The Pandora Chronicles - Book 1 (A Scifi Adventure Thriller)

by Attard, Ryan

  “I’m sorry, Sir,” she said, frowning at the piece of plastic Nick handed her. “The machine keeps rejecting your card.”

  Nick grimaced at the card and fumbled in his wallet.

  “Try this one,” he said with a smile that made her blush a little.

  “I’m so sorry, Sir,” she said after trying again. “This one is no good either.”

  Solomon took the card, checking it for scratches. He had money in the damn thing, so why wouldn’t it work? He made a mental note to call the bank first thing tomorrow morning.

  “Let’s try this the old-fashioned way, then,” he said, handing her some banknotes.

  Once outside, he dumped the bags in the car and extracted his cell phone. No service. He saw a guy walk past chatting away on a Bluetooth earpiece. Clearly, he had service.

  What the hell was going on?

  Panic was starting to surface as he got to his car and drove off to his office. Once there, the groceries were dumped on the couch, and he went to his computer. He tried logging into his school account but got rejected.

  “Hey, Ty,” he called.

  Tyrone’s head appeared from the kitchen with a spoon in his mouth.

  “I’m outta the system,” Nick said. “Could you do me a favor and log into your account?”

  Tyrone put down his pudding cup. “What for?”

  Nick considered telling him about Astrid and his growing suspicion that the millionaire had somehow exacted revenge for Nick’s refusal. But he had no proof yet, nothing he could give to the police—just a theory and a myth about a lost city of gold.

  “Just try looking me up,” Nick said. “Maybe they got a bug or something.”

  Tyrone nodded and tapped at the keyboard. He frowned, paused, and began typing again, his frown deepening with each keystroke.

  “Erm… Teach?”

  “Yeah?”

  “I dunno how to tell you, but you’re out of the system.”

  “I know. Hence my asking you to check.”

  “Nah, Teach. I mean you out of the system,” Tyrone insisted. “Try Googling your name.”

  Nick pulled up the search engine and typed in his name, expecting to see the usual articles emboldening his name and National Geographic links detailing his achievements.

  Now, there was nothing. In fact, Google decided that the entry Nick Solomon, archaeology was an error.

  Nick swore. “Just what is going on here?”

  “Seems like someone shut you down, Teach,” Tyrone suggested. “As far as the virtual world goes, Nick Solomon no longer exists.”

  “They shut down my credit cards and cell phone, too,” Nick added. “Something tells me that even my birth certificate is invalid.”

  Tyrone’s eyes narrowed. “Just what did you get yourself involved in, Teach?”

  Before Nick could answer, he felt his phone vibrate. He extracted it from his pocket, and looked at the message from an unknown number.

  Go outside and wait for our call.

  Nick’s expression darkened. This had officially gone beyond the realms a messed up prank or an act of revenge. This was officially in blackmail territory.

  ***

  The courtyard at Trinity College was a favorite spot among the students. It was just an empty field of grass, but at some point everyone lounged there. There were students studying, eating, chatting, playing with their phones, and even sun-bathing. And of course, you’d always find that one group of alpha males throwing around a football, or the hippie-wannabes wearing only a pair of jeans and an acoustic guitar.

  As soon as Solomon was out of the school building, his cell phone went off again.

  “Did we get your attention yet?” a voice crackled from the other end.

  “Clever tactic you got there,” Nick replied. “So, what are you? FBI? CIA?”

  “We’re the ones who can pull the trigger and shut you down.”

  “Which means you guys are government. No way Astrid’s got this kinda power,” Nick said. “If you’re government, then you probably know everything about me already. Which means you know that I do not respond well to threats.”

  The voice chuckled. “Oh, Mr. Solomon, this is no threat. We simply wanted to make you notice us.”

  “Mission accomplished. And it’s Professor Solomon to you, Mr.—who the hell are you?”

  “You are speaking with Director Stanley Briggs.”

  “What do you want, Stan?”

  “It’s Director Briggs to you.”

  Nick ignored him. “Stan. Stan the Director. Kinda catchy, ain’t it?”

  “Stop joking around, Solomon.”

  “Then, just tell me what you want from me.”

  There was a pause before Director Briggs answered. “Earlier today, you received a visit from a certain Alejandro Astrid. He asked you to examine evidence of a secret society called the Order.”

  Nick let out a snort. “He also asked me to find El Dorado. The dude’s not exactly all there, if you catch my drift.”

  “Yes, we gathered that on our own,” Briggs replied. “But that is of no interest to us, Solomon. What I’m about to tell you is a top-clearance government secret.” He paused for a second.

  “We keep tabs on every secret society in existence. But this Order is still a mystery to us. We have no beginning or end, just a series of events which we cannot link to anyone or anything—except for Astrid.”

  Nick connected the dots in his mind. “And you want me to take his case and report back to you. Play the double agent game, right?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Now you’re the insane one, Director. Besides, don’t you have people trained for this sort of crap?”

  “We do. But right now, you are the one we need, Professor. And you are also the one with the most incentive.”

  Nick’s eyebrows shot up. “Oh, this should be good.”

  There was a pause and a crackling noise, like a phone exchanging hands.

  “Professor Solomon?” The new voice was female and made entirely out of ice.

  “Who is this?” he asked.

  “You may call me Excalibur,” she said.

  “Like the magic sword?”

  “Precisely.”

  “You seem sharp enough,” Solomon joked.

  “Please, be quiet and look at your phone. I have sent you some images which might interest you.”

  Nick looked at his cell phone and, sure enough, a new image file had been sent. He tapped it open and began scrolling.

  “What the f-?”

  The Order’s logo, the same one he saw on Astrid’s coin, appeared on his phone. The second image was a satellite photo of a large compound. His heart skipped a beat when he recognized the geography: it was the compound he grew up in, his childhood home.

  With a trembling digit, Nick forced himself to swipe across the image. The next picture was a black and white photograph of a man and the file name read Olly Fletcher.

  “Professor Solomon?”

  Nick put the phone back to his ear and said nothing. His erratic breathing did all the necessary talking.

  Excalibur’s voice crackled again. “Olly Fletcher. True name, Oliver Finnegan, son of Captain Jack Finnegan and Duchess Elizabeth Tier. The forefather of the organization created to oppose the Order. Their HQ was that compound. We know who you are, Professor. We know all about where you were raised, about the training you received.” Then, her voice lowered into a sinister whisper.

  “And we also know what you really are. A Select.”

  Chapter 16

  The plane ride from the United States to Spain was pretty much uneventful. As usual, Nick had to deal with being crammed into a seat with virtually no leg room, next to a guy who should have been stowed away in the luggage component.

  Nick had a tablet out and tried very hard not to slam it repeatedly against his forehead.

  The US government is officially an idiot, he thought. It was one thing to commission an expedition, and quite another to ask him
to help a criminal in finding a mythological city of gold.

  “Just point him in the right direction,” they had said, despite his repeated yelling that he had no idea where the place was. When he got back to his apartment that evening, his bank account and documents were still blocked, and he found a plane ticket to Spain as well as the NSA’s file on Astrid. The guy was something of a crime lord, masking his operations with the usual import-export business. Not that the information surprised Nick.

  What did surprise him however was how the NSA, with all its power, couldn’t just shut Astrid down. Maybe they wanted to find the Order themselves. Or maybe this Briggs character was as insane as the Spaniard, and after El Dorado as well.

  Either way, Nick was involved now, and if he wanted his life back he had to see it through.

  Just do your job and get out, he kept telling himself. It was bad enough he had no money or documentation anymore—those bastards even made him miss that concert he was looking forward to all month.

  Freakin’ government.

  He switched on his tablet in a bid to distract himself from his bitterness and pulled up a file he had begun compiling the previous night. He had all known expeditions to El Dorado listed down, all the way back to the Conquistadores: Ordaz, Martinez, the Welser agents, Pizarro, Francisco de Orellana, Philip Von Hutten, Quesada, Sir Walter Raleigh, and Alexander Von Humboldt; there was no shortage of explorers who tried finding the city and died trying. Mostly the latter.

  But Solomon’s job was more of a navigator than an expeditionary, not that he saw much of a difference. Last time he checked, yellow fever did not distinguish by job title.

  But what if it is real and you found it?

  That voice had been getting louder and louder since his meeting with Astrid. It was that same voice which drove him to look for the next challenge, the next site to dig, the next item to examine.

  Shut up, he thought arguing from a rational point of view.

  The fact remained, the city did not exist—it was just a fairy tale. And if Nick were to tempt fate, chances are he might end up like all the other explorers.

  And yet, he kept working, just like the guy who knows he’s going to crash his car but just can’t stop speeding.

  After an hour, he had it narrowed down to three possible locations. The first was the Amazon rainforest. There were parts of it still unexplored, and the native tribes there rarely allowed outsiders inside their territory, no matter what the Discovery Channel might think.

  The second was the Bolivian Jungle. Nick put this guess in because too many on his list had died on Peruvian soil, wandering the jungles there.

  The third guess was one of the islands somewhere around Baja California. He remembered some of the stories told to him during his childhood and the description of the environment seemed to match the Pacific shores on the Californian side rather than South American shores.

  He pushed back the memories of his childhood and replaced them with thoughts of his present predicament.

  This is all I can do right now, he thought, before giving up on working and surrendered to playing Angry Birds and listening to music while fantasizing about a long vacation he was suddenly yearning to take.

  The flight lasted for another few hours and then was mercifully over.

  Solomon had no luggage, except for a duffel bag, so he quickly walked outside, following the Arrivals arrows. At the main foyer, he caught sight of a large, beefy man holding up a piece of cardboard with ‘Solmon’ scribbled on it.

  “Nice sign,” Nick said as he walked up to the man.

  The large man peered at Nick over his sunglasses.

  “You Professor?” he asked, pointing at Nick and then at the sign.

  “Yeah.”

  “Wait, please,” the man said as he pulled out a photograph of Nick and compared it to the man in front of him.

  “You, Nick Solomon,” he finally said, emphasizing each syllable.

  “And you, are a genius,” Nick mimicked.

  The man’s already beady eyes narrowed even further. “You follow me now.”

  “A gentleman would buy me dinner first,” Nick shot back.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, just a joke.”

  The man let out a grunt. “Mister Astrid no like joke. You come to do business. No more joke, please.”

  He escorted Nick to a sleek, black Range Rover designed for rougher roads than concrete and asphalt.

  “We go to Algericas and off to Mister Astrid’s lands. It is long drive. You sleep or work.”

  They got in the car and the man started the engine. Solomon couldn’t help himself.

  “Are we there yet?”

  “No more joke.”

  ***

  “We are here.”

  Nick snapped out of his slumber and fought back momentary panic of not knowing where he was. The past two days’ events came rushing in at once, and he remembered to put on his best poker face.

  The Rover had gone about three hours south of Algericas and into the wilderness and more rural areas. The last thing Nick saw before falling asleep was a beautiful panorama of green, and he vaguely heard the driver point out that they were entering Astrid’s lands.

  The white villa spanned like an airfield. It was a clash between a giant garden and a house with a different version of paradise in between each room. It even had the iconic golden gates which swung open to allow the Rover inside.

  The driver escorted Nick to a veranda on foot, where Astrid stood next to a fountain.

  “Ah, Professor Solomon,” he said. His white suit made him look like a seagull. “So glad you changed your mind.”

  He suddenly embraced Nick, who just stood there awkwardly.

  “Wasn’t left with much of a choice,” Nick replied.

  Astrid beamed at him. “Yes. I, too, feel that passion which drives me to find the answer to this mystery. Come. I have much to show you.”

  Solomon found himself being half-dragged into the villa. Every inch was decorated with expensive stuff: paintings, portraits, statues and, in one particular room, a canvas that spanned over the entire ceiling.

  “This room is my pride and joy,” Astrid said, before inserting a large key and opening a thick, mahogany door.

  It was a cross between a museum and a dining hall. There were artifacts from every era, and Nick’s trained eye began authenticating them automatically.

  “The table used to be part of the furniture aboard the very first ships that sailed to America,” Astrid continued. “The silverware is pure silver, of course, salvaged from one of Cortez’s ships—those that were salvaged anyway. Very difficult to acquire, but I just had to have them.”

  Nick’s eyes wondered over to the head of the table and lightly touched the smooth wood. “This looks like it came from the Tudor era,” he said.

  “Correct,” Astrid replied. “All the chairs are either Tudor or Elizabethan, taken from the courts of Her Majesty herself.”

  Behind the chair, standing against the wall as if at attention, were two full suits of armor, complete with weapons and shields, from the First Crusade.

  “Templar knights,” Nick gasped in awe.

  “Yes. It took a small fortune to get the full thing,” Astrid said. “The rest of the stuff here includes authentic Conquistadores uniforms and equipment.”

  Nick walked along the exhibitions, observing everything from Aztec masks to African shamanic scepters, a samurai-era daito, and a Chinese fan with more age than the entire United States. He flitted from one item to another, like an excited boy in a toy store.

  “And this, Professor Solomon, is my most prized exhibition.”

  Astrid was patting a glass case standing at the very back of the room in a corner all by itself. Its contents were sparse compared to the rest of the displays. There was an entire row of coins like the one Astrid had brought to Nick’s class. A faded, yellowed map lay flat, and Nick noticed it was largely incorrect, but had interesting markings on certain lo
cations. Then, there were stacks of parchment, all showing the same story—gods bearing gifts to man. Finally, there was a broken sextant and a Conquistador’s helmet.

  “They were taken from Columbus’s first voyage. That was also when the Order had become established,” Astrid said as he gazed into the case.

  “The pictures you showed me,” Nick said. “Where were they taken from?”

  Astrid sighed and motioned for Nick to follow him. They exited the room, and Astrid locked it up again.

  “The Order had a series of ledgers, usually bound in red leather, in which it kept all of its case files, so to speak,” the Spaniard explained. “Those images were from one such ledger. It is not in my possession, unfortunately. It is not even in the country.”

  They walked all the way outside, onto a veranda, and were greeted with a beautiful panorama which ended in the stark blue of the ocean. Nick could just make out the faint outline of land on the horizon, like a solid cloud of mist.

  “Do you know what you are looking at, Professor?” Astrid asked.

  Nick made some quick calculations. “The Straits of Gibraltar,” he replied, impressed by the view.

  Astrid nodded. “Yes. They are also known as the Pillars of Hercules. The legend goes that one of the labors of Hercules took him to the very edge of the Mediterranean, and he split a mountain in half in order to gain passage.”

  He paused for a moment.

  “This is just a myth, of course,” Astrid continued, “but it serves of inspiration to me. If a man could split a mountain in two with his bare hands, in order to achieve his goal, then no challenge is truly impossible.” His cold, grey eyes fell on Solomon. “I want El Dorado, Professor Solomon. I want to do what my ancestors, and an entire secret society, could not. And I always get what I want.”

  Chapter 17

  Nick and Astrid locked eyes, each searching for weaknesses in the other.

  “Is that a threat, Mr. Astrid?” Nick Solomon’s voice was as cold as Astrid’s eyes. He felt his heart pounding heavily in his chest, suddenly very much aware of the crazy rich guy standing a few feet in front of him.