Dateline: Atlantis (32 page)

“You can't go back down there and leave me alone. Those are CIA guys, or worse. I'll spend my life in Guantanamo Bay for being here. You're going to stay and give them the smooth talk.”

“Deal with it yourself. Here,” Pitch says, tossing the plastic clearance pass toward Cruz as he shakes his arms free. Cruz pockets the pass, calm at first, then he scowls and turns russet red.

“They won't believe that belongs to me,” Cruz shouts, taking a flying lunge at Pitch, who barely sidesteps the attack.

Pitch responds by pulling out the diver's knife, holding it up to the light, and then burying it deep into Cruz's chest. It takes
a great deal of effort, but Pitch has found the essential spot: just between the ribs and over toward the left lung. He turns the knife slowly to cut the major arteries. The Cuban stands for a second, his face registering pain and utter astonishment. Then he tumbles, with grace at first, then like a ton of meat, to the launch's rail. Pitch upends his feet and lets him sink. As the body descends, Pitch thinks with a bit of sadness that he's also lost the knife, the one he picked up the last time he made a kill in the tower. He sighs again at the thought that now there is no more time to open the pyramid door.

He mops what few drops of Cruz's blood have splattered the launch—it was a clean kill—and wraps the rags in heavy conch shells that litter the boat, tossing the weighted bundles overboard.
Off to your sea change. Cruz. May pearls be your eyes.
Then he sits and waits for whatever American authorities want to interview him. He tells himself he has no fear of them. He went out by himself in the launch.
Who is to say differently?
By the time they arrive, Cruz will be shark food.

#

Amaryllis' eyes begin to adjust to the tiny bit of light that is leaking into the pyramid. She looks up and realizes that the filtered sun is shining a tiny bit through the, broken top of the structure. It's a gift, not a great one, but something that might keep her and Shoshanna alive. She realizes that the light is illuminating a table and elaborate sculpture upon which a crystal is caged. It's almost a twin to the one she gave to Donny. She wants to grab for it, but merely regards it, trying to take in its power and presence.

We have no doors.

That one thought gives her courage, although she is not sure what it means. Taking a precious breath, she keeps her mind
focused on staying alive and floats back toward the door the madman flung shut.

She inspects her tank meter and realizes they have only about ten minutes of air left. With labored strokes, she makes her way toward the area where she can see the stone carvings stop and a single black slab stands in her way. It's nothing more than hard rubber sheeting, she realizes. It's the kind of garbage that might have been jettisoned from a barge or cruise ship. Foreign matter. Obviously not part of the original structure. She gestures to Shoshanna who drifts over. Together, they begin to push at the black, unforgiving blockade. It might take all her strength, but moving this ugly plug may be their only way to stay alive.

They shove and wiggle the rubber, but make no headway. Amaryllis can't see a lock or any hook, but maybe the fastener is on the outside. Carefully, she takes her diving knife and traces the lines where the sheeting meets the stone. The bubbles she exhales get in the way and she keeps dodging her head to get a good look at her progress. The work is tedious, the light dim, and the air meter keeps running. Trying to breathe at regular intervals, she reaches a point where the knife sticks. She feels a latch of some kind.

She prays her efforts will work and begins to move the knife up and down, hoping that if the lock is a hook, she can pop it out of its eye. Even if it's a simple hasp, it should unlatch with enough pressure from her end.
Unless he put a padlock on it.

She turns to her side to gesture to Shoshanna and sees her friend stumble to the seafloor in a rush of bubbles. Shoshanna collapses.
She can't possibly have run out of air before me.
Balancing whether to attend to Shoshanna or to redouble her attempts to open the door, Amaryllis forces herself to turn back to the lock. There's not enough time to do both. She re-inserts her knife into the gap between stone and rubber. Up and down. Breathe. Up and down. Nudge, scrape, breathe. Up and down. It's becoming a symphony of futility in Amaryllis' head. Slowly, it dawns on
her that this hideous rubber door may be the last thing she sees
in her life.

She looks over at Shoshanna who lets out a weak stream of bubbles.
She's still alive. But for how long?
She returns to her work, time slowing to eternity, and feels faint movement. Something is giving way. Working feverishly now, she pushes up and down with her knife until the latch jerks, gives way, and the door rips open.

There stand two divers. Two men. Amaryllis recoils until her heart gives out a cry. Even in mask and diving gear, one man is recognizable as Donny. She swims to Donny's arms, and, wasting no time, they ascend by steps, followed by a man bearing Shoshanna, to the surface.

On deck, Amaryllis can't pull off her diving gear fast enough. Someone pulls the hated burden of the tanks off her shoulders. She turns around and sees Donny's relieved face. She embraces him, breathing the sweet, fresh air of planet Earth and babbles like an idiot to herself. “I'm alive. I'm alive. Donny, I'm alive.”

Donny lifts her face to his and kisses her long enough that she runs out of oxygen again. Not knowing whether to laugh or pray, she just collapses onto the deck of the cutter. She sees Shoshanna lying exhausted, arms spread out, on a bank of cushions near the deck's edge. Navy medics are hovering over her. Amaryllis hopes her friend will pull through. She will just have to wait for their report.

It takes some bottled water and deep breaths before she can speak. Donny sits on the deck next to her, inspecting her from top to bottom, as if to make sure she's well enough for the voyage back to shore.

“How?” she finally gasps after the last of the water is gone. She makes gestures that are supposed to fill in the rest of the sentence, but she knows she's not making sense.

“How did we find you?” Donny asks.

She nods.

“A great deal has happened since you left Chicago,” he says, putting his arm around her shoulder. “Do you want it all at once or bit by bit?”

“All of it,” she says, slumping against his warm breast. Despite the warmth of the Caribbean waters, she has become chilled to the bone. Donny's skin is comforting and his shoulder is just the shape to cradle her cheek.

“Well, first of all, that cutter out there,” he points out to sea. “is going to apprehend Pitch. It was Pitch, wasn't it?”

“The man with the long chin? Lean and lanky?” Donny nods, and she struggles to see where Donny is pointing. He grabs for her hand and shakes his head to console her.

“Don't even try, sweetheart. I'll tell you what is going on.”

Sweetheart? He's never said that before. But…it is so wonderful to hear.
She nestles next to his chest again. She's vaguely aware that Thorgeld and Captain Johnny are having an agitated conversation with the Navy crew. They've been apprehended and she fears for their safety. She hopes she can get someone to intervene, but her attention falls away as Donny starts speaking

Donny has been a busy man since Amaryllis left him in that miserable hotel room in Homestead Beach.

First, he says, he contacted the FBI and began swapping information about Garret Lucas' murder. Together, he and the federal agents learned about the Committee. Ricketts was apprehended and confessed, with surprisingly little encouragement, to participating in the kidnapping of Garret Lucas. It didn't take long for him to blame the members of the Committee and finger Pitch and Cruz as the violent members of this academic band. But there was a surprise in store. No one expected the loquacious Ricketts to spill the beans about Logos and their involvement with Committee assignments. Ricketts reported that the Logos hit men were responsible for Lucas' death. Learning the Committee knew Amaryllis was in Florida, Donny flew back to Miami. He didn't want to panic her, so he kept his whereabouts secret while continually keeping track of where she was.

After checking out Florida dive shops and scuba enthusiasts, he realized there was only one way the Langs could have died. They were far too experienced to go down without enough air. With their weight belts still on and gravel under Mrs. Lang's fingernails, the consensus of the experts was that the couple had been trapped somewhere—probably in a cave.

“Then I picked up a business card I've been holding onto for weeks,” Donny says.

“The Fossil,” Amaryllis exclaims, clapping her hands together like a small child.

“I gave the Fossil a call, and I was on my way to Homestead Beach again. After interviewing every dive shop in town, we finally found a middle-aged scuba specialist who remembered the Langs. After I offered him a little financial
incentive, the man remembered that they hinted at diving near Nav-Tech, in restricted water. “

There is a tower there, Donny learned, reputed by local mythology to be a remnant of Atlantis. Keeping his skeptical lawyer's hat on, Donny tried to parse the truth from legend. However, no one in the area would discount the story. It's part of local pride—Atlantis is almost at their back door.

“But you were in Chicago when I was getting those faxes,” Amaryllis protests. “I called you there.”

“You called me on my cell phone,” he says, tapping her on the cheek. “You ought to know I could pick that call up anywhere.”

“The faxes?”

“I had my secretary send them. The material was all from my FBI file in Chicago.”

Donny peers out into the distance and jumps to his feet and narrows his eyes, surveying the far waters.

“Pitch,” he says, motioning for Amaryllis to stay down. “He's being taken aboard the Navy cutter, and the spooks are talking to him. But there's no one else on his little launch. No Cruz.” He looks down at her. “Was Cruz underwater?”

“No. It was only Pitch. And, oh God, Donny, he had my father's diving knife. He showed it to me as if he were bragging or something.”

“That must have been the knife listed as missing in your father's coroner's report. I guess now we know where it went.”

Donny sits down and resumes his story. He and the Fossil had convinced the FBI to reopen the Lang case, and he no longer
needed to deal with the young small-town police chief. Warrants were issued for the arrest of any Committee member traveling to the United States. An all-points bulletin went out for Cruz, but the Cuban managed to slip through Miami Airport like a snake. No one imagined that Pitch would land in the Bahamas, because Nav-Tech was in American territory. With Ricketts out on bail and under surveillance by the FBI in Chicago, there weren't too many leads to follow. So, Donny flew out to Nav-Tech on Andros Island to explain his need to watch any suspicious visits to the black ruin. With the FBI agents standing behind him, the Navy officials were happy to offer the lawyer their support.

As Donny speaks, everything slowly comes together in Amaryllis' mind.

“But I still don't get how you know I was on my way to the tower,” she says, frowning.

“You told me, remember?” Donny says with a laugh. “On the cell phone?”

She mocks a clunk to her head. “I must have killed off a lot of brain cells down there.” She tries to laugh and ends up coughing so hard she can't stop. Donny offers some tissues and more water, and she quiets herself. With her eyes, she encourages him to continue his tale. He complies.

“We just sat and waited until the acoustics engineers heard a boat heading toward the tower near dawn. You were pretty clever there, honey, taking precautions to arrive so early and to keep the sound down, but you forgot, or didn't know, that the acoustics work at Nav-Tech is state of the art. They heard the boat's motor miles away, long before the captain cut the engines. When the anchor dropped, it sounded like a megaton bomb.”

Once again, all she can do is nod. Then she looks up to see someone out of context. Gabriel, lead by some G-men, is coming down from the upper deck and trying to avoid her gaze.

“What's he doing here?” She almost leaps to her feet, but thinks better of it and squats back down on the deck. Just that much effort has taken her breath away.

“We thought you might want to explain that to us.” Donny looks Gabriel's way, and she knows Donny already has guessed that something has happened between the two of them. Donny takes on that alpha male set of the chin, and Amaryllis puts her muddled head in her hands.

“He wants the crystal,” she says.

#

On land, at the Navy headquarters, Pitch has been processed, charged with the Langs' homicide. As a formality, the federal authorities contact the United Kingdom government. Amaryllis implores the U.S. officials to let Thorgeld and Shoshanna off the hook for trespassing. The government isn't even interested in Captain Johnny and his Rasta crewman, merely reprimanding them and sending them back to Freeport.