The Sam Reilly Collection

by Christopher Cartwright

  He grabbed his wallet, glasses, and keys to his Ducati – the motorcycle’s equivalent of a Lamborghini – and opened the front door.

  And there she stood.

  “It’s you.” Tom didn’t know what else to say.

  “And you,” she replied, stupidly. “Who the hell were you expecting?”

  “You’re alive!” he said throwing his arms around her.

  She stepped forward, a little closer to his face, and said, “Of course. That wasn’t the first time they’ve tried to kill me since Sam and I started this thing.”

  He stepped backwards, until she’d followed him inside.

  Then, closing the door behind her, Billie reached up on the tips of her toes, wrapped her arms around his strong neck, and an inch before reaching his lips, asked, “Did you miss me?”

  “Yes,” was all he replied, before their lips touched.

  Tom kissed her as much as he’d wanted to since their first night inside the Mayan pyramid.

  And soon the kissing turned to undressing.

  Tom pulled back for a moment, with his arms still wrapped around her tiny waist, as he admired her in nothing but underwear. They were white and cotton – nothing that suggested they were designed to be sexy – but over her tall, lithe, body and olive skin, they might as well have been intended for a lingerie model. Her body, in complete proportion, had an athletic build, with firm, small breasts.

  She looked as amazing in her underwear as he’d imagined a thousand times by now.

  Billie stared back at him, a coy and flirtatious smile below the teasing glint in her almond eyes, in response to Tom’s blatant adoration of her figure. She slid her underwear off, and said, “Did you just want to look at me, or are you going to fuck me?”

  *

  Tom rolled over with a fright.

  How long had they been in bed?

  It was dark outside. Checking his bedside clock, he saw that it was already after midnight.

  “What is it?” she whispered, rolling on her side and exposing her perfect, small, breasts. “Is everything okay?”

  “Yes, of course. It’s better than okay,” he replied, grinning as he stared at her again. “It’s just that I don’t know how I’m going to break this one to Sam, that’s all.”

  “Why?”

  “You know…” he hinted.

  “No, I don’t know?”

  “You two. Your history together.”

  “Did you think Sam and I were lovers?”

  “Yes, weren’t you?”

  “Christ no!”

  “But you said you and Sam had an unbelievable past?”

  “We do, and if you and I are still alive by the end of the year, I’ll tell you the entire story.”

  *

  Sam boarded his father’s Gulfstream at LAX.

  He knew what was coming and decided to head to Washington to deal with it before they came to him. Stopped at the end of the runway, the pilot increased the engine’s power in preparation for takeoff, and then shut it down completely.

  Sam stood up to find out what was wrong, but had a terrible gut feeling he already knew.

  “Your guest, Mr. Reilly.”

  “Then you’d better send her in,” Sam said, not waiting to ask who had stopped his jet.

  He remained sitting, while the woman walked along the sleek interior of the plane. Her slim, yet overriding figure taking his breath away.

  Despite his complete distrust of the woman in front of him, he couldn’t help but admit, that for one of the most powerful women on earth, she was by far the sexiest redhead he’d ever met – not that it made their meetings any more pleasant. After all, she’d expressed on many occasions how that sentiment was mutual.

  His mind quickly considered the events of the past month, and he wondered what, precisely, she was going to go after.

  Behind her strong jawbone, starry blue eyes, dark, short-cropped hair, and genuinely attractive face, Sam thought her perfect smile somehow always appeared halfway between beautiful and a constant scowl. At times, he wondered whether that, too, was a mask that came with the position.

  “Good morning, Madam Secretary,” he said, standing up.

  “Sit down, Mr. Reilly,” she commanded. “Tell me, what did you find in the Gulf of Mexico?”

  So, that’s what this is about?

  He was glad his father had hidden the Ark of Light before anyone acknowledged it had even been discovered.

  “Very little. As you know, Madam Secretary, you destroyed all of it.”

  “We did?” She shook her head. “No, Mr. Reilly, I assure you, if we wanted its secrets destroyed, that stupid girlfriend of yours, Dr. Swan, wouldn’t have survived.”

  “Not you?” Sam was genuinely surprised. “Then who?”

  “Someone else who’s been closing in on our hunt for the Master Builders. And you’d better pray, you beat them to it.”

  “If they were as powerful as I’m starting to believe, we’d better all pray that our enemies don’t discover them first.” Sam laughed. “So Billie’s still alive?”

  The Secretary of Defense ignored his question, as she so often did.

  “Oh, and Dr. Swan’s not my girlfriend.”

  The U.S. Secretary of Defense smiled. Her perfect white teeth, glaring, and replied, “Yes, Mr. Reilly, we know all about your history with that girl. Do you think that by sending her there while you went in search of the Mahogany Ship, it would keep us from finding out the truth?”

  He shuffled his feet uncomfortable in the seat, and then replied, “I had hoped so.”

  “So, do you have another lead?”

  “Not yet, but I’m hoping, if Billie is alive, she will make contact soon,” he said. “Perhaps when I return from Washington?”

  “You’re not going to Washington. There’s no one there who wants to speak with you. I suggest you turn your father’s toy airplane around, and go home.”

  “As you wish, Madam Secretary.”

  *

  At 2 a.m. Billie turned up at his house. Despite the U.S. Secretary of Defense suggesting she was still alive, he hadn’t completely believed it.

  “Jesus, Billie,” he said, throwing his arms around her. “I was starting to think you were actually dead!”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what they would have liked, wouldn’t they?” she replied, quickly removing his arms from her torso. She studied his face, and then said, “Damn it, you knew they would come, didn’t you?”

  He turned to avoid her gaze.

  “When Rodriguez asked me to help him find the Mahogany Ship I had personal reasons to go searching for it. Specifically, it was the first shipwreck that my father and I ever hunted together. My feelings were tied because I really did want to know more about the sunken Mayan pyramid.”

  “But you knew that the Master Builders were involved!”

  “No. Well, not at first. I reluctantly agreed to think about going with Rodriguez on his expedition. It was only when I replayed the recording I’d made of the king’s sarcophagus that I saw the image of the Mahogany Ship on the wall.”

  “And then you realized that the Mahogany Ship was built by the Master Builders!”

  “That’s right. And I knew I had to distance myself from the discovery as fast as possible. I hoped they would assume that if I’d discovered anything of value, then surely I wouldn’t have left the project to someone else. Giving you enough time to find some answers. Instead, now all we have are more questions.”

  “I might just have one answer…”

  “What about?”

  “The communication device… it was made out of a stone, not too dissimilar to a diamond in chemical makeup.”

  “How could you have possibly done that? Everything was destroyed?”

  “Yes, but before that happened, I broke off a little.”

  He examined the stone, which fitted comfortably in the palm of his hand. It looked like an enormous blue diamond. Even with today’s technologies, nothing even resembling its
brilliance could be synthetically manufactured.

  It sparkled in his hand under the limited light of the night lamp.

  “Is it a diamond?”

  “No. I’ve taken it to three leading experts in geology. None of them can tell me what it is, only what it isn’t.”

  “And what’s that?”

  “It’s not synthetically made, and it’s never been seen before.”

  Sam looked at it again, wondering in the back of his mind if he’d somehow seen a similar stone, somewhere else. “Could they tell you anything about the type of stone it resembles, other than a very sparkling diamond?”

  “They each identified that it has some unusual properties.”

  “Such as?”

  “The stone transmits light and sound more than a thousand times faster than water. And is the first naturally occurring substance harder than diamond.”

  “Interesting. I suppose that explains how it was used to see other parts of the Mayan pyramid,” he said.

  Billie laughed, “You and I both know that’s not true, don’t we?”

  Ignoring her statement, he said, “So we lost the greatest lead for Master Builders we’ve ever had?”

  “Yes.”

  “And it was all for nothing, with exception of the discovery of the best fake diamond the world has ever seen?”

  “No.” Billie smiled, holding her hard drive. “Because I think I just found a map to Atlantis.”

  The End

  Atlantis Stolen - Prologue

  Dutch Trading Post, 1638.

  The barren winter landscape was desolate in its beauty. While the sun approached its zenith, it did little to stop the cold stinging his weather-worn face while he worked. Albert Olsen filled his bucket with another shovel of sludge and then turned to climb the slippery crest of the muddy bank. Once on the ridge, he didn’t have far to walk before he could dump its contents down the other side.

  From there, Olsen saw the other islands.

  A strange mixture of mud and ice stood surrounded by a river whose partially frozen mouth looked as wide as an ocean when it thawed. Not that he paid much attention to any of it as he returned to fill yet another bucket.

  It was strenuous and tediously boring work, but it needed to be done so the boats could survive. And if they didn’t, the little outcrop certainly wouldn’t.

  So the sea canals needed to be built.

  They had begun as small ditches used to drain the marshland so basic farming could meet the needs of the settlement. But protecting the ships had warranted the effort to widen and deepen them to accommodate small boats, or ships at high tide.

  Wrapped in a pair of thick animal hides, fur hat, and boots, even a day’s shoveling did little to allay his cold. The sort of cold that sunk into your bones and didn’t come out again long into the spring. Not that it bothered him much. He’d spent the last four winters working at the post, laboring for the master engineer. In another year, he would have repaid his obligation and would be allowed to return home.

  He dumped another bucket over the ridge.

  He’d seen that view for the past four years. He would leave after completing his obligatory service to his master, Hank Worthington, who’d been hired to build large amounts of the government’s sea structures and buildings. At the age of 22, Olsen had earned enough money that he could now afford to return home and marry Frajia Clausen, the girl from his childhood dreams – that was, if she’d kept her promise.

  If they let me leave.

  Young laborers were hard to come by, and the council of traders would offer tremendous rewards to those who would stay on. If not, they would threaten tremendous suffering if one refused.

  Olsen returned down the steep slope of the soon to be complete canal, sliding on its damp dark sides. Sticking his shovel back into the wet soil, he continued as he’d been doing for the past few weeks. He worked with a team of thirty other men – although how it could be called a team, he didn’t know, as there was little order to the process. Each man dug, hauled, and dumped the soil by himself.

  Next to him, Felix Brandt worked.

  Although, again, he wondered if that were the right word. An older man, whom he’d guessed couldn’t be any younger than 50, worked so slowly that Olsen sometimes wondered whether the man even wanted the project complete.

  Olsen continued this process of filling his bucket, carrying it up the slippery edge of the canal, and then dumping it until he’d lost count of the trips he’d performed that morning. With irritation, he noticed he could easily count two or sometimes even three trips, for every one that Felix achieved.

  He’d never liked the man.

  It didn’t make sense, why someone his age would want to come to such a place for work. Not that he’d ever given much thought about what sort of work an old man like Felix would be well suited to. After his last bucket, Olsen paused his efforts, just long enough to walk down the dike to the edge of the river bank, so that he could fill his cup with the icy cold water.

  When the main river thawed, the attacks would begin again.

  That’s what this was all about. Hastily building, preparing, and guarding the trading post so that it could beat their attackers again, as it had done last summer, and the summer before that. The wall had been strengthened earlier in the winter, and the canals now lengthened to protect the boats. And the settlement would continue to beat them, until they lost, or someone finally discovered what he’d learned the first day he came to the island – that it’s a muddy swamp, in the middle of nowhere, of little value.

  The naiveté made him want to laugh. Not that it was his problem. He would be leaving soon enough. He took another drink of the water. It was so cold it stung at his throat while he drank, making him cough.

  “You’re slowing down, Albert.” Felix dropped his bucket and climbed down to meet him at the river’s edge. “Are you wearying in your old age?”

  “No, just waiting for you to catch up,” he replied.

  “You may have to wait all day and tomorrow most likely. I’m more than twice your age, you know.”

  And Albert did know, too.

  Felix slowly filled his leather bota bag. Even that, Olsen noticed, seemed to take an unusually long time. The man was slow in every task he performed. Not because he was stupid, or incompetent, but as though he simply couldn’t see the point of any urgency in what he was doing.

  The man seemed to be biding his time and merely waiting.

  But for what?

  Albert wondered why Brandt, for a man who was still laboring at his age, hadn’t felt more urgency to achieve something, anything, before he was incapable of sustaining himself.

  “They tell me you’re leaving soon,” Felix said as he sat down by the river’s edge to drink his water.

  “Yes, when the river thaws, I will look for the next passage home.”

  “It will be difficult with our current arrangement to obtain passage on a ship. After all, no one seems to be playing very well with others currently.”

  Albert smiled, unsure if he was being reprimanded for the way he’d avoided the man. “I’m patient. I’ll find my way home.”

  “Why do you want to return so soon?”

  “Soon? I’ve been here five winters already. Why wouldn’t I want to leave it?”

  “It seems like a nice enough island as any. Is there something waiting for you back home, though?”

  Albert found himself answering before he even considered why the strange old man was interested. “There’s a girl. Frajia Clausen, more perfect than anyone or anything I’ve ever seen. And she promised to wait for me.”

  “That’s very nice. That’s a worthy reason to leave this place.” Felix smiled, a nearly condescending one, and then said, “But have you seen all that this world has to offer? There are some things, I dare say, far more beautiful than that girl of yours…”

  Albert picked up his bucket, ready to return to the canal before he lost his ability to refrain from striking Felix. “If
you’d ever met a girl like this, you too, would be quite certain there was no need to see every precious thing this land has to offer before determining that she was the most precious.”

  Felix smiled. There was something unctuous and slimy about it. “Of course, of course… I’m an old man, and foolish at such matters as love. I’ll tell you what I will do for you…”

  Albert paused at the top of the dike. “What you will do for me?”

  “I own a ship, and I have to return to Amsterdam next year. She’s in the north canal. In the summer I too have to return home. You may come with me.”

  Albert stared at the old, worthless man, suddenly realizing his mistake. Brandt wasn’t a slow working laborer. Instead, he was a wealthy landowner, who had paid for the building of the canals. He was too stunned to speak.

  “Would you like that?” Felix asked.

  “Yes sir, thank you very much sir. That’s very kind.”

  “Good. Now, shall we finish this canal?”

  Albert nodded and returned to the canal, ready to continue. Despite commencing work several weeks ago, today it would finally be flooded. At its bottom, a small trickle of water, no more than a few inches high could be seen, having seeped into the otherwise dry canal.

  Albert continued digging with his new-found friend, Felix Brandt. Ensuring the boats that would soon call the canal home had enough water below their keels, an engineer carefully measured the depth.

  The master engineer, Hank Worthington, then inspected the depth of the canal and informed them the canal would have to be dug a further foot before it could be successfully flooded.

  With slow, purposeful movement of his shovel, Albert deepened the center of the canal. Water filled the spot where he dug as fast as he removed the wet soil. He continued, working harder now he knew who his slow and unwanted companion really was.

  It was there that he found it.

  A strange sound, like metal striking metal. It could have been another hard rock, but the sound didn’t quite match up. Albert kept digging, more out of curiosity than out of any desire to get somewhere.

  His shovel struck it again.

  That was when he first spotted its sparkle. Below the water, half a foot under the soil, Albert saw what had made the sound. It appeared like a strange mixture of red and orange metal, but brighter, almost like gold. He worked the small device with the tip of his shovel until it came free from the earth’s clasp. Pulling it out, he quickly washed it in the muddy water. It glowed red like a strange type of gold. He quickly examined his finding.