From Jeff's account, I e-mailed Moretti, a scientist I had never met but upon whom my daughter's life now depended. I asked him to include the papyrus plant in his studies, to determine whether some element contained within it could somehow have produced the Vesuvius isotope.

There was still no response from John. I e-mailed him again. In the subject line of the e-mail, I typed two question marks. The body I left blank.

That was last night.

You see me here, Lucius, in answer to your prayer. I am Nature, the universal Mother, mistress of all the elements, primordial child of time, sovereign of all things spiritual, queen of the dead, queen also of the immortals, the single manifestation of all gods and goddesses that are. My nod governs the shining heights of Heavens, the wholesome sea breezes, the lamentable silences of the world below. Though I am worshipped in many aspects, known by countless names... some know me as Juno, some as Bellona... the Egyptians who excel in ancient learning... call me by my true name, Queen Isis.

-The Golden Ass Apuleius (ca. 123180 CE)

Chapter Twenty-Four.

When I awoke this morning, I went back down to the hotel lobby and accessed the computer, happy to see the "Do Not Disturb" sign still hanging from Dante's door. My latest e-mail to John had been returned as undeliverable, with a message that his inbox was full.

But I-rather, Jeff-had already received a reply from Romano Moretti, who had been able to locate an online vendor of live papyrus. He had placed a rush order.

His group had also completed the chemical analyses of the biological samples Alyssa and I had provided him. Aside from an almost uniformly high concentration of sulfur, to be expected from their proximity to the volcano, the samples had not yielded anything unusual. Moretti was seeking advice regarding additional work on those samples, as he appeared to have arrived at a dead end.

I quickly realized that abandoning Dante for a second time would be futile. We would both be heading to the same place-the Temple of Isis in Aswan. And to leave Dante now would possibly also blow my cover, to admit that I knew the truth about him and Rossi. So instead, I knocked on his door and told him I had made arrangements for our transportation to the temple.

I had signed the two of us up for a van tour from Luxor to Aswan. The tour would take us through Esna Temple, Edfu Temple, and Kom Ombo Temple en route to Aswan. The Temple of Isis at Aswan would be the final attraction.

We learned on the tour that the plant we had seen the night before was a lotus.

The plant we had seen being examined by the goddess Isis at the Luxor Temple was the symbol of Upper Egypt. To the ancients, the lotus complemented the papyrus, the symbol of Lower Egypt. And it was everywhere.

I was amazed at the sheer number of times the lotus and the papyrus appeared together. They graced the walls of every ancient monument, their stalks intertwined, their leaves kissing. The lotus and the papyrus. The papyrus and the lotus. But no nardo.

The goddess Isis was everywhere as well. She always looked identical to the image we had seen in Luxor Temple. And she never, ever had wings.

The Temple of Isis at Aswan is located on the island of Philae. The boat taking us to the temple made a semi-circle around the island to reach the entrance, which is located on the far side of the island relative to the Aswan shore. I was able to take in the vast ruins from a distance before the boat docked and the temple was upon me.

I stepped off the boat and looked up at the monument. Though it was quite a distance away from the dock, it seemed to tower just over my head, so large in relation to the island itself that it almost appeared as if the temple could topple right off the land.

As we disembarked from the boat, a gathering of touts converged upon our tour group. Just as I had seen in Luxor, they offered T-shirts, miniature statues, postcards, and other assorted souvenirs. Their Arabic and English chatter swirled hazily around me as I looked up at the temple. When a particularly persistent woman in niqab took my hand and laid a roll of paper into it, I paid no attention.

"This is map of ruin," she said in heavily accented English. "It will help you find what you are looking for."

Absently, I reached into the pocket of my jeans and handed her a small handful of change. "Thank you," I said, without tearing my eyes from the temple.

At the temple's entrance was a large relief showing Ptolemy XII, Cleopatra's father. Beside him stood his family, including the young princess, Cleopatra. According to a guide leading a small group through the temple, Ptolemy XII had been the last ruler to significantly add to the temple. His contributions could be found throughout the temple, but the majority were focused within the inner sanctuary at the far end.

Dante and I headed there at a brisk pace, noting as we went the thousands of years of history and myth sprawled before us. We passed next to a smaller temple, colonnaded as Luxor Temple had been. As at Luxor Temple, the colonnades were carved to resemble papyrus. We passed through a larger such temple. Papyrus colonnades again. We passed by a seemingly infinite number of Isis reliefs. All of them wore sheath dresses. All wore atop their heads a crown of the horns of Hathor with the sun disk in the center. Most carried an ankh or a staff. None had wings.

We passed row upon decorative row of ankhs, aligned with each other in perfect grids. We passed a low relief resembling a picket fence. Slowing for a closer examination, I saw that the image was actually an alternating pattern of papyrus and lotus plants.

We continued forward.

At last we approached the inner sanctuary, and the vast, open, colonnaded spaces were replaced with a series of progressively smaller enclosed rooms. As we passed from one into the other, I noticed that their walls and ceilings became increasingly adorned with birds in flight. Flocks of soaring birds gradually replaced the ankhs and plants I had seen in the outer spaces. Their flight patterns pointed from doorway to doorway as if always leading the way into the next room.

As we followed their path into the depths of the temple, the spaces surrounding us became noticeably darker and much, much cooler. The brilliant Egyptian sunlight, formerly beating down mercilessly, was now filtering in gently through a scattering of small windows. Through them, I could at last feel a gentle breeze wafting across the island from the Nile. It was as if the fluttering wings all around me had brought it.

The birds guided us into the inner sanctuary, their wings outstretched, their heads held arrogantly erect. They began to resemble the symbol.

The caduceus.

Suddenly, I understood the ancient Egyptian legend Dante had described the previous day. In a desert land where temperatures could reach well above a hundred degrees, a soft breeze was life. And it was the winged Isis-one of very few winged deities-who could provide that wind and renew life.

And then, as if to confirm this, there she was.

It is our second date, and Jeff and I step out of the Egyptian rooms of the Louvre. We have just spent an intimate moment marveling at the winged Isis on the sarcophagus of Ramses III, the oldest image of the modern caduceus that either of us has ever seen.

"I had no idea our medical symbol was so old," I say.

"A professor of mine once regaled the class with the accepted story of its origin," Jeff says.

"Oh yeah, what did he say?"

"That the caduceus-a winged staff wound symmetrically by two snakes-had historically been associated with the rod of Asclepius. But that is a different staff, without wings, wound asymmetrically by one snake. Asclepius was the Greek god of medicine, and his rod is also found today. But it is not the same symbol as the caduceus, which is much more commonly used today to depict medicine."

"So how did your professor explain the mistake?"

"He couldn't. I told him it sounded like bullshit. We debated the point for the rest of the school year." Jeff grins widely. "Now I have proof I was right. The caduceus symbol came from the ancient Egyptian goddess of medicine. Isis. But I have no idea where the snakes came from..."

In a relief covering the entire wall of the innermost sanctuary stood the only winged Isis I had seen in all of Egypt. Her message was as clear as if she had spoken it out loud.

On the head of Isis were the horns of Hathor. But that was the extent of the resemblance this Isis bore to the thousands of other images I had seen here.

Beneath the horns of Hathor, a serpent circled her head like a crown, its triangular head stretched before Isis as if it wanted to see what she saw. For the first time, the goddess did not wear the constricting sheath dress, the dress that would certainly bind a broad span of wings.

Isis folded her wings protectively around another figure. The figure's face had been obscured over time, but the dress was male.

"Who are you protecting?" I quietly asked the goddess.

"That's Horus," Dante said. "Horus is her son."

In Horus' hand was a staff. The serpent jutting out from the head of Isis pointed toward it. Across from Isis and Horus was another figure, also a male. On his kilt were two serpents, winding up his body, the snakes of the caduceus staff itself.

Here is your answer, Jeff. The staff, the wings, the snakes. Here is the legend that gave us the timeless symbol of medicine. This is how the wings of the goddess Isis became entwined with the snakes of the caduceus forever.

Between the kilted figure and the protective wings of Isis around Horus stood a large bouquet comprised of the same repeating elements. The same two plants. The lotus and the papyrus.

"There they are," Dante said breathlessly beside me. "Those are the plants you need. Both of them."

I soaked in the details of the relief, the snakes adorning the two figures, the two plants, the protective wings of the goddess Isis enfolding and protecting her child. And I knew how to save mine.

I stepped toward one of the openings in the wall to feel the breeze upon my face. Inhaling deep breaths of cool air, I glanced through the window at the lush foliage growing along the Nile. They could both be out there. The lotus and the papyrus. The nardo. And if they still grew anywhere in Egypt, I was willing to bet they would still be growing here, at this temple.

I unrolled the map of the ruins handed to me by the veiled tout at the entrance. For a moment, I only stared at the paper, confused. The document in my hands was not a map at all. It was a long section of text written in Egyptian hieroglyphs. I stared at the symbols for a moment before they began to blur from the shaking of my hands.

The paper was thick. It appeared brittle to the eye. But to the touch, it was surprisingly supple. And when I folded a corner between two fingers and then unfolded it, only a barely perceptible crease was left behind.

I vaguely remembered Alyssa telling me at her museum that ancient papyrus was one of the most resilient types of paper ever invented. And that once an ancient scroll is unwound, methods finally exist today for softening it.

This was not a modern, commercial document made to look like ancient papyrus. This was ancient papyrus.

It was the original nardo document.

And Alyssa Iacovani was still alive.

I glanced around. Dante was examining another relief in the inner sanctuary, a grouping of birds. Their wingspans seemed to point toward the winged Isis and her companions. I casually re-rolled the nardo document and stepped outside.

She was standing on the outskirts of the temple, at a serene spot devoid of tourists. Beside her was a steep slope that led down to the Nile.

The tout in the black galabia and niqab was looking out over the water. When I approached, she turned toward me. This time, I noticed her green eyes through the mesh of the niqab's second layer. She glanced at me only briefly, and then her eyes fell to the shoreline of the river.

"It's here," she said. I followed her gaze and saw the plant she was referring to. It was the lotus.

"This is how they kept secrets," she said. "They hid half of the puzzle in a document somewhere, perhaps buried within a mummified crocodile. Or even in a library. The other half is encoded.

"In this case, the document actually is the first half of the puzzle. The text was written on the first plant you need. The papyrus.

"The encoded half is the nardo. Spikenard. It is the lotus."

"Why didn't you tell me?" I asked quietly.

"I didn't know myself, until yesterday," she said. "Yesterday, I broke the code.

"The lotus of Upper Egypt translates to 'S N' in ancient Egyptian-the very language that, among the educated classes of Egypt and Rome, only Cleopatra could speak and read. Lotus is S N. Spikenard. Nardo.

"When I learned that the lotus was the plant we sought, I knew that I would find the most authentic source of it here, in Upper Egypt, at the largest Temple of Isis in the world, the one completed by Cleopatra's father.

"But even if I had known all of this before yesterday, I still couldn't have told you, for the same reason Cleopatra could not tell her children. The danger to both of us has grown too great.

"Two days ago, a group of strange men came looking for me at the museum. I wasn't there, but a colleague of mine had a horrible feeling about them. I told the colleague that if anyone returned he should tell them I had been killed. And that is why I am dead." She flipped down the third layer of her niqab.

"Katrina, be careful," she said. "You have to stay hidden."

"Because you think Rossi or his thugs might have followed you here?"

"No," she said, "because the body of a prominent San Diego scientist was turned over to the police a few hours ago."

For seven days, I had been expecting this moment. But now that it was upon me, I could hardly process the information.

Jeff's body was turned over. Turned over. It is over.

But it wasn't over.

"Wait," I said.

Alyssa turned back toward me. I could no longer see her green eyes.

"Did they release his name?" My voice was weak and quivering.

"Not yet," Alyssa said, "pending next-of-kin notification. I'm so sorry, Katrina."

I pulled a small cassette tape from the pocket of my jeans. My hands were clammy and trembling as I handed it to her. "This is a voice recording of one of them on his cell phone. I recorded it yesterday. He did not know that I was sitting nearby. I was dressed as you are now.

"The conversation is in Italian. My hope is that it may have evidence that can put them away." I handed the recording to Alyssa, and she slipped it beneath her galabia.

"The man on the tape..." I glanced around the ruins.

Dante was nowhere to be found.

I watched for a moment as Alyssa walked away. Then I looked back toward the water. The nardo swayed gently in the cool breeze.

I slipped cautiously down the treacherous slope toward the Nile and reached for the plant. My hands clasped its foliage and found the stalks and leaves to be strong. Gently, tenderly, I wiggled the nardo loose from its bed in the water.

There is a crash.

I feel wetness and pain.

I see a thousand memories.

I feel myself slipping beneath the surface...

The bite of a crocodile holds more force than that of any other creature on earth-even that of a great white shark. Yet, crocs almost always kill their prey by dragging them into the water and drowning them.

This trivia from a TV show from another lifetime flashes through my mind as something crashes into me, and then my head strikes the ground. The sunlight around me dims, and all I can see are teeth. I feel the earth shift beneath me. I feel a cool, somehow comforting wetness, and then darkness falls-as if the lamp has been put out in a closed room...

There is an image in my mind. It is an image of my husband, but he is not my husband. He is a handsome stranger, naked on a sunny beach. He looks up at me and smiles, and he tries to shield himself with a towel...

There is an image in my mind. It is an image of my husband, but it is not my husband. It is a twisted corpse lying naked on the deck of a yacht, a pool of red expanding rapidly around him. There are two gunshot wounds.

There is a gunshot...

There is a gunshot. It is a noise I know.

There is quiet. There is pain. There is a voice.

"Katrina, hold on, sweetie," it says. It is a voice I know.

There is a light. There is softness beneath me, and there is pain. There is movement around me. I open my eyes. I look around. I am in a hospital bed. There are nurses nearby. I scan the room.