Dateline: Atlantis

by LYNN VOEDISCH

  Thorgeld ends the pensive reprieve, jabbing her in the ribs and pointing into the distance. The Navy patrol boat is moving off, and clouds are beginning to redden in the eastern sky. She and Shoshanna zip up their suits and put on their tanks and fins. The captain steers close to the tower and drops anchor. The sun pokes above the horizon, and it’s time for the show to begin.

  When she splashes backward into the water, Amaryllis has the familiar problem of not being able to tell up from down, east from west, and forgetting to breathe. She dog paddles a bit before getting her bearings, takes deep breaths, and the lets herself sink to a shallow depth. In front of them, behind the murky haze, stands the tower. It resembles a black funnel more than a chimney now. But as they near the structure, it becomes apparent that there is no funnel, the top is merely chipped and weathered. It probably had a triangular top before lightning, windstorms, and tempests worked their way on the black stone. Beneath the waves, the structure widens as it stretches toward the sea bottom.

  Amaryllis kicks her frog fins and drifts near enough to touch the tower. She half expects it to send a bolt of electricity through her body, but all she feels is slick stone. Even in the soft light of dawn, it’s easy to see that this is another pyramidal structure—only not a stepped building like the ones she’s seen before, but a smooth-sided pyramid.

  Shoshanna is gesturing and Amaryllis goes down further to see a wall, covered with crustaceans. Shoshanna pokes with her diving knife at a small crevice and the shells and debris fall away, leaving clearly carved characters engraved upon the wall. The women work feverishly, cleaning as much of the wall as they can and photographing the final images. Amaryllis recognizes characters she saw on the submerged pyramid in the Yucatan. Even the jaguar sign that Gabriel decoded is there, incised for the ages.

  Shoshanna bobs her head with excitement. She mimes reading a book, and Amaryllis realizes Shoshanna has cracked the linguistic code. She can read what these glyphs say—or at least partially. But there’s no way to learn what words Shoshanna has discovered until they re-surface. The frustration is keen, but Amaryllis tries to keep her mind focused on the task at hand.

  Stomach squeezing from nerves, Amaryllis gestures for Shoshanna to keep moving downward. The water is fairly shallow here and they stay on the lookout for other divers or shadows of boats. Amaryllis prays that Thorgeld, up on the surface, is surveying the area every second for sharks.

  When their fins touch bottom, the number of engravings before them is staggering. Even the heavy coating of barnacles can’t cover what must be an ancient text. Amaryllis hopes the flashlights give Shoshanna enough light to boost the flash on her underwater digital camera. She looks to be reading along as she documents each area of the wall. Amaryllis creeps along, feeling the letters of these unknown glyphs, until her fingers reach an empty space. A hole? Damage from a ship?

  She looks to the right and sees an opening in the pyramid that appears to be an arched doorway. The divers stand on the sandy sea bottom and aim their flashlights into the door. What they see would have made them gasp if they hadn’t been hooked up to air tanks to stay alive. Inside, the walls were covered with writing, only these samples are far less eroded. Without a moment’s thought, Amaryllis swims through the door, and Shoshanna follows.

  The next second, the water blurs, and the walls seem to move about in a crazy dance of their own. There’s a swirling object near Amaryllis that she can sense through her wetsuit. It’s as if a monstrous fish has set off a violent wake. She fights to turn about, fighting against the resistance of the sea and in an instant, she’s slammed against a back wall. She looks at the clearing water and sees the hand of an unknown diver—a male hand—pushing her, maneuvering her away from the doorway. A portion of the man’s face is visible now; long nose, pointed chin. He’s tall and thin, like a scarecrow in a wetsuit. Fear pounds in her temples and she averts her eyes, but he holds something before her face. Where have I seen him before? The face. The long pointed face. The laughing man I saw in the crystal.

  Amaryllis is about to lose her wits. She looks about for Shoshanna, but her face mask obscures most of her peripheral vision. From what she can tell, her partner must be moving toward the attacker, probably with the intent to disarm him. She scrutinizes the object in her attacker’s hands. It’s a diving knife, bright and lethal looking with an eight-inch blade. She recoils, the sound her thundering heart sounding like a roomful of tribal drums. Thinking he means to stab her. But he’s not aiming the dangerous blade at her, he’s displaying it, like a trophy. And then she notices the initials carved in the handle—K. L. For Kristoff Lang. She reaches for her own knife, but the man drifts away out of reach. He maneuvers around Shoshanna, who is wasting energy trying to tackle this eel of a human. She has her knife out and is slashing, but she can’t make contact with his slippery movement. He swims like a sea snake to the door. Before Amaryllis can push away from the wall, she hears a low thud that sets up powerful vibrations in the water. The interior of the pyramid goes black.

  The man shut the door. Thrashing in the dark, Amaryllis attempts to force the opening, but can’t tell where the gap had been. She presses against stone after stone, and none of them yield. She struggles, thrusting against rock and water until she realizes there’s nothing she and Shoshanna can do except pray that Thorgeld realizes they’ve been down too long and engineers a rescue.

  Amaryllis scratches her nails against the limestone walls, feeling for an opening. She remembers the coroner’s report and her stomach contracts.

  I’m going to die my parents’ death.

  #

  Pitch surfaces and makes his way to a small launch manned only by Cruz. It’s hidden behind the tower, away from the Bahamian boat. Thanks to his old friendship with a retired Navy captain, Pitch was able to get clearance for his dawn trip to the tower, but he dared take only one crewman. That blasted Caine wanted to send his goons in, but Pitch wouldn’t hear of it.

  He smiles to himself at the simplicity of this operation. It was easy enough to figure when the dangerous Lang woman would make her move. He canvassed every boating outfit from Nassau to Freeport City until he found one that scheduled a boat in Nav-Tech’s general direction. The company logged it as “private dive” and booked it under Thorgeld’s name. The captain wouldn’t give any details, but Pitch had all the information he needed. The time was written on the log-sheet, and Pitch has no trouble reading upside down.

  Now, having made his kill, Pitch enjoys a rejuvenating rush bursting through all his cells. He swims strongly to the launch and nearly hoists himself aboard single-handedly. What power to have the ability to shut the door on a life. A couple of troublesome lives at that. He doesn’t get a chance for this sort of rough stuff too often, thanks to that brute Caine. Usually, when violence is warranted, he chooses Cruz or Caine’s boys to do the dirty work. But this time, he wants to delight in the delicious irony of seeing Miss Amaryllis Lang die the same way her loathsome parents succumbed. The Knox woman is just extra pleasure. He’ll deal with Thorgeld at another time.

  Cruz is babbling at him, but he hasn’t removed his goggles or wetsuit yet, so he has no idea what the man is going on about. When he finally clears his ears, he realizes that Cruz is yelling, gesticulating toward the distance, saying something about patrol vessels coming their way. One is headed toward the Bahamian fishing vessel where he is sure Thorgeld is on board. Good, they’ll pick him up for trespassing. The other is bound in Pitch’s direction. No problem. He’ll merely show them his clearance pass.

  “It’s not Navy,” Cruz says, pointing at the cutter that’s charging their way. It is still a long way in the twilit distance, but Pitch can discern, through binoculars, that the insignia is indeed not naval. Maybe Coast Guard. Then he thinks with a sudden burst of intuition and panic that he’s been linked with that kidnapping Ricketts had bungled or maybe even with the guard Caine’s cretins murdered.

  Conflict rises in his esophagus, because he needs to wait another
twenty minutes, after those women are good and dead, to open the door again. It wouldn’t do to have them locked up in there, contaminating the space. As much as Pitch hates the fact that the tower stands, he still maintains the archaeologist’s love of artifacts. He simply can’t let the tower be desecrated by dead bodies. It must be left as it was found, in situ. It’s bad enough that the Navy installed that makeshift door to keep intruders out. More desecration of the ruin is unthinkable.

  The boat is far away enough for Pitch to make another dive and finish those two off with the knife, if they aren’t dead already. It’s a bit messier and not true to plan, but it will have to do. Let Cruz deal with the questions on the surface. Pitch readjusts his gear and begins to ready himself for another dive. Cruz tackles him and holds back his arms. With a snarl, Cruz begins to shout.

  “You can’t go back down there and leave me alone. Those are CIA guys, or worse. I’ll spend my life in Guantanamo Bay for being here. You’re going to stay and give them the smooth talk.”

  “Deal with it yourself. Here,” Pitch says, tossing the plastic clearance pass toward Cruz as he shakes his arms free. Cruz pockets the pass, calm at first, then he scowls and turns russet red.

  “They won’t believe that belongs to me,” Cruz shouts, taking a flying lunge at Pitch, who barely sidesteps the attack.

  Pitch responds by pulling out the diver’s knife, holding it up to the light, and then burying it deep into Cruz’s chest. It takes a great deal of effort, but Pitch has found the essential spot: just between the ribs and over toward the left lung. He turns the knife slowly to cut the major arteries. The Cuban stands for a second, his face registering pain and utter astonishment. Then he tumbles, with grace at first, then like a ton of meat, to the launch’s rail. Pitch upends his feet and lets him sink. As the body descends, Pitch thinks with a bit of sadness that he’s also lost the knife, the one he picked up the last time he made a kill in the tower. He sighs again at the thought that now there is no more time to open the pyramid door.

  He mops what few drops of Cruz’s blood have splattered the launch—it was a clean kill—and wraps the rags in heavy conch shells that litter the boat, tossing the weighted bundles overboard. Off to your sea change. Cruz. May pearls be your eyes. Then he sits and waits for whatever American authorities want to interview him. He tells himself he has no fear of them. He went out by himself in the launch. Who is to say differently? By the time they arrive, Cruz will be shark food.

  #

  Amaryllis’ eyes begin to adjust to the tiny bit of light that is leaking into the pyramid. She looks up and realizes that the filtered sun is shining a tiny bit through the, broken top of the structure. It’s a gift, not a great one, but something that might keep her and Shoshanna alive. She realizes that the light is illuminating a table and elaborate sculpture upon which a crystal is caged. It’s almost a twin to the one she gave to Donny. She wants to grab for it, but merely regards it, trying to take in its power and presence.

  We have no doors.

  That one thought gives her courage, although she is not sure what it means. Taking a precious breath, she keeps her mind focused on staying alive and floats back toward the door the madman flung shut.

  She inspects her tank meter and realizes they have only about ten minutes of air left. With labored strokes, she makes her way toward the area where she can see the stone carvings stop and a single black slab stands in her way. It’s nothing more than hard rubber sheeting, she realizes. It’s the kind of garbage that might have been jettisoned from a barge or cruise ship. Foreign matter. Obviously not part of the original structure. She gestures to Shoshanna who drifts over. Together, they begin to push at the black, unforgiving blockade. It might take all her strength, but moving this ugly plug may be their only way to stay alive.

  They shove and wiggle the rubber, but make no headway. Amaryllis can’t see a lock or any hook, but maybe the fastener is on the outside. Carefully, she takes her diving knife and traces the lines where the sheeting meets the stone. The bubbles she exhales get in the way and she keeps dodging her head to get a good look at her progress. The work is tedious, the light dim, and the air meter keeps running. Trying to breathe at regular intervals, she reaches a point where the knife sticks. She feels a latch of some kind.

  She prays her efforts will work and begins to move the knife up and down, hoping that if the lock is a hook, she can pop it out of its eye. Even if it’s a simple hasp, it should unlatch with enough pressure from her end. Unless he put a padlock on it.

  She turns to her side to gesture to Shoshanna and sees her friend stumble to the seafloor in a rush of bubbles. Shoshanna collapses. She can’t possibly have run out of air before me. Balancing whether to attend to Shoshanna or to redouble her attempts to open the door, Amaryllis forces herself to turn back to the lock. There’s not enough time to do both. She re-inserts her knife into the gap between stone and rubber. Up and down. Breathe. Up and down. Nudge, scrape, breathe. Up and down. It’s becoming a symphony of futility in Amaryllis’ head. Slowly, it dawns on her that this hideous rubber door may be the last thing she sees in her life.

  She looks over at Shoshanna who lets out a weak stream of bubbles. She’s still alive. But for how long? She returns to her work, time slowing to eternity, and feels faint movement. Something is giving way. Working feverishly now, she pushes up and down with her knife until the latch jerks, gives way, and the door rips open.

  There stand two divers. Two men. Amaryllis recoils until her heart gives out a cry. Even in mask and diving gear, one man is recognizable as Donny. She swims to Donny’s arms, and, wasting no time, they ascend by steps, followed by a man bearing Shoshanna, to the surface.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: APOTHEOSIS

  On deck, Amaryllis can’t pull off her diving gear fast enough. Someone pulls the hated burden of the tanks off her shoulders. She turns around and sees Donny’s relieved face. She embraces him, breathing the sweet, fresh air of planet Earth and babbles like an idiot to herself. “I’m alive. I’m alive. Donny, I’m alive.”

  Donny lifts her face to his and kisses her long enough that she runs out of oxygen again. Not knowing whether to laugh or pray, she just collapses onto the deck of the cutter. She sees Shoshanna lying exhausted, arms spread out, on a bank of cushions near the deck’s edge. Navy medics are hovering over her. Amaryllis hopes her friend will pull through. She will just have to wait for their report.

  It takes some bottled water and deep breaths before she can speak. Donny sits on the deck next to her, inspecting her from top to bottom, as if to make sure she’s well enough for the voyage back to shore.

  “How?” she finally gasps after the last of the water is gone. She makes gestures that are supposed to fill in the rest of the sentence, but she knows she’s not making sense.

  “How did we find you?” Donny asks.

  She nods.

  “A great deal has happened since you left Chicago,” he says, putting his arm around her shoulder. “Do you want it all at once or bit by bit?”

  “All of it,” she says, slumping against his warm breast. Despite the warmth of the Caribbean waters, she has become chilled to the bone. Donny’s skin is comforting and his shoulder is just the shape to cradle her cheek.

  “Well, first of all, that cutter out there,” he points out to sea. “is going to apprehend Pitch. It was Pitch, wasn’t it?”

  “The man with the long chin? Lean and lanky?” Donny nods, and she struggles to see where Donny is pointing. He grabs for her hand and shakes his head to console her.

  “Don’t even try, sweetheart. I’ll tell you what is going on.”

  Sweetheart? He’s never said that before. But…it is so wonderful to hear. She nestles next to his chest again. She’s vaguely aware that Thorgeld and Captain Johnny are having an agitated conversation with the Navy crew. They’ve been apprehended and she fears for their safety. She hopes she can get someone to intervene, but her attention falls away as Donny starts speaking

 
Donny has been a busy man since Amaryllis left him in that miserable hotel room in Homestead Beach.

  First, he says, he contacted the FBI and began swapping information about Garret Lucas’ murder. Together, he and the federal agents learned about the Committee. Ricketts was apprehended and confessed, with surprisingly little encouragement, to participating in the kidnapping of Garret Lucas. It didn’t take long for him to blame the members of the Committee and finger Pitch and Cruz as the violent members of this academic band. But there was a surprise in store. No one expected the loquacious Ricketts to spill the beans about Logos and their involvement with Committee assignments. Ricketts reported that the Logos hit men were responsible for Lucas’ death. Learning the Committee knew Amaryllis was in Florida, Donny flew back to Miami. He didn’t want to panic her, so he kept his whereabouts secret while continually keeping track of where she was.

  After checking out Florida dive shops and scuba enthusiasts, he realized there was only one way the Langs could have died. They were far too experienced to go down without enough air. With their weight belts still on and gravel under Mrs. Lang’s fingernails, the consensus of the experts was that the couple had been trapped somewhere—probably in a cave.

  “Then I picked up a business card I’ve been holding onto for weeks,” Donny says.

  “The Fossil,” Amaryllis exclaims, clapping her hands together like a small child.

  “I gave the Fossil a call, and I was on my way to Homestead Beach again. After interviewing every dive shop in town, we finally found a middle-aged scuba specialist who remembered the Langs. After I offered him a little financial incentive, the man remembered that they hinted at diving near Nav-Tech, in restricted water. “

  There is a tower there, Donny learned, reputed by local mythology to be a remnant of Atlantis. Keeping his skeptical lawyer’s hat on, Donny tried to parse the truth from legend. However, no one in the area would discount the story. It’s part of local pride—Atlantis is almost at their back door.