Amaryllis smothers a laugh at Sybil’s look of consternation. A list of university nerds and an armed crew of survivalist Christians, all with no relation to Miami, would send anyone into confusion. But for Sybil, puzzlement is a normal state.
So, attempting with difficulty to remember every detail, Amaryllis tells the story of Garret Lucas, her archeological discoveries with Gabriel, her parents’ murder, and the possibility that her parents found a mysterious structure off the coast of Florida.
Listening to the long explanation, Sybil drums her dazzling fingertips on the metal desk. Her eyes widen when she hears of Garret’s murder. She takes a slurp of her cappuccino and takes in some more information, with no signs of boredom.
“Nav-tech,” she says when Amaryllis comes up for air.
“What the hell is that?”
“A so-called ‘secret’ military installation out near Andros Island in the Bahamas. They think it’s secret, anyway. They do underwater testing of mines and torpedoes. They also do sonograms of the sea bottom. It’s close enough to Florida to be the site you’re talking about.”
She pulls out a Florida area map and indicates a section of the ocean beyond U.S. territorial waters, yet marked as U.S. Navy property. It’s just north of Bimini and the Berry Islands.
“No one gets into this place. No one gets out, either,” Sibyl says. “They’ve got a tower in that complex that was not built by modern man, that’s for sure. Some say it’s just an oddly shaped sea volcano, but others aren’t so sure. Hamilton—you remember Buck Hamilton?—has been trying for years to get the Navy to tell us what they are doing there.
“Yeah,” she continues as she surveys the map. “If your parents were stuck in that tower for a while and the current was right, they could eventually wash up in Homestead Beach, no problem.”
In her gut, Amaryllis knows she’s gotten the information she’s been striving to find for weeks. Here is an anomalous structure that the academic Mafia couldn’t get to, and her parents had penetrated the security. No wonder someone wanted them out of the way.
“Is there any way we can talk to Buck about this right now?”
Sybil lifts both her hands in complete bafflement and stands up to survey the newsroom. She beckons Amaryllis with her fingers. They snake their way through a maze of desks, finally coming to stand next to a man typing notes in a frenzy on a computer screen while cradling his phone receiver in the crook between shoulder and neck. He looks up at Sybil and nods, then does a double take when he sees Amaryllis. He makes a circular motion with one hand, indicating that he’ll wind up the conversation in a minute. They stand studying the orchestrated madness in the rest of the office before Hamilton hangs up.
“Amy Quigley! How wonderful!” Buck gets up to hug her. Then he lowers his voice. “I hear you’re working on the story of a lifetime.”
“Word sure gets around,” Amaryllis says, looking at Sybil, who is all innocence.
“Well, half of L.A. is talking about it.”
“They are?” Amaryllis is anguished thinking that her story is about to be gobbled up by someone else.
“Okay, two guys I know at the Times told me about it. And believe me, they don’t know your sources. Wright is as tight as a drum with that sort of thing,” he says, sitting back down and leaning into his chair. “Sit down and visit. And tell me why you’re in Miami.”
“It’s complicated. Part of it does have to do with the big-deal, story of a lifetime that you mentioned,” she says, smiling with a sly sense of conspiracy. “But there’s also a murder mystery I want to solve.”
“Wow. Nothing like ambition for you. You were always that way.”
Sybil breaks in before Buck can land any more praise—and flirtation—Amaryllis’ way.
“She wants to see pictures of the Tower, Buck,” Sybil says.
Buck runs a hand through his perpetually messy brown hair and whistles. “Ambitious is not the word for it. I’ve been trying to get at that thing for years,” he says. He leans down to his file drawers and starts riffling through folders.
“I just want to see what it looks like,” Amaryllis says. “It might answer a lot of questions we came up with at the coroner’s office.”
Hamilton’s phone rings again, but he ignores it, letting it go to voice mail as he continues searching for the files. When he pulls up the correct picture, Amaryllis holds her breath.
The tower is black. Not one of the limestone or granite structures she’s seen before. But a black slab of some onyx-colored rock. This thing emerges out of the water like the peak of a witch’s cap. It’s smooth sided, with no signs of steps, and looks slick to the touch. She’s about to say that this couldn’t possibly be the pyramid she’s looking for, when Buck starts to mumble.
“The guy who took this picture had been diving in the area,” he says. “It’s all restricted, you know, and I don’t know how the hell he got out of there without getting arrested. But he said he went all the way down underwater, and the thing has an opening. It’s filled with lots of sand, but he said there are inscriptions on the wall. I couldn’t get much more out of him. He’s got the negative of this photo.”
Amaryllis stares at the image again and there’s a scream in her lower abdomen, the sensation of being trapped within the blackness, the horror of entombment. In the moment it takes to view the photo, she knows something has shifted. This is no longer about Wright and prize-winning stories. It isn’t about ego and coming home to Chicago as a hero. This is about her family and correcting a heinous, veiled crime. This is her call to action and nothing in her body can resist any longer.
“No, I can’t tell you who the guy was…” Buck is saying, but she is far away from the conversation now. Scheming how to get near to the tower and how to settle the family score. Wondering what her parents found so fascinating about the black edifice.
“Do you have the GPS coordinates of that thing?” she asks. “And was it always poking out of the water, or does it submerge with the time and tides?
He writes the GPS data down, smiling, and says he has no idea how long the top has been poking out of the water. “You’re not thinking of going there are you? Because I’m telling you, no one can.”
Amaryllis simply returns his happy grin. “Try me.” Hamilton’s phone rings again.
“That’s my girl!” Buck exclaims as they walk off, back to Sybil’s desk.
“Get me everything you know about this tower,” Amaryllis says, excitement growing in her gut. Sybil lets out a belly laugh.
“You’ll end up with a library. I’ll just do a Lexis-Nexis search and see if I can find something intriguing.”
Then Sybil grabs Amaryllis’ arm and drags her over to a cluttered desk covered with books and publishers’ proofs. It’s the Herald Freebie Table, a place for all the promotional material that reporters get in the mail but can’t use for stories.
“As for the caves and pyramids you found, I think I have just the thing for you,” Sybil says, pawing through the mound of goodies. She pulls out a copy of a publisher’s proof titled Time before Time by an author named Isaac Thorgeld. Although the book is not due for publication for several months in the U.S., the publishing company is eager to drum up publicity now. They smell a blockbuster, so it could be a good read.
“I’d been meaning to pick this up and read it, but didn’t know why. Now, I know it is for you.” Sybil presents Amaryllis with the heavy paperbound tome.
Amaryllis takes it, feeling an odd sensation that this book, too, may solve a mystery. She thanks Sybill for all her help. Then with a wave, she promises to meet Sybill the next day to share notes on their research.
After a frustrating afternoon of searching dive shops that would venture out as far as Nav-Tech, she gives up for the day. She orders room service and decides to stay in for the evening. She’s spied that gnome-like Hispanic man on the streets a couple times and figures she is safer at the hotel than on the street. After a good long shower, she dials Fiona.
“What’s up, darlin’?” Fiona answers, cheerfully mixing American slang with her Irish lilt.
“Atlantis, for one thing.”
“I was just reading about that in your newspaper,” Fiona says. Amaryllis gulps. “Someone has been comparing mitochondrial DNA of the bones of ancient Indians—and it caused quite a stir. The Native Americans are suing the state university for messing with the ancestors and the professors are fighting back. They say the bodies didn’t even share the same skeletal structure as current American Indians.’
“Was this a wire story?”
“It says Associated Press, yeah. “ Phew. At least Wright hasn’t put someone on Amaryllis’ beat. “But let me get to the DNA. Perhaps the so-called Indians were most likely Caucasians, and probably Celts.”
“Where does Atlantis come in here?”
“Some are saying that these people are all of the same stock and came from a single place. At least one bloke is quoted as saying they sprung from an Atlantis race.” Fiona giggles.
“What’s so funny?”
“Or else the Irish—Celts, you know—discovered America.”
“It’s not so crazy an idea.”
“Well, the whole thing certainly got some people mad. There was a demonstration downtown in front of the Star building.”
“Who was demonstrating? The Indians?”
“No, silly. The religious people.”
“Okay, I’m lost.” Amaryllis runs a hand through her wet hair pulling apart tangled strands. Fiona knows how to go down a garden path with her long tales.
“That Logos group that’s gotten so big. The people with the Creationist school-board candidates and the preachers screaming to beat the band.” Fiona lowers her voice. “Even he was there.”
“Who’s he? ’ Amaryllis is tiring of this guessing game and is feeling the minutes rack up on her cell phone bill. “What’s Logos?”
“The Rev. Caine. Big, pompous asshole…,” She giggles again.
“Fiona, have you been drinking?”
“Only a few, lovey. But you should have seen it in the news. The Reverend was screaming about how creation began at nine in the morning one day six thousand years ago. And all the people were saying ‘Amen.’ What a sight.”
“But what were they protesting?”
“Atlantis. You see, if it existed, then Earth didn’t start at nine in the bloody morning in the year whatever it was… .”
“They’re protesting the idea of Atlantis?” Amaryllis sits up straight on the hotel bed. “This is a new one.”
“Apparently not. They’ve been attacking the theory for a while now. There’s a story in the Times …”
“I’ll get Wright to fax it to me. Or I’ll look on the Web.” She sits and processes the information for a few short seconds. Religious crazies. Anti-Atlantis. Guns and Money. Academics. An odd picture is coming into view. She needs to research this Logos outfit. She sighs and Fiona fills the silence.
“You’re feeling the loneliness, girl?”
“Yeah, Fiona. I’d give anything for a night of girl talk.”
“Is it about that Mexican man calling here?” Amaryllis can never figure out how Fiona knows these things. She never let on that there was any romantic attraction there. But it is best not to lie to Fiona now.
“He was wrong for me and I was stupid enough to ignore the signals.”
Fiona makes that soft ticking sound that indicates sympathy and concern. Amaryllis’ nerves settle down.
“The trouble is that I never know what’s right, not until I’ve made a complete mess of everything.” She’s thinking of Donny now. Alone in the motel room, holding the crystal and watching her leave. “I suppose I’ll never get it right.”
“Never say never, sweetie,” Fiona says. “My sister met a guy at forty-one and she had a baby the next year.”
“But how about you?”
“Didn’t I tell you? Alan’s been calling again from Ireland. He wants to come here.”
Lovely. Fiona’s oaf of an ex-boyfriend camping out again.
“You’ve been through this before.”
“I know,” Fiona says, as if she’s just seen a sweet angel standing before her.
Amaryllis rings off. Maybe reading is a better idea.
She tucks herself into bed and opens up the Thorgeld book, starting her night by reading of Great Flood fables, unexplained structures, ancient pyramids found across the globe, and Plato. Lots of Plato.
The search for a lost civilization, which is what Thorgeld calls his quest, is called “Atlantology” by skeptics, she learns. That’s because everything in the “lost world” arena harkens back to Plato’s description of Atlantis in Timaeus and Critias. This work features an ancient Egyptian priest, who relates to Solon, an Athenian sage, the story of a continent that disappeared “in one horrible night and day.” Although most scientists completely discount Plato’s story, he was painstakingly precise in his description of the island paradise.
It was, Plato said, situated beyond “the Pillars of Hercules,” which were generally agreed to be, in the ancient world, the Straits of Gibraltar and the northern shores of the Atlantic coast of Africa. That was where the tenth and eleventh labors of Hercules were said to have been accomplished—in southwest Spain (Gades) and Mt. Atlas in Africa. That would put Atlantis squarely in the Atlantic Ocean.
Atlantis was also supposed to have been near an impassable sea, which Thorgeld says is most likely the Sargasso Sea, a wide expanse of the Atlantic Ocean that is choked with seaweed. This part of the Atlantic even impeded Christopher Columbus’ famous passage to the New World. But it isn’t just the Sargasso Sea that would have proved a hindrance; Thorgeld also writes at length about the shallows and shoals of the Bahamas.
Amaryllis dog-ears that page. She certainly has seen her share of blocked passages to Bahamian dive sites. She plunges on, absorbed in Thorgeld’s writing.
The Egyptian priest who informed Solon of the civilization’s existence also went on to say that voyagers to Atlantis could then reach “the whole opposite continent,” which in Thorgeld’s mind could be nothing but the Americas.
Plato described Atlantis as being vastly old. The Egyptian priest said his own culture was 8,000 years old and that Atlantis sank 1,000 years before that. Calculations that Amaryllis couldn’t fully comprehend put the last of Atlantis at 9,000 to 10,000 B.C. “These are dates that drive orthodox archaeologists and historians to distraction,” Thorgeld writes. “Because no one but cave-dwelling Neanderthals were supposed to be alive at that time.” However, he goes into great detail describing the King’s Lists of the Egyptians, a detailed chronology of all the past rulers of ancient Egypt. The inventory clearly went back to days of the “god kings.” Historians consider those divine monarchs to be mythical, but Thorgeld cautions that readers must give the Egyptians more credit. They were meticulous record keepers. Various lists go back to 13,420 B.C. or even further.
Plato also described Atlantis as having a subtropical climate with two growing seasons. And it was supposed to have had elephants. Nowhere in the Atlantic had topography like that. Was it possible that a land did create a bridge between Africa and the Americas? Amaryllis thinks back to the maps Gabriel had been showing her in the Bahamas. Clearly, he believes. But can she?
Thorgeld then traces the Atlantis-like mythologies and flood stories of other cultures from the Mexicans, the Irish, Polynesian Islanders to Sumerians and others all over the globe. He theorizes that some pre-flood culture must have been existed for this mythology to have been so pervasive worldwide.
He sets about tracing the various premises making the rounds in journalistic and New Age circles. Amaryllis rolls to her other side and wonders if it is worth continuing at this point. He isn’t going to hypothesize that UFOs populated the earth, is he? She has been willing to go this far, but she certainly isn’t convinced that the ruins she found beneath the Caribbean were Atlantean. But, then, what are they? Who built them? She thumbs through
the rest of the text and finds it appears quite scholarly, full of charts and maps of post-Ice Age inundation. Okay, I’ll keep going. She gets up to grab a Coke from the minibar and plops back down to press onward.
There are several popular concepts that he alternately features and then debunks. First, the theory that the tiny Mediterranean Island of Thera or Santorini was Atlantis. This idea she was familiar with, so she flipped the pages to the next section. Here, the author tackles the common theory that the Azores were part of a giant island that is now the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. According to continental drift theory, a so-called Dolphin’s Back Ridge portion of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge would fit neatly into the ball of continents called Pangaea. (Pangaea being the giant patchwork of land that drifted apart to form the continents of today.) As the continents drifted apart, the Dolphin Back portion moved northward to lodge itself in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. The German scientist Otto Muck wrote in great detail about the Azores theory, backing it up with migration patterns of wildlife and the unexplained dip of the Gulf Stream, which now looks to be skirting a large, absent mass of land. However, no one has been able to find any profile of anything manmade in the many naval soundings of the Atlantic floor.
Nonetheless, Thorgeld maintains, a great deal more land of the Azores, the Canary Islands, and the Cape Verde Islands did stand above water long ago, possibly creating a landmass that might have supported an ancient civilization. The submerged volcanic rock of the Azores must have hardened in the open air, according to geologists, because the Azores tufa, a volcanic substance, cannot harden in that particular way when it is underwater. Once again, this would put a sizable mass of Mid-Atlantic land above the water in the Neolithic Age.
Some Atlantologists consider America itself to be the missing continent. There is a body of evidence supporting this theory in South America, but Thorgeld says the entire idea begs the question of what Plato’s “opposite continent” would be if not America.
Dateline: Atlantis Page 18