pregnant with their first child, from the modest hut in which they lived. Verdes saw no reason to live exorbitantly in spite of his reputation as the greatest builder of his time. Although humble, he’d built his own home in the lee of a hillside to provide ample shade in the warm summer months like these, leaving the king’s messenger comfortable on the bench seat fashioned out of clay. Beyond that there were only straw mats on which to sleep and shelves formed of laced-together branches to store their meager possessions. Verdes had fashioned the plates, bowls, and cups out of wood, coating them in a fine resin of tree sap as his father had shown him. So, too, his home was the lone structure built to feature open slots carved into the walls, constructed to allow the breeze to pass through in the warm season and then be filled in with a combination of moss, clay, and stones when the weather turned cold.

“There is a weapon greater than any ever known to gods or mortal man,” the messenger continued. The light sifting through the open slots caught his face in splotches, making it seem formless—more mask than flesh. But Verdes shook off the illusion. “This weapon has the power to control the world or destroy it, to kill even a god. As the greatest builder of our time, your king orders you to construct a temple capable of containing this weapon so it remains protected from mortal hands. You must be sure to build this temple so no mortal can ever reach it, apart from man where it will remain for all time.”

Pathos Verdes felt the rough canvas stitching of the shapeless robe he wore over his undergarments digging into his legs. Those undergarments were made of a rolled combination of tree bark and dried fig leaves, stitched by his wife thanks to her own considerable talents.

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