Zawas paused in the center of the promontory before the group of soldiers. Jamil moved in smartly and saluted. Zawas waved it off. He was a handsome man with deep-set eyes. There was a brief exchange in Arabic. Serena couldn’t quite catch all of it, but the contempt on Zawas’s face was enough.
His eyes traveled over the men casually, and fixed on her. He stood there staring at her in the silence, then said something to Jamil, who walked over, grabbed Serena by the arm, and propelled her in front of him. She fought to control the panic that surged inside her, for fear would not help her now, and schooled herself to play it cool.
She kept her head down, but Zawas lifted her chin, and she looked into the dark eyes. “If you’re an Atlantean,” he said in English, “then this is indeed paradise. But I take it you are an American.”
She shook her head and said in a low voice, “No, Colonel, I’m from Rome.”
It took a moment for her Australian accent to register, and then she saw the shock of recognition. Then a broad, genuine smile crossed his face. “Sister Serghetti, it is you,” he said. “What on earth are you doing here?”
“It’s Doctor Serghetti, Colonel, and I was going to ask you the same question,” she said, looking around at his troops. “You don’t really expect me to believe you are acting on behalf of the United Nations?”
Zawas smiled. She realized he was amused that she was the one demanding answers. “Consider us representatives of certain Arab oil producers who have the most to lose from the discovery of alternative energy sources.” He took her arm and said casually over his shoulder, “Get to work, Jamil.”
Jamil gave them enough time to get clear then shouted something unintelligible that was drowned out in the immediate uproar as the soldiers began to break out equipment. Drills, seismic meters, metal detectors, explosives.
They reached the steps leading up to the iron gate and the entrance to the temple, and Zawas paused, turning to look at her, a slightly quizzical frown on his face.
“I didn’t recognize you at first,” he told her. “It’s been so long, and you’re usually not so dirty on those magazine covers.”
“Sorry to have disappointed you.”
“Not at all. I find it quite becoming.”
She studied him closely. Handsome, shrewd, even gentle if he wanted to be, she was sure of that.
“And why is that?”
“It brings you down to earth.” He smiled faintly, opened the front gate, and led her inside.
The chamber was sparsely furnished. Table, chairs, computers, a cot. As he closed the door, he took her backpack from her and dropped it on a chair.
“Please, sit down.”
He politely pulled out a chair for her, and she sat down. He seated himself on the opposite side of the table.
She wasted no time. “So that’s what you think you’ll find down here?” she asked him. “An alternative energy source?”
“Not just any source, Doctor Serghetti, but the source,” he told her. “The legendary power of the sun itself that the Atlanteans are said to have harnessed. What else did you think General Yeats and Doctor Yeats were after?”
Serena couldn’t say, her eyes involuntarily glancing at her pack on the chair. She considered the blueprints of the obelisk that she had hidden inside her thermos. What she really wanted to know was why Zawas seemed to believe Antarctica was Atlantis, let alone that there was some all-powerful “source” behind its power.
“So you’re here because you’re just as power hungry as the rest of them,” she said. “That’s not your reputation at the United Nations.”
“On the contrary,” he said. “I’m concerned that faltering economies in the Middle East will permit increasingly influential mullahs to sow unrest and seize power. That I must use animals like Jamil to stop the rest of his kind is but one of geopolitics’ many ironies.”
“I’ve got it all wrong then,” she said. “You’re not a terrorist. You’re really a patriot who’s simply been misunderstood.”
“You worry too much about the souls of men like me and Doctor Yeats,” he said. “Oh, yes, I know all about him. More than you even, perhaps. If he’s still alive, we’ll find him. You, however, should be asking yourself why you’re down here. Clearly, it’s not to protect the environment, which as you can see has altered significantly since your arrival.”
“All right then,” she said, folding her arms. “Tell me why I’m here.”
“You’re here because I sent for you.”
Her mouth went dry. “You sent for me?”
“Well, maybe not you exactly, but somebody like you,” Zawas said. “I knew I would need a translator to help me find the Shrine of the First Sun. Why else do you think I tipped off the Vatican about Yeats’s expedition?”
Serena’s heart skipped a beat. What was Zawas implying? What did he know that she didn’t? “Just what exactly do you want me to translate?”
“A map.”
Zawas unrolled an old parchment across the table.
Serena looked at it and realized it was a map of the city. The inscriptions were some sort of pre-Egyptian hieroglyphics. She could see the Temple of the Water Bearer clearly marked, along with other pavilions. It was a terrestrial map that mirrored the celestial map Conrad recognized from the Scepter.
“We found it some years ago in a secret chamber beneath the Great Sphinx at Giza,” Zawas said. “Drawn by the ancient Egyptian priest Sonchis, the primary source for Plato’s story of Atlantis. Of course, we had no way of knowing whether the map depicted a real place, let alone its location, until the American discovery of P4 in Antarctica.”
She said, “So how did the Americans know the location of P4?”
“They didn’t, as far as I know,” Zawas said. “It was the seismic activity that brought them to East Antarctica. Only after they found something under the ice was the Vatican brought on board.”
“The Vatican?” Serena arched an eyebrow. “I don’t think so.”
“The Vatican has its own map of Atlantis,” Zawas said. “It originally had been stored in the Library of Alexandria during the time of Alexander the Great. Then the Romans stole it during their occupation of Egypt. Later, after the fall of the Roman Empire, it was moved to Constantinople. When Constantinople was sacked during the Fourth Crusade, the map was smuggled to Venice. There it was rediscovered in the seventeenth century by a Jesuit priest.”
Serena felt shaky, the fury building inside her. But was she angry at Zawas for telling her this, or at the pope for telling her nothing? “I don’t believe you.”
“Why else would Rome be so eager to send you?” Zawas asked. “You didn’t really think it was to save the virginal ecosystem of Antarctica?”
“Then what for?” she asked.
“Surely it was to protect itself, its power. The Church is no more noble than the secular, imperialist American republic. It fears any sort of real divine revelation that might undermine its influence in the course of human events. And that’s what this is, Doctor Serghetti. Something older than Islam, Christianity, and even Judaism. Your superiors have every reason to be scared. And you have no reason to trust them or anybody else-only the man who bothered to tell you the truth. So come now, you will help me find the Shrine of the First Sun which contains the source.”
“And if I don’t?”
“Suffer like the rest of the world,” he replied.
“The rest?”
“Ah, you haven’t heard the news,” he told her. “McMurdo Station has lost its ice runway. And the U.S. carrier group off the continent is recovering from that tidal wave and is running at half power. My intelligence tells me American forces are at least sixteen hours away. Until they get here, I am the ultimate power in Atlantis.”
“And when they do get here?”
“It will be too late.” Zawas’s dark eyes flashed with determination. “I will have captured the technology housed in the Shrine of the First Sun, and the world’s balance of power will be shifted. The
United States will be wiped out, a victim of the earth-crust displacement it unleashed itself. Atlantis, on the other hand, will be ours.”
“You’re a fortune-teller too?”
“It’s our destiny.” He leaned forward and smiled. “You see, Doctor Serghetti, this is my people’s Promised Land.”
27
Dawn Minus Eleven Hours
Conrad zipped up aunacom weapons inspector’s uniform and grimly noted the Capt. HASSEIN tag over his left breast pocket. Yeats had a couple of these uniforms, sans bodies. Conrad could only guess how he had obtained them. He looked around the chamber Yeats had brought them to. It was stockpiled with computer equipment, M-16s, and explosives.
Conrad asked, “What is this place?”
“A weapons cache I found.” Yeats was busy stashing bricks of C-4 plastique into a backpack. “I ended up down here after you flushed me down that shaft in P4 like a piece of shit. Crawled out, got my bearings, and got to work hauling whatever I could find.”
“And this cache wasn’t guarded by those goons outside?”
“No goons,” Yeats said. “Not anymore.”
Yeats’s survival instincts were astounding even to Conrad, who had already fought hard to stay alive himself in the last several hours. How in the world did he survive that fall? Conrad wondered. He didn’t know whether to give his father a medal or a kick in the groin. The man had yet to express relief at seeing his only son alive, nor had he uttered another word about his origins.
“How do you know all this won’t get flushed away again?”
“I don’t.” Yeats checked the timers for the C-4. “But this alcove is separated from the corridors below. Anyway, we won’t be sticking around much longer.”
“So I see.” Conrad eyed the bulging pack of C-4 that Yeats slung over his shoulder. “So you know who these guys are?”
“I trained their leader, Colonel Zawas.”
Conrad stared at Yeats. “You trained him?”
“At the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs under a U.S.-Egyptian military exchange program in the late eighties,” Yeats said. “Came in handy a few years later during the Allied bombing of Iraq in the Persian Gulf War. An Arab pilot taking out two Iraqi jets proved to be priceless PR and legitimized the bombing campaign as a multinational effort.”
“So that’s what you taught him to do-kill other Arabs?”
“In my dreams,” Yeats said. “No, I trained him in the Decisive Force school of warfare. The idea is to use overwhelming force to either annihilate an enemy or intimidate him into surrender.”
“So the U.N. weapons inspection team was only a cover?” Conrad asked.
Yeats nodded. “Obviously, Zawas stacked the team with his own men. Probably offed the other internationals and plans to say we did it. I wouldn’t be surprised if he put the Russians on us back at P4 and was just waiting for us to do all the hard work.”
Conrad said, “So you’re saying Zawas came with friends.”
“And firepower,” Yeats said. “In the real world, a few terrorists are no match against the world’s lone superpower. But Antarctica is a different theater of war. It doesn’t take much to overwhelm a small team of Americans on an otherwise empty continent.”
“Well, his lieutenant killed your dog and abducted Serena.”
Conrad could see the veins in Yeats’s neck bulge. “So where’s the obelisk?”
Conrad said nothing.
Yeats shot him one of those rare, withering glares that used to make Conrad crumble as a boy. “Goddamn it. Are you telling me that Zawas not only shot my dog but also has the Scepter of Osiris?”
“No, I said he has Serena.”
“Same difference. Open your eyes. You heard Ms. Save-the-Earth back at P4. The Scepter of Osiris belongs in the Shrine of the First Sun. That’s where she’s going to lead Zawas.”
“You’re selling her short.”
“You’re thinking with the wrong head,” Yeats said. “Our mission is to deny Zawas any advanced weapon or alien technology that could shift the world’s balance of power. Asymmetrical force. Got that? Burn it into your brain.”
“Gee, and I thought we were going to settle who I am and where I really came from, Dad,” Conrad shot back.
Yeats paused, and Conrad could practically hear the whir of the hard drive behind Yeats’s eyes as his father searched for an appropriate response.
“We do that by beating Zawas to the Shrine of the First Sun and setting a trap for him if and when Serena finally leads him there.” Yeats patted his pack full of C-4 and moved on as if he had disclosed everything. “The problem, of course, is going to be finding it without them finding us first. Which is about the time between now and when Zawas discovers that several of his men are missing. They control the skies and everything on the surface. We’re going to have to stay underground until dark.”
“We’ll need the stars, anyway,” Conrad said, pulling out his handheld device with the images of the obelisk he had captured. “Because the scepter instructs the would-be sun king to put heaven and earth together. Only then will the ‘Shining One’ reveal the location of the Shrine of the First Sun.”
“Serena never said that.”
“I know,” Conrad said. “The scepter did.”
“I thought you couldn’t read the inscriptions.”
“Let’s just say some things are feeling a little more familiar.”
“So you believe me now?” Yeats asked. “About finding you in the capsule and everything?”
“I’ll never believe everything you tell me,” Conrad said. “And I reserve judgment on some things. But this inscription beneath the four constellations on one side of the obelisk is almost identical to the inscription Serena read for us.”
“What’s the difference?”
“The inscription Serena read to us warns against removing the scepter unless you’re the most worthy, according to the Shining Ones, or else you’ll tear Heaven and Earth apart,” Conrad said.
“Which seems to be happening right now,” Yeats said.
“So it seems,” Conrad said. “But this inscription under the four zodiac signs tells the would-be Sun King how to find the Shrine of the First Sun with the help of a Shining One and bring Heaven and Earth together again.”
“And what on earth is the Shining One?” Yeats asked.
“It’s not of this earth. It’s probably some kind of astronomical phenomenon. I’ll know it when I see it.”
“Hot damn, Conrad, looks like you really are the Sun King.” Yeats slapped him on the back for the first time in years, and Conrad couldn’t deny it felt good. “But where exactly are we supposed to consult this Shining One? There are millions of stars out there.”
Conrad said, “We’ll follow the map on the scepter.”
“What map?”
“The four constellations.” Conrad showed Yeats the 360-degree digital scan he had taken of the obelisk. “See? The zodiac signs of Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius.”
Yeats looked at the image. “So?”
Conrad tapped his device. “So if this city is astronomically aligned, then maybe these celestial coordinates might have terrestrial counterparts.”
“Maybe?” Yeats said. “You’ll have to do better than that.”
“We already know P4 is aligned with the middle belt star of Orion, Al Nitak,” Conrad said, and Yeats nodded. “In the same way we might find strategically positioned shrines in the city that are aligned to Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, and Aquarius.”
Yeats furrowed his brow. “Meaning we follow the pavilions or temples that correspond to these signs like some kind of heavenly treasure trail?”
“Exactly.”
“So these celestial markers will lead us to Aquarius,” Yeats said. “And then we find its terrestrial double.”
“That’s right,” said Conrad. “It’s dusk outside now. Soon the stars will be out. They’ll serve as our map and lead us to some kind of monument dedicated to the
Water Bearer. That’s where the Shining One will be, to lead us to the Shrine of the First Sun.”
Yeats nodded. “And everything we’ve spent our lives searching for.”
28
Dawn Minus Six Hours
Inside the Temple of the Water bearer,starlight seeped into the chamber where Serena stood tied to a post. It was her punishment for refusing to help Colonel Zawas translate his map of Atlantis. To help Zawas locate the Shrine of the First Sun would be to betray Conrad, she reasoned, having concluded that Conrad, for all his faults, was still her best hope in stopping a global cataclysm. But even if Conrad could reach the shrine first, Zawas still had the scepter. Somehow she had to hold on long enough to figure out a way to steal it.
She could hear voices outside, and three dark silhouettes filled the doorway, blotting out the heavens. It was Jamil, flanked by two Egyptians. Serena stiffened as he unfurled a towel with assorted knives and needles across a small table.
“Colonel Zawas was disappointed he couldn’t persuade you to cooperate, Doctor Serghetti,” he said. “Now it’s my turn.”
“So I see,” she said, staring at the cruel instruments on the table. “Isn’t this a bit over the top? I already told Zawas that I don’t know where the shrine is. Honest. If I did, I’d tell you.”
“A brave front, Doctor Serghetti, really.” Jamil looked over his wares, stocked mostly with syringes, knives of various shapes, and shock rods. “Ah, the tricks your Inquisition taught us.”
He picked up a two-foot-long black club. Suddenly it came to life like lightning. It was an electric shock baton.
“This is my favorite,” he said, waving it in front of her. A bolt of blue electricity sizzled between two metal prongs. “Each jolt delivers seventy-five thousand volts. A few pokes would leave you unconscious. A few more, dead.”
“Is this what you intended your life to become, Jamil?”
Jamil cursed and tried to force her jaw open. She turned away. But he shoved the baton into her mouth. She choked on the metal rod as he dug it deeper.
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