The Hunt for Atlantis (32 page)

“No!” This time it was a wail, an uncontrolled release of horror and despair.

Time and cold had turned the skin a dry leathery brown, soft tissues long since decayed to leave the eye sockets as empty black holes. But Nina still recognized the faces. They had been in her thoughts every day for the past ten years.

Her parents.

They hadn’t died in an avalanche. They had died here, gunned down.

Murdered.

Starkman forced her forward, closer to the terrible reality pinned in Qobras’s light. She struggled and kicked at him, not wanting to look but unable to avert her gaze. “You did this!” she screamed at Qobras. “You killed them! You bastard, you fucker! I’ll fucking kill you!” The two guards moved as if to protect their boss, but he held up a hand for them to stop. They stood back and waited as Nina’s screams lost coherence, reduced to angry, anguished sobs.

“I’m sorry,” Qobras said in a low voice. “But it had to be done. Kristian Frost could not be allowed to obtain the secrets of the Atlanteans.”

“What secrets?” Nina cried bitterly. “There’s nothing here! It’s just a tomb!” Her eyes narrowed with hatred. “You killed my parents for nothing, you son of a bitch.”

“No …” Qobras slowly panned his flashlight around the walls. “I thought there was nothing here ten years ago, that the tomb had been plundered. But if the last inscription from the temple in Atlantis itself is true, there must be something more to this place.” He turned to the two guards. “Search every centimeter of the walls. Look for anything that might indicate another opening—a crack, a loose block, a keyhole—anything!” As they moved to obey, Qobras himself started examining the walls around him in minute detail. Starkman kept hold of Nina.

Her sobs of grief slowly died away … replaced by a cold, expressionless mask.

Almost expressionless. Only her eyes gave away the fury burning inside her.

The search took only a few minutes before one of the guards called out to Qobras. Everyone hurried to where he stood, carefully tracing a line almost concealed between the columns.

“Doors,” said Qobras, sliding a fingertip down the narrow gap. “There doesn’t seem to be any way to open them from outside. We’ll need to break them open.”

One of the guards was sent back to the helicopters to bring the necessary equipment. In the meantime, more of Qobras’s men arrived, hauling with them on a fattired cart the large crate Nina had seen being loaded onto the second helicopter. A chill of fear ran up her back. Even if the bomb it contained was only half the size of the crate, it would still be larger than a man.

The charges Qobras intended to use on the doors, however, were far smaller. A drill was used to carve out a fist-sized hole in the stone. Once the hole was made, Qobras placed the explosive—a fat disc the size of a silver dollar—into it.

“You’re just going to blow it up?” said Nina.

“Yes.”

“What about them?” She pointed at the bodies. “You going to blow them to pieces as well? It’s not enough that you killed them, now you’re going to desecrate them too?”

Starkman made an impatient noise, but Qobras paused, considering her words. “Jason, get some of the men to take them into the entrance chamber,” he said at last.

“It’s a waste of time, Giovanni,” Starkman said, barely concealing his disapproval. “We should be getting the job done, not letting her delay us. And what difference does it make? They’re already dead.”

“Dr. Wilde is right. Move them.”

Starkman scowled, but followed his orders, summoning a group of men to assist in removing the bodies. Nina couldn’t watch, feeling a new burst of almost unbearable anguish as the corpse of one of the Tibetans was lifted up as if he weighed no more than a child. That was all that was left of these people, of her family, nothing more than husks. Her throat clenched so tightly with resurgent grief that she could barely breathe. She fought past it, refusing to break down in front of her enemies.

Once the bodies were gone, Qobras returned his attention to the explosive. He attached a timer to it before quickly retreating, ushering everyone else back to the cavern.

“CL-20,” explained Starkman to Nina, without being asked. “The most powerful chemical explosive ever made. A piece the size of an Oreo can blow a hole right through six inches of armor plate.”

“Am I supposed to be impressed by that?” she replied sourly.

“Maybe not. But you might want to cover your ears.”

Nina saw that the others were doing just that, and hurriedly followed suit. A moment later there was an earsplitting bang and a swirling cloud of dust.

Qobras was the first to move, his flashlight beam slicing through the dust like a laser. “Clear all the debris from the doors so we can get the bomb through them,” he ordered. “Jason, Jack, Dr. Wilde—come with me.” Nina was unsurprised when her two guards came as well.

What had appeared to be a solid wall was now a gaping hole. Huge chunks of the shattered door were scattered over the tomb floor. The other door was still in place, though seriously damaged.

Beyond the doors lay darkness.

Qobras stepped over the debris, leading the way down what turned out to be a smooth slope descending deeper into the heart of the mountain.

The air was cool and, to Nina’s surprise, fresh, lacking the almost indefinable stale, ancient mustiness she associated with long-sealed environments. Presumably there was another entrance, or at least some way for air to reach it from outside.

Like the entrance chamber, the long tunnel had been widened out from an existing natural passage. Considering its length, with only basic hand tools it must have taken years to excavate.

And as for whatever lay ahead …

“It’s opening up,” said Qobras. Distance reduced his flashlight beam to a tiny coin. The echo of their footsteps faded, suggesting they were about to emerge into the open.

But that was impossible. They were inside the mountain.

Which meant the space they were about to enter was huge…

They emerged onto a road, a broad paved lane stretching beyond the range of their lights. Buildings lurked on either side, imposing pillars glinting with gold and orichalcum rising into the darkness.

“Christ, it’s huge,” said Starkman. He cupped his hands to his mouth and yelled, “Hello!” A very faint echo returned a couple of seconds later.

“We need more light,” Qobras said. Starkman nodded and took off his pack, taking out a stubby flare gun. He quickly loaded it and fired it up at an angle. A brilliant red light fizzled to life, drifting on its small parachute…

Everyone was stunned by the sight it revealed.

“My God …” said Nina.

The scene before them was spectacular, an awe-inspiring tableau lost since the dawn of history.

Nina instantly recognized what lay at its center. It was another replica of the Temple of Poseidon—but this time, it was not alone.

Surrounding it were other buildings—smaller, but no less grandiose. The architectural style was familiar, starkly elegant, yet at the same time somehow brutal.

They were palaces, and temples; the citadel of Atlantis as described by Plato, re-created thousands of miles from its inspiration. And unlike their ruined counterparts in Brazil, these had withstood the test of time, shielded from the elements, perfectly preserved.

As her eyes adjusted to the flickering glow of the flare, however, she realized the scene was not complete. Vast as the cave was, it still wasn’t large enough to accommodate the entire citadel. Even the Temple of Poseidon itself was incomplete, its far end disappearing into the cave wall. There were indications that the Atlanteans had tried to carve out part of the wall to make room for the structure, but in the end they had, she assumed, simply dug the temple’s inner chambers directly out of the mountain.

The flare sputtered and died, dropping the colossal cave back into darkness. The only light came from the group’s flashlights.

“It’s … it’s unbelievable,” said Philby. “Giovanni, at the very least we have to photograph this. This is an even more important find than Atlantis itself!”

“No,” Qobras told him firmly. “Nothing can remain. Nothing! The Atlantean legacy will end here.” He turned his back on Philby, addressing Starkman. “This road leads straight to the center of the citadel. Call the others and have them bring in the bomb.”

“How big is this bomb?” Philby asked nervously.

“It’s a thousand-pound fuel-air explosive,” Starkman told him. “The explosive core is fifty pounds of CL-20. In terms of destructive force, it’s the next best thing to a tactical nuke.”

“My God,” Philby gasped.

“These are the people you’ve gotten yourself in bed with,” Nina reminded him coldly. “Destroyers and murderers. I hope you’re proud of yourself.”

“Nina, please,” he begged, stepping closer, “I’m so, so sorry! I never wanted to do anything to hurt Henry and Laura—I went on the expedition with them hoping they wouldn’t find anything!”

“But you still betrayed them. To him.” She shot a look of cold hate at Qobras. “They died because of you, Jonathan. They were murdered because of you! You son of a bitch!”

Before her guards could react, Nina punched him in the face. The pain that exploded in her knuckles was eclipsed by the pure primal satisfaction she received from the sight of Philby falling on his back, a bead of blood running from one nostril. He stared up at her aghast.

The guards pulled her back as Starkman, looking almost amused, helped Philby to his feet. “Nice punch, Dr. Wilde. Been taking tips from Eddie?”

The word came over the radio that it would take about fifteen minutes for the bomb to be brought down the tunnel. Qobras glanced at his watch, then looked at Philby and Nina. “That’s how much time you have to explore this place, Jack. Dr. Wilde, I promised you would have the chance to see the last outpost of the Atlanteans. I am a man of my word.”

“Before you kill me, you mean,” she said with a bitter smile.

“As I said, I am a man of my word.”

“Right. I’m sure that helps you sleep at night.”

Starkman fired another flare, and they headed down the road towards the citadel. Nina couldn’t help but feel the thrill of discovery as they approached, but at the same time she was painfully aware that every step she took was counting down the seconds to her death.

In the harsh, wavering light of the flare, she realized there was another structure before the Temple of Poseidon, a much smaller building raised up from the cave floor on a steep-sided mound. It was surrounded by a wall about fifteen feet high. A wall of …

“Gold,” said Starkman, awed. “There must be tons of it. How much is gold worth per ounce? Eight hundred dollars? Nine hundred? There’s hundreds of millions of dollars there!”

“Be careful,” Qobras warned. “That kind of thinking led Yuri to betray us. We’re here to destroy all this, not profit from it.”

They walked up to the gleaming wall. It completely encircled the little building, with no apparent way in. “It’s the Temple of Cleito, Poseidon’s wife,” Nina said. “Plato said that it was inaccessible.”

“Inaccessible, huh?” said Starkman, putting down his gear and unslinging his grappling gun. “We’ll see about that.”

“Jason.” The single word from Qobras stopped Starkman midmotion.

“Oh, come on,” Nina chided. “Aren’t you the least bit curious about what’s inside? It’s the very beginnings of Atlantis, a replica of the spot where it was founded—for all we know, this might contain the original contents of the temple, rescued from Atlantis itself. Don’t you want to know what you’ve been fighting all these years? Don’t you want to know your enemy?”

Qobras contemplated the golden wall, then nodded to Starkman, who took the grapnel from the gun and unspooled a length of cable. Once he had enough, he stepped back and tossed the grapnel over the top of the wall. He pulled the line; it caught.

“Okay, let’s see what’s in here,” Starkman said, quickly climbing the cable. One of Nina’s guards threw another line up and scaled it, though more slowly.

Reaching the top, Starkman swung around, supporting himself on his stomach. “Dr. Wilde, you’re next.” He gestured to her other guard to hoist her up so he could take her hands.

“You realize I could just push you off and break your neck,” she muttered once she reached the top.

“You realize I could just shoot you in both legs and leave you to die in agony when the bomb goes off,” Starkman retorted. He lowered Nina down the other side.

Philby was next, awkwardly assisted over the top by Starkman, then her second guard and Qobras followed. Qobras was surprisingly agile and limber for a man of his age, Nina noticed. An analogue of Kristian Frost, a dark mirror-image.

Steps led up the steep mound to the temple’s entrance. Again Qobras took the lead; this time, Nina was right behind him, determined to see what was inside.

There was actually surprisingly little to be found. A pair of golden statues awaited them inside the doorway: Poseidon, no longer the giant found inside his own temple, but still larger than life, and facing him Cleito, his wife. Beyond them …

“It’s a mausoleum,” Nina said. A pair of large sarcophagi occupied the rear of the room, the plain, almost crude stonework contrasting sharply with the carefully wrought precious metals lining the walls.

“Yeah, but whose?” Starkman wondered. He directed his flashlight at an inscription chiseled into the end of one of the coffins. “What does this say?”

Nina and Philby began to offer a translation at the same moment, before Philby shrank back. “It says that this is the tomb of Mestor, last king of … I guess that means New Atlantis,” Nina said. The letters were styled differently from the familiar Glozel alphabet, but in this case it didn’t appear to be the result of mutations in the language over time, more from simple sloppiness. She moved to the second coffin. “And this is his queen … Calea, it looks like.” The letters were equally crude.

“The last king?” mused Philby. “What happened to his successors? Even if he had no heirs, there would always be somebody in line for the throne …”

“Give me your flashlight,” Nina ordered Starkman, all but snatching it from his hand as she bent down to read the rest of the inscriptions.

“You’re welcome,” he said sarcastically. She ignored him, focusing on the ancient letters.

“They were dying out,” she realized as she read on. “They thought they could sustain a new empire from here, rule the lands around the Himalayas and use the mountains as a natural fortress. They were wrong.”

“What happened?” asked Qobras.

“What happens to every empire?” Nina replied. “They overstretched themselves, got lazy, decadent. And let’s face it, they didn’t pick the breadbasket of the world to settle in. I guess they thought they could just have the peoples they conquered bring what they needed as tribute, but it didn’t work out.” She almost laughed as she worked through the text. “This place? The last outpost of the great Atlantean empire? They abandoned it. The king and queen here were the only reason anybody stayed. As soon as they died, everyone else hightailed it out and sealed the place up behind them. In fact, it wouldn’t surprise me if they actually killed the king and queen themselves to speed up the process.”

“Where did they go?” asked Starkman.

“I’d guess they went right where your boss here always thought they did—into other societies. Except …” this time Nina actually did manage a hollow laugh, “they didn’t take over as conquerors. They were assimilated the same way as people are now—as immigrants, refugees. They moved in at the bottom of their new societies.”

“That can’t be true,” Qobras growled.

“That would be an accurate interpretation of the text,” confirmed Philby. “The people who wrote this knew their society was dying out, and that the only way to survive was to integrate into the other cultures in the region.”

“So much for your conspiracy theory, Qobras,” said Nina, not bothering to conceal her contempt. “This Brotherhood of yours, it’s been spending thousands of years fighting something that didn’t even exist.”

“It exists!” Qobras asserted. “The Atlanteans would never accept subjugation by people they considered inferiors. It’s how they think, it’s in their genes. They would work their way back up—it would take generations, but they would regain power.”

“Where’s your proof?” Nina cried, jumping to her feet and jabbing the flashlight at him like a sword. “So Kristian Frost is tracing the Atlantean descendants from their DNA, and wants to find Atlantis itself, the greatest legend in human history—that doesn’t mean he’s trying to take over the world!”

Qobras wheeled on Nina, dazzling her with his light. “You don’t know what Kristian Frost is capable of doing.”

“He can’t be any worse than you!”

His eyes narrowed. “You have no idea …”

Any elaboration was interrupted by Starkman’s radio. “They’ve brought the bomb,” he announced after responding to the call.

“Tell them to prepare it for detonation immediately,” Qobras snapped. “Let’s go.” Everyone moved to the temple entrance, but he held out a hand to stop Nina. “Not you.”

“What?”

“You’re staying here. It seems the appropriate place.”

The full horror of Qobras’s words squeezed her chest like an ice-cold vice. “Wait, no … you’re just going to leave me in here? You’re going to leave me in here until the fucking bomb explodes?”

Starkman put a hand on his holstered pistol. “We could just shoot you in the head if you like.”

“You won’t have time to feel any pain,” said Qobras. “You’ll be vaporized instantly.”

“Well, that makes me feel so much happier! You can’t leave me in here!”

“Good-bye, Dr. Wilde.” Qobras tossed an unlit glow stick at her feet, then left the temple. The others followed. Philby glanced back with an expression of pained sorrow as if about to say something, but then walked silently away.

Nina wanted to run after them, to punch and kick them as they tried to scale the wall, tear down the lines and trap them inside with her … but she couldn’t. Her body refused to cooperate, admitting defeat even as her mind demanded that she fight on. She sagged against the king’s sarcophagus, sliding down to the dusty stone floor.

The men scaled the wall, leaving her in darkness.

This was it? This was how she was going to die? Trapped in a tomb with the last rulers of Atlantis?

She drew in a long, trembling breath, then felt for the glow stick, cracking it to unleash a sickly green light. Not knowing what else to do, she turned around and regarded the text carved into the coffin once again.

So this was how the story of Atlantis ended. Not with a crash of waves wiping a great power from the face of the earth, but in mundane ignominy, dying out through decay and corruption like every other fading empire in history.

In some ways, it was a good thing. The legend would remain exactly that, a story of wonder. The greatest mystery of all time.

But it didn’t make her feel any better.

Nina heard sounds from over the wall, clankings and clatterings as Qobras’s men opened the crate and prepared the bomb. She wondered how long she had left to live. Fifteen minutes? Ten?

Raised voices outside. She lifted her head. Their tone had suddenly changed: confusion mixed with concern.

The glow stick in her hand, Nina quickly descended the steps to stand by the wall, straining to hear the voices outside. Qobras was demanding answers, Starkman talking into his radio.

And getting no reply.

Then Qobras shouted something all too clearly, freezing her breath in her lungs. “Start the timer!”

Running footsteps. The sound quickly faded as they hurried up the road towards the tunnel.

“Oh, shit …” The urge for survival kicked back in; she ran around the wall, looking for any sign of an exit.

There was none. It was a solid ring of metal, the gold supported by iron, completely enclosing the temple.

The temple …

Maybe there was some hidden escape route like the one in the Temple of Poseidon! She raced back up the steps into the mausoleum, a flicker of hope in her heart.

But it was quickly extinguished. The interior walls and floor seemed solid, the only possible place anything could be concealed being inside the coffins—and she quickly found she wasn’t strong enough to open the heavy stone lids.

Helpless minutes passed, and the bomb was still ticking down to detonation—

A sudden noise made her jump. Not the bomb, but… gunfire!

The distant rattle of automatic weapons. Distant—but getting closer.

What was going on? She ran down the steps, listening at the wall. More gunfire echoed through the huge chamber—as did the thud of an explosion. A grenade? Another followed moments later, a scream abruptly cut off by the sharp bang.