The Atlantis Cipher (The Relic Hunters Book 2)

by David Leadbeater

“Listen,” Cross spoke up. “We’re about halfway into this journey. Do we know where we’re even going?”

  Now Heidi smiled. “Oh yeah,” she said. “Have you ever visited the Swiss Alps?”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  As the flight wore on, the team readied themselves for a fast assault, preparing weapons, gear, and communications devices as Heidi and Lucie continued to talk.

  “Danel’s Compass,” Heidi told them. “One of those obscure, unknown artifacts that wealthy men and women buy at auction houses around the world. Probably desired and sold at great price on account of its age. Probably—”

  “Wait,” Lucie said, thinking of her history. “Surely the sale of a nine-thousand-year-old compass would have been widely reported?”

  “Ah, you’re sweet.” Heidi smiled. “I’m talking about underground auctions. Those attended by collectors burdened with untold wealth, desperate to possess that which cannot be possessed and store their new assets where only they can see. Of all the incredible, important, relevant historical objects we know are in the world today, our inventory would double if we could include all those stolen items that we don’t. From art to sculpture to crafted eggs, to golden objects and even papyrus. The list is endless. Danel’s Compass was bought by a man named Carl Kirke some decades ago. A quick check into Kirke’s history and we find that he is a successful entrepreneur, a man of many fortunes. The good news is that none of his ventures appear to be illegal. The bad news is that he’s still a criminal, keeping an artifact once stolen from a museum without informing the authorities.”

  Cross shrugged. “Aren’t we all?”

  “Unless the CIA needs to borrow your skill set,” Bodie said. “Then you’re an agent.” He laughed to confirm the joke before Heidi got any bright ideas.

  “Well, we can always drop you off where we found you,” Heidi said sweetly before continuing. “We’re aiming for a hard landing in the Swiss Alps, a few miles from Kirke’s house. The rest will be up to you.”

  “We’re stealing the compass?” Cross said. “Shit.”

  Gunn was mouthing words like a goldfish. “When you say ‘hard landing’—”

  “Carl Kirke is a well-heeled hoarder,” Heidi said. “Probably forgotten he even has the compass.”

  “Maybe. But that’s not the problem,” Bodie said.

  “Listen,” Gunn said. “Just how hard is this landing going to be?”

  Heidi skimmed the faces before her. “Not too hard. What is the problem, Bodie?”

  “You keep dumping this shit on us. We’re thieves, bloody good ones. The kind of job we do—it takes months of planning. It takes discussions, sketching, more discussion, the review of several plans, options. It takes scheduling, organization, the perfect gear for the perfect job. Now, like I said, we’re decent thieves but we’re not magicians.”

  Heidi found a seat to slump in. “Well, shit. I guess we’d better turn around and forget all about Atlantis.”

  “If it means that we get what we want and walk free . . .” Bodie said quickly.

  Lucie took it at face value. “No, no! Surely you can give them some time to plan. I must say—I don’t remember the part where you mentioned they were thieves, but Guy is right. A professional in any field needs space to plan and execute a good job.”

  “Ahh,” Cassidy sighed. “Then there’s something else Heidi Hotpants didn’t tell you. Atlantis, the compass, and the statues have already attracted the attention of several undesirables. Gangs. Mafias. Mercs. Thugs. You know, the usual circus show.”

  Lucie looked stunned. Bodie felt a moment’s sorrow for her before shaking his head slightly under Heidi’s gaze.

  “Are you people ever up front with anyone?”

  “You can leave at any time,” Heidi grated.

  “That’s easy to say when you’re flying at thirty thousand feet,” Cassidy pointed out.

  “I know, and I don’t expect Lucie to accompany you on the mission,” Heidi said. “But I do expect the best heist team in the world to have worked out a plan in the next four hours. Get on with it.” And she turned away, staring hard at the bulkhead and cockpit door in front of her.

  Cassidy made a face at Bodie. “See how her curls get tighter when she’s mad?”

  Bodie kept it professional, but with difficulty. “We’re here,” he said, “so we’ll make the best of it to get what we want. Lucie’s done her job. Heidi’s done hers. It’s time for us to do ours.”

  Cross leaned forward, a sign of excitement. “Do we have a photo of the place?”

  Jemma turned her laptop around so that everyone could see it. “Already loaded up.” The house was ultramodern, a three-story structure that clung to a hillside. It wasn’t terribly imposing, raising no ominous warning signals, but its progressive appearance gave the impression that it would have state-of-the-art security measures.

  Bodie looked around at the team. “Then let’s get to work.”

  The airplane touched down, wheels skipping along the well-lit runway. The wings distended, dipped. Runway lights skimmed by at almost two hundred miles per hour. By the time the plane came to a halt, the team finally realized they were no longer in the air.

  “What time is it here?” Bodie asked.

  “Two a.m.,” Heidi said with a yawn. “The night is already passing.”

  “Not in this club, baby,” Cassidy said. “We party hardcore, right until dawn.”

  The team established a Bluetooth link with Lucie and Heidi, and drove away in a midnight-black Toyota off-roader, leaving them behind. Within minutes they had found a road and were climbing through the Swiss Alps. Darkness lay over the mountains like a thick fleece, wrapping the uneven land. Bodie cranked the heater up high as the team discussed the finer points of their plan.

  Soon, they parked and climbed out of the car. The night air hit them like an icy dart.

  “Right,” Bodie said. “To recap. We gain entry via the solar panels, hack the system . . . or as much of it as we can . . . and make straight for the safe room on the second floor. Eyes and ears open for any extra security on the inside. Got it?”

  Up here, the sense of vastness was absolute. Though the snow-covered mountains were dark, their shapes registered a colossal magnificence and radiated an utter silence. Bodie stood immobile for a minute, taking in the feeling. Time registered, he was sure, but the landscape did not entertain it.

  A rough, lightly grassed slope, speckled with snow, ran up the sides of the mountain to their right. At this height, the slope was gentle. Ahead, where Carl Kirke’s house sat, the gradient became much sharper. Initially it looked like three separate dwellings set on three huge mountain steps, one behind the other, but Bodie knew each building was joined to the one above by way of two parallel roofed bridges and also a twisting path at ground level. It was entirely built of stone but with wooden cladding, decks and balconies all the way around, and huge timber roofs that overhung everything. Yellow lights shone from several windows. An imposing, towering chimney built of stone and slate reared up out of the topmost dwelling, but no smoke emerged.

  Bodie turned to Jemma, who knew their plan right down to the finest detail. “Keep going?”

  Jemma pulled her thin thermal gloves even tighter. “Just up a ways, and the lighter snow there is where his property begins. We circumvent through that.” She pointed at a stand of trees adjacent to Kirke’s impressive home.

  They moved carefully onward through the dark. The cold bit hard, but Bodie ignored it. Movement would raise their core temperature and then, he knew from experience, the job and the thrill it wrought would take over.

  “It’s not so cold”—Cassidy blew on her fingers—“if you’re a seal.”

  “We’re not all used to the West Coast,” Cross mumbled. “It appears that can have its disadvantages.”

  “Piss off, redneck.”

  “That’s Mr. Redneck to you.” Cross forged ahead, the older man now playing on his age to give the redhead a feisty look.

  Cas
sidy grinned and fell in alongside him, happy to be part of something. Bodie checked their link back to Heidi for the third time and followed close behind. They wound through the high trees, taking advantage of the thick, verdant branches. They stayed low and moved a step at a time. Kirke didn’t appear to have any outside security, but Bodie’s team remained ever cautious.

  Eventually, they came to the end of the tree cover.

  “Ready to hug the house?” Jemma whispered.

  “Security measures start now,” Bodie reminded them.

  The care they took was infinite. Where Kirke’s safety measures consisted of a swivel camera, they waited for the lens to move, watching it through a high-powered, super-compact scope. They were crawling so close to the earth they tasted snow, felt it sprinkle across their faces when they moved. The area before Kirke’s home was nothing but a flat, meandering path of square paving amid rolling hills. It was entirely unassuming. Where cameras were fixed and positioned in pairs to observe everything, maybe even with infrared sensors attached, Gunn came forward and hacked their systems. He didn’t try to gain entry to Carl Kirke’s entire network yet—the team had discovered it had an internal server that approached military spec and was almost unhackable, and, without further investigation, thought it better to leave it alone. Kirke could keep his secrets—all but one.

  Half an hour passed quickly. Bodie breathed a sigh of relief when they approached the apex of the uppermost step, and the roof of Kirke’s highest building. When they reached it, they expected a new level of exposure, with no walls to hide them and the seemingly endless mountain rising toward blackness above.

  They would be required to move fast.

  Cross led the way, stepping lightly off the slope and onto Kirke’s roof. The angle was about thirty degrees and the timbers were lipped, making it easy to navigate. Cross moved over to the first of the solar panels, which were “in-roof,” the rectangles having replaced the tiles that used to live there. Where the design was secure enough, Bodie had yet to come across one that was correctly security-shielded.

  Cross used a laser to break the seal, then removed four of the narrow panels with help from Bodie and Cassidy. This gave them a three-foot gap. Bodie was the first to lower himself inside, grabbing hold of a cross timber and balancing on another to pause and study the scene below.

  “All good.”

  They descended into the loft space and made their way to a standard doorway, rather than the traditional hatch both Bodie and Cross were used to seeing. Gunn scanned it for every kind of machine-based apparatus, sensors, or spy technology that he could imagine but came up blank.

  “Clear.”

  Bodie clicked the door open and the team eased into a darkened hallway. They waited, listening for movement, taking as much time as they needed. Nothing happened. Three thirty a.m. passed by uneventfully. For some unknown reason, Kirke’s safe room was located inside the house’s second “step,” according to the blueprints Gunn had found in the federal state’s secure registry. Switzerland comprised twenty-six cantons and so consisted of twenty-six different building laws. All were governed by the local building authority, which kept precise records.

  Bodie found the staircase and studied the layout. They hadn’t had time to locate every security measure, so were having to wing it more than he was comfortable with. Still, experience counted for much.

  They descended to the bottom floor of the highest building, which stood entirely in darkness. Now they would have to traverse the bridge that joined it to the lower building. There was no other way down, thus the team saw this as the greatest risk.

  Gunn scanned the way ahead with an infrared detector. Jemma snooped for an alarm system by checking for control panels or monitors, searching for any sign of technology. In seconds, they had found what they were looking for: interior cameras and beams linked to an internal system. Gunn set about hacking it, working fastidiously at first but then starting to frown.

  Bodie tapped him on the shoulder. “Problem?”

  “Yeah, they’ve wired in extra redundancies that I can’t hack. Not enough time. I can force my way in, but it could set off an alarm.”

  “Shit, what are the odds?”

  Gunn waved a hand. “Fifty-fifty.”

  “Says the best hacker in the business,” Cassidy said with disappointment.

  “I never said that, Cass,” Gunn snapped back.

  Bodie felt the sweat beading on his brow. “If the alarm goes off, how long until someone gets here?”

  “Apart from the owner? Well, we’re in the middle of bloody nowhere.”

  “That’s what I thought you’d say.” Bodie stared at the others for a second, all but Cross appearing just a little anxious. “Do it. Everyone else get ready to run just in case.”

  “We’re not leaving now,” Jemma said.

  “He means to grab the owner of the house,” Cassidy said with some relish. “Not a problem, boss.”

  Gunn tapped his keyboard some more, tongue between his teeth. After a moment he wiped sweat away and made an anguished face. “Damn, it’s gonna be touch and go here.”

  “Get on with it, geek,” Cassidy urged.

  With a final flourish he hit the last key, attempting to loop the camera feed until they were across the bridge. Nobody breathed. Gunn clenched his fists.

  “Oh shit . . .”

  Bodie started forward, cursing their bad luck.

  “No, no, wait . . .” Gunn suddenly held his laptop up in triumph. “It worked. Took a while but . . . it’s safe to go.”

  Now the second building could be accessed. The safe room should be to their right, at the top of the stairs, and promised to be gigantic, spanning two floors. When Lucie asked how they would find a compass in a treasure trove, Bodie responded honestly.

  “Not a clue, love. But we’ve done it before.”

  “I don’t find that the most suitable reply.”

  “It’s pretty good for Bodie,” Cassidy said. “Usually it’s littered with lots of curse words too.”

  A door protected with a Kindle-size digital keypad stood before them, but this wasn’t the only worry. Soft light shone from the floor below and they could faintly hear music. Although no voices were evident, Bodie called a halt. They listened for a while, hearing nothing. The team peered through the balcony but saw no signs of life, not even shadows.

  Cross shrugged. “Embrace the night,” he said. “We’re on the clock here.”

  “You can say that again,” Gunn said softly. “The problem with forcing one’s way into a system is that you could then be purged. You can also be noticed at any moment. Get on with it, for God’s sake.”

  Bodie signaled for Cross to go ahead. While Gunn fretted, the thief connected a device to the keypad that crunched numbers and learned any passcode by matching processors, and waited. Soon, his minidisplay flashed red.

  “Five minutes,” Bodie said.

  Gunn hung his head. “Not good,” he whispered. “Not good at all. I recommend scanning the area and fast.”

  Bodie and Cassidy were already descending the staircase, but again saw no signs of life. Maybe Kirke was asleep on the sofa. From the background check they knew he was a loner, intent wholly upon himself.

  They returned to find Gunn rechecking his override, gripping his laptop between white fingers, and Jemma standing over him, biting her lip in concern. Cross was ignoring them both.

  “How’s it going?” Bodie asked.

  “It’s slipping,” Gunn moaned. “I’ve already lost control of the top-floor cameras.”

  Cross sighed with relief. “We’re in.”

  Cross jabbed the code into the keypad and opened the door. Inside there were no more corridors, no partitions, just a wide room with four walls and a ceiling, a simple staircase in the middle.

  The area was open plan, several large statues taking up the main space and paintings festooning the walls with color. A quick check revealed no hidden nooks and crannies. It also revealed, as expected,
that the inner room held no cameras.

  Immediately, Bodie discounted the top floor.

  They descended to the bottom level. Disappointment set in when they were faced with a mirror image of the top floor. It took a moment for Bodie to notice the single, significant detail.

  “Ah, bollocks,” he said. “Now that’s gonna be a major problem.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The safe measured eight feet in height and three feet in width. It was an old Gardamm, a manufacturer that prided itself on making burglary-proof products and supplying to the American government not only valuables vaults, but means of weapons storage as well.

  “I cracked one before,” Cross said dubiously. “Remember Milan?”

  “Of course, but Eli . . . we were fully equipped.”

  “Dammit, Bodie, get out of the way. Can’t hurt to try, am I right?”

  “In the meantime,” Gunn said, “we need a plan B in case he fails.”

  Bodie knew both men had valid points. He’d known Cross for many years now, and every time he came across something different, a new challenge, he approached it with puppy-dog eagerness. Cross was a jaded man in a burned-out world, but if there was one big reason Bodie admired him, it was that he never gave up.

  Bodie turned to Gunn. “Failure doesn’t exist,” he said. “We don’t leave this house without that compass. Get it sorted.”

  It was then he saw Cassidy, who stood on the other side of the room, gesticulating wildly. Instantly, he saw what troubled her.

  The lower-floor security door stood wide open. Through it he could see straight to the downstairs living quarters. Crap, is that a pair of legs?

  It was. When Bodie moved closer he saw the sprawled-out sleeping figure of what could only be Carl Kirke. The proportions were right. The hairline was right. The man lay on the carpeted floor, with what appeared to be a large poster of a woman’s face clutched in his arms. Bodie could hear heavy snoring quite clearly.

  “Awkward,” said Heidi as he related the scene to her through the earpiece.

  “Weird,” Cassidy whispered. “Think I should knock him out to prevent us disturbing him?”