The Atlantis Stone

by Alex Lukeman

  He complicates things, she thought. Harder to create an accident with the divers around. That one always seems to be with her.

  Vysotsky had been clear. If Katerina Rostov became a problem, eliminate her. As far as Valentina was concerned Rostov was already a problem, if for no other reason than because she was arrogant and abrasive.

  At that moment Rostov looked up at her. The eyes of the two women locked. Rostov's lips curled down. She turned back to her companion.

  If looks could kill one of us would be dead now, Valentina thought.

  By the time she reached the lower deck Rostov and the diver had disappeared inside. Valentina made her way to the stern and leaned against the railing, watching the wake trail out behind the ship. The ship's cook appeared with a pail of slops. He nodded at her and dumped the slops over the side. The garbage spread out behind the ship on the surface of the water.

  There were always seagulls circling above, tracking the ship. They dove for the feast, striking the water and lifting into the air with whatever they had seized.

  I wonder what it would be like to be like one of those birds, Valentina thought. Sailing on the wind over the ocean, wherever I wanted to go.

  As she watched, two of the gulls turned on one another, fighting over a scrap.

  Maybe not. It doesn't look like it's much different from being human.

  She turned to go back to her cabin and saw Rostov coming out onto the deck. Nikita was right behind her. He moved away to the port railing. Rostov continued toward the stern.

  She looks flushed, Valentina thought. I'll bet she's been screwing Nikita in there.

  "Major Antipov."

  "Major Rostov."

  "If this fool of a captain is correct in his figures, we will reach our target tomorrow. We need to talk about how to proceed."

  "Let me guess," Valentina said. "You have a plan."

  Rostov looked away and said something inaudible.

  "I'm sorry," Valentina said. "I didn't quite catch that. What did you say?"

  "It doesn't matter. Look, we don't like each other, but we have to work together."

  "For the good of the Rodina?"

  "Exactly. What are your orders?"

  "My orders? To observe. To find out what's down there, if anything. To monitor the Americans. I expect those are your orders as well."

  "The Americans present a problem."

  "And does your plan include them?"

  "They must not be allowed to learn anything that threatens our security," Rostov said.

  "What do you propose to do?"

  "Nikita is highly skilled in underwater demolition. If they find anything, he will destroy their craft. Whatever they learn will vanish with the ship."

  Rostov watched to see her reaction. Valentina gave no sign of what she was thinking and feeling.

  My sister is on that ship, you bitch. And you know it.

  "That could provoke serious repercussions," Valentina said. "Is Volkov foolish enough to risk the wrath of the Americans on mere suspicion?"

  "You should be careful what you say, Antipov. Director Volkov has only the good of the Motherland at heart. Criticism of his decisions may reflect badly on you. Any attempts on your part to interfere could be seen as treason."

  "Treason?"

  "Do I have to mention your sister, the American spy?"

  For a brief instant, Valentina imagined throwing Rostov over the side for the gulls to feed on. Into the propellers would be good. The pieces would be smaller, easier for the birds to pick up.

  "I wouldn't be quick to make accusations if I were you," Valentina said. "For an officer to have an affair with an enlisted man is punishable by court-martial. Or had you forgotten that?"

  "You dare to accuse me?"

  "Come on, Rostov. Anyone can see you're fucking that gorilla. What's his name? Spassky? So drop the threats and try to be professional."

  Rostov made an effort to control herself. "Perhaps such extreme measures with the Americans will not be necessary."

  "I'm glad to hear it," Valentina said.

  "We will make an initial survey with the remote vehicle. I assume you agree to that?"

  "Yes. What else do you have in mind?"

  "Whatever happens next depends on what we find."

  "It would be wise to avoid a confrontation with the Americans in the water. Even someone as experienced as Sergeant Spassky can get into trouble."

  Rostov looked at Valentina, wondering if what she had said was a veiled threat.

  "I'm sure Spassky can take care of himself. I want to know if we have an agreement to make this go smoothly."

  "We are in agreement about one important thing," Valentina said.

  "Yes?"

  "If there's anything in those ruins that will help our country, we will bring it back."

  CHAPTER 37

  "We have company," Selena said.

  She pointed at a ship that had come up during the night and anchored a few hundred yards away.

  Nick raised a pair of binoculars to his eyes and read the name on the bow.

  "That's the Russian ship we saw in Egypt."

  "What do you think she's doing here?" Lamont said.

  "Same thing we are."

  Nick watched people moving around on deck.

  "Ronnie, where's that camera with the telephoto lens?"

  "In the cabin." He looked over at the Russian ship. "I'll go get it."

  "Thanks."

  Ronnie came back with the camera and handed it to Nick. He focused the powerful lens on a group of people standing near the Stern. A dark-haired woman came on deck.

  Shit, Nick thought. That's Selena's sister. What's she doing out here?

  Valentina walked over to the group. One of them turned around and Nick recognized the woman who had tried to kidnap Selena in the hotel. He didn't recognize any of the others. He took several pictures of the group and of the ship to send off to Harker later.

  "There's something you need to know," Nick said to Selena.

  "What's wrong?"

  "Your sister is on that ship."

  "Valentina? Where?"

  Nick handed the camera and lens over to Selena. He pointed at the cluster of people on the aft deck of the Tolstoy.

  "She's in that group at the stern, talking to the only other woman on deck. That's the one who tried to grab you."

  Selena looked through the lens.

  "Shit."

  "Yeah, that's what I thought."

  "You think Valentina is working with her?"

  "Looks that way."

  "How did the Russians know we're here?"

  "We had to get out of Cairo in a hurry. Maybe they found your notes."

  "That would explain it. Everything was on my computer. But it doesn't explain why Valentina is here."

  The ship was getting ready for the day. Dress code on the Sexton's Dream was casual. The crew was relaxed, joking with each other as they went about their tasks. Sexton ran a happy ship.

  "We'll be ready to go right after chow," Nick said. "Sexton has an ROV he says is perfect for the job."

  "How many ROVs does he have?" Lamont asked.

  "Two, I think. Plus the DSV. "

  "Jeffrey's a serious researcher," Selena said.

  "Mmm." Nick emptied his cup.

  An hour and a half later, two crewmen swung the ROV over the side with an articulated arm and lowered it into the water. It bobbed on the surface, half submerged. A fiber-optic tether to control the vehicle led back to a caged feed on the deck.

  The body of the rover was made of high density orange-colored plastic, enclosed in a frame of sled-like tubing. The unit was small, about three feet long by two and a half wide. Thrusters on either end were powered by a large twenty-four volt battery. An additional vertical thruster added more maneuverability. LED lights in front provided illumination for the camera.

  Nick looked over at the Tolstoy. He counted three pairs of binoculars focused on what they were doing.

 
; "Time to go to the communications room," he said.

  The communications room was where the control console and monitors for the ROV were located. The operator was an athletic-looking woman with dark brown hair, one of the ship's officers. She'd dressed in shorts and a T-shirt. Nick read what was written on the shirt.

  "I used to be schizophrenic but we're so much better now."

  Her console had dual joysticks and a monitor displaying the image from the rover's camera. Everything the camera saw would be recorded in full color, high definition video. At the moment the monitor showed water breaking over the camera as the ROV bobbed on the surface. The operator could manipulate two arms with mechanical fingers that were capable of picking up a coin from the ocean floor.

  "This is Vicki," Sexton said.

  Vicki flashed a smile and went back to her console.

  "Ready to go look for a myth?"

  "Let's do it," Nick said.

  Sexton turned to Vicki. "Everything looking good?"

  "Everything is a go. All systems functioning."

  "Send her down."

  "Down, aye."

  Vicki took hold of the joysticks. The image on the monitor changed as the rover sank beneath the surface. A vertical display on the side of the screen showed battery charge, speed, depth, time remaining, external pressure and other indicators of the health of the vehicle.

  Nick and the others watched as the rover descended.

  "Twenty meters. All systems normal."

  Gradually the light faded.

  "Thirty meters," Vicki said. "Turning on the lights."

  She touched a switch and bright streams of light poured out into the growing darkness. A large shape swam past the camera and was gone.

  "What was that?" Ronnie asked.

  "Shark," Sexton said. "Lots of them out here."

  Selena and Lamont looked at each other.

  "I hate sharks," Lamont said.

  "Forty meters."

  The depth chart kept changing as the robot sank deeper into the ocean and total darkness. It passed seven hundred and eighty meters. Bits of debris floated past the camera's eye.

  "Getting close," Nick said.

  Vicki adjusted the speed, slowing the vehicle.

  "She'd be a good drone operator," Lamont said.

  "She was one," Sexton said. "Vicki did a tour in the Air Force, most of it at Nellis in Nevada. Running Reapers over Afghanistan and Iraq."

  "This is more fun," Vicki said. "Whoa, look at that."

  She brought the ROV to a stop, holding position with delicate adjustments to the thrusters. The depth gauge read eight hundred and two meters.

  Peering at them out of the blackness was a gigantic, stone face.

  "Doesn't look like he's having a good day," Lamont said to Ronnie.

  "You can't blame him. How would you like to spend five or ten thousand years underwater?"

  "That head must be thirty feet tall," Selena said. "It looks like it's carved out of one solid piece of stone."

  "Could be part of a statue," Lamont said.

  Sexton put his hand on Vicki's chair. "Take a look to the left. I saw something as you moved in."

  Vicki adjusted the joysticks and the ROV swiveled to the left. The lights revealed a second stone head rising out of the seabed, this one canted at an angle. The heads bordered a gap in a high wall.

  "Wow," Ronnie said.

  "If those are statues, everything will be under a hell of a lot of muck and silt," Nick said. "Not good for finding what we're looking for."

  "Are you looking for something specific?" Vicki asked.

  Selena said, "It might not have been a natural disaster that destroyed Atlantis. It's possible the people that lived here caused it. We're looking for something to tell us what happened."

  It was partly true.

  "Keep going left," Sexton said.

  A narrow plume of white vapor rose from the seabed in front of the wall. It disappeared above the camera's field of view.

  "What's that?" Selena asked.

  Sexton said, "It's a sign of volcanic activity."

  As the robot continued along the wall they saw two more of the vapor plumes.

  "Several major tectonic plates come together in this part of the Atlantic. It's always active here."

  "Do those plumes mean there's going to an eruption?"

  "Not necessarily, but it's not a good sign."

  The robot moved left, following the wall until it came to a sudden end where the seabed dropped sharply away. The robot had reached the abyss marking the boundary of the ruins.

  Lamont said, "It looks like the earth opened up under them."

  "That slope drops away for thousands of meters," Sexton said.

  Nick said, "Go back to the heads. They look like they make the sides of a gate. Let's see what's on the other side of the wall."

  The robot turned back through the water and reached the stone heads. Vicki guided it through the opening. The lights revealed the shapes of ruined buildings rising from the silt and mud. They spotted more of the vapor plumes.

  "Everything's half buried," Ronnie said.

  "Not everything," Vicki said. "There's something big ahead."

  The rover came to a broad wall of dark stone crusted with sea growth, slanting up toward the surface far above.

  "What is it?" Ronnie asked.

  Under Vicki's control, the robot followed the slope up. As they neared the top it became evident the structure was a pyramid.

  "I'll be damned," Sexton said.

  The top of the pyramid was three hundred feet above the seafloor. A large, square opening at the peak gaped out at them. Long strands of seaweed drifted in lazy patterns about the opening.

  "This is eerie," Selena said. "It's like finding Egypt underwater. These people had to be far advanced to build that."

  "Can you get the robot through that opening?" Nick asked.

  "Let me get closer."

  Vicki brought the robot up to the opening. The lights revealed nothing from the outside.

  "It will fit. We need to be careful, though. It would be easy to get trapped in there."

  "Go ahead and take her in," Sexton said.

  With a touch at the controls, the robot moved slowly into the interior of the pyramid . A school of odd looking fish swam past the camera and out through the opening. As the robot moved around they saw three more openings like the one they had come through, one on each of the four sides. It was a kind of room. There was a floor covered with silt. Nothing else could be seen but a wide, black shaft in the middle of the floor.

  "That's weird," Lamont said.

  "Follow that down, Vick."

  "You're the boss."

  The ROV tilted and headed down into darkness. Two hundred and fifty feet down, the robot emerged into a large chamber at the bottom of the pyramid. Countless centuries of sea muck covered the pyramid floor.

  Vicki moved the robot around the room, trying not to kick up debris with the thrusters. Even so, a fine mist of silt began to cloud the water, limiting visibility. It was dreamlike, the walls shifting in and out of focus. Unlike the outside of the pyramid, the interior walls were free of growth.

  "That's odd," Sexton said. "Why isn't anything growing inside?"

  Selena touched Vicki's shoulder. "Can you hold the robot right there without stirring up more silt?"

  "I'll try."

  The robot paused as Vicki held it in position. Slowly the water cleared enough to see what Selena was looking at. The inner wall of the pyramid was covered with the writing she'd named Linear D.

  "Is the camera recording this?"

  "Yes, ma'am."

  Selena said, "This is incredible."

  "What does it say?" Nick asked.

  "It's like the columns and the tablet. These people seem to have been obsessed with their achievements and the greatness of their empire. At first glance it's a history of their expansion into North Africa. At least I think it's about North Africa. Make sure we get e
verything on that wall."

  Vicki worked the robot back and forth until everything had been caught on tape.

  "What about the other walls?" Nick said.

  "I'll look," Vicki said.

  For the next forty-five minutes they recorded the other walls of the pyramid on video. Each wall was covered with writing to a height of about twenty feet, interrupted by blank squares set at regular intervals. The lower lines of writing were obscured by the buildup of silt and muck.

  "What do you think those squares were?" Lamont asked.

  "Probably paintings," Selena said. "Pictures to go along with the story. Anything like that would've been gone a long time ago."

  "We need to bring the robot up," Vicki said. "The battery is running low."

  "We have enough pictures for now," Selena said.

  "Bring her home, Vicki," Sexton said.

  The robot turned and started up toward the shaft leading to the peak of the pyramid. Sudden bright light blinded the camera. The image tilted crazily and went dark. Vicki worked the controls on the console with no result.

  "I've lost her. The robot's not responding. Something hit the unit."

  Nick's face was tight and angry.

  "I'll bet I know what it was," he said.

  "Yeah," Ronnie said. "The Russians."

  CHAPTER 38

  The heat of the day had not yet begun and the patio doors of Elizabeth's office were open to the early morning. She poured a cup of coffee and went outside, where Stephanie sat at a shaded patio table. For the moment it was a pleasant morning in the Virginia countryside, the kind of morning when Elizabeth could pretend there was nothing more important to worry about than what she would have for lunch.

  "I wonder what they're going to find down there," Stephanie said as Elizabeth sat down.

  "The whole thing is hard to believe, isn't it? People have been arguing about the existence of Atlantis ever since Plato wrote about it."

  "I wouldn't be surprised if they kept on arguing. A lot of experts are going to look pretty foolish if it really is Atlantis. They aren't going to want to believe it, even in the face of hard evidence."

  "I've never understood why people are like that." Elizabeth sipped her coffee. "I can understand resisting change. Nobody really likes change. But when evidence smacks you in the face and you choose to ignore it, that's just stupidity."