The Atlantis Code (42 page)

The occupants of the car had already taken care of their morning meal. They’d struck camp early that morning, had a hasty breakfast, and gotten onto the road. During the night, Leslie had learned a lot about maneuvering around in a sleeping bag. She’d left Lourds’s tent before Gary had woken, so their trysting was still presumably secret from him. But Natasha had been at the campfire and given them both scathing looks of disapproval for their nocturnal activities.

“Ah. I see,” Diop said. “So after you graduated you were—fair game for this professor?” Diop’s eyes crinkled in merriment.

“Exactly.”

“How long were you here?”

“A month. Five weeks. Something like that. Enough for us to find out that we were compatible. We had a good time together.”

“But not enough of a good time to form a more permanent arrangement?”

“No.” Lourds shook his head. “I’m not the marrying kind. I love my work too much.”

Diop nodded. “I understand. I found myself in similar straits. I married and I tried to make the best of it, but I often found myself torn between my family and my work. In the end, my wife left me for someone who was more inclined to stay at home.”

“That’s too bad.”

“Actually, I think it was for the best. We were both happier for it. And now I have three beautiful daughters and seven grandchildren to visit when I feel the need for family. I believe they understand me more than their mother ever did.”

Spider monkeys leaped from treetop to treetop. Antelope stood at the roadside with twitching ears, then shied away as the jeep roared past. A short distance farther on, the driver had to swerve to avoid hitting a forest elephant that wandered out onto the dirt road leading up into the bush country.

“The man we’re going to see,” Diop went on. “The oba of Ile-Ife—”

“Adebayo,” Lourds said.

Diop nodded. “Yes. You have a good memory. Anyway, this man is very much taken with the old ways. He is lately come into the office he holds, but he’s always been protector of the drum.”

“The drum isn’t part of the office of oba?”

“No. The drum has been handed down through his family for generations.”

“For how many generations?”

Diop shrugged. “To hear him tell it, since the beginning of the Yoruba people.”

“For many hundreds of years, then.” Excitement sang within Lourds. Despite the knowledge that Gallardo was on their trail, but buffered by the fact that they hadn’t seen the man since leaving Île de Gorée, Lourds felt hopeful. “Do you believe him?” Lourds asked.

“Not so much when he told me as when you showed me those pictures of the bell and cymbal. Although I’m no expert, I think the writing on the drum is related to those.”

Lourds shifted restlessly in the seat. They’d traveled most of the day yesterday, by plane and then by jeep. Last night’s encounter with Leslie had been relaxing, but he was consumed with curiosity. His impatience today was only escalating.

“Do you speak Yoruba, Thomas?”

“Passably,” Lourds said. “My professor was Yoruba, and we worked with Yoruba artifacts.”

“That’s good. Adebayo speaks a little English and more Arabic, as many need to in this region to conduct their business affairs, but in the process is painfully slow. Besides, he’ll be more impressed if you speak his language.”

“How much farther is it?”

“Not so much. We’re not going into Ile-Ife proper. Adebayo lives in a small village north of the city. He travels into town when he needs to in order to let his voice be heard. But don’t let that fool you. He’s an educated man.”

“Stay back,” Gallardo instructed DiBenedetto, who drove the Toyota Land Cruiser they’d purchased back in Lagos. “I don’t want to get too close.” He gazed at the notebook computer screen on the lap of the man next to him.

The computer screen showed the Nigerian terrain they traversed. A blue triangle marked Lourds’s position. One of the computer geeks Gallardo hired for jobs had hacked into Lourds’s cell phone and was able to track the GPS locator as long as it remained on. They’d also hacked into Leslie Crane’s phone service. They hadn’t yet been able to get the Russian woman’s.

The red square following the blue triangle marked Gallardo’s own progress. A small satellite receiver mounted on a pole on the Land Cruiser’s bumper connected them to the geosynchronous satellites that orbited the earth and painted their position.

DiBenedetto nodded and reduced his speed.

Gazing behind him, Gallardo looked at the three other vehicles that carried the small army of mercenaries he’d hired back in Lagos. They were white, black, Chinese, and Arabic, a real global collection. Men like them were always for hire in the right bars. Africa remained torn by wars and greed. The dogs of war stayed close to the battles.

All the new men were armed to the teeth.

Gallardo settled back into the seat and felt the day heating up around him. He felt certain it wouldn’t be long now. He’d get the instruments. Then that redheaded bitch was going to get what was coming to her.

NORTH OF ILE-IFE, NIGERIA
OSUN STATE
SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

T
he village was a scattering of huts and small houses made of whatever their occupants could lay hands on. There were a few tin roofs, but most of them tended to be made of bundles of grass. Goats, chickens, and sheep wandered around the homes. Laundry hung on tree limbs behind the houses.

The driver pulled the four-by-four to a stop in the center of the village. A little girl no more than four or five years old ran from a young woman and yelled for her father’s attention.

“See?” Diop said quietly. “These are the things you miss if you never have a family.”

“It wouldn’t be a good idea for me to have a family yet,” Lourds replied. “I’m still not through with my childhood.”

Diop’s eyes sparkled. “No. And I suspect you never will be. You’ll always find one adventure or another that will call your attention away.”

Lourds thought again of the Library of Alexandria. He hadn’t given up hope that not all those books and scrolls from it had been lost forever. He wanted to find them. Perhaps that want would haunt him all his life.

He got out of the vehicle feeling stiff and sore. Part of that was from the sleeping bag, he knew, but part of it was from his amorous adventures with Leslie. He was getting a bit too old for romps on the bare ground.

The men, women, and children of the village all circled them excitedly. They talked in a handful of dialects, trying each one to find a means of communication that worked for the newcomers. They finally picked English, but they had only a rudimentary grasp of the language.

Still, they did much better with English than the standard English-speaker would do with the Yoruba dialect.

But Lourds wasn’t standard.

Lourds chatted easily and amiably with them in the Yoruba tongue. Even though it had been years since he last spoke it, the language came back to him almost naturally. He’d always known he was gifted when it came to languages. Not only did he generally have a quick grasp for them, but he also had a tendency for almost photographic recall when he needed them again, no matter how long it had been since he’d spoken them last.

The villagers made only a token attempt to get to know Natasha. She’d shaken her head at them and smiled at their many questions, but her attention remained riveted on the surrounding forest. She carried her hunting rifle slung over one shoulder and pistols at her hips. She wore her long hair back in a ponytail, and a cowboy hat shaded her face. Ice-blue sunglasses hid her eyes.

She looked more dangerous than any of the forest predators.

As Lourds talked to the villagers, he wondered again at how Yuliya’s sister could be so different from her. Then again, he had to be grateful that she was. Without her, they’d all be dead.

His attention was drawn away from Natasha as the crowd parted before an old man dressed in khaki shorts, sandals, and a white golf shirt. He carried a staff in his right hand. Gray-white cottony hair covered his head and his face.

The man stopped before them.

“Thomas, I’d like you to meet Oba Adebayo,” Diop said.

Lourds walked forward and met the man’s gaze.

“Oba Adebayo,” Diop said, “this is Professor Thomas Lourds. From the United States.”

Adebayo looked from Diop to Lourds. “What do you want?” he asked in heavily accented English.

“Only to talk to you,” Lourds said in the Yoruba tongue.

The old oba’s eyebrows crawled up his forehead in surprise. “You speak my language.”

“Some,” Lourds admitted. “Not as much as I’d like.”

“It has been long and long since I have heard a white man speak my language so well,” Adebayo said. “What do you wish to talk about?”

Lourds had given much thought to how to bring up the subject of the drum. He could have forestalled the discussion, but he’d figured that anyone wise enough to run a village and serve as a king to one of the oldest existing African cities would see through that ruse.

Instead, Lourds shrugged out of his backpack and sat it on the ground. “Let me show you,” he said. He knelt beside it, unzipped one of the outer pouches, and took out the pictures of the bell and the cymbal.

“These,” he said, handing the photographs over.

After a moment, Adebayo took the photos. He studied them in quiet contemplation as the livestock milled about and the children continued talking excitedly.

Then he looked up at Lourds. “Where are these things?”

“I don’t know.” Lourds stood and slung the backpack over his shoulder again. “But I want to know.”

“Why have you come here?”

“To hear the story.”

“You have wasted your time. You have come to the wrong place.” Adebayo handed the photographs back and turned away.

“Have I truly come to the wrong place?” Lourds asked softly. “I haven’t been able to translate much on those instruments, but I’ve found a warning on them: Beware the gatherers.”

Adebayo kept walking back to his small house. It had a tin roof and walls covered in children’s drawings, which Lourds assumed had come from Yoruba legends.

“Someone is gathering those instruments,” Lourds said. “Someone very ruthless. One of my friends was killed when it was taken. Whoever is behind that theft isn’t a good person.”

The old man pulled aside the vinyl curtain that hung over the doorway.

“He—or she—knows more about the instruments and the gathering than I do,” Lourds said. “I know that gathering the instruments is dangerous, but I don’t know why.” He paused. “I need help.”

Adebayo disappeared into the house. Lourds started to pursue him. Immediately a half-dozen young men stepped in front of the hut to block his path.

Helplessly, Lourds looked at Diop.

The old historian only shook his head. “If Adebayo doesn’t wish to speak to you,” Diop said, “then he won’t speak. Perhaps another day.”

Disgusted with himself, Lourds tried to think of something to say or something he could do. He looked back at the photographs of the bell and the cymbal.

“You’re supposed to protect the drum,” Lourds said. “I know that. But you’re also supposed to be a wise man. That’s why the messages are written on the instruments. You’re supposed to hand knowledge down to those that would take your place as the drum’s protector.”

The young warriors came forward and chased the children and animals back.

“You will go,” one of them said in English. He had a hand on the knife at his belt.

“Someone else will come,” Lourds said as he reluctantly gave ground before the warriors. “Soon. Someone else will come and take the drum from you. Can you stop what happens when the instruments are gathered?”

Adebayo’s head poked back out the door. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” Lourds admitted. He had to be honest, even if it was to plead ignorance now. The four-by-four’s fender pressed into his hip and blocked any further movement backward.

“Do you know what the writing on the bell and the cymbal say?” Adebayo asked.

“No. I was hoping you could help.” Lourds felt the tiniest trickle of hope in the air, but he dared not reach for it.