by Rob Jones
They ran along a flat interdune stretch between two more enormous dunes before the woman darted to her right. He turned around the base of the dune in pursuit of her and saw a motorbike. “Better than nothing,” he said. “I’m Max by the way.”
“Zahra.”
They both heard the soldiers yelling, and then the roar of an engine. Moments later, the nose of McCabe’s Jeep crested the top of one of the dunes. In the rear, one of the soldiers was holding a submachine gun.
“Not a good development.”
Zahra climbed on the bike and pushed down on the kick-start lever. The engine spluttered for a few seconds and then died. She did it a second time, and McCabe’s Jeep drew closer. Hunter heard another engine and realized one of the Iraqi army trucks had driven around to the north and was trying to cut off their escape route.
“Looks like we’re surrounded,” Zahra said, kicking the lever a third time and still getting no response from the two-stroke engine.
“We’re in trouble.”
Both of them jumped with a start when a rocket-propelled grenade streaked out of the sky and roared over their heads at the front of a twisting column of white exhaust smoke. To their surprise and relief, it was going toward the Iraqi army truck, which it struck in a direct hit to the cab. The massive fireball exploded in the night and lit both their faces in a warm orange glow.
“What the hell?” Hunter said.
Zahra’s face was etched in confusion and fear. “I hear a helicopter.”
The chopper was on them in seconds, flying low and fast over the ancient sands before zooming up over a dune and then pitching down abruptly just ahead of them. It spun around ninety-degrees until it was side-on and the door slid open.
“Looks like my ride is here,” Hunter said.
“I’m glad you have such good friends.”
McCabe’s Jeep was navigating the bottom of the dune and turning in their direction. The soldier in the back raised his submachine gun and fired on the helicopter. Most of the rounds missed, but the end of the arc struck the tail boom and clanged off the metal.
Hunter and Zahra scrambled through the sandy dust created by the downdraft until they reached the bullet-pocked chopper. The door opened wider now, and Hunter pushed Zahra inside before climbing halfway in after her. The chopper instantly spun around and headed away from McCabe, leaving him out on the dunes beside the burning army truck.
Hunter breathed a sigh of relief and felt his heart slowing down to something resembling normality. Then, he heard the familiar, welcoming and slightly smug voice of a woman he knew almost better than anyone.
“Perhaps I can be of assistance to you this evening?”
He stared up at her and grinned. As the chopper raced away, his legs were still hanging out of the door. He crawled inside the cabin and closed the door as Zahra clambered up into a seat opposite the woman. In the front, beside the pilot, a man was disassembling a small RPG launcher.
“I think maybe you can,” he said.
The mysterious woman smiled sweetly at him, and the aircraft raced away, vanishing seconds later deep in the night’s sable craw.
CHAPTER SIX
Juliette Bonnaire’s long red hair was tied up in a neat, professional bun and she wore a plain black suit. Even here in the back of an emergency rescue helicopter, every inch of her was typically crisp, clean and elegant. She looked down through her polished horn-rimmed glasses at the dirty, dusty heap of a man in the cabin footwell and gave him a weary smile.
“Bonsoir, Max.”
He crawled up off the floor and sat beside her in a cloud of dust. “Howdy.”
“Who’s the woman?” she asked. “Your latest conquest?”
“Hardly, we just met tonight,” Hunter said.
“So give it another hour or so?”
“She was looting. They were going to kill her.”
Zahra spoke up. “I am not ashamed. These men come to our country and steal our artifacts. When I take them, at least I don’t pass them onto ISIS or international smugglers.”
“Then what do you do with them?”
“I say I found them in the desert and sell them to the museums.”
Hunter laughed. “It’s a living.”
“And thank you for saving my life.”
Hunter smiled. “Think nothing of it.”
Juliette sniffed. “It only cost us two years’ work.”
“Hey, I got us both out alive,” Hunter said.
“And I think maybe now,” Juliette said in her rich French accent, “that you can thank me for making you wear the little GPS tracker.”
“It makes me feel like a dog, Juliette.” Hunter gently rubbed his fingers over his old army dog tags around his neck. The latest addition was a micro GPS tracker supplied by UNESCO at Juliette’s request. “You know that.”
“But how many times has it helped me to save your life this year, mon chiot?”
“Who’s counting?” he said.
She held up three fingers and gave him a stern look. “Trois.”
His smile was fading. “You’re counting. That’s who.”
“I’m counting because I’m also the one paying for everything. It costs a lot of money to mount an operation like this and the budget is not unlimited. Planes, helicopters, cars, local knowledge, protection and when you’re really firing on all six cylinders, bribing law enforcement officials and diplomats.”
“You couldn’t do this without me, Juliette, and I’m not your puppy.”
“I love you Max, but you do realize you are paid by UNESCO to retrieve the artifacts without causing international crises wherever you go?”
“Please, you’re making me blush.”
Zahra looked on, a faint smile of amusement dancing on her lips.
Juliette sighed. “This is no joke. You are an Oxford PhD-holding archaeologist who represents the United Nations’ agency for cultural and natural heritage. Your days galivanting around the world as a British Army officer are over. Getting shot at by Iraqi soldiers as you scramble out of a tomb is not good optics. It’s already on the BBC, CNN and all three of France 24’s language service websites.”
“They’d been bribed.”
“Sorry?”
“The soldiers.”
“Now I’ve heard it all.”
Zahra spoke up. “Where are we going?”
“Back to Mosul,” Juliette said. “Is that all right with you, or can I divert the aircraft somewhere? It only costs three hundred dollars per hour to keep it in the air.”
“Mosul is fine.”
“How considerate.”
A tense silence fell over the small cabin and the chopper cruised through the night, low over the desert sands. They made the trip back to Mosul in less than half an hour, and then Hunter and Juliette watched Zahra walking away from the helipad toward her brother’s old car. As the blades whirred to a stop, he turned to his boss and looked at her, regret etched on his dirty, lined face.
“It was McCabe,” he said darkly.
“What?”
“The man who bribed the soldiers.”
Juliette looked at him in shock. “Brodie McCabe was here in Mosul?”
Hunter nodded. “Right there in the labyrinth under the Gates of Nineveh, Juliette. He lied to the soldiers and told them I was a smuggler. They flushed me out of the labyrinth and then drove me out to their camp. I’m sorry, but McCabe got the statue.”
“That bastard got the winged statue?”
He gave a slow, reluctant shake of his head and rubbed his bruised, aching back. “He gave it to someone named Gaius. You heard of him?”
“Never.”
“But still, I saw it, Juliette. With my own eyes.”
She took a deep breath. “Was it as we expected?”
He nodded slowly, dragging his moment of glory out for as long as possible. “Exactly as we thought. The inscriptions around the base left no doubt.”
“So we were right,” she said. “Atlantis was real.”
“I think so, but I need to see it again to be sure, I need to spend time making a proper translation of the inscription. Working while McCabe’s soldiers were shooting at me wasn't exactly the easiest thing I’ve ever done.”
“Get real, Max. If McCabe has the statue we both know we’ll never see it again. It’s probably already on the black market.”
“Yeah, I know. But it means the text in the missing Plato dialogue I found in Athens was accurate.” His voice trailed away. “It means there are two more out there somewhere. The three Winged Guardians of Atlantis… and I let one of them slip through my hands like water.”
“At least you’re alive.”
He took a deep breath and patted his stomach. “Sure. All I need is a few days in Oxford and I’ll be back to my normal self again.”
“You’re not going back to England.”
“Eh? Why not?”
“Because I have a little surprise for you.”
A cool breeze blew off the desert beyond the airport. He ran his hands through his sandy, sweat-soaked hair. “I hate surprises, Julie. Especially your surprises.”
She gave a wicked laugh. “I think this one you will like.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Because you have been invited to the home of Oskar Rorschach.”
He turned and gawped at her. “As in the world’s greatest collector of antiquities?”
“The very same.”
“What does he want?”
“He wants you to authenticate some pieces he is thinking of buying.”
Hunter felt his heart quicken. “What sort of pieces?”
Juliette brought out her phone and showed him a scanned photo of an old black and white photograph. The picture was of a set of daggers unlike anything he had ever seen before, and in the corner was a small smudged stamp.
“My God, look at the pommels on these blades! These tiny carved statues are identical to the one McCabe just stole from me.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, and what the hell is that stamp in the corner, the emblem of the Ahnenerbe?”
“Indeed.”
Hunter stared in disbelief at the stamp on the photo. It was a downward-pointing sword in an oval with the words DEUTSCHES AHNENERBE written around the outside of it. The reference to the Nazi ancestral heritage think tank chilled his blood. As a subdivision of the notorious SS, the Ahnenerbe was run directly by Heinrich Himmler and was dedicated to proving Nazi racial doctrines. He felt he might be slowly wading out of his depth.
“This is massive,” Juliette. “We know the Nazis were looking for Atlantis but I had no idea they found anything relating to the place. If these carved statues really are the same as the one McCabe just stole from me, then they must be linked. Where are they now?”
“That is what you are going to Switzerland to find out.”
“When?”
Juliette pointed to a Cessna Citation parked up on the opposite apron. “Right now. That over there is Mr Rorschach’s private jet, and waiting on board is his personal assistant. By all accounts, she cannot wait to meet you.”
“Can’t blame her for that, Julie. She’s only human.”
“Max.”
“Sorry – is there somewhere I can clean up first?”
She pulled a small black and silver key-card out of her pocket. “There’s a modest transit hotel in the airport. I booked you a room with a shower and organized some fresh clothes.”
The moonlight shone on the card when he took it from her. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek. “You’re a dream, Julie. I’m forgetting about McCabe already.”
“Play it cool, Max. There’s a good chance we’re about to run into some serious trouble. Maybe McCabe – maybe someone even worse. A lot of powerful people are going to want a piece of this. Watch your back.”
“Relax, I’ll just be myself.”
“That’s what I’m worried about.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Apostle studied Gaius’s mild and calm face for any signs of deception. The head disciple was unflappable, but also inscrutable. He was talking to him on a wall-sized plasma screen fitted in his office, sitting in the darkness and listening carefully to everything he was telling him.
“I want to see it,” he asked.
Gaius obeyed instantly and lifted the small statue off the table in the middle of his opulent tent. Holding it up in the moonlight, the disciple chanced an appreciative smile.
The Apostle stared, unblinking. “It’s bigger than I imagined it.”
“It’s heavy, too, Teacher.”
“And is it made from pure orichalcum?”
“It appears to be an alloy of gold, copper and the very purest orichalcum. I have already had Crixus run his tests on it. The orichalcum element is five nines fine.”
The Apostle gasped. The purity of precious metals was rated on a system called millesimal fineness, with five nines fine describing the very purest of 99.999%. “You have done well.”
“My most humble thanks, Teacher.”
The Apostle rested his elbows on his desk and steepled his fingers, smiling in satisfaction. Silver had the highest thermal conductivity of any element, and the purer the silver, the higher it went. This metal, according to their Holy Scriptures, had even greater conductivity, and their test proved it.
“You look perturbed by something, Gaius.”
“Dr Hunter escaped from the camp tonight. He ran out into the desert with some filthy vermin of a looter and flew away in a helicopter. I’m worried he might be a problem going forward with our plans.”
“How long did he have alone with the statue?”
“Not long, Teacher. He had only been inside the tomb a few minutes when McCabe tracked him down and sent the soldiers in after him.”
The Apostle considered the matter. Hunter had come up on his radar before and was well-respected as an archaeologist. His military background meant he was happier to go into many of the more dangerous areas of cultural interest and excavate, as had happened this time. Iraq was not the safest environment for academics to work in, especially not out in the northern deserts, and yet Hunter had gone there, in pursuit of his insane dreams.
How much had he gleaned from the statue before McCabe took it from him? This was the million dollar question. Was it long enough to learn anything of significance, or was he still fumbling around in the dark?
“We have the statue,” he said at last. “That is all that matters. I wish to see it immediately. You are to bring it to our headquarters at once.”
“Yes, Teacher.”
“You are also to send McCabe and some disciples to destroy Hunter.”
“I will do so with great relish.”
“I’m sure the Magus will be pleased when I report this news, and you are a good disciple, Gaius. You are a fine example to your men.”
Gaius bowed his head. “I am humbled by the compliment, Teacher.”
“Go to your work, Gaius – our long journey is almost over. We will meet in our headquarters.”
The Apostle pushed a small button on his desk and the plasma screen went dark. The original oil painting, The Course of Empire by Thomas Cole, slowly descended from a slit in the ceiling and covered the plasma screen. The British National Gallery thought they had the original, he mulled with amusement. But they did not.
He looked at the chaos in the painting and smiled. Terrified people ran for their lives, smoke billowed up from burning buildings. Soon all of this would be brought to the world once again, only so much worse. He felt no guilt; it was a fate this miserable world richly deserved, and then a new world order would rise from its smoldering ashes.
His master would consolidate power over the world and rule it totally, but only if Atlantis was found. The ancient kingdom harbored powers so terrifying it almost scared him to think about them. No one alive had ever seen anything like the devastating might the cradle of humanity hid under its secret veil.
But co
uld this power be harnessed?
Yes, but only if the ancient teachings were followed.
His spine tingled with fear when he considered the long line of Apostles tracing all the way back to the very origins of mankind. His skin prickled when he thought about how he was a part of all this, alongside the world’s most powerful men and women. They were all working together to make this work, to find Atlantis and harness its ancient powers.
He was just one cog in the machine, but an important cog. He knew that Hunter had to be stopped, and so did James Gates and his FBI Office of Antiquities. They were asking too many questions and prying into too much that didn’t concern them. Gaius and the rest of the disciples would kill them all, long before they ever got close to the truth.
He leaned back in his chair and sipped single malt whisky from a cut glass tumbler. The Dalmore 62 was a steal at one quarter of a million dollars per bottle, but money meant nothing to him. He was the Apostle, and he answered only to one higher rank, the Magus. No one else in this world could touch him.
He took another sip, which was at least a thousand dollars’ worth of the whisky, and closed his eyes once again. After years of slow progress, the most lethal hunt on earth was gathering speed at last.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Hunter tightened his seatbelt for the third time as the Cessna Citation banked around another snow-capped mountaintop. The pilot had just extended full flaps and lowered the gear, and Klara Steiner was now stepping through the cockpit door. She flashed a pleasant smile with her scarlet lips and wandered down the aisle toward him.
The Swiss woman was tall and blonde and lithe, and had worn a smart charcoal pencil suit when she met him at Mosul International Airport. As Oskar Rorschach’s personal assistant, he had sent her out to meet him and join him on the flight back to their Swiss headquarters.
“Welcome to my homeland,” she said, sitting beside him and buckling up her seatbelt.
“It’s very beautiful.” The plane ran through some turbulence and jolted them up and down for a few seconds. Outside his window, he saw they were now descending past the snowline.
