The Atlantis Revelation (5 page)

C
onrad knew that he had come tonight to see Mercedes, whom he reluctantly followed past security down some stone steps into the lower gardens. But the sight of Serena had so thoroughly thrown him that Mercedes could have stripped off her snug gown and invited him to skinny-dip with her in the sea and he still would have passed on the opportunity in order to get back to Serena. Or get back
at
her. He wasn’t sure.

Mercedes, meanwhile, looked incredibly if artificially well sculpted in her silver halter dress. Her forehead and facial features, however, seemed a bit too tight when she turned to him in the dim light of the lower gardens. Sure they were at last alone, she slapped him across the face.

“You bastard!” she hissed. “You stranded me in Nazca with a stolen artifact and a dozen Peruvian soldiers.”

He rubbed his stinging cheek with his hand. “You got out okay, didn’t you?”

“And how do you think I managed that?” she said, tearing up. “You think those pigs cared who my father was?”

It dawned on him what must have happened, the favors she was forced to offer to get out while he was off in Antarctica with Serena. He couldn’t tell her he’d had no choice, because in hindsight, he had. It hadn’t been necessary to leave her on that plateau. He could have insisted that the U.S. military take her and drop her off somewhere safe before proceeding. And he hadn’t.

Conrad said, “You told me later that all was forgiven and forgotten.”

Her eyes turned into black slits, the moonlight giving them an otherworldly glow. “Because I had to,” she said. “I was hoping you’d come back. But you didn’t, did you?”

Conrad, realizing that Mercedes’s feelings toward him were the same as his own toward Serena, felt horrible and gave her his full attention. “I’m here now.”

“No, you came to see
her,
” Mercedes said, referring to Serena.

“Actually, I came to see your boyfriend,” he said, surprised that he was actually telling her the truth.

She believed him, it seemed, and said nothing for a couple of minutes as they walked down more steps to the beach. There was a tiny Greek fishing village there, with some modest homes behind whitewashed walls. She removed her stiletto sandals, and they walked along the sand to the old stone bridge jutting out into the water.

“This is the kaiser’s pier,” she said. “He used it to go back and forth from his yacht.”

“Like Midas?”

Her slits for eyes softened into a worried look. “What’s your business with Roman?”

“He stole something that belonged to me.”

She forced a smile. “I doubt that.”

“That he stole something?” Conrad asked.

“That whatever he stole belonged to you. What was it, Conrad? Some Greek statue at the bottom of the sea?”

“Something important enough for Midas to blow up my boat and kill my crew over.” He was as serious as he had ever let her see him.

She paused. “And so you decided to come back for more?”

“Did you hear me, Mercedes? Your boyfriend killed people today. You don’t seem surprised. And that surprises
me
. What are you doing with a monster like Midas?”

“All men are animals.” Her eyes narrowed back into slits. “But Roman is an adult, Conrad, not a child like you. He understands power and money and politics in a way you never could.”

“All I understand, Mercedes, is that Midas seems to have moved on from oil to arms.”

Mercedes sniffed. “I don’t believe you. Midas doesn’t need anything in this world. He’s as rich as, well, Midas. He doesn’t have to steal anything. He can buy it.”

Conrad said, “Then tell me what he’s buying these days besides megayachts and art.”

A shadow passed across her face, betraying the fact that, yes, Midas had bought something interesting lately. “You haven’t changed, Conrad,” she said. “You’re looking for links that don’t exist. The great conspiracy is that there are no conspiracies. Everybody is out for himself. Life is a big black hole. There is no meaning.”

“Your existentialism used to have some romance, Mercedes. What happened?”

Her phone beeped, and she glanced at a text message and shook her head. It must have been from Midas, Conrad thought. “Romance is dead,” she told him. “And so are you if you go after Roman.”

She took his hand to lead him back to the party when two security men came down the steps, talking softly into their radios. “You fool, it’s too late,” Mercedes said, sounding genuinely alarmed.

Conrad looked over his shoulder past the kaiser’s stone pier. A light in the distance grew closer, and soon a dinghy emerged from the mist around nearby Mouse Island, like a boat from the River Styx, with a large, muscular colossus of a man standing at the prow.

“You’ve got to be kidding me.” Conrad had started to turn back to Mercedes when he felt the stab of a needle in his neck and blacked out.

A
bucket of freezing water brought Conrad to life. He blinked his eyes open. He seemed to be inside the submersible launch bay of the superyacht
Midas.
The hatch was open wide over the surface of the water. Moonlight reflecting from the sands beneath the yacht bounced around the hold. He was sitting in a chair, his feet bound together at the ankles and his hands tied behind him to the back of the chair.

“What is the four-digit code, Professor?” said a voice with a thick Russian accent.

Conrad looked up to see a bodybuilder type towering over him. Behind him stood two security men and a giant basin of water. They were leaning against a double-domed deep-flight Falcon submarine. Midas must have used the Falcon to transport the
Flammenschwert
from the
Nausicaa
to the yacht, Conrad thought.

“I don’t know about any four-digit code,” Conrad said, trying to quickly make sense of his predicament. He should be dead. Maybe Midas hadn’t found everything he was looking for in the
Nausicaa
and was hoping Conrad had. “But I’m sure glad you told me about it.”

The Russian held up an electric shock baton. Conrad recognized it as the type favored by the Chinese police in torturing Falun Gong practitioners. “Maybe this will jog your memory,” the Russian said.

Conrad shivered as the picture came into focus: He was drenched in water in order to intensify the three hundred thousand volts of electricity this thug was about to apply to him.

“I know you,” Conrad told him, and he realized where he had seen the face. “You’re that ex–KGB guy turned fitness guru with the kettle ball infomercial.”

The Russian paused, seemingly pleased at the recognition. “It is true. I am Vadim.”

“Too bad your website sucks. Bet your online sales of those Vadimin supplements do, too. Is this your day job, or do you have another one at some health spa?”

Vadim cocked his thick head. Conrad was clearly getting inside it, and the Russian didn’t like it. He plunged the electric baton into the fresh harpoon wound in Conrad’s leg.

Conrad gritted his teeth as the voltage shot up his thigh and throughout his body. For a second he thought his head would explode. When the wave of devastating pain finally passed, he dropped his head and saw that the baton had reopened his harpoon wound, which oozed blood.

“Utter a sound, Dr. Yeats, and I’ll shove this baton into your mouth and shock you with a thousand root canals at once until you black out.”

Conrad could smell his own burned flesh. It would take weeks for it to fully heal. Not that Vadim was intending for him to see that day. The Russian pressed the wound with the baton until a shard of harpoon protruded up through the blood. Conrad moaned in agony.

“Go easy on the lad, sport,” one of the other guards said in a British accent. “Midas wants to get the code out of him before he dies.”

So the other two were Brits, Conrad thought. Private security. For all Conrad knew, Midas also employed former Navy SEALs and American mercenaries in his private global army. Who said capitalism was dead?

“Shut up, Davies,” Vadim told the Brit sternly while he trained his eyes on Conrad. “Von Berg’s code,” he repeated. His breath was foul. “Four digits. Like your hand after I cut off your thumb.” He pulled out a cigar cutter. “Or maybe I’ll cut off something else. Now tell me where the code is.”

“Of course!” Conrad cried out. “It’s all in my head!” He started to laugh uncontrollably, despite the pain. It was crazy, but by rephrasing his demand for the code in terms of “where” instead of “what,” Vadim had triggered an epiphany for Conrad. Now Conrad understood why nobody had found a metal briefcase containing secret codes inside the sunken sub. The paranoid Baron of the Black Order never carried secret papers in a briefcase or on his person on land, sea, or air. Von Berg knew he’d be dead if anybody found them. So he kept the code in his head, literally. And that head was back in Conrad’s room at the Andros Palace Hotel.

Vadim and the Brits glanced at each other. “You find this funny, Dr. Yeats?”

Conrad nodded. “Let me guess. This code Midas wants. You don’t know what it’s for, do you?”

Vadim said, “You will tell us?”

“Hell, no. But Midas is going to assume I did. And then you guys are dead.”

Vadim’s nostrils flared. “What are you talking about?”

“I know what Midas stole from the sub this morning. Don’t you?”

It was clear from Vadim’s expression that he did not.

“Oops,” Conrad said. “Maybe you’re not as tight with the boss as you thought.”

Vadim’s eyes dilated at the truth of Conrad’s words. Indeed, Vadim seemed to be reconsidering his relationship with Midas.

“What’s more likely?” Conrad asked, relentless. “That Midas is going to kill you because I got away? Or because you know what he stole from the sub and where it might be?”

“Kill him,” said Davies. “But get out of him what he knows.”

Conrad looked at Vadim. “The only way to pull it off is like this: You have to make Midas believe you killed me before I said anything. But how is he going to believe that and keep you around? You have to make it look like I killed one of the Brits while trying to escape and that the other one came in and shot me.”

“How stupid do you think I am, Dr. Yeats?” Vadim pulled out a 9mm Rook pistol of the type favored by Russian special forces and put it to Conrad’s forehead.

“Quite stupid, actually,” Conrad said.

Vadim shook his head, swung his arm to the side, and shot Davies in the head. Davies fell to the floor.

“Bloody hell!” screamed the other Brit, and pointed his Browning pistol at Vadim. “You killed him!”

Vadim shot the other Brit, and Conrad watched him crumple on top of his fallen comrade. Conrad, still in agony from the shock baton, kept laughing as Vadim put his gun away.

Vadim picked up the shock baton and glared at him. “You will now reveal the four-digit code, Professor Yeats.”

“Look!” Conrad was staring at the bloody black hole in his thigh. “Look at what you did.”

With a smile, Vadim bent over to take a closer look.

Conrad kneed him with both legs to the face, driving the protruding harpoon shard into Vadim’s eye. The Russian snapped his head back with a howl. Then Conrad used his bound feet to sweep the leg of the table with the basin of water, sending it crashing to the floor.

As Vadim staggered back, his boot slipped on the water, and he lost his grip on the shock baton. Conrad watched the baton fall to the floor and lifted his feet as a blue wave of electrical light rippled across the water, electrocuting Vadim like an X-ray.

When Vadim came to a few minutes later, the yacht’s “abandon ship” alarms were blaring, and Conrad was gone. In his place was a gray-green brick of C4 explosive with a timer and Davies’s cut-off middle finger sticking up on top.

The display on the timer was down to one minute and twenty-three seconds.
“Chyort voz’mi!”
Vadim cursed, and scrambled topside to discover that the skeleton crew had left with the shuttle tender, leaving him no choice but to jump overboard and swim for his life.

S
erena was alarmed to see Mercedes come up from the lower gardens alone and immediately went out on the terrace to search for Conrad, to no avail. She did, however, find Packard by the stone balustrade with a drink in his hand.

“What are you doing, Mr. Secretary?” she demanded. “Where’s Conrad?”

“Elvis has apparently left the building,” Packard told her. “And Midas doesn’t look too happy.”

Serena followed his gesture toward the statue of Apollo, where Midas seemed to be having a low-key but sharp exchange with Mercedes.

“Guess Midas just figured out that you’re not the only woman here tonight who has a past with Yeats,” said Packard, taking another sip of his drink. “Now, what’s up in the Arctic?”

Serena tore her eyes away from Midas and looked at Packard. “Midas is prepping to mine it for the Russians.”

“You sure it’s for the Russians?”

“Who else?” Serena asked.

Packard finished his drink. “Your friends in the Alignment.”

Serena looked out over the bay, where she could see Midas’s yacht sparkling on the waters. “I have no friends in the Alignment,” she told him. “Only enemies.”

“But thanks to your corrupt holy order, Dominus Dei, of which you are now the head, you are by definition one of the Thirty.”

Serena took a deep breath. “And as soon as I figure out who the rest are, I’ll let you know.”

“You were talking to one of them.”

“Midas?” she said. “How do you know he’s not just working for them?”

“He knows too much,” Packard said. “More than you, it seems. Financial records in London show that Midas’s trading firm went long on oil and gold futures this morning. If he really expected the Russians to succeed in the Arctic, he’d be shorting oil on the expectation that a new supply would depress global prices. Instead, he’s betting on a spike in prices.”

“Interesting,” Serena said. “Midas must be anticipating a disruption in oil production.”

“Or some other event that would shoot up the price of oil. Maybe a major war.”

“So he knows something we don’t,” she said, and then she realized something. “And so does Conrad.”

“You should fix that.”

“Listen, I told you about Midas’s operations in the Arctic. Have you given any thought to returning that celestial globe to the Vatican?”

“Have you given any thought to returning the terrestrial globe you stole?” Packard shot back.

“We’ve been over this, Mr. Secretary. The Masons inherited them from the Knights Templar.”

“Who in turn stole them from Solomon’s Temple,” said Packard. “So maybe we give them both back to the Israelis.”

Serena sighed. “Along with another American weapons system, perhaps? That will help the situation in the Middle East.”

“The only thing you can do to help the Middle East and the rest of the world is to give us the real names and faces of the Alignment’s so-called Thirty,” Packard said. “Before Yeats finds out you’re one of them. Get busy. Here comes Midas.” Packard walked away as Midas approached her.

“Was that the former U.S. secretary of defense?” Midas asked Serena innocently enough.

“Yes,” she said. “Confessing all his country’s sins. Do you have any confessions you want to share?”

“Actually, I was looking for Dr. Yeats. He seems to have disappeared.”

There was a feigned playfulness in Midas’s voice, but his eyes were hard. He was lying, she realized. Midas knew exactly where Conrad was.

“So has Mercedes,” she said, and his smile vanished.

Midas said, “She had a headache. Dr. Yeats upset her.”

“He has that effect on women,” Serena said when her Vertu phone rang with the song “He’s a Tramp” from Disney’s old
Lady and the Tramp
cartoon. “Speak of the devil.”

Midas cocked his head and narrowed his eyes with suspicion as she took the call.

Conrad’s voice, breathless, filled her ear: “Have Benito pick me up in front of the Andros Palace Hotel in Corfu town in two hours. I need to hitch a ride with you on your jet.”

“We’re all here for three more days,” she said, eyeing Midas.

“I don’t think these Bilderbergers like talking to police,” Conrad said. “They’re all going to scram before they give any statements about what they saw.”

“I’m not sure I understand.”

“Take a look out at the
Midas
in the bay. She sure looks like a beauty out there on the water, all lit up.”

Serena glanced at Midas, then out at the water. “Yes, she does.”

Suddenly, the superyacht blew up into the night sky like fireworks, drawing gasps from the crowd on the terrace. An explosion like thunder rolled over the bay. Midas crushed his glass in his fist. Wine and blood dribbled through his fingers. Serena watched his face twist into a monstrous mask of rage as the glowing debris of his beloved ship rained down upon the waters.