The Sam Reilly Collection

by Christopher Cartwright

  Chapter Seventy-Seven

  Sitting in wet cargo pants for the duration of the remaining flight would have been a small price to pay for the knowledge that she’d upset her captor, but his words, “Good, she is almost ready,” seemed far more ominous.

  The jet was still taxiing when someone grabbed her from behind and forced her to stand. Soon she’d discover exactly what Andrew needed from her before she died. The plane stopped moving, and she found herself walking down a series of steps, to where another chopper was waiting.

  Fifteen minutes later, the helicopter landed. She was pulled out of it by a man who’d been waiting for her. The wind nearly knocked her off her feet. Below, a long way down, she could only just barely hear the cars honking their horns.

  Well, that answered whether or not Andrew knows where Atlantis is – he’d taken her to the top of the Bank of America’s Financial Center.

  They walked her into a waiting elevator.

  It dropped five stories before coming to a halt on the 18th floor. There, she felt a man’s rough hands pull at her bound wrists, forcing her to step out. A man reeking of rich cologne swiped a key card to open up the bank’s most secure elevator.

  It was a security measure to make it more difficult to rob the bank’s elite private vaults. Owners who utilized the bank’s private security boxes, were forced to enter the lobby, take an elevator up to the 18th floor, where they would pass more security checks, before entering a completely different elevator – its elevator shaft completely separate to the rest of the elevators in the building. The elevator lowered nearly 45 stories below, taking them deep below the building, where a secret vault housed some of the world’s most precious secrets and valuable items.

  The secret vault was not made known to the general public. The bank offered a security deposit box system for its regular customers on an entirely different level. This secret vault had reached the same status as an ancient legend. A place where some of the most unique items from around the world, were stored for its absolute security.

  Billie had only reached her conclusion to the location of Atlantis because she too held a safety deposit box in the secret vault. A place where she stored many of the artifacts and notes she’d obtained on her quest to complete what her grandfather started. Based on her calculations from the looking glass within the Mayan pyramid, she’d determined the location of Atlantis as the corner of Wall Street and Water Street, New York. The second she saw it, she imagined the only place that such a secret could be maintained over the centuries.

  The elevator came to an abrupt halt, and she was forced to step out. The temperature dropped several degrees. She recalled that the secret vault was maintained at an artificially lowered temperature to protect some of the older, more fragile, artifacts.

  Still blindfolded, she was pushed toward the end of the room. Her hands were unbound, her head was pushed downwards, and she was forced inside a metallic tunnel. The smell of burnt waste still festered. She knew precisely where she was now.

  Crawling slowly, she felt the sharp prick of a knife on her legs every time she stopped.

  Climbing out the other side, she heard the tiny door behind her close with a metallic clank, followed by several turns of its security lock, like that of a submarine hatch.

  Once in the ancient tunnel of Atlantis a man removed her blindfold for the first time since she’d been kidnapped from the deck of the Andre Sephora. A blond-haired man greeted her with a well-practiced, and disarming smile. He then carefully removed her gag. A curious grin on his face, it appeared as though he was fascinated by what she might say or do now.

  When she said nothing, he displayed the resignation of a bully who’d been told that the child’s mother was here now, and that he could no longer torment it.

  “Now, Dr. Swan, I would like you to show me how to beat the challenges of Atlantis.”

  Chapter Seventy-Eight

  Edward examined his little pygmy friend, Zanzibe.

  He’d dressed the king in a Vivienne Westwood suit. Somehow, it transformed him from what looked like an albino child, to a rich, albeit very short businessman. The bank’s security staff wouldn’t dare take a second look at him, dressed as such. Zanzibe smiled his perfectly white teeth, sharpened to razor points.

  Edward sighed. “Perhaps no smiling at anybody, my friend.”

  “Very good. No smiling.”

  “Okay, are you ready?”

  “Yes, of course. I was born to protect Atlantis.”

  Fanaticism never ceased to amaze Edward. His friend had spent his entire life preparing for tonight’s event. One look at the little pygmy, and he knew that the man would gladly give his life to protect the legacy of his Gods.

  “All right. Let’s do this.”

  It was early in the evening. The main bank was closed, but its secret vault never slept. The staff saw themselves as the divine custodians of some of the world’s most precious items, and their owners could visit their secrets twenty-four hours a day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Edward drove up to the main gates in his own car. A security camera confirmed his details, and then opened the gates. He drove into the bank’s underground security drive.

  A valet immediately approached. “Welcome back Mr. Worthington. Will you be staying long?”

  Edward handed him the keys and replied, “Perhaps an hour, thank you.”

  The vault offered an enforced valet service to reduce the risk of bank robbery, because the getaway car would be parked in a separate building’s carpark. The night manager approached, and cordially greeted them. “Welcome back Mr. Worthington.”

  Edward shook the manager’s hand and said, “This is Mr. Zanzibe. My friend from the Democratic Republic of Congo, who I told you about. As you can imagine, he needs to store some of his better discoveries.”

  The bank manager nodded his head. And he did know, too. The DROC was synonymous with the best quality diamonds in the world as well as corruption. One look at Zanzibe, and he instantly would have imagined a tribal man who’d found the ultimate blood diamond. “Of course, right this way, gentlemen.”

  The valet disappeared with Edward’s Audi, and then the three men entered the elevator. It went up to the 18th floor. There, the pygmy had the retinas of his eyes and his fingertips scanned, followed by a DNA sample. He chose a password involving a combination of 42 letters, numbers and accented characters.

  Zanzibe was given his safe deposit box number. The two men then stepped into the elevator and began their descent into one of the most protected vaults on earth.

  Edward said, “Now, they advised me that the last occupants down here left thirty minutes ago. But for that to be true, it would mean that Andrew had already won.”

  “Perhaps, my friend, he has?” Zanzibe replied.

  “No, that’s not possible. Because if he had, none of this would still be here. It’s more likely that he had someone else sign him out of the vault. You might want to prepare yourself, in case we have company when this elevator comes to a stop.”

  “I will be prepared.”

  Edward looked next to him, where Zanzibe had already put together his two Uzis. His sharpened teeth glistened like a banshee. And then the elevator doors opened.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Billie studied the first of the three challenges with intensity. She already knew the answers to all three, but now had a much greater contest to overcome. Inside Poseidon’s temple, the Sphere of Atlantis waited eagerly to release its evil power of destruction. The time was narrowing, and soon she must act to overpower her captor.

  It was always a game, but now the price of the challenges was no longer merely her life. Now, failure meant the end of the human race. She considered simply refusing to beat the challenges at all, but with the Sphere of Atlantis already poised, Billie had to reach it with the code if she wanted to stop it.

  No, she would have to reach the inner sanctum. But somewhere along the way, Andrew Brandt must die.

  The firs
t room involved the challenge of Strength, with its long tunnel and descending roofline, filled with spikes, Billie quickly wondered if Andrew would be naive enough to wish to go through first. She watched as Andrew studied the mechanism that lifted the roof by maneuvering the cantilever. He lifted it up so that the roof levelled, revealing the half opened exit at the end of the long tunnel, and then slowly lowered it again.

  The spikes dropped like a machete.

  He grinned at her wickedly. “I guess I better let you through first. Then you can open up for me?”

  “Why, don’t you think you’re strong enough to work it out on your own?”

  “Of course not, that’s why I went to great lengths to bring you here, Dr. Swan. Now, in case you get the urge to keep running once you’re on the other side, may I remind you that only I hold the code to Atlantis.”

  Andrew stared at her.

  His piercing gray eyes tormented her indecision.

  When she didn’t respond, he said, “And that means that this building and everything within it is going to be levelled within the next two hours.”

  “And if I help you get through. Then what?”

  “Then I win, and you lose.”

  “But we all die anyway?”

  “No, you die, everyone else dies, but I have all the power that comes with the Sphere of Atlantis and its access code.”

  “Doesn’t sound very fair to me,” Billie pointed out.

  He sighed. “No, I dare say it’s not very fair. But hey, so long as you and I are together, perhaps you’ll find your chance to win. I doubt it, but it’s the best hope you’ve got, isn’t it?”

  She turned to show him her hands were still bound behind her back.

  “I’m going to need these off if you want me to make it through the challenge.”

  “I’d really rather I didn’t.”

  “Then I guess we may as well both lie down here and die. You see, halfway up the tunnel, a lever needs to be pulled to open the final exit. If I can’t reach it, I can hardly help you reach your all powerful sphere.”

  He grabbed her forcefully. Placing his knee into the nape of her neck, he removed the handcuffs that bound her. She quickly stretched her arms and moved them to her front. A second later, Andrew clipped them again.

  “There. Now you should be able to reach the lever, but still less likely to pick up a rock and beat my skull in.”

  She smiled with a meekness that she would never truly feel. “Okay, let’s see how strong you are then.”

  Within minutes, Billie passed the first challenge and having reset the lever so that Andrew could follow her, was now studying the second one. This one involved choosing the correct weight to place on the pedestal. Instead of the gold ingots of the Congo temple, this one had bars of solid orichalchum. Each one glowed red in response to their dim flashlights, sending shards of red into the dark chasm blocking their progression.

  She stood there considering how to overcome the challenge and get her captor killed in the process. And then Andrew began picking up the ingots and the weights and piling them on the ancient balancing scales. Within two to three minutes, he laughed and carried several of the bars of orichalchum over to the pedestal.

  Without asking her if he had chosen correctly, Andrew dropped them.

  The pedestal glowed red, and seconds later the hidden bridge swung into position.

  “That was lucky, wasn’t it? I guess I might not have needed you after all?”

  Chapter Eighty

  Sam Reilly arrived at the entrance to the Bank of America on the corner of Wall Street and Water. The building by this stage was swarming with police officers. He stepped out of the car, armed with an M16 machine gun in his hands and a Glock strapped to his left thigh. Tom followed behind with similar armament. In the foyer, the night manager of the vault stood arguing with the senior police officer on scene.

  “Good evening, sir.” Sam shook the man’s hand. “My name is Sam Reilly, and this is one of my associates, Tom Bower. Have you been briefed on the situation?”

  “My name is Mitchel Sawyer. I’m the night manager of the vault, and no one gets in or out unless they are a current customer of the bank. And I’m afraid none of you are on the list.”

  Sam gritted his teeth before he spoke. “Mr. Sawyer, in under an hour, you and just about every other living being on this planet are going to have a really bad fucking ending to their day, unless we stop a madman from committing the ultimate act of terrorism.”

  “I’m most sorry to hear that sir, but I’m afraid the vault has very specific rules. In fact, it’s protected by a number of laws, expressly prohibiting you from barging in here like this.”

  Sam pulled out his phone and handed it to the man. “I hope this man can talk some semblance of sanity into you before I have to kill someone.”

  The man straightened up at the threat, and then took the cell phone.

  “Who is it?”

  “Just pick up the phone, and you will see.”

  The night manager spoke into the cell. “Hello?”

  He nodded his head.

  Then began trying to explain the system again, before suddenly handing the phone back. Sam took the cell and said, “Mr. President.”

  He grinned.

  “Of course, Mr. President. I’ll do that.”

  The bank manager began to protest again that he really didn’t want to go against the President of the United States of America, but his first duty was to his customers.

  Sam stuffed the nozzle of his Glock into the man’s throat.

  “I’m sorry Mr. Sawyer. You must have misunderstood me. I said, we need to get into the vault – right now!”

  Within ten minutes Sam and Tom were descending the elevator into the vault – alone. Both men removed the safeties from their M16 machine guns.

  “From what we know about this guy, he’ll have the entrance to this thing well-guarded.”

  Tom rested his finger on the trigger.

  And the elevator door opened.

  Sam grinned as he saw the vault, where at least ten people lay dead. Each had been massacred by heavy machine gun fire. “On second thoughts, we might not be the only ones interested in this guy.”

  “No Sam, it appears you’re going to have to wait in line.” Tom scanned the room, which was now covered in blood. “Whoever beat us here came well prepared and heavily armed. But the question remains, where did they go?”

  “That part’s easy.”

  “Really? Where?”

  Sam walked up to the incinerator and said, “Right here.” It was shaped like the head of a giant crocodile. Like all good storage places of valuable secrets, the vault housed a large incinerator, which its clients could use to remove the evidence of any unwanted truths. The red metal of orichalcum shined like the devil.

  “How did you know?” Tom asked.

  “Billie once brought me here. Many years ago. She told me that her grandfather, who was searching for an ancient civilization, used this vault to store all his information on it. The image of the incinerator was so unique that although I didn’t know where to place it, I recognized it inside Poseidon’s temple.”

  Tom poked his head inside the incinerator. It still smelled like burnt residue. “A nice place to hide the entrance to an ancient city. After all, who would want to willingly enter an incinerator?”

  Chapter Eighty-One

  Billie followed Andrew as he casually walked across the bridge. It swung gently as they traversed it, but nowhere near enough for her to get the advantage required to somehow throw him off. On the other side they crawled through yet another tunnel, which opened up to the third and final challenge – the test of bravery.

  Nearly forty stone pillars stood precariously above a deep ravine. Below which, one could see nothing but darkness. At first glance it would be impossible to jump from each stone to the next all the way across the chasm.

  Billie stood there, watching, but refusing to show the way.

  “My
dear Dr. Swan. I’d like to say that we can wait all day, but to tell you the truth…” Andrew glanced at his watch, “we have just under twenty minutes.”

  “All right. See those three white stone pillars?” she asked.

  “I see them.”

  “Good, the long gap between the second and third are merely illusions. The dark ground below is the best disguise.”

  Andrew grinned at her. “You first, Doctor.”

  “Okay, but I need my hands untied. You have a gun, and you’re at least twice my size, so what are you worried about?”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “Why do you need your hands to jump across some rocks?”

  “Because I need a run off to do so, and I’ll never make it without the full swing of my hands.”

  “I don’t care if you don’t make it.”

  “Sure, suit yourself. I’ll just wait here and watch you try and jump it.”

  Andrew studied the gap. The optical illusion was nearly perfect. Then he stepped up to her with a knife in his hand and shoved it inside the handcuff’s locking mechanism. The cheap lock cracked under the pressure.

  Billie lifted her hands slowly. “Thanks.”

  He nodded to her, pointing his gun. “Now it’s your turn. Go!”

  She turned and ran into the chasm, stepping from one stone to the next until she came to a complete stop. There she stared down at the dark ravine. She picked up a pile of white sand and threw it out into the black expanse.

  Instantly, a hidden path, no wider than a person’s foot, could be seen wandering across the remaining 11 or more feet to the other side. Instead of being a straight beam, the secret path snaked around the room, so that no one could simply guess it was there. It was made from an alloy. Unlike the Atlantean’s unique alloy orichalcum which reflected light majestically, whatever material they had built the secret path with absorbed all light. She carefully stepped foot in front of foot until she reached the other side.