The Atlantis Code (33 page)

“We’re not going to talk about it in my room.”

Lourds couldn’t for the life of him figure out why Natasha seemed so angry. He hadn’t gone after Leslie. True, he hadn’t turned her away either. But they were two consenting adults looking for a little downtime. There was nothing more to it. He was certain Leslie felt the same way.

Then again, they hadn’t talked about it, and Lourds wasn’t exactly a mind reader. He’d gotten involved with women before who hadn’t understood the ground rules. His passion would always be his work. He wasn’t going to be bereft of female companionship, but he wasn’t going to let it change his life either. He’d gotten the impression that Leslie was a kindred spirit in that regard.

“Leave that be for now. Something more important has come up. Someone broke into my house,” Lourds said. “A friend of mine got shot when he checked it out and is now in the hospital. He almost died.”

For a moment he didn’t think Natasha was going to answer the door even after he told her that. Then, just as he was about to walk away, the door opened.

“Come in.” Natasha stepped back from the door dressed only in a too-big T-shirt that clung to her high breasts and ended well above midthigh.

Lourds knew he shouldn’t have noticed. He tried not to, in fact. There were times he could go whole days at a time without noticing such things. At least, without letting them have an effect on him.

The problem was that once his libido was aroused it remained rampant till it had burned itself out. That could take a while. His blood was definitely still running hot now.

Lourds entered the room and closed the door behind him. Light from the television monitor created a bubble of gray-blue illumination in the center of the room. Evidently he hadn’t caught Natasha sleeping.

“Having trouble getting some shut-eye?” Lourds asked in Russian.

Natasha stood with her arms folded over her breasts. “You have a story. Let’s hear it.” She spoke in English.

“My house,” Lourds repeated. “Broken into.”

“So?”

Lourds ignored her, even as he wondered why she was in such a mood. He opened his backpack and took out his computer. After placing the computer on the desk, he opened it and booted it up.

“I’ve got a program on my computer that allows me to access the security camera system in my house no matter where I am,” Lourds said.

“So you’re going to show me your house?”

“I’m going to show you what bothers me about the break-in.” Lourds brought the program up. A series of windows spread across the screen as the cameras came online. “This feature also allows me to go back twenty-four hours. Anything more than that and I have to access the security provider.”

“You have a picture of who broke into your house?” Natasha seemed a bit more interested.

“Yes.” Lourds tapped keys. “Granted, it’s possible that my house could have been broken into at random. I’ve been gone for about three weeks or so. But it seemed awfully coincidental.”

“Maybe you’re only being paranoid.”

“With everything that’s happened, I’d think that’s the only way to be.” Lourds backed the digital film to the point where he was watching one figure in orange coveralls in his den while the other raided his entertainment equipment from the bedroom.

“She’s backing up your hard drive to the external one she brought,” Natasha said.

“Yes.” Lourds was uncomfortably aware of how the T-shirt material stretched across Natasha’s breasts when she bent closer. She also, he discovered, smelled nice. He had to clear his voice to speak. “Doesn’t seem like something your typical burglar would do.”

“Do you keep anything important on your computer?”

“Notes. Projects I’m working on.”

“Important projects?”

“I work on the same kind of thing Yuliya did. None of it’s going to make me wealthy or be worth much to anyone else.”

“No. What about credit cards and financial matters? Are those on your computer?”

“No. I’m too leery of that, I’m afraid.”

“Says the man who can look into his own bedroom from another country.”

“I thought it was pretty cool, actually. I’d never done it before today except when my friend installed it. I wouldn’t have done it today if Marcus Bergstrom hadn’t been shot.”

Natasha stood straight again and Lourds was sorry to miss the view.

“They were professional. The woman took data off your computer while the man upstairs attempted to make it look like a common burglary.” Natasha took a breath. “This just means Gallardo hasn’t forgotten about us.”

“I thought maybe Gallardo had given up after Odessa.”

“Apparently not.” Natasha looked at the computer screen. “They’re hunting us now.”

“Why?”

“You tracked the cymbal back to the Yoruba people. I’m willing to wager they haven’t done that.”

“ ‘They’?”

“A man like Gallardo operates by a simple profit-and-loss statement. He does a crime and he immediately benefits from it.”

Lourds nodded. “He stole the bell in Alexandria, so he must have had a buyer.”

“We have to find out. In the meantime, you need to leave.”

“I do?” Lourds was startled at how quickly she brushed him off.

“Yes. I don’t want—”

There was a knock at the door.

Quietly, Natasha slid her hand under a pillow on the bed and brought out a pistol. Lourds started to speak but quieted at once when she put a finger to her lips. Silently, Natasha crossed to the door and peered out the peephole.

Then she sighed in disgust. Russian women, Lourds was willing to acknowledge, were champions at sounding disgusted when they chose to.

“This,”
Natasha said as she opened the door, “is what I didn’t want.”

The door swung open and revealed Leslie standing there fully dressed. The young woman had her arms crossed and looked just the slightest bit challenging.

“I thought I’d come see what was taking so long,” Leslie stated. “I was wondering if maybe you’d gotten distracted.”

For a moment Lourds thought Natasha might shoot Leslie. Though he wasn’t sure why.

“Trust me,” Natasha said as she walked back to the bed, “when I bed a man, I’m much more than a distraction.” Without another word, she slipped the pistol back under the pillow and lay on the bed. “You people need to leave. I need to get some sleep.”

Lourds started to do just that. He felt awkward enough as it was without getting into the middle of a catfight he didn’t quite understand. When he opened the door, though, he saw a man he recognized and quickly stepped back into the room.

“We can’t leave,” he said.

The women looked at him with scathing stares.

“Patrizio Gallardo and his men just passed by in the hallway.”

CAVE #41
ATLANTIS DIG SITE
CÁDIZ, SPAIN
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

“Fire in the hole!”

Crouched down behind one of the big bulldozers, Father Sebastian barely heard the warning shout of the demolitions crew chief rip through the cavern on the PA. The ear protectors muffled nearly all sound.

A moment later, the explosives blew in a rapid series like popcorn popping.

Dust and debris filled the cave. The full-face filter mask protected Sebastian’s eyes and his lungs. Tremors ran through the ground and reminded him of being on a ship’s deck. Not for the first time did he think of the sea waiting outside the bulwarks they’d built to keep the cave dry.

He remained down until D’Azeglio slapped him on his hard hat.

“We’re okay, Father,” the construction man said as he lifted one of the ear covers. “Everybody’s okay.”

D’Azeglio looked like some kind of freakish insect in the filtration mask and hard hat. His voice was muffled and strained. He offered a hand up.

“Thank God,” Sebastian said as D’Azeglio helped him to his feet. He took off the ear protectors. “These explosions always make me nervous.”

“I’ve been around them for years, Father. When you’re under this much rock, it never gets any easier.”

“No water,” someone called out. “No water. The next cave is dry.”

A cheer went up. The water-filled caves they’d encountered so far had slowed them down considerably. Days were lost with all the necessary pumping.

Excitement flared anew within Sebastian. Since he’d been a boy following around his archeologist father, he always loved the idea of seeing things that hadn’t been seen in hundreds or thousands of years.

When he’d been pulled to the cloth, he feared those days were over. But he thanked God, in whose infinite wisdom he’d been allowed to take up not only the Bible and cross as a priest, but also the pick and shovel of an archeologist.

It was a good life.

High-intensity spotlights played over where the wall had been. Now it was only a jumble of rock in the opening to another cave. The opening at the top was perhaps four feet high.

Brancati ordered the scholars to stay back while some of the more able climbers surveyed the area. Sebastian watched the four men climb up the rock and reach the pinnacle. They wore miner’s hard hats with built-in lights. They carried other lights in their hands. Brancati remained in constant contact with them by radio.

After a few minutes, the men descended the other side. Shortly after that, Brancati came over to Sebastian.

“Father, do you think you can make it up that rock?”

Sebastian was surprised by the question. Brancati had taken pains to make certain he was kept out of harm’s way.

“I think I can manage,” the priest replied.

“We’ll help you. It’s important that you see what’s in that cave.”

“What is it?”

Brancati’s expression was solemn. His voice was low when he spoke. “They think it’s a graveyard.”

The announcement sent a chill through Sebastian. It wouldn’t be a graveyard in the traditional sense. While traveling with his father as a young man, Sebastian had been present when such discoveries were made. Simple men were always humbled.

And frightened.

“Let’s go,” Sebastian said. And he started forward. But his mind whirled with the implications. Were they about to see Atlanteans for the first time?

CAVE #42
ATLANTIS BURIAL CATACOMBS
CÁDIZ, SPAIN
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

T
he long climb robbed Father Sebastian of his breath and reminded him that he wasn’t as young as he remembered. Despite the daily constitutionals he took, he too often found himself in library stacks rather than at dig sites during the course of his working days. Reading was not the most aerobic of activities. But he still managed the task. He made it all the way up the sloping pile of broken stone and debris, even if he didn’t do it quite so quickly as his younger colleagues.

The halogen light one of the men raked across the interior of the next cave lit up the catacombs. The cave had been carved from solid rock and hollowed out to make room for the dead. Aisles wove through the walls that stood floor to ceiling like huge bookcases and reminded Sebastian of an old coil radiator.

“Looks like an apartment village of the dead,” one of the construction workers said quietly.

The wreckage and the debris had been spread on the other side of the opening as well. Rocks had tumbled down between the walls of graves.

Atlantis
.

The word whirled through Sebastian’s brain. Atlantis was the most fabled of all lost worlds. And it seemed to him that at least a piece of its storied past was spread out before him. It was a truism in both his fields of expertise that the soul of a culture revealed itself in the way it treated the dead.

Sebastian turned so quickly, he almost fell on a loose rock. One of the Swiss Guards reached out reflexively to steady him.

“I need to get down there,” Sebastian said. “I need to see. Help me.”

“Father,” one of the Guards said softly, “the way doesn’t look safe.”

“I’m afraid we can’t allow you down there,” one of the construction men said. “The boss told us we could bring you this far, but that’s it.”