Hey guys, I'm so sorry it took so long to post this! Work has been crazy and I've been so stressed with the holidays! This is the first day in a while that I've had to myself. I hope you enjoy this chapter and I hope you've been enjoying the story! Till next next my lovlies!

Back at our hideout, which was actually just Charlie's apartment, or flat as they called them in Britain, Chloe, Charlie, and Sully lounged around drinking whiskey and telling stories. Nate and I sat on the couch, pouring over Lawrence's journal and the map we found in the Golden Hind figurehead. It was truly an amazing find! I was practically sitting on Nate as he leafed through the journal, making him pause on certain pages every now and then so I could read.

"Are you going to join us, darlings?" Charlie asked sweetly.

"Yeah, yeah…" Nate answered absentmindedly. He picked up the map and stood up, forcing me to follow or risk being dumped on the ground. I let out a quiet whine at my reading being interrupted, but Nate was still too engrossed on the map to pay me much mind. "Well, the map proves it - Drake didn't screw around in the East Indies for six months. He sailed straight through and headed to Arabia."

Sully nodded. "Right."

"But here's where it gets interesting. See this mark?" He pointed to a mark that looked like a '007' in the bottom right hand corner.

"That's John Dee's signature," I announced, leaning a bit against my boyfriend as I stopped next to him.

"Who the hell's John Dee?" Sully asked.

"John Dee. One of Queen Elizabeth's closest advisors. Everybody knows that," Charlie said eagerly before Nate could answer. I allowed a small amused smile at the affronted look Nate shot the Brit.

"Yeah, yeah, he was a great mathematician and navigator, way ahead of his time," Nate continued, cutting Charlie off. "He's probably the one who invented that." He gestured to the decoder Chloe held.

"Seriously into the occult. I mean like, in a really creepy, dark way," Charlie added.

"See, he signed all his letters to the Queen with this symbol -" Nate tapped the symbol again. "- Meaning he was her 'eyes'."

"The original '007'. You see, look, 'double-O-seven'."

"Not really that relevant," Nate told him. Charlie held up a hand.

"Still cool though," I said. I think I almost got whiplash listening to those two.

"Exactly!" Charlie grinned.

"So it was John Dee who sent Drake to Arabia?" Chloe asked.

"Yeah, it looks that way. Dee and Elizabeth," Nate said.

"And Walsingham," Charlie added. Nate sighed and hung his head in exasperation.

"Great, but what for?" Sully inquired.

"Wee, that's the million-dollar question, isn't it? And this is where T.E. Lawrence comes in," Nate said. "See, before Lawrence became 'Lawrence of Arabia'..."

"Great film," Charlie cut in. Nate ignored him and continued.

"…he was an archaeologist. Even when he was just a kid, he was obsessed with history - everything to do with knights and the Crusades. He traveled all over, documenting every Crusader site he could find. It's all in here."

"All right, you've lost me completely, kid, what the hell does this got to do with Drake?" Sully questioned.

"He's taking the scenic route as usual," I teased. Nate shot me an offended look before continuing.

"After the war, Lawrence said that if he were ever to go back to Arabia, it would be to search for this place he called 'The Atlantis of the Sands.' Now the legend crops up over and over again under different names - Ubar, Iram of the Pillars, The City of Brass… but the story is always the same." Nate placed the journal in front of Sully.

"'A city of immeasurable wealth, destroyed by God for its arrogance… swallowed forever in the sands of the Rub' al Khali desert'," Sully read.

"Right here." Nate pointed to a point in the middle of the desert on the map.

Sully sat back in his chair, rolling his cigar in his fingers. "Well, I like the 'immeasurable wealth' part, anyway."

"And you think this is what Elizabeth and Dee sent Drake after," Charlie said.

Nate nodded. "Oh yeah."

"More importantly, it's what Marlowe's got to be after," I added.

Chloe stood from her seat in the window. "So wait, if Drake was on a mission from the Queen to find this place, why all the secrecy? I mean, it looks like he went to a lot of trouble to hide whatever he found - even from Her Majesty." I lowered my gaze to the map and journal on the table. Chloe did raise an interesting point. Why go through so much trouble to hide all evidence of his journey, even from the one who had sent him?

Nate shook his head and shrugged helplessly. "I don't know."

"Oh, I'm sorry - what was that?" Charlie asked teasingly.

"No, hang on a second. Because, if you recall, the last time we went halfway around the world searching for a lost city things got more than a little dicey," Chloe pointed out.

"Don't remind me," I muttered. I absentmindedly rubbed my stomach where several scars remained from my encounter with the grenade.

"Yeah, but this time we have the upper hand," Nate insisted. "I mean look, Drake only had half the clues… Lawrence only had half… We have both."

I grinned. "And Marlowe has jack with a side of squat."

"Small problem," Sully said. "The Rub' al Khali desert - six hundred miles across. The Bedouin go around the damn thing."

"Even if we knew where it was - which we don't - we would die trying to find it," Charlie pointed out.

Nate held up a hand in slight irritation. "Just - hold on. You see these symbols here?" He gestured to the symbols around the border of the map.

Sully set his elbows on the table. "Yeah. Looks like -

"Sabean script," Sully and Nate said at the same time.

"...Right," Nate said. Sully fist bumped Chloe while I chuckled at the dejected pout on Nate's face. "Look, the Crusades were searching for the same lost city a thousand years ago. But out of all the sites Lawrence documented, only two are marked with these symbols. One in Syria - the other - in France." He flipped to each page in the journal where there was a sketch of each site with similar symbols on the side of the buildings. Chloe put her hand up excitedly. "No - you two are going to Syria," he said, pointing to her and Charlie. "We're heading to France." Chloe lowered her hand, disappointed.

"Bad luck old sport," I told her with a clap on the shoulder. She gave me a light shove in answer.

"Look, we track down these clues, we find Lawrence's lost city. I'm sure of it," Nate declared.

"And then what?" Charlie inquired. "How are we going to get across six hundred miles of impassable wasteland?"

"Well, it's in the middle of the desert, so technically it'd be about three hundred miles."

"Yeah, that extra three hundred miles makes all the difference," I quipped.

Nate put a hand on his hip. "Look, I don't know. We'll figure it out."

"We burn that bridge when we get to it, eh?" Chloe said, raising her glass.

"After Shambhala, I actually prefer to avoid bridges," I said.

Nate smiled and glanced at the four of us. "Whaddya say?"

Sully sighed and shrugged. "What the hell."

"Let's do it," Charlie declared with a punch to Nate's arm.

I slung an arm around Nate's waist. "Well, someone's gotta keep you from hurting yourself." Nate rolled his eyes fondly and wrapped an arm around me to draw me closer. "And you still owe me an ice cream." The group laughed and preparations for our search began.