by Nick Thacker
Julie was upset, but she understood. Interpol was trying to keep things clean, simple. There were many organizations it worked with worldwide, and that automatically implied there were plenty of lines of communication and chains of command that would overcomplicate issues. Adding in a crack team of NGO freedom fighters, from their perspective, would drastically muddy the waters. The paperwork alone would be a nightmare.
Still, it hurt to be cast aside so succinctly and effortlessly. Sharpe was a good agent, she could tell, and he seemed like a good man. He didn’t want to hurt their feelings, but he also didn’t want to upset tried-and-true hierarchies.
She looked at the rest of the members of her team. Mrs. E was silent, taking it all in. Reggie and Ben were quiet, but she knew they were probably both screaming on the inside. She herself felt it. Sarah was gone, they had no good leads, and the information they did have they’d effectively just turned over to an organization that didn’t want their help.
She thanked Sharpe and showed him out, asking him where he was staying while on the island. He responded with a dismissive, vague answer about another hotel somewhere nearby, then departed. As soon as she closed the door, Ben and Reggie were standing behind her, arms crossed.
She sensed they were upset with her, as if she had been the one to deliver the bad news.
“So we’re just supposed to lay low, ignore all of this?” Reggie asked.
“No,” Julie said, shaking her head. “That’s the last thing we’re supposed to do.”
44
Julie
“WE’RE GOING TO MAKE THIS a matter of national security,” Julie said.
“How’s that now?” Reggie asked. She could see a visual shift in the man’s demeanor. He’d been expecting more disappointment, more anger, more grief. What she’d just given him was hope.
“It’s not just a kidnapping,” she replied. “And it’s not just some quack theory about Atlantis.”
“It’s not?” Ben asked.
The four of them were all standing in the narrow hallway near the door, where Sharpe had just exited. Julie waved them to follow and navigated between them to the more spacious hotel room. How many times have we planned out some scheme from inside a hotel room like this? she wondered.
“It’s not,” she said, continuing. “There’s something else going on here. Something bigger — deeper — than just the kidnapping of a couple academics. And certainly bigger than just an unprovable — and improbable — theory about Plato’s lost continent. Sharpe said so himself.”
“He did?”
Julie nodded. Before she’d worked for the Biological Threat Resistance department of the CDC she’d been a sought-after IT consultant. Her education was in computer science and information systems, and after the incidents at Yellowstone, she’d accepted a job doing part-time consulting and support for the national park her boyfriend Ben worked for.
Her role in the CSO was still one of support, and her knowledge and experience was often put to work to help solve computer-related problems. She wouldn’t have called herself a hacker, necessarily, but she understood how systems worked, interfaced, and connected with the outside world. Most importantly, and the piece many ‘real’ hackers were missing, she knew how people worked. She could understand the motives behind why people did what they did, and then translate that to how they may have done it using a computer system.
Sharpe had explained something she knew intuitively — a government or police force can only monitor so much at once. They were limited, like anyone else, with their resources and manpower to determine actionable items. That meant that even with fancy computers and well-scripted algorithms, organizations still couldn’t see, hear, and watch everything.
So if Interpol had found something worth investigating in person, acting on a tip from a university’s IT department and campus police, and then sending someone across the continent to investigate further and provide eyes-on support, it meant that it — whatever it was — was likely a big deal.
As far as she could recall, there hadn’t been any international investigations launched for similar kidnappings, even when the person kidnapped claimed to have found Atlantis — a certain famous archeologist named Dan Kotler came to mind. He had stolen the hearts and minds of the public on his own successful archeological excursions, and his kidnappings hadn’t raised the hackles of anyone but his closest allies.
So there was something else going on. It was large enough that at least two professionals had been kidnapped in the name of ‘finding’ this version of Atlantis, and Interpol was following a thread of evidence based on a paper published, and subsequently unpublished — by one of the kidnapping victims.
Julie had been lost in her own thoughts, formulating a plan, but she stopped and looked up at the rest of the group. “Yes,” she said. “He wouldn’t be here if they didn’t think it was an international concern.”
She noticed Ben eyeing him suspiciously.
“Problem?” Julie asked.
“You’re not telling us something,” he said.
She exhaled. “Fine,” she said. “You’re right. But it’s probably nothing. I just — I just don’t trust him.”
“Who, Sharpe?” Reggie asked.
“Something… about him. I don’t know. It just seems like he’s not telling us something, I guess. About this whole mess. And the fact that he’s been there, everywhere we’ve gone? Seems strange.”
“I agree,” Reggie said. “But I’m not sure it’s anything actionable.”
“The actionable thing to do is to take action,” Julie said.
“So what’s our move, then?” Ben asked.
“Well, Interpol’s involved, we think. That means it’s an international concern.”
“So…”
“So we make it an even bigger international concern,” she said.
“And… how do we do that?”
“Simple. We get someone involved who believes us, and who can pull the right strings.”
“You’ve got someone in mind?” Reggie asked.
Julie looked at Mrs. E, who simply smiled. Ben followed suit, but Reggie sat in the chair across from Julie, silently fuming. Apparently he hadn’t followed the breadcrumbs she’d been dropping.
She waited.
Finally, after a few more seconds, he looked up. “I see,” he said. “Yeah, that might work. If he’s not busy. But we’ll need something more concrete. We can’t just tell him ‘my girlfriend got kidnapped,’ then hope that the FBI issues a warrant and sends out a squad.”
Julie laughed.
“Is that… wrong?” Reggie asked.
“No, you’re right,” Julie said. “The FBI’s not an international force. I’m just laughing because you just called Sarah your girlfriend.”
45
Graham
PROFESSOR GRAHAM LINDGREN STOOD and stretched. He had eaten well that evening — a surprisingly positive attribute of his otherwise miserable captivity. He was still a prisoner, of course, but it was apparent that his jailers were truly more interested in finding whatever it was they thought he had than in harming him.
Though after their last threat against his daughter, he wasn’t sure what they were capable of or planning. If I don’t give them something…
He ran through ideas for anything they might be looking for. He’d been working on a unified theory of human civilization based on a question his daughter had posed in one of her papers: ‘Where did we all come from?’
It was an innocent question, one not burdened down by the rigors of religious and cultural overtones. Since they’d spoken last, she told him she had been working on a paper trying to show the migration patterns of early American settlers, with the working hypothesis that the first people to arrive in the Americas had not, against what popular opinion depicted, arrived via a land bridge that connected present-day Alaska to Siberia over the now-thawed Bering Strait. Her goal was not to prove that the accepted theory was flat-out wrong, but to prove that ther
e was another route taken entirely, and earlier — a route on the opposite side of the continent.
Settling the Eastern side of the Americas was something that most scholars believed had been many thousands of years after the migration over Beringia, when civilizations were capable of boatbuilding, sailing, and navigation.
It was already common knowledge that Christopher Columbus hadn’t ‘discovered’ America as much as rediscovered it for the Europeans, and that Viking explorers had reached the shores of North America almost half a millineum before. In fact, recent evidence suggested that the Vikings had settled the area of Newfoundland around 1000 AD, suggesting that Europeans were stomping around the Americas long before Columbus was even born.
So for Graham’s daughter to suggest that the Vikings hadn’t been the first Atlantic-born connection to the Americas was not something that should have ruffled a feather, but he knew better than most how most academics treated ‘new’ information — suspicion was their modus operandi, no matter how strong the evidence. It usually took mounting evidence, millions of dollars of research grants, and years of healthy-yet-skeptical discourse before a well-established belief was overturned and made mainstream.
Sarah hadn’t exactly been shunned for her hypothesis, but it had not been well-received. She had received funding from her school, but he suspected that the money was the sort that came with strings attached. In other words, the money had been the proverbial rope: just long enough to hang herself with. And, he guessed, there might be a bit of familial favor involved: he was an accomplished archeologist with a near-celebrity status, and a refusal of his daughter’s funding could generate backlash for her university.
He stretched again, then walked a couple circles through the room. There was nothing to do here — even reading, had he had a book to read — was impossible, as the only light filtering in was from a distant fluorescent bulb hanging in the hallway around the corner. He had no way to legitimately exercise, which caused him to feel lethargic and slow. He worried that his mind, normally sharp and quicker than the rest of his body, would eventually waste away as well.
How long will they keep me here? he thought. What’s their endgame?
He knew that was the real question. They didn’t care about him, or his daughter — they cared about results. They wanted to find whatever it was they were looking for, no matter the cost.
And if they didn’t find it, they would make him pay dearly for it.
But how long did they have? What was their timeframe?
These were questions he had no answer for, as he had no idea what in the world they could possibly be searching for. He paced, wanting nothing more at the moment than to find out some more answers to his questions.
As if someone had read his mind, he heard the door to his room click open. He whirled around, seeing Rachel Rascher there again. She hadn’t joined him for dinner this time around, but she was smiling, holding a bottle of wine.
“A peace offering?” Graham asked. “You threatened my daughter. You think I’m going to —”
“We already have your daughter, Professor Lindgren. It took a bit of coercion, but she is inbound as we speak.”
He seethed, turning to face her fully. He raised a finger, preparing to launch into a tirade.
“Save it, Professor,” Rachel said, her kind facade failing. “I am not here for an offering of any kind, unless you happen to be a wine drinker. In that case, here. It’s a vintage from my own collection. Merlot.”
He sucked his teeth. He was a wine drinker. Both his current girlfriend and Sarah’s mother — his ex-wife — were interested in wine and had been collectors, filing Graham’s apartment with both vintage and modern selections of the ‘noble reds:’ Cabernet Sauvignon, Merlot, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Riesling, and Sauvignon Blanc.
But it didn’t change the fact that the woman offering him this gift was the same woman who had kidnapped him, his daughter, and was asking for something he didn’t have.
“I still don’t understand what it is you think I have,” he said.
She handed him the bottle. “No matter. You probably need a drink anyway.”
He accepted it, popped the cork, and took a swig directly from the bottle. “Where’s Sarah?”
“She is fine, if that’s what you mean,” Rachel said. “As I said, she is on her way here as we speak.”
“What do you want with her?”
“The same thing we want from you, professor. We want to know what was inside the object — the one you sent her.”
The powder.
He shook his head, smiling in an unbelieving way. “There was nothing inside. I found it in Greenland, but it was empty. Unless you want to know what was in the air inside, in which case I would say it it’s a combination of mostly oxygen and nitrogen, in a ratio that resembles that of the air found in the rest of the —”
She rocked on her heels. “Fine,” she said. “Your daughter will be here in a matter of hours. At that point —”
Graham lost his temper. “At that point you can take whatever it is you’re looking for and shove it up your —”
“Enough, Professor.” She held up a hand. “I believe you, actually. When I mentioned your daughter, you were in pain. Real, actual, pain. I recognized that, because I’ve felt it. If that wasn’t real, you’re either the best damned actor I’ve ever seen or I’m hallucinating. The fact that I’m bringing her here doesn’t change anything, however. If you don’t know anything, perhaps she will. If she does not, then we will move to more direct tactics.
“The contents of the object you retrieved from Greenland are paramount to this investigation. And we need to the compound that was inside that artifact, before the event.”
Rachel looked up toward the corner of the dingy cell, as if she’d said too much.
“What event? What are you talking about? As I said, there was nothing inside —”
“I know,” she said. “I mean, I believe you. But we are running out of time.”
“What event are you talking about? And what the hell are you really looking for?”
“We are trying to find the solution to an ancient problem.”
46
Ben
“COME ON, MAN, THERE’S GOT to be something,” Ben said. He was stressed, feeling the physical exertion of two days of travel, poor sleep, and a kidnapping of their friend beginning to weigh him down. He rolled his neck back and forth on tight, tense shoulders.
Reggie shook his head, his eyes dropping to the floor. “There’s nothing, Ben. I’m sorry. I tried…”
“Nonsense,” Julie said, suddenly at Ben’s side in the hotel room. “You’re good at this, Reggie. The best. Your training, experience — “
“My training got me through some situations, but it didn’t prepare me for this.”
Ben knew a bit about his friend’s past, that Reggie — Gareth Red — had been an Army sniper, headhunted for a mission to Russian that had ended poorly, and with Reggie’s dismissal from the United States military. He hadn’t rested on his heels, however, beginning a years-long excursion around the world, living wherever he pleased and working wherever he could.
Ben didn’t know the details, but he knew that sometimes the man’s ‘work’ was the sort of work that had gotten him kicked out of the military in the first place. He’d eventually settled down in Brazil with a young wife, building a compound on some land he’d purchased and opening up a survival training school and shooting range. He and his wife got a divorce, Reggie met Ben and Julie, and eventually joined up with the CSO.
“It did, Reggie,” Ben said. “You got the license plate already. That’s a start. Isn’t there anything else you can remember? What did the guys look like, what was the car like?”
“I already told you all of that. And I told Derrick that, too.”
Roger Derrick was an acquaintance of theirs who had helped them out in Philadelphia and Montana not long ago. He was an FBI agent, currently working on an assignment that was kee
ping him stateside for the time being. Julie had called him up, asked if he could help them with their predicament, and Roger Derrick had given them the best answer he could: ‘give me the license plate number and any details you have, and I’ll run them through our system.’
Ben, however, knew that Roger’s hands were tied. There wasn’t much he would be able to do if the car’s owner was not a criminal, and he’d be even more helpless if the person wasn’t American. The FBI wasn’t an international organization, and though they were capable of plenty of surveillance and international intelligence-gathering, Derrick couldn’t just hop on a plane and fly to Santorini to help his friends find a kidnapping victim.
Julie’s idea to call Derrick was a good one, but it hadn’t helped them much. They were still in the hotel, fumbling around for ideas without any solid leads.
Ben’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He reached for it when he noticed that Julie’s and Reggie’s were already in their hands as well.
“Mrs. E texted all of us,” Julie said. “Looks like Derrick got back to her.”
Ben read the message on his phone as Julie read it aloud. Derrick says car registered to owner in Santorini. Catholic priest. Likely stolen.
“A priest?” Julie asked.
“That’s why he thinks it was probably stolen,” Ben said, shrugging. “I don’t know of a lot of priests who are kidnapping people.”
“You don’t know a lot of priests,” Julie said.
He looked up at Reggie. “Any of those grunts look like a priest?”
“No,” Reggie said. “But why would they? It’s not like they’d give themselves away by wearing a collar and black clothes. Besides, even if a priest was behind all of it, how does that help us?”