The Atlantis Codex Read online

  Lucy looked up again at the symbols and began photographing them as they moved through the temple. Ethan could hear the sound of running water nearby, and ahead he could see in the faint glow of the sticks an archway that was half–filled with silt that descended away from them into the darkness down more steps.

  ‘How far out do you think we can get?’ he asked Lucy as her camera flashed behind him.

  ‘Not that far,’ she replied. ‘The silt and debris will have buried the city long ago, and what isn’t buried beneath silt will be beneath the water table and inaccessible to us. The only way we’ll ever see the entire city again is if the entire park is drained, and there’s no way that’s going to happen, it’s far too large.’

  Ethan frowned as he looked around them. The city that so many had searched for, for so long, was now so deeply entombed beneath millennia of accumulated silt that it was unlikely that anybody would ever know the true extent of its depths. That so many had come so far, and that so many others had lost their lives for what amounted to nothing more than old stone buildings half–buried in a lonely marsh appalled him, and he wondered again why so much of what he and Lopez had investigated over the years had led to so much loss and bloodshed.

  ‘So this whole thing was for nothing?’ Lopez uttered.

  Lucy looked around them at the temple, searching for some sign or means of delving further into the ancient ruins.

  ‘There may be passages or tunnels through the silt, channels dug out by fast moving water that might follow the streets and alleys of the old city, and we might be able to access some of the larger buildings but it’s hit and miss and highly dangerous. Any part of this place could collapse at any moment and there’s no guarantee that Heliosa’s ship is going to be within reach.’

  Ethan peered into the darkness and could see the forms of steps and tunnels moving away from them, the old passages dried now like mining tunnels but their floors still glistening with moisture.

  ‘We’ve come this far,’ Ethan said. ‘There’s no sense in turning back now.’

  Lucy looked up at the texts. ‘They appear to be some earlier form of Tartessian script, which itself would give a very ancient date of origin to this city.’

  ‘The ship we’re looking for was lost here during a tsunami, right?’ Lopez said. ‘Ships have a habit of floating, so what’s the chances that it would have settled somewhere higher inside the city rather than lower?’

  Lucy sighed and looked around them.

  ‘It’s possible,’ she conceded, ‘but I’d be concerned about travelling deeper without support from the outside world. If something happens, a collapse of some kind, we could be buried alive down here.’

  ‘You said you wanted to find this place,’ Ethan said, ‘well, now you have. You’ve found Atlantis.’

  ‘Tartessos,’ Lucy corrected him.

  Lopez gestured at the immense temple surrounding them. ‘I don’t care what it’s called. Let’s jut see if we can find Heliosa’s ship and snatch Petrov’s prize from under his nose, okay?’

  Ethan heard something from above them, a faint sound that was not the rush of water nearby but more mechanical and coming closer with every passing moment.

  ‘Whatever we’re going to do, we’d better get on with it or we’re going to become permanent residents down here. Which way?’

  Lucy flustered for a moment as she got her bearings, and then she pointed toward the largest of the subterranean tunnels to their left.

  ‘That way,’ she said. ‘If the ship survived the tsunami then it would most likely have been dragged out to sea when the waters receded. If we’re going to find it, it’s going to be in there somewhere.’

  Ethan didn’t hesitate as he turned and began trudging through the ankle–deep sludge toward the cold and inky blackness before them.

  ***

  XLIII

  Konstantin Petrov hurried along the animal trail with his men surrounding him, heavily armed and running to keep up. At this early hour and this far out into the park there was no chance of them being observed by anybody, the remote marshes and lagoons far from the nearest towns.

  Petrov followed the team’s point man, a former soldier and tracker who was tracing their quarry with an ease that betrayed the fact that it must be Lucy Morgan and perhaps Warner and Lopez with her, moving fast and not expecting Petrov to be this close behind them.

  ‘They’re not covering their tracks,’ the point man said. ‘They don’t know we’re here. At least three people.’

  Petrov nodded in satisfaction, then glanced behind him to see the twenty armed men jogging along behind, equipped for whatever met them when they located Warner and Lopez. Most carried grenades in black webbing slung on hastily when they had arrived at the location, and all were armed with AK–12 assault rifles. Further back, another six men were carrying diving equipment with them, ready for the possibility that their destination might be submerged beneath the lagoons.

  Petrov followed the tracker out toward a mound and over it toward another and then finally a third, larger mound and the tracker waved his extended left hand up and down as he slowed. The tracks followed the circumference of the mound and then all at once Petrov saw an area of disturbed ground and beside it a slab of shaped stone that appeared to have been discarded there.

  As they closed in, he saw the blackened maw of a narrow opening in the sloping ground and he pushed past the tracker and hurried to the edge before looking in. He could see that the tracks ended here, and that the soil and sand had been shovelled hurriedly out of place to expose the entrance to whatever lay inside. Petrov turned to his men and pointed at four of them.

  ‘The four of you set up observation posts at all cardinal points around this site, make sure nobody gets close without us knowing about it. The rest of you, with me.’

  The four soldiers scattered to maintain a watch on the site as Petrov checked the magazine on his pistol. Then he holstered it and poked his head carefully through the cavity and into the darkness. Quickly, he tucked in his legs and dropped into the opening as his men filed in behind him with military efficiency.

  *

  Allison Pierce sat inside a waiting room at the Hospital Universitario Puerta del Mar in Cadiz and tried calling Jarvis, Ethan and Nicola once again but there was no response from any of the lines and she knew without a doubt that something major had already gone down. She figured that Foxx had moved on Jarvis and perhaps his entire team and that everything had gone south long before the Russians had reached the area.

  The ward was quiet, located in a corner of the hospital reserved for private patients. Allison had gone out of her way to call every single elected official she knew to inform them that Congressman Keyes was in critical condition in a Spanish hospital, and then she had called a journalist colleague in New York City and informed them of the same before sending him footage taken with her cell phone of the congressman being rushed into an operating theatre surrounded by surgeons and nurses all jabbering away in Spanish. The chances that Keyes would ever be able to deny that he had been here at all was now completely removed, and that was when she had decided to drop the bombshell to her colleague and send him the images of Keyes meeting with the Russians in DC during the election campaign.

  Her colleague had almost hit the roof when he saw them, proof positive that Keyes had lied on oath and that of all the people that could have been chosen to lead the inquiry into Majestic Twelve and its international associations, he was the least reliable to perform the work. Then she had asked her colleague to sit on the information and not go public with it until both she and Keyes were safely back in the United States, for their own safety. Once back on home soil, she would take the reins of the story in order to both clear her name and restore her reputation.

  She was still sitting there figuring out her next move when a surgeon appeared and walked toward her. She stood up and he smiled.

  ‘He’ll be fine,’ the surgeon said in heavily accented Spanish, ‘you saved his
life. Can I ask how you know this man?’

  Allison shrugged. ‘We worked together back home in America.’

  The surgeon nodded as though he understood, and gestured behind him. ‘He’s out of anesthetic now so you can go see him if you wish.’

  Allison thanked the doctor and walked swiftly into the ward, where she saw a series of doors to the private patients’ rooms. Keyes’ name was on one of them and she made sure that she took a picture of it with her cell, ensuring that the rest of the ward was visible in the shot before she made her way into the room.

  Milton Keyes was propped up in the bed on pillows, an IV line in his arm and with his eyes closed as though asleep. She noted the heart monitor and the steady pulse and pressure it recorded as she made her way around the side of the bed.

  ‘Congressman?’

  Keyes opened his eyes, focussed on her and then winced and looked away.

  ‘Are you never going to leave me alone?’ he rasped weakly.

  ‘You’re welcome,’ she replied. ‘Surgeon said that without me you’d have been dead.’

  Keyes chuckled bitterly. ‘I might as well be. I got a call five minutes ago from my wife informing me that Congress is asking questions about why I’m half way around the world in hospital. I take it that you’ve been up to your handiwork again?’

  ‘I’m covering myself,’ she replied. ‘I wouldn’t want you to start worming your way out of all this now, would I? Or worse, asking your Russian friends to arrange an accident for me.’

  ‘I don’t have any Russian friends,’ Keyes spat angrily.

  Allison held up her cell to him, the screen filled with the image of Keyes meeting with a small group of men in DC months before. Keyes’ eyes widened in shock and he looked at her, and she could tell that it was not shock at seeing the image but surprise that she still possessed a copy.

  ‘I have friends in high places too,’ she purred softly. ‘They backed up my files before your people got to them.’

  Keyes looked away from her. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, and those people were nothing to me, street kids being helped by congressional initiatives, nothing more.’

  ‘Half the country knows you’re lying,’ Allison went on, ‘the other half won’t believe it until they see these images being beamed into their living rooms in the next twenty–four hours.’

  ‘What do you want from me?’

  ‘What does anyone want from their elected leaders? The truth. Honesty. Integrity. Try bucking the mold and manning up.’

  ‘That’s naïve in the extreme,’ Keyes uttered.

  ‘Only if corruption is considered the norm,’ Allison replied. ‘I have back ups of everything, Milton, and more evidence than just what I’m carrying now. I’m giving you the chance to get ahead of this, despite everything you’ve done. Go public, expose the truth behind the election and the lies, show people what’s really going on and you’ll get clear of the coming storm.’

  Keyes chuckled bitterly.

  ‘You don’t think that the administration wouldn’t hesitate to act against me, to deny my claims and then end my career? My life would be over, I’d have nothing and then the world would move on and forget about it all.’

  ‘Two hours ago your life was already over,’ Allison pointed out. ‘The Russians threw you under a bus Milton, and congress will do the same. This is your only play: come clean and let the American people hear your voice. There are people here who could die if you don’t do the right thing! Tell the Spanish authorities that there are armed Russian gunmen here in the country, that they did this to you and will attack other American citizens if they’re not stopped!’

  Keyes grit his teeth and squirmed but she could tell that he was beaten, that he had nowhere else to go. The congressman opened his mouth to speak, and then suddenly four suited but bedraggled men strode into the room.

  Allison turned and saw Keyes’ guards rush to his side. One of them grabbed her arm and hauled her away from the bed.

  ‘Get them off me,’ Allison snapped at him.

  For a moment she thought that Keyes would call his bodyguards off, but then he smiled and snarled at them,

  ‘She’s not welcome here and she has illegally obtained sensitive information while I was incoherent under anaesthetic. Her people attacked us! Take her cell phone and throw her out of here!’

  Allison writhed as the guards yanked her cell phone from her hand and she twisted away from them.

  ‘You’re making a mistake! People will die if you don’t act now!’

  Keyes said nothing as Allison was forcibly pushed from the private room and the door was slammed in her face. The surgeon who had spoken to her looked across in surprise as Allison cursed and stormed away from the ward.

  She was almost out of the main exit when a woman stepped in alongside her and handed her a fresh cell phone. Allison looked up and saw Lillian Cruz walking beside her, talking softly in her distinctive accent.

  ‘Keyes won’t be turned, and fortunately you won’t have to.’

  ‘How the hell did you know I was…’

  ‘I’ve been following you the entire time,’ Cruz said. ‘That’s my job here, to cover your ass and make sure that people like Keyes get what they deserve.’

  ‘His people took my cell again.’

  ‘You have it backed up this time.’

  ‘Yeah, but he’ll already be making calls to track it down.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Allison replied, ‘you only sent out the still images as instructed, right?’

  ‘Well, yeah, but we don’t have anything else on him and he can claim the images are forgeries.’

  Lillian patted the back of Allison’s arm as they walked.

  ‘The stills aren’t all we have,’ she promised. ‘Where are Ethan and Nicola?’

  ‘I can’t reach them and they were being tracked by the Russians!’

  ‘Then we need to move fast,’ Lillian said as she took out her cell phone. ‘Come with me.’

  ***

  XLIV

  ‘It’s this way.’

  Lucy ducked down as she led them deeper into the subterranean system forged by the passage of flood waters over thousands of years. Although the surface of the city street was buried beneath a foot of compacted silt Ethan could still get a sense of the streets and the buildings around them, many of which were visible protruding from the walls of silt like ghostly apparitions entombed in the soil of ages.

  The street was descending, and although the passage appeared smooth and solid in the flashlight beams Ethan could see areas where the upper sections had collapsed, mounds of rubble and silt now half–blocking the passage beneath the marshes above.

  ‘Any of that comes down while we’re here and it’s goodnight one and all,’ Lopez said as she observed the debris, the air rank with the odor of rotting vegetation and brackish water. ‘How come the water isn’t just flooding straight down into here?’

  ‘The vegetation and the city are acting like foundations,’ Lucy said as they picked their way through the debris. ‘It’s holding some of the surface material up, but it could collapse at any moment and frequently does. Fortunately for us, the marshy land fills in any collapses and they then drain slowly again, keeping the city concealed and these pathways open.’

  Ethan saw what looked like the front of a house to his left, the structure eerily similar to those they had seen at the excavations at Akrotiri. Flat fronted stone walls held a single, low door with a heavy frame, much of which was rotting in place as the water and minerals slowly got the better of the thick timbers. Ethan could not see inside but he imagined that within would be a treasure trove of Tartessian archaeological wonders, relics from an age of human civilization that existed five thousand years before the beginning of recorded history.

  Lucy slowed as she reached an area where the passage ended in a junction that offered them the choice of forking left or right. Both channels were low and precarious, debris scattered across their path betraying
countless collapses and the flood waters that had then partially swept the debris away.

  ‘The records that Pytheas kept suggested that the trireme was lost somewhere in the inner channel during the tsunami,’ Lucy said. ‘The crew were able to access it only for a few days before the debris and silt settled enough to completely bury the wreck. If it’s still here in any recognizable form we must be within a hundred yards of it. If it’s been dragged too far by water flow and debris over the centuries then it’s lost forever.’

  Ethan glanced left and right and could see no difference between the two passages.

  ‘Better make a choice while we still can,’ he urged her. ‘It’s pot luck whether we find anything anyway.’

  Lopez’s sharp eyes picked something out in the darkness that Ethan had not noticed.

  ‘The tunnels slant downward to the right,’ she said as she pointed ahead.

  Ethan saw that she was right and that the tunnels were running slightly downhill to their left, and that would mean that any debris and silt would likewise have flowed in that direction. Ethan could mentally picture a flow of water out of the lagoons flooded by the tsunami that Pytheas had witnessed centuries before, and his men fighting to recover valuables from their lost ship before she was consumed.

  ‘The water flow out would have dragged silt and debris with it,’ Ethan said, ‘so it must have flowed from our right to our left, leaving less and less behind it as it travelled further out from the land.’

  ‘Anything large like a ship would presumably have been left behind.’