The Sam Reilly Collection

by Christopher Cartwright

  “Are you saying these simple folk are descendants of Atlantis?”

  “It’s unlikely,” Sam mused. “But then again. Even you must admit that the coincidence is uncanny. And it just so happens that the oldest known population layer is believed to be represented by the Kusunda people. Do you know where the highest population of Kusunda live?”

  “Let me guess. Somewhere in the Five Treasures of Snow?”

  “Right you are!”

  “So, if these were truly descendants of the ancient people of Atlantis… one question… what happened to them? I mean, look at them. They’re simple mountain people. Living lives which have barely changed in the last 11,000 years. Don’t you think if they came from a master race that had significant powers and technologies back 11,000 years ago, wouldn’t they be living at the top of the world?”

  Sam looked around. “They kind of are.”

  “No, you know what I mean. If some disaster struck America and only a small portion of the population survived… those who did survive, their descendants wouldn’t be living in huts!”

  “Wouldn’t they?”

  “’Course not.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we’ve come from a civilization that knows about internal plumbing, smartphones, cars! We would be doing just fine.”

  “Yeah, but how many Americans, living the dream, necessarily know how to create it? If you knock off too many, the civilization has to take a step back and look after the priorities. Agriculture, simply supplying enough food and water to live. All the perks of the smartphone generation are pretty much useless if you can’t eat.”

  “And so you’re saying that the Kusunda people are the last survivors of Atlantis?”

  “I’m just saying it’s possible. When you look at the history that their earliest background is approximately 11,000 years ago, it seems like a remarkable coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  “But why here, then? It’s such a hard place to live. Why not further down the mountains?”

  “Why not indeed?” Sam looked up at the mountains above. “What if they knew something we don’t know about our future?”

  “Do you think as far back as 11,000 years ago they were planning on avoiding a second disaster?”

  “I don’t know. But why else would they go to such lengths, as a small group of survivors, to build a new Atlantis in such an inhospitable place?”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Landing at the edge of the village, Andrew thought he could imagine these people living this way for thousands of years. He’d gone back in time to when life was simple. Andrew Brandt scrambled out of the passenger seat of the B3 Eurocopter. With him were two helicopters and fourteen mercenaries armed with AK47s. Given the stakes, he wasn’t taking any chances.

  The monks of the Tsoka Monastery looked at them with worried faces. They were simple people who had lived on the mountain for thousands of years, but that didn’t mean they didn’t recognize evil when it arrived.

  “Dmitri, you’re sure it was them?”

  “Certain. There were two of them, and they had no idea which mountain they wanted to summit, only that they needed to reach Tiger Hill before sunrise. Then, once they had viewed the sunrise they returned to the helicopter and asked me to drop them as high up the mountain as possible.”

  “Are you certain this is where they went?”

  “Of course I am. I’m telling you, this was where I left them.”

  “Where did they go from here?”

  “No idea. They said they were going climbing for the season. They had my number and said they would call when they were ready. They paid well, and knew I’d come the second they asked.”

  “All right gentlemen. Everyone out. Let’s see what these monks remember about our friends, shall we?”

  “What do you want me to do, boss? Shall I shut her down?” the pilot asked.

  “No, keep your rotors spinning. I want to take off again as soon as we know where they’ve gone.”

  Andrew stepped out of the helicopter.

  He carried an AK 47. It was an old, but effective, weapon. And more importantly, it was one of the most well-known weapons on the planet, which meant it would serve the purpose of creating terror. And frightened people told the truth.

  His men, also armed with AK47s, walked towards the huts. The villagers scattered. An old man was the only one who couldn’t run.

  “Did you see other white people like us?”

  “No, not like you. They weren’t carrying guns.”

  “But did you see where they went?”

  The old man looked concerned. “I’m not sure where they went. Some of our local men helped them. I think they were going on a climbing expedition. I do not know where.”

  Andrew looked at one of his men. “Go find me one of the children.”

  Andrew smiled at the old man while he waited a couple minutes for his men to return with a crying child of around four.

  He smiled at the small boy. “Did you see where the other white people went?”

  The boy shook his head.

  “How about you, old man? Has your memory improved?”

  The man’s toothless smile was the only response.

  Andrew pulled out the pistol from his holster and pointed it at the child’s head. “Okay, everyone. I’m going to kill this boy in ten seconds if I don’t get some answers that I’m looking for. Then I’m going to find another child. Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six…”

  At six seconds he pulled the trigger, and the rock next to the child’s head exploded.

  The child screamed, and the man holding him, fought to keep him still.

  The boy then bit the soldier’s hand and ran.

  “Holy shit, Andrew!” Dmitri said. “You nearly killed an innocent kid. Do you really want to go through with this?”

  Andrew leveled the gun with the running child and took aim. “I would kill every single one of their kids, if I thought it might provide a lead to the location of Atlantis.”

  His finger began to squeeze the trigger.

  “Wait!” It was a woman who came running.

  “Yes?”

  “I know where they’ve gone.”

  “Good. Take us there.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Edward Worthington looked around the ancient Atlantean vault, where their history had been recorded over the millennia. Several tunnels lined the passageways. The biggest room of them all had walls and walls of ancient writings, followed by circles of information on the ceiling, which he recognized as being the same pictographic text he’d seen in drawings of Atlantis.

  At the end of the room were three fully decomposed bodies, the remnants of Himmler’s last expedition. The man who’d started the Nazi SS had pursued his crazy idea to find the Atlantis people who shared the perfect Aryan bloodline.

  The spear through their heads made him wonder if he was not wrong to come with only Dr. Swan and Mark, as his bodyguard.

  Dr. Swan audibly gasped when she saw it. Not the remains, but the glowing pile next to them. It must have contained more than a thousand pieces of orichalcum – the ancient gold and copper alloy the Atlanteans once mined.

  “They had to prepare themselves for the return of their city,” Edward said, noticing Billie’s astonishment. “When it came, the Atlantean survivors knew they would need gold to be in a position to make it great again, so they stockpiled what remained here.”

  “Yes. It must be worth a fortune.”

  “Forget about the gold. It’s worthless if we can’t find the solution to the code of Atlantis, in the midst of these thousands of ancient notes. Without that code, the sphere will be locked until it is too late. If we fail in our task, the gold will have no meaning to any of us!”

  “It could take months to make sense of all of this.”

  Edward raised his voice. “We don’t have months. We have a little less than three weeks.”

  He watched as Billie’s shrewd mind explored the cavern.

/>   “I’ve found it.”

  “What is it?”

  “The code, to Atlantis, of course.”

  “That’s wonderful news!”

  “Only it’s missing half of it.”

  “What do you mean, its missing half of it?”

  “I was worried about this. In my earlier research, I found reference to two groups of Atlantean survivors. One went east and set up camp high in these Tibetan mountains, while the other went somewhere completely different, presumably west.”

  “But to where?” Edward asked.

  “The two groups must not have trusted each other not to steal the most valuable remnants of Atlantis. So consequently, they broke the code into two parts and split them between the two groups.”

  “Fine. So what now, we need to know where the other group is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Here it is. A map to their other settlement.”

  Edward studied the rudimentary map. The depiction of the African continent wasn’t exact, but nonetheless it was impossible to deny what he was seeing. He listened to her read the description. Only a few people on the planet knew how to read the ancient text. Dr. Swan, he noticed, knew more about it than she’d revealed to him in their previous discussion. It was obvious she was nearly fluent in the ancient language.

  He watched as Billie took several pictures of the map on her tablet.

  “Can we destroy the map now Dr. Swan?”

  “I don’t see why. You and I are the only two people to know of its existence.”

  “And Mark, but I pay him well enough to keep any secret. Even so, no reason to take chances. Mark, bring a grenade in here. I want this destroyed.”

  “Very good, sir.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Edward watched as she marked some notes on one of the blank circles. “So you really can understand this?”

  “I have an idea. They’re similar to something I saw inside the Mayan pyramid beneath the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. I just wanted to test my theory.”

  “And what does it mean?”

  “Well, if I’m right…” Dr. Swan said while she ran her fingers along the grooves of the hieroglyphic, “then this is a map to the other group of descendants.”

  “Other group of descendants?”

  “Yes. As this building is testament to, not all died during the sinking of Atlantis. By the looks of things, it was decided to split the two groups up and send them in different directions to protect the knowledge of the future.”

  Mark came back into the tunnel from the opening. “It’s time to go. We have company.”

  “Andrew Brandt or Sam Reilly?” Edward asked, reaching for his binoculars.

  “Sam Reilly. But if he’s this far up the mountain, you can be sure that Andrew won’t be far off.”

  “How far away?”

  “Less than a day’s climb. He’ll be here by nightfall!” Mark replied.

  “Okay, we’ll leave soon.” Edward looked at Dr. Swan. “You want to go back for them, don’t you?”

  Dr. Swan smiled at him. “They could help us.”

  “You know that’s not possible, don’t you?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Andrew’s gaining on us, Dr. Swan. And unless you like the concept of losing in this race, I suggest we come up with a plan to throw them off our tail.”

  She paused, a piece of chalk in her hand.

  And then wrote a note followed by several numbers in the ancient text, before writing in plain English: Love, From Billie.

  Edward studied the numbers.

  They were written in the ancient text he’d not fully mastered, but the numbers were clear enough. There was something strangely familiar about them. They were GPS coordinates, of course. But where? Then it hit him.

  “Very good, Dr. Swan. But don’t you think they’ll know that anything of any value was destroyed there more than a hundred years ago by the American expedition?”

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Above them, Sam Reilly thought he heard the distant sound of thunder. A crude signal of an avalanche, perhaps? Or worse, someone had beaten them to it. He looked above, where the opening to the cave should have been, another 6000 feet above them.

  “Avalanche?” Tom asked.

  “Maybe, but it must have been a long way off. If it was above us, we’d have known about it by now.”

  “I almost thought it sounded like the echo of a grenade.”

  “Then they’ve already beaten us to it?” The thought brought the urgency back into Sam’s mind. “Come on. We’re close. Maybe there’s still time to save her.”

  It was early the next morning by the time they reached the opening to the Atlantean Archives. It was built by two rocks overlapping. From the air or the ground, it appeared as one only, but once you stood directly next to it, you could see that there was an opening. It wasn’t very large – big enough for only one person to slip through at a time.

  Sam was the first to enter the cave.

  He squeezed his broad shoulders through first, with his hands out in front of him, then wriggled until the rest of his body followed. Once on the other side, he was able to stand up in what appeared to be a large cavern. Dark as the deepest sea, and for a moment he thought that it was nothing more than a naturally-formed cave. A musky smell appeared to pervade the emptiness of the cavern. He struck a large glow stick and threw it into the cavern.

  The room lit up with the bright glow of light.

  “Tom, squeeze your lanky self in here. You’re going to want to see this!”

  His friend shuffled into the room. “What have you found?” Tom stared up at the grand room and then said, “Holy shit! It’s Atlantis!”

  The walls were massive, giving it the appearance of a football stadium more than a cavern, except for the fact that the roof was quite low. So much so that Sam found himself capable of easily running his hands along it as he walked. At least two hundred circles could be seen covering the roof, and a maze of pictographs and hieroglyphics inside them. The circles that formed the roof were carved from ivory. The walls themselves were made of stone, but a multitude of sapphires embedded in them glowed like stars under the glow stick’s reflection.

  “What’s that scent?” Sam asked, as he walked forward. “It’s fresh. Whatever caused it has been here in recent weeks.”

  “Musk. And its Billie’s cheap deodorant she uses on her expeditions. We must have only just missed her.”

  They walked further into the cavern.

  At the far end of the room the remains of four people appeared. They wore Nazis uniforms and the insignia of the Schutzstaffel – the elite SS guard. Sam looked down at their remains. “Who would have thought they were so close to finding Atlantis?”

  “The Nazis?” Tom laughed. “What the hell would they want with an ancient civilization?”

  “Heinrich Himmler, the man who started the original SS, believed strongly in the perfect bloodline and noble DNA. Like Adolf Hitler, he was obsessed with the concept that Germany came from a powerful bloodline. Throughout the war, they spent a fortune trying to find Atlantis, believing that Germany had originated from it.” Sam looked at them and shook his head. “Himmler made declarations that they had found Atlantis and were in the process of proving their pure heritage, but no one actually believed any of it. Everyone just assumed it was another one of Hitler’s propaganda machines working in overdrive.”

  Tom looked at the spears that still rested inside each of the men. “Well, there’s a bit of useless trivia for your children. They got close, but look what they got for their efforts.”

  “It’s a timely reminder to us not to become complacent here. This place, as with the real Atlantis, may still be protected by a number of booby traps.”

  “That’s impossible. Surely their springs, coils, and firing mechanisms must have broken over the centuries?”

  “Yes, but as we have already learned, there are still direct descendants of Atlantis very much alive and ke
en to protect the secrets stored here.”

  Chapter Thirty

  Tom stared at it in awe. “It could take us more than a year and an army of archeologists to make sense of this cavern, let alone where they have taken Billie.”

  “The good news is this isn’t Atlantis,” Sam replied. “And that means they’ll want to keep Billie alive, and that we probably still have a chance. We just need to find where they’re headed.”

  “Still, we’d have to get pretty lucky to make any sense of this in time to catch up. If they’ve already been and left, then we know they got whatever they need from here.”

  “Yes, but whoever built this did so to be a library of their history. Therefore, we should find a logical sequence.” Sam scanned through the rows upon rows of circles, until he reached a blank area. “There. The circles are empty.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Those are empty folders, still yet to be filled with the writings of Atlantis,” Sam said while he studied the entry to the last circle. “It says that Atlantis is due to be activated again…”

  “Activated again?” Tom looked surprised. “How do you know how to read ancient Atlantis texts?”

  “Because this is the same language the Master Builders used.”

  “Can you read what else it says?”

  “Unless the proper code is input once more – and then it has some sort of date, but I can’t work it out. I can read the numbers but I have no idea about their calendar to make any sense of it.”

  “Code to Atlantis? Input into what? Did these people have computers or something?”

  “I have no idea,” Sam replied shaking his head. “Now I really wish Billie were here.”

  “Maybe it’s a good thing when Atlantis becomes activated?” Tom suggested.

  “Hang on a second. Over here.” Next to the strange symbol, Sam saw something that translated to: Activation Dates for Atlantis. There were five dates: 120040, 40200; 18007; 1000 and 23. “Look the periods between the dates are getting smaller each time.” Four of the dates had been scratched with stone, as though someone was writing them off a list of things to do. But one was still yet to happen.