The Atlantis Code (36 page)

“As I was telling Leslie, we should go to the police.”

“The police are seeking to detain us. They’ve got witnesses who have seen us shoot at armed men. It doesn’t inspire trust in a municipal police department to have that happen. The radio is full of our descriptions and the news that we are wanted.”

“That’s just absolutely brill,” Leslie grumped. “I suppose you know that getting out of the country by airline, train, ship, and bus is absolutely out of the question if what you say is true.”

“I do. However, I was able to secure a car so we can get to France.”

“Why France?” Leslie asked.

“We’re not wanted in France,” Natasha replied. “The E.U. has open borders. We won’t be stopped entering France if we drive. From France we should be able to book passage to Dakar.”

Gary wandered over from the counter. He looked slightly nervous. “I was just watching the telly. You were right. We made the news.”

Looking at the television mounted above the counter, Lourds watched as hotel surveillance camera footage of the gunfight at the Radisson rolled. So far police and hotel management weren’t releasing any details, but four men were confirmed dead at the scene.

“You said you only killed two,” Leslie accused.

“I did,” Natasha replied.

And that exchange drew attention from nearby patrons.

Lourds gathered his backpack and eased out of the booth. “On that note, ladies and gentleman, I think it best if we adjourn somewhere else. Before the police arrive.”

RESTRICTED LIBRARY STACKS
STATUS CIVITATIS VATICANAE
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

“Cardinal Murani? Yes, he’s here.” Beppe’s hoarse voice carried in the quiet library.

Seated at the table, Murani gazed at the drawing of the man offering his right hand while holding a book in his left. The figure had occupied his thoughts for years.

No
, he corrected himself.
Not the figure. The book.

Footsteps headed in his direction.

Cardinal Giuseppe Rezzonico followed the old librarian to Murani.

“Cardinal.” Beppe bared a toothless grin. “You have a guest.”

“Thank you, Beppe.” Murani waved to a chair on the other side of the table.

Rezzonico seated himself. He looked like he’d just gotten up from bed and wasn’t too happy about it. “Father Sebastian’s excavation team just began exploring the new cavern they found.”

“Cave number forty-two.” Murani nodded. He’d been keeping up with the exploration of the catacombs.

“It turned out to be a burial vault. A large one.”

Murani couldn’t hold himself back. “Who was buried there?”

“We don’t know. The Swiss Guard relayed us digital images over the Internet.” Rezzonico passed over a digital camera. “I downloaded them to this.”

Murani took the camera and quickly flicked through the images.

“This is them,” Murani said hoarsely. “The Atlanteans. Those that lived in the Garden.”

“Perhaps.”

Murani couldn’t believe it. He stared at Rezzonico and anger filled him. “How can you doubt this? If your faith were as strong as it should be, you’d know this for what it was.”

“It’s a burial vault,” Rezzonico said. “That’s all I know for certain.”

After checking the size of the digital files, Murani discovered they were almost five megabytes each. They could be blown up considerably.

Without a word, Murani got up from the table and walked to the back of the room. High-tech digital equipment occupied a small area in the stacks.

He sat at the desk and popped the SDRAM memory chip from the camera and inserted it into the reader slot on the front of the computer. It took only a few keystrokes to bring up the images.

“This isn’t why I came here,” Rezzonico protested. “We need to talk.”

“I’m listening. But let’s look while we talk.” Murani examined each of the pictures in turn. Slowly, he followed Father Sebastian into the crypt.

“The council wants to talk to you. They don’t believe that you had nothing to do with Father Fenoglio’s death.”

For a moment Murani couldn’t remember who Father Fenoglio was.

“They know the pope had Father Fenoglio following you,” Rezzonico said.

“The pope should feel guilty about that. Not me. I didn’t put Fenoglio in harm’s way.” Murani glanced up at Rezzonico. “Furthermore, why didn’t the council see fit to tell me that the pope had someone following me?”

“They thought Fenoglio would be more circumspect.”

“Why would the pope assign someone to spy on me?”

“Because he doesn’t trust you.”

“I’ve proved myself very trustworthy for years.”

“Not to this pope. He believes you’re far too interested in the Secret Texts for your own good.”

“I’m here, not in Cádiz,” Murani snorted. “I couldn’t be much further removed from the Secret Texts. The pope has already seen to that.”

“Yet here you are,” Rezzonico said, “prowling through the stacks dedicated to the Secret Texts and all that pertains to the Garden of Eden.”

Murani took a deep breath and let it out. “I should have been the one to go to Cádiz. I should be the one heading up the excavation. No one knows more about the Secret Texts, the Garden of Eden, and Atlantis than I do.
No one.
”

“The Society didn’t want to fight the pope.”

“The pope
isn’t
right in his approach to the Church!”

Self-consciously, Rezzonico glanced around. “Please keep your voice down, Stefano. I beg you. You’re already in enough trouble.”

“What trouble?”

“Didn’t you hear me? The council suspects that Fenoglio’s death was no accident.”

“Of course it was no accident. The carjacker ran him down. I know. I was there. I nearly was killed myself—the bruises haven’t fully faded yet.”

“
And
the car backed over him, according to the police report.” Rezzonico’s gaze remained level. “That was something you didn’t mention.”

Murani realized he hadn’t mentioned that. At the time it had seemed like it would draw too much attention to the incident. He had forgotten about the forensic work that could be done. “I was in shock. It all happened so fast.”

“The police say there was no blood in the car’s interior.”

“The carjacker hit me again and again when I got out of the car,” Murani said. “He didn’t want me to escape and identify him.” That was an easy adjustment to make to the story.

Rezzonico was quiet for a moment. “The only reason the police haven’t questioned you further in this matter is because we have interceded in your behalf.”

“ ‘We’?” Murani showed the older man a mirthless smile. “Now the Society protects me?”

Rezzonico frowned. “Your disrespect grows insufferable, Stefano.”

“No,” Murani growled, “the stupidity shown by the Society—and you—deserves my derision. The Society protects me to protect itself. If I were to be arrested for Fenoglio’s murder, do you think I would continue to protect the secrets the Society of Quirinus has been covering up for generations?”

“If you loved the Church—”

“The Church is the bride of God. She’s supposed to serve God. She isn’t serving God by growing weaker and more tolerant every year. She’s supposed to be strong and run God’s house here in this world. She has a mission—”

The newest image on the computer caught Murani’s attention and froze his diatribe in midword.

A necklace lay revealed in the image. It showed a man offering his hand while his other hand held a book.

“Sebastian found it,” Murani whispered in disbelief. “Look here.”

“So I see. And he may have lost it,” Rezzonico said. “Shortly after this cave was found, after the images were relayed to the Society, there was a collapse. Water flooded the burial chamber. No one knows if Sebastian or the men in that room are still alive.”

CHARLES DE GAULLE INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT
PARIS, FRANCE
SEPTEMBER 5, 2009

ATLANTIS DROWNING AGAIN?

T
he headline on CNN
Headline News
caught Lourds’s attention as he sat in the boarding area awaiting the flight to Dakar, Senegal.

Leslie’s production company had, though grudgingly, set up a separate accounting to foil whoever had been spying on the travel expenses. They’d also sent her a bundle of traveler’s checks instead of credit cards to pay expenses.

But it hadn’t had a positive effect on Leslie’s mood. When she’d finished the negotiations that accomplished this, she returned to their hotel in Paris in a particularly foul mood. She hadn’t spent the night with Lourds since Leipzig. At present she sat wrapped in a light jacket and slept in the row of seats across from Lourds.

Gary lounged in another seat nearby and played a PSP video game player that he seemed totally absorbed by. Earphones trapped him in whatever virtual world he was experiencing through the tiny game platform.

Lourds didn’t know where Natasha was. He was fairly certain, aside from brief catnaps here and there, that she hadn’t slept. He was also certain that being bereft of her weapon inside the airport was driving her slightly insane.

There was nothing he could do about any of it. He turned his attention back to the broadcast.

“Nearly thirty hours ago, the Cádiz excavation site—which has received international media coverage for the last few months as myths of sunken Atlantis have surrounded it—suffered a serious setback,” the young black news anchor said.

The scene cut to stock footage of the Cádiz dig site. Dump trucks and handbaskets trundled earth from the open mouth of the excavation area to the coastline less than a hundred yards away. Great earthen bulwarks held back the tide.

“Early on the morning of September fourth,” the anchor continued, “Father Emil Sebastian led explorers into a new cave that had just been opened up.”

More stock footage rolled. It showed Sebastian talking to crews inside the base camp cavern. The media—according to the
Time, Newsweek
, and
People
articles Lourds had read on the plane—hadn’t been allowed past the base camp, and hadn’t been allowed there often.

“We’ve received unconfirmed reports that the explorers were examining a burial vault filled with dead.”

“Cue scary music,” Gary said.

Glancing over at the cameraman, Lourds discovered the young man had put his PSP away and was focused totally on the story playing on the television.

“Decided to leave the cyber realms?” Lourds asked.

Gary grinned. “If I had my way, mate, I’d still be there. Freaking batteries are dead. I gotta go charge ’em.”

Gary looked around for a power source, and Lourds watched the monitor screen.

“Although those reports have been unconfirmed by the excavation team,” the anchor said, “we do have a report from an undisclosed source inside the work party who stated that bodies
were
found in the cavern. We also have a picture that shows the cave with the alleged graves carved into the side of a wall.”

A picture showed up on the monitor. It was splotchy and too dark. But it did look like an ancient burial chamber with a wall of crypts. The image was too fuzzy for Lourds to identify any iconography or scripts.

The camera switched back to the anchor. “We’re told that two men drowned in the accident before they could be rescued.”

Pictures of a young man and a middle-aged man formed on the flashy digital backdrop behind the anchor’s head. Neither of them were Father Sebastian.

“Father Sebastian has stated that the newest cavern was nearly flooded by the water,” the anchor said. “The mishap has put the excavation behind schedule, but Father Sebastian says they will continue their work there. The Vatican, which has funded the excavation, has offered no comment when contacted.”

“I’m telling you, mate,” Gary said, “the blokes crawling around in the guts of the earth like that have got some bloody big balls on them. You wouldn’t catch me that far underground with the sea just waiting to pounce in on me.”