The Atlantis Code (41 page)

He kept a short list of words that he exchanged throughout the text.

Flood.

God.

Danger.

Cursed.

Those all ought to be in there somewhere.

The Russian encryption method provided for plain text to be rearranged before the encryption process, so headers, salutations, introductions, and other standards in texts were all pulled out. That process mixed up the written language enough that decrypting the finished result without a key was almost impossible because it reduced the redundancy that normally took place in encrypted messages.

Lourds sighed and stretched. He tried in vain to find a comfortable position, but his back and shoulders ached fiercely. He glanced at the television set, tuned to ESPN but silent. He used the images to rest his eyes and change the distance of his focus.

Someone knocked at the door.

Remembering the man Natasha had caused to plummet to the cobblestones on Île de Gorée, Lourds got up cautiously. In a way, it gave him a sense of déjà vu. He crossed to the closet and looked for an iron. The one the hotel provided was skeletal and had no heft. It was a sorry weapon at best.

The knock repeated, more insistent this time.

Lourds peered through the peephole. Leslie Crane stood in the hallway with her arms folded over her breasts, looking a little put out.

For a moment Lourds debated answering the door. It was almost midnight. He could claim that he’d fallen asleep. Then again, she could—as she had last time—have kept one of his room keys. He hadn’t checked this time.

He gave in and opened the door, but he didn’t step back.

“Yes?” he asked.

“I thought maybe we could talk,” Leslie said.

Lourds crossed his arms and leaned against the doorframe.

“Well?” Leslie demanded.

“Well, what?”

“Are you going to ask me in?”

“I thought I might find out what kind of mood you were in first.”

“I’m in a fine mood,” Leslie said crossly.

“Fine. You can come in. But the ground rules are that if you become unpleasant, you’re leaving. Even if I have to carry you out myself.”

Leslie bristled at that. “You weren’t so quick to throw me out a few nights ago.”

Lourds smiled. “On that night I found you quite fetching.” He stepped back. “Lately, not so much so. But, please, come in.”

Leslie entered the room and glanced around. Her gaze landed on the computer.

“You were working,” she said.

“Yes.” Lourds closed the door and locked it. Having assassins creep into the room—even though the hotel was rated five stars—would be embarrassing. Not to mention deadly.

“Are you having any luck?”

“I don’t know yet. Breaking languages, especially when you have so little to go on, is a laborious process.”

“Do you think Diop knows what he’s talking about? About the drum?”

“I certainly hope so.” Lourds sat on the couch and gazed at the young woman. He tried to keep his mind on business. It was too easy to remember what she’d been like naked and in his arms.

Leslie paced for a moment. “I’m getting a lot of pressure from my superiors. They want more of the story.”

“We don’t have anything more to tell them.”

“My job is on the line here.”

“I understand. If you want to separate company from me now and declare it a loss, I’ll understand. I’ve got some money put back. I can continue this for a while.”

She stopped pacing and gazed at him. “You’d do that, wouldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Why? Because of Yuliya Hapaev’s death?”

“Partly, although I see that as work for the police rather than a linguistics professor. But it would be nice to give them everything they need to put Yuliya’s killers behind bars.”

“That isn’t where Natasha wants to put them.”

“No, I suppose it’s not.”

“She’s going to get us into trouble.”

“As I recall,” Lourds said, “Natasha’s been far more apt to get us
out
of trouble than into it.”

“She kills people.”

“I know. I can’t say that it’s something I would do, but if I were to meet those people under the same circumstances—”

“But you have.
We
have.”

“—and people’s lives were on the line, I don’t know if I wouldn’t do the same thing.”

Leslie shook her head. “You’re not like her. She’s cold and detached.”

“When she chooses to be, I have no doubt of that.” In fact, he was sure of it. Pushing a man from a fourth-story window into the street was pretty callous.

“You couldn’t do it.”

“I don’t know. I might surprise you,” Lourds said softly.

“You already have.” Leslie’s voice softened, too. Without another word, she approached Lourds and pushed him back onto the bed.

She kissed him. At first Lourds wasn’t going to respond, not certain at all about what he was getting into. And not at all certain that the flesh wasn’t too weak. But then, when he found out the flesh was responding just fine, he decided to go for it.

Their hands pulled at each other’s clothing.

Exhausted and running on fumes, Natasha forced herself out of the too-comfortable bed and paced the floor. She didn’t trust herself not to sleep too deeply in the plush bed.

And she didn’t trust that Gallardo wouldn’t be able to break through the hotel security. He’d already shown he was capable and willing to do such a thing in Leipzig.

In the end, though, she knew she was going to need a few hours of sleep. There was only one place she could think of to get it.

She picked up the suitcase containing the guns she’d taken and left the room. Across the hall, she knocked on Lourds’s room. After a few moments, the peephole darkened.

Lourds opened the door and looked at her. “Is something wrong?”

Natasha took one look at the disheveled clothing and hair, then noticed the lingering scent of Leslie Crane’s perfume, and knew exactly what was going on. When Leslie stepped into view behind Lourds wearing only her blouse, which barely covered her modesty, there was no doubt.

“You,” Natasha declared fiercely in Russian as she felt anger and embarrassment sting her cheeks, “are a
goat
.” She reached out and pulled the door shut.

Cursing to herself, Natasha walked to Gary’s room door. She knocked.

A moment later, he let her in. Thankfully he was still clothed. He carried his PSP in one hand. Aliens danced across its little screen.

“Hey,” Gary said. “What’s going on?”

“I need a place to sleep,” Natasha declared. She brushed by him and entered the room.

“Okay. Sure.” Gary closed the door behind her. “I guess that’s cool. Got two beds in here.”

Neither of the beds had been used. Evidently Gary had been playing video games for a while.

“Let me have three hours of sleep while you stay awake,” Natasha said. She lay back on the bed and kicked off her shoes. Taking the pistols from the suitcase, she held them in her hands, which she crossed over her breasts. “After that you can wake me and then you can sleep.”

“Sentry duty, huh?” Gary asked.

“Yes.” Natasha closed her eyes and felt them burn with fatigue.

“Maybe I should get a gun.”

“No.”

“Oh. Why?”

“Because I said so. Now be quiet and let me sleep. And there’s one thing further.”

“Yeah?”

“If you try to touch me while I’m sleeping, I’ll shoot you through the head.”

Then sleep dragged her off into a welcome darkness.

CAVE #41
ATLANTIS BURIAL CATACOMBS
CÁDIZ, SPAIN
SEPTEMBER 10, 2009

The excavation crews played lights over the waters roiling in the cave as the pumps worked.

Father Sebastian stood to one side and listened to the pumps and generators fill the cavern with noise. Fear rattled inside him. Even though the excavation foreman, Brancati, had told him the structural integrity was sound, Sebastian knew that if the patchwork they’d done to the breached wall gave way again, they might all drown.

Along with the water, though, the excavation crews also brought out the bodies of the ancient dead. They lay like undead sunbathers on top of body bags. Their textiles were much the worse for wear, but that was no surprise. The experts on the dig staff seemed to feel that the materials could be easily restored. But there were many more of the crypt’s occupants that had been shattered by the floodwaters and now lay in pieces. The Atlanteans apparently had superb techniques to preserve the bodies of their dead, but even so, the power of an ocean unleashed upon the site had been too much for them.

It would be years, perhaps many years, before all those bodies would be returned to sacred ground.

Sebastian couldn’t help but pity them, even as he knew that studying them would open new windows into humanity’s distant past.

Even then
, Sebastian thought,
we won’t know your names
.

The loss was monumental. Somewhere in the recesses of the burial vault, or perhaps the caves beyond—if, indeed, any caves yet existed—there might be a record book that listed all the dead. Perhaps there would be a history with those names as well.

Were you Adam and Eve’s true sons and daughters? Were you really the last of those who lived in the Garden of Eden? Did you taste immortality only to have it stripped away for daring too much against God
?

As he stared into the darkness of the flooded cave, Sebastian remembered all the old stories from the book of Genesis. As a child, he’d imagined what it must have been like to walk with God and see firsthand all the wonders he’d wrought.

The illustrations in his childhood Bible had shown thick, lush forests filled with animals that had no fear of Adam. He’d roamed freely among them and given them their names.

God had also given Adam Eve to be his wife. And she had been tricked by Satan in the guise of a serpent and he had gotten her to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.

When God found out they had done the one thing he had forbidden them to do, he drove them from the Garden and placed a cherub with a flaming sword to guard over it.

Would the cherub still be there?

The question haunted Sebastian. If indeed this was the Garden of Eden, as Pope Innocent XIV believed it was, what would he do if God blocked the way?

Sebastian shook his head. Merely thinking the question was sacrilege. If God blocked the way, then the way would be blocked. There would be no going past that.

“Father Sebastian.”

Recognizing his name amid the thunder and crash of the big machines operating around him, Sebastian turned. One of the young men from the construction crew stood before him.

“Yes?” Sebastian said.

“You need to put your hat on, Father.” The young man pointed to the hard hat now cradled in Sebastian’s hands.

“Of course. You’re right. I was just thinking about God. I never stand before him with a hat on.” Sebastian pulled on the hard hat.

“In the future, you might want to do your thinking about him in a safer area.”

Sebastian nodded but didn’t say anything. The young man went on his way. After a moment more, Sebastian turned his attention back to the flooded cave.

Soon
, he told himself. Maybe only days remained before they could reenter the cave. In truth, though, he didn’t know whether to look forward to that or be fearful of it.

OUTSIDE ILE-IFE, NIGERIA
OSUN STATE
SEPTEMBER 11, 2009

“Have you been to Ile-Ife before, Thomas?” Ismael Diop asked. He sat beside Lourds in the middle seat of the forty-year-old Jeep Wagoneer.

Natasha sat up front with the young Yoruba driver Diop had negotiated for them after they’d touched down in Lagos the day before. While they’d been in Lagos, Natasha had outfitted herself with a hunting rifle and holsters for the pistols. She’d been mildly insulted that none of the rest of the party wanted to carry weapons.

Leslie and Gary occupied the rear seat.

The old four-by-four rode better than Lourds had expected upon seeing it. Most of the paint and the wood grain sides had been lost over the years, but the engine and transmission sounded strong.

“Once,” Lourds admitted. “A long time ago. Shortly after I graduated university I was asked down here by a linguistics professor I had. She had come from Nigeria.”

“She asked you to come for further study?”

Lourds grinned at the memory. “You might say that. She was a very strict professor. No dating the students. Graduates were an entirely different matter.” He glanced over his shoulder and made sure Leslie was still occupied with Gary.

Leslie pointed out spider monkeys and brightly colored birds. The tall forest was alive with animals around them. It was still early morning, and breakfast was the first order of the day for the wildlife.