Dateline: Atlantis

by LYNN VOEDISCH

  Amaryllis stands and Wright follows her lead. Alvarez hands them two business cards: Frank Fellows and Alicia Target, Federal Bureau of Investigation, domestic crimes unit. These will be their contacts.

  “I’ll call ahead and make sure the hospital lets you in pronto,” the superintendent says. They blow out of the office into the blaring mid-day traffic, each drifting in a private, silent monologue, avoiding the other’s eyes. Amaryllis can’t get the idea out of her mind that a black Ford is following their cab, but every time she turns around, it fades into the bumper-to-bumper morass that is Loop traffic.

  #

  Extra-large sized Garret nearly flows out of his standard hospital bed. His arms, one still hooked up to an IV tube and the other grasping a television remote control, spill off the edges. His slippered feet hang a couple inches from the ends of the cot. The sight of Wright must have given him a shock of adrenaline for he drops the remote, while trying to brush his unwashed hair back into order.

  Amaryllis waves at Garret while Wright takes command of the situation. He paces the perimeter of the tiny room, looks at charts, and mumbles questions into Garret’s ear. Garret just nods.

  A nurse, who stands as rooted to the room as most of the furniture, fiddles with the contents of the IV sack and blocks Amaryllis’ attempts to get near the bed. A tag on the door to the private room holds a discreet but damning FBI case number, and a federal agent leans on the wall next to the door.

  “Either the beds are shrinking or you’re on steroids,” Amaryllis says to Garrett. Although she’s trying to joke, her eyes are perilously close to tearing up. Since she can’t hug her photographer friend, she gives him another wave. He returns the gesture.

  “No private rooms had an extra-long bed,” Garret explains. There’s a stony silence as Wright continues to pace. The nurse and the agent are making this little reunion as uncomfortable as possible. Amaryllis, feeling gargantuan in the tiny room at only five-foot-seven, tries to press herself against a wall and gazes at the lakeshore view. Her mind drifts. The clouds have broken, and bright sunlight teases the tops of the small waves pushing onto icy breakwaters. There’s plenty of light and no snow. Just a frozen crust around the beach’s edge. Chicago. Sun and ice.

  It had been a day of brilliant light and sweeping wind chills when she first arrived at the Peterson Avenue home. Fresh from Florida, where she lived only a few years, but long enough to become acclimated to tropical weather, she thought the sun assured a balmy day. But the frowning caseworker lady insisted she wear sweaters and a puffed-up duck down jacket. When she stepped into that famous wind, she thought all the air had stopped forever in her lungs. The savage chill was so brutal she closed her eyes in pain. The birds. The squirrels. The cats. How do they live?

  And then she was in an overheated hallway and into Aunt Freya’s arms.

  “You’re home, darling. You’re home.” The lilac-smelling lady said over and over as she wound off scarves and pulled at buttons and sweaters. “You’re in your new home, little Amy, and you’ll never have to worry again.”

  A looming man, long and lean as a skeleton, but with a charming, eye-twinkling smile, looked over Aunt Freya’s shoulder. He looked a bit like dad and simply smiled. Saving an orphan child. It must be an honor. Maybe I’m something of a prize. But the eight-year-old girl knew that wasn’t true, for when she closed her eyes, all she could see was the last questioning look on her mother’s face.

  “Need anything before we go?” Mom’s voice trailed away. Now, I need everything.

  The nurse’s nasal voice rockets everyone to attention as she announces Mr. Lucas’ lunch time. She shoots Amaryllis a glance that’s meant as a challenge, but she’s already stood up to the city’s top policeman, and she is not about to let some bossy nurse get in her way.

  “I’ve got a lot of questions for Garret,” she says and pops open her notebook.

  “Oh, Amy,” Garret groans.

  “What did you do to him?” the nurse says, rushing over to inspect his arm. She grabs for a pulse.

  “No, no,” Garret says, shaking the nurse off. “I’m just sick of questions.”

  “These are good questions,” Amaryllis says with a wink. She lowers her voice. “God, are we happy to see you again.”

  “No shit,” Wright chimes in. Both Garret and Amaryllis gape in wonder at the sight of their boss uttering a swear word. Then all faces turn back to Garret—even the nurse’s ugly mug—all looking for an explanation.

  “Okay, okay,” Garret says, flipping off The Jerry Springer Show. Amaryllis still can hear it playing down the hallways. “At least, you guys deserve to know. Because those spooks insist on security, she ain’t gonna leave,” he jerks a thumb at the nurse. The woman scowls but pushes against the wall, and becomes as inanimate as the IV stand.

  “First…” Amaryllis coaches. She inches closer to Garret and sees that he’s not been roughed up. There are only a few bruises on his arm. But with several days’ growth of beard and dark circles under his eyes, he looks exhausted.

  “First, I came back to my hovel and dropped my load,” Garret says, looking at Wright with a mixture of suspicion and interest. “I pulled out all my rolls and digital chips and threw everything into a big plastic bag. Then I went out to get the film processed ASAP.”

  He readjusts himself in the bed, pressing a button to raise the backrest to a more comfortable position and gets ready for a monologue. Clearly, he’s been through this before.

  “As I was considering zipping through the drive-through lane for some fast food, a black minivan deliberately bumped me from behind on Van Nuys Boulevard. I knew about this scam and mentally took down the license plate: LOGOS 5. But the van kept at it and eventually sideswiped me so I had to move to the inner lane,” Garret says. “I looked at the people inside and they were intense. There were about four guys with trucker hats and beards. I don’t know how, but I could tell they weren’t from around L.A. They looked tough. Redneck types.

  “I figured I would outgun them with the accelerator, but, man, did I misjudge that. The van forced me off onto the shoulder and we skidded to a stop. Three guys popped out of the van in broad daylight. They worked their way into my back hatch-back and passenger door. And I had locked the doors, so they must have had some pro training. They were fast.

  “Then a guy with a low voice told me to hand over the photo bag. He was carrying one of those small assault rifles, an Uzi, I think, although I don’t know guns. So, I did as I was told, although I wasn’t so sure that they’d go ahead and kill me anyway. Then they told me to drive home. The minivan kept pace with me. When I got home and the guys patted down my pockets, found my wallet and keys and frogwalked me into the van. They tied my hands and feet and then the lights went out.”

  Wright jingles some change in his pocket. “So I suppose that’s when they entered your apartment. They probably thought you had more you were holding back.” Amaryllis, writing as fast as she can, senses Wright’s gaze on her. “I wonder why Carlos didn’t see that?”

  “Carlos takes breaks just like any other man,” Garret said, waving the objection away. “Should I go on?”

  Amaryllis and Wright nod, so Garret clears his throat and continues in a voice shorn of emotion.

  “When I came to, I was aware of being in a vehicle of some kind and we were jerking and jolting along bumpy side roads. Then I felt that rhythmic thud of reflective lights under the wheels, so we were on a freeway. Someone in the front seat was talking in an English accent.”

  “Were the assailants English?” Wright says, frowning.

  Garret shakes his head. “As American as mom and apple… “ He gives up on the metaphor. Amaryllis smiles. Wright would never get it. “They were big American guys. The Brit was much smaller, dressed in khakis and a polo shirt. Sort of like a professor.”

  Amaryllis and Wright lock eyes at that statement. Garret keeps talking.

  “I was too wiped out to try to sort out what was happening so I just lay
motionless and listened as these guys discussed my pix of Mexico—the ones that were destined for National Geographic —and how they’d be sent to Heathrow eventually.“

  Heathrow. Amaryllis sits stunned, trying to make the connections between her poor, injured friend, Mexico, ruins, Chicago—and now, London.

  “Eventually, the guy next to me saw that I was awake and listening, so he filled a syringe with some liquid and jabbed me in the arm. Within minutes, the view became hazy, but I remembered being pulled aboard a small jet, up some stairs that rolled to the side door of the aircraft.”

  As Garret unwinds his ugly tale, Amaryllis finds herself drifting in a mental fog, imagining a flight over cornfields and lonely train tracks in a private jet with a British-American crew. Thugs? They don’t sound thuggish. But then normal people don’t go brandishing Uzis. These people could afford a private jet, but Garret said the rough guys looked like they had come straight off a farm, rough calluses, sunburned faces and all. Garret insists that if they hadn’t kept pricking him with the sedative, he might have had a chance to punch someone out during his abduction, but Amaryllis just smiles. Big Garret, the former linebacker, had his manhood threatened. But you can’t punch out an assault rifle.

  The story ended in a storage closet in little-used building at the University of Chicago.

  “A janitor heard me moaning, unlocked the door, and untied my hands. I was so out of it, I couldn’t tell what was going on. I only know that the security guy called 911. First, the Chicago police showed up and then the FBI took over. End of story.”

  Garret flopped back onto his pillow, worn out from this re-telling.

  “And so now you’re here, and the pictures are gone,” Wright mutters, staring out the window at the lush view of the blue lake, gleaming azure under the bright winter sun. “If they stole the photos that they wanted, why bring you to Chicago, of all places?”

  Amaryllis straightens wanting to defend her hometown from any imagined insults. But Wright isn’t criticizing, just ruminating. She chews on the end of her pen and offers an idea.

  “U. of C. is home to some of best Egyptologists in the world.”

  “So?”

  The agent, who’d been hovering near the doorway, slips in and folds his arms. FBI.

  “These ancient historians hang together,” she offers to Wright. “Maya, Egypt, Babylonia. All are separate disciplines, but all are based on the sacred timeline of our culture’s approved history. Garret’s pictures—and my stories—challenge all that. We found a civilization that would have been above water before the Ice Age. They wouldn’t want that story to get out.”

  She pauses to think.

  “And maybe they were trying to lure me here…” Her voice trails off. To Amaryllis’ puzzlement, the spook nods. She realizes she’s on to something.

  CHAPTER SIX: INFINITE LOOP

  The orb has been glowing in Amaryllis’ dreams for nearly a week now, although she has never dared peer into it since the day the pyramids flooded in Mexico. She had let Garret hold it once, before they hid it for a short time in his camera bags during the airplane voyage. He was white with exhaustion when he relinquished the ball. He never mentioned it again.

  She has kept it all this time, always on her person, in coat jackets or in her briefcase. On the road, it goes in her purse—and never causes a blip from the airport x-ray machines. The curious bit of crystal, flawless and clear, only five inches in diameter, is the most precious thing she owns, yet she can barely make her rational mind acknowledge its existence. Its power weighs on her.

  Despite what it signifies—crazy notions of Atlantis—she dreams of touching it again. No, not touching, plugging into it, tapping in, communicating. Sitting on the hotel bed, the urge grips her again and makes her stomach squeeze. In an instant, she’s thinking of Gabriel.

  Have they rifled his belongings, too? Is he safe? She hasn’t even e-mailed him since she returned to the United States, and the man nearly drowned. Guilt floods her face, spreading a tinge of shame like prickly heat. Without thinking, she pounces on her purse, pulls out the orb, and unwraps the silk surrounding it. Freed from its captivity, it sends out the subtlest of electrical pulses, as if calling for her. She balances the ball between each palm. A soft humming begins in the back of her mind, like the steady pulse of the harmonic strings on a sitar. Low, waving, and monotonous, they lull her into a state of deep tranquility. A sigh escapes her lips. Her vision narrows until she is peering through the everyday world. She’s looking through a veil. The hotel room about her dims, and reality becomes what the crystal chooses. Magic is happening.

  In her mind, she sees a boat slicing through the green waves with proud authority. It’s not one of the tall ships of another age. This is a modern-day cutter, a steel-gray vessel with no ornamentation at all. In the dull light from an overcast sky, Amaryllis sees numbers on the side of the boat. They spell out marine call letters—nothing more than gibberish to her:

  On the deck are two men and an astonishing, tall, vibrant woman. All are dressed in slickers, drenched by the cold salt spray. The face of the woman is luminous, onyx, intense; her hands fidget with the binoculars she presses repeatedly to her dark eyes. When she hands them to her comrades, she smiles with ease.

  “Canary Islands, dead ahead,” she says to no one in particular.

  She reads our language. Go to her.

  Amaryllis nearly drops the jewel in confusion. This was not like the encounter in Mexico. Where are the caves, the flooded islands, the radiant past? Then the gem told her the entire story of an ancient race. This is a modern image. Disappointed, she tries to wrap the orb again, put it away, and forget the fantastic images she remembers. Another spark calls her back to attention. The crystal doesn’t give up so quietly. She hears the orb call her back and she touches it again. Now, she sees Gabriel surmounting a large stone cliff, staring out into the turquoise Caribbean. She nearly gasps as she recognizes the wounds of his brush with death—his deeply scratched nose, the arm bandaged and held in a sling. He gazes toward the east.

  As her thoughts shift, so do the visions from the orb. She doubts that Atlantis ever existed and the orb answers her. Headlines pass before her inner eye—the sightings of strange shapes underwater near Cuba, images of submarine triangles located by satellite. Then her mind leaves her body entirely. She floats now on a craft with solar sails in the ink of space, in an airless orbit over Earth, sharpening, ever keening her focus on a tiny square of data. Refocusing, disks spinning. The vision resolves itself into a photo of a perfect pyramid amid three similar structures, visible deep in the Caribbean Sea, just off the Bahamas.

  Florida. In the distance, Gabriel looks as if he has heard someone call him. Florida.

  She almost lets the orb drop to the chenille coverlet and stares at the pulsing object as if it might explode in her presence. Florida, where my parents died. What madness would make me want to see Florida again?

  But the magic is too strong for her to break and she fogs again, seeing the image of two hands appear before her, joined in love.

  The hands become arms, the arms connect to bodies, and she sees a man and woman swimming in Scuba gear, circling an odd sub-oceanic structure. The man traces the outlines of a door, but the woman grabs his arm, holding him back. In the woman’s face, she sees raw anxiety, eyes pulsing with images of entrapment and certain death.

  It has become too much. Amaryllis wrenches herself from the images and hurls the crystal onto the carpet. Breathing hard, she jumps off the mattress, and comes back with a hotel hand towel, and wraps the orb inside of it, and puts it in the hotel room safe. For now, she isn’t touching that witches’ scrying globe again.

  #

  During the days it takes to get Garret discharged from the St. Joseph Hospital for his detox from a drug called Versed, Amaryllis is free to roam the city. The FBI believes that if they can find the source of Versed, a common hospital sedative that is not a street drug, they will be close to finding the kidna
ppers. Wright spends most of his time on the phone with his Los Angeles co-workers and waves her away whenever she tries to take him anywhere. So she hunts up old friends at the Trib and the Chicago Sun-Times. This is a luscious break from the heavy duties of hospital visits and FBI conversations.

  They squeeze in a lunch that’s hilarious and the conversation witty, with flowing beer and mock tragic sob stories of axe-wielding copy editors. Amaryllis’ spirits are bolstered by such entertaining company. All of her friends want to know the details of her Mexican story and her photographer’s strange abduction, but she’s parsimonious with the facts. She has a good reason to be, for every time she leaves a lunch or get-together, she’s aware of a car tailing her taxi. At first, it seems imaginary, but now she’s sure someone’s watching her. She changes routes frequently and stays in touch with Wright often via cell phone.

  The day before Garret is to be discharged, she arranges a lunch with friends at her favorite sushi restaurant, Katsu, which now is twice its old size and—thanks to television publicity—jammed full of customers. The owner’s wife recognizes her and produces four miraculously vacated places at the sushi bar. After the reporters and editors stuff themselves with soft-shell crab and salmon-skin hand rolls, Amaryllis begins to sense something that pulls her from her moorings. All this closeness with her friends stirs up a desire to go home. She’s dying to make contact again with her family just down the street. It happens so quickly and with so much force that she nearly loses her breath from the sudden punch of emotion.

  Outdoors, when the handshaking is over and calls of “See ya, Amy,” retreat into the distance, she jumps into the Toyota she rented for the day and puts the car in drive. She’s heading west to her family home. She arrives before she can mentally find balance, so she sits there, shivering in the car that never had a chance to heat up, staring at the home she once loved and wants to adore again. It’s brown brick, just like every other building in the neighborhood, with an enormous front porch that once held hopscotch games and lemonade sales, and firefly-counting contests.