Dateline: Atlantis

by LYNN VOEDISCH

  #

  Pitch stomps through Kensington Gardens, stopping at Round Pond to collect his thoughts. A few dozen feet away, a little girl tosses breadcrumbs for the swans to eat. He watches the majestic birds swallow the pieces with regal tosses of their heads. The grandness of the park, with its gravel paths and fussed-over gardens soothes Pitch’s own need for order and control. He finds a bench and sits with the Time before Time proof and tries to draw up a plan. So far, nothing comes to mind.

  Isaac Thorgeld had been a fellow student at Oxford, then Pitch’s roommate when they were getting their doctorates. He hardly knew a man so unlike himself, yet they got on like long-lost brothers. Whereas Thorgeld was a bit of a pretty boy, tending to date any woman within a ten-mile radius of the campus (including the female professors), Pitch was an introvert. He rarely asked a woman out, and, when he did, it was to find a colleague of similar intellect. As so often happens in academia, or at least in Pitch’s field of archaeology, the women with the serious brainpower were often a bit shaggy looking and caked with dirt from a dig. Nothing a good haircut and bath couldn’t fix, but they weren’t runway models, either. So, Pitch remained frustrated while Thorgeld, blond and perpetually tanned, cherry-picked the loveliest women in town.

  Pitch eventually married Rebecca Tunis, an exotic half-English, half-Turkish girl. Isaac stood up as best man. The marriage lasted a year, leaving Pitch with no further desire to put up with such niceties as remembering birthdays or buying flowers. So illogical. Too bad, because Rebecca had been a top-drawer scholar.

  He moved back in with Thorgeld, because he didn’t feel at home at the family estate after his marriage failure. While Pitch was a compulsive neat freak, Thorgeld couldn’t keep his piles of papers confined to one room. While another tidy man might have been driven mad by his roommate’s disregard for his living space, Pitch found it pleasurable to clean. He filed papers and labeled boxes with a sense of pride. In an odd way, he felt Thorgeld’s copious writings were like his own, so he protected them with the same care.

  Pitch left his growing collection of knives in a locked cabinet and labeled each one with information about its year of construction, materials, area found, and date. Thorgeld never once tried to open the doors or take a peek. He seemed to respect Pitch’s passion.

  While they were students, they would talk long into the night about archaeology and linguistics (Thorgeld’s field). Both felt that knowledge grew from a common foundation. The Greeks, they agreed, established a system of knowledge and all learning was built upon this structure. Remove a brick at the base of the tower of intellect, and the whole thing would tumble into useless bits of unrelated facts.

  Thorgeld, however, was inclined to believe that much the Greeks had “invented” had really been borrowed from the Egyptians, and he got into howling arguments with Pitch, about this deviation from the accepted truth. Nonetheless, Pitch saw nothing of value beyond Dynasty Zero of the Egyptian civilization, and considered the Egyptians lists of former god-kings to be simple myth. Picky, tedious academic arguments, but important ones to men like Pitch, who considered history to be more compelling than the actual life he was living.

  For all their quarrelling, there never was a sign that Thorgeld would break ranks with his friend. They were inseparable, mentally joined by common principles.

  As their careers grew, Pitch landed a spot at the British Museum, and moved to his apartments in Kensington. Thorgeld received his doctorate and became a lecturer at Oxford. Later, Thorgeld went on to win tenure and a full professorship.

  Then, without warning, a shattering new trend began to work its way through academia. A few Americans in Egypt, a renegade Frenchman, and some English crackpots were beginning to find holes in the timeline of civilization. First, pamphlets appeared arguing that the Giza pyramids were aligned with the stars and that whole cities were laid out along zodiacal maps. Then an English journalist wrote a popular book maintaining that the ancients knew of precession, the Great Year—the thirty-five-thousand-year span of time it took for the earth’s pole to complete one circuit through the zodiacal signs. There was science to precession, even if Pitch dismissed the zodiac out of hand.

  This new theory of such ancient knowledge was impossible to Pitch’s way of thinking. It was unbelievable that the ancients could even have a concept of such vast expanses of time. This theory would presume that humans weren’t running around with bear-fur pelts on their backs but were civilized people able to spend long hours on such leisure-time activities as astronomy and mathematics. It couldn’t be. But the books captured the public yearning for something more exciting than digging up new mummies or finding frozen icemen in the Alps.

  Feeling that an earthquake was rumbling under the historical construct that Pitch and Thorgeld held sacred, they formed the Committee. It began as a network of like-minded, alarmed academics and snowballed into an enterprise determined to squash any more talk of forgotten civilizations.

  They used to gather in each other’s homes, each member offering hospitality for a monthly meeting. At first, the Committee accomplished little more than issuing authoritative papers to peer journals, papers that knocked down alternative theories. Occasionally, when a book similar to The Sphinx Decoded broke, they would appoint a member to appear on the BBC, and he or she would proclaim a condemnation.

  It was all businesslike and civil until the Langs came along. Their scholarship was impeccable and they were onto something damaging beyond all measure. Pitch never felt so threatened in his life, because what the Langs were digging up—shards of pottery and cracked stellae with the rudiments of a language carved upon them—contradicted all the research he had done. They discovered traces of ruins in the Americas that dated far back into Neolithic Times. At that point, Pitch’s career was on the up-swing: the British Museum job was new and he wanted to make an impact, distinguished peer journals clamored for his work, he sensed an Order of the British Empire in his future if things continued on track.

  He petitioned the Committee to hush the Langs up, but the group of academics was having little luck keeping things quiet on the other side of the Atlantic, so they widened their sphere and welcomed in like-minded professors across the globe. It didn’t help much. Then Pitch met the Rev. Caine.

  The preacher charmed Americans wherever he went, holding huge prayer meetings and collecting large amounts of cash to spirit away in his stretch limousine. He, too, had seen the Langs speaking, on the television news, of a civilization that existed in 10,000 B.C. The preacher was horrified. He cast about to find experts in the field of archaeology who might demolish the Langs’ research and discovered Pitch.

  At first, Pitch, a man of science, refused to meet with the fundamentalist. This man was a Creationist, after all. There seemed little common ground upon which to stand. Pitch worried about the taint of superstition on his sterling reputation. It wasn’t until Caine revealed the full range of his holdings—a survivalist camp in Idaho, the munitions cache, a ready army of soldiers of God—that Pitch saw a use for the Reverend. When the preacher offered substantial sums of U.S. dollars to finance television specials, glossy magazines dedicated to archaeology, and American info-mercials (a sort of long-form television advert), Pitch embraced Caine’s anti-Atlantis crusade. The Langs were eliminated and forgotten by a fickle public. The Committee, now grown in size and strength to oppose any alternative theory that came down the road, went after more of Caine’s enemies.

  Still, the alliance was uneasy, and Pitch knew Caine regarded him with suspicion. He also knew the old fool considered himself smarter than the combined brainpower of the entire Committee membership, because he thought God talked directly to him. Such an idiot needed to be handled with exceeding care. He was like a vial of nitroglycerin. Drop it, and an explosion could erase everything.

  A call of ducks taking wing over the pond wakes Pitch from his reveries and he focuses on the heretical book proof in his hands. He sighs as he pages through the industrious output of hi
s former friend. Pitch suspected the betrayal was brewing when Caine came aboard. Thorgeld remained a member and even set up the robust Hall of Truth site on the World Wide Web when the Internet boom had just begun. But soon, he stopped attending meetings, preferring to send e-mail instead. When the evangelicals began supplying the Committee with guns and musclemen—and assassins, when necessary—Thorgeld stopped talking to the Committee at all.

  About five years ago, Thorgeld drifted away from his friendship with Pitch. He left Oxford, married a Moroccan woman, and only resurfaced from time to time to write the odd article on forgotten languages, such as Akkadian and Aramaic.

  But this. No one expected this. As fervent as Thorgeld had been to stamp out Atlantis seekers, now he had become one. He was Paul on the road to Damascus. Hobnobbing with that Knox woman had him causing trouble from the Middle East to the New World.

  But what can Pitch do with a man who had been so loyal so long? Perhaps it was a mental breakdown of some kind. Maybe the Moroccan woman got to Isaac’s head. Isaac often had problems with losing himself in the love affair at hand. Pitch does not dare send a madman like Cruz to deal with this. Hewitt? Well, he is a man of mediocre talents.

  The idea is to catch Thorgeld before he makes it to Mexico or Cuba or wherever else he plans to go. And the one to intercept the turncoat must be Pitch himself. Perhaps he can talk some sense into his old comrade. If he details the expected O.B.E. honor and what it means to him and to scholarship in general, Thorgeld is bound to attend to him. He owes him that. At least that.

  He looks up at the clouding sky and pulls his coat tighter about him. The end of February is always a grim time in London. He could do with a sunny vacation. He shoves the proof under an arm and paces around the pond, plotting his next few moves.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN: SITE SEEING

  For the first time in many years, Amaryllis listens. She checks into a decent hotel with a large business center and purchases a new bathing suit from the expensive hotel store. She settles in her room and calls Donny, gets his voice mail, and leaves the hotel’s fax number. Then she changes into the bathing suit—her usual humdrum style of navy blue maillot—and goes to the pool to swim a few laps. The exercise begins to pull the ropes of stress free in her body. She ends up in the hot tub, letting the jets work on her shoulders and neck.

  She can’t help but think about Gabriel and the senseless argument they had before she left for Miami. All he seemed to want was to find another pyramid—and more than once he asked her if he could have the crystal they found in the Yucatan. Their one night of passion had been nothing more than an aberration, just like so many of Amaryllis’ past encounters with men. She inhales sharply and gets a dose of chlorinated water up her nose. She shakes her head to clear her breathing.

  She just can’t tell the difference between a man’s desire for sex and his need for love. Maybe that’s because there isn’t one, she thinks. As for herself, she struggles to remember wanting anything like deep, passionate love. An easy compatibility is all she ever asks for, yet, even that seems impossible to find, in Chicago, Los Angeles, and all over the world. She hadn’t had many boyfriends over the years, putting most of her energy into her job. Now, resting her neck against the smooth ceramic tiles of the hot tub, she wonders if a little wild romance is just what’s been missing from her controlled life. Sex with a man like Gabriel had the requisite fire but not the simmering quality to keep a fulfilling affair going.

  Now, if it were Donny. She rolls over and lets the jets hit her on the upper shoulders. Oh, don’t start with him. It’s impossible. Their past is so intertwined with mundane trivia that their over-arching hopes and dreams easily are lost. How does one have a blazing romance with a man who once raced you to the end of the alley for first dibs on a box of oatmeal cookies? Donny, she thought, was clinging to her because he was a semi-orphan himself. His own mother had been working most of the time, and Freya was the one who hovered with peanut-butter fudge and hot chocolate. The father issue is huge. Donny absolutely despises the man who contributed sperm and nothing else to his boyhood. He is carrying around a chip on his shoulder the size of the Willis Tower and doesn’t realize that he is trying to forget about it by mooning over Amaryllis. Or does he really know how to love?

  Or does she? She sits straight up in the Jacuzzi and holds her head in her hands. She sits staring into the water, wondering why it was so hard to show her face in her hometown on that last trip. She remembers Aunt Freya in the old days, her hand-embroidered nightgowns, and filling in coloring books on the coffee table in the living room. Why didn’t she feel confident enough to go back home? Then a black thought descends like a shade on her consciousness. The Hollister kids running down the alley and chanting into her backyard: “Orphan, orphan, orphan. Little Orphan Amy.” They’d scoot when her uncle chased them with a rake. But that didn’t stop them at school or on the playground.

  Little Orphan Amy held her head high. She never received anything lower than an A- on her report cards, but, in her mind, she never measured up to some enigmatic mark of superior accomplishment. Nothing was ever good enough.

  This ancient civilization story better work. Then I’ll finally make it. The talk shows. A headline in the Tribune. They’ll all remember me. Her little fantasy of revenge disintegrates as she remembers Garret’s missing photos. She plunges herself deep into the water. Somehow being good enough, even for herself, is far away indeed.

  After she lets the jets work on her neck, she sighs and steps out of the hot tub, feeling her tension draining away with the heat—almost as if it has been pulled off of her like a soggy blanket. The cooler air outside hits her like a blast of refrigeration, and she bundles up in a towel. Maybe she doesn’t want a big, complicated love affair, anyway. Maybe all she wants is that Pulitzer that Wright keeps dangling in front of her.

  She goes back to her room and writes several names on the note pad next to her phone—all people who once worked with her and who now write for the Miami Herald. She studies the names and settles on Sybil Caldwell, an odd choice, because Sybil is a critic, covering theater and the performing arts. But she also worked in news, working the city beat with Amaryllis in Chicago. Most importantly, Sybil is trustworthy, right down to keeping sources secret from nosy editors.

  Next, Amaryllis packs a box of heavy winter duds, including that awful winter coat she’s been schlepping around, and uses the hotel business center to ship the parcel back to Fiona. Dear Fiona. She’s been taking in Amaryllis’ mail and managing her bills, also. Amaryllis is thrilled that she had the foresight to sign up for automatic bill pay. All Fiona has to do it tap a few buttons on the computer. The rent is being taken care of by Wright, who also has put her pay into the bank via direct deposit. When Amaryllis finally makes it back to Los Angeles, it will be time to take Fiona out for a night on the town. She owes her Big Time.

  As Amaryllis is working with the business center employee on getting a morning pickup for the box, a fax comes in addressed to her. Donny is sending her the nitty gritty on the gang of academic thugs and their holy army. The Doctors of Crime and the Phalanx of the Lord. Pages keep spewing out until she has thirteen documents. She pops them in her purse and goes on the final errand of her day. She treats herself to a late afternoon of shopping, buying clothes that suit the climate and won’t stand out while conducting a murder investigation.

  She keeps reminding herself this is all business, but those flowered thong sandals sing to her, call her over to the boutique window. There will be time for leisure, too, she reasons, opening the door to the swank shop.

  #

  This morning, Sybil is her usual scatter-brained self. She tells her secretary to let Amaryllis into the Herald office, and then disappears for forty-five minutes. Amaryllis, wearing her new sandals, sucks in the surging energy and cynical jabber of the newsroom. This is like home to her. She breathes easier, settling back in the chair by Sybil’s desk. She notices that like so many of the Herald reporters, she is dress
ed casually in pastel Capri slacks and a matching brightly hued, short-sleeved shirt. Without knowing how, she, a mere visitor, has finessed Miami style without a problem.

  After the long wait, during which she reads all thirteen pages of Donny’s fax, Sybil rushes in, carrying two cappuccinos, slightly lukewarm in their foam containers. She offers one to Amaryllis, and, after she sets the drinks on the desk, Sybil grabs her friend in an affectionate hug. They’d been close at a rough time in Sybil’s life. She had had a miscarriage and a divorce in Chicago, and the two women became confidantes. Never having been pregnant or married, Amaryllis found herself almost as affected by her friend’s dramas as Sybil herself. They know each other inside and out. So it is not strange when Sybil steps back and regards her pal with wide eyes. She’s feeling vibes.

  “You’ve got a new man in your life,” she announces, loud enough for a few copy editors nearby to hear. They snicker. Sybil’s sixth sense kicks in at the weirdest times, and almost everyone in the newsroom knows about it. They scoff and laugh, but the truth is that Sybil, true to her name, is almost always correct in her predictions.

  “You mean the Maya guy?” Amaryllis says, pushing the thought away with her hand. “A mistake.”

  “No, no,” she pulls Amaryllis close and puts her lips to her ear. “Another man. He’s a good one. Really good.”

  Amaryllis stares at her, not wanting to understand. But she does. She got over Gabriel in one day. Romance is the last thing on her mind. But Donny...

  “I wanted to talk about a twenty-five-year-old murder,” Amaryllis says, pulling the faxes from her purse. “Can you help me find out what’s going on with these people?”

  Sybil shrugs and scans the pages, then comes up with a blank expression. When she goes numb like this, she looks like a ditz from South Beach. She has bleached and colored her hair an un-earthly halo of strawberry blonde. She wears pastels—lavenders and pinks. She has fingernails painted a frosted color that changes in the light like a hologram. She is a five-foot-tall Easter egg.