Dateline: Atlantis (27 page)

“Logos! Since when do religious people abduct innocent bystanders? What kind of God are you worshipping?”

A low voice booms from the front seat.

“We love those who love the Lord. We hate those who hate Him.”

“Hate?” She starts pushing against the lug in the back seat. Then she gouges him in the instep with her high heel. He takes a large gulp of air. “Who said I hate God? What an insult. My own aunt is part of your congregation.”

The two men look at each other, a question in their beady eyes. During that second, Amaryllis tests for the door latch. The lock hasn't caught yet.

“Orders are orders,” the man in the driver's seat says and begins to accelerate just as she flings open the door and pitches head first onto the pavement. The van screeches to a stop and, for one mad second, Amaryllis thinks they are coming back to run over her. But she rolls to standing position and begins to run—as best as her heels will allow—to the exit door. There she collides with another tall man, but this one is lanky and hardly muscular at all. He has a hotel security guard with him and he's yelling for the van to stop. The security guard draws his handgun and stands in a crouched position ready to fire.

In one horrible second, the van begins to accelerate with Sybil still caught inside. A bullet zings through the air, sounding like little more than a firecracker. The security guard lists to his left, drops his gun, and, like a manikin, slumps slowly to the ground. Blood runs like a rivulet from his head.

Amaryllis doesn't know whether to run from the tall man or just scream for more security cops. Instead, she watches as the mysterious stranger, a tall Nordic-looking man with graying blond hair and ice-blue eyes, unpockets his cell phone and, with a steady hand, calls the emergency number.

“There's been a shooting here at the Four Winds Hotel. In the garage. The men who did it escaped in a black van with plates reading LOGOS17… That's right.” There is a pause, then
he speaks again, “Must I give my name? Very well, I'm Isaac Thorgeld. I'm a guest at the hotel.”

#

After making their police report in the swank hotel lobby, Amaryllis and Thorgeld survey the solemn scene as paramedics carry the security guard to their waiting emergency vehicle. He's covered with a white sheet.

She's been a reporter far too long to have doubts about what that means. The man is dead. Logos, an organization dedicated to the love of God—or so say its brochures—has ended an innocent life. What was it the driver said about “hating God?”
I guess they determine who's a hater and who's not. As if they have that right.
Indignation makes her whole body shake.

Thorgeld's presence has been comforting, especially when she told the police about Sybil's presence in the van. They upgraded their police report from homicide to homicide plus kidnapping. This van will be the most sought-after vehicle in the greater Miami area. Thorgeld examines Amaryllis' arm, which has ugly red marks where the assailant grabbed her. She notices the heel on her shoe, where she stomped on the brute with the clothesline, is ruined. How she ran in those shoes, she'll never know.

Thorgeld answers the police officer's questions in careful English, accented slightly with a Scandinavian lilt. When the cops leave, she and this cipher of a human being stand facing each other as the crowd around them begins to disperse. He breaks the unease.

“I think you came to see me?” he asks. “I went to the conference room because someone called me there for an interview with a reporter. When I got there I saw you and the shorter woman, Sybil, run for the staircase.” He gulps, the first sign of
emotion he betrays. “I suspected the worst and fetched a security man from the lobby. The rest is tragic.”

“You saved my hide, at least. I think that bastard was going to back up and run over me.” She knows she's exaggerating, but the terror is creating shattered images in her mind. “And Sybil…”

“They'll find her. With the plates noted and the quickness of our response, they can't have gotten far.”

“I better call this into their newsroom. The police radio call won't tell them everything. Especially not about the Logos connection.”

After reaching the news desk and getting Hamilton on the line, she fills him in on the details, then clicks her cell phone closed. She's at wit's end about what to do about Sybil. Thorgeld smoothes his hair and suggests she change shoes so they can get out of the hotel and have some coffee.
Just what I need. A jolt of caffeine.
But Amaryllis hears herself agreeing all the same. She buys some flip-flops at the hotel store and sets off with the man who saved her life.

#

They perch at a tiny table in the Internet café, the Sun Bean, a block away from the hotel. Amaryllis is not sure if she can trust this man, no matter how benign and bookish he appears. He might have saved her, but in light of recent events, his academic appearance makes her jumpy. Their meeting spot couldn't be safer and is hopping with activity: college students hammer away on their computers, waitresses heft trays of latte and chai, techno music thumps in the background. Thorgeld sits in an erect posture, as if he is afraid to touch anything. He is listening with his head tilted to one side—probably to favor one ear—as Amaryllis explains how she was baited by a phony press invitation to go to the Four Winds conference room.

“A press conference?” Thorgeld says, his eyes enlarging to a sea of blue.

“That's what they told Sybil, too. Obviously, it was just a ruse. When Sybil and I got there, the whole thing looked so bogus that we took off.”

“I had no press conference,” Thorgeld says abstractedly, putting a hand up to his receding hairline, as if to jog his brain. “All I had was a message at the front desk, telling me to meet a Miss Amy Quigley for a press interview in room 500. That's the conference room.” He pauses to put the facts together. “Heaven's sake, I'm not even on a book tour.”

They had walked into a trap, but Amaryllis can't understand who the Committee is trying to round up, Thorgeld or her. They stare at each other for a few eternal minutes until she breaks the silence.

“There's this man who's been following me. Short. Dark complexion. Bristly black hair. Sort of a square build. Maybe about your age. Anyway, Sybil and I saw him guarding the elevator bank and decided to take the slow way downstairs. Big mistake.”

“That would be Ignacio Cruz,” Thorgeld says, leaning forward enough to put his elbows on the edge of the table. “Believe me, you would have had just as much trouble with him.” He pauses, taking a sip of his coffee. “I can't believe they are still using him.”

“Who's ‘they'?”

“It's a group of researchers, professors, people who do archeological excavations. I used to work with them.”

Amaryllis nods her head. This was old news.

“The Committee. What did you people actually do? And why were you allied with Logos?” She starts pushing away from the table as if contact with this man might put her in further peril. “And how do I know you're not still with them?”

Thorgeld rubs his balding head and lets out a soft groan. “If only I could rid myself forever of my association with those
people,” he says, sounding as if someone has socked him in the abdomen. “The taint is bad, and I guess it will stick to me forever.”

“Look. I read your book, so I know you're not lying about a change of heart, but I don't understand the break you made. If I'm to believe you, tell me how you split with the Committee,” Amaryllis says, trying to puncture his story.

He lets out a pained sigh and flops back onto his seatback. “The Committee was a huge mistake. I only was in it because I was brainwashed, just like the rest of them: Pitch, Ricketts, Fayed Hareem, all of them. We were told what to believe at the universities. We followed in lockstep and never questioned anything.

“Perhaps what you don't understand is that people in the academic world are trained to be skeptics. And they become so indoctrinated with this idea that there is only one true science that they develop a passionate distaste for those who would challenge them. They cast a huge shadow of doubt on anyone who dares to stand up to their conclusions. You simply don't break with the pack. If you do, you're a pseudo scientist—or worse, a cultist. Some, like Pitch, are more intense in their fervid disregard for these interlopers. He developed a seething hatred of them.”

Thorgeld begins to weave a long tale of academic intrigue and purported heresy. Amaryllis learns how Thorgeld's former best friend, Conrad Pitch, invented the Committee. He explains that the group was launched to stamp out fraudulent claims by archeological hucksters. They had been successful for many years, but Thorgeld began to feel uneasy when the Committee started to interfere with bona fide truth seekers. When they were waylaying psychics, UFO devotees, and religious crazies, the situation was tolerable for Thorgeld. But then the Committee got in bed with religious extremists themselves and the irony was too great.

“The methods Logos used against unbelievers were brutal. Kidnapping, torture, even…the worst. Not to mention that when the Committee devotees got in the way of credentialed
professors, I knew they were going too far. The whole arrangement was out of control.”

Thorgeld demurred at the group's tactics and the rest of the Committee—which had grown into an international, secret society—let him know that they expected blind obedience.

“Sometimes, when a group of people believe something so obsessively, it becomes impossible to process conflicting information,” Thorgeld explains. “The Committee knew rational Ph.D.s were publishing papers with verifiable findings, but findings that were completely at odds with their own. It was too much for them to bear. So denial and, ultimately, violence was the only answer.”

The beginning of the end of his active involvement with the Committee came when two archaeologists began snooping in waters between Florida and the Bahamas, dredging up objects that hinted at a drowned civilization.

As the professor rambles on, Amaryllis takes a sudden involuntary breath, but Thorgeld doesn't hear it. His story is picking up steam.

“I told Pitch that I wasn't going to stand by and see the Committee ruin the lives to those two young idealists. I guess they reminded me of myself, had I chosen another path for my life. I left the meeting, but not before I heard them talk about using Ignacio Cruz to terminate the investigation.”

“Terminate?” Amaryllis says, with her throat constricting.

“Usually, we'd just debunk theories, but Pitch wanted a more forceful way of stopping them.” His eyes dart around the room. She knows he's hiding something.

“What happened?” she whispers, and bolts down some chai. “Who were they?” She doesn't really want to know the answer, but the question pops out of its own accord.

Thorgeld pries at his buttoned-up collar and blanches before her eyes.

“They were Kristoff and Maggie Lang,” he says, rubbing his eyes with frustration. “Two talented archaeologists from Chicago
who were in Pitch's way. I'm pretty sure they were killed because I never saw a journal article by them again.”

There's a prickle of adrenaline in her stomach. Blood pounds in the artery near her right ear. She's afraid to take another breath. She looks into her chai and hears herself mumble.

“My real name is Amaryllis Lang.”

From the crushed look on Thorgeld's face, he has not realized what a gaffe he has made. He turns even whiter, blond eyebrows perched high on his forehead in an almost comical state of shock.

“My God…if I had known…” His mouth continues to work but no sounds emit.

“Why were they killing people, anyway?” she demands. Her anger bolts to the surface and she doesn't care if Thorgeld is responsible for her heartache or not. “How did they dare…?” She falters, unable to finish a coherent sentence.

“If the Langs' work and all the other ‘heretical' researchers are correct, and if someone really does find an ancient, submerged civilization, that puts all of academia's theories in peril. And, of course, Logos can't have anything but the literal truth of Biblical creation.”

He takes another sip of coffee, Adam's apple bobbing up and down in his thin neck. He looks as if he's considering his next words with care.

“You can hardly understand what it means to a man like Pitch to see his entire life's work blown away by a new idea. By then, the truth doesn't matter to him. The timeline must be maintained.

“Listen, I know Pitch better than any man, and I can tell you that he doesn't trade on everyday human emotion. He's driven. He's a proud man, proud of his birth, his family, his job, and his scholarship. The last I heard, he was up for an honor respected in all of Britain. A man like him simply cannot believe himself to be wrong. And he won't let anybody make him look foolish, either.”

“So who is Cruz after now, since I assume he set up the phony press conference?” Amaryllis asks, trying to keep her voice level, trying to keep herself objective, despite the millions of questions that are flying through her mind.