by Rob Jones
“He also happens to be the greatest Egyptologist in the world,” Amy said.
“You don’t have to tell me that. He taught me most of what I know. I’m just saying, get ready for a rough ride.”
They stepped through the entrance and walked to the front desk. Hunter spoke in French and was given directions to his old mentor’s office. The museum was approaching closing time and the corridors and exhibition rooms were slowly emptying of tourists as they made their way across the enormous palace.
Outside the office, Hunter straightened his shirt and relaxed his shoulders. He turned to the team standing behind him and gave them a smile. “Anyone got a Prozac?”
The door swished open before anyone could answer. A tall man was almost totally filling the space where the door had been moments earlier.
Hunter extended a hand. “It’s great to see you, Julian.”
“Max. Are you getting fatter?”
Hunter’s smile faded. “And thanks for taking the time out to see us.”
The tall English archaeologist was dressed well, as Hunter had expected, in a pale cream linen suit and a black shirt. His bright blue eyes sparkled in the soft light of the corridor.
“Hey, as the Americans say – it’s your dime.”
Hunter withdrew his unshaken hand. “Your new job hasn’t mellowed you,” he muttered.
“What was that?”
“I wondered how your new job is going?”
“It’s work,” he snapped. “Work is work. It goes along.” He flattened his hand and pushed it through the air in front of him. “It’s not like retirement. That doesn’t go anywhere. It just sits there while you get older. Trust me, I tried it for a year in Arizona.”
Hunter nodded and gave a cheery laugh. “Excellent, let me introduce you to everyone. This is Special Agent Amy Fox, the Assistant Director of the FBI’s Antiquities and Heritage Office. Special Agents Sal Blanco, Jodie Priest, Ben Lewis and Quinn Mosley are part of her team. They’re based in Washington DC.”
“Really? Walters said. “I had no idea the FBI was based there. Anyway, come in.”
This time Hunter’s laugh was more strained. As Walters walked back over to his desk, Hunter lowered his voice so only Amy could hear. “I told you.”
“He’d better be worth it, Max.”
Walters’s voice boomed from the other side of the office. “I hope you’ve got something worth my time, Max. Busy man here.”
They took their seats. Amy had learned enough about their new addition not to push him too hard, and when she spoke it was in a straight, businesslike tone. They were paying him a great deal of money for his time, after all. “As you know, Professor, we’re in some trouble and we need your help.”
“Yes, you called me a few weeks ago and I told you to bugger off. I gather this time you actually have something interesting to show me?”
“Yes,” Amy said. “We located some artifacts in El Salvador.”
“Montecristo,” he said. “Bonnaire already told me on the phone.” He ignored Amy now and turned to Hunter. “What are we talking about, Max? Pre-Columbian Mayan?”
“Try Twentieth Dynasty Egyptian.”
Walters nearly smiled. “I’m sorry, what?”
“You heard me.”
“What I heard is not possible, so try telling me again. Use your words, Max. Start from the beginning.”
Hunter and Amy shared a glance of mutual sympathy before the Londoner bravely continued. “The beginning? Fine. You recall Diocles, the supplement to Plato’s Critias that I found in the dig in Athens a few months ago?”
“Who could forget? You practically hired a skywriter to tell the world you’d found it.”
Amy smirked. “That does not sound like the Max I know.”
Hunter coughed. “Anyway, inside the document I found a further description of Atlantis, including an intriguing reference to three winged guardians. Plato described them as angelic in appearance and made from something similar to silver, but with a rose-blush. Instantly I knew he must be describing orichalcum.”
Julian sighed. “Oh, Max, when are you going to grow up and leave this Atlantis stuff behind? With some hard work and a lot of luck you could be a half-decent archaeologist.”
Hunter heard Jodie stifle a laugh behind him. “Gee, thanks, Julian.”
Amy stepped in. “As unbelievable as it sounds, we found the statues Plato wrote about in Diocles.”
Walters perked up. “Max?”
“As I was saying,” Hunter said lazily. “The document led me to a labyrinth beneath the Tomb of Jonah at the Gates of Nineveh and I found one of the winged statues.”
“Bugger me with a honey dipper,” Walters said. “I apologize for what I said before, Max. You could easily be a three-quarter decent archaeologist.”
Hunter gave a warm, sarcastic smile. “Again, thank you.”
“May I see this statue?”
“No, it was stolen on site by Brodie McCabe.”
“McCabe? I didn’t know he had it in him. Stealing it is the only way he’d ever get his hands on it. He’d never find it. He’s sloppier at research than you are.”
Hunter turned to Amy with another smile. “I’m more of a field archaeologist.”
“Anyway,” Walters boomed. “Do carry on with your tale of derring-do and adventure. I’m gripped.”
“If you insist,” Hunter said. “After discovering the statue, I was invited to the home of Oskar Rorschach.”
Walters’s smile faded and he sat up in his seat. “What did he want?”
“To show me some very interesting ceremonial daggers and some photographs of a winged statue. All of the artifacts in the pictures had strong parallels to the workmanship I saw on the statue in Mosul.”
“Fascinating. More, please.”
“Rorschach was sent the daggers and the picture of the winged statue by a black market relics dealer named Raul Vazquez. He wanted to sell them to him and Rorschach wanted me to go down there and conduct a pre-sale authentication.”
“Which you did.”
“Which I did, and nearly got my head blown off in the process. While I was down there, I met my new friends here, and alongside the second winged statue we also saw a Nazi map Vazquez was hiding in his little floating strongroom. Vazquez got away with the statue and the map but we got photos. They were easy to decipher and it led us to a lost city in El Salvador where we found another almost identical statue. Vazquez and his men were slaughtered by McCabe on site.
Hunter reached into his bag, pulled out the statue and set it on Walters’s desk. The old man gasped and reached forward to pick it up.
“So, McCabe got the winged statue in Iraq and the one from Vazquez, but you got the one from the El Salvadorian city?”
“Correct, and as you can see, it ain’t silver.”
Walters turned it over in his hands and it sparkled in the light. “My God, this is incredible – but what has it to do with Twentieth Dynasty Egypt?”
“In the lost city, we also found a life-size statue of Ramesses X guarding some sort of model, which I believe will give us the clue to the location of Atlantis. Here’s a picture.”
Quinn took her laptop from her bag and flicked across to the pictures. “We uploaded them from Sal’s camera onto this. They’re all right there.”
Walters looked at her with suspicion as he took the device. “Oh my…”
“Exactly,” Hunter said. “If you know how Egyptian artifacts from a thousand years before Christ ended up in a lost city in the El Salvador jungle, I’d love to hear it.”
“I have no idea.”
“Atlantis, Julian.” Hunter’s eyes were almost wild with something resembling greed. “It’s the only explanation. Only an ancient highly-advanced civilization based somewhere in the center of these locations could explain this. We know the ancient Egyptians and the ancient Maya did not have the capability to travel such vast distances, which is the only other explanation. Atlantis, Julian. Atlantis.”
Walters shook his head, but couldn’t take his eyes off the statue and Quinn’s laptop. “I don’t know, but…”
“I need your help, Julian. I’ve tried to translate the glyphs on the Ramesses statue and they seem to be talking about how the statue was a gift from the gods, and something else called the Gate of the Gods. I think a full translation will reveal not only the location of Ramesses’s tomb but maybe even Atlantis. Can you help us?”
“I think so, but I’ll need time.”
“That’s the one thing we just don’t have,” Amy said.
Walters looked at her, confused. “What do you mean? If Max is right and there is an Atlantis, then it’s been there for thousands and thousands of years. Another few days won’t make any difference to anything.”
Amy said, “We think McCabe is stealing the statues for an order placed by Oskar Rorschach, and we think Rorschach is working for an Illuminati group called the Creed.”
Walters set both the statue and the miniature laptop down. “And to think you almost had me…”
“It’s true, Julian,” Hunter said, his patience running thinner by the second. “Listen to what she’s telling you. Be a gentleman.”
Walters gave his former protégé a wry look. “Do go on, Special Agent Fox.”
“As I say, we believe Rorschach belongs to a highly secretive organization called the Creed. The FBI has been tracking this for a long time and at first we thought they were simply trying to control the world’s antiquities market. Since Max came on board, we now think they’re trying to locate Atlantis. We don’t know why.”
Walters paled. “Tell me more about this Creed.”
“We believe they were formed by the same man who formed the Illuminati.”
Walters shook his head again. “No, I never heard so much drivel in all my life.”
Hunter looked at his old mentor. “Please, Julian – just hear her out. It’s not as crazy as it sounds.”
“All right, I’m listening. But it had better be good. I have a serious reputation in this academic discipline and I’m not going to blow it all on the kind of thing you see in an adventure movie.”
“The founder of the Illuminati was a man named Adam—.”
“Adam Weishaupt,” Walters said.
“You know.”
He sighed. “Who doesn’t know that in 2019? We’ve had about fifty movies based on this since that damn book came out.”
“Fine, and in that case you’ll probably know that Weishaupt angered the authorities when his society became too powerful and its members began infiltrating all the top positions of government in Bavaria and beyond.”
“Yes, I know that also.”
“So they banned the Illuminati and Weishaupt was exiled to Gotha, a small town in central Germany, where he was patronized by the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg, Ernest II.”
Walters had started to relax now. “Go on.”
“When he was living under the patronage of the duke, he continued to work and write on the subject of the enlightenment until he died there in 1830. Many of his writings centred on the persecution of the Illuminati by the Bavarian Government, but what most people don’t realize is that another secret society called the Creed simply replaced the vacuum left by them after it was banned.”
“What evidence do you have for this?”
“Scant evidence, but enough.”
Walters nodded thoughtfully, and when he spoke, his tone was less hostile. “What has any of this to do with my presence being necessary in all this? Right now I’m struggling to see what links an eighteenth century European illuminist society with the jungles of the El Salvadorian highlands and Paris. You might say I’m in need of enlightenment.”
Walters chuckled at his own joke as Amy thought carefully about her reply.
“As I have already tried to explain to you, we believe the Creed is still at work today, and continues to exert covert influence over many governments and other powerful institutions.”
“So this is about the Creed pulling the levers of power behind the scenes after all?”
“It’s not about what they’re already doing, Julian,” Hunter said. “It’s about what they’re going to do next. We’re telling you this because your life could be in danger.”
“Finally, something exciting,” he said wearily. After a long pause, he said, “Fine, leave this with me and I’ll look at it.”
Amy got up from her seat. “We can’t leave this with you. It’s FBI property and it’s staying with me.”
Walters face crumpled with anger. “You come in here begging me for a favor and then tell me you don’t trust me? Get out of my office.”
“Whoa,” Hunter said. “Take it easy. I’m sure Amy simply meant we can’t leave the statue with you. Right Amy?”
“Well…”
“I’m sure we trust Professor Walters to keep copies of all the pictures we took.”
“Yes,” she said, still uncertain. “Copies.”
Walters smiled. “In that case I’ll get to work right away. If you could piss off out of my office and give me some peace, that would be most conducive to my studies. Be back here tonight at ten and I’ll tell you what I know.”
“At ten?” Amy said, surprised.
“You’re right,” Walters said. “Make it midnight.”
“And what the hell are we supposed to do in the meantime?” Jodie asked noisily.
“I have somewhere we can go,” Hunter said, reluctantly.
“Nowhere the Creed can find us, I hope?” asked Quinn.
Hunter shook his head. “No one knows about this place but me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When Hunter opened the door to his old apartment, he saw nothing but ghosts. He hadn’t been in here since the day he and Avril had broken up and gone their separate ways, and it looked like she had stayed away, too.
Nothing was as he remembered it. Furniture mostly gone and bare floorboards everywhere. Walls stripped of photos. It looked bigger, untouched and now covered in a thin layer of dust. If he closed his eyes and concentrated hard enough, he could hear her voice as she sang in the kitchen. He stepped inside, swallowing down any feelings he had for his past life, and tossed the keys on the hall table.
“Come in, everyone. We should be safe in here, at least for a few hours. The place was never registered in my name.”
“I’ve heard of minimalism but this is ridiculous,” Quinn said.
“I don’t live here,” Hunter said. “I live across town, but something tells me Rorschach and the Creed might know about that place by now. This was always in Avril’s name.”
“Who is she?” Quinn asked.
Amy gave her a sharp look. “We don’t need to know everything about Dr Hunter’s life, do we?”
“No,” he said tersely. “You don’t.”
He led them into the main living space where an old sofa and some tattered cushions were in the middle of an otherwise empty room. There was a standard lamp standing beside it, its cable curled around its base like a snake. Once, he had sat in this room and talked about starting a family with Avril, now it looked like an abandoned warehouse. His past fought back up to the surface. An international childhood as his father chased his dreams had turned into a wild drunken adolescence, and then here in Paris, the golden years.
“Everything okay?” Amy asked.
“All good,” he said. “Totally fine. Happy. I want a drink.”
She understood. “Me too. Maybe we could get something to eat too.”
“Good call, boss,” Blanco said. “I’m famished.”
Hunter walked over to the French doors. The key was still in the lock. He turned it and stepped out onto the balcony. He’d forgotten how good the view was from here. He sighed and stepped back inside. “All right, I’ll be back.”
“I’m coming with you,” Amy said.
“Whatever you like.”
*
When Hunter and Amy returned with the takeout and wine, the a
tmosphere had changed. Jodie had found candles and placed them in strategic places around the room and Quinn and Lewis and turned two packing boxes into makeshift seats opposite the couch.
Making a generous sweeping motion with his hand, Blanco said, “Home Sweet Home” as they walked past him into the living room.
Soon after, with cartons of deep-fry chili beef and Hokkien noodles set out on the floor, and Amy busy pouring large quantities of pinot noir into some plastic picnic glasses they had bought with the wine, Blanco surprised everyone.
“I have a good idea.”
“And that is?”
“Let’s play truth or dare.”
“I don’t know,” Quinn said. “I’d rather hear the good idea you said you had, not that one.”
“C’mon, truth or dare.”
Amy pulled her head back and stared at him. “Seriously?”
“We should play truth or dare. What’s the matter, afraid?”
“In your dreams, old man.”
He chuckled. “Then you go first. Truth or dare?”
“Truth.”
Blanco rose to the challenge. “Biggest joy and biggest regret.”
Amy went quiet. “My biggest joy was the day I got into the FBI. My biggest regret was never being able to tell Dad.”
When Hunter saw the look on her face, he didn’t have to ask why.
“All right, Sal,” Amy said fiercely. “Truth or dare.”
“You think I’m nuts? Truth.”
“Biggest blessing and biggest tragedy.”
“Biggest blessing is my daughters, no question.”
“And tragedy?”
“There are no tragedies in my past,” Blanco said honestly. “Just plain old-fashioned hard workers like my parents. Pops worked eighteen hours a day in the restaurant, and Mom took great care of us all. My childhood was in a golden era, and I’ll never forget it. Poor bastards now with their damn iPads and YouTube stars and cyber-bullying. When I was six, I used to…”
“Ride a bike all morning and play ball till sunset in Marine Park,” Amy and Jodie said at the same time. “We know.”
The big man from Brooklyn just grinned. “Did I tell that story before?”
