The Atlantis Cipher (The Relic Hunters Book 2)

by David Leadbeater

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Bodie found himself on another plane, taking another journey far too soon. This fast pace was not the life he had become used to. It was like rushing head over heels to investigate shark-infested waters. Where was the careful planning, the long reconnaissance? Where were the blueprints to the bloody building?

  Bodie remembered a long time ago, before his parents died, being eight years old and having a great group of friends. It was why now he ached with every fiber in his being to share that again. Back then, the five of them could live a lifetime in one day. Brian, Scott, Jim, and little Darcey. Darcey had been small for her age, but the boys had been big and promised to guard her with their lives. Once, that promise had been tested. Their time together had been relatively short, but, for Bodie at least, it left an impression that lasted for the rest of his life. The Forever Gang, they called themselves, because they imagined their period of fun, and their friendships, lasting forever.

  They had been a gang of four until Darcey Jacobs blasted into their life, knocking their socks off. New to the neighborhood, she saw them walking by one night and made herself a part of their lives, so engaging and lively that they couldn’t then envisage a walk or an excursion or an adventure without her.

  “Darcey,” she greeted them that night.

  She shook their hands with a small, floppy appendage that was warmer than Bodie might have imagined and soft to the touch. She asked where they were going and they responded as proud young boys on a mission so often do.

  “The old Killer Slide. They roped it off today,” Jim had piped up.

  “Yeah, we’re down that mother like bread and butter,” Scott had said with a whistle.

  “Have you been down it before?” Darcey asked.

  “Umm, well . . . no.”

  “Why now?”

  “’Cause it’s fuckin’ there!” Brian growled, eyes laughing. Brian was always the ringleader, a trait that would years later remind Bodie of Cassidy Coleman.

  They all chortled at the curse word, and at the shiver of fear that coursed through them with its use. Darcey pushed between them, shoving even the adventurous Brian aside and maneuvering Scott backward until she came face-to-face with Bodie.

  “And you?”

  “I know first aid.” It was the only thing that came to him, but it set them off laughing so hard they fell to the ground. Darcey was all in, and she was first to push herself down the Killer Slide, then egg Scott and Brian, Jim and Bodie on after. She was the sunrise in their days of pure light, and as sweet as a honey bear.

  Bodie rarely revisited this part of his past. It had been locked away in a dusty compartment of his mind simply because it evoked such a sense of loss to his emotional state that it often brought him to tears.

  The Forever Gang spent a lot of time in Hyde Park, taking hold of the bright, sunny days, making them their own. They held picnics on the wide lawns under sprawling trees, played football and hockey and cricket, but always finished with hide-and-seek, which saw the shadows grow long and end yet another glorious, full day. Bodie found himself mostly sharing the experiences with Scott, who had been just as steadfast, careful, and reserved as Cross was now. His similarity to Scott was probably the main reason Bodie preferred Cross’s company to any of the others.

  It lasted forever. It felt like it lasted forever. They talked of nothing, they did dares, and walked until they ached. Sublime days and an endless summer stretched ahead. These are our moments of immortality, when everything we hold in our heart and in our head is good and beautiful and infinitely perfect. Bodie imagined parents might get a similar feeling witnessing their children experience the innocence of youth, but that wasn’t knowledge he could draw upon. The long-dead past was all he had, and the long-gone friends he used to share it with.

  Bodie had dwelled long enough on memories and returned now to thoughts of his current family, intrigued by the parallels he found between them and the Forever Gang. It was no coincidence, but it wasn’t something he wanted to get into right now. He gave himself five minutes before daring to open his eyes and look around the plane.

  The first person he laid eyes on was Cassidy Coleman. Perhaps because of his nostalgic mood and the memories of lost hopes, and perhaps because she reminded him of Brian, he mulled over the emotions that ate her up. All her life, Cassidy had been trying to organize disparate feelings and finding it was akin to scything her way through a jungle with a penknife. She gave up constantly . . . but never gave in, and those times when she couldn’t detangle at least a few of those feelings, she ended up in a nightclub, or a fight.

  Cassidy was as lost as he was, but in an entirely different way. She felt his eyes upon her then and looked over, smiling.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “How alike we are now,” he admitted. “And how I always chose friends with the same qualities. We arrived here with totally different backgrounds . . . and yet it feels like we’ve known each other forever.”

  Cassidy grew serious. “The shit I’ve gone through would fill a book. I never lost my parents; I lived with them till I was seventeen. It didn’t drop to the level of abuse, but I never knew love until years later.”

  “Still find it hard to accept?”

  “You know it. It’s like right now—I’m having to physically sit on my hands to keep from opening that hatch and running the hell away.”

  Bodie glanced at her hands pinned beneath her legs and the airplane’s exit. “You mean falling away.”

  “Whatever. You started this, Bodie. As usual I’m just telling it straight.”

  “I had something really good,” he said, “before my parents died. Good friends, not unlike you guys. It was . . . the best time. If life hadn’t taken a tragic curve, I would have become a totally different person.”

  “Fate,” Cassidy said with a shrug. “They say it always finds a way. I had someone too, at seventeen, but I was already conditioned, hardened to the world. It took my man every moment he had left to start helping me.”

  “I remember the story,” Bodie said. “Brad, wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah, and I remember yours. The kids, right? I don’t remember their names.”

  “Brian, Scott, Jim, and little Darcey,” Bodie said, and try as he might, he couldn’t keep the rasp from his voice. “Scott was a ringer for Cross; you remind me of Brian.”

  “Ever look them up?”

  “Why would I? Everything ended the day my parents died. Strangers turned up and took me away.” He swallowed drily. “Planted me in an orphanage. From that day on, my energies were consumed by survival.”

  “Maybe your friends would remember you.”

  Bodie shrugged. “Not in the same way. People move on, Cass. They change. My life with them, I remember it like yesterday because it was the only time in my life that I was happy, content, and befriended. To most normal people, it is a rite of childhood. To them, I’m a misty memory of youth and they’d think it weird if I showed up at their door.”

  “Still, they could recall something.”

  “I remember everything,” he said. “The individual sounds of their laughter. The touch of the night and day on my skin. The way they reacted to each situation. The games we played on given days. Cass,” he sighed. “I remember everything.”

  “Brad saved me,” she said. “And, at nineteen, I had to hold his hand and watch him die. That was after a year of trying. Where the hell the time has gone since then, I don’t know, but I do know that I’m still trying.”

  Bodie clammed up as Heidi came to sit on the end of the opposite aisle. Her face was open and honest as she leaned toward them.

  “Since we’re sharing,” she said, “and since this is a long-ass flight, I’m just about to put a call in to the husband who left me and the daughter who wants nothing to do with me. Any suggestions?”

  “What did you do to them?” Cassidy asked bluntly.

  “Oh, I went to work for the CIA, I guess.”

  “Then no,
Frizzbomb, sorry. You’re on your own there.”

  Bodie leaned across Cassidy toward Heidi. “Never give up,” he said. “If you think it’s worth it—never, ever give up.”

  “Amen to that truth.” Heidi scooted toward the window for privacy and started tapping at her cell phone.

  Bodie settled with Cassidy, happy in a shared silence. In ten minutes he had almost fallen asleep, but then Lucie Boom announced that she would be sharing her findings.

  “Sounds like an invitation you’re not allowed to turn down.” Cassidy yawned and turned in her seat. “You’d best hurry on up to the front of the plane, hon. I’m not planning to get a crick in my neck from looking at you.”

  “That’s where I was going, actually.” Lucie’s precise tones pierced Bodie’s cloud of introspection. Maybe now they would learn where they were going.

  Lucie stood at the front of the plane, hands behind her back, a teacher addressing a new class. “Straight to it, then. The first formal writing system that we know of is roughly five thousand years old, discovered in Iraq. Hieroglyphs and symbols such as this can be complex too, and when man started leaving triangles, circles, and other squiggles on cave walls forty thousand years ago it could be said that this was the first form of code. We’re talking hand stencils, penniforms, other signs and symbols. There is even enticing evidence that Homo erectus carved a zigzag into a shell some five hundred thousand years ago . . .”

  Lucie took a sip of water and continued. “There are etched teeth. Strangely consistent doodles all around the world. I posit this to give weight to my belief that writing and coding, in some form or other, existed nine thousand years ago.”

  She paused. The team stared. Heidi jumped in. “You don’t have to prove your theory to us,” she said. “We believe you.”

  “You believe me without a significant offering of evidence?” Lucie looked shocked. “Are you all mad? Or stupid?”

  “I think what Heidi’s trying to say is—time is short. Get on with the bloody story.” Bodie used Lucie’s own bluntness against her.

  “Right. Well, this symbolic script can be deciphered. The key to deciphering it lies on the arms of all nine statues; the actual message lies around their heads and bases. The Phoenician alphabet is the oldest known alphabet, consisting of twenty-two letters, all of which are consonants. Of course, it derives from Egyptian hieroglyphics, but it’s like the chicken and the egg here. Which came first? But it also harks back to the Rosetta Stone, remember that? It was carved with the same text in two languages and three writing systems: hieroglyphic, demotic, and Greek alphabet. Scholars were able to unlock the code, and without the stone we would know nothing of the Egyptians and their three thousand years of history. So, the five are the key, and the four are the message. Of course, it is obscure, as you would expect.”

  As Lucie paused for breath, Bodie wondered if she imagined everyone knew the things she knew and everyone had been educated the way she had. He also wondered if she was one of those critics that assume her point of view was both perfectly correct and at the peak of importance.

  Lucie then took a breath. “The message goes like this:

  Parted, my nine were assigned

  Different soils, earth, different climate,

  By me, for mine purpose which is remembering and rediscovering,

  But now upon the Syrian sea the people do live,

  The first noble forefathers of the world,

  Who forged a new life for the next sons of men

  Who found the path through vast seas unknown,

  Using mine own ore, lodestone, and brass plate.

  Whose true purpose remains remembering and rediscovering.”

  Heidi coughed. “I hope you’re all writing that down.”

  Jemma tapped her armrests, thinking. “Don’t have to.”

  “It is a dry, old portion of text,” Lucie admitted. “But also, it is telling. This person, the man who made the statues, freely admits he not only fashioned them but left the message for future generations in the hope that they would ‘remember and rediscover.’ I don’t like to jump in feet first, but I think it could be a way to find Atlantis. The start of a cipher. The first clue is right there. The poor man could never have imagined the destruction wrought on Atlantis a few years later or that his statues might survive, but look at the human race of today. We bury time capsules. We plant flags and build furiously. We leave our wills and hide sentimental items in safes or bank vaults. We want to remember. We want to be remembered. Maybe this man used the only tools at his disposal to do the same.”

  “That’s all good,” Cross said from the back, “the deciphering and all. But what the holy hell does it all mean?”

  “It’s a telling of his time,” Lucie said, folding her fingers together and looking every inch the high school teacher. “A short telling, yes, but he didn’t exactly have much room.”

  Bodie narrowed his eyes just slightly. Was that . . . was that an attempt at a joke? Somehow, he doubted it. He wondered if any words that weren’t neat, well pruned, and precise had ever escaped her mouth, but then criticized himself. Being precise didn’t preclude making jokes.

  “You’re wondering how it helps us.” She was staring right at him. “I can see. If we’re hunting for the fabled Atlantis, the stakes will be incredibly high. Men and governments kill for far, far less. Think of the wealth, the power it would bring, not to mention the enormity of wisdom, history, and technology within. A country may become a superpower overnight. Or a superpower may cement its international standing even further. But first we have to discover the true identity of this man. And then we have to find his compass.”

  “You got all that from that dry, old verse?” Cassidy asked.

  “That verse is ancient history, incredibly valuable. Potentially, it holds the power to reshape our thinking.”

  “Wow.” Cassidy sat back. “I didn’t catch that. Maybe it’s the way you tell it?”

  “I’m not sure what you mean. What I do know is that ore, lodestone, and a brass plate mean a compass and that this man made that too.”

  “Nine thousand years ago?” Jemma asked. “I thought compasses didn’t exist until around the fifteenth century.”

  “That was the first compass known to navigate the sea,” Lucie said. “And that’s where our story gets really interesting.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lucie began to pace, but the slight roll of the plane made it too difficult and she grabbed hold of a seat back.

  “Remember I stressed that the Atlanteans were an advanced seafaring people? Well, through history it has often been believed that the mariner’s compass existed long before we thought. It seems as far back as you can study ancient races of the world there is some knowledge of the magnetic stone. Europeans routinely claimed new inventions that were in fact just plagiarized from older populations. First, the compass was believed to be invented by Amalfi in 1302, but an Italian poem from 1190 refers to its use by sailors. And, of course, it is now known to have been used by the Vikings back in AD 868—five hundred years earlier than we first thought. Sanskrit has been a dead language for twenty-two hundred years but refers to ‘the precious stone beloved of iron,’ and ‘the stone of attraction.’ And even the Phoenicians placed a representation of the compass at the prow of their ships. Again, I mention this to back up my findings.”

  The team drew a collective breath, but said nothing.

  “There is a clear line of progression here that passes the compass from the Atlanteans to the Hindus to the Chinese. But this is the one thing everyone is clear on—all civilizations where the compass has been found associate it with territories where Atlantean myths prevail. The compass is older than we have been led to believe, people, much older.”

  Bodie shifted in his seat as winds gently rocked the plane. “You’re saying that the man who forged the statues nine thousand years ago also made a compass? And you’re saying that’s the next clue?”

  “If I am reading the v
erse correctly, yes. Don’t you see it?”

  “Well, I guess so, but you’re the historian.”

  “Of course. So true. In fact, I already found out the man’s name. It is Danel, and was carved on the base of every statue. A signature.”

  “So we’re searching for Danel’s Compass, a little known historical relic, in the whole of Europe?” Jemma asked, looking confused. “Surely you have more to go on than that?”

  “I seriously doubt you would need more.”

  Jemma bit her tongue. “If you’re about to say ‘We’re the relic hunters,’ I’m gonna—”

  “Not at all.” Lucie looked confused. “I was merely offering the floor to Agent Moneymaker here, and the CIA.”

  Jemma inclined her head. “All right, I admit the reasoning’s sound.”

  Heidi moved over to stand next to the history expert. “Of course, Lucie is right. She suggested in private that we should search for an object by the name of Danel’s Compass. We’ve been scouring the databases for the last few hours.”

  “You couldn’t just tell us before all the . . . rhetoric?” Cassidy asked.

  “Again,” Lucie said with confusion in her eyes, “don’t you want to know why you’re going where you’re going? Don’t you want to question the evidence? I present it as best I can, but even my reasoning can occasionally be flawed.”

  Bodie turned to address the others. “She’s right, you know. Who here would embark on a heist without questioning every blueprint, every camera position, every laser sight?”

  Lucie cleared her throat. “Umm . . . laser sight? I hope this won’t be too dangerous.”

  “Don’t worry about it, love,” Bodie said. “That’s the least of your worries now that you’re working for thieves who work for the CIA who may or may not have the full backing of the US government. Depending on who you speak to. Is that about right, Heidi?”

  The agent ignored his question. “I, for one, wouldn’t join an op that hadn’t been scrutinized down to the last possible element. Thank you, Lucie.”

  “You’re welcome, I think.”