Dateline: Atlantis

by LYNN VOEDISCH

  She folds her phone shut and hopes she has covered all bases. Via e-mail conversation, Wright has approved funds for this dangerous excursion; he wants the story so much he’ll pay a fortune. Early the next morning, she checks out of the fancy hotel with the snooty desk clerk. Sybil had offered to take her in, but Amaryllis decides against getting her friends into deeper peril. Instead, she takes up Shoshanna Knox’s proposal that they share a room at the little Conch Shell Hotel south of the Miami luxury high rises. There’s no Internet hook-up, no voice mail, not even a pool, but it’s so plain and inconspicuous that she’s sure Cruz or the Logos minions will never find her there.

  #

  Another morning arrives with an orb dream. They plague her every time she closes her eyes.

  A couple leaves a church filled with cheering celebrants. They jump into the car that’s decorated with streamers, toilet paper, and balloons. He takes her hand and gazes into her Caribbean blue eyes before he pops the auto into first gear—and they are on their way. He is thinking with his young brow creased; she has nothing but starfish on her mind.

  Amaryllis wakes, shakes her head, angry that the crystal is violating her dreams again. Still, she writes what she remembers of the dream in her reporter’s notebook. She knows it’s the story of her parents, told in piecemeal form. If she juggles all these dreams, she may come up with an approximate history of their quest. After puzzling over the vision, she pulls on some shorts and a t-shirt and goes out to meet the day.

  It’s late in the morning and she sits in a little lounge chair outside her room’s door, her head feeling as if it hasn’t been screwed on in proper fashion. As she gazes out to the ocean, she’s trying to figure out a way to get near the tower. Shoshanna comes up behind her with a copy of the yellow pages.

  “I tried every one of those diving companies, and no one will go near Nav-Tech. They don’t even want to skim the border.” Shoshanna tosses the book on the pavement where it lands with an alarming plop. Amaryllis thinks about the boat she had hired in Freeport City. One of the crew hinted about going into forbidden waters. Would they really do it?

  “If we can’t ship out of Miami, we could rent a boat from the Bahamas,” she says.

  “Yeah, but what a pain, and the expense…”

  “My boss will cover the expense. We just have to find the right crew, seedy enough to nearly break the law but decent enough to protect our behinds.”

  Shoshanna nods. Amaryllis understands they are cut from the same cloth. Both women have come too far to turn away now from the tower.

  #

  At an old-fashioned steakhouse where they meet to plan their next move, Thorgeld is wild about the idea of hiring Capt. Johnny and the reggae boatmen from Freeport City. He likes the idea of staying away from possible entanglement with the FBI. If they use Bahamian nationals, they are likely to be untraceable.

  “But what about Cruz and Hewitt? You realize Pitch has them patrolling every boating rental establishment in the whole area, don’t you?” he asks while eyeing a juicy t-bone, that has arrived to a neighboring table.

  “Well, the faster we get to Freeport City, the better then,” Amaryllis says, playing with the cubes in her iced tea. The thought of Hewitt puts a damper on her appetite. Sneaky bastard. I swear I saw him at my hotel before I checked out.

  “Not really,” he says. “We have to plan this meticulously. The slightest slip up will put all of us in jail.”

  They sit in silence. Thorgeld, lost in his own thoughts, lets out a dry chuckle. “Of course, if I hunt down someone who knows the Nav-Tech schedule…”

  “How would you know that? You’re British or Swedish or something,” Shoshanna sputters. “Not American, anyway. They aren’t going to tell you Navy secrets.”

  “I’m a citizen of the United Kingdom, originally born in Sweden,” Thorgeld says in a formal tone. “Anyway, you forget that I used to work with Pitch. Some of these folks don’t know he and I have gone our separate ways. One U.S. Navy researcher sat on the Committee when I was there a few years ago.”

  “An oceanographer?” Amaryllis asks.

  “Yes, indeed, he was employed doing sonograms of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. We used him several times to discredit the blokes who thought Atlantis was part of that chain of undersea mountains.” He laughs again. “Atlantis might be there, but if it is, it’s coated under about forty feet of volcanic rock.”

  Amaryllis gets the feeling that Thorgeld cringes at the world Atlantis. He certainly avoided it in his book whenever possible, opting for phrases such as “drowned civilization” or “antediluvian societies.” Shoshanna must be picking up on the same thought because she begins telling the derivation of the word, as if defending the legendary name.

  “You can laugh at the word Atlantis all you want, big shot,” Shoshanna huffs. “The ‘atl’ sound is unique in that it almost always has to do with the lost civilization, or Atlas, the god who held the world on his shoulders,” Shoshanna says. She tells them that the “atl” sound can be found in societies as diverse as the Aztec, who called the ancestral domain the Aztlan, to the Basques, who speak of Atlaintika, to the Canary Islanders, where Atalaya is still the name of an area where many local residents live. The Vikings spoke of Atli, and the Phoenicians jealously guarded their secret of Antilla, where they traded for riches. In fact, Shoshanna says, it’s hard to find a society that does not have a myth of a flood and the loss of a precious land. And most of the names of those lands contain variants of the “atl” sound.

  Thorgeld nods, eyebrows raised at the tempest he has unleashed. It probably is the Viking part of Shoshanna’s lecture that catches his interest. He tells Amaryllis how Shoshanna linked the ancient texts of Enoch—the parts that were left out of the Bible—to the script of ancient Mediterranean peoples. Enoch was often linked to the Egyptian god of knowledge, Thoth, and Shoshanna and Thorgeld are close to making a connection between these Enochian texts and Egyptian writing that pre-date full-fledged hieroglyphics.

  Amaryllis is spellbound at what she’s hearing. This would make a complete timeline from Atlantis straight to Egypt and then on to the Bible. Language moving from one mother tongue in the Atlantic and moving east toward the purported cradle of civilization. No wonder the Committee was so worried and eager to stamp out “cult archaeology.” She laughs inside. All she did was stumble upon some pyramids and swipe a crystal gem, but now…her mind begins to reel. She’s starting to believe.

  “If my Navy man can help, we’ll catch a private plane to the Bahamas tomorrow,” Thorgeld says, hoisting a beer and leaving Amaryllis in awe of the linguist’s connections.

  #

  As they hoped, the Navy oceanographer responds on the spot to Thorgeld’s e-mail. When he, Shoshanna, and Amaryllis head back to the little Internet café to check, the Navy man sends an attachment with the schedules and watches at Nav-Tech stations. He even signs off thanking Thorgeld for continuing his “good work keeping the nuts at bay.” Thorgeld chuckles as he sends the attachment to the café’s printer.

  After the printer spits out the schedule, Thorgeld finds a spare table and spreads out a large map of the waters between Florida and the Bahamas. He sketches out the immense swath of ocean that Nav-Tech occupies. He marks an area in the northeast corner where the tower is situated. It’s on the border between naval and Bahamian waters.

  “We can’t dive at night,” Thorgeld says, sucking in his cheeks as he thinks. “So we have to find a time of day when the watch is changing and there is enough sun to get our work done.”

  After running her finger through columns of numbers, Shoshanna finds a break. It’s just after dawn. The watch changes and a new boat is put out to sea to monitor the tower. But, she notes, in order to make the shuffle of personnel, the surveillance team must go to Andros Island to fetch the new boat and crew.

  “It doesn’t give us long, but it gives us enough time to take photos and inspect carvings. If we’re lucky, we’ll be heading back to Freeport before the new ship
arrives.”

  Thorgeld looks at the numbers and gazes up at Amaryllis with a question in his eyes.

  “Yes, I’ve done this sort of diving before,” she says. “Let’s just get there before the Committee blows the tower up.”

  #

  Amaryllis’ cell phone trills just after they step off the light plane in Freeport City. Although her ears are still popping, she flips the phone open, amazed once again that it’s getting a signal. She doesn’t even want to think what the roaming charges will cost.

  “Amy, what is a Torre ?” It’s Donny, and he sounds as close as if he were next to her.

  “Donny, how did you get through? Last time, I couldn’t get anyone on the cell phone. It only rang once and it was Wright, with a lot of bothersome questions.” Her chest tightens as she recalls the circumstances of that conversation. It feels as if it happened years ago, but it was only last week. She wishes she could erase the whole thing and keep the guilty feelings from straying to her voice.

  “Just the magic touch, I guess. But you still haven’t answered my question. What’s a Torre and what does it have to do with the murder case?”

  “He used to be the manager of the New York Yankees,” she says with a touch of sarcasm. She waits for his snicker before continuing, “It’s everything to this case. No one acknowledges that it exists, but if you do a Lexis-Nexis search…”

  “Which I’m doing right now.”

  “You’ll see that it’s in the right area where my mom and dad would have been diving.”

  Donny is silent for a few seconds, obviously sizing up the fortress they are about to attack. “How are you going to get in there?”

  “We figured out a way.”

  “Who’s we?” Suspicion creeps into his voice.

  “Isaac Thorgeld, for one.”

  “Really? In the flesh?”

  “Yup.”

  “Well, okay, I hope he’s really on your side. But don’t worry, I’ll be watching your every move.”

  Amaryllis tries to decipher that last comment and can’t make any sense of it. He’s stuck in Chicago, where by now, the crocuses are just pushing their way through the snow.

  “Donny? What has the FBI found?” This phone call is going to cost a fortune. She just lets it roll. It’s all on Wright’s dime, anyway.

  “They nabbed Ricketts based on what I furnished them. I didn’t explain everything about the Committee to them. I don’t think they’d believe it, anyhow. But they have plenty of circumstantial evidence on Ricketts. Fibers from Garrett’s clothing, syringes and traces of Versed. Plus, he has no alibi for the night of the kidnapping.”

  “Will he rat out the others?”

  “Probably.” Static stands in for his thoughts. “I think the only guy Ricketts truly is afraid of is Pitch.” More static. “We called the British Museum—that’s where Pitch works—and the big man is on a sudden business trip.”

  A tension headache threatens, squeezing like an ill-fitting swimming cap.

  “Where?”

  “Don’t worry. He’s probably still an ocean away. Anyway, I’m keeping tabs on you.”

  They say their goodbyes, not knowing if they’ll get a signal again. She turns to her new friends. Now comes the part she dreads,, waiting for the right hour to make their assault and hoping Cruz and Hewitt don’t make a sudden appearance.

  #

  A violet light shading all the figures of her morning dreams signals that the orb is at work again. Amaryllis turns over in her sleep trying to will away the intrusion.

  A disaster. The office has been tossed from ceiling to floor. Files are spilled out, precious artifacts stolen from the locked cabinets in the professor’s office. Worst of all, the manuscript is missing. There are other copies, but losing the manuscript means a loss of secrecy. There’s no way to stay here anymore. The sea calls. It’s the only place to go.

  The woman races to the red Ford parked outside and speaks in a rush to the tall man behind the wheel; together, they cart away papers, carvings, stellae, vases, albums of photographs. They finally fling a picture of a young girl into the back seat. She is somber with dark curling hair and hazel eyes that bore right through the veils of dream. She’s looking for a future that no one else can see.

  Amaryllis wakes in an irritable mood, pencils in the dream images to her growing journal, and dresses for a dive. She stomps outdoors to find a squall has put them out of business for a day, so it’s back to shorts and a t-shirt. She spends the afternoon puzzling over the dreams and just how her parents had been harassed out of their jobs. It’s all so hazy, with no facts to back it up. But Amaryllis has learned to trust the images. They are all she has.

  The next morning breaks bright and glistening. The water sings to Amaryllis, its vibrant turquoise radiating purity from the horizon to the apex of the sky. The weather reports call for continued calm. She leaves Thorgeld and Shoshanna eating junk food and playing cards and goes to find the reggae boat crew. They are in the same slip and remain in the same condition in which she left them: the captain sits smoking a cigarette while the kid with the Rasta dreadlocks bangs the side of the boat to the rhythm of his boom box. Amaryllis gets their attention and tells them where she wants to go, and the captain starts to shake his fat-cheeked head, but the boy stops banging and brightens like a small child.

  “More cash,” he says. The captain tosses him a look that could knock a man overboard, but the kid keeps smiling.

  “Let’s say three hundred dollars,” Amaryllis offers.

  “American?”

  She nods. The captain looks down at his ship’s wheel and returns the nod. The young guy in the bandana dances on the deck.

  “But we must be quiet. No reggae!” The captain has lost his good-natured smile now. “They test sound there. One noise and we are dead.”

  Amaryllis nods and the kid stands at attention. She sets the time for tomorrow, an hour before dawn. The young man looks unhappy at that but cheers up when the captain tells him they’ll be able to do two runs of passengers that day—which means more money.

  She shakes hands with the tubby sailor, who finally cracks a smile, showing off one gold tooth next to the nicotine-stained one. Business has been good for him. She trots back to the hotel where Thorgeld and Shoshanna are involved in a fierce game of Go Fish.

  CHAPTER TWENTY: DEATH’S DOOR

  She leaps into the driver’s seat and moves the vehicle in random circles on the deserted street. He watches, his face contorted in fear. She never learned to drive a car with manual transmission, and now, she was just playing. He yells as she moves into traffic. The palm trees blow as she makes a right-hand turn and jitters and jerks around the block. When she swings by again, he grabs the passenger door and jumps in, breathing like a storm .She kills the engine when attempting a left-hand turn. He leans over and grabs the wheel, reeling the still-moving vehicle onto the shoulder of the road just as an eighteen-wheeler truck speeds by, blowing his horn.

  “In Florida, I take care of you. Do you hear me?” She lowers her head and nods.

  This dream doesn’t seem to fit with the others, but it must impart important information, otherwise, why else is she sensing the crystal’s power? Whenever these projections play at the back of her mind, Amaryllis hears a distant music and the singing of a chant long forgotten. She jots down the dream, wondering why her father was so anxious about his mother’s safety. Is this a warning for what lies ahead today, the day of the Nav-Tech dive?

  It’s four in the morning, much too early for anyone to be taking a pleasure cruise of the Caribbean. As they set out in Captain Johnny’s fishing boat, they are encompassed in murky gloom, Amaryllis sees only distant lights of other boats—mostly large naval craft that are moored at Nav-Tech’s many docks.

  True to his word, the captain has made the journey to the tower as quiet as possible. Before they are close enough to be heard, he turns off the motor and lets the boat glide for a while. The sea is working in their favor, for swells pu
sh them ever closer to the peak that juts out of the waves like a wet knife. Thorgeld produces an armload of high-tech gadgets, including night-vision goggles. Amaryllis holds them up and studies the scene, which looks green and black, like some sort of horror film. The tower is supposed to be funnel shaped, but she can’t see any opening at the top. It simply looks sharp, like a finely split blade of obsidian.

  “Don’t drop anchor until you see the watch change,” Amaryllis whispers to the captain. Silence drops like a blanket on everyone in the boat. In the distance, they see a small patrol boat stationed at the Nav-Tech border. Amaryllis takes the goggles again and sees another Navy boat bobbing near the tower. It looks like a ghost ship, for no crew members are on deck.

  They wait for what must only be ten minutes, but each second passes by with Johnny’s passengers maintaining the concentration of a tiger stalking a wildebeest, slow and deliberate. Amaryllis sits on the deck in her wet suit, trying to preoccupy herself with checking the meters on her air tanks and feeling the tubes for leaks. She doesn’t anticipate this to be a long dive, but the tanks are filled to capacity, nonetheless. The tower may poke through the surface of the water, but no one knows how far down the base sits. Here in this relatively shallow area, the ocean floor is forty-five feet down.

  Next to her, Shoshanna stares at the stars, and Amaryllis follows the gaze. Away from the city, she’s always astounded at the number of lights in the sky. With the moon at just a sliver, the stars and planets seem brighter still. Venus, her favorite night traveler, grabs her interest and she watches it pulsate with subtle, rhythmic light and energy. She imagines its hazy, foggy atmosphere filled to overflowing with saturated light. Inside her head, she thinks of the ancient peoples—maybe the ones who lived here—watching the same Morning Star and tracking its glowing, shimmering pearlescence.