They were standing on the outer edge of a wide platform that ran round the rotunda several metres above the central floor. Evenly spaced doorways, identical to the one they had just emerged from, had been cut into the rock all the way round the perimeter. Each one was topped with the now familiar symbols. Beyond the inside edge of the platform they could just make out the central dais of the chamber. Backing onto the vapour column were four stone seats, each in the shape of bull’s horns and arranged at cardinal points of the compass. The one facing them was obscured by the platform but was clearly larger than the others, the tips of the horns reaching up towards the oculus.
“It must be some sort of throne room,” Costas said, awestruck. “An audience chamber for the high priests.”
“The hall of the ancestors. The funerary chamber. And now the audience chamber,” Katya murmured. “This must be our last staging post to the holy of holies.”
They had been in a state of constant high excitement, exhilarated by the thrill of discovery since leaving the submarine. Now as they confronted the very core of the volcano their exuberance was tempered with unease, as if they knew the ultimate revelation would not be yielded without a price. Even Costas faltered, reluctant to abandon the security of the tunnel and pitch himself forward into the unknown.
It was Jack who broke the spell and urged them on. He turned towards the other two, his face streaked with grime and his rugged features underscored by pain.
“This is where the text was leading us,” he said. “The sanctuary of Atlantis is somewhere here.”
Without further ado he pushed himself forward and limped ahead, his willpower the only thing keeping him from buckling. Costas walked alongside and Katya immediately behind, her face set impassively as they made for the lip of the platform.
Just as the throne began to come into view over the edge of the platform, they were blinded by a beam of light. They instinctively cowered and shielded their eyes. Through the glare they made out two figures that materialized to right and left.
Just as suddenly the light disappeared. As their vision cleared, they saw that the two figures were clad in black just like their assailants in the submarine, and each carried a Heckler & Koch MP5 levelled menacingly from the hip. Jack and Costas raised their hands; they would have no chance of reaching their weapons before being cut down in a hail of bullets.
Ahead a flight of twelve shallow steps descended to the dais. A portable searchlight was aimed at them beside the stairs. A raised walkway led directly to the bull’s horn sculpture whose tips they had seen above the platform edge. It was the ostentatious backing for a massive stone seat, more ornate than the others.
The seat was occupied.
“Dr. Howard. A pleasure to meet you at last.”
Jack recognized the voice, the same drawling, guttural tone that had come over Seaquest’s radio from Vultura three days ago. He and Costas were pushed roughly down the stairs and the bloated form of Aslan came clearly into view. He was slouched on the throne, his feet planted firmly in front and his immense forearms draped over the sides. His pale and ageless face would have seemed almost like some priest of old were it not for the signs of rampant excess in his corpulent frame. With his billowing red robe and oriental features he seemed the epitome of an eastern despot, an image straight from the court of Genghis Khan, except for the thoroughly modern warriors on either side of him, each carrying a submachine gun.
Directly to Aslan’s right stood a diminutive figure at odds with the rest of the entourage. It was a plain-featured woman wearing a drab grey overcoat, her hair pulled back in a bun.
“Olga Ivanovna Bortsev,” Katya hissed.
“Your research assistant has been most helpful,” Aslan boomed good-naturedly. “Ever since she reported back to me I have kept your vessel under constant surveillance. I have been wanting to visit this island for a long time. Fortunately my men found a way up outside and into this chamber. It seems we arrived in the nick of time.” Suddenly his voice hardened. “I am here to claim lost property.”
Costas could restrain himself no longer and lunged forward. He was immediately sent sprawling as the butt of a gun slammed into his stomach.
“Costas Demetrios Kazantzakis,” Aslan said with a sneer. “A Greek.” He spat out the word contemptuously.
As Costas struggled to his feet, Aslan turned his attention to Katya, his dark eyes narrowing and the corners of his mouth betraying the hint of a smile.
“Katya Svetlanova. Or should I say Katya Petrovna Nazarbetov.”
Katya’s look had changed to angry defiance. Jack felt his legs slip out from under him as his body finally gave in. Her reply seemed to come from somewhere else, from a shadowy netherworld disconnected from reality.
“Father.”
CHAPTER 23
Ben shifted almost imperceptibly on his haunches, never once letting his eyes waver from the smudge of light that emanated from the control room at the far end of the passageway. He had held the same position for hour after hour, relieved only for short spells by Andy from the torpedo room below. With his body pressed against the casing and dusted with white precipitate he seemed almost a part of the submarine’s fabric, little different from the macabre corpse of the zampolit hanging in the darkness only an arm’s length behind.
Despite his E-suit the cold had crept insidiously into his body, and the fingers curled round the trigger guard of the AKSU had been numb for hours. Yet he knew how to compartmentalize pain, how to push away everything except what was needed to watch and wait. Years before he had learned that the true test of toughness was extreme endurance, the rare quality that had singled him out among all the other applicants for Special Forces.
He had taken his visor off and an acrid smell reached him before he sensed any movement.
“I managed to get up a brew.” Andy crept behind him and thrust a steaming mug under his face. “Some foul Soviet muck.”
Ben grunted but cradled the coffee gratefully in his free hand. They had no food other than the high-energy bars in their emergency packs, but had found some sealed water bottles in the wardroom and had made sure they were well hydrated.
“Anything yet?” Andy asked.
Ben shook his head. It had been almost eighteen hours since Jack and the others had left, a full day since they had last seen sunlight. Their watches told them it was early evening, yet with no link to the outside world they had little sense of the passage of time. Ahead of them their opponents had noisily consolidated their position below the escape hatch, periods of activity and raised voices punctuated by long silences. For hours they had endured the moans and wails of a wounded man until a muffled gunshot had put an end to it. Half an hour before there had been an intense commotion which Ben knew was the enemy submersible docking with their own deep submergence rescue vehicle, and he had heard the clatter of footsteps down the entry hatch. He had tapped a prearranged signal for Andy to join him in expectation of the worst.
“Here we go.”
Suddenly a torch shone down the passage towards them. Despite the harsh brightness neither man flinched. Ben put down the mug and flipped off the safety catch on the AKSU, and Andy pulled out the Makarov and melted into the darkness on the other side of the bulkhead.
The man’s voice that came down was hoarse and strained, the words half in English, half Russian.
“Crewmen of Seaquest. We wish to talk.”
Ben replied sharply in Russian. “Come any closer and we will destroy the submarine.”
“That will not be necessary.” The words this time were English and came from a woman. Ben and Andy kept their eyes averted, aware that a moment’s blindness in the torchlight could lose them their advantage. They could hear that she had advanced ahead of the man and stood only about five metres in front of them.
“You are pawns in other men’s games. Come over to us and you will be richly rewarded. You may keep your weapons.” The woman’s ingratiating tone made her accent seem even colder, harsher.
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“I repeat,” Ben said. “One step closer.”
“You await your friends.” There was a contemptuous laugh. “Katya,” she spat out the word, “is an irrelevance. But I had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Howard in Alexandria. Most interesting on the location of Atlantis. And most enjoyable to make his acquaintance and that of Dr. Kazantzakis again this morning.”
“You have been warned for the last time.”
“Your so-called friends are dead or captured. Your ship is destroyed. Nobody else knows the location of this submarine. Your enterprise is doomed. Join us and save your lives.”
Ben and Andy listened impassively, neither of them baulking or believing a word. Ben looked at Andy, then turned back.
“Not a chance,” he said.
Jack awoke with a start to the rays of morning sunlight playing across his face. He opened his eyes, looked round blearily, then shut them again. He must be dreaming, he thought. He was lying on his back in the middle of a king-sized bed on freshly laundered linen. The bed occupied one side of a cavernous room, its walls whitewashed and hung with half a dozen modernist paintings which all seemed vaguely familiar. Opposite him was a huge bay window, its tinted glass revealing a cloudless sky and a line of sun-bleached hills.
He began to raise himself and felt a stab of pain in his left side. He looked down and saw that a bandage covered his ribcage below a mass of bruising. Suddenly it all came back to him, their extraordinary adventure in the volcano, their final passage into the audience chamber, the image of Costas sprawled in agony and Katya standing beside him. He sat up with a jolt as he remembered her last word, his mind reeling in disbelief.
“Good morning, Dr. Howard. Your host is awaiting you.”
Jack looked up and saw a demure man of indeterminate age standing at the door. He had the Mongoloid features of central Asia, yet his English accent was as immaculate as his manservant’s uniform.
“Where am I?” Jack demanded gruffly.
“All in good time, sir. The bathroom?”
Jack looked in the direction the man had indicated. He knew there was little point in remonstrating and eased himself onto the richly hued mahogany floor. He padded into the bathroom, ignoring the Jacuzzi and opting instead for the shower. He returned to find new clothes laid out for him, an Armani black roll-neck shirt, white slacks and Gucci leather shoes, all in his size. With his three-day stubble and weather-beaten features he felt at odds with designer clothing, but he was thankful to be out of the E-suit with its unpleasant lining of congealed blood and seawater.
He smoothed back his thick hair and spotted the manservant hovering discreetly outside the doorway.
“Right,” Jack said grimly. “Let’s find your lord and master.”
As he followed the man down an escalator, Jack realized that the room he had occupied was one of a number of self-contained pods dotted around the ravines and slopes of the hillside, all linked together by a nexus of tubular passageways that radiated out from a central hub rising from the valley floor.
The edifice they were now entering was a vast circular building capped by a gleaming white dome. As they approached, Jack saw that the exterior panels had been angled to catch the morning sun as it shone down the valley, and below stood another battery of solar panels next to a structure that looked like a generating station. The whole complex seemed bizarrely futuristic, like a mock-up for a lunar station yet more elaborate than anything NASA had ever devised.
The attendant closed the doors behind Jack and he stepped guardedly into the room. Nothing about the utilitarian exterior had prepared him for the scene inside. It was an exact replica of the Pantheon in Rome. The vast space had precisely the dimensions of the original, capacious enough to accommodate a sphere more than forty-three metres in diameter, larger even than the dome of St. Peter’s in the Vatican. From the opening far above, a shaft of sunlight lit up the coffered vaulting, its gilt surface illuminating the interior just as the original would have done in the second century AD.
Below the dome the walls of the rotunda were broken by a succession of deep niches and shallow recesses, each flanked by marble columns and capped by an elaborate entablature. The floor and walls were inlaid with exotic marbles from the Roman period. At a glance Jack could identify the Egyptian red porphyry favoured by the emperors, green lapis lacedaemonis from Sparta and the beautiful honey-coloured giallo antico of Tunisia.
To Jack, this was more than antiquarian whimsy on a grand scale. Instead of the catafalques of kings, the niches were filled with books and the recesses with paintings and sculpture. The huge apse beside Jack was an auditorium with rows of luxurious seats in front of a full-sized cinema screen, and computer workstations were dotted around the room. Directly opposite the apse was an immense window. It faced north; the distant ridge Jack had seen from his bedroom window here filled the view, with the sea to the left.
The most striking addition to the ancient scheme was in the very centre, an image at once supremely modern and completely in keeping with the Roman conception. It was a planetarium projector, gleaming on its pedestal like a Sputnik. In antiquity the initiate could gaze upwards and see order triumphing over chaos; here, though, the fantasy was taken one step further, into a dangerous realm of hubris the ancients would never have dared enter. To project an image of the night sky inside the dome was the ultimate illusion of power, the fantasy of total control over the heavens themselves.
It was the playroom of a man of culture and scholarship, Jack reflected, of incalculable wealth and indolence, someone whose ego knew no bounds and who would always seek to dominate the world around him.
“My small conceit,” a voice boomed. “Unfortunately I could not have the original so I built a copy. An improved version, you will agree. Now you understand why I felt so at home inside that chamber in the volcano.”
The remarkable acoustics meant the voice could have come from beside Jack, but in fact it emanated from a chair next to the window in the far wall. The chair swivelled round and Aslan came into view, his posture and red robe exactly as Jack remembered before he lost consciousness.
“I trust you enjoyed a comfortable night. My doctors attended to your injuries.” He gestured towards a low-set table in front of him. “Breakfast?”
Jack remained where he was and scanned the room again. It had a second occupant, Olga Bortsev, Katya’s research assistant. She was staring at him from one of the niches in front of a table covered with open folio volumes. Jack cast her a malevolent glare and she looked back at him defiantly.
“Where is Dr. Kazantzakis?” he demanded.
“Ah yes, your friend Costas,” Aslan replied with a hollow laugh. “You need not be concerned. He is alive if not kicking. He is assisting us on the island.”
Jack reluctantly made his way across the room. His body desperately craved replenishment. As he approached the table, two waiters appeared with drinks and sumptuous platters of food. Jack chose a seat at the far end from Aslan and settled down gingerly in the soft leather cushions.
“Where is Katya?” he asked.
Aslan ignored him.
“I trust you liked my paintings,” he said conversationally. “I had your suite hung with some of my latest acquisitions. I understand your family has a special interest in cubist and expressionist art of the early twentieth century.”
Jack’s grandfather had been a major patron of European artists in the years following the First World War, and the Howard Gallery was famous for its modernist paintings and sculpture.
“Some nice canvases,” Jack said drily. “Picasso, ‘Woman with a Baby,’ 1938. Missing from the Museum of Modern Art in Paris since last year. And I see your collection is not restricted to paintings.” He gestured towards a glass case in one of the niches. Inside was an artefact instantly recognizable the world over as the Mask of Agamemnon, the greatest treasure from Bronze Age Mycenae. It normally resided in the National Museum of Athens, but like the Picasso had disappeared in a series of daring heists
across Europe the previous summer. To Jack it was a symbol of nobility that mocked the arrogance of its grotesque new custodian.
“I was a professor of Islamic art, and that is where my heart lies,” Aslan said. “But I do not restrict my collecting to the fourteen hundred years since Muhammad received the word of Allah. The glory of God shines through the art of all ages. He has blessed me with the gift to make a collection that truly reflects His glory. Allah be praised.”
“Playing God won’t make you any friends in the Islamic world,” Jack said quietly. “Not very devout to keep a collection that mimics God’s creation.”
Aslan waved dismissively as his cellphone chirped. He removed it from a pouch on his chair and spoke in a guttural tongue Jack took to be his native Kazakh.
The food on the table looked appetizing and Jack took the opportunity to make the most of it.
“My apologies.” Aslan slipped the phone back into its pouch. “Business before pleasure, I fear. A small matter of a delayed shipment to one of our valued customers. You know the story.”
Jack ignored this. “I take it I am in Abkhazia,” he said.
“You are correct.” Aslan pressed a button and his chair swivelled towards a map of the Black Sea on the opposite wall. He aimed a laser pointer at a region of mountains and valleys between Georgia and the Russian Caucasus. “A matter of destiny. This coast was the summer residence of the Khans of the Golden Horde, the western Mongol empire based on the river Volga. I am a direct descendent of Genghis Khan and Tamburlaine the Great. History, Dr. Howard, is repeating itself. Only I will not stop here. I will take up the sword where my ancestors faltered.”
Abkhazia, fiercely independent and tribal, was a tailor-made hideout for warlords and terrorists. Once an autonomous region within the Soviet Republic of Georgia, the collapse of the USSR in 1991 had precipitated bloody civil war and ethnic cleansing in which thousands had died. With the upsurge of Islamic extremism, fighting had again broken out, leaving the Georgian government no alternative but to give up all claims to the region. Since then Abkhazia had become one of the most anarchic places on earth, its ruling junta surviving on payouts from gangsters and jihadists who had arrived from all corners of the world and transformed the old Soviet resorts along the coast into their own private fiefdoms.
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