by A. G. Riddle
Dorian turned to the Immari special ops soldier beside him. “They’re moving on. Find us a helicopter. We need to get out of here.”
82
Malta
From the helicopter’s window, David could see the entire small city of Rabat below. It was nothing like he expected.
Rabat was deserted, utterly abandoned, as if every soul had fled the tiny town with only the clothes on their backs. When the plague hit, the people here would have flocked to one of Malta’s two Orchid Districts, either Victoria or Valletta.
Across from him, he scanned Janus’s and Chang’s faces. Blank. Impassive. Through the split in the helicopter’s seats, he could see the reflection of Shaw’s and Kamau’s faces in the glass. Blank. Hard. Focused. The six of them would be alone in Rabat, and Martin’s killer would make his move—for Kate, or for the cure, or for whatever his endgame was.
David glanced out the window again, and his mind drifted to history, to safety, to what he knew best.
Rabat lay on the other side of Mdina, the old capital of Malta, a city historians believed had been settled before 4000 B.C.
Malta itself had first been settled by a mysterious group that had migrated down from Sicily around 5200 B.C.
In the twentieth century, archaeologists had found megalithic temples all over the two islands of Malta: eleven in total, seven of which had since been declared UNESCO World Heritage Sites. They were true wonders of the world. Some scientists believed them to be the oldest freestanding structures on the planet. Yet, no one knew who built them or why. They dated back to 3600 B.C. or possibly even earlier. The age of the structures—the history of Malta itself—was an anomaly, a fact that didn’t fit into the current understanding of human history.
The dark ages of ancient Greece only reached back to 1200 B.C. The first civilizations, first cities, in places like Sumer, only dated back to 4500 B.C. Akkadia had been settled around 2400 B.C., and Babylon, supposedly, 1900 B.C. Even Stonehenge, the closest megalithic monuments, at least in character, was thought to have been created in 2400 B.C.—which was still over a thousand years after some mysterious group had built the towering temples on the isolated island of Malta. There was no explanation for Malta’s megalithic structures; their history, and the history of the people who built them, had been lost to the ages.
Historians and archaeologists still debated the birthplace of civilization. Many argued that settlements had arisen in the Indus Valley of present-day India or the Yellow River Valley of present-day China, but the overwhelming consensus was that civilization, defined as functioning, permanent human settlements, had been founded around 4,500 years ago somewhere in the Levant or the wider region of the Fertile Crescent—thousands of miles from Malta.
Yet the remains of those primitive settlements in the Fertile Crescent were sparse and crumbling; a stark contrast to the undeniable, comparatively impressive, and technically advanced stone structures on Malta—which may have predated them. An isolated civilization had thrived here, had erected structures to some higher power, but had somehow vanished without a trace, leaving no history, save for the temples where they had worshiped.
The first settlers on Malta to leave a historical record were the Greeks, followed by the Phoenicians around 750 B.C. About three hundred years later, the Carthaginians succeeded the Phoenicians on Malta, but their reign was cut short with the arrival in 216 B.C. of the Romans, who conquered the islands in a few short years.
During the Roman rule of Malta, the governor had built his palace in Mdina. Almost a thousand years later, in 1091, the Normans had conquered Malta and altered the city of Mdina forever. The Nordic invaders had built defensive fortifications and a wide moat, separating Mdina from the nearest town—Rabat.
Perhaps the most enduring legend of Mdina, however, was that of St. Paul. In the year A.D. 60, the apostle Paul had lived there after having been shipwrecked on Malta.
Paul had been on his way to Rome—against his will. The man who would later be declared an apostle was to be tried as a political rebel. Paul’s ship was caught in a violent storm and wrecked on the Maltese coast. All aboard swam safely to land, some two hundred seventy-five people in total.
Legend has it that the Maltese inhabitants took Paul and the other survivors in. According to St. Luke:
And later we learned that the island was called Malta.
And the people who lived there showed us great kindness,
and they made a fire and called us all to warm ourselves…
Luke’s testament relates that as the fire was lit, Paul was bitten by a venomous snake but suffered no ill effects. The islanders took this as a sign that he was a special man.
According to tradition, the apostle took refuge in a cave in Rabat, opting to live a humble existence underground, refusing the comfortable surroundings offered to him.
During the winter, Publius, the Roman governor of Malta, invited Paul to his palace. While Paul was there, he cured Publius’s father of a serious illness. Publius is then said to have converted to Christianity and was made the first Bishop of Malta. In fact, Malta had been one of the first Roman colonies to convert to Christianity.
“Where should we land?” Kamau called over the radio, interrupting David’s reverie.
“In the square,” David said.
“At the Church of St. Paul?”
“No. The catacombs are a little farther away. Put us down in the square. I’ll lead the way.”
He had to focus. Some mysterious group had settled Malta, and the world had fought over this tiny island for thousands of years since. Legends of miraculous healing, evidence of megalithic stone temples that predated civilizations around the world, and now, something on Malta was saving refugees from the plague. How did it all fit together?
He turned to Kate as the helicopter landed. “Can you walk?”
She nodded.
David thought she seemed… distant. Was she okay? He had the irresistible urge to put his arm around her, but she was already out of the helicopter, and the two scientists were shuffling out of their seats, following her.
Shaw and Kamau joined them.
“I assumed the catacombs would be under St. Paul’s Church,” Janus said.
“No,” David half-shouted over the dying roar of the helicopter behind them. He glanced over at St. Paul’s Church, the stone building that had been built in the seventeenth century atop the cave—now referred to as St. Paul’s Grotto—where the apostle had lived so simply.
As the group cleared the helicopter’s dying roar, David explained. “The catacombs are just ahead. For sanitary reasons, the Romans wouldn’t allow their citizens to bury their dead inside the city walls of the capital of Mdina. They built an extensive subterranean network of catacombs—burial chambers—here in Rabat, just beyond the city walls.” David wanted to add more—the historian in him could hardly resist. The catacombs in Rabat held the bodies of Christian, Pagan, and Jewish bodies, laid side by side, like members of the same denomination, an act of religious tolerance almost unheard of in Roman times, where many officials routinely persecuted religious leaders.
At the same time that the families of Pagans, Jews, and Christians were laying their loved ones to rest in adjacent subterranean burial chambers in the catacombs of Roman Malta, a man named Saul of Tarsus, a Jew and a Roman citizen, was zealously persecuting the early followers of Jesus. Saul had violently tried to destroy the upstart Christian church in its infancy but later converted to Christianity on his way to Damascus—after Jesus’s death on the cross. Saul of Tarsus would become known as the apostle Paul, and the catacombs in Rabat had been renamed in his honor.
David focused on the task at hand.
They ducked down another alley, and he stopped at a stone building. The sign read:
MUSEUM DEPARTMENT
S. PAUL’S
CATACOMBS
Janus pushed the iron gate open, then the heavy wood door, and the group wandered into the museum’s lobby.
&
nbsp; The large marble-floored room was quiet, eerily still. The walls were adorned with placards, photos, and paintings. Glass cases were filled with stone items, and smaller artifacts David couldn’t make out crowded several corridors off the main room. Yet all eyes focused on David.
“What now?” Chang asked.
“We set up camp here,” David said.
As soon as the words were spoken, Kamau cleared off a table, set down his duffel bag, and began sorting their weapons: handguns, assault rifles, and body armor.
Janus rushed to Kate and held a hand out for the backpack. “May I?”
Kate handed him the backpack absently, and Janus began setting up a research station. He powered up the computer and connected it to the thermos-like device that Martin had given Kate to extract DNA samples.
Janus placed the sat phone on the table. “Should we call Continuity? Report our status?”
“No,” David said. “We only call when we have something to report. No sense in… revealing our location.”
He glanced at the phone. One member of the team had been doing just that—revealing their location. He grabbed the phone from the table and handed it to Kate. “Hang on to this.”
Shaw stood a few feet from Kamau, watching him sort the weapons and armor. David locked eyes with him, and they each stared for a moment.
Shaw broke off first. He strolled nonchalantly to one of the small tables flanking the stairwell that descended into the catacombs. He picked up a folded brochure and began reading it.
“What now, David?” Shaw asked casually. “We wait for a medieval knight to come wandering out, and we ask him if he’s seen an old stone box?”
Janus spoke up, trying to break the tension. “I want to point out the urgency of our situation—”
“We’re going in,” David said.
Kamau took the words as a cue. He attached his body armor and handed another set to David.
“It’s a needle in a haystack,” Shaw said. He held up the brochure. “The network is extensive. Only a few of the catacombs are normally open to the public, but this… device could be anywhere down there. We’re talking miles of tunnels.”
David tried to read Kate’s expression. It was emotionless, almost cold. Was she having another flashback?
“I feel we should split up,” Janus said. “We can cover more ground.”
“Wouldn’t that be… dangerous?” Chang said sheepishly.
“We could go in teams of two: one soldier, one scientist in each one,” Janus said.
David considered the proposal. His other choices were leaving someone behind, here in the museum, where they could close the catacombs or acquire backup. He had no good options.
“Okay,” David said. “Shaw and Chang, lead the way.” David wanted to put his two suspects together, have them break off first, put distance between them and the rest of the group. “Kamau and Janus next. Kate and I will bring up the rear.”
“We have no bloody clue what’s down there,” Shaw half-shouted. “I’m not going down there unarmed. You can shoot me if you like, David.”
David walked to the table, picked up a tactical assault knife and threw it at Shaw, point first. Shaw caught it by the handle. His eyes flashed.
“You’re armed. You’re going first, or I will shoot you. Try me.”
Shaw paused for a moment, then turned and led the way down the stairway, followed closely by Chang and then the other four.
83
St. Paul’s Catacombs
Rabat, Malta
The catacombs were musty and dark. The museum lighting system wasn’t functioning, but the glow of the LED lanterns revealed a scattering of display cases and write-ups where tours would pause and read about the chambers.
After about ten minutes, the tunnel split.
“We rendezvous in the lobby in one hour, no matter what. Turn back if you don’t find anything,” David said. “Try to make a map of where you’ve been.”
“Sure thing, Mom. Back in an hour, and we’ll bring our homework,” Shaw snapped. He turned and led Chang down the darkened corridor.
Kate, David, Kamau, and Janus walked in silence after that. Five minutes later, the tunnel forked again. Kamau and Janus edged toward the new path.
“Good luck, David,” Kamau said.
Janus nodded to both Kate and David.
“You too,” David said.
He and Kate walked without a word for a bit. When David thought they were out of earshot of the others, he stopped. “Tell me you know what’s going on here. What’s saving the people in Malta from the plague?”
“I don’t know. In the past, I saw the Ark, but I don’t know what happened to it. I saw the Immaru carrying it into the highlands, but I don’t know what happened after that.”
“There are megalithic stone temples here that are almost six thousand years old—the oldest known ruins in the world. There are legends of miraculous healing dating back to the Roman period, when St. Paul landed on Malta. Could the Immaru have brought the Ark here for safekeeping?”
“It’s possible,” Kate said, seeming distracted.
“How can it be healing these people?”
“I don’t know—”
“What’s inside it?”
“The body of Adam, our alpha—the first person we gave the Atlantis Gene. At this point, just his bones.”
“How could his bones be healing people?”
“I… I don’t know. We did something to him in the past. I was there, but I couldn’t see it. I couldn’t even see my partner’s face. The human genome was splintering—we were having trouble managing the experiment.”
“The… experiment.”
Kate nodded but didn’t elaborate. “David, something is happening to me. It’s hard to concentrate. There’s something else. Dorian was there—”
“Here—”
“No. He was there in the past. I think he has the memories of another Atlantean, a soldier named Ares who came to Earth after the science expedition.”
David stood there, stunned.
“How?”
“He was on the expedition, in Gibraltar. The tubes were reprogrammed to his radiation signature. When Dorian was put in there after the Spanish flu outbreak, he must have awakened with the memories, the same way I got the scientist’s memories.”
“Incredible,” David whispered. A new kind of fear slowly surrounded him, setting in slowly. Dorian had knowledge of the past, possibly even more than Kate. That gave him a tactical advantage.
“What’s your plan, David?”
David snapped back to the moment, to the dimly lit stone tunnel. “We find whatever is down here, see if we can use it to find a cure, then get the hell out of here.”
“The others?”
“One of them is a killer and a traitor. We leave them down here. We have to put some distance between us. It’s the only way to secure you.”
Kate followed David through the tunnel.
The catacombs reminded her of the stone passages Martin had led her through below Marbella. In fact, the small town of Rabat itself reminded her a great deal of Marbella.
Kate felt as though a memory were just out of reach—the conclusion of her old life, the balance of the truth of what had happened in Gibraltar. Yet, she felt that if she allowed it to come in, the last of her would flow out. And she would lose David. To her, the memory uncovered was the greatest enemy down here, but she knew David was right: a killer lurked in one of the other tunnels.
84
CDC
Atlanta, Georgia
Dr. Paul Brenner slowly opened the door to his nephew’s private hospital room.
The boy lay still. Panic ran through Paul.
A second passed, and Matthew’s chest rose slightly.
A breath.
Paul gently pulled the door closed.
“Uncle Paul!” Matthew called as he rolled over and coughed.
“Hey, Matt. I was just checking on you.”
“Where�
�s Mom?”
“Your mother’s… still helping me with something.”
“When can I see her?”
Paul froze, not sure what to say. “Soon,” he mumbled absently.
Matthew sat up and broke into another fit of coughing, spraying tiny specks of blood onto his hand.
Paul stared at the droplets of blood that slowly began to flow across the boy’s hand, coalescing into small ravines of red.
Matthew eyed it, then wiped his hand on his shirt.
Paul grabbed his arm. “Don’t wipe it—just… wait, I’m going to get a nurse.” He rose and fled the room. He heard Matthew call to him, but Paul was already out of the room, walking quickly. He couldn’t watch, couldn’t stay in the room another second. I’m finally breaking, losing it, he thought.
He wanted to go to his office, lock the door, and wait until the whole thing, the whole world was over.
His assistant rose at the sight of him. “Dr. Brenner, you have a message—”
He waved his hand at her as he quickly paced past. “No messages, Clara.”
“It’s from the World Health Organization,” she said. She held up two pieces of paper. “And another from British intelligence.”
Paul snatched the pages out of her hand and read them quickly. Then he read them again. He turned and stumbled into his office, his eyes still on the pages. What does it mean?
He closed the door and quickly dialed Kate Warner. The sat phone didn’t ring. Straight to voicemail. Was it off? Out of reception?
“Kate, it’s Paul. Uh, Brenner.” Of course she knew which “Paul.” Somehow even leaving a message for Kate made him nervous. “Look, I heard from my contact at WHO. It seems there’s no record of a Dr. Arthur Janus. And I also heard from British intelligence. They have no agents named Adam Shaw. They even checked the classified records.” He paused, not sure what to add. “I hope you’re okay, Kate.”