The Spear of Atlantis (Wilde/Chase 14)

by Andy McDermott

  ‘Which is why you need an archaeologist,’ Eddie chipped in. ‘Rather than sending a bunch of goons with shovels.’

  ‘Yeah. I’m hoping my experience – and intuition – will help us narrow down the options.’

  ‘In my own experience,’ said Lobato, ‘intuition is merely another name for guesswork.’

  ‘You’d be surprised how often it pays off in archaeology,’ Nina retorted. ‘But then it’s one of the humanities, isn’t it? The logic’s always more fuzzy than the yes/no binaries of a game.’

  ‘Maybe that’s how the Emir tricked you,’ said Eddie. ‘He took advantage of human nature – even though you probably don’t like admitting you’re human.’

  The white-clad man eyed him, then looked back at Nina. ‘So what does your experience tell you about the location of the vault?’

  ‘I’ve narrowed it down to two possibilities based on the topography and satellite views,’ she said. ‘When I actually see them in person, I’m hoping my knowledge of the Atlanteans will tell me which is the right one. What would they have done? Where would the best place be to plant this weapon? If I can find the right answer, we’ll be able to reach it before the Emir’s people.’ She checked her map again. ‘We’ll need to turn off for the first hill soon, Eddie. Next exit to the left.’

  Eddie kept driving until the turn came into view. ‘We’re going off-road,’ he warned. ‘It’ll get bumpy.’

  Nina, well used to traversing bad terrain, braced herself as he brought the BMW on to the rutted track. Lobato, on the other hand, was evidently accustomed to a smooth ride, clutching at the door handle as a lurch sent him skidding across the leather seat. Husband and wife grinned at each other. Ana guided the second SUV after them.

  The track climbed higher. Nina surveyed her surroundings. Although they were technically passing through farmland, the sandy-brown soil sprouted nothing but stones. She looked back at her map. This hill was, she already suspected, the less likely prospect, but it was the one closer to the airport – and there was always a chance her intuition was wrong.

  ‘Going to run out of road in a minute,’ Eddie remarked. The track petered out below the summit, where a gnarled rocky ridge rendered it useless for even the most hardscrabble farming techniques.

  ‘Just get as close as you can,’ she told him. ‘I want to see the view from the top.’

  More bumps and jolts followed, the last few testing the strength of the seat belts, before Eddie finally stopped. ‘Everyone okay?’ he asked.

  ‘Just glad I wasn’t doing my make-up,’ Nina joked. Behind her, Lobato unclawed his fingertips from the upholstery.

  She climbed out. The wind hit her immediately. With almost no vegetation in its path as it swept down from the mountains, it was dry and gritty, unpleasant. This was not somewhere she would choose to live.

  But several millennia ago, people had. The buried ruins at Gobekli Tepe – their real name still unknown, no traces as yet having been found of their inhabitants’ written language – stretched far beyond those so far fully excavated. It was a place where under normal circumstances she would have been positively itching to conduct a dig of her own.

  But that would have to wait. It was a relic of Atlantis she was searching for, a time bomb from the past. Was the vault somewhere beneath her feet? She clambered to the hilltop and gazed at the view beyond.

  Eddie arrived behind her. ‘So, is this the place?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, though she was already coming to the conclusion that it wasn’t. She took out her phone and brought up its compass to check a bearing, then stared intently in that direction.

  Only bleak, crumpled hills met her gaze, inactive volcanoes rising in the distance beyond them. They were roughly six miles from Gobekli Tepe but the site was hidden from view beyond a rise.

  Lobato scrabbled to the top of the hill, brushing dust off his hands with distaste. ‘Well? What have you found?’

  ‘I’ve found,’ she replied, ‘that we came up here for nothing.’

  ‘How can you tell?’ he demanded in disbelief. ‘We have only just arrived! You have not even started to search.’

  ‘I can tell, because I’m thinking like an Atlantean – and like one who’s planting a doomsday device. Gobekli Tepe is over there,’ she pointed, ‘but it’s out of sight behind that hill. So for one thing, your scouts can’t keep an eye on your target to make sure they’re not sending an army in your direction. For another, it means the city would be shielded from the explosion.’

  ‘If it’s as powerful as a nuke, it’d still cause plenty of damage,’ said Eddie.

  ‘Maybe, but the Atlanteans wouldn’t want to just damage their enemy. They’d want to obliterate them, utterly – to serve as an example of their power. They’d need to be sure the blast would hit its target directly, so the vault would be in line of sight.’

  ‘So on to the next hill?’

  ‘Yeah. It’s . . . over there,’ she said, pointing towards a summit about a mile and a half away.

  Lobato looked. ‘There is a building on it.’

  ‘I saw it on the satellite photos. It’s a little farmhouse – with half the roof missing. I don’t think we’ll be bothering anyone.’ She started back to the car.

  Ana and Maximov had just emerged from the second BMW. ‘We are not stopping?’ complained the Russian. ‘We had bumpy ride for nothing?’

  ‘Thought you’d enjoy being bashed about,’ said Eddie as he followed Nina. While in the military, Maximov suffered a head wound that had not only required a steel plate to rebuild the front of his skull but had also scrambled some of the nerve impulses to his brain; he now experienced pain as pleasure.

  The huge man put a hand to his stomach. ‘That, no problem. But seasick? No, no!’

  ‘There were only two possible locations,’ Nina explained. ‘I don’t think it’s here, so it has to be on the other hill.’

  ‘And if it isn’t?’ asked Ana.

  ‘Then the Emir’s people won’t find it either. They’re working from the same data as me.’ She climbed back into the SUV. ‘Well, come on, then. Let’s go!’

  Ana came closer to Eddie. ‘Nina was . . . different on the ship,’ she said quietly. ‘Is she always this impatient?’

  ‘When she’s after something archaeological, yeah,’ he told her.

  ‘Huh. She is a lot more rude.’

  He smiled. ‘You get used to it. Well, I just ignore it. Have to, really, otherwise—’

  ‘What are you two talking about?’ demanded the subject of their discussion.

  ‘Nothing, dear,’ Eddie replied, sing-song. He got back into the X5, still smiling smugly as Nina gave him a sidelong glare. He turned the car around, leading the other SUV back down the hill.

  The distance between the two hills was not great as the crow flew, but the journey along winding dirt tracks took over an hour. Finally the travellers neared their destination – where Eddie noticed something unexpected. ‘This road’s been flattened out,’ he said as he guided the BMW upwards. ‘Someone’s put new gravel on it.’

  It was indeed smoother than the rutted, stony path they had traversed earlier. ‘There are tyre tracks along the sides,’ said Nina. ‘Maybe someone’s brought a tractor up here.’

  ‘The land hasn’t been ploughed, though,’ Eddie said. The hilltop came into sight. ‘And that’d be why.’

  Lobato looked ahead. ‘It would appear the satellite images were out of date.’

  ‘No kidding,’ said Nina, startled.

  She had expected to see a little cottage ahead, but instead was greeted by a sprawling house. It was brand new, plastic sheeting covering a still-incomplete corner of the roof. A small yellow excavator stood near a water bowser on a rise, part of which had been dug away to make room for a swimming pool. The pool was not yet finished, a pallet of lurid blue tiles waiting beside it.

  The house itself was a gaudy architectural catastrophe, a wedding cake of unnecessary columns, tiered gable ends and window
s of different sizes and styles. It seemed as if someone had taken the worst excesses of wealthy American suburban housing, and rather than mocking them had instead decided to celebrate them by cramming as many examples together as possible.

  ‘Have to admit,’ Nina went on, ‘I didn’t expect to see a McMansion on top of a hill in Turkey.’

  ‘It’d be more of a Mansionoglu,’ said Eddie. She gave him a confused look, only to notice that Lobato appeared almost amused. ‘Yeah, I know a little bit of Turkish.’

  ‘I love that even after fourteen years, you still manage to surprise me,’ she said. ‘But now I’m not sure what to do. We’ve turned up at someone’s house!’

  ‘You could just knock on the door, tell ’em who you are and ask to poke around the place,’ Eddie suggested, bringing the X5 to a stop.

  Nina considered that. ‘You know, I could.’ She got out of the car.

  ‘And I thought it was just you who didn’t get jokes,’ he told Lobato with a sigh as he followed.

  Ana emerged from the other SUV. ‘Is this the right place?’ she asked, confused.

  ‘We’ll soon find out,’ Nina replied. The house had several entrances; she headed for the largest and most elaborate. As Eddie caught up, she pushed the doorbell.

  A man and woman in their thirties, both wearing casual-but-pricey clothing and ostentatious gold watches, opened the door and regarded them suspiciously. The man spoke in Turkish. ‘I’m sorry,’ said Nina, ‘but do you speak English?’

  ‘English? Yes, I do,’ he replied, chest swelling at the chance to show off his linguistic skills. ‘What do you want?’

  ‘This will sound odd, but . . . I’m Nina Wilde,’ she said. The couple regarded her blankly. ‘Dr Nina Wilde, the archaeologist.’ Still no recognition. ‘I discovered Atlantis? Found the Ark of the Covenant?’ Nothing. ‘Saved the world at least three times, Hollywood made some movies about me? Oh, come on!’

  The man sniffed, shaking his head. ‘No, I do not know you.’

  Eddie chuckled. ‘You always tell me you don’t care about being famous. Now you know what it’s like!’

  The others had by now joined them – and the woman gasped and tugged at her husband’s sleeve. ‘Gideon Lobato! It’s Gideon Lobato!’

  The man’s response was no less awestruck. He spoke in Turkish to Lobato, who replied with a small nod and what Nina realised was a request for him to speak in English. ‘Yes, yes,’ said the man, grinning uncontrollably. ‘Whatever you want. You are our . . . the word, the word . . .’ He snapped his fingers in frustration, saying something to the woman.

  ‘Idol,’ she told him, before addressing Lobato. ‘You are our idol, a hero. You began with nothing here in Turkey, and now you are one of the richest men in the world. You are a big inspiration!’

  ‘We are rich too,’ said the man with a complete absence of modesty. ‘Not as rich as you, but one day we get there. What can we do for you?’

  Lobato gestured towards Nina. ‘Dr Wilde can explain better than I.’

  ‘Why, thank you,’ she said, trying to hide her annoyance. Eddie was right; she had become used to people knowing who she was, and finding out that not everybody did was a small slap to her ego. ‘As I said, I’m an archaeologist, and there may be a major archaeological site buried on this hill. I would like your permission to look for it.’

  Even before she finished, it became clear that the couple knew something, and also that they were concerned about telling her. ‘An archaeological site,’ the man echoed. ‘Are you, ah . . . are you from the government?’

  ‘Not the Turkish government, no,’ Nina replied. They both visibly relaxed. ‘But I worked,’ she de-emphasised the past tense as much as she could get away with without outright lying, ‘for the International Heritage Agency at the United Nations in New York – and Turkey is one of the IHA’s contributors.’ A pleasant but pointed smile. ‘Why, does that make a difference?’

  The house’s owners were now decidedly nervous. ‘It is very important,’ said Lobato. ‘Please, if you know anything, you must tell us. It is a matter of safety.’

  ‘Safety!’ cried the woman. A rapid-fire exchange with her husband, then she looked back at Nina. ‘Are we in danger?’

  ‘That’s what we need to find out,’ the American replied.

  ‘You . . . you should come in,’ said the man, with a blend of worry and resignation.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Nina. ‘By the way, you are . . . ?’

  ‘Elmas,’ the woman replied. ‘Elmas Onan. And my husband, Berk.’ Eddie suppressed a snort of amusement.

  ‘Eddie,’ Nina cautioned quietly. ‘I’m Nina Wilde, and this is my husband, Eddie Chase. Mr Lobato you’re already familiar with, and these are Ana Rijo and Oleg Maximov.’

  Any hope of Berk’s that he might be able to reassert his dominance once he was inside his own house faded as the giant Russian ducked through the doorway and stared down at him, arms folded. ‘Hello, yes. Welcome,’ he managed.

  The interior was as ostentatious as the outside, positively Trumpian in its unrestrained use of gilt. ‘This is a . . . very big house,’ was the best compliment Nina could manage. ‘I wasn’t expecting it to be here, though. There was only a small building on the satellite photos.’

  ‘My grandfather’s old farmhouse,’ said Elmas. ‘He had not lived there for a long time, but it still belonged to him, and he left it to me in his will last year.’

  ‘The house was worth nothing,’ Berk continued, ‘but the view? Very valuable! Come, see.’ He led them into a large lounge, from where more doors led to other parts of the expansive house. One wall was dotted with framed photographs of the couple in the company of people whom Nina assumed were well-regarded Turks, though the only one she recognised was the country’s president. Berk’s smile in the picture had the intensity of a cult member.

  He made sure all his guests saw the wall of fame by leading them right past it, before bringing them to panoramic picture windows. ‘Look! It is worth living all the way up here for that view. Do you agree?’

  ‘I do, yes,’ said Nina. ‘It’s very impressive.’ But she was less interested in the vista as a whole than in what she could pick out upon another rise. ‘That’s Gobekli Tepe, isn’t it?’

  ‘The old ruins, yes,’ said Berk, unenthused. ‘But if you look over there, we can see all the way to Sanliurfa!’

  ‘That is where we work,’ added Elmas. ‘Our friends in the city have big houses, but ours is bigger – and we can look down on them from here.’

  Nina wasn’t sure if the Turkish woman meant it literally or in a snobbish way, but her attitude suggested a bit of both. She went closer to the window. Sanliurfa was indeed visible in the distance to the south-west, a grey sprawl across the dusty brown terrain.

  This had to be the place. It would have provided the Atlanteans with direct line of sight to their target at Gobekli Tepe – but now, if the spearhead were to explode, it would also flatten a city of half a million people. ‘I think this is it,’ she said to Eddie and Lobato.

  ‘Then we have to find the vault,’ Lobato said. ‘And quickly, before the Emir’s men get here.’

  ‘Has anyone else come to see you in the last few days?’ Eddie asked the Onans.

  Elmas shook her head. ‘No. Only the men building the pool, and we know them.’

  ‘We got here first, at least,’ he said to Nina. ‘Question is, can we find the thing before they turn up?’

  ‘Before who turns up?’ asked Berk.

  Nina adopted what she hoped was a reassuring tone. ‘Okay. Like I said, I’m an archaeologist, and my speciality is Atlantis. You had heard it’s been discovered, right?’

  ‘Of course,’ said Berk, affronted.

  ‘Just checking. Now, there was a recent discovery – a kind of map. Long story, but it brought me to this hilltop. I think the Atlanteans buried a vault here, and it contains something that might be extremely dangerous.’

  The couple’s eyes went wide. ‘Perhaps you shou
ld sit down?’ Ana suggested.

  ‘Yes, perhaps,’ said Berk, leading his wife to a large sofa. They dropped on to it, holding hands. ‘What do you mean, dangerous?’

  ‘I don’t want to be too alarmist,’ said Nina, ‘but it’s basically a bomb.’

  ‘A bomb?’ Elmas shrieked. ‘There is a bomb here?’

  ‘As far as we know, right now it’s safe,’ Nina went on. ‘But there are other people looking for it – people who want to use it as a weapon. We have to find it before them. Now, when I first mentioned an archaeological site, I got the impression you knew something about it?’

  There was a brief whispered exchange in Turkish. Berk exuded reluctance, while Elmas was entirely the opposite, swatting her husband’s chest in annoyance. ‘Yes, yes,’ she said to Nina. ‘We found—’

  ‘Elmas!’ protested Berk.

  ‘If it is dangerous, we have to tell them!’ she snapped. ‘I am not having a bomb under my house!’ She turned back to Nina. ‘When we were building, we found some big stones under the ground. One had writing on.’ Her gaze shifted away evasively. ‘We . . . did not tell anyone because we thought it was something to do with the ruins at Gobekli Tepe. If the government learned about it, they would have taken away our land and given it to the archaeologists.’

  Nina was not impressed. ‘So you bulldozed a priceless archaeological site because you didn’t want to give up your view?’

  ‘We did not bulldoze it!’ Berk objected. ‘We kept the pieces.’

  She stood. ‘Show me.’

  The Onans exchanged worried looks, then Berk reluctantly rose too. ‘Come with me.’

  He led Nina and the others deeper into the house. ‘The guy really is a berk,’ Eddie whispered.

  ‘Okay,’ Nina said, ‘what’s so funny about his name?’

  ‘Berk? It’s Cockney rhyming slang. Like “butcher’s hook” means “look”, and Londoners say “I’ll have a butcher’s”. Well, berk’s short for “Berkshire hunt”. It means someone’s a right c—’

  ‘Yeah, I get it,’ Nina hurriedly interrupted. ‘Poor guy – and he doesn’t even know his name’s an insult in another language.’

  Her husband grinned. ‘He’ll find out pretty quickly if he ever visits England.’