The Atlantis Code (47 page)

“Making sure they can’t follow us anymore.”

Lourds took his first real breath since he’d been knocked over as Natasha knelt down and started the pyre with her lighter. The flame lapped at the gasoline quickly and blazed in the gathering darkness. In seconds the phones started to melt and caught fire.

“What if we need help?” Leslie demanded as she pushed herself to her feet. “Did you happen to think of that?”

“If we need help,” Natasha said, “we help ourselves.” She walked back toward the motorcycle. “We’re more likely to need it if Gallardo finds us again. Get back in the truck. We need to put as much distance between us and this place as we can, as fast as we can.”

Gingerly, wondering if something had been broken, sprained, or torn, Lourds got up. He stood for a moment and felt the heat off the fire.

“You brought her along,” Leslie accused.

Lourds knew that wasn’t exactly true, but he wasn’t going to argue the point. “Maybe we should get moving.”

Natasha didn’t give any signs of waiting up for them. She threw a leg over the motorcycle seat and pushed the ignition switch to start the engine. The low rumble vibrated through the forest and chased away the night sounds. A moment later the headlight came on and burned through the darkness.

Lourds picked up his dusty hat, slipped it on, kicked enough dirt over the burning phones to put them out, and slid behind the old four-by-four’s steering wheel. Diop, Gary, and Adebayo climbed into the back.

Leslie stood for a moment at the side of the truck with her arms crossed. She looked as stubborn as a child.

Natasha roared ahead.

“It’s a long walk back, Leslie,” Lourds commented. “Even from here. And you wouldn’t like the neighborhood.”

Cursing, Leslie opened the door and swung herself inside. She sat in the seat with her arms crossed again and glared at the disappearing motorcyclist.

“She’s not the boss of me,” Leslie said petulantly.

Lourds didn’t comment. He put the truck in gear and let off the clutch. They gained speed as they followed the motorcycle. He just hoped that Leslie would see that he wasn’t interested in having this conversation. It wouldn’t do any good to talk about it. No matter what they said, the phones were still burned and what had happened still would have happened. He wasn’t even sure she was wrong. Natasha was the most trouble-ready among them. Not following her was stupid.

“Why didn’t you do something back there?” Leslie demanded.

Despite his efforts to intercede, which had collected him a nice assortment of bruises, Lourds knew it wouldn’t do any good to point out now that he’d tried.

“I can’t believe you let her set my phone on fire.”

It’s going to be a long trip back
, Lourds realized.

CAVE #41
ATLANTIS BURIAL CATACOMBS
CÁDIZ, SPAIN

“Are you all right, Father?”

Father Sebastian looked at Dario Brancati. The construction foreman stood beside the priest and looked as worn and haggard as Sebastian felt.

“I’m fine, Mr. Brancati,” Sebastian replied. “I’m just tired. That’s all. It’s nothing that a few more hours of sleep won’t cure. You look as though you could use some sleep yourself.”

“I’ll sleep when we’re finished with this,” Brancati said. “I apologize for the early hour.”

According to Sebastian’s watch, it was almost three in the morning. He’d had barely four hours sleep even though he’d promised himself he would get to bed earlier.

“I would have waited,” Brancati said, “but I thought perhaps you’d want to see this for yourself.”

“I do.”

Brancati handed him a fresh flashlight and a new hard hat.

“I’ve already got a hat,” Sebastian said. He held the old hat up.

“How fresh are the batteries in that?”

Sebastian hesitated, then shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“That’s why you need a new hat.”

The two Swiss Guards accompanying Sebastian also got new hats. Sebastian struggled to remember their names—Peter was the one with the small scar over his eyebrow. He’d gotten it in a fight with his brother as a boy, some mix-up over a coveted toy. And the other, Martin, had a cleft chin. Good men, both. They’d insisted Sebastian wear a lifejacket with handgrips on it in case they had to get him out of the cavern in a hurry. Together, they followed Brancati and his team into Cave #42.

Nervous energy filled Sebastian as he carefully waded into the waist-deep water. The pumps growled incessantly as they removed the water from the cave. Most of it was gone, but the crews remained vigilant in case another leak sprang up. The ground radar had confirmed the presence of water on the other side of several walls. They walked through a rock bubble that hung 150 feet below the level of the Atlantic Ocean.

The floor was treacherous. Bodies and parts of bodies still floated—mostly submerged—beneath the oil-black water. Once Sebastian felt something strike his leg and saw a skull float up for a moment before disappearing once more.

“We should have the rest of the water out of here in the next few days, Father,” Brancati announced. His voice carried in the cavern, but it was almost buried in the throb of the vacuum engines pulling water from the cave.

“That’s good.” Sebastian followed the man through the burial crypts. Only a few of them had tenants at the moment.

“We didn’t see it last time, because we weren’t in here long enough before the cave gave way,” Brancati said. “Even when it was found this time—” He shook his head. “Nobody believed we’d found it.”

A few minutes later, Sebastian gazed up at Brancati’s find.

The door was immense. It spanned at least fifteen feet across. The oval shape gleamed in the reflected light and had a metallic cast to it. Strange symbols covered the surface. As Sebastian watched, the symbols shimmered and wavered. In only seconds, he could read what was there.

KNOW YOU OUR HONORED DEAD.
THIS PLACE IS PROTECTED, KEPT SAFE BY THE HAND OF GOD.
THESE PEOPLE ONCE LIVED ON GOD’S HOLY GROUND.
LET THEM SLEEP WELL.

Sebastian read the inscription again. When he tried to concentrate, he didn’t see the writing. He saw only the symbols. But he was certain of what he’d read.

In the center of the door, though, was the same figure he’d seen hanging from the dead man’s necklace. He stood tall and handsome, the book under one arm and the other offered to help whoever wanted it.

Below that was a seal Sebastian recognized from the materials Pope Innocent XIV had given him. It showed a glowing hand on an open book with flames leaping from the pages.

He stopped cold, shock ringing through him until it nearly stopped his heart.

“It’s some kind of metal alloy,” Brancati said. “But we haven’t yet determined what kind yet. The way it’s built into the rock is way ahead of the time period we’re talking about. We couldn’t do it today. Not like that. I don’t have an explanation for it.”

“It’s just lost tech,” one of the construction workers said. “Just like the way the Egyptians built the pyramids. We can guess how they did it, but we don’t know for sure.”

“Oh my God,” Sebastian whispered hoarsely as he stumbled forward. He would have fallen if one of the Swiss Guards hadn’t reached out and caught him. He stretched out his hand and touched the seal.

It was still well defined and hard edged, gleaming as though it had been struck yesterday.

It’s true. All of it
. Sebastian ran his trembling hand over the seal.

“Father,” the guard who held him, young Peter, said softly.

“I’m all right.” Sebastian pulled at his arm. “Please. Release me.”

With obvious reluctance, Peter did so, but he remained close at hand.

Cold fear twisted through Sebastian. It had nothing to do with the depths of water waiting outside the cave walls to drown them. The fear that flooded the priest now focused solely on the figure on the great door ahead. Sebastian dropped to his knees and felt the cold brine he’d waded through climb to his chest.

He put his hands in front of him and prayed for mercy and salvation, not just for himself, but for all the souls that had been lost when Atlantis had been lost to the ocean.

God hadn’t been merciful then. He wouldn’t have been. God’s loss of his son and the effrontery shown by the priest-kings of Atlantis had been inexcusable.

That was why he had pulled the island continent beneath the sea.

But why is this here now? To test us again? Is that what you want, God? A test?

If it was a test, Sebastian feared they would fail once more. He feared that even he might be tempted by what lay beyond the strange metal door.

And if he did, the world might be doomed again.

LAGOS AIRPORT HOTEL
IEKJA, LAGOS, NIGERIA
SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

Lourds referred to the notebook computer screens where the images of the bell, cymbal, and drum were open, but he worked on lined yellow legal pads he’d bought on the way to the hotel. Natasha hadn’t been happy about the shopping, but he explained he needed the pads.

His brain was on fire as he compared the four languages represented on the three instruments. He worked feverishly, exchanging values and words, ideas and guesses that had come to him during the long drive back to Lagos.

Even fleeing for his life hadn’t turned off that part of his mind that so loved puzzles of language and culture. This was where his passion lived.

Upon their arrival at the hotel, they’d checked in and gone to their rooms. Leslie had managed to get them all on the same floor.

There hadn’t been any sense of camaraderie, though. Each of them—except for Diop and Adebayo, who acted like long-lost friends—had elected to trudge off to their room separately.

Lourds hadn’t wanted to deal with the women, and he still wasn’t exactly sure where his loyalties lay in handling them. Leslie had managed to bring him this far, and there was the intimacy factor, but Lourds never let sex get in the way of his job. He suspected Leslie was very much the same in that respect.

Sadly, both of them were also driven by the same desire to excel at their jobs. And that put them on different sides of the fence regarding the instruments.

Natasha had her own agenda to avenge her sister’s murder. Lourds suspected that need came out not only from the personal aspect of Yuliya’s murder, but also out of whatever motivation had prompted Natasha to become a police officer in Moscow to begin with.

The problem was, Lourds was near to bursting with ideas about what they were ultimately searching for. He needed a sounding board, someone he could talk to about everything that was buzzing through his head.

And it didn’t seem fair that he didn’t share it with Leslie.

Except that he couldn’t.

He looked at the notes he’d taken over the last several pages of the legal pad and knew he was going to drive himself crazy if he didn’t talk through what he suspected to be true.

It was decision time.

Ultimately, it came down to needing the most dispassionate listener. He judged that Leslie wouldn’t be. If he told her what he believed was true, she would feed off it and push him into making even more and wilder leaps. He needed to be grounded to complete his work.

He left the notebook on the bed, went to the refrigerator, and took out two beers. He was fresh from the shower and dressed in khaki shorts and an old soccer shirt. For a moment, he stood at the door and tried to debate whether he needed an audience, but he knew he did.

Having to explain things, just focusing to put everything he was thinking into perspective and an oratory summary, allowed him to see and think more clearly. Perhaps that was caused by the nature of the teacher within him, but he also believed it was because speaking caused him to think more linearly.

He needed that now.

He glanced back at the legal pad lying on the bed. The name
ATLANTIS
was underlined, circled, and starred. He really, really needed that now.

Feeling some apprehension, he left the room.

Lourds knocked on the door. He waited a moment outside in the hall, feeling ridiculous and vulnerable all at the same time because he knew she would be watching him through the peephole.

And probably putting the safety back on her pistol
, he told himself.

He started to knock again, thinking maybe he’d caught her in bed. It was only a few minutes after 5 A.M. locally.

Then she asked, in Russian, “What do you want?”

“I come bearing gifts.” Lourds tried a smile and held up the two beers.

“I have my own refreshment bar. Go away.”

Some of Lourds’s confidence waned. He dangled the beers at his side. “I need to talk.”

“About what?”

“I’ve deciphered some of the inscriptions on the instruments.”

“Good. We can talk about it in the morning.”

“I want to talk about it now.”