“All done, Doc. We are fully mapping the anomaly. Full HD. We should be able to match the angle of the sides if it is a pyramid. There should then be no doubt.”
Stan nodded. He was still deep in thought. He toyed with contacting Diana but thought that keeping radio silence might be a better course of action at this point. But Diana had sensed otherwise and had come through on the secure line from the HQ ship. The Captain whistled at Stan and gestured him over to the handset.
“Call. Dr Garry. For you, Stan.”
“Hiya. What’s up, Diana?”
“Hi. Just a feeling you are over something important. I have butterflies in my tummy, and it’s not the baby. I feel I should be with you. Is it significant?”
“Yes. Mind-blowing.”
“I am coming. How deep?”
“Pretty deep structures. I can’t say more. It might be what you, er, saw. But how can you come here?”
“We have the ship. She is geared for diving, and the equipment is sound – or so I am told. The Captain is up for it. The doctor has given me the all-clear to travel. It’s my baby as much as our baby is. This ship has past glory for Jacques. Let’s give it one more in his memory!”
“You are mad. Can I possibly persuade you not to come?”
“No. We are already on our way. What’s your position?”
“I will put the Captain on.”
The Captain relayed the coordinates to Diana and then directly onto the commander of the Nostradamus. The ex-diving HQ ship corrected its course and set out for open sea.
In a Cuban listening station, a radio operator triangulated the signals and called to his supervisor.
“Comrade. We have a confirmed signal in the forbidden zone. We are attempting to decrypt the messages. We believe the originator is near the Bahamas. We are aware of 2 survey vessels in the region at this moment. One set sail from Miami yesterday at first light. The other one has been moored off of South Bahama. If it is those vessels, we must board and seize the survey evidence.”
“Da, da. I will inform the Supreme Leader. And Moscow. We may need back up if it becomes an international incident. “
Both men nodded.
XXIII - Rendezvous
At dawn, the ships met up in open water. The UAV had been brought back aboard, as had the sonar equipment. The engineers had uploaded their results to their cloud storage via the satellite link their benefactor had given them. Point to point there was no leakage. They also copied the sonar scans too.
Diana wasted no time in boarding a speedboat and heading over to the other ship. Despite all she had been through, she virtually jumped up onto the vessel and ran up the stairs to the bridge.
“Hi, everyone. I am not missing this for the world. Can you show me the footage of the main structure please?”
“Here you go, my sweet.” Stan beckoned his wife over to the monitor where the HD video of the pyramid-like structure was recorded by the drone’s camera.
Diana looked intently before closing her eyes. Some of the memories of her dream, of her life as Messima, came back to her. She remembered the Great Invocation to Amun-Ra. If this was the same structure, then that embossed writing might still be there.
“Do we have clear footage of the structure a few metres from the top?” She asked.
“No, I am afraid we don’t. But we do have LIDAR. The analysis came back from our base. It’s pretty comprehensive—definitely a pyramid. The top part appears to have an inscription. It appears to be in a script that I can only describe as being quite Sumerian in style and form. I was hoping for hieroglyphs. It looks like I lose my bet.” One of the technicians interrupted. The other two looked at each other and did a High five. “Sweet”.
Diana went over to the technician’s monitor. It surely was The Great Invocation. “Let the light from Amun-Ra come forth into the hearts of all; let love reach down to Earth.” She muttered. The shape of the words for Amun-Ra was very distinctive. She could see them. “Bingo! This is the Pyramid of the Light in the centre of Atlán, the circular city in Atlantis.” She was ecstatic. All her life she had known that Atlantis had been real. And here she was above it. The hairs on the back of her neck were standing on end.
“Merde! We have company!” The Captain exclaimed.
The whole of the crew and passengers aboard the ship looked out of the windows of the bridge. A submarine had surfaced nearby. Judging by its Cyrillic lettering, it was Russian.
The Captain took an ancient-looking key out of his pocket and opened an old teak drawer below his desk with it. Inside he retrieved three revolvers. He put one in his jacket pocket and handed another to his First Mate. The final one he gave to one of the American technicians. “If they board us, we must fight. We are in international waters, and they have no right to interfere.”
Just as things were looking bleak for the survey crew, a Sparrow autogyro appeared. It hovered in front of the window, revealing the intriguing writing along its side of ‘Transatlantic Crown Club’.
“Oh great, so now we have James Bond arriving. We don’t need a spy on board, not unless he’s got an anti-submarine mortar with him. Otherwise, he might as well have brought me curlers!” The Captain spoke and took off his hat to reveal his bald head. The crewman sniggered.
However, the technicians were giving each other more High fives and chatting among themselves.
“What’s the gossip gentlemen?” Asked Stan.
“It’s Velvet Honeycomb. You know. Your benefactor. They must have seen the data feed.”
The tallest of the men ran down the staircase and waved at the autogyro. He gestured for the pilot to go to the back of the ship and land on the helipad there. The strange craft set down on the deck. As soon as the blades had stopped rotating, a woman got out and headed towards the bridge.
A somewhat glamorous dark-haired English woman shook her long dark hair out of her flying helmet. As she arrived, she spoke. “Who is Diana Garry?”
Diana put her hand up and said “I am. And who might you be?”
“I am your mysterious benefactor. But you can call me Tallulah. I must congratulate you on your success. It seems like you have stumbled upon the fabled lost civilisation of Atlantis. Unfortunately, it seems that our Russian friends here were already aware of it. They have orders right from the top to insist that you move off station and return to Port. They are prepared to sink us.”
“You have got to be kidding. We are in international waters. How dare they interfere!” Replied Diana.
“It’s OK, Doctor Garry. We have formulated a plan that, I hope, will be acceptable to all parties.” Tallulah responded.
“Go on, please,” Diana spoke again.
“We need to leave as soon as possible. We get to keep the results we have, and they will be invaluable in years to come. My team can study them. We can’t tell the world about your discovery quite yet. I hope you understand.”
Tallulah made it clear from her speech that there was no room for further negotiation in what she was saying.
Diana was fuming at this. “You have got to be kidding. You can’t just drop in here and tell us to forget all about it. That’s not fair.”
“Life is not fair. Besides, you know the drill. Pont de l’Alma Diana. Don’t play innocent with me. If you made all your finds public, the fabric of society would break down. “
Diana flushed. So much for French secrecy. “And if we agree?”
“Nobody dies Diana. And you get to announce that the Phoenicians reached America in the Bronze Age. Predating Columbus, Cabot and even the Vikings. Quite an achievement. I was hoping for some Atlantean technology from your discoveries, but I guess I will have to bribe the guys down in Antarctica instead. It seems the ice hasn’t been present there as long as the history books say. So, shall we up anchor and sail back to Miami?”
Diana nodded. Her anger was barely contained as she flexed her hands and dug her nails into her palms until they bled. Stan stared at her, and she at him.
Th
e Captain took back his pistols and locked them up once more. He radioed to the other ship their intention to return to port, then turned the boat sharply around before setting a course back to Miami.
Tallulah had prepared a press release for Diana to use upon her return. She spoke to her in private and smoothed out the objections that Diana had about the whole situation. A lifetime’s dream confirmed but forced back into its box. She had wanted to open the lid on Atlantis, but this time Pandora had been foiled.
She wiped away her tears. She had a consolation prize. But in taking it, a small part of her died inside. She had heard tales of cover-ups. Out of place objects and advanced technologies found by other Archaeologists. But she had dismissed them. Yet here she was accepting a large bursary on behalf of her University from a woman who had just done a deal with the Kremlin. She felt sick.
XXIV – Shelved
Diana had not had any part of her previous digs ‘black shelved’ before. But she knew that it could happen to anyone in her profession. She suspected that the Gunung Padang site in Indonesia had been shut down after the team there announced to the world that they believed that their site included a pyramid 10-20,000 years old. It didn’t fit in with the ‘Golden Crescent’ model and nor did an Atlantean site being confirmed in the sea between Cuba and the Bahamas.
So, was she to be a good girl and stick with Tallulah’s plan and avoid professional suicide – or worse – or tell the truth and become a maverick like her father and the others whose careers had been ruined.
As she sat at her desk on her last full day onboard the ship that had been her home for the previous few months before and after her near-fatal accident she told herself that if it was just her decision and her future at stake she would have exposed the site of the Atlantean pyramid temple to the world. But with Stan’s future and that of their child at risk, then she would have to play it safe. At least for now. She had ‘accidentally’ kept a back up of the scan results and as much of the HD footage as would fit on her USB stick—one for her memoirs or a later point when the pretence was finally up. The truth cannot be hidden forever.
She thought back to her long and very lucid dream while in her coma. The details were so precise and yet so damaging as a concept to many of her colleagues and Egyptologists who relied upon the sanctity of the current model of civilisation.
Even the discovery of Gobleki Tepe some years ago with its high-status carvings and carbon dating to some 12,000 years ago did not seem to worry those who kept control of the historical agenda. Its proximity to the biblical Garden of Eden and the Fertile Crescent in the Middle East did not make it a threat. Earlier finds in the Americas or Asia did rather upset it.
The pyramid she had seen in her dream, the pyramid that seemed to match it and its inscription on the seabed off of Cuba could all undermine the delicate balance that history currently held.
Pyramids were a fascinating subject to her. When she was a schoolgirl, she had a poster of the Great Pyramid of Giza. It sat uncomfortably next to Take That on her wall. She had wrongly believed that there were only pyramids in Egypt. But then she heard about the stepped pyramids in Mexico and South America.
The Temple of the Feathered Serpent at Teotihuacan in Mexico was truly spectacular. She had never visited Egypt or Mexico, but she had been to places that reminded her of those sites. She had happened across the hill in Bosnia where a few years later, a maverick archaeologist named Osmanagich announced to the world that he had discovered a giant pyramid under the hillside. She got tingles down her spine on hearing that news since she had pointed out to her father that the hill in question looked just like a pyramid as they drove past it on a tourist trip and even he had laughed it off.
During her time convalescing after her accident, Diana spent a lot of time looking for clues relating to pyramids and other things she had glimpsed in Atlantis.
She discovered that the problem with pyramids wasn’t that they didn’t exist across the world, as they indeed now appear to have been a common feature, but in the names that they had been given.
Even the word ‘pyramid’ was derived from a Greek word, ‘pyramis’ describing the shape of the Egyptian pyramids. The Egyptian name was actually ‘Mer’. The capstone of a pyramid was called ‘ben-ben’, as was the tip of the obelisks such as ‘Cleopatra’s Needle’ now found in London.
The term ‘ben-ben’ related to the sacred benben stone found in the temple of the Sun at Heliopolis. We don’t even know where the name ‘Mer’ originated. In Proto-Indo-European languages, ‘Mer’ means ‘to rub away harm’ or possibly ward away harm. Taking the concept one further, if the pyramids were initially decorated with symbols and knowledge, then one symbol could easily have been the ‘Eye of Ra’ which included an eye. In many cultures surrounding Egypt and the Mediterranean, the eye is used as a talisman to ward off evil or keep away harm.
In her trip to Thailand and other parts of Asia as a backpacker in her year out as a youth, she had spotted features on ancient temples that matched pyramids elsewhere. The serpents or ‘Nagas’ on Buddhist temples were very similar to the snakes on the pyramids in Mexico. Yet perceived wisdom was that there had been no contact between these races in ancient times.
At one ruined temple in Chiang Mai in Thailand, she had seen a large tower, called a ‘chedi’ or ‘stupa’, where the relics of Buddha were kept that resembled a stepped pyramid. This temple was called Wat Chedi Leung. It meant 'temple of the enormous stupa'.
Other Buddhist and Hindu temples in Thailand, Cambodia and India that she saw held a resemblance to pyramids. Even the pagoda structures in China were often tall towers that started wider at their base and gradually narrowed further up, ending up with a triangular section roof on the top.
In Biblical texts, the ‘Tower of Babel’ is thought to have been a ziggurat as found in various sites around Babylon and Syria. Ziggurats are often wholly ruined. But those that remain look like a cross between a large tower and a stepped pyramid.
Even near to her own childhood home in the south-west of England that is more famous for its ancient stone circles of Stonehenge and Avebury, there is a conical man-made hill that is comparable to the pyramids - Silbury Hill.
Recent digs on other mounds used to believed to have been built by the Normans as part of their castles have been identified as potential ancient druidic mounds dating back much earlier than the 11th century AD.
She had once made the mistake of asking questions about the different forms of pyramids across the world to her lecturer at University. He had shot her down in flames. He had said. “Diana, my girl, if you want to get on as an Archaeologist, don’t go out on a limb by asking questions that are at odds with the current consensus view. It never ends well for those that do.”
She had remained wary and had avoided getting into situations where she might end up challenging her colleagues.
For some reason, she had become drawn to the Bahamas and its intriguing marble pillars. In her conscious mind, she had never imagined for a minute that she might get pulled into proving the myth of Atlantis. But perhaps her unconscious mind had hoped it would locate Atlantis with her help. It was intriguing, but now she was in an ethical dilemma.
To satisfy Tallulah and the Archaeological director at the Atlantic University of Miami, Professor Chuck Morris, Diana was tasked with separating the definite Phonecian era finds from any earlier evidence of Atlantean activity at the Bahamas dig site. The other expedition towards Cuba never happened. The divers were bought off yet again.
Just as she was finishing compiling a list of artefacts to be published in the Archaeological paper and listing the others in an inventory to be black-shelved for the director, Jerry knocked on the door.
“Miss Diana, I have made you an espresso, just how you like it. It’s using Cuban coffee beans – I have a source.” Jerry held her finger up to her lips as she whispered the last part.
Diana chuckled as she held out her hand for the small cup of coffee. “My lips are
sealed. I am good with secrets.” She decided it was better to laugh about it than to cry.
“I’m gonna miss you when you’ve gone back to England. Promise you’ll keep in touch and send me pictures of your gorgeous little person when he or she is born.”
”Yes, of course, I will. I have grown very fond of you and the rest of the team. I am sure you will all go on to achieve great things at other sites once you all graduate.”
“Thank you. Finding these Phoenician things here has been my career highlight so far. Just think, Columbus might have had a map that had been drawn by those guys when he sailed to the good ole US of A. It’s truly amazing.”
“It certainly is. And who knows how much earlier too.”
“It’s a shame we never found anything that turned out to be Atlantean. That would have turned an epic dig into a turning point in world history!”
Diana’s stomach went tight again as Jerry uttered those words. “Yes indeed, Jerry. Yes, indeed.”
Jerry waved and let herself back out again.
Diana finished both lists a few minutes afterwards and emailed them to Tallulah and the Director.
The black-shelved artefacts, Diana was assured, were to be sent to a special section of the Smithsonian for further study out of the public eye. She very much hoped they wouldn’t be destroyed like she feared some other ‘Out of Place Artefacts’ had been.
She was risking a lot by keeping copies of some of the photos taken by the team of the banned items. She had zipped and encrypted them as a binary file under a randomised name. Fingers crossed they would stay undiscovered.
A small kick in her tummy from her baby reminded her of the importance of keeping to the deal.
She had at least avoided taking what she considered ‘blood money’ for her silence or accepting a promotion to another University sponsored by Tallulah.
As she daydreamed back to her undergraduate days, she recalled accidentally attending a Fortean Society meeting by a keen amateur historian. She couldn’t remember his name, but he had set up an old Agfa slide projector and carousel with a set of 35mm slides to talk through.
The Priestess Page 10
