The Atlantis Codex (Warner & Lopez Book 7)

by Dean Crawford

  Ethan pulled out a pair of folding metal shovels from his backpack, the handles of which formed wedges perfect for prizing stubborn rocks from compacted soil. Ethan shoved the handles in at two points along one edge of the stone and then he and Lopez pressed their boots down on them as hard as they could.

  The handles bowed under the pressure and then Ethan heard the tell–tale rumble of rock scraping against rock. The stone shifted and Lucy shoved a third shovel into the opening gap to pin the stone open. Ethan moved to one side and then got his fingers underneath the stone as he and Lucy heaved it upward.

  The stone flew up and toppled over onto the side of the hill as a waft of stagnant air puffed out into their faces. Ethan looked down and saw nothing but an impenetrable darkness before them.

  ‘What was that stone for?’ Lopez asked.

  Lucy stood up and brushed herself down as she looked at the perfectly cut stone now lying nearby on the hillside

  ‘This area might have been prone to tsunami for many thousands of years, and the best defense would have been stone blocks in recesses in the windows. The people might have set it and others in place in the hopes that they could return, but they never did.’

  Ethan was about to ask another question but he didn’t have time. Lucy pulled out a small torch and then grabbed the lower ledge of the opening and tucked her legs beneath her before hopping into the opening and vanishing into the darkness.

  Ethan shrugged and followed her in, Lopez right behind him.

  ***

  XL

  Cadiz, Spain

  Allison Pierce hurried across the street outside the terminal of Jerez Airport and got into a hire vehicle. Her eyes were concealed behind sunglasses and she wore a summer hat with loose clothes that did as much to conceal her shape as her identity. Mitchell had warned her of the dangers of facial–recognition software employed at major airports and other hubs, and therefore she had also plugged her cheeks with cotton wool and wrapped her waist with spare clothes beneath her blouse to further conceal her identity.

  The fake passport and other documents that Mitchell had supplied her with had functioned perfectly and to her relief she had passed through customs without a hitch. She knew, of course, that it was possible that she was being followed but she could only leave as difficult a trail as possible and hope that it was enough.

  The car was hot and she wound down the windows as she waited, a gentle breeze wafting through the vehicle as she checked her burner phone and selected an app that showed her various aircraft travelling into and out of Cadiz. She picked out the one she wanted and smiled to herself as she recognized the picture of a private jet inbound from Ronald Reagan International. The flight had landed twelve minutes previously and had disembarked only moments ago.

  As she watched the terminal she saw two smart white sedans with tinted black windows cruise effortlessly into the sidewalk outside the terminal. Within moments, two smartly suited men stepped out of the terminal and were followed by two more either side of a man whom Allison recognized instantly.

  ‘Well, hello there Congressman Milton Keyes.’

  Allison shrunk back into the shadowy interior of her car as she filmed the senator climbing into the second of the two white vehicles as the suited men all climbed into the first. The vehicles pulled smoothly away again and Allison started the engine on her little hire car and pulled out to follow them from a good distance behind.

  *

  ‘Thank you for agreeing to meet with us, congressman.’

  Konstantin Petrov sat inside the plush interior of the vehicle and regarded the man before him.

  ‘This is a dangerous precedent,’ Keyes uttered. ‘Congressmen have lost their jobs and been imprisoned for less. Why am I here?’

  Keyes was older than Petrov and it showed. His jawline was flabby and his skin blotchy from what Petrov imagined was too many late nights sipping liquor with his congressional pals. Keys represented something that Petrov and all commoners despised: the rich man who lorded over the masses, who passed legislation that favoured corporations over the common people and who knew little of life in the real world.

  ‘I would not have brought you here were it not of paramount importance.’

  Keyes appeared unimpressed.

  ‘There is nothing out here that warrants my time and effort. This is something that we agreed would be handled by your people.’

  ‘My people?’ Petrov asked, unable to prevent himself from taunting the congressman.

  Keyes faltered. ‘By that I mean, that you.., I mean that…’

  ‘You mean Russian,’ Petrov replied calmly. ‘You mean ordinary person, commoners.’

  Keyes reared up in his seat a little. ‘I didn’t mean it like that.’

  ‘But that is what you wanted to say, no?’ Petrov pressed, still presenting an affable air despite the contempt now boiling inside of him. ‘That I am something less than you are?’

  Keyes seemed to suddenly notice the muscular frame beneath Petrov’s shirt and the cold gleam of a killer lurking somewhere in his eyes. The congressman shook himself from something that might have been fear, remembering that he was an American lawmaker.

  ‘I am here because you asked me to be,’ he snapped. ‘I want to know why. Threatening me with the exposure of our accord was unnecessary.’

  Petrov smiled, no warmth in his eyes as with one hand he slowly produced from beneath his shirt a long, highly polished blade. The combat knife was serrated on one edge that glittered like diamonds encrusted in a shark’s tooth.

  Keyes immediately reached for the door handle and yanked on it, but the door remained firmly shut as Petrov leaned forward and glared into the congressman’s eyes.

  ‘We’re in this together, Milton,’ he snarled, ‘down here on the street, and until I say otherwise you belong to me.’

  Petrov’s hand shot out and the tip of the blade pressed against Keyes’ belly. The congressman sucked in a deep breath as he tried to pull his stomach in and away from the blade and he reared up in his seat. Both of his hands wrapped around Petrov’s and tried to push the weapon away but his feeble arms were no match for the soldier’s raw strength.

  ‘Now,’ Petrov murmured as he kept the blade pressed against the congressman’s flabby stomach. ‘Tell me, about how you intend to renege on the deal that we agreed.’

  Keyes quivered and his eyes wobbled in horror as he shook his head.

  ‘No. No, that’s not true! We have said no such thing and…’

  Petrov shoved the blade hard against Keyes and the weapon pierced his shirt and sank an inch into the fat of his stomach. Keyes screamed in terror and pain, but Petrov kept the blade in place with immovable strength.

  ‘Every time you lie to me this blade will sink another inch into your guts, and I’ll keep pushing it until the tip severs your spine and pins you to this seat, do you understand?’

  Keyes nodded, sweating profusely.

  ‘We were tipped off,’ Petrov growled. ‘We know that you intend to betray us. How?’

  Keyes whimpered and his words spilled from his lips in a torrent.

  ‘They’re going to corner you inside the site and kill all of you! There’s nothing that I can do about it! I didn’t want any part of this, they made me cover up everything and bury the evidence!’

  Petrov leaned even closer, the knife ready.

  ‘This blade will puncture your intestines if I push it any further, and they will begin to leak bodily waste directly into your bloodstream and ensure a long and agonizing death as the contents of your guts swill through your body. You won’t be able to escape, because the last push will sever your spine and render you incapacitated. By the time anybody finds your remains, the animals and the birds won’t have left much to identify you by.’

  Keyes began to blub incoherently, the strength fading from his flabby arms as he capitulated entirely to his fate, knowing that there was nothing he could do to prevent his death at the hands of a Communist psychopath. Petrov saw i
n him a man of great power who now found himself facing up to who he really was – a weak man.

  ‘When will they come?’ he demanded.

  Keyes blubbed his unintelligible answer amid a stream of spittle and Petrov twisted the blade sharply. Keyes screamed, more in terror now than pain, and shouted his reply.

  ‘They are tracking us! We are expected to travel to a site that has been located in the marshes somewhere, where we were told that money from Majestic Twelve has been hidden! Then when you’re all there, they will attack!’

  ‘Who?!’

  ‘I don’t know!’ Keyes wailed. ‘Special Forces or something, they have a ship off the coast!’

  Petrov nodded slowly, and patted the back of Keyes’ hand as though consoling a child. Then he yanked the blade out of his guts, the serrated edge ripping flesh and skin on its way out. Keyes groaned and folded over his wound as Petrov thought for a moment.

  The Russian tip–off had been anonymous, and now suddenly there was an American warship off the coast of Spain, conveniently positioned to intercept them. Petrov examined the blade of his knife for a moment, the shiny metal smeared with the congressman’s blood.

  ‘Jarvis,’ he uttered to himself.

  The American had, so Petrov had been reliably informed, arrested aboard a luxury yacht matching the description of one that had been seen near both Indonesia and Santorini and was now somewhere in the Red Sea. Jarvis had evaded arrest for many long months, but suddenly finds himself in American hands…

  Petrov made his decision and nodded to the driver.

  The vehicle was already well out of the city and travelling swiftly north. The driver found an old track near a church, which was standing alone near a forest surrounded by endless miles of wilderness shrubland. The driver cruised into the woods and pulled up at a lonely spot where the sun beat down in silence.

  Petrov reached across Keyes and pushed open the door, then looked the congressman in his quivering and bloodshot eyes.

  ‘I am a man of my word, and so for coming clean I will spare you your life,’ he said, ‘or rather I will allow you the chance of survival, however slim that may be. If you speak of me, ever, it will be your family who will suffer the consequences.’

  Keyes opened his mouth to protest and then Petrov’s blade sliced across the back of the congressman’s heel in a line of white pain. Keyes screamed again as his Achilles Tendon was severed and Petrov shoved him out of the vehicle to crash down onto the lonely desert road, his hands clutching his mauled belly.

  Petrov hauled the door shut and the vehicle drove away from the scene, Petrov cleaning his blade as the driver glanced over his shoulder.

  ‘If he survives and makes it back to America, he’ll feel safer and might open up to the courts and identify us. It’s risky to let him go.’

  Petrov smiled as he worked.

  ‘He will not survive, Victor,’ he replied calmly as he worked. ‘It’s not just blood that I’m cleaning off this blade but Epibatidine. It’s the poison of an Ecuadorean tree frog and is lethal in even the smallest doses.’

  The driver chuckled to himself and shook his head as he looked in the mirror and saw the form of the Congressman’s body curled up in the road amid a cloud of dust.

  Petrov pulled out a cell phone and dialled a number. When it was answered, he could hear the sounds of a busy vessel’s bridge deck in the background as he spoke.

  ‘It is confirmed,’ he said. ‘The Americans intend to betray us. Sail at maximum speed for Cadiz and we will meet you on the coast.’

  ‘Understood, comrade. You should know that there is an American warship within a few miles of Cadiz.’

  ‘Understood.’

  The line went dead and Petrov pocketed the cell phone. The Americans would never reach the site in time to protect their people, and Petrov would be long gone before they arrived. All that he needed now was to gain access to the site, take what he needed, and then escape and vanish into thin air.

  *

  Allison slowed as she saw the two vehicles in the distance, still headed north as they turned right and joined another highway headed out toward the national parks area. Her vehicle had closed on them unexpectedly as they had slowed rapidly in a cloud of dust, and she figured that they had stopped for some reason, and she realized why when she saw the form of a man kneeling in the center of the road as the dust cleared.

  Allison slowed as she recognized the figure and her heart leaped into her throat as she realized that Congressman Keyes was raising his hand toward her, trying to flag her down. Allison looked up to see the Russian vehicles disappearing in the heat haze far ahead and she cursed as she wondered whether Petrov and his men had picked her up on their tail and sought to distract her from following them.

  Allison stopped her car and got out of the air–conditioned interior into the heat of another blazing Spanish dawn. The sight of Keyes on his knees in a foreign country with none of his entourage to protect him inspired in her a moment of grim delight that lasted only seconds as he realized the state he was in.

  ‘Help me,’ he gasped, one bloodied hand over a messy wound in his guts.

  Allison hurried across and tried to help him to his feet. Keyes staggered weakly upright, one leg dangling weakly beneath him, the sock soaked in blood as they shuffled to the vehicle and he slammed his hands down onto the hood for balance, Allison unable to bear his weight any longer.

  ‘I asked you for help once,’ she said. ‘That fell on deaf ears.’

  ‘You hadn’t been stabbed and beaten,’ Keyes snapped in reply, his face still blotchy with pain and shame and his eyes puffy and damp with tears.

  ‘Tell me everything,’ she insisted. ‘Who did this to you?’

  Keyes peered sideways at her as his addled brain finally conjured a thought. ‘What are you doing out here?’

  ‘It’s a long and tragic story and most of it’s been caused by people like you,’ Allison shot back. ‘Thanks to you and a media who care more for sensationalism than truth I’m now a fugitive on the run and you’re half dead! Who did this to you?!’

  ‘The Russian,’ Keyes gasped, ‘Petrov.’

  Keyes slumped a little more on the hood of the car and Allison noted the sweat beading on his face and an unhealthy palor to his skin.

  ‘I’m feeling real bad,’ he gasped, his hands trembling and his one remaining good leg quivering beneath his weight.

  Allison pulled out her cell phone to dial for an ambulance and immediately realized that she could get no signal. She cursed and slammed her hand down on the hood of the car as she looked again at Keyes. She was no doctor but she knew a dying man when she saw one. Petrov might have punctured the congressman’s stomach with his knife, but he might also have done more than just that and she knew that if she left Keyes here he wouldn’t last much more than an hour.

  ‘Tell me what happened!’ she insisted. ‘There’s no time to argue! If you don’t talk then Petrov will kill everybody he finds out there!’

  Keyes struggled to stay focussed and blinked, then spoke.

  ‘The Russians were involved in a campaign to spread fake news during the presidential election,’ he gasped. ‘They set up a control room in downtown DC and used cybercrime to influence the way people think. They’ve been doing it for years inside Russia but have now spread their work to the United States. Militarily, Russia isn’t the force it once was and so the Kremlin has resorted to other means to project their influence into world events.’

  Allison shook her head. ‘How do you fit into all of this?’

  Keyes lowered his head further, sweat dripping from his brow onto the hood.

  ‘They wanted me to act as a go–between for the Russian hackers, and to ensure that the investigation into Majestic Twelve did not reveal the lost billions but only that which had already been declared to the public.’

  ‘Damn it!’ Allison cursed again and hit the car hood. ‘I knew it! It’s all about the damned money and you people don’t care whose lives ge
t destroyed in the process! How much were you in for, Keyes? How much did they promise you?’

  Keyes shook his head. Allison took one last look at him and knew that if they didn’t move now, they would never make it back to Cadiz and a hospital in time.

  ‘Blood money,’ she snapped as she hauled Keyes off the hood and helped him to the passenger side. ‘You’re as bad as the Russians you were stupid enough to deal with, and now more patriots will die because of what you’ve done.’

  ***

  XLI

  USS Bataan

  Lieutenant Colonel Foxx strode down a corridor inside the warship as it sailed north out of the Straits of Gibraltar. They had been at full steam and had crossed the Meditteranean in record time, and all of it on the word of a man who had a reputation for being able to twist anybody to his will.

  That said, everything Jarvis had claimed had checked out, although there was no way that he was going to let the old man go. It had taken months to track him down, and regardless of his motivations Foxx was determined to complete his mission and bring Jarvis back to America to face trial for his actions.

  Foxx entered a small interrogation room, where Jarvis sat manacled to the table.

  ‘Is it done?’ the old man asked as Foxx closed the door and sat down.

  Foxx took a deep breath before he replied, perhaps because he couldn’t quite believe what he had now witnessed with his own eyes and ears.

  ‘A call was placed to a member of congress,’ he said, ‘after we tipped off the Russians through a DIA source in Moscow. The information we placed resulted in the congressman and the Russians arranging to meet in Cadiz, just as you said they would. We’re tracking them now. How do you know that the area contains what they’re looking for?’

  ‘My granddaughter, Lucy Morgan, identified it some days ago and sent me the details,’ Jarvis replied. ‘We’ve sat on it because the Russians were tailing my operatives. Sending them there would also give the Russians what they needed.’