by Jeff Hirsch
Amy kept moving backward and the man followed, his gun falling almost imperceptibly. His team followed, too. Amy prayed that some shred of her and Dan’s old teamwork still existed, that her brother would guess what she was trying to do.
Amy was just a few feet from the back of the alley. She moved to take another step back, but this time the gun rose again, pointing at her forehead, dead center. The man’s finger curled around the black trigger and Amy’s heart missed a beat.
“How about this headline?” he said. “Cahill Kids Wander into Dark Alley. Shot by Local Criminals. Bet people will believe that.”
“Please,” Amy said, raising her hands, trying to control her breathing, trying to stay calm. “Whatever you do with me, just let Dr. Rosenbloom go. He doesn’t have anything to do with this. I swear. If you want a hostage, let him go and I’ll take his place.”
“Take whose place?”
“Mark Rosenbloom!”
The man’s eyes narrowed and his head tilted to one side. “Who’s Mark Rosenbloom?”
“AAAAAHHHHHH!”
Jake exploded out of the alley, swinging a plank of wood. It smacked into the man’s wrist and the gun fell. Jake didn’t miss a beat. He swung again, hitting the back of the man’s head with everything he had. The board shattered and the man went down to his knees. Dan and Atticus were right behind him, a heavy steel trash can between them. They hurled it through the air and caught one of the others in the stomach. He doubled over and the Taser clattered to the street.
Amy dove for the Taser and jammed it into the third man’s side as he came at her. There was a crackle and spark and the man hit the ground, flopping like a dying fish.
“Run!” she yelled.
The others joined Amy as she took off down the street. She looked over her shoulder. The three men were groggy but already starting to pick themselves up.
“This way!”
Dan jerked to the right, leading them down another twist. Amy’s mind raced. Pierce’s men were so much faster. They had only minutes before her energy gave out to the point that running became stumbling and falling. Maybe she could distract Pierce’s men for a few seconds with a surprise melee, but fighting them head-on was hopeless.
A cramp tore into her side as she ran. Amy gasped and her hand went to it, under her jacket. She felt something stiff and square in her pocket. The idea hit her with the impact of a gunshot.
“We need a place to hide,” she yelled up to Dan.
Dan turned through road after road in the dark until he came to another alley and ran into it.
Thank God for that memory of his! thought Amy.
The kids fell to their knees in the dark, out of breath. Amy listened but didn’t hear the pounding of the mercenaries’ boots. They had lost them, but she knew it wouldn’t last. They had bought themselves seconds. If that.
“Dan,” she said. “What’s the fastest route back to the Bab el Bahr?”
“But that’s right out in the open!” Jake said. “Amy! What are you doing?”
Amy pulled out her phone and then dug in her jacket pocket.
“Throwing our dog a new bone.”
Dan watched as his sister made a half dozen phone calls and then stuffed her phone back in her pocket.
“You sure this is going to work?” he whispered. Amy looked over at him but didn’t say anything. Dan swallowed. He could see it in her eyes. This was a Hail Mary pass. He had trusted his sister without question, but she’d been so erratic lately. Was she acting rationally?
“Here they come,” Jake whispered.
Every muscle in Dan’s body tensed as Pierce’s men turned the corner. Dan held his breath as they ran past. They were like Greek statues in motion, tireless, invulnerable. The instant their footsteps faded, Amy nodded to Jake and he sprang into the road.
“Hey!” Jake shouted. “What’s the matter? You jerks can’t catch a couple of kids!?”
“Go,” Amy said.
Dan burst out of the alley with Amy and Atticus right behind him. He turned a sharp right and headed up the street, following the map in his head to the Bab el Bahr. There was a crash behind him as Jake pushed an empty merchant’s cart into the street. It would only slow the men down for a second. Once again, he prayed his sister knew what she was doing.
Dan took another sharp turn. The plaza surrounding the Bab el Bahr was in sight. He rocketed toward it but then there was a clatter on stone and a deep oof behind him. Dan turned to see Jake sprawled out on the pavement, Pierce’s men breaking over him like a wave.
“Jake!” Dan cried as he skidded to a stop. “Amy!”
Dan started for Jake but Amy’s hand clamped onto his arm, holding him back.
“What are you —”
“We have to keep going!”
“We can’t leave him!”
She yanked Dan back toward her. “Go! Now!”
Amy grabbed Atticus’s arm, too, and pulled them all down the street. Dan looked back and saw the blue-eyed man hauling Jake off the ground. The Bab el Bahr and the plaza surrounding it were dead ahead. Behind them, Pierce’s men were in pursuit, dragging Jake along with them. The moonlight glinted off the gun in one of their hands.
Amy didn’t stop until they were at the foot of the gate. She searched the empty streets around them, her eyes wide, desperate. “They didn’t come!” she said, her eyes frantic. “Why didn’t they come?”
“This little chase is over.”
Amy, Dan, and Atticus turned to find Pierce’s men in a semicircle around them, with Jake on his knees beside the blue-eyed man. The man had the jet-black automatic pointed at the back of Jake’s head.
“A quick surrender will be the easiest for all of you,” the leader said.
“And then what?” Amy asked, stepping forward. “We fall off a building? What makes the best news?”
The man lifted his gun from Jake’s back and pointed it at Amy’s chest. “No more time for games.”
His finger tensed on the trigger but before he could fire, the sound of voices came from all directions. The square was dark, but the voices got louder and louder, as if there were a stampede on the way. Floodlights pierced the darkness.
“Amy! Dan! Over here!”
Amy pulled a stack of business cards from her pocket and threw them at the man’s feet.
“Nope, it’s just time for a new game,” she said. “Hope you like it.”
Seconds later they were surrounded on all sides by jostling reporters, nearly thirty of them, pushing and elbowing their way forward. Flashes went off like firecrackers over their heads. In the distance, Dan could see vans with spotlights tearing into the square.
Pierce’s men were surrounded. Their muscles tensed and nostrils flared as guns, Tasers, and handcuffs disappeared in their jackets. One of them even pulled Jake back up to his feet and threw an arm around him, like they were old friends.
My sister’s a genius, Dan thought. My sister is an unbelievable genius.
“Amy! Dan!” one of the reporters shouted. “Tell us what you’re doing in Tunis!”
“Any response to the Tolliver interview?”
“Is Jake Rosenbloom your new boyfriend!?”
“Dan? Why do you do whatever your sister tells you?”
The reporters fell into silence as Amy stepped into the harsh lights.
“You’re asking the wrong questions!” Amy announced to the crowd of reporters. “It doesn’t matter who my boyfriend is and it doesn’t matter how I feel about what the Tollivers said. What matters is what’s happening right here and right now. What matters is these men!” She threw an accusing finger at Pierce’s men, and the reporters’ heads swiveled in their direction. Pierce’s men fumbled around, clearly unsure what would make their boss more angry — fighting or running.
“You need to ask yourself why men with guns are chasing a bunch of kids in the middle of the night!” Amy went on, her voice ringing out over the clicking cameras. “You need to ask why, when barely anyone had ever he
ard of any of us before, we’re suddenly in the news every single day! Who benefits from that, and why?”
“Who, Amy?” a reporter shouted. “Who’s after you!?”
Amy stood tall in the glare of the lights. Dan could feel the tension building around them until it felt like it was going to explode. He took his sister’s arm and started to draw her back from the cameras, but she pulled away from him.
“The person you need to be investigating is their boss!” she said. “The man who pays them to chase us all over the world. The same man who kidnapped an innocent scholar named Dr. Mark Rosenbloom!”
“Who!?” a woman in a red suit cried. “Tell us who!”
“J. Rutherford Pierce!” yelled Amy.
It was as if a bomb went off in the middle of the plaza. Every reporter began to shout, surging forward in a tidal wave. They blew past Dan and Amy and went right for Pierce’s men. Dan almost laughed to see the look of abject terror on the blue-eyed man’s face. Pierce may have turned him into the most lethal killing machine the world had ever known, but nothing could prepare him for an onslaught like this. Jake shook off the man holding him, and Pierce’s muscle ran like they had an army after them. The reporters didn’t let up, going after the men like a pack of starving piranha. Within a minute, the plaza was empty.
“Are you INSANE!?” Jake was standing in the middle of the square, face red with anger.
“You told them about Pierce? About my father?”
“I was trying to save your life!” Amy said.
“What about my father’s life? What do you think Pierce is going to do to him now that you outed him?” Jake yelled.
“Jake, I —”
“You do not get to make decisions for my family, Amy!”
“We can’t just keep waiting,” Amy said, her face hardening. “If we act, maybe we can force Pierce to make a mistake.”
“And what if that mistake is killing my father? Do you even care?”
“Of course I care!”
Dan forced himself between Jake and Amy. “Guys! Hold on. Let’s just calm down. We’ll find your dad, Jake. I promise.”
Jake glared at him. “And what if you don’t? You going to stick up for her then, too, Dan? Those reporters were right about you. When are you going to get a mind of your own?”
Dan felt his own rage ignite. “Amy’s doing her best!”
“For herself! Not for Atticus and me!”
“EVERYBODY SHUT UP!!”
Dan, Amy, and Jake wheeled on Atticus, their chests heaving. Atticus stood beneath a streetlight, Olivia’s notebook open in his hands.
“Atticus,” Jake said. “What? What is it?”
“I figured it out.”
“Figured what out?”
Atticus took a deep breath, like he was steadying himself before going off a high dive.
“I know where Dad is,” he said. “And I know where the silphium is, too.”
Atticus refused to say another word until they were deep in the stacks of the Tunis library, where Dr. Rosenbloom worked. It was still well before dawn, but the night security guard recognized Jake and Atticus and let them inside. Atticus guided them down narrow corridors of books that got older and older the farther they went. Every few seconds, Atticus stopped to examine a book, hauling a few into his increasingly heavy backpack.
Finally, they found themselves in a cramped reading room with an antique table and a few rickety chairs. Atticus pulled the books out of his pack and arranged them on the table, going through each one in turn.
Amy was standing across from Jake, but neither of them came close to looking at the other. They glowered at the dark table, their lingering anger filling the room like a black cloud. Dan felt suffocated by it and by Jake’s words in the plaza. Amy was his sister. They always stuck together, no matter what. And she did the right thing. Didn’t she?
“Att,” Jake said. “Seriously. We don’t have a lot of time here. If you know where they’re keeping Dad —”
“No one’s keeping Dad anywhere,” Atticus said, his eyes meeting Jake’s.
“What do you mean? Where is he?”
Atticus closed the book in front of him and took a deep breath. “This is going to sound crazy.”
“Atticus, would you just —”
“Dad’s in Atlantis.”
Dan had never heard a silence as complete or as awkward as the one that followed Atticus’s pronouncement. Everyone just sort of froze in place.
“Um . . . buddy,” Dan said as delicately as possible, “I know we’ve all been under a little stress lately, but Atlantis doesn’t, you know, um . . .”
“Exist,” Jake said.
Atticus pushed his glasses up and turned to look at Amy. “Back in the medina, when you asked the man to let my father go, he acted like he didn’t know what you were talking about, right?”
“These guys are well trained,” she said. “They know how to lie when they need to.”
“I know that,” Atticus said. “But did you believe him?”
Amy stared down at the table, her brow wrinkling in concentration. “Yeah,” she said. “I did.”
“Me too,” Atticus said. “In actuality, that’s when it became clear.”
“That your father is in Atlantis,” Dan said. “Doing what, Att? Hanging out with the mermaids?”
Atticus ignored Dan and held up Olivia’s notebook. “This is the page my dad was looking at before he left.”
“Names and gibberish,” Jake said. “We’ve been over this.”
Atticus held up a finger. “But what if they’re not gibberish? Look at the last sentence, the one that doesn’t seem to make any sense. The twentieth Hafsid claims to keep the testament of the failed strategoi.”
Atticus opened a massive leather book marked Caliphs of Ifriqiya. Dan could almost see the wheels turning in his friend’s head.
“The Hafsid was a dynasty that controlled Tunis, called Ifriqiya back then, from the thirteenth to sixteenth centuries. The twentieth Hafsid should mean the twentieth Caliph, or ruler. That was a man named Abu Umar Uthman ben Abul Hasan Muhammad. Uthman for short.”
“Okay,” Amy said. “So who’s the failed strategoi?”
“That was a little harder,” Atticus admitted. “A strategoi was a kind of general. The failed one could mean any number of them. But then I looked into those names from Plato’s dialogues and found out that he based his character Hermocrates on a real guy.”
“A general,” Dan said, suddenly feeling the excitement that always built up inside of him when he saw Atticus at work.
“Exactly,” Atticus said. “And apparently not a very good one. He was made a general but then had the title taken away because he didn’t win enough battles.”
“So . . .”
“So what Olivia is saying is that the twentieth Hafsid, Uthman, claimed to have the testament of the failed strategoi, Hermocrates. That testament must mean Plato’s third dialogue, which was supposed to be named after him.”
“Which you said doesn’t exist,” Jake said.
“It isn’t supposed to exist.” Atticus’s eyes gleamed. “But what if it does?”
“So wait,” Dan said. “What’s this even have to do with Atlantis?”
“Nothing,” Amy said. “Atticus, Dan is right, Atlantis is a myth.”
“Everybody was pretty sure Troy was a myth,” Jake said. “Until Calvert and Schliemann found it.”
“But that’s different!”
“How?” Atticus said, and then held up another book. “This is Plato’s Critias, okay? It’s the second of the three dialogues and the first time anyone in history mentions a place called Atlantis. It’s just like how everyone thought Troy was something Homer made up in the Iliad until they actually found it.”
“I don’t know . . .” Amy said.
Atticus practically bounced in his chair. “Okay,” he said. “Was there once an island-based world power with, like, super technology and mermaids that completely vanished? Duh, of
course not! But could there have been some powerful kingdom thousands of years ago that was destroyed in a natural disaster? And then, over thousands of years, the myth of it grew until Plato wrote about it and called it Atlantis? Why not?”
“But we found Troy,” Amy said. “With all the technology we have today, how could we have missed an entire island?”
“Who knows?” Atticus said. “If it’s really, really, really old, maybe there’s not a lot left to find. Or maybe we’re looking in the wrong places. I mean, it’s not like Plato left us a map in Critias or anything.”
“But maybe he did in Hermocrates,” Dan said.
“Exactly,” Atticus said. “Look, all I know is that Atlantis theories have always been a kind of hobby for our dad. And the second he saw this stuff in Olivia’s notebook, stuff that seemed to reference a way to find the actual Atlantis, he ran like his life depended on it.”
Jake frowned. “You’re saying he wasn’t kidnapped at all.”
“Exactly! He just saw one of the biggest discoveries in history and went after it. That’s why his house was such a wreck. It wasn’t ransacked. You know how Dad is! He was probably so excited to get after it that he tore the place apart grabbing what he needed and ran without even closing the door.”
“Ran where, though?” Amy asked.
“To research Uthman, I’m guessing. If he can find where Uthman was keeping the Hermocrates, then maybe he can find Atlantis.”
Amy considered a moment and then shook her head. “Atticus, you and Jake should go check on your dad, but Dan and I have to go back to searching for the silphium.”
“Fine,” Jake said. “Come on, Atticus. We can start at his house and go from there.”
“Wait!” Atticus said as his brother reached for the door. “There’s one more thing.”
“What?”
Atticus sat back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest and a broad smile on his face. He looked unusually pleased with himself.
“The note Olivia made about Leonardo’s joke. Remember? When she asked him where she could find the silphium, he said she should look —”
“On the Island of the Athenian,” Dan said. “But . . .”