“Makes sense to me,” Abrams said. “I’ll let Hartogg know. Be good to have some weapons as well.” He nodded to his SEAL. “He’s also good.”

Adira smiled. “All taken care of. Baruk has been busy.”

The young, rugged-looking man closed the rear door of the SUV, stood back and waited.

Adira took one last look around, and then headed for the passenger door. “Let’s go.”

*

They pulled to the side of El-Geish Road, and sat looking out over the azure water. Three-foot waves crashed onto the shoreline, and there was nothing between them and the horizon.

Tania leaned forward, putting her hand on Matt’s thigh as she went. “Just how far out is our dive site?”

Matt squeezed her hand once and quickly lifted it free. He had a sudden sense of panic over what Adira would do if she thought they were suddenly a couple – for that matter, he didn’t want anyone in their group to get that impression. For a start, Andy would freak out, and he remembered Adira’s glance on the front steps, and it still scalded his conscience.

“Closer than you think.” He cleared his throat and sat forward. “Pharos was a small island about a mile off the coast. In 332 BC Alexander the Great founded the city of Alexandria on an isthmus opposite Pharos and he built a link to the island – it was so wide they used it as a walkway. But over the millennia, that silted over, and then centuries of erosion and various earthquakes destroyed the island, and what was left was buried. Now it’s all under water.” He pointed. “Somewhere arou-uund, there.”

They followed his hand – to nothing but blue water.

In the front seat Adira’s fingers danced over a tablet and she called up several maps – ancient and new. She adjusted size and orientation, and then lined them up one over the other. She turned in her seat, holding the screen up.

“We are here.” She pointed to a long road running along the shoreline. “And we need to start our search, here.” Less than a mile offshore there was the outline of the island. “This coastal section has been reclaimed from the sea, so the good news is the island is closer to us now than it would have been on the coast of a thousand years ago.” She sat back. “Of course, it might not be the actual island we’re looking for.”

Matt grunted his assent. “She’s right. Pharos itself was very small, only about as large as a few football fields together. And the entrance to the secret library could be anywhere surrounding it. A thousand years ago, it was shallows out there. Low tide might have exposed a lot more of the rock and perhaps some sort of cave entrance.”

“I doubt it,” Andy said. “This whole area is nothing but a layer of limestone over a bed of sandstone, the oldest ground being outcrops of metamorphic and igneous rocks. The island was created under high pressure, and therefore was a lot denser and more able to withstand the elements. Everything else would have been softer, and would wear away very quickly.” He looked at each of them, eyebrows raised.