C
ONRAD ZIPPED UP
a UNACOM weapons inspector’s uniform and grimly noted the
CAPT. HASSEIN
tag over his left breast pocket. Yeats had a couple of these uniforms, sans bodies. Conrad could only guess how he had obtained them. He looked around the chamber Yeats had brought them to. It was stockpiled with computer equipment, M-16s, and explosives.
Conrad asked, “What is this place?”
“A weapons cache I found.” Yeats was busy stashing bricks of C-4 plastique into a backpack. “I ended up down here after you flushed me down that shaft in P4 like a piece of shit. Crawled out, got my bearings, and got to work hauling whatever I could find.”
“And this cache wasn’t guarded by those goons outside?”
“No goons,” Yeats said. “Not anymore.”
Yeats’s survival instincts were astounding even to Conrad, who had already fought hard to stay alive himself in the last several hours. How in the world did he survive that fall? Conrad wondered. He didn’t know whether to give his father a medal or a kick in the groin. The man had yet to express relief at seeing his only son alive, nor had he uttered another word about his origins.
“How do you know all this won’t get flushed away again?”
“I don’t.” Yeats checked the timers for the C-4. “But this alcove is separated from the corridors below. Anyway, we won’t be sticking around much longer.”
“So I see.” Conrad eyed the bulging pack of C-4 that Yeats slung over his shoulder. “So you know who these guys are?”
“I trained their leader, Colonel Zawas.”
Conrad stared at Yeats. “You trained him?”
“At the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs under a U.S.-Egyptian military exchange program in the late eighties,” Yeats said. “Came in handy a few years later during the Allied bombing of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. An Arab pilot taking out two Iraqi jets proved to be priceless PR and legitimized the bombing campaign as a multinational effort.”
“So that’s what you taught him to do—kill other Arabs?”
“In my dreams,” Yeats said. “No, I trained him in the Decisive Force school of warfare. The idea is to use overwhelming force to either annihilate an enemy or intimidate him into surrender.”
“So the U.N. weapons inspection team was only a cover?” Conrad asked.
Yeats nodded. “Obviously, Zawas stacked the team with his own men. Probably offed the other internationals and plans to say we did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put the Russians on us back at P4 and was just waiting for us to do all the hard work.”
Conrad said, “So you’re saying Zawas came with friends.”
“And firepower,” Yeats said. “In the real world, a few terrorists are no match against the world’s lone superpower. But Antarctica is a different theater of war. It doesn’t take much to overwhelm a small team of Americans on an otherwise empty continent.”
“Well, his lieutenant killed your dog and abducted Serena.”
Conrad could see the veins in Yeats’s neck bulge. “So where’s the obelisk?”
Conrad said nothing.
Yeats shot him one of those rare, withering glares that used to make Conrad crumble as a boy. “Goddamn it. Are you telling me that Zawas not only shot my dog but also has the Scepter of Osiris?”
“No, I said he has Serena.”
“Same difference. Open your eyes. You heard Ms. Save-the-Earth back at P4. The Scepter of Osiris belongs in the Shrine of the First Sun. That’s where she’s going to lead Zawas.”
“You’re selling her short.”
“You’re thinking with the wrong head,” Yeats said. “Our mission is to deny Zawas any advanced weapon or alien technology that could shift the world’s balance of power. Asymmetrical force. Got that? Burn it into your brain.”
“Gee, and I thought we were going to settle who I am and where I really came from, Dad,” Conrad shot back.
Yeats paused, and Conrad could practically hear the whir of the hard drive behind Yeats’s eyes as his father searched for an appropriate response.
“We do that by beating Zawas to the Shrine of the First Sun and setting a trap for him if and when Serena finally leads him there.” Yeats patted his pack full of C-4 and moved on as if he had disclosed everything. “The problem, of course, is going to be finding it without them finding us first. Which is about the time between now and when Zawas discovers that several of his men are missing. They control the skies and everything on the surface. We’re going to have to stay underground until dark.”
“We’ll need the stars, anyway,” Conrad said, pulling out his handheld device with the images of the obelisk he had captured. “Because the scepter instructs the would-be sun king to put heaven and earth together. Only then will the ‘Shining One’ reveal the location of the Shrine of the First Sun.”
“Serena never said that.”
“I know,” Conrad said. “The scepter did.”
“I thought you couldn’t read the inscriptions.”
“Let’s just say some things are feeling a little more familiar.”
“So you believe me now?” Yeats asked. “About finding you in the capsule and everything?”
“I’ll never believe everything you tell me,” Conrad said. “And I reserve judgment on some things. But this inscription beneath the four constellations on one side of the obelisk is almost identical to the inscription Serena read for us.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The inscription Serena read to us warns against removing the scepter unless you’re the most worthy, according to the Shining Ones, or else you’ll tear Heaven and Earth apart,” Conrad said.
“Which seems to be happening right now,” Yeats said.
“So it seems,” Conrad said. “But this inscription under the four zodiac signs tells the would-be Sun King how to find the Shrine of the First Sun with the help of a Shining One and bring Heaven and Earth together again.”
“And what on earth is the Shining One?” Yeats asked.
“It’s not of this earth. It’s probably some kind of astronomical phenomenon. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Hot damn, Conrad, looks like you really are the Sun King.” Yeats slapped him on the back for the first time in years, and Conrad couldn’t deny it felt good. “But where exactly are we supposed to consult this Shining One? There are millions of stars out there.”
Conrad said, “We’ll follow the map on the scepter.”
“What map?”
“The four constellations.” Conrad showed Yeats the 360-degree digital scan he had taken of the obelisk. “See? The zodiac signs of Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius.”
Yeats looked at the image. “So?”
Conrad tapped his device. “So if this city is astronomically aligned, then maybe these celestial coordinates might have terrestrial counterparts.”
“Maybe?” Yeats said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“We already know P4 is aligned with the middle belt star of Orion, Al Nitak,” Conrad said, and Yeats nodded. “In the same way we might find strategically positioned shrines in the city that are aligned to Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius.”
Yeats furrowed his brow. “Meaning we follow the pavilions or temples that correspond to these signs like some kind of heavenly treasure trail?”
“Exactly.”
“So these celestial markers will lead us to Aquarius,” Yeats said. “And then we find its terrestrial double.”
“That’s right,” said Conrad. “It’s dusk outside now. Soon the stars will be out. They’ll serve as our map and lead us to some kind of monument dedicated to the Water Bearer. That’s where the Shining One will be, to lead us to the Shrine of the First Sun.”
Yeats nodded. “And everything we’ve spent our lives searching for.”
I
NSIDE THE
T
EMPLE OF THE
W
ATER
B
EARER,
starlight seeped into the chamber where Serena stood tied to a post. It was her punishment for refusing to help Colonel Zawas translate his map of Atlantis. To help Zawas locate the Shrine of the First Sun would be to betray Conrad, she reasoned, having concluded that Conrad, for all his faults, was still her best hope for stopping a global cataclysm. But even if Conrad could reach the shrine first, Zawas still had the scepter. Somehow she had to hold on long enough to figure out a way to steal it.
She could hear voices outside, and three dark silhouettes filled the doorway, blotting out the heavens. It was Jamil, flanked by two Egyptians. Serena stiffened as he unfurled a towel with assorted knives and needles across a small table.
“Colonel Zawas was disappointed he couldn’t persuade you to cooperate, Doctor Serghetti,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”
“So I see,” she said, staring at the cruel instruments on the table. “Isn’t this a bit over the top? I already told Zawas that I don’t know where the shrine is. Honest. If I did, I’d tell you.”
“A brave front, Doctor Serghetti, really.” Jamil looked over his wares, stocked mostly with syringes, knives of various shapes, and shock rods. “Ah, the tricks your Inquisition taught us.”
He picked up a two-foot-long black club. Suddenly it came to life like lightning. It was an electric shock baton.
“This is my favorite,” he said, waving it in front of her. A bolt of
blue electricity sizzled between two metal prongs. “Each jolt delivers seventy-five thousand volts. A few pokes would leave you unconscious. A few more, dead.”
“Is this what you intended your life to become, Jamil?”
Jamil cursed and tried to force her jaw open. She turned away. But he shoved the baton into her mouth. She choked on the metal rod as he dug it deeper.
“The Chinese like to shove this down a prisoner’s throat and charge it up,” he said as she gagged. “The current that races through your body will leave you crumpled on the floor in a pool of blood and excrement and in extreme pain.”
She could feel the hot metal prongs at the back of her throat and moaned. But Jamil pulled it away and pushed the button again so she could see the blue electric charges flash between the prongs.
“There are other places I could ram this,” he told her, and she unconsciously squeezed her thighs together. “Good,” he said with a smile and set the shock rod down on the table. “I see you understand.” He then picked up a syringe and with the back of his finger flicked the hypodermic needle. A yellowish fluid spurted out. “Now we can begin.”
A few hours later, Serena regained consciousness and found herself in the dark, staring at a makeshift lantern Jamil had hung from the ceiling—his shock rod swinging on a rope, making grotesque zapping sounds as it flashed. She tried closing her eyes, but the zap-zap of the shock rod only seemed to grow louder. Or maybe it was the drugs injected into her bloodstream that made her feel so sloshed.
Somehow she sensed another presence in the chamber and opened her eyes to see a long shadow on the wall. Her eyes drifted to the doorway, where a fuzzy figure stepped inside.
“Conrad?” she said.
“It’s nice to have dreams, Doctor Serghetti.”
It was Zawas. Serena hung her head again as he walked over to the small table where Jamil had left his tools of torture.
“I’m told you haven’t been terribly cooperative,” Zawas said, examining Jamil’s toys. “It was all I could do to keep Jamil from
permanently erasing your memory with those chemicals of his. But he is an animal. He gives Arabs everywhere a bad name. You know that most of us are not at all like him. You must understand this. Your Church has priests who molest children. Yet you aren’t about to abandon your mission. Neither am I.”
She said nothing as he looked around the chamber. Her pack on the floor caught his eye. He circled round it and watched her face. Then he lifted it to the table and unzipped it. He began to rifle through its contents, examining her personal belongings—water purification tablets, hot water bottles, a flare, and the like.
Then he came to her green thermos. Her chest constricted as he began to unscrew the top. She prayed he wouldn’t find the blueprint inside the secret shell. For all she knew, that blueprint contained enough information for him to find or deploy this unlimited power source he was searching for in the Shrine of the First Sun.
“You remind me of Pharaoh, Zawas,” Serena said. “You know, from the Bible.”
He seemed amused and put the thermos down on the table. “Then you know my authority comes from the gods themselves and you must answer to me.”
“The gods of Egypt were defeated once before,” she said. “They can be defeated again.”
“History is about to be rewritten, Doctor Serghetti. But first I must find the Shrine of the First Sun. So far, its location has eluded me. As has Doctor Yeats. Oh, yes, he’s alive. I know this because several of my men are missing,” he said. “He killed them, just like he’s killed so many others in Atlantis thus far in his selfish quest for the origins of human civilization. I know all about this man. He cares little for the consequences of his actions on governments, people, even the very sites he excavates. It’s a good thing I saved you and the Scepter of Osiris from him.”
Serena said nothing, because there was no defense against Zawas’s accusations. They were true.
“Unlike the reckless Doctor Yeats, however,” Zawas went on, “I appreciate and want to preserve natural beauty in all its forms, especially the feminine. I would hate to see a monster like Jamil mar you in any way.”
That was a lie, she knew. “So you’re a gentleman among the barbarians.”
He looked at her carefully. “I see we understand each other well. It’s not as if the Catholic Church hasn’t wrapped itself up in nobility and social mercy only to make pacts with the devil at convenient points in history.”
“Then you’re a hero, really,” she told him. “You just happen to be on the wrong side of history.”
“Exactly,” Zawas said. “Like Pharaoh during the Exodus. It was his bad luck that the eruption of the volcano at Thíra in the Mediterranean should produce the plagues you eagerly attribute to the God of Moses. There was no parting of the Red Sea. The Israelites crossed at the Sea of Reeds in only six inches of water. But it was enough to bog down the wheels of Pharaoh’s chariots.”
“Then it was a greater miracle than I thought,” Serena said. “That all of Pharaoh’s soldiers and horses should drown in six inches of water.”
Zawas was not amused by her argument, she could see, and his face grew more stern in the flashing light. “History is written by the victor,” he told her. “How else can you explain Judeo-Christian exaltation of an allegedly merciful and loving God who goes around killing the firstborn of the ancient Egyptians?”
“He could have killed them all,” she said.
Zawas was put out. “So it was Pharaoh’s fault?”
She tried to focus. Even in her somewhat shaky state she recognized this could be a pivotal moment in persuading Zawas. “You know that at certain points of history, everything rests on one man or one woman,” she told him. “Noah and the ark. Pharaoh and the Israelites. God offered Pharaoh the divine opportunity to be the greatest emancipator in history. But his heart was stubborn and arrogant. Now is such a time. You may be such a man.”
“Or you that woman,” he said. “Where is the Shrine of the First Sun?”
“I honestly don’t know.”
“Then I honestly must give you to Jamil to finish the job,” he said. “It’s out of my control now. I wash my hands clean of this.”
“Says Pontius Pilate.”
“And I thought I was Pharaoh.” He shook his head and threw up his hands. “Am I to be compared to every villain in your Scriptures? Have you ever considered the possibility that these leaders are history’s true heroes and your saints the revisionist authors of fiction?”
He was about to turn and leave when his eyes once again drifted to the coffee thermos on the table.
“Why are you still carrying around your thermos?”
Serena said nothing, pretending not to hear.
But he was already untwisting the outer shell. He smelled the coffee and made a face. “I prefer tea myself.”
He emptied the coffee onto the stone floor and then tried to screw the lid back on. As he did, the blueprint fell to the floor.
Serena caught her breath.
Zawas picked up the blueprint and let out a hearty laugh. Then he showed it to her and said, “Do you know what these schematics are?”
She hung her shoulders in defeat. “The blueprint to the Scepter of Osiris.”
“No,” he told her. “This is the blueprint to the Shrine of the First Sun.”
She just stared at him, head rushing with dizziness.
“Yes,” Zawas said. “Now I have three things Doctor Yeats wants. And if he won’t lead me to the Shrine of the First Sun, then you will. I’ll tell Jamil he has more work to do.”