The Lost Island by Douglas Preston

Glinn picked up the book again and resumed reading the poem:
    I am the solitude that asks and promises nothing;
    That is how I shall set you free. There is no love;
    There are only the various envies, all of them sad.
    Finishing the poem, he lay back in the bath, his thoughts gravitating to that strange phrase on the ancient map. Respondeo ad quaestionem, ipsa pergamena : “I reply to the question, the very page.”
    Was it the key to the nature of the mysterious “physic”? It would do them no good to find Phorkys and then not know what to look for.
    I reply to the question, the very page. The answer to the riddle was there, on the page itself—it had to be. Lying in the bath, visualizing the map in his mind’s eye, Glinn searched it, then searched again, roving over the lovely miniatures, the dotted lines, the tiny inscriptions.
    The answer was there, and he would find it. Of that he was sure.

16
    T HE SPARSE CLOUD cover around them vanished as the Gulfstream approached its destination. Sitting in a gray leather seat, Gideon gazed out the window at the seascape below. Ahead, as they approached the southern end of the Windwards, he could see the distant coastline of Venezuela, with the ABC islands in the distance: Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao. All around lay the turquoise Caribbean, speckled with islands, hundreds of them: grains of land set in the turquoise blue, many uninhabited. He wondered which of them, if any, would turn out to be Phorkys.
    Garza, coming up the aisle, touched his shoulder lightly. “Gideon? We’re ready for Eli’s transmission.”
    He rose and followed Garza to a partitioned area in the rear of the aircraft, where a large blank screen dominated one wall, a small array of seats in front.
    The EES employee he had briefly seen at headquarters had come along on the flight; apparently, she would be helping conduct the briefing. Amy, Garza had called her. She was small and slight but quite attractive, Asian looking, with exotic green eyes, glossy short black hair, and a pert, athletic body. He noted in passing the wedding band on her finger. He wondered where the pilot of their vessel was; decided he was probably already on board in Aruba.
    The woman drew a curtain over the aisle, and a moment later the lights went out and the screen sprang to life. And there was Eli Glinn, looking back at them from the conference room at EES headquarters.
    “Greetings, Gideon,” he said, his voice surprisingly clear over the satellite connection. “Hello, Manuel. And hello, Amy. The pilot tells me you’re somewhere over the Caribbean as we speak.”
    “An hour out of Aruba,” said Amy.
    “Excellent. You have your briefing folders and all the information we can provide you at this time. During the mission, we’ll stay in contact through sat phone and computer. The yacht we’ve engaged for you is fully equipped with a high-speed satellite uplink, email, Wi-Fi, you name it. And it’s fully stocked with comestibles. Once you’re settled, Garza will return here and we’ll continue our analysis of the Phorkys Map. As we uncover more information, we’ll feed it to you.”
    “Very good,” said Gideon.
    “We’ll have people standing by at EES headquarters at all times, but Manuel will be your point man. And now, just a couple of parting words, if I may.”
    “Shoot,” said Gideon.
    “While I wouldn’t characterize this as an easy mission, Gideon, it doesn’t present the kind of challenge your earlier assignments did. For one thing, it’s the Caribbean. If things go wrong, we can always abort, extract you, and try again later. There’s no time limit on the mission beyond our client’s eagerness to see it completed. It’s true that we’re moving into the hurricane season. But with forecasting as powerful as it is today, you should have plenty of advance notice about bad weather.”
    “I understand,” said Gideon.
    “Now: any questions?”
    There were none.
    “Well then: good luck, you