‘So you think that Atlantis has some connection with a volcano?’ Lopez hazarded.
‘That’s what Lucy was thinking,’ Hellerman went on. ‘The various Atlantis legends all describe a city that lives under a cloud of some kind and almost all of the ancients describe their version of Atlantis not as some modern marvel but as a city of flames and smoke, a city that is feared as well as revered. The Romans and their predecessors, the Etruscans, had traditions concerning their coming from an overseas land submerged under the seas in a cataclysm shortly after or during a great war. They were led by Aeneas, and came in a great fleet of ships from a region located outside the Pillars of Hercules. Even the Amerindians of the Brazilian Amazon such as the Tucanos, Desanas and Barasanas claimed to have come from a sunken Paradise, destroyed and submerged by the Flood.’
Ethan listened as Hellerman spoke of the enormous number of ancient civilizations who bore legends of their ancestors as having travelled from some distant, mysterious land consumed first by flames and then by the oceans. All over the world, from the Amazonian jungle to the plains of Babylon to the sandy deserts of Egypt and the Near East, there were mythical allusions to sunken golden realms that are often likened to Hell or Hades, the Realms of the Dead. The Suvarna–dvipa or “Golden Isles” of the Hindus, the Chryse Chersonesos or “Golden Peninsula” of the Greeks, the Aigeia of Poseidon, the Aiaia of the Argonauts, the Eldorado of Amerindian traditions, the Apsu or “House of the Apsu” of Babylonian traditions, the subterranean Vara of Yima, the Flood Hero of the Persians and more. They all derived from the myth of Atlantis and their true source was the Hindu traditions such as those recounted in the Ramayana and the Mahabharata, which Lucy had been investigating when she had suddenly fallen silent.
Jarvis leaned against the beach house wall as he spoke.
‘We sent Lucy out under the cover of her research projects for the Chicago Natural History Museum to start searching for any common threads in the story of Atlantis that might shed some light on whether the city actually existed and if so where it might be found. Obviously, people have been searching for Atlantis for millennia and so far they’ve come up empty, but Lucy located this emblem in three separate locations on the coast of India and was able to tie them to actual physical towns or cities that have long since been lost to history. She went off to find them and that’s where we lost contact with her.’
‘When did we last hear from her and where was she?’ he asked.
‘Rampara, India,’ Hellerman said. ‘Lucy mentioned that she had made some sort of connection with an ancient Greek manuscript, some kind of codex that she was trying to unravel. Arnie’s flying boat is within range of the region and it should be child’s play for you to slip into the country unobserved and find out where she went. Her last contact before us is an archaeological expert who has been excavating sites around that part of India’s coast for the past thirty years. I’ll send his details.’
Ethan turned to Lopez expectantly. ‘You up for this?’
‘No,’ Lopez uttered as though it were obvious, which he realized that it was. ‘You sure it can’t wait one more day?’
Jarvis smiled and pushed off the wall. ‘I’m afraid that as unjust as it may seem, one of the world’s greatest discoveries can’t wait for you to top up your tan, Nicola. Arnie will get you out to Rampara and will fly you around for as long as you need. We’ll stay in touch via Rhys Garrett’s yacht which will follow you up there but remain a discreet distance away to avoid risking any connection between yourselves and the rest of our operation.’
‘What about Mitchell?’ Ethan asked, recalling that the towering, sepulchral former assassin who had once served Majestic Twelve was now working for Jarvis. ‘Will he be helping us out with this one?’
‘Mitchell is otherwise engaged,’ Jarvis replied enigmatically. ‘Rest assured he will join us as soon as he can. Go, now, and find Lucy. She might be about to reveal to the world something even more astounding than the remains she found in Israel all those years ago, and we’re not the only ones who will want to be there when she does. Mat’ Zelmya in Russia are following similar leads to us, and we suspect that they’re closely allied with elements of the American government and may be willing to trade information and resources in order to locate us and the money we liberated from Majestic Twelve. Watch your backs folks, because this time everyone’s looking for us.’
***
VII
Capitol Hill,
Washington DC
Allison Pierce pulled her jacket closer about her and yanked her collar up to protect her neck against a bitter wind gusting off the streets nearby beneath a featureless slate gray sky. She had been standing on the steps of Congress for almost an hour but still had not caught sight of the man she had been waiting for.
She glanced down the steps to where her companion awaited, tucked out of sight behind stone pillars that flanked the entrance to the Capitol. He peeked out at her but otherwise did not move, something in his grasp hidden beneath a thick winter coat.
Allison checked her watch once again. The congressional committee should have completed its final meeting and disbanded almost an hour ago. To her amazement, she was the only person on the steps of the building who seemed to have any idea of what was occurring within, that this was one of the most momentous days in modern democracy. Yet there had not been a single news piece about the meeting, not a single station carrying the story.
Allison hugged herself against the cold and for the first time that day wondered whether she had made some mistake and got the wrong day, or that perhaps this story really wasn’t worth covering. Then she recalled the countless hours she had spent pursuing leads, the endless blocking of her work by her superiors and the efforts made by nameless souls to dissuade her interest in the meeting. She steeled herself against the cold once again and resolved to see it through to the…
‘He’s coming out.’
The voice of Allison’s companion crackled in her ear piece and she looked up to the Capitol entrance to see Congressman Milton Keyes stride outside with his secretary on one side and a security guard on the other. Squat, overweight and embued with the arrogant air of a lawmaker above the law, Keyes struck out toward her without a care in the world. Allison waited until they were descending the steps, as far from the sanctuary of the Capitol building as they were from the glossy black limousine that was pulling up at the bottom of the steps, and then she pounced.
‘Congressman Keyes, Allison Pierce, KNW news.’
Keyes glanced at her and the cameraman who leaped out from behind the stone pillars nearby, then he averted his eyes and began to hurry down the steps as he angled away from her approach.
‘Congressman Keyes won’t be taking questions today,’ his secretary informed Allison.
Allison hurried to keep pace as her cameraman deftly walked backwards down the steps with his camera trained on the congressman.
‘What has been the conclusions of the committee on the Majestic Twelve scandal congressman?’ Allison demanded. ‘The public were promised an open and frank review of what happened eight months ago and yet the final findings of the investigation have taken place today without any fanfare. There has been no opportunity for the people to receive an explanation as to how a group of industrialists could have made off with billions of dollars of tax–payer’s money?’
‘The three billion dollars of public money was returned to the people as reported last summer, Miss Pierce,’ the secretary replied with a smile so forced it looked as though she were chewing a wasp. ‘Everybody knows that.’
‘Yes, but what they don’t know is that three billion dollars is just a fraction of the money found to be missing from government coffers over the past twenty years. What happened to the rest of the money, congressman? We know it’s still out there so why isn’t anything now being done to recover it?’
Congressman Keyes glanced at his security guard and the muscular, shaven headed man pushed his way forward to block Alli
son’s way.
‘Is that where we are now, congressman?’ Allison called as her cameraman continued to film. ‘Blocking the press whenever they ask questions that you don’t like? Is the administration’s hatred of the media now poisoning the legislative branch too now? Or will anything I say now be dismissed as fake news, like any other inconvenient truths that the administration and its cronies don’t want the people to hear or think about?’
‘Congressman Keyes won’t be answering any questions at this time,’ the secretary repeated. ‘Any further pressurisation or provocation will be considered harassment!’
‘Is it harassment to ask a congressman for the very information he promised to deliver to the people of this country months ago?’ Allison snapped as she pushed against the security guard. ‘Or is that the free press merely doing our job and an elected official failing to do theirs?’
Congressman Keyes reached his car and the security guard moved to open it for him. Allison grabbed the opportunity the brief respite offered and she ducked left, cutting in behind the congressman and shoving her microphone between him and the vehicle’s interior.
‘Are the people whom you vowed to serve no longer entitled to a response to their questions, or the fulfilment of promises that you made to them on live television, congressman?’
The security guard shifted position and pushed the microphone aside as the lawmaker virtually hurled himself into the car and the guard slammed the door shut behind him. Allison made the most of the moment as she called into the glossy black mirrored window.
‘Are you shutting the door on the people you promised to serve, congressman? Are you now just the lackey of a corrupt administration? Has America now become the kind of state the rest of the world fears it has become?’
The security guard climbed into the front passenger seat of the vehicle and within moments it was gone, pulling swiftly into the flow of traffic and vanishing as a squall of thin snow began to fall from the bitter sky overhead. Allison turned to her cameraman and saw him shut the camera off, his features dejected.
‘You should have known better Ali, they were never going to talk to us. This whole thing has been a whitewash from day one.’
Allison grinned as she tucked her microphone away and they headed toward their car nearby.
‘On the contrary, it couldn’t have gone better.’
‘What? They said nothing, gave us nothing. What the hell’s good about that?’
‘Curiosity,’ Allison replied. ‘If Keyes had been smart about it he would have spoken to us, hid behind some kind of legalese or just claimed that there was nothing to hide and that the findings of the meeting would be released soon. Instead, he brushed us off using force and refused to say anything, which to any sane mind means he’s hiding something.’
The cameraman sighed and shook his head.
‘I don’t know, Ali. Ever since the new administration took power they’ve been cutting out broadcasters from press conferences who print anything that doesn’t show them in a good light to the public. You know as well as I do that they’ll do everything they can to prevent us from releasing anything that can be construed as negative press.’
‘Good,’ Allison replied. ‘As hard as they push to silence us the harder we’ll push back to be heard. This is how fascism once took hold in Europe Pete, the attempts of a governing power to pressure or coerce the free press and the sewing of the seeds of doubt in the public mind about anything they read in the news. If the people come to believe that the only truth that matters is that which they hear from the halls of power, then their democracy is already lost.’
Allison walked to their vehicle and unlocked it as Pete moved to the trunk to stow the valuable camera safely before joining her. As she got into the driver’s seat she heard the camera thump heavily down.
‘Hey, take it easy back there will you? That camera’s this months’ pay check for you and I!’
Pete moved around to the passenger door as she started the engine, and then he climbed into the car with her and she realized that it was not Pete at all. The barrel of a 9mm parabellum pressed into her side and a pair of dark eyes glared silently into hers. The man spoke with a deep, almost solemn voice, no hint of a threat in his tones and yet his voice all the more threatening for it.
‘Drive, now, or your friend in the trunk will pay the consequences.’
Allison stared for a moment into the big man’s eyes and she knew that the threat was serious. She pushed the vehicle into drive and then eased out into the flow of traffic as she kept her eyes straight ahead.
‘Congressman Keyes won’t get away with this,’ she said. ‘I don’t care what the administration thinks it can get away with, the forceful abduction of a journalist in the process of reporting on…’
‘Silence.’
The word was spoken without force and yet Allison obeyed instinctively as the car wound its way out of the district, the armed man offering monosyllabic directions as they travelled south out of Anacostia, crossing the river into Maryland toward Suitland. The gunman directed her to an anonymous spot near the Forestville center, the rear of a parking lot where trash gusted on the cold wind and where few pedestrians strayed.
Allison slowed the car down and pulled in alongside an abandoned lock up. The gunman reached across and switched the engine off before he yanked the keys from the ignition and slipped them into his pocket.
Allison kept staring straight ahead out of the windshield, the wheel held in a death grip as she blurted out more words.
‘If you kill me it will only draw more attention to my work and expose even more of the corruption festering right here in the nation’s capitol! Others will take my place, far more of us than you could possibly silence and they will…’
‘Look at me.’
Allison hesitated, deeply aware of the gun pressed deep into her side. It nudged her a little harder and she turned her head with an effort and looked at the man. Dark skin, soulless black eyes devoid of any compassion that she could detect, salt and pepper hair cropped short above a bull neck and broad shoulders. Judging by the way he was crammed into her car, he was probably six four and weighed two hundred fifty pounds, big enough to crush her with one hand and…
‘You need to learn to shut up, because right now all you’re going to do is get yourself killed.’
Allison’s lip trembled along with her voice but she lifted her chin a little.
‘I’m not afraid of you people. I won’t be stopped from doing my job and…’
‘See what I mean?’
Allison stopped talking as she stared at the man and saw something now in his gaze, a bemusement perhaps, as though he were assessing her. The thought that he might simply be a drug–addled hijacker looking for cash for his next fix crossed her mind, but his clothes were smart and he was clean shaven and…
‘You assume that I’m working for Congressman Keyes and you assume that you’ve been targeted in some way for assassination,’ he rumbled at her.
‘You’re ex–military, dressed like a security team member, you have a gun pressed against me and you’ve locked my cameraman in the trunk,’ Allison snapped back. ‘Excuse me for jumping to conclusions.’
Now, the man smiled a little, still watching her with interest.
‘And your reports are being broadcast but nobody’s listening,’ the man replied. ‘You have a story but nobody wants to hear it because it doesn’t stand out. It’s just one more tale of corruption in the halls of power that people have come to expect. Nobody trusts a politician these days, so what difference will it make?’
Allison was about to answer the question with her usual fiery patriotism when a new thought crossed her mind.
‘Who are you?’
The big man gently eased the pistol away from her side and slid it into a shoulder holster beneath his coat as he replied.
‘Now you’re thinking straight,’ he said. ‘My name is Aaron Mitchell.’
Allison frowned expectantly. ‘
I don’t know you.’
‘And that’s your problem, right there. You’re reporting on something and you know almost nothing about it. You don’t even know about the people involved.’
Allison’s eyes widened as she stared at him. ‘You know about Majestic Twelve?’
Mitchell watched her for a long moment with that sombre gaze.
‘I worked for them for thirty years.’
‘Doing what?’
Mitchell sucked in a deep lungful of air as he glanced outside at the abandoned lot. ‘Clearing up issues.’
Allison stared at the big man for a moment and then her journalist’s instinct kicked in.
‘Prove it.’
Mitchell smiled a faint, enigmatic smile as he returned his gaze to her. ‘Note this down: Russian billionaire Yuri Polkov goes missing in Peru; Stanley Meyer’s fusion cage; computers that can read minds in real–time in Japan; the Black Knight satellite.’
Allison grabbed a notebook that she always carried with her and scribbled furiously. ‘I’ve never heard of any of this?’
‘That’s because the congressional committee hasn’t either,’ Mitchell replied. ‘Congressman Keyes can’t talk to you because he’s as involved in what has happened over the past year as any of the cabal of Majestic Twelve. He is towing the line for others and will be hoping that people like you will eventually disappear.’
The Atlantis Codex (Warner & Lopez Book 7) Page 5
