Dateline: Atlantis (28 page)

“I'd say the both of us,” Thorgeld answered. “Cruz is an interesting case. He sort of floats in between Logos and Pitch. His sympathies are with the religious side, but he's Pitch's man. The professor all but owns Cruz. But what the Committee is after right now, I cannot tell you. I don't know how they figured out I'd be in Miami. They must have been trailing you and discovered me by coincidence.”

Amaryllis doesn't think there are any coincidences when it comes to the Committee. She tilts her head as a question forms.

“Why are you in Miami if you're not doing a book tour?”

“I'm meeting with someone you should know. A young, brilliant linguist named Shoshanna Knox.”

Amaryllis closes her eyes and remembers. Gabriel knew her, too.
She speaks our language.

How could he have bungled this assignment so badly? Things have gone wrong before—like that embarrassing incident with the U.S. military—but never has he seen anything like this. Ignacio Cruz holds his head in his hands as he sits in a secluded corner at the Four Winds Hotel lobby. All he did was step out to check the elevators, and his prey disappeared. That persistent reporter and the traitor Thorgeld, both of them were gone from the hotel before he could turn around. He knew they had been in that conference room; he heard two women talking. He wasn't sure if Thorgeld had made it there yet, but he wanted to take a gander at the elevators, just to be sure. Five o'clock came and went, and nobody showed up at all.

When he finally headed back to the lobby, he saw cops everywhere and went into survival mode. He hid in an unused dining room off of the lobby, peeking through the blinds, and saw the body of a security guard brought up from the garage. Then the reporter and Thorgeld were giving statements to the police.

The plan was so simple
.

Then he received a phone call from one of the Logos people and discovered the reporter slipped though their fingers, too. But they still had her friend and they weren't sure what to do with her.

He pulls at the wiry hair on his head in agony. All he planned to do was to get the reporter and Thorgeld out of the way for about twenty minutes. That was just enough time for him and Hewitt, stationed at the reporter's hotel, to search their rooms for pictures, artifacts, any evidence they were carrying around with them. He knows that after the dive near the Berry
Islands, the Lang brat surfaced with photographs. Any pictures that could corroborate her newspaper story must be suppressed at any cost.

Still, no one is supposed to be kidnapping anyone. The Logos people just jumped in again like the clumsy gorillas they are.

Everything has turned on him, but he has to minimize the damage. First, he calls Hewitt to warn the incompetent fool. Hewitt, as usual, is so slow he has not yet used the duplicate maid's key to get into the room.

“Abort, abort,” he tells Hewitt. He has no idea if the Lang girl is already on her way back to her room. God forbid she should run into Hewitt on the way. She'll remember him from the Bahamas.

Cruz closes his fists in fury as he considers the prospect of following this reporter around for a few more days. And where is that Mexican man who protected her so well at the dance club? Probably, he has no green card. The Miami airport is tough, he thinks as he puts his hand to the jacket pocket holding his fake U.S. passport. Without the right connections, it's difficult to travel on a whim.

Then rage seizes him again as he relives the botched press conference scam. He thought he set up the room convincingly. He even invited the Lang girl's reporter pal from the Herald. He had an unnerving feeling Lang would check the invitation. Giving one to her friend seemed an obvious safety net. So what had he overlooked? Logos.

He thinks again of the friend, tied up in the Logos van.
The last thing we need is another death.
He calls the van's driver.

“Praise God,” the man says instead of hello. Cruz never can get used to their bizarre way of talking. His neck bristles with irritation.

“Listen, Cruz here. Get rid of the girl. No killing, nothing like that. Just get her out of the van. And then take off, somewhere remote. She can i.d. you and every cop in the city is looking for you idiots.”

“There is no love in your heart, brother Cruz,” the driver says.

“And there's no brain in your head. What was all that about the guard? He's dead, did you know that? How am I supposed to explain this to the boss?”

“
Our
boss knows it was for the greater good.”

Cruz rolls his eyes. They have no idea what it's like to have the wrath of Pitch come down on them.

“Just cut the girl loose and scramble. Fast.” Cruz disconnects and winces. The worst task of all is explaining this gaffe to Pitch. In Hewitt's case, that would be par for the course. But Cruz if mismanages things like this...
Someone has to own up to the mess. And that person is me.
With a wince, he opens his cell phone again and stares at it as if it were vermin. Sighing, he begins to dial the international code for the United Kingdom.

#

At the end of the financial committee meeting, the Rev. Caine is applauding, pleased at the fine job his fundraising team has done over the last quarter. All his holdings are showing profits and now this extra income will help influence others to think the right way about God.

“Praise Jesus,” he says, popping a cigar in his mouth and then applauding. A servant hurries over to light the cigar. No one bothers to point out the “no smoking” sign in the meeting room. “A ten percent raise for all of you. You've done Logos proud.”

The chief financial officer beams. The whole room is aglow when Caine's cell phone starts bleating. He excuses himself to step into the hallway.

“Praise…” he says.

“God, yes, we have big trouble down here.” Caine is amazed that this mere minion has the nerve to cut him off in
mid-salutation. But something buzzes inside his brain at the sound of the word “trouble.” Caine is not used to that.

“What kind?”

“We tried to ambush the reporter like you said. We got her and her friend into the van. But then a security guard pulled a gun, and I fired. The reporter got away. I just heard the guard passed on. “

Homicide. This would be a black stain indeed on Logos' fine name. Not that it hadn't happened before, but then, no one ever found out. God often had tests for men like Caine, but he figured he'd made it through the worst of them. This time, things would work out just as well. The angels were on his side.

“Get to the swamp country and disappear for a while.”

“Well, that's what we are aiming to do, but we still have the reporter's friend….”

“And she can identify you,” Caine finishes the lug's thought. “Are you well out of town?”

“Yup, nothing but trees and bugs and marsh land around here. “

“Leave her out by the road. Maybe a hungry ‘gator will find her a tasty snack.”

“But what about us?”

“What about you? You better pray, son, because no one asked you to do any killing. I'd find myself a private spot, get on my knees and pray until Sunday.”

“But…what if the cops…”

Caine hangs up the phone. Nope. No one's going to ruin the reputation of his fine baby. No one. This murder will stay far away from his world.

#

In the middle of teaching his hieroglyphics class, Pitch's favorite after-hours task at the museum, he sees an assistant
motioning to him. He wants Pitch to come into the hall. The professor puts down his chalk and tells the class to wait a second. It's another crisis, the shaking messenger boy tells him. However, he doesn't know what sort of emergency it is. He knows only that Pitch must take a telephone call at once.

Pitch strides back into class and claps his hands like a monarch ending a royal visit with the common folk.

“That will be it for the day. We've nearly spent our class time, anyway. I'm sure you'll have more than enough translation work to get you through to Friday.”

The class lets out a collective groan, and the students begin to pack up their books. Pitch has no time to watch them file out, as he always does, checking to see if they've lifted any of his precious research material. Today, he half runs, half jogs to his office on the third floor. He picks up his phone and hears the crackle and distorted choppiness of a mobile phone.

“Pitch…Cruz…had to abort,” the voice says, before the sentence becomes unintelligible.

“What are you saying, Cruz? I can hardly hear you.”

“Lang girl slipped away…met Thorgeld...good chance…”

“She's met with Thorgeld? “ Pitch begins to stroke his pointed chin. He's beginning to think this Lang woman is a more fearless adversary than he originally imagined. He sees she is no child to be pushed aside. “Surely you're not going to tell me they've had a chance to swap stories?”

“Don't know…cover blown…Hewitt, too…”

Hewitt! That half-wit never should have been trusted with such a sensitive assignment.

“What about the Mexican man?” Pitch asks, always keeping the players straight, as if there were a chess game going on in his mind.

“Back home…she's alone.”

“Well, that's comforting.”

“…Logos interfered…killed a guard…” he breaks into static. “The tower…” The line goes dead.

“Cruz, can you hear me?”

Nothing but snakelike hissing noise comes through the ear-piece. Pitch slams down his receiver and begins to pace. The tower?
That
tower? He realizes that if the reporter has found out about Nav-Tech's tower, sitting right out there in the middle of the Bermuda Triangle, one of the most guarded and enigmatic sea anomalies in the world, then she also has shared this information with Thorgeld. The tower is exactly the sort of thing the author needs to prove his theories. It would be ironic indeed if his former best friend brings down Pitch's entire career.

And murder. He can't imagine how Logos managed to ruin a routine kidnapping and end up killing someone. They've botched things one too many times. He already has been jumping through hoops to avoid any connection to the Chicago murder. Now this. He'll have to consider breaking things off with Caine. He's proven to be too much of a hindrance. There's a reputation to uphold. Pitch clears his throat and remembers the OBE. Timing is critical.
No more mistakes.

His throat pinches as he envisions the future spinning out of control, running away from him so fast he can't even grasp the complexity. The reporter gets her story. It gets worldwide attention. Thorgeld writes another book. Almost certainly that wog woman is there, too, deciphering carvings and inscriptions for the two of them.

What difference does it make now that he and his highly placed friends once worked out a deal with the United States to protect the area around the tower? These interlopers have proven they can get around any roadblock he throws up. The Lang woman just may be cagier than her parents were.

And the messy murder. This one he can throw completely Caine's way. He never ordered such a thing.

He paces the perimeter of his vintage Persian rug, unwilling, as always, to mar its plush surface with a footprint. Cruz, his best and deadliest man, has proven to be as inept as Hewitt. He's
going to need personal direction. Coaching can't be done via mobile phones.

He picks up his desk phone and dials his secretary.

“Book me air tickets to Freeport City, Bahamas.” Pitch flips open his diary and decides all those must-do assignments will have to go. “Make it for tomorrow and leave the return open-ended.”

He listens as she complains about the cost.

“Money doesn't matter. I'll bill Logos. Just book the flight with my credit card. And get Davis to cover my appointments for the week.”

He rings off and gathers his belongings for the commute home, mentally deciding which items he will pack. His mind fastens on the gleaming diver's knife—the one with the initials K.L. carved in the handle.

The scarlet sun is plunging into the western horizon when she and Thorgeld reach the street. All about them the shadows are long and Amaryllis strides exposed, sensing that she's stripped naked on the city street. Almost any of the strangers buzzing along could be an enemy. Having a companion like Thorgeld only makes matters worse, for he is a target, too.

She quickens her step and nearly dashes through the doors of the Four Winds Hotel, where Thorgeld wants to stop to pick up items he left in his room. She paces the lobby as he disappears in the elevator. She looks about for a secluded area and finds a chair by a potted palm. Amaryllis pops out her cell phone. She's punching in the number for Freya. That old home phone number is so comfortable that she nestles into the seat as the phone rings.