Uncharted: The Fourth Labyrinth Read Free Page B

that he had arrived, he couldn’t help being worried.
    Victor Sullivan had practically raised him from his early teens and taught him everything—or nearly everything—he knew about staying alive in the “hard-to-find-acquisitions” business. They’d been all over the world hunting for treasure and antiquities for pretty much anyone who could afford to pay the tab. And in all that time he had never heard Sully sound as grim and weary as he had on the phone.
    A taxi driver laid on the horn as Drake hustled across the street. A chilly October wind blasted him, and he shivered, wishing he had a coat. He had left his bags in a locker at JFK, figuring he would be headed back to the airport on his way out of the city, but nothing in there would have helped. Ecuador had been warm and humid. Drake had spent too much time in hot and sticky locales in his life, so he didn’t mind the chilly autumn wind, but it was a rapid shift, like stepping through a door to the other end of the world.

    Wouldn’t that make my life easy? he thought. But of course that kind of stuff happened only in science fiction and fantasy stories, where the heroes were all noble and dead wasn’t always forever. Real life had less convenient rules.
    Drake hauled open the heavy glass-and-brass door and walked up the pebbled incline between the outer and inner doors. A man with a long, filthy, matted beard and sunken eyes stood to one side wearing a sign announcing the arrival of the End Times, but there was no way to tell if he was celebrating or regretting the moment.
    When he stepped into the main concourse—the enormous, ornate chamber that came immediately to mind when he thought of Grand Central Terminal—he made a beeline for the huge clock. He spotted Sully standing beneath it, but the older man was turned away, watching the stairs across the terminal, probably thinking about the baby carriage scene in De Palma’s Untouchables , a homage to the Russian flick Battleship Potemkin . They’d passed through Grand Central together a few times, and every time Sully had to tell him about those stairs. Sully saw him coming and perked up, shaking off whatever he’d been thinking about. From the haunted look in his eyes, Drake decided maybe it wasn’t old gangster movies, after all.
    “Nate,” Sully said. “Thanks for coming.”
    “I was already traveling. Just had to take a detour,” Drake replied. Their rapport mostly consisted of banter, but for once he thought maybe the lighthearted approach wasn’t appropriate. “What’s going on, Sully? You said ‘murder.’ One look at you and I’m guessing this isn’t some cozy mystery.”
    Sully frowned, smoothing his gray mustache. “I’m not my usual jovial self, huh? I guess not. But you look more than a little like crap yourself, so maybe you shouldn’t judge.”
    Drake raised his eyebrows. “Great to see you, too.”
    A tired smile touched Sully’s face and a bit of the usual mischievous twinkle lit his eyes, but then the smile faded and his gaze turned dark. He nodded his head toward the row of arched doorways that led through into the train tunnels and platforms.
    “Come on. This way,” he said.

    Drake followed without asking any more questions. If Sully had a particular way he wanted the answer to unfold, Drake would indulge him. He’d earned that, and far more, in the years they’d been friends. He studied Sully as they reached a staircase and started down to a lower level. A drinker and an inveterate ladies’ man, he looked, as always, as if he would have been more at home gambling in 1950s Havana than dealing with twenty-first-century America. His graying hair looked a bit unruly, and dark circles under his eyes implied he hadn’t gotten a lot of sleep the night before. He wore a brown leather bomber jacket over one of his guayaberas—linen shirts that were most popular in Latin America and the Caribbean. Both the shirt and the khaki pants he was wearing were rumpled, indicating