#
Shoshanna can’t stop talking in the dirty little kitchenette the crew calls a mess hall. She has digital images that remind her of several ancient languages: Linear B, proto-Egyptian, the undeciphered language of the lost Guanche of the Canary Islands. She makes marks in her notebook that look exactly like photos of ancient script from some large textbook she brought on board. It looks as if the Knox woman has found a match in her tome of ancient characters.
Hewitt is definitely feeling something ugly in his stomach. All last night he tried to keep it down. No seasickness. No signs of weakness. But he knows it’s not a mere case of landlubber’s disease. This is the bile of a man facing defeat. If these carvings are real, what is he going to tell the Committee? How can they keep it quiet?
“It’s genuine?” he says, butting into Shoshanna’s rapid-fire lecture. How those Americans can talk, especially the ones from the Northern cities. She glares, but answers in a level voice, gazing down the six inches that separates her eyes from his.
“It’s something that no one would know how to forge, even if they could. The carvings are deep and layered with crustaceans and debris, but where we cleaned, the symbols looked almost laser cut.”
Hewitt’s gut lurches, but he manages to grab the edge of the table to hide the distress.
She continues, switching to impeccable German for Grundenstand’s benefit. The two seem to have gotten cozy since the dive. The tall German shows none of his usual peckish reserve when answering her. She flips to an entry in her book. She gestures at an image captured on the display of her digital, underwater camera.
Hewitt sees nothing but gibberish. With deliberate speech, as if explaining to a toddler, she indicates another page of her giant volume. The lines on each inscription look almost identical.
“The book of Enoch,” she says, lifting her head at a triumphant angle. “Proto-semitic writing with words from the Apocrypha. Much of the script looks like what developed into extremely early Egyptian glyphs.”
“Apocrypha. Books left out of the Bible,” Grundenstand adds, as if anyone needs an explanation.
Hewitt now is gripping the table to keep from sinking to his knees. This isn’t going to please the backers.
“How long could it have been submerged?” he chokes out.
“Certainly as long as seven thousand years. Perhaps much longer,” the diver/archaeologist explains. “I’d guess that with the amount of volcanic activity in this region the last shift of land happened at least that long ago. Islands around atolls have been known to pop in and out of view in a matter of days. But, I’m betting this is from the end of the Ice Age. Which, of course makes us question just how old these books that made up the Bible really are.”
Ten thousand, BCE? That’s absurd.
Hewitt sways, considering the implications. A swell raises the Elaine several feet in the air. He falls in slow motion to meet the table, aware only that he has come to rest in a pool of his own vomit.
CHAPTER FIVE: PEOPLE MOVERS
Wright squeezes her wrist as the Airbus, an American Airlines jet flying nonstop from Los Angeles, begins its dreamy descent over the suburbs of Chicago. Amaryllis tries not to notice the inappropriate conduct, for she’s aware her boss is full of dread when involved in takeoffs or landings. On the actual flight, Wright is as jolly as a Christmas elf, ordering gin and tonics and making sculptures out of the plastic cutlery on the tray table. He flirts with any woman, fat or slender, old or young, using a sweet, insouciant voice. He can turn on the lights, that’s for sure. He can banter about anything from the landowners’ and squatters’ squabbles in Zimbabwe to whether the latest Tom Cruise movie has any merit. Wright is, Amaryllis realizes, a well-informed man, who reads newspapers from lands across the globe. When the flare ignites, Wright can hold his own with the best of the world’s wits.
Now, however, the fire is a sodden ash, and the chatter stops as soon as the attendants begin snapping seats back into their “full, upright positions” and speak of making “their final descent.” She hopes it’s not. Amaryllis’ wrist is beginning to hurt, so she gently peels Wright’s weighty fingers off her flesh and quietly repositions his hand on the armrest. He fails to notice, his face the color of an old sweatshirt, eyes closed, mouth set in a ghost of a line. He grips the armrest the same way he clutched her wrist. She turns away and watches the brilliant sunset, as the craft circles around to the west.
Six years since she’s seen this landscape. And what will they say at home when she appears at the front door? Will she get the business for not being a good, dutiful daughter? Or will they forgive her? How can she even start to make amends for her absence?
When the landing gear clunks into place, Wright lurches in his seat and Amaryllis absently pats his hand. She can see the dazzling grid of O’Hare’s intersecting runways. She tries to pick out which one her plane is aiming to nestle into. Her ears are muffled, but she still can hear Wright’s soft moan.
“Almost there,” she says, still not looking away from the window. She closes her eyes.
Wright hadn’t been like this before 2001, before he turned on the news on one September morning and discovered that two of his best correspondents were buried under a mountainous mass of concrete and steel. They call that day 9/11, but to Wright, it was the day his own mortality became a haunting, lurking being. It followed him around everywhere he went. Until that day, he had been the newspaper’s bon vivant. Now, people would catch him staring at his reflection in the office windows—a 58-year-old-man, who lost two damn fine reporters, one of whom was his own daughter.
Priscilla. Amaryllis saw a glimpse of the woman’s wicked smile, curling over a martini at a Wall Street bar. She winced at the wretched memory of trying to call the Star’s New York bureau that morning and hearing an automated voice bleating, “all circuits are busy.” Priscilla would have wanted a proper parting. A hug from dad. Red-tipped roses for her service. She planned to return from New York in two months’ time, and another reporter was to take her place. Now, Priscilla is part of some memorial park landfill. Gentle blonde curls smashed into granite blocks. Atoms blasted away to parallel worlds. Amaryllis remembers her last trip to New York when she dared to view the holes marring downtown Manhattan. She stood weeping at the bashed sculpture in Battery Park. She never mentioned Priscilla’s name again nor dared think of what her own fate might have been had she come to work in New York.
So now, some ten years later, Amaryllis is Wright’s surrogate offspring. At thirty-three, she’s the perfect age for him to dote on. Why must she comfort this father figure when the wheels bump on the pavement and the engines begin their furious reverse burn? There is a churning in her lower gut. Why are they even here, in her hometown, in the middle of winter? She turns to Wright, who pats at his forehead with a delicately monogrammed linen handkerchief that she’s never seen him remove from its familiar jaunty angle in his crisp suit pocket.
“We’re okay,” she whispers. Wright gulps, his Adam’s apple contracting, and opens his eyes. There is some life deep within them.
“What kind of madmen kidnap Garret Lucas and bring him out here?”
Amaryllis winces at the dismissal of her home city. “Crazies, crazies,” she says and looks at her hands, amazed that she forgot, even for a minute, the purpose of the trip. A voice replays in her memory.
“Lucas is in Chicago,” a rough cop from the LAPD said over the office telephone. “Chicago P.D. wants you to go get him.”
#
Amaryllis dreads this homecoming. The idea of riding in a cab up to Peterson Avenue and ringing the doorbell at the Georgian brick home is fraught with insurmountable demons. Freya, Sean, the stepsisters, all climbing over themselves to get a good look at her—the orphan child who made good in the wider world beyond the Midwest. The one who went to a prominent journalism school, interned at the Chicago Tribune, and hit the big time out West. The fear of coming home probably has kept her at the Star far longer than she should have sta
yed. There was no reason for this paranoia in the beginning, but the longer she stayed away, the more guilt accrued. Now, she is panic-stricken about facing her own loved ones.
However, she knows she’ll never truly avoid the grasp of home. It is long past due to find out who she really is and just why she had been raised by well-meaning, middle-class relatives who accepted her without any discussion when child-welfare officials brought her to their North Side house at the age of eight.
The truth is that Amaryllis was a lost child before she was officially alone. At five years old, she left the cool autumn of October in Illinois, full of burning, campfire-hued leaves, home-grown pumpkins, and crisp winds to relocate to her parents’ land of dreams. Days later, when she stood on the sidewalk in front of her new Florida home, she studied, amazed, the funny wide-bladed grass in the odd front lawn. This was the stuff her father cursed as “crabgrass” back in Chicago. She looked sky-ward, hurting her neck a bit, at the towers of palm trees that looked more like pillars than any living plant she’d ever seen. The funny, pebbly-covered apartment complex was made of no visible bricks, had no basement, and held no tall chimney on a tall, pitched roof. She couldn’t even believe she was in America. This looked like the land of hula girls and monkeys in banana trees. The kind Mrs. Beasley showed the class in picture books at kindergarten class.
“It’s Florida,” her mom had said and led her indoors with a soft touch on her shoulders.
Amaryllis desperately tries to remember what her mother looked like. Fair—that much she can pluck from the memory banks—but the features blur as she tries to zero in. She only sees a glow, a steady light she’d recognize in this world or the next, the aura of mother love.
Her father she only recalls by his rather prominent nose. He’s tall and skinny, with a broad chest and the shoulders of a swimmer. He looks a great deal like Uncle Sean. She remembers he was a professor but can’t recall what discipline he taught.
The memories bounce to the background as a man shoves Amaryllis to get his baggage off the carousel at O’Hare. How had she walked all that way, through the maze of unending gates, without conscious thought? It has been years since she’s been at O’Hare, yet she navigates like a professional traveler. Wright stands beside her, silent and steaming with beads of anger on his forehead. He grabs the rude man by the elbow and tosses him out of Amaryllis’ way as if the interloper were a piece of junk. He doesn’t need to talk; he protects his own. With no protest, the scowling man scurries away with his luggage, pulling a cellular phone from a breast pocket as if it were a tiny dagger.
By the time she and Wright sit snug in their warm cab, they begin to feel the weight of Chicago beneath their feet. The city spreads out in all directions, offering more possibilities than they can cope with in their present condition. Wright wants to head straight to the police department, but Amaryllis insists on the hotel first. It’s getting on past five in the evening, and no one of consequence still will be in the main office.
“There’s no sense showing up like a couple of bedraggled street people,” she says, before Wright can protest. “We’ll pop in fresh and rested tomorrow morning like a pair of professionals.”
Wright opens his mouth to argue, but Amaryllis narrows her focus, drawing a bead on Wright’s pupils.
“This is my turf. Let me handle it.” All he can do is nod.
#
On a frigid January morning at the downtown police department, they are directed to the headquarters of the police brass at 35th Street and Michigan Avenue. The fierce wind makes the walk from the cab an adventure and Amaryllis can’t help but smirk to herself as she watches the California-pampered Wright wince in the face of the northerly howler that Chicagoans know as the Hawk. Once inside the doors, she and Wright have no trouble gaining access to the inner sanctum of the Superintendent of Police. Looking every bit the big-shot—albeit nearly frostbitten—editor, Wright receives a royal treatment from the secretaries as Amaryllis pads behind, glancing into offices she never could gain access to when she toiled as a mere reporter for the Tribune.
This latest superintendent is a skinny Hispanic man who regards Wright as a visiting dignitary. Obviously, he hasn’t gotten used to the power of his own position, Amaryllis thinks. He pulls a chair up for Wright and brushes off the already immaculate seat. Then he drags over a folding chair for Amaryllis. He asks if they’d like anything to drink or eat. Tired of the toadying, Amaryllis breaks in.
“So, where is our photographer?”
“Excuse me?” Hector Alvarez has a glow in his eyes, as if he has found a new clue in a bothersome case. “And who may you be?” He moves back to his desk, seeking protection behind the fine wood.
“I may be a reporter who never had a chance to talk to you when you were on Roosevelt Street,” Amaryllis says, letting all the broad Chicago twang back into her usually manicured voice. As Alvarez fiddles with his desktop toys, he clears his throat as she continues. “Remember Amy Quigley from the Trib? The Johnson murders? The jokey cover-up that even the D.A. wasn’t buying?”
Alvarez looks as if he’s been dealt a blow to the solar plexus and shifts his gaze between the door and his dignified new guest, Wright. He remembers her, all right. She was a plucky, but anonymous, reporter who used to get the run-around from Chicago P.D., and Alvarez had been one of the worst obfuscators.
“Good. You recall it all. I work for him now.” She gestures to a beaming Wright, who clearly is enjoying this sideshow. “And we would like our photographer back.”
Never had this tactic worked so flawlessly in Amaryllis’ career. Cops generally treat female reporters with disdain, but tough talk often earns a bit of grudging respect. Now, with Wright at her side, Amaryllis sees a cop crack before her eyes. Inside, she folds like taffy, unable to keep up the rough exterior much longer.
Wright, who never has seen her work like a tough cookie before, gapes like a guy who’s discovered Nessie. He snuggles in his chair with a smug smile.
“Yes, Garret Lucas,” Alvarez says, still coughing, unable to meet Amaryllis’ eyes. “He was found at the University of Chicago in a storage closet. Unconscious and drugged. Don’t worry. He’s staying in a private room at St. Joseph’s Hospital. Nice lake view.” The phone rings and Alvarez jumps as if it’s an animal about to attack him. “Olga!” he yells, “Take my calls!” The phone goes silent.
“Superintendent Alvarez.” Wright’s voice jars this peaceful break. “Of course, we want to see Garret Lucas as soon as possible. But we must know how he got here and what condition he was in when your officers found him. This is incredibly distressing to our entire newspaper staff.”
“What? They didn’t tell you in L.A.?” Alvarez’s eyes are bulging with a conflicting range of emotions. “They should have… that darn…let me get the file…,” he picks up the phone and dials, muttering “I can’t believe it,” then barks an order to some unfortunate underling. Within several uncomfortable seconds, the mysterious Olga, cool in an icy, Russian way, swishes into the room with a thin file folder. She leaves without disturbing the light dust on the superintendent’s vast oak desk.
“Here. Here,” Alvarez pages like a madman through the police reports, looking for details. “There was a call to our Hyde Park precinct from a janitor at the University of Chicago. He’d been hearing odd noises in the hall off of a concert facility. Our unit on call, Sergeant O’Reilly and Lieutenant Wilson, found a man bound and gagged.” He hands them a picture of a man they barely recognize, zoned out by tranquilizers, and lying on a dirty closet floor.
“Garret. My God,” Wright says, grabbing for his handkerchief and pressing it to his eyebrows. Amaryllis is lost in the image of her friend trussed like a helpless animal.
“Yes, he was identified as Garret Lucas, a photographer from Los Angeles. Although his wallet was gone, he gave us his Social Security number and it checked out with LAPD.” He pauses and flicks a tight tongue over chapped lips. “They were supposed to have told you all this.”
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“And they didn’t,” Wright says, tensing his hands in his lap.
“I know, I suspected that…that’s why I’m looking…ah, here. Our officers reported that Lucas has no memory of coming to this city, just a vague idea of being put into a small jet. While Lieutenant Wilson made arrangements for Lucas to be taken to a hospital, Sergeant O’Reilly got the report that Lucas was on the missing persons list.”
The top cop drones on about police procedures until Amaryllis is ready to explode from the sheer input of minutia. It has been amusing to see this top dog become an obsequious boot-licker, but this tiresome gamesmanship is on her nerves. She thwacks her notebook on her lap, stopping the superintendent in mid-sentence. Both men gaze up with large eyes, as she steadies her focus, commanding attention.
“However,” she says in her most level, rational voice. “The FBI now has jurisdiction.”
Alvarez practically jumps out of his desk chair to run for another file on an office shelf. This one had been waiting for Wright and Amaryllis all along. “Yes, yes,” the police superintendent mutters, scrambling through more paperwork with his busy fingers. Clearly, there’s been a tussle about who’s minding the store in this case. Chicago P.D. plays nice with the feds, but they don’t like being bossed, either. It’s a delicate balance and Alvarez—new to his job—appears careful not to tip it.
“You see,” the superintendent says, throwing up his hands in desperation, unable to find the papers that exonerate him from blame. “L.A. doesn’t want this,” he says, eyes flashing a rare hint of candor. “And the FBI, they are working with us now. I guess they figure the perps are based here.”
“Where may we find my employee?” Wright’s voice quakes a bit. He’s lying about Garret’s job status, but his emotion is true. He cares about the photog’s welfare, and he’s tired of wasting time on petty details.
“He’s in Room 1708-A,” Alvarez says, writing down the address of St. Joseph’s on a large pad of paper. Deflated, he hands it over to Wright. Amaryllis knows the look. Cops hate it when the feds get the final word. “We think he’s fine, but the FBI is convinced he was sedated by an unusual drug—something that may help locate the offenders.”
Dateline: Atlantis Page 6