“Hello Mr. Brandt,” Olsen said, politely.
“May I come in?”
Olsen looked nervous. “Of course. Is something wrong?”
“It’s all right. I just wanted to talk to you.”
The room was small, with a bed at one end and a fireplace next to it. There was little more to it and nowhere to sit.
“I’m sorry I don’t have much to offer you, Mr. Brandt,” he said, while placing a small pot of water on the fire. “Would you like a warm drink? I’m afraid I don’t have anywhere for you to sit.”
“That’s not a problem. I don’t want to take up much of your time. I have a question for you.”
“For me?” Olsen appeared confused, but Felix wondered if he detected a slight amount of fear too.
“Yes, it’s about what you found today.”
Olsen stopped pouring the warm water into a mug.
“What I found today?”
Felix carefully studied the man’s eyes. They failed to meet his own, and answered his question immediately.
Yes, Albert Olsen is trying to hide something.
“It’s quite all right, Albert. I don’t want to take it from you, if that’s what you’re worried about. It’s just that I have a collection of local artifacts that have been discovered over the years, and I’m interested in one in particular. I have seen a number of drawings of it, and was hoping you may have stumbled upon it.”
Albert kept quiet, but nor did he deny his discovery.
Felix pulled out a rolled piece of paper with a drawing and opened it in front of him. “Did it look something like this?”
Albert stared at it for a moment and said, “Yes, it’s identical. Where did you get the drawing?”
“I was given it a long time ago, by someone who’d found it during an earlier expedition.”
“Is it valuable?”
“Yes, of course. Not in the sense that it is made out of gold or anything like that. But historically, it is worth a fortune. I once heard it described as the key to their greatest city.”
“What city? The place was a marsh before we came.”
“That’s not important.” Felix quickly changed the topic. He’d already said too much about THEM. “Did you show it to anyone?”
“No, of course not. Something like that looked as though it could be worth more than my entire life savings! I didn’t want anyone to steal it.”
“Of course… You’ve done the right thing,” he reassured Albert.
In one quick motion Felix slid the tip of the knife through the gap between Albert’s ribs and into his heart. It was as quick a death as could be contrived. A lifetime of training, and he’d never had the need to do so before.
Albert barely made a sound.
Felix wasn’t a born killer. And he took no pleasure in it. He stared at the boy’s face. Aghast, he noticed there was no hatred in Albert’s eyes and no pain, simply absent disbelief. Felix wanted more than anything to relieve the child from his anguish.
“I’m so sorry Albert, really I am,” Felix said. “But some things, I’m afraid, were supposed to remain buried – forever.”
*
Hank Worthington watched as the fifth marker pole was driven deep into the ground below the shallow water, forty feet out from the bank of the river. Today was the first day of the process of reclaiming the land from the sea, so that the man paying his wages could have his mansion built on prime real estate.
It wasn’t an entirely new idea for the Dutch, but on the outlying Trading Post, where land was plentiful, the return compared to labor required to achieve the task made it seem fanciful. Hank looked up, having heard the familiar sound of hammer on steel as the wooden marker pole was driven into the soft soil below until it struck bedrock. Tomorrow his team would begin the laborious task of backfilling the water below with rock and then soil.
He shook his head at its absurdity.
Built like a dike, and doubling as a fortress to guard the entrance to the main canal, which Mr. Brandt too had commissioned, the expansion onto the river seemed outlandish, even to him. And Hank was a 3rd generation master water engineer, whose family had been employed on a number of water projects in Amsterdam. But this was different.
“Felix Brandt is a fool,” he said out loud.
“Yes, but a very rich one,” his apprentice agreed.
“They’re the worst kind.” Hank pulled out the engineering plans to show his young apprentice. “Ordinarily, we would have supported this point here, where the natural bank of the river formed and then built his fortress above it, where it could still protect the entrance to the canal.”
“So why didn’t you?”
“Because Felix Brandt was specific. This spot, right here. He even took me out in a rowboat and showed me precisely where he wanted the new land to reach.”
His apprentice looked at the map depicting the landfill areas. “He wants a lot of new land? There’s nearly a square mile of it! I wonder why he doesn’t simply build further back. It’s not like land around here is scarce or valuable?”
“Indeed. Why not?” Hank waited for the boy to come up with an answer on his own. When none came, he said, “Felix gave some stupid excuse that he would then one day own the greatest amount of deep waterfrontage on the island, and therefore could command its trade.” Hank gave a supercilious smile and then continued, “But I think he did so simply to prove that what he wants, he can have.”
Out on the water, the familiar chime of hammer on steel continued as the sixth pole commenced being driven into the deeper water below.
Hank’s ears piqued to the sudden change in resonance.
That pole driver struck something other than sand, rock or wood. But what?
From the shore he watched as the men withdrew the wooden pole and attempted to reset it. By the third attempt, one of his men dived down to see what they had struck. The big man who’d entered the water climbed back onto the barge after holding his breath for nearly a minute.
Hank looked at the man’s face. Even from forty feet away, he could see that something was wrong. “Come with me. Let’s go see what the problem is.”
“I’ll get the rowboat.”
The two climbed into the small boat and his apprentice took the oars. Within a couple minutes they were tying up alongside the barge.
“What have we got?” Hank asked, taking the outstretched leathery hand of Jeroen, who was driving the piers. The two had worked together for nearly twenty years.
“We hit something hard. There’s no way we’re going to be able to drive anything through it.”
“That’s fine. We’ll build over it anyway.” Hank looked at Jeroen’s clothes, still dripping wet. “You’ve had a look. What have we struck?”
Jeroen looked nervous as he handed him a small ingot of orange metal. It could have been brass or even a copper alloy.
“You found it down there?”
“Yes. But I have no idea where it’s come from. There’s a lot of it down there. I think its best if you have a look for yourself.”
Hank looked at the water. It wasn’t quite spring and the ice had only recently thawed. He was going to say something but Jeoren stopped him.
“Trust me, you’re gonna want to see this.”
Not wanting to spend the rest of his day arguing over whatever the hell his men had found, he took his shirt off and dived into the water. The icy temperature stung him, but he forced his eyes open as he swam toward the bottom. It wasn’t deep. Maybe twenty or thirty feet at most. His head barely dipped the surface before he saw it.
It looked like the center of an old city. But nothing like any city he’d ever seen, or even heard of. And it was covered in the same orange colored, bright, metal that young Albert Olsen had discovered while digging in the canal. The entire place had the surreal appearance of a lost Egyptian city. Not that he’d ever seen one of those either. A friend of his had shown him sketches after visiting there when they were both students.
Hank
returned to the surface and climbed the rope ladder onto the barge.
He could see Jeroen’s face – waiting to say ‘I told you so.’
“Well Hank, what do you make of that?”
“I’d better go to the owner with this one…” Hank said, without hiding the disgruntlement from his voice. “And that will mean delays.”
*
An hour later, Hank returned to the worksite. On the beach, a tent had been set up with a desk at its center - an office for himself and the architect. To the north it was protected from the wind by large piles of rock and soil in preparation for the build. Sitting opposite his desk, Jeroen and his apprentice waited for him. A glance at their faces told him they had both been waiting in expectation.
He was still carrying the strange piece of orange metal when he came into the small worksite office, and sat down, placing it on the table as he would a paperweight – and said nothing.
“Well Hank, what did Mr. Brandt have to say?” Jeroen asked.
Hank cracked his knuckles together. “He says it’s the remains of the India Star, an old brass lined ship of war, dumped here years ago to stop the never-ending erosion to the beach.”
Jeroen laughed at the explanation.
“That’s bullshit and you know it as well as I do. That looked like a city to me.”
Hank met his eyes, and forcefully replied, “Yeah, well maybe it was one of ‘their’ old cities, before we came. Now it’s ours, so why shouldn’t we build on top of it? It looks pretty solid to me.”
“I don’t care if it was one of ‘their’ cities.” Jeroen lit a pipe. “Heck, some of that red metal stuff must be worth something?”
“Yeah, well maybe Mr. Brandt isn’t too keen on slowing down his project while we all go archeological on his building site. Besides, so what if it is? All the better for building on. Anything that solid must make for a good foundation.”
“So, then, what are we going to do with it?”
“The owner says backfill with rocks and soil, lay the foundations, and prepare for stage two of the building.”
“And that’s what you’re planning on doing?”
“Like I said, it’ll make good foundations.”
Jeroen stood up to leave and then said, “Hank…”
“Leave it alone Jeroen. I said it’s time to go back to work. I want this place buried by the end of the week.”
That night, Hank drank whiskey quietly in his own tent. Ordinarily he’d have been happy to have one with his men, but he needed the time to think this one through. Something in the back of his mind kept reminding him of the damn copper-colored ingot. He’d never seen anything glow like that. It was almost a type of orange gold.
Besides, it didn’t make sense how the owner responded. Mr. Brandt was an extremely wealthy man, but that was no reason not to become wealthier. He’d bought the water lots fair and square. If there was an ancient golden city below, he could have easily claimed ownership.
So, why had he been so quick and adamant to bury the lot of it? What didn’t he want the rest of the world to see?
It was too much for him, and in the end, Hank knew he needed to have a more satisfactory answer. Returning to his work tent where he’d left the orange ingot as a good paperweight, Hank grabbed the strange metal, put it in his pocket and walked towards the steel forge, where men were working through the night to create the steel required for the new outpost.
As the leading engineer, Hank was known by everyone who greeted him cordially, though surprised to see him there in the night. At the back of the room he examined the ingot. It was definitely made from the same strange glowing metal used in the artifact that Albert Olsen had discovered.
He shook his head, still wondering at the young man’s sudden disappearance. It wasn’t like someone had killed him for it – after all, Olsen had already entrusted the artifact with himself before he disappeared. Perhaps, he had never intended on returning to Frejia, and this was the best apology he could find? First weighing it, he discovered that it was precisely 250 ounces. He then placed it inside the crucible and started the furnace. And watched as the strange metal smelted until it glowed with fire and liquefied.
Zinc and lead were the first to go, being weak metals.
He then poured off the liquid while the stronger metals, being gold, silver and copper, remained in a solid form.
With a gloved hand he picked up the blacksmith’s pincers and gripped the small clump of shiny metal so that he could examined it. Not much had changed in its weight. He weighed it to be sure. 240 ounces.
He became excited by the prospect of 240 ounces of gold, silver and copper. But the question remained: in what proportions were they?
Hank then took a small bottle of Glaubers Salt, a recently discovered strong acid that would dissolve silver and copper, but leave gold untarnished, and poured it into the crucible.
Again, the gold remained solid, while the other two elements turned into a weak sludge.
He carefully removed the sludge and heated the gold once more to remove any additional impurities, and then examined the glowing remaining metal. It certainly looked like pure gold. He might not have all of it, but it was close.
Gripping it with the Blacksmith’s pincers, he dipped it in water, watching it hiss.
Impatiently, he then picked it up.
It felt heavy in his hand and his heart raced as he placed it back on the scales. Holding his breath, he added lead weights to the opposite end of the scale, until the two metals were balanced.
He totaled the tiny weights and nearly screamed.
175 ounces!
He did the arithmetic in his head.
Holy shit! That’s nearly 70% gold!
And there’s a buried city below his construction site covered in the stuff. Buried for eternity.
He returned to his master’s locked ship.
A sudden sense of urgency led him to quickly open his safe and examine the artifact that Albert Olsen had asked him to deliver. At the time he’d dismissed the markings as being unlikely similarities, but now he was certain that they were one and the same as those his old college friend had spoken about.
The instant he saw it he knew they were.
So, he was telling the truth all those years ago.
Robert Mitchel had discovered an ancient tribe in Africa that knew the way to the Golden City!
Hank stared at the gold in front of him.
He was going to be rich beyond his dreams. All he had to do was work out how he was going to steal it without Felix Brandt’s entire fortress caving in on him. In the delusion of happiness, which the allure of gold often provided, Hank didn’t even stop to consider why Felix was so determined to bury it all.
He was going to be rich.
Hank recalled the conversation with his old friend, Robert Mitchel, all those years ago. And then prayed that the second part of the man’s story never came true.
Chapter One
Amsterdam, Present Day – Five Weeks Remaining
Dr. Billie Swan turned left onto Amselstraat and then right onto Weeperstraat taking the shortest route out of the old city, over the maze of canals and dikes. She drove a Renault Twingo, the four door version of the tiny European car. Hired for the week, she’d expected it to take at least that long to find the answer to her question.
Instead, she’d found it on her third day.
In her rear view mirror she saw a yellow Vespa. It had been following her since leaving the Stadsarchief Amsterdam – the National Archives Center. It could have been taking the same route as her. It was the fastest way out of the city.
But had she seen it yesterday?
Europe was rife with such mopeds, and she could be easily forgiven for mistaking a different one, which followed her now, as one and the same.
Her nerves had been on edge since she’d returned from Atlantis.
Billie hadn’t even worked out the entire truth. If her predictions were even close to the mark, then the world wa
s in trouble. And based on the calculations of time, she didn’t have long to work out a solution. Maybe as little as five weeks.
Time was running out – fast.
They say knowledge can be a dangerous thing. For what Billie had learned, it could spell the end of the human race. The only hope she had left was to reach the inner sanctum of Atlantis in time to stop the next cycle from being triggered. And to do that, she needed to find the code.
Hell, if she had years, maybe a team of code breakers might be able to solve it, but she didn’t. She had five weeks. Her only hope now was to find the notes of the last living person known to have seen it.
Felix Brandt.
For that, she needed to find where he’d spent his final days on earth. And that was what had taken her so rapidly to Amsterdam.
The truth was so dangerous that she had refused to tell Sam Reilly or even Tom Bower about it. Instead, she’d made up a story why she needed their help to find someone in Amsterdam. Now she’d found where the man had gone centuries ago, she would need their help to reach him, or at least where he put his notes.
HIM…
The thought brought her back to the man with curly blond hair and blue eyes she’d seen on her first day in the national archives. The blond man in the red baseball cap on the moped – today wasn’t the second time she’d seen him. He’d been there – at Stadsarchief Amsterdam – on her first day. She hadn’t taken much notice of the man. He was entering the building while she was leaving. The only reason she’d taken any was something strangely attractive about his face. Beneath his looks, he had an outward sign of self-assuredness which bordered on arrogance. And then, as though he’d read her thoughts, he’d responded with the most disarming smile – the sort that could easily cause a woman less driven by necessity to inadvertently find herself in his bed.
So that makes three times in three days.
That’s more than a coincidence.
He was after her.
And that meant she was in trouble… and the world was at great risk.
It was time to let Sam Reilly know what she’d really discovered in Atlantis. At the same time, even more important than ever that she not disclose its location.
Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3) Page 2
