‘I’m not following,’ Wright said softly, watching her with an uncertain gaze.
Lucy flipped a page on the screen of her laptop and turned it to face the professor. Wright read from the page and his eyes widened as he did so.
‘You’re not out here looking for what I think you are, are you?’
‘Pytheas didn’t make it up here on his own,’ she replied, dodging the question a little. ‘There were sceptics about his voyages even at the time and some of his measurements and claims didn’t stand up to scrutiny even then. It was remarked by his peers that he seemed to have relied upon some kind of earlier writings to have completed his voyage, filling out details with information from another source, some sort of guide or codex.’
Lucy gestured to the remains before them and Wright understood immediately.
‘How much earlier?’ he gasped, eager now to learn more.
‘The Greeks had already heard of northern lands where there was perpetual darkness and that the seas froze and veils of fire danced through the night sky,’ she replied. ‘Word could have come over land via trade routes and via shared stories travelling south from community to community, but what if the information had been kept from an earlier time in the same way that most myths and legends were kept alive before the advent of writing? What if some common origin of all people was not just their stories but the actual living record of how a dispersed, technologically advanced people were scattered about the globe and interacted with existing hunter–gatherer populations, forming what we think of now as the first civlizations?’
‘You’re talking about Atlantis,’ Wright said, his voice sounding flat in the growing darkness as Lucy put the laptop away.
‘I’m talking about the possibility that civilization was thriving before the period currently recognized by modern historians and archaeologists, and that it was reborn as survivors of some great calamity were dispersed around the globe. Nobody has ever been able to explain how so many advanced early cultures around the world sprung up at the same time, with similar technologies and legends, on widely separated continents that should have had no contact with each other. My assertion is that they shared a common origin for those technologies, dialects and legends, and this ship is my evidence.’
‘A Greek trireme?’ Wright said.
‘No,’ Lucy replied, ‘I don’t think that this ship is Greek at all.’
Wright stared at her blankly for a long moment as he digested what she was saying.
‘You think that this was an Atlantean vessel?’
Lucy glanced over her shoulder at the ancient oar buried in the sediment.
‘This fjord was created by the retreat of an ancient glacier,’ she said. ‘The sediment around that oar was not put down after the ship was lost here. It was put down after the glacier retreated.’
Professor Wright seemed to turn pale in the glow from the lamps. ‘That’s not possible. The glaciers in this region did not retreat until some twelve thousand years ago!’
‘Right about when Plato and others state that a super civilization was wrecked by a colossal climatic event that wiped them out,’ Lucy replied triumphantly. ‘I think that this ship was left here over ten thousand years ago, and I want to know what’s inside it, because if we can figure that out we might learn of where it came from.’
Lucy picked up one of the lamps, the glow from it illuminating half of her face while the rest remained in deep shadow.
‘You wanna start doing some fringe research professor, or are you just going to stand there?’
***
IV
Pentagon, Washington DC
Lieutenant Colonel Foxx walked through the corridors of the most famous military complex in the world, kept his eyes fixed ahead and ignored the glances of other members of staff going about their business in offices all around him.
The Pentagon employed a large number of people, sufficient that it was unusual to see the same face twice in one visit. As Foxx rarely walked these halls the anonymity offered by the place suited him just fine. His rank would normally have guaranteed recognition but Foxx did not command divisions of infantry or armor. In fact, he had not stepped onto a parade ground in almost two decades. Foxx worked in the shadows, his department funded by a “black budget” that was now growing larger every year due to the policies of an administration built upon a fear and paranoia that now fuelled or hindered the American dream, depending on how one viewed the world.
Foxx stopped at the door of a non–descript office and checked his uniform briefly out of habit before checking his watch and knocking briskly. Once, long ago, men in his position had worn black suits, ties and hats. They were tasked with ensuring that witnesses to unusual phenomena, especially UFO sightings, remained silent about their experience and were “discouraged” from reporting them either to the media or friends. Their visits to members of the public from the late 1940s onwards had resulted in them being labelled with a strange moniker: Men in Black.
Those days were long gone now, and instead it was preferred for ultra–covert operatives to remain tucked out of sight in what appeared to be menial roles within the regular military. Foxx’s true role as an agent of a highly classified government organization was thus perfectly concealed from all but those who served alongside him. The office he sought was likewise anonymous among the many hundreds of others that filled the Pentagon.
‘Enter.’
Foxx walked in and closed the door behind him. Inside was a small office with pictures on the walls of the residing officer’s family and military service. A simple filing cabinet stood in one corner of the room and the desk was cluttered with mundane paperwork.
‘Please, sit.’
Foxx sat in the only other chair inside the room and waited for the older man before him to speak. A senior officer with close links to the White House, he had been quietly appointed his position while the media was focussing on whichever scandal was rocking the administration of the time. White hair, tired and rheumy eyes and slumped shoulders, Foxx had seen these kinds of appointments before given to men who could be relied upon to maintain silence about their work until reaching a grave that was not far away. There was no greater means of keeping a man’s silence than death itself.
‘What news of Russia?’
Foxx shifted uncomfortably in his seat as he replied. ‘They are as ever among us, welcomed even.’
He could not help but express a little surprise in his response, given where they were sitting.
‘They have their place,’ the old man said and then finally looked up at Foxx. ‘It’s not like we haven’t done this before.’
‘The Cold War is long over,’ Foxx cautioned. ‘The enemy cannot be trusted.’
‘And the enemy of my enemy is my friend,’ came the cryptic reply. ‘It is not our place to make policy. We are merely the instrument of that policy.’
Foxx said nothing. He had seen the passing of enough administrations to know that they were merely the public face of a much more powerful and labyrinthine machine that few people even knew existed. Although in recent years the powerful military industrial complex which underpinned all of western society had seen its influence eroded by the rise of people power across the globe, it still maintained control of the bulk of the media and the vast majority of the political establishment in the United States and Europe. The phase of people voting for nationalistic dictators was seen as just that; a phase that would soon pass as the populace of country after country slowly came to realize that a populist agenda only came to fruition at the hands of those with the temperament to remain popular. Inevitably, that ability was lost in the face of their rise to power and their unwillingness to part with it.
‘Why am I here?’ Foxx asked.
The old man spoke quietly, using no force in his words, no emotion or sense of urgency. Instead his calm and steady tones were imbued with the authority of countless years of experience which Foxx would likely never hear about even with his level of securi
ty clearance.
‘The administration is unstable to say the least, and although their cosying to the Russians appalls any sane American it does provide us with opportunities that did not exist during the previous president’s tenure.’
‘Such as?’
‘The ear of powerful Russian figures for whom profit is of greater concern than democracy, or the lives of the people from whom they extract their fortunes.’
Foxx’s eyes narrowed uncertainly. ‘Where is this going?’
‘The administration is being run in the manner of a business and major arms contractors and technology giants have the ear of the president. Their ability to maintain profit is largely dependent on the continuation of an American defense program overseas and the maintenance of a war footing in at least one theatre around the globe.’
‘Peace is the enemy of profit,’ Foxx acknowledged.
Any sane person had long become aware that the word defense as used by the administration was a deception in itself. America maintained some three thousand overseas bases around the world, whereas Russia maintained precisely three. America had never needed nor relied upon such a global presence for its own safety, but rather used it to project power across the globe along with its own insistence that other countries abide by an American Way that was as corrupt in many sectors as anything the Soviet Politboro had conceived during the Cold War.
‘With the administration cutting international aid and public spending in order to increase our own bloated military budget by a further ten percent, most of the major arms companies are rubbing their hands together in glee at the prospect of another major regional conflict designed to line their pockets with the blood of innocent civilians. To oppose this, of course, is now referred to as “un–American”, or even Communist.’
Foxx was aware of how the country’s leadership was on the verge of plunging into the abyss like nothing he had ever witnessed before but like most he couldn’t see what he or any federal agency could do about it.
‘Our greatest concern now,’ the old man went on, ‘is that in return for facilitating these new conflicts, or at the very least providing minimal resistance to the next military intervention by American forces, Russia will be offered recompense in ways other than the retraction of sanctions.’
‘Such as?’
‘The president shares more than just his attitude with dictators of the past,’ the old man said. ‘He is just as interested in the conspiracy theories peddled by several right–wing radio shows and television channels and is showing a concerning habit of basing actual policy on those theories. Our concern is that in his lunacy he might inadvertently start to get a little too close to the truth.’
Foxx knew what the old man was referring to and suddenly he understood why he was in the room. Seventy years earlier, a meeting between the President of the United States and elements of the industrial and military complex had resulted in the formation of a shadowy cabal of powerful figures known only as Majestic Twelve. In continuous operation for nearly eight decades and charged with the post war takeover of the democratic process, it had been Majestic Twelve that President Eisenhower had warned against all those years ago and which overshadowed United States foreign policy to this day.
However, in a shocking breach of intelligence agency security the veil of Majestic Twelve had been brought down by a small team of civilian contractors within the DIA and the entire operation had collapsed. Exposed and hounded, the sitting council of Majestic Twelve were no more and now a new and unpredictable president was being briefed daily by a CIA hostile to other agencies and commanded by a man who was little more than a crony for the administration.
‘You’re concerned that the administration will trade secrets for political or business favors,’ he said finally.
The old man inclined his head. ‘What is the status of our work on relics recovered from the sites of previous investigations by the DIA team, before their ARIES unit was forceably disbanded?’
Foxx sighed, knowing that there was little to show for almost eight months of work.
‘We’re no closer to figuring out what they were chasing beyond their work in dismantling Majestic Twelve, but we’re sure that they were not finished and that they stole artifacts from the ARIES building before they all disappeared from the Egyptian desert.’
‘And we’re sure that no nation other than Russia has any idea what occurred there before they vanished?’
‘The location site was destroyed and all evidence lost or damaged. Egyptian forces did not detect the blast that destroyed the site due to an unusually powerful storm cell over the area at the time.’
The old man nodded, apparently satisfied. ‘ARIES was shut down completely six months ago by the then president, presumably to prevent his successor from learning about what had occurred in case that successor turned out to be the kind of lunatic we all feared. That unfortunate eventuality has now come to pass and the CIA are being used as a weapon by the administration to uncover everything that we have fought to discover and understand.’
Now, Foxx looked up.
‘Are you saying what I think you’re saying?’
‘Yes,’ the old man assured him. ‘The nature of our enemy has changed radically, in every sense. The administration’s decision to encourage open relations with Russia and normalise departmental cooperation means that our rivals in Moscow may now have leverage against our intelligence services to gain access to our most classified operations.’ The old man looked Foxx in the eye. ‘The enemy is within us, and we must act accordingly. We must forge our own alliance with the very people we sought to destroy: the remaining members of the ARIES team.’
Foxx baulked. ‘That will never happen. They sacrificed almost everything to bring down Majestic Twelve. The idea that they would even consider working with us is insane, and besides we have no leverage over them.’
‘What were the names of the operatives missing in Egypt after ARIES was shut down?’
Foxx knew the names by heart, as he had spent much of the past few months monitoring watch stations around the world in the hope that one of them would surface.
‘Ethan Warner, Nicola Lopez, Joseph Hellerman and Douglas Jarvis.’
The old man handed Foxx a series of photographs. The images showed a number of civilians whom Foxx recognized instantly. One was a palaeontologist by the name of Doctor Lucy Morgan.
‘Where is Morgan now?’ the old man asked.
‘She works at the Chicago museum of natural history, but I don’t know that this is the best way to try to get these people to trust us let alone help us to…’
‘They have been missing for months,’ the old man insisted, ‘essentially fugitives from justice but in actual fact victims of programs classified far beyond even my knowledge. The only weakness we have not yet exploited is the one thing that they have been forced to leave behind.’
Foxx thought for a moment. ‘This could backfire badly and lose us what little manoeuvring space we have left.’
‘All the manoeuvring space we had left vanished the moment our elected leader revealed himself to be a tyrant determined to advance his own agenda over the welfare of his country. Our purpose was to discover how much these missing agents knew about Majestic Twelve’s intentions and take over the work while discrediting them until any testimony from them would be considered farcical. Now, the only way we can keep this information out of the hands of the demagogue in our own White House is to force them to hand over what they know on the threat of losing their families for good. Locate Warner and his people, draw them out using their loved ones, and obtain what we need. No more loose ends from this point on. Eliminate them all if you have to. Dismissed.’
Foxx stood, turned and marched from the office, pursued by the sense that the insanity enveloping the White House was already spreading out into the intelligence community and beyond like an unstoppable cancer willing to kill its host in the name of domination.
***
V
Indonesia
The dawn seared the horizon like a burnished blade spilling flickering embers onto the ocean as Ethan Warner jogged along a deserted beach on the island’s north coast. There were few residents on the island, mostly located in three small towns perched on isolated spits of sand that emerged from the lush forest that enveloped most of the interior. Barely ten miles long and only two miles wide, Pulau Lobobo was an island on the edge of existence, far from the tourist routes of Sulawesi to the west.
Ethan ran at a leisurely pace, not wanting to over exert himself in the cool of the dawn only to become overheated later when the sun rose swiftly over the broad expanses of ocean to his left. The golden glow of the dawn bathed the palm trees with light, the nearby rollers glistening as they surged back and forth against the pristine sand.
Ethan had been on the island for almost six months and had developed a certainty that he would not be leaving unless he was dragged kicking and screaming by a train of wild horses. The idyllic beauty of the island and the calm nature of its residents rendered any other kind of lifestyle he had ever experienced a poor alternative. The simple fishing villages were comprised of homes built on bamboo stilts over crystalline waters so clear he had never seen his own reflection on the surface. For the past two months he had even allowed himself to forget about the Defense Intelligence Agency, Majestic Twelve and just about everything else that had dominated and shaped his life these eight years passed.
Ethan ran around the island’s north east tip and followed the beaches south toward a small fishing village on the east coast that had become his home. Already the sun was rising up into a powder blue sky as he jogged through the dappled shadows of palm groves and across narrow strips of white sand that felt warm beneath his feet. Within just a few minutes he joined one of the narrow tracks that travelled off the coastline to avoid a few rocky outcrops and then re–joined the beach a half mile later where it curved around the inside edge of a secluded bay. Rows of homes on stilts were perched in the sparkling water and fishermen were just rowing out toward the deeper waters to the east.
The Atlantis Codex (Warner & Lopez Book 7) Page 3