The Hunt for Atlantis

by Andy McDermott

  A little overwhelmed, Nina had no idea what to say. “Thank you,” she eventually managed.

  Kari held her hand for a moment longer before releasing it. “Anything for you.”

  “So, er, do Eddie and Hugo get the same deal?” she asked, blushing again with the attention.

  Kari’s smile became more jokey. “Not exactly. After all, they’re being paid to look after us!”

  “From what Eddie said, it sounds like you don’t need anyone to look after you. Did you really escape from Hajjar on your own?”

  “You helped me again! When you turned off the power,” she added on seeing Nina’s confusion. “It distracted them for a second, and I… Well, I’ve done a little self-defense training. And another reason I’m glad you cut the power when you did was because I think Hajjar was about to accept Qobras’s offer and shoot me.”

  “That was Qobras?” Nina remembered the face of the man she’d seen on the videoconference split screen.

  “You saw him?”

  “Yes, there was a computer room in the basement; I saw him on a monitor.”

  Kari looked solemn. “So now you know who we’re up against. And how ruthless he is. He offered Hajjar five million dollars to kill the Russian, Yuri, there on the spot. He’s an extremely dangerous man, a psychopath … and he will do anything to stop us from finding Atlantis. I won’t underestimate him again. But for now, we’re safe. We have the artifact, and more important, we have you. We’ll find Atlantis, I know it. Now,” she asked, “are you ready to order?”

  By the time they returned to the hotel later that afternoon, Nina was exhausted. How much of it was just tiredness caused by touring Paris, and how much was a delayed reaction to her experiences in Iran, she didn’t know. All she did know was that before Frost’s expert in ancient languages arrived, she needed a nap.

  Even lying on the huge, comfortable bed, however, Nina’s rest was uneasy. Part of her mind was still trying to process all the frightening and violent events she’d witnessed—been part of—since Starkman’s phone call. Her academic life in New York seemed almost like another world.

  And even in her half-sleep, she couldn’t escape from the mysterious artifact, her mind still focused on the puzzle within her dreams. There was something about the piece, the strange feeling of memory she had experienced when holding it in the farmhouse.

  Something familiar.

  Something here.

  Nina jolted to full wakefulness, knowing what it was, and how she knew it. She was curled up, knees tucked almost to her chest, one hand resting on the base of her neck.

  Holding her pendant.

  That was the sense memory she’d felt.

  She leapt from the bed and raced to her desk. She snatched the artifact from under the magnifier and with her other hand hurriedly pulled the loop of the pendant over her head, holding the two pieces next to each other.

  That was the connection! She’d had it all the time, and never even realized.

  The telephone rang, startling her. Still clutching both pieces of metal, she clumsily picked up the receiver. “Yeah! Hello?”

  “Nina?” It was Kari. “Are you all right?”

  “Yeah, yeah, I’m fine! I just woke up.” She was about to tell Kari what she had just discovered, but the Norwegian spoke first.

  “I just wanted to tell you that the expert is here, so when you’re ready, could you bring the artifact?”

  Nina caught a glimpse of herself in a mirror. Her hair was standing up on one side where she’d slept on it. “Uh, can you give me five minutes?”

  “That was seven minutes,” whispered Chase as Nina entered the lounge.

  “Oh shut up,” she whispered back, looking around the room. Kari was sitting expectantly in an armchair, Castille leaned against the door to the corridor, eating an orange, and on a couch, sipping a cup of coffee, was …

  “Hello, Nina,” said Philby, standing up.

  “What are you doing here, Jonathan?” Nina blurted, thinking—hoping—this was a joke. Of all the people in the world Kristian Frost could have called upon to help analyze the artifact, he had chosen Professor Jonathan Philby?

  “I think that’s the reason,” said Philby, looking down at the object Nina was carrying, wrapped in its cloth. “I got a call yesterday morning from none other than Kristian Frost, who told me that you’d helped find a most remarkable item but were having difficulty translating what was written on it. He asked if I would be willing to help you out. It was rather short notice, but…” He glanced at Kari. “Your father does have a way of making offers that can’t be refused!”

  “Horse’s head in your bed?” asked Chase.

  Philby looked at him uncomprehendingly. “No, a rather generous donation to the university. And, well, a flight in a private jet! Not something I’ve had the plea sure of before.”

  “So, Jonathan,” said Nina, looking at him askance, “since when did you become the world’s greatest expert on ancient languages?”

  “Really, Nina,” said Philby, “not wanting to blow my own trumpet, but I would have hoped you’d read my recent papers for the IJA. I think it’s fair to say that I’m one of the top five authorities in the world on the subject, and certainly the top man in the West. Although I’m sure Ribbsley at Cambridge would disagree!” He chortled at his joke, stopping when he realized that the absence of undergraduates in the room meant nobody else was laughing with him. “Well then,” he continued, “shall we have a look at what you’ve found?”

  Nina carefully placed the artifact on the table as Kari adjusted a lamp to illuminate it. Philby’s eyes widened. “Oh, now that’s … that’s remarkable.” He looked up at Kari. “May I hold it?”

  “Please do.”

  Philby picked up the artifact, weighing it in his hands. “Heavy, but not pure gold, the color’s wrong … a gold-bronze—no, more like a gold and copper mix?”

  “The word you’re looking for,” said Nina pointedly, “is orichalcum.”

  “Let’s not jump to conclusions. Has a metallurgical analysis been done yet?”

  “Not of the entire piece,” said Kari, “but a small sample has been tested, yes.”

  “And?”

  “And I believe Dr. Wilde is correct.”

  Nina gave Philby a self-satisfied nod.

  “I see.” Philby clearly had more to say, but kept it to himself. He turned the artifact over. “Small circular protrusion on the underside, and on the top surface … ah!” He shot Nina a smug smile. “Nina, I’m disappointed! Surely you can translate this!”

  “I’ve translated most of it,” Nina snapped. “It’s a map, directions up a river to a city. I couldn’t identify the other characters, but they’re definitely not Glozel.”

  “Well of course they’re not,” said Philby. “But really! How could you not recognize Olmec inscriptions?”

  She looked more closely. “What? Those aren’t Olmec.”

  “Not classical Olmec, but the family resemblances are unmistakable. Don’t you see?” He indicated certain characters. “Some of the symbols have been inverted or restyled, but they definitely—”

  “Oh my God!” Nina exclaimed. “How the hell didn’t I see it?”

  Kari peered at the artifact. “Then they are Olmec?”

  “God, yes! I mean, like Professor Philby said, not the classical form of the symbology, but definitely a variant. Older?” She looked at Philby for affirmation.

  He nodded. “Almost certainly. They’re less refined, and maybe with an influence from the Glozel in certain places. Very strange.” He leaned back. “Glozel alphabetical influences in proto-Olmec hieroglyphics? That ought to ruffle a few feathers …”

  “Who or what is an Olmec?” Chase asked.

  “An early South American civilization,” Nina told him. “They were at their height around 1150 BC, mostly on the southern coast of the Gulf of Mexico, but their influence went a lot farther inland.”

  Chase shrugged. “Oh, those Olmecs.”

&n
bsp; “Professor,” said Kari, “what does the rest of the inscription say? I assume you can translate the Olmec symbols.”

  “I can certainly make an attempt. It may not be entirely accurate; as I said, the characters aren’t quite the same as the traditional forms, but… Well, let’s see, shall we?” He adjusted his glasses and leaned forward, Nina doing the same from the other side of the table.

  “That first symbol, could it be—an alligator?”

  “An alligator or a crocodile,” Philby mused.

  Castille perked up. “The crocodile river? That could describe a few places that Edward and I have visited. There was one time in Sierra Leone—”

  “The next word is a combination of symbols,” said Philby, ignoring him. “God … and water?”

  “Or ocean,” Nina offered. “Hey! The god of the ocean! Poseidon!” She and Kari both said the name at the same moment.

  “Begin from the north mouth of the crocodile river,” Philby went on.

  “Seven, south, west. The river at seven, south, west, presumably,” said Nina. “Follow course to the city of Poseidon. There to find … to find what?” She tried to make sense of the remaining symbols. “Damn it. I’m not exactly fluent in Olmec.”

  “Let me see …” said Philby, running a fingertip above the artifact. “This first symbol looks like the one for ‘home,’ but with these extra marks. It’s almost like ‘descendant’—no, ‘successor,’ but that doesn’t really fit.”

  “Yes it does,” Nina realized. “Successor home—new home. There to find the new home of … of this symbol.”

  “Hmm.” Philby leaned so close that his breath clouded on the artifact’s surface. “Now this one I really don’t recognize. It could be a representation of a personal name, or maybe a tribe …”

  “Atlanteans.” Everyone turned to Kari. “The new home of the Atlanteans. That’s what it says.”

  Philby pursed his lips. “Now, Ms. Frost, that could be wishful thinking. There are many other possibilities, which a detailed study of the ancient writings found in that region could clarify.”

  “No,” said Nina, picking up the artifact. “She’s right. It has to be the Atlanteans. There’s nothing else it could be. The Atlanteans built a new home for themselves following the sinking of the island, somewhere in South America—and this piece is the map that’ll take us right to it. All we need is to identify the river. If we can work out what the numbers represent—”

  “Or we could just do a pub quiz,” cut in Chase, grinning. “Seriously, Doc! South America! Big river full of crocodiles! What’s the first answer that comes into your head?”

  “The … Amazon?” she answered, unsure if Chase was, as he put it, “taking the piss” again.

  “Bingo! Come on, look how many notches directing you left and right there are on this map of yours, and each of them has a number next to it. If that’s how many tributaries you go past, that’s a bloody big river. And if there’s a lost city out there, it has to be in the Brazilian rain forest. If it was anywhere else, somebody would have found it already.” He looked over his shoulder towards Nina’s room. “You had an atlas in there, didn’t you? Hold on a minute.”

  Chase jogged through the connecting door, returning with the large atlas, which he opened. “Here. There’s the northern mouth at Bailique, and if you go upstream you pass four tributaries on the left, seven on the right…” He laboriously tracked the route westward against the markings scribed into the orichalcum bar. “Eight on the left, and that brings you to the first big junction at Santarém.” The marking under his finger was more deeply indented than the others.

  “Where it says to go right,” Nina said.

  “So it’s working so far, then.” They followed the directions farther upriver until their course finally branched off the Amazon itself, onto a tributary over a thousand miles inland. The thin blue line on the page of the atlas continued westward for another hundred miles before stopping. There were still several more direction markings left to follow on the artifact.

  “We need a better map,” said Kari. “Satellite imagery too.”

  “But at least we know the general area,” Nina said excitedly. “Somewhere along the Tefé river. Right in the middle of the rain forest!”

  “A proto-Olmec civilization, that far inland?” wondered Philby. “That doesn’t fit with any of the current theories about their origins and population distribution.”

  “Nor does Atlantis, but things seem to be holding up so far,” said Nina, slightly caustically.

  Philby huffed. “And how exactly would the Atlanteans be able to sail from the Gulf of Cádiz, according to your theory, all the way across the Atlantic? Even if we accept that the Sea People of ancient legend were in fact the Atlanteans, a journey of a few hundred miles in a trireme is rather different from a journey of several thousand. Especially when they had no way to navigate!”

  “Actually,” Nina said, “they did have a way to navigate.”

  “What do you mean?” Kari asked.

  “I just realized it before you called me.” Nina picked up the artifact. “There was something about this that felt familiar, but I couldn’t work out what until now. Look.” She held the piece by the circular protrusion, letting it swing gently from her fingers like a pendulum. “It’s meant to hang down, like this. And then …” She held her pendant beneath the curved end of the artifact. “They match up exactly. My pendant has a few numbers marked on it, and if you extend it along the same curve and also continue the sequence of numbers … Well, with a sighting system of some kind, like a mirror that fits in the little slot, then you’ve got a way to measure the angle of inclination of an object relative to the horizon!”

  “An object like a star?” asked Kari, caught up in Nina’s rising excitement. “Or the sun?”

  “Exactly! It’s a sextant! The Atlanteans had a navigational instrument in 10,000 BC that wasn’t reinvented until the sixteenth century!”

  “Imagine the military advantage that would give them over any other nation of the time …” Kari said thoughtfully.

  Chase looked doubtful. “It’s not exactly like they had GPS.”

  “Well no, because to work out longitude you need a very accurate chronometer, and it’s a stretch to think the Atlanteans were that advanced,” Nina said. “But a sextant lets you calculate latitude, how far north or south you are, with reasonable accuracy by using the sun or a star as a guide, as long as you adjust your calculations for the time of year. Which every ancient civilization with knowledge of astronomy was able to do.” She held up the two orichalcum pieces and pretended to take a sighting on Chase’s forehead, swinging her pendant back and forth as if it were part of a larger arc centered on the bar’s pivot. “Without something like this, the only way to navigate at sea is to either follow the coastline looking for landmarks, or use dead reckoning—just head in a particular direction and hope you don’t go off course.”

  “But being able to calculate latitude makes longer voyages possible,” added Kari.

  “Yeah. In fact …” Nina showed Chase the markings on the bar again. “The number here, seven, then south and west—the seven could be a latitude using whatever scale the Atlanteans worked in, and the compass directions …” The thought that had been taking form in her mind finally solidified. “It’s telling the user how to get to the river on the map from Atlantis! Go south to what they called latitude seven, then turn west. As long as you’re at the right latitude, then all you need to do is keep going west and you’ll eventually reach your destination. Since we know where their latitude seven is, that means …”

  Kari completed her thought. “That means, if we can determine exactly how many degrees are in an Atlantean unit of latitude, we can backtrack and work out the exact location of Atlantis!”

  “Okay, so,” said Chase, “all we need to do to find Atlantis is mount an expedition into the middle of the Amazon jungle, find a lost city and see if it’s got any old maps still knocking around?”

/>   Nina nodded. “More or less.”

  “Yeah, I’m up for that,” he said with a mock casual shrug.

  Philby stood up. “Ms. Frost?”

  “Yes?”

  “This may be completely out of line, but… if your initial surveys show that there may indeed be a lost city somewhere along the Tefé, would it be possible for me to accompany your expedition?”

  “Wait, Jonathan, let me get this straight,” said Nina, scenting victory. “Are you saying that now you do believe I was right all along and that Atlantis really existed?”

  “Actually,” Philby sniffed, “I was thinking more about the importance of discovering evidence of a pre-Olmec civilization and the chance to study its language firsthand. It would be an incredible find. Any connection to Atlantis would be … well, a bonus.”

  Kari was slightly thrown by Philby’s request. “I’ll check with my father, Professor, but… Are you sure that would be practical? We will be going deep into the jungle—and what about your commitments to the university?”

  “I think I can arrange the time off—I am the head of the department, after all!” Philby laughed. “Besides, if Dr. Wilde can take off at a moment’s notice on an expedition around the world …” He gave Nina a pointed look. “It’s been several years since I went properly out into the field, but I’ve been to worse places than the jungle, believe me.”

  “Then as I said, I’ll check with my father. But for now…” They shook hands. “Welcome aboard, Professor.”

  “Thank you,” Philby replied.

  Nina put her pendant back around her neck and placed the artifact on the map of Brazil. She gazed at the blank swath of green surrounding the Tefé river, trying to imagine what she would find there. “So,” she whispered, “that’s where you went…”

  ELEVEN

  Brazil

  Welcome to the jungle!” Chase sang as he exited the plane.

  Despite having traveled all around the world, Nina always found arriving in the tropics an unwelcome shock. While she didn’t mind a hot environment per se, it was far easier to adjust to the dry heat of a desert than it was to emerge from an air-conditioned aircraft cabin into the sticky, humid heat of a tropical jungle.