The Atlantis Covenant

by Rob Jones

  “Wait,” Jodie said, opening one eye. “You mean we fly through this meteor storm twice a year and its comets could blast us at any time?”

  “Yes,” he said coolly. “Welcome to the solar system.”

  “Holy crap.”

  “Where did they hit specifically?” Lewis asked.

  “We know from very recent research that they hit the planet in the north of Greenland and would have caused massive and rapid flooding.” Seeing he had their undivided attention, he went on. “As I say, so much data from the Younger Dryas event suggests that there was this period of extreme and rapid cooling directly following the warming that ended the last Ice Age. Tie this up with the new discoveries of massive comet impacts in northern Greenland dating to the exact same period and we have a possible link.”

  “You really think comets struck Greenland and created a massive flood?” Blanco asked, gripped.

  “Yes, I do. Like I said, new research earlier this year revealed a massive comet impact nineteen miles wide under the Hiawatha Glacier, and more recently a second impact site has been discovered around one hundred miles from the first and it’s even bigger. These impacts were colossal, easily big enough to melt the ice sheet up there and massively alter the world’s climate in the very recent past, in geological terms, at least.”

  “Wow,” Jodie said. “It’s getting kind of interesting now.”

  Hunter smiled. “And best of all, this period dates to around twelve and a half thousand years ago which was nine thousand BC.”

  Amy whistled. “Exactly the same date Plato puts on the fall of Atlantis.”

  “That’s one hell of a coincidence,” said Quinn.

  “In my opinion, it’s no coincidence,” Hunter said. “There’s just too much data tying it all together. On top of the famous Plato reference to Atlantis, we now have all this other research cementing it all together, especially the comet strikes on Greenland which caused a colossal flood across North America and Europe, not to mention all the islands in the Atlantic. Throw in the sea-level rise after the end of the Ice Age wiping out anything that survived and we start to understand the fate of Atlantis.”

  After a long pause, Amy said, “Is this for real?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, I know the way academics can get carried away.”

  “It’s real,” he said firmly. “The Ice Age meant rising sea levels, but after that we have the Younger Dryas which just had to be caused by the double comet strike in Greenland.”

  “I want my mommy,” Lewis said with a grin.

  Hunter smiled. “Like I said, this brought catastrophic and flash flooding across the transatlantic region, and had a knock-on effect even further afield. For example, geological evidence is mounting that the Sphinx is at least ten thousand years old, twice as old as mainstream archaeology allows for, and they date it this way because of the water erosion patterns on its base.”

  Amy accepted what he was saying, but frowned. “Okay, fine, but while this might give us a plausible reason to believe in Atlantis, none of this gives us any clue about its location. The sort of flooding you’re talking about would have wiped out half of the North American continent and much of Europe.”

  “It did.”

  “So Atlantis could still be anywhere.”

  “Not anywhere,” Hunter said. “But very definitely somewhere, and Ramasses’s lost tomb in Egypt is going to tell us where.”

  “This is heavy,” Jodie said. “I mean, I’m really starting to believe we might find Atlantis.”

  “Good, because we are,” Hunter said. “I’ve spent my whole life looking for it and now it’s within my grasp.”

  “We land in three hours,” Amy said. “Do you think we’ll have any problem getting into the site?”

  “Not at all,” Hunter said. “It’s open to the public, but I have a good friend who can help us if there’s any problem.”

  “Who is he?”

  “Omar works at the Department of Egyptian Antiquities and curates a good part of the fifty thousand pieces there. I’ve already sent him a message and asked him to meet us at the site. More than that, I asked him to get digging and try and get us a head start.”

  “Great,” Amy said. “Everyone get some sleep. Remember, the Creed snatched Professor Walters several hours ago and if they got the location of the tomb out of him they’ll be ahead of us. Egypt is two hours ahead of France so we’re touching down just before nightfall. I’m guessing the Valley of the Kings will be closed, right Max?”

  “Five PM closing time, so yeah. We can’t go out there at night because it’s guarded by the army to protect it from the likes of Brodie McCabe and other artifact thieves. We have to wait till morning, and so will McCabe, for sure.”

  “So we get one night in the hotel in Luxor,” Amy said. “And we leave at daybreak, but we have to be prepared that McCabe and the Creed’s disciples could still get there before us.”

  Hunter turned and looked out of the small window at the stars over the Alps. “Over my dead body.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  Hunter relaxed when they reached the hotel in Luxor. After a shower, he left his room and stepped outside into the hotel courtyard where the scent of jasmine drifted in the warm air. He sat down and took in his new surroundings.

  The courtyard was centerd on an ornate tiled fountain, ringed by Madagascan dragon trees and bright pink pentas flowers. The height of the surrounding hotel kept the sun out of the yard until an hour either side of midday, and now the entire area was cooling in the evening shade. With the sound of water trickling out of the fountain, the team took some seats outside the hotel’s restaurant and started to unwind.

  As they disappeared into their conversations, Amy pulled up a chair next to Hunter and gave him a tired smile. “We made it to Egypt.”

  “That we did,” he said.

  “It’s starting to feel like we’ve known each other our whole lives.”

  “Not to me,” he said. “I hardly know anything about you.”

  “Ask away,” she said with an honest smile.

  He finished his beer and fixed his eyes on her. “All right. What was that Quinn said back in Paris about you being a New England blue blood?”

  Amy looked at his face and saw nothing but honest curiosity. “I don’t like talking about it, but since you asked, the Foxes are an old Connecticut family, going right back to the Saybrook Colony. That’s all she means.”

  “Wasn’t your father a former Director of the FBI back in the eighties?” Quinn said from behind her menu.

  Amy sighed. “Yes, I suppose he was.”

  “And wasn’t your grandfather a senator for Connecticut during World War Two?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “And your great-grandfather a previous governor of the state?”

  “I believe so.”

  “And didn’t President Lincoln once stay at your family home during the Civil War?”

  Amy scowled at Quinn. “He might have done.”

  “Like I said,” Quinn grinned. “Blue bloods.”

  Hunter reflected on what he had just heard. “That’s an impressive family background. I’m sure you’re very proud.”

  “It’s what it is,” Amy said bluntly. “And we have our family problems just like anyone else.”

  “I bet,” Quinn said. “Like whether to use the silver or gold plates on Thanksgiving.”

  “I’m not going into this all over again with you, Quinn,” Amy said. “And I’m not apologizing for an accident of birth.”

  Hunter said nothing. The atmosphere at the table was cooling faster than the desert air blowing over the courtyard.

  “Anyone want a drink?” Blanco said. “I know I’m parched.”

  Lewis snapped his menu shut. “That sounds like a great idea, Sal old man. I’ll come with you and help you bring them back to the table.”

  Amy watched them leave. “That’s my story, but what’s yours, Hunter? And I mean the real you,”
she said, pointing to his heart. “Not the Indiana Jones façade.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “You can start with what you meant when you started to talk about your mother back in Paris.”

  Hunter watched Blanco and Lewis return with the drinks and decided to open up. “I was at school when it happened,” he said quietly. Just an ordinary day in an ordinary school in West London and then one of the women from the front office interrupted the class and called the teacher out. It was geography, I remember it all so well. Mr Richardson was a good teacher, too. Intelligent and kind. When he walked back into the class, I knew straight away something bad had happened because of the look on his face. When he looked over to my desk and asked to speak to me, I felt my legs turn to jelly. I was only twelve.”

  Hunter reached over for the beer bottle and emptied it in one long pull. In the respectful silence of the cool courtyard, he wrapped both hands around the bottle and blew out a deep, long breath. “Anyway, he called me out into the hall and the three of us walked back to the office. The old boy put his hand on my shoulder. I knew right there everything was about to change. When we got back to the office there were two coppers there – one man and one woman. They told me Mum was gone and Dad was on his way back from Russia.”

  “That’s rough,” Blanco said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “What happened?” Quinn asked.

  Hunter shrugged. “It was what we call a debris avalanche, out at her dig in the Black Desert, in Jordan. She was an archaeologist, see. Just an accident.” His voice grew quieter. “No one to blame.”

  Blanco sensed the pain starting to claw at Hunter and stepped in. “When I was a kid…”

  “We know, it was idyllic,” Jodie said.

  “Most of it, but not all of it. Dad had a dark side.”

  Amy flicked her eyes over to him. “You never told me that, Sal.”

  “You mean he hit you?” Jodie asked.

  “No, nothing like that. I had a good background. Spanish father, Italian mother. Pops was the best – not the kind of scum that hits kids. If he saw anyone doing that, then book that guy an undertaker, y’know what I’m saying? He fled the Spanish Civil war back in thirty-seven when he was a kid, with his parents. Those people understood what real suffering was.”

  “I bet,” Lewis said.

  “But the thing with my mother is that she had brothers. Lots of brothers – she was Italian, y’know? There was Uncle Matteo, Uncle Sergio, Uncle Luigi, Uncle Paolo… all good men, but Uncle Giulio was different. He got mixed up with the mob in Vegas and found himself in a heap of trouble. My old man stepped in and fixed it. He never talked about what he did, but there was talk maybe he killed a guy.” Blanco looked sad, almost apologetic for what he had said. “Pops was a good man.”

  Jodie swept her hair over her ears and flicked some ash off her cigarette tip. “I’m sure he was, Sal. I know that just by knowing you.”

  He held her hand and squeezed it. Hunter had noticed how close they were before, and the look on their faces right now was more father and daughter than good friends.

  The moon reached its zenith above the courtyard and the Englishman sipped his fresh beer, speaking almost without thinking. “Things were different after Mum died. Dad was a diplomat with a serious career. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office moved him around every year or so and I got dragged around behind him. Germany, France, China, Japan, Korea, Brazil… you name it. I never had friends, just people who taught me how to swear in their language for a few months and then I was gone again.”

  “I’m guessing you went into archaeology because of your mom?” Amy asked.

  He nodded. “When I got out of the army I was lost. Following in her footsteps just seemed like the right thing to do. I feel like I’m finishing her legacy, working hard to make sure she didn’t do all that work for nothing, plus I love the hell out of it.”

  She brushed his hand. “I’m pleased it’s working out for you, Max.”

  “That’s why I got so annoyed with Brodie when he accused me of copying him. If anything, the bastard got the idea from my mother. Then he used his money and connections to work his way into the best college in the country and set up his own archaeological foundation, including prizes and awards. With each check he wrote he pushed me and my work further into the shade.”

  “But you won in the end.”

  “I guess so.”

  “But only because you worked so damn hard, right?” Jodie asked.

  “Nothing wrong with hard work,” Hunter said. “I’d go mad without my work. Brodie can buy all the success he likes, but he’ll never be a better archaeologist than me, and he wasn’t a very good soldier, either.”

  Blanco laughed and gave him a look of sympathy. “You can’t buy class, Max.”

  The group grew quieter and more solemn. Hunter was again struck by how he had known these people for only a few days and would likely never see them again when the mission to find Atlantis was over. He glanced at Jodie’s cigarette jealously but fought back the urge to ask for one. Over ten years without a smoke, he thought. Don’t blow it now.

  The quiet was broken by Amy. “Nothing I ever did was good enough for my mom,” she said pensively. “She was the real blue blood, was Annabelle Fitch. She never gave me an inch, never cut me any slack. She kept the pressure up all the time – work hard at school, pass your exams, get into Princeton get into the state government. When I followed Dad into the FBI, her head almost popped off like a champagne cork. Even when she finally accepted it, it was get to the top, Amy! Never take your foot off the gas, Amy!”

  “I’m starting not to hate my parents so much,” Quinn said out of nowhere. Everyone turned to look at the young goth.

  “You care to expand on that?” Amy said.

  “No. I shouldn’t have said anything, so just go back to flaming your own families and leave me out of it.”

  “C’mon, Quinn,” Blanco said. “Everyone’s being honest here tonight. Sharing a little piece of their lives with the group. What about you?”

  She gave an insolent shrug. “No one knows anything about Ghost.”

  Jodie sighed and blew out some smoke, fighting the urge not to look too bored. “That’s kind of the point Sal just made.”

  “Besides, you’re not Ghost anymore,” Amy said. “You’re Quinn Mosley, IT consultant. You have a real life with real friends who appreciate you. You’re part of the team. You’re one of the family, as far as I’m concerned.”

  “And you’re mom?”

  “Hey, I’m not old enough to be your mom, that’s for sure.”

  “Either way, I don’t want to talk about myself.”

  Amy dropped it and yawned. “That’s enough for me. We have to get up at dawn and get out to the desert to find this tomb. I’m going to bed.”

  “Me too,” Lewis said.

  Quinn pushed back from the chair. “And me.”

  Blanco was next to turn in, yawning and getting to his feet at the same time. “Night everyone.”

  Hunter watched them wander back to their rooms. Only Jodie stayed behind. One of the waiters opened a door and a breeze blew through the bar out into the courtyard, lifting her hair in the moonlight.

  “Why did you steal the car?” Hunter asked.

  She turned. “Huh?”

  “Back in Paris you told me you stole your neighbor’s car.”

  “I never planned it,” she said quietly, suddenly lost in thought. “I guess I was just angry with my parents. When my dad walked out, it was like a bomb went off in my life. It left a hole too big to fill.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “Yeah.” She started fiddling with her coaster. “I’m sorry about what happened to your mom in Jordan.”

  They shared a long silence, broken only by the sound of the waiter clearing drinks from a nearby table. “At the time,” Jodie said at last, “I was angry, like I said, but it wasn’t until years later that I realized just how much it damaged me. It
ruined me, Hunter. I will never forgive him.”

  “I guess that’s your right.”

  “I was eating ice cream when Mom told me. She bought me ice cream to soften the blow.”

  “That’s rough. I’m sorry.”

  “It was a long time ago,” she said wistfully. “Back then, it wasn’t so common for families to break up. I was the only kid at school without a father and some of the other kids gave me hell for it. I felt like shit. It would have been better if he had died, at least then I would have gotten some sympathy.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  She faced him. “What the hell do you know about it, anyway? Don’t tell me what to say.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “You just walked into our lives a few days ago, dude. You don’t know anything about us. We’re not going to connect just like that.” She snapped her fingers.

  “Take it easy, Jodie. I was just trying to help.”

  She settled down when she saw Blanco step back out of the hotel bar. He walked over to them across the courtyard and gave a warm smile. “Sorry, forgot my glasses. You two crazy kids not in bed yet?”

  “We’re just trying to connect,” Hunter said with a smile at Jodie.

  Jodie turned away without a smile and finished her drink. She pushed away from the table, chair legs scraping on the tiles. “And I’m beat.”

  Hunter watched her walk away into the shadows of the hotel entrance.

  Blanco, who had caught the end of their conversation, sat down in her seat and tapped his glasses case on the rim of the table. “Don’t take it personally. She didn’t give me a smile for about year after I met her.”

  Hunter nodded. “Sounds like she had a rough time.”

  “And she’s as strong as they come because of it, Max, but that means a hard shell.”