The Hunt for Atlantis (21 page)

“We make a pretty good team, don’t we?” he said. “You’ve got the brains, I’ve got the brawn, and Kari’s got…”

“The beauty?” suggested Nina. Kari smiled.

“I was going to say agility, but yours works too.” He took the light from Nina. “Okay. So we beat the three challenges. Now what?”

“Now we put the artifact back where it belongs, then get the hell out of here,” Nina said, advancing down the passage.

Castille glanced nervously to the west. The sun had long since dropped behind the high canopy of trees, but pinpoints of bright light still made it through the dense foliage.

It was very close to the horizon, though. And the sky overhead was rapidly turning a deeper blue as dusk crept in …

He looked back at the temple entrance. The square of darkness was devoid of any movement, as it had been from the moment the glow of Chase’s flashlight had disappeared about forty minutes earlier.

“Hurry up, Edward,” he said to himself.

“Wh-what if they’re dead?” Philby asked, sweat covering his panicked face. The three prisoners were on their knees outside the elders’ hut, several hunters encircling them.

“They’ll make it,” Castille said, wishing he felt as confident as he sounded.

An unexpected harsh crackle cut through the mutterings of the Indians and the chatter of birds. It was coming from the abandoned packs.

“Survey team, do you read me? This is Perez. Do you read me? Over.”

The Indians reacted with predictable shock, jumping into defensive positions and aiming their weapons out past the perimeter of the village as if expecting an attack.

“Survey team, come in, come in, over.”

“If we can answer him, he can call in the helicopter,” di Salvo said under his breath. “With some support.”

“And guns!” Philby added, almost hopeful.

“If we can persuade them to hand us the radio,” said Castille. The Indians had now worked out where the sound was coming from, and were cautiously investigating the packs, prodding them with their spears.

“Survey team, I don’t know if you can hear me …” One of the tribesmen jabbed Castille’s pack, momentarily muffling the transmission. “…got company. I can hear at least one chopper, maybe two, approaching my position. They’re not ours, I say again, they are not our helicopters. Please respond.”

“Military?” Castille asked, concerned.

“I would have been told if they were planning any jungle operations,” replied di Salvo.

“Merde.” Castille had a horrible idea who might be in the helicopters. “Agnaldo, try to get them to bring us the radio. We need to—”

One of the Indians pulled out the walkie-talkie. Perez’s voice was now clearer. “Survey team, I see one of the choppers! It’s—Jesus!”

A piercing screech of static blasted from the speaker, the Indian dropping the radio in fright. Philby looked between Castille and di Salvo in confusion. “What just happened? What was that?”

Castille gave him a grim look, twisting to look in the direction of the river. A few seconds later, a sound like a distant clap of thunder reached them. “That was the Nereid exploding,” he said.

“What?”

“It’s Qobras. He’s found us.”

Chase checked his watch. “We’ve only got eighteen minutes left.”

“Then we need to keep moving,” said Kari. She took out the sextant arm. “Find where this needs to go.”

“Maybe we could just leave it here and pretend we put it back,” Nina said, not entirely joking.

“I think they might check,” replied Chase sarcastically.

“Well, it was a thought… Oh.”

They had reached the end of the passage.

Chase lifted the flashlight. Even its bright beam was almost lost in the huge room beyond.

“The Temple of Poseidon,” Nina whispered.

Chase stared in awe. “Bloody hell.”

By Nina’s estimate, the great chamber was two hundred feet long, half the length of the entire building, and nearly as wide. The vaulted stone ceiling, wreathed with gold and silver, rose like a cathedral roof, supported along its length by buttresses at the sides of the vast room. In each alcovelike space between the buttresses was a statue, glinting with the unmistakable color of gold. There were dozens of them, ranks of unimaginable riches.

But they were nothing compared to what had seized the attention of the three explorers. At the far end of the chamber, stretching to the very highest point of the ceiling nearly sixty feet above, was another statue.

Poseidon.

“My God,” said Nina as she walked towards it, any concerns about traps completely banished from her mind. “It’s just as Plato described it…”

“There was the god himself standing in a chariot, the charioteer of six winged horses, and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head,’” recited Kari alongside her.

“You’d get a few quid for that on eBay,” Chase remarked.

“Those must be the hundred Nereids,” said Kari, ignoring him and pointing at a circle of much smaller statues around Poseidon’s chariot.

“Doesn’t look like a hundred to me,” Chase said as they headed for the giant statue.

“I bet there’s sixty-four of them,” said Nina. “In base eight, that would be the number as important as a hundred in base ten. Plato was using a word translated from a different numerical system, but the actual number it represented was different—”

“I count seventy-three,” interrupted Kari.

“What? Seventy-three?” Nina snapped incredulously. “What the hell kind of system would use seventy-three as an important number?”

“Nina? Seriously? We don’t care,” said Chase. “We’re here—now let’s do what we’ve got to do before we all get killed, okay?”

“Okay,” Nina pouted. “But it still doesn’t make any sense…”

Behind the massive statue was an opening leading to a flight of stairs. They ascended to find another chamber, smaller than the main temple, but even more elaborate—and extravagant. Although it was lower, the ceiling was vaulted to match the temple outside. But where that had been made from stone, this was something else.

“Ivory,” said Kari as Chase directed the torch upwards. She frowned. “According to Plato, the roof of the entire temple was meant to be lined with ivory …”

“This isn’t the Temple of Poseidon,” said Nina. “It’s a replica, a copy. The Atlanteans tried to re-create the citadel of Atlantis in their new home. I guess ivory was harder to come by here, so they made do with what they had … Whoa.” She came to an abrupt stop. “Eddie, give me the flashlight.” She snatched it from his hand. “We’ve found what we came for.”

She aimed the beam at the chamber’s rear wall. A warm reflected glow filled the room. Orichalcum.

The entire wall was coated with the metal, thin sheets inscribed with line upon line of ancient text. Nina quickly saw that it was another variation on the language, older, but no less advanced.

But that wasn’t what transfixed her attention. She played the torch over the large illustration dominating the wall, following the distorted but very familiar lines …

“Is that a map?” Chase said in disbelief.

“It’s the Atlantic,” Nina whispered. “And beyond.”

Although inaccurate in detail, the shapes of the continents were impossible to mistake. The eastern coasts of North and South America on the left, Europe and Africa on the right. And past Africa, the map continued around into the Indian Ocean, tracing the shape of India itself and even parts of Asia. Lighter lines connected various points, apparently charting courses between ports and marking routes to settlements inland.

Most of the lines converged on something in the eastern Atlantic, the shape of an island found on no modern map …

“Jesus.” For a moment, Nina felt as though her heart had stopped. “We’ve found it. Atlantis. Right where I said it was.”

“My God,” said Kari, stepping forward for a closer look. “You found it! Nina, you found it!”

“We found it,” Nina replied, sharing her delight. “We did it, we found Atlantis!” For a moment she almost whooped with glee—until the reality of the situation returned to her. “Eddie, how long have we got left to get back?”

“Fourteen minutes. The only bit that’ll be tricky will be getting back through those poles with the spikes—we can do it in eight, if we shift.” Chase moved away from the map, spotting something in the rear corner of the chamber.

“So we’ve only got six minutes left to explore? Shit. Shit!” Nina banged her clenched fists against her thighs in utter frustration. “I need more time!”

Kari held out the orichalcum artifact. “Let’s find where this goes. If we can get back to the village in time, we might be able to convince them to let us back into the temple if we promise we won’t take anything. All we need are photographs …”

“It’s not enough,” Nina moaned, feeling everything she’d worked for slipping away. She knew there was no chance of the Indians allowing them inside the temple again—assuming they weren’t killed just to keep its mere existence secret.

“Hey.” At first Chase thought he’d found another exit, a chute leading downwards from the chamber. But a quick glance told him it was blocked, clogged by rough chunks of rock. That the debris was far from the exacting standards of the rest of the temple didn’t escape him, but then he saw something more interesting nearby. “Over here.”

Nina and Kari hurried over to find an altar, a high slab of polished black stone. On it rested several objects, all made of orichalcum.

“That must be the other part of the sextant,” said Kari, pointing at a flat pie-slice-shaped piece inscribed with Atlantean numerals. Nina quickly took off her pendant and held it against the bottom of the sextant. The curvature was an exact match.

“God, I had part of one like it all along,” she said, putting the pendant back around her neck. “Give me the arm.”

“How come the Nazis got away with that piece, but not the rest of them?” Chase asked.

“Maybe the men carrying the others were the ones we saw on the river.” Nina quickly placed the nub on the arm’s underside into the corresponding hole at the top of the triangle, swinging it around so the arrowhead scribed into its surface lined up with the mark above each number. “It works,” she said, with a mixture of vindication, and sadness that she wouldn’t be able to show anyone else her discovery. “Whatever they used as mirrors are missing, but you can see the slots where they’d fit. God, they really could calculate their latitude, over ten thousand years ago …”

“Okay, the thing’s home, let’s go,” said Chase.

Nina waved her hands. “Wait, wait!”

“Nina, they’re going to kill Hugo and the others, and us too if we don’t move our arses!”

“One minute, just one more minute! Please!”

“Let her,” said Kari firmly. Chase reluctantly acquiesced, but pointedly held up his watch hand.

“The map,” Nina said, almost gabbling in her haste to get the words out. “Look, the destinations at the end of the trade routes, or whatever they are, they’ve got numbers and compass directions marked next to them. The mouth of the Amazon, here,” she pointed at it, “it says seven, south and west, just like it does on the sextant arm.” She moved across the map to the distorted representation of Africa, indicating the continent’s southern tip. “But look at this! The Cape of Good Hope’s marked as well—it shows its latitude relative to Atlantis!”

Chase shook his wrist, waving the watch at her. “Point, Nina! Get to it!”

“Don’t you see? We already know how far south the mouth of the Amazon is relative to Atlantis, seven units of latitude, and now we know how far south they said the Cape is as well—so since we know their positions relative to each other in modern measurements, we can use the difference to find out exactly how big an Atlantean unit of latitude is, and then work back north from the Amazon to find Atlantis itself! We can do it! Now that I understand their system, we don’t even need the artifact any more—all we need is time to make the calculations!”

“We’re out of time, Nina,” said Chase, his tone making it clear that there would be no further discussion. “We’ve got to get out of here. Now!” He took the light from her. “You too, Kari! Let’s go!”

They ran out of the chamber, passing the colossal statue of Poseidon. Nina strained to listen over the sound of their footsteps echoing through the huge room. “What’s that noise? I can hear something!”

Chase could hear it too, a low-frequency rumble, growing louder with every second. “Shit, sounds like a chop—”

The entire temple shook as an explosion blasted a hole in the roof.

Down!” screamed Chase, throwing himself on top of Nina as shattered stone rained around them. Much larger blocks tumbled to the temple floor below the gaping hole, smashing deafeningly apart on impact.

A fierce wind blew through the gap, whipping the clouds of dust into a swirling vortex. Chase rolled clear of Nina and squinted up at the sunset sky, which was almost immediately obscured by something.

Something big.

The roar of the helicopter’s engines and the machine-gun thudding of its rotor blades were so intense that he could feel them. A Russian-built Mi-26 Halo, the biggest helicopter in the world, designed to carry large loads over long distances.

Large loads—or large numbers of troops.

The chopper moved into a hover directly above the hole. The fuselage doors were open, and at any moment ropes would drop from them so men could rappel into the temple …

“Come on!” he yelled, his voice barely audible over the Halo’s thunder. He helped the women up. “Get to the tunnel! Now!”

“What the hell’s going on?” shrieked Nina.

“It’s the Brotherhood! Get into the tunnel! Run!” He grabbed the still-bewildered Nina’s arm and pulled her after him, Kari sprinting alongside.

Six black lines snaked from the Halo. They fluttered in the downdraft before tightening as men dressed in black combat gear and body armor expertly descended each one, brilliant beams of light lancing out from their chests. Chase saw enough in his brief backwards glance to know they were professionals, ex-military.

And each man was armed with a Heckler and Koch UMP-40 submachine gun, and probably other weapons as well.

They reached the passage, Chase leading the way with the flashlight in his outstretched hand. The noise of the chopper was still audible even as they negotiated the twists and turns and ran through the door into the chamber housing the Challenge of Mind.

“How could they have found us?” Kari demanded.

“I don’t know,” said Chase as they entered the next tunnel. “Maybe they put a tracker on the boat.”

Nina was breathless, unused to the pace. “What do they want?”

“The same thing as us,” Kari told her. “Only they want to destroy it, to make sure nobody can use the information to find Atlantis.”

“And destroy us, too,” added Chase.

“Oh my God!” Nina gasped. “What about Jonathan, and Hugo?”

“Just got to hope they went straight for the temple and bypassed the village,” Chase said grimly.

They reached the last stretch of passage before the drawbridge over the pool. Running footsteps echoed up the tunnel behind them.

“Get to the exit,” said Chase, handing Kari the light as they ran over the bridge, which flexed under their weight. “Wait for me.”

“What are you going to do?” Nina asked.

“Try to stop them from catching up. Go on!” He stopped at the end of the bridge, letting Nina and Kari past. Then he grabbed the endmost plank and strained to lift it from the ledge before pushing it sideways with all his strength. The bridge warped along its length, creaking and groaning.

With a pained grunt, Chase shoved it down into the pool. The wood tried to bend back to its original shape when he let go, jamming the bridge against the vertical side. He kicked at it, driving the end into the water with a splash. The remaining caiman surfaced nearby, taking a sudden interest.

“Okay, go!” he shouted, running for the exit. Kari led the way, Nina hesitating as she waited for Chase to catch up.

“Their weight’ll put the end into the water,” Chase said as they hurried down the passage. “Then we’ll see if that croc’s still hungry.”

“Thought it was a caiman,” Nina panted.

“Whatever! Okay, here’s the poles. Kari, you go first, then Nina.”

Even without the incentive of the descending ceiling, they still picked their way between the spiked poles faster than Nina would have liked, the barbs plucking at their clothes. Finally they cleared them, emerging in the confined chamber housing the Challenge of Strength. Chase retook the lead.

“Okay,” he said as they ran, “the second we get out, I want the two of you to run like hell into the jungle. Get away from the temple, then find cover and stay in it.”

“What about you?” Nina asked. “And the others?”

“I’ll get ’em. I’m just hoping that the Indians are pissed off about Qobras blowing up their temple and went after the helicopter. If we’re lucky, there’ll hardly be any guards left.”

“And if we’re not?” said Kari.

“Then I guess we’re fucked!” They came around the last corner, a square of fading daylight ahead. “You ready?”

“No,” Nina moaned.

“You can do it, Nina. Kari, look after her. I’ll catch up as soon as I can.”

“I will,” Kari promised. They were almost at the entrance.

“Okay, get ready … go!”

They raced into the open—

And stopped. There was nowhere to go.

Waiting for them were ten more men in black combat gear, weapons at the ready, standing in a semicircle around the temple’s entrance. The bodies of four Indians lay among the huts; of the rest of the tribe, there was no sign. Castille, di Salvo and Philby were still prisoners, on their knees in a line in front of …

“Hello, Eddie,” said Jason Starkman.

He didn’t look the same as when Nina had met him in New York. The suit was gone, replaced by a military outfit—body armor, equipment webbing holding ammo and a sheathed knife, what looked like a grappling hook slung over his back. A black patch covered his right eye. The sickening memory of her finger digging into something wet made her shiver.

“Arr, matey!” said Chase with a nasty smile as he raised his hands. “Going for the pirate look, are you?”

Starkman regarded him coldly. “I see your sense of humor’s as lousy as ever.”

“Don’t you mean you half see?”

Starkman’s face tightened for a moment before he turned his attention to Nina. “Dr. Wilde! I’m so glad to meet you again.”

Chase and Kari both moved protectively in front of her. “Leave her alone,” Kari snapped.

Starkman raised an eyebrow. “Kari Frost. Never thought I’d meet you in person. Hajjar should have taken Giovanni up on his offer, it would have saved us all a lot of trouble.” He gestured with his gun, his men advancing. Overhead, the helicopter circled—followed by a second Halo, the downdraft from the two enormous aircraft setting the trees thrashing as if caught in a hurricane.

“What happened to the Indians?” Nina demanded.

“Most of them ran off,” said Starkman. He looked over at the corpses. “The smart ones, anyway. Some of them actually thought they could take us on.”

The other men started to search Chase, Kari and Nina. “What do you intend to do with us, Starkman?” asked Kari, her eyes narrowed. “Kill us?”

“Yup.” The casual way in which he said it turned Nina’s blood to ice. “But first, I want to find out what’s in that temple.” He turned away as he took a radio from his belt, giving Nina a better look at the piece of hardware on his back. It was a grappling hook, as she’d thought, but it was protruding from what looked like a fat-barreled shotgun. Most of his other team members were similarly equipped. “Eagle Leader to entry team, come in.”

“What is it with you Yanks and eagles?” Chase taunted. “I had you pegged as more of a budgie.”

Starkman clicked his fingers. One of his men, a mountain of muscle almost a foot taller than Chase, balled his fists together and clubbed the Englishman at the base of his neck. Chase dropped to his knees.

“Eddie!” Nina gasped.

Starkman looked surprised. “On a first-name basis with the clients, Eddie? Or … is she something more? You should be careful about that, you know what happens.”

“You shut your fucking mouth,” Chase growled. Starkman smirked, and seemed about to say something else when his radio crackled.

“Entry team to Eagle Leader,” said the man on the other end. “We’re in the temple, and we’ve located the stolen artifact. It’s in a smaller chamber behind a statue. Jason, this place is incredible!”

“I’m sure it is,” Starkman said dismissively. “What else have you found, Günter?”

“You won’t believe this, but there’s a map here, an actual map! It’s scribed onto a huge orichalcum sheet on one wall. It shows the location of Atlantis!”

Starkman became a lot less dismissive. “How accurate is it?”

“The continents are quite distorted, but recognizable. And there’s something else, Jason. The map … it shows the positions of landmarks relative to Atlantis. We can use them to work out Atlantis’s exact position!” The man’s voice became more excited. “The northern mouth of the Amazon is marked as being at latitude seven south, just as it said on the artifact Yuri stole, and the Cape of Good Hope is at… there are six dots and an inverted V. We know from our archives that this symbol first appears after eight single units, so it must represent nine. Nine plus six equals latitude fifteen.”

“The Cape’s at thirty-four degrees south,” Starkman informed him. “The top of the Amazon delta’s at about one degree north.”

“A difference of thirty-five degrees, then, with fifteen minus seven, eight Atlantean units of longitude between them. So one unit is thirty-five divided by eight…” The radio fell silent for a few seconds as he made the calculation. “It’s 4.375 degrees!”

“So what latitude is Atlantis at?” Starkman asked.

“Let me check on the laptop … 4.375 multiplied by seven is 30.625 degrees, and add one degree to account for the position of the delta … Atlantis is located somewhere between thirty-one and thirty-two degrees north!”

Starkman gave Nina a mocking look. “That’s quite a way south of the Gulf of Cádiz. Guess we didn’t need to worry about your theory after all.”

Nina said nothing. The map in the temple had clearly placed Atlantis within the Gulf of Cádiz. The shapes of the continents had been inaccurate, but surely the Atlanteans couldn’t have been that far out?

Günter spoke again. “Even allowing for errors—the Atlantean system is not as precise as ours—a sonar sweep of the area should only take a few days.”

“And then we can make sure nobody ever finds Atlantis,” said Starkman with rising excitement. “Good work, Günter. Plant the thermite charges and prep for evac. Melt the place down.”

“You’re going to destroy it?” Kari cried, appalled.

Starkman fixed her with a cold stare. “We’ll do whatever we have to do to stop people like you and your father from finding Atlantis.”

“The greatest archaeological find in history, and all you care about is destroying it so your insane boss can keep the knowledge for himself?” said Nina, her fear overcome by her utter disgust. “You make me sick.”

Starkman snorted in disbelief. “Jesus. You really don’t have a clue what’s going on, do you?”

“Why don’t you enlighten me?” she sneered.

“You think your friend Kari here and her dad are looking for Atlantis as a hobby?” said Starkman. “You know how much money they’ve spent? Tens of millions of dollars, maybe hundreds! Even for a billionaire, that’s one hell of a hobby!”

“We’re doing it for a good reason,” said Kari. “Unlike Qobras.”

“I know what your reasons are. That’s why I joined up with Giovanni.” He looked questioningly at Nina, then back to Kari. “But does she know? Did you even bother to tell her why you’re so desperate to find Atlantis?”

“As long as they don’t want to destroy it, that’s good enough for me,” Nina told him. Kari gave her an admiring look.

“You might have changed your mind,” Starkman said as his radio squawked again. “Not that you’ll get the chance now.”

“Eagle Leader, we’ve got everything we need. Setting the charges,” said Günter.

“Roger that.” Starkman looked up. The two Halos were still following their slow circle, about two hundred feet above the ground. He switched radio channels. “Chopper two, this is Eagle Leader. Move into pickup position.”

“Roger,” replied the pilot. One of the helicopters wheeled lazily about to head for the temple. More ropes dropped from its side.

“Well, I guess this is the end,” said Starkman, looking back at his prisoners. “Sorry about this, Eddie, but I’ve got my orders.”

“You can take your fake sympathy and shove it up your arse, you two-faced twat,” Chase snarled. “I should’ve let those al-Qaeda wankers kill you in Afghanistan.”

“The world’ll be glad you didn’t. Good-bye, Eddie.” Starkman gestured to his men, who forced Nina and Kari down onto their knees next to Chase.

Nina felt the cold, hard barrel of a gun touch the back of her head. She closed her eyes …

And heard a hissing noise.

Thok!

The man behind her let out a wet, bubbling gasp before crashing to the ground. Nina opened her eyes to see spears and arrows flying overhead. One of the men behind Philby took an arrow to his leg. He grimaced, then reached to pull it out… only for his eyes to bulge wide. Fingers spasming, struggling to breathe, he collapsed.

Poisoned!

Starkman whirled—and was hit in the chest by another arrow. But it struck only his Kevlar body armor, not flesh. “Open fire!” he shouted, taking cover by the nearest hut as he raised his UMP-40 and unleashed it into the surrounding trees.

The men covering Nina and Kari jumped back, following Starkman’s lead and firing into the jungle. Kari grabbed Nina’s arm. “Go!”

She hauled Nina with her as she ran. A commando behind her turned to shoot them, but a bola whirred from the jungle, two of its weighted strands yanking his gun away from its targets. The fist-sized stone on the third strand smashed into his face, knocking out teeth.

Chase saw his chance as the huge man behind him moved, and thrust his elbow savagely backwards to catch him in the groin.

He missed. The man grunted in pain, but had taken the impact on the bulging muscles of his upper thigh. Chase looked up to see him staring back, anger twisting his face. The mercenary’s gun came around—

Chase flung himself backwards at the man’s knees, trying to knock him off his feet. The man staggered, then fell—landing on top of him, his knees slamming onto Chase’s chest. Wheezing, Chase grabbed at his adversary’s UMP-40—

A fist smashed into his face. Chase heard a sharp crack as his nose broke. He was almost surprised at the lack of pain, but he knew from experience that it would come soon enough.