The Atlantis Trilogy Box Set- The Complete Series

by A. G. Riddle

  “The site could be the mine. The Immari are trying to hire an American miner, a former soldier, to excavate a structure several miles under the Bay of Gibraltar. They think it’s the lost city of Atlantis.”

  “Interesting,” David said, deep in thought.

  Before he could say anything else, Kate cracked the journal open and began reading.

  August 9th, 1917

  It’s late when I arrive home, and Helena is at the small kitchen table. Her elbows are on the table, and she holds her face with both hands, like it will plummet to the ground if she releases her grip. There are no tears, but her eyes are red, as if she’s been crying and can’t anymore. She looks like the women I used to see leaving the hospital, followed by two men carrying a stretcher covered by a white sheet.

  Helena has three brothers, two in the service, one too young to join, or maybe he’s just signed up. That’s my first thought: I wonder how many brothers she has now?

  She jumps up at the sound of the door and stares at me, wild-eyed.

  “What’s happened?” I say.

  She embraces me. “I thought you’d done it, taken that job or gone off and left.”

  I hug her back, and she buries her face in my chest. When the crying subsides, she peers up at me, her big brown eyes asking a question I can’t begin to decipher. I kiss her on the mouth. It’s a hungry, reckless kiss, like an animal biting into something he’s hunted all day, something he needs to sustain himself, something he can’t live without. She feels so delicate in my arms, so small. I reach for her blouse, fingering one of the buttons, but she clasps my hand and takes a step back.

  “Patrick, I can’t. I’m still… traditional, in many ways.”

  “I can wait.”

  “It’s not that. It’s, well, I’d like you to meet my father. My whole family.”

  “I’d like that very much, to meet him, all of them.”

  “Good. I’m off at the hospital for the next week. I’ll ring him in the morning. If it suits them, we can leave on the afternoon train.”

  “Let’s… make it the day after. I need… I need to get something.”

  “Very well.”

  “And there’s something else,” I say, searching for the words. I need the job, at least a few weeks of the pay, then I’ll be set. “The job, I did, actually, have a look and it, um, might not be so dangerous—”

  Her face changes quickly, as if I’d smacked her. The grimace is somewhere between worry and anger. “I can’t do it. I won’t. Every day, waiting, wondering if you’ll come home. I won’t live like that.”

  “This is all I have, Helena. I’m not any good at anything else. I don’t know how to do anything else.”

  “I don’t believe that for a second. Men start over all the time.”

  “And I will, I promise you that. Six weeks, that’s all I need, and I’ll throw in the towel. The war might be done by that time, and they’ll have another team in there, and you’ll be shipping out of here, and I’ll need to… I’ll need money for… making arrangements.”

  “Arrangements can be made without money. I’ve got—”

  “Out of the question.”

  “If you get killed in that mine, I’ll never get over it. Can you live with that?”

  “Mining’s a lot less dangerous when people aren’t dropping bombs on you.”

  “How about when you’ve got the whole ocean on top of you? The whole Bay of Gibraltar over your head. All that water, constantly pressing on those tunnels. How would they ever pull you from that cave-in? It’s suicide.”

  “You can see the sea coming.”

  “How?”

  “The rock sweats,” I say.

  “I’m sorry, Patrick, I can’t.” The look in her eyes tells me she means it.

  Some decisions are easy. “Then it’s settled. I’ll tell them no.”

  We kiss again, and I hug her tight.

  David put a hand on Kate’s. “This is what you’ve been reading? World War One–era Gone With the Wind?”

  She pushed his hand back. “No! I mean, it hasn’t been like this so far, but… well, you could probably do with a little romance in your literary diet. Soften that hard soldier heart of yours.”

  “We’ll see. Maybe we can just skip the mushy parts, get right to the point where they say the bombs or secret labs are located here.”

  “We’re not skipping anything. It could be important.”

  “Well, since you’re enjoying it so much, I’ll endure it.” He clasped his hands on his stomach and stared at the ceiling stoically.

  Kate smiled. “Always the martyr.”

  82

  Clocktower HQ

  New Delhi, India

  “Sir?”

  Dorian looked up at the Immari Security officer lingering nervously in the doorway to his office.

  “What?”

  “You asked to be kept apprised of the operation—”

  “Make your report.”

  The man swallowed. “The packages are in position in America and Europe.”

  “Drones?”

  “They’ve acquired another target.”

  83

  Immaru Monastery

  Tibet Autonomous Region

  Kate thought the buzzing in the distance, the bee searching for them, was getting louder, but she ignored it. David didn’t say anything either.

  They sat together in the small alcove overlooking the valley, and Kate continued reading, stopping only for an early lunch and to give David his antibiotics.

  August 10th, 1917

  The pawnbroker watches me like a bird of prey perched in a tree as I browse the glass cases at the front of the store. They’re full of rings, all sparkling, all beautiful. I assumed there would be three or four to choose from, that it would be rather simple. What to do…

  “A young man seeks an engagement ring, nothing warms my heart more, especially in these dark times.” The man stands over the case, smiling a proud, sentimental smile. I didn’t even hear him move across the room. The man must move like a thief in the night.

  “Yes, I… didn’t think there would be this many.” I continue skimming the case, waiting for something to jump out at me.

  “There are many rings because there are many widows here in Gibraltar. The Kingdom has been at war for almost four years, and the poor women, the war leaves them with no husband and no source of income. They sell their rings so they can buy bread. Bread in your belly is worth more than a stone on your finger or a memory in your heart. We pay them pennies on the dollar.” He reaches inside the glass case and pulls out a velvet display rack that holds the largest rings. He places the rack on top of the glass case, just a few inches from me, and spreads his hands over them as if he were about to perform a magic trick. “But their misfortune can be your gain, my friend. Just peek at the prices. You will be surprised.”

  I take a step back without realizing what I’m doing. I look from the rings to the man, who motions toward them with a greedy grin. “It’s all right, you can touch them—”

  As if in a dream, I’m out the door and back on the streets of Gibraltar before I realize what’s happened. I walk fast, as fast as I can with one and a half working legs. I don’t know why, but I walk out of the main business district toward the Rock. Just before I reach it, I cut across Gibraltar, out of the western side, the modern side of the city, which faces the Bay of Gibraltar. I walk into the old village, which lies on the eastern side of the Rock, on Catalin Bay, facing the Mediterranean.

  I walk for a while, thinking. My leg hurts like the dickens. I didn’t bring any pills. I hadn’t expected to walk this much. I did bring five hundred of the nearly eleven thousand dollars I’ve saved.

  I debated at length on how much to spend. I thought of spending more, maybe even a thousand dollars, but two things convinced me not to. The first is that I need capital to start a new life. Eleven thousand dollars probably won’t do, but I can find a way. I certainly won’t be taking the Immari job, so the cap
ital on hand is all I’m going to have. The second, a more important reason, is that I don’t think it’s what Helena would want. She would smile and gladly accept the gaudy ring, but she wouldn’t want it. She grew up in a world where fine jewelry, silk clothes, and towering homes were as common as a drink of water. I think those things have lost their luster for her. She craves genuine things, real people. We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood. Sheltered children become reckless. Starving children become ambitious. And some children, like Helena, who grow up in privilege, never wanting for anything, surrounded by people who don’t live in the real world, people who drink their brandy every night and gossip about the sons and daughters of this house and that house… sometimes they only want to see the real world, to live in it and make a difference. To have genuine human contact, to see their life mean something.

  Ahead of me, the street ends as it meets the Rock. I need somewhere to sit down, to get off the leg. I stop and look around. In the shadow of the white rock, rising to the right, there’s a simple Catholic church. The arched wooden doors open, and a middle-aged priest steps out into the sweltering Gibraltar sun. Without a word, he extends a hand into the dark opening, and I walk up the stairs and into the small Cathedral.

  Light filters in through the stained-glass windows. It’s a beautiful church, with dark wood beams and incredible frescoes across the walls.

  “Welcome to Our Lady of Sorrow, my son,” the priest says as he closes the heavy wood door. “Have you come to make a confession?”

  I think about turning back, but the beauty of the church draws me in, and I wander deeper inside. “Uh, no, Father,” I say absently.

  “What is it you seek?” He walks behind me, his hands clasped in front of him in a stirrup-like pose.

  “Seek? Nothing, or, I was in the market to buy a ring and…”

  “You were wise to come here. We live in strange times. Our parish has been very fortunate over the years. We’ve received many bequests from parishioners passing from the world of the living. Farms, art, jewels, and in recent years, many rings.” He ushers me out of the worship hall and into a cramped room with a desk and leather-bound volumes crammed into floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “The church holds these items, selling them when we can, using the funds to care for those still among the living.”

  I nod, not quite sure what to say. “I’m looking… for something special…”

  The man frowns and sits down at the desk. “I’m afraid our selection is not what you might find elsewhere.”

  “It’s not selection I want… It’s a ring… with a story.”

  “Every ring tells a story, my son.”

  “Something with a happy ending then.”

  The man leans back in the chair. “Happy endings are hard to come by in these dark ages. But… I may know of such a ring. Tell me about the lucky young lady who will receive it.”

  “She saved my life.” I feel awkward answering the question, and it’s all I can manage to start.

  “You were injured in the war.”

  “Yes.” My limp is hard to miss. “But, not only that, she changed me.” It seems like a disgraceful summary of what she’s done for me, for the woman who made me want to live again, but the priest simply nods.

  “A lovely couple retired here several years ago. She had been an aid worker in South Africa. Have you been to South Africa?”

  “No.”

  “Not surprising. It’s only recently of any interest to anyone. Since around 1650, it had only been a watering hole on the trade routes to the East. The Dutch East India Company built Cape Town as a stopover on the Cape Sea Route. Built it with slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India. And that’s what it was, a trade stop on the sea, at least until the 1800s, when they found gold and diamonds, and the place became a true hell on earth. The Dutch had massacred the local African population for centuries in a series of frontier wars, but then the British came and brought modern war. The kind that only European countries can fight, but I think you know about that. War with massive casualties, famine, disease, and concentration camps.

  “There was a soldier who had fought for the British in the South African War. And as the spoils of war go to the victors, the end of the conflict several years ago left him with quite a bit of money. He used it to invest in the mines. A strike made him rich, but he fell ill. An aid worker, a Spanish woman who had worked in the hospital during the war, nursed him back to health. And softened his heart. She told him she would marry him on one condition: that he leave the mines for good and donate half of his wealth to the hospital.

  “He agreed, and they sailed out of South Africa for good. They settled here in Gibraltar, in the old city on the coast of the Mediterranean. But retirement didn’t suit the man. He had been a soldier and a miner all his life. Some would say that all he knew was the darkness, pain, struggle; that the light of Gibraltar shone too bright for his heart of darkness, that the easy life left him to reflect on his sins, which haunted him, tormented him, day and night. But whatever the cause, he died a year later. The woman followed him several months after.”

  I wait, wondering if the story is over. Finally, I say, “Father, we have very different ideas about what constitutes a happy ending.”

  A smile spreads across the man’s face as if he’d just heard a child say something funny. “This story is happier than you think—if you believe what the church teaches. To us, death is only a passage, and a joyous one for the righteous. A beginning, not an end. You see, the man had repented, had chosen to forsake his life of oppression and greed. He had paid for his sins—in all the ways that matter. He was saved, as so many men are, by a good woman. But some lives are harder than others, and some sins haunt us, no matter how much we pay for them or how far we sail from them. Maybe this happened to the man and maybe not. Maybe retirement doesn’t suit the industrious. Perhaps there is no solace in rest for a hard-working man.

  “And there is another possibility. The man had sought war and riches in South Africa. He craved power, security, a sense of knowing he was safe in a dangerous world. But he forsook it all when he met the woman. It’s possible that all he wanted was to be loved and not to be hurt. And when he was, when he finally found love after a life without, he died, happy. And the woman, all she ever wanted was to know that she could change the world, and if she could change the heart of the darkest man, then there was hope for the entire human race.”

  The priest pauses, takes a breath, studies me. “Or perhaps their only folly was retirement, of living a sedentary life where the past could catch up to them, if only in their dreams at night. Regardless of the causes of their deaths, their destiny was certain: the Kingdom of Heaven is the domain of those who repent, and I believe the man and woman live there to this day.”

  I consider the priest’s tale as he gets to his feet.

  “Would you like to see this ring?”

  “I don’t need to see it.” I count out five one-hundred-dollar silver certificates and place them on the table.

  The priest’s eyes grow wide. “We are happy to accept any donation our patrons see fit, but I should warn you, lest you seek a refund, that five hundred dollars is much more than this ring is worth… in the current… market.”

  “It’s worth every penny to me, Father.”

  On the walk back to the cottage, I barely notice the pain in my leg. I have a vision of Helena and me sailing the world, never stopping anywhere for more than a few years. In the vision, she works in the hospitals. I invest in the mines, using what I know to find savvy operators and promising sites, mines that pay the workers a fair wage and provide good conditions. It won’t be as profitable at first, but we’ll attract the best people, and in mining, as in every other business, better people make all the difference. We’ll put our competitors out of business, and we’ll use the money to make a difference. And we’ll never retire, never let the world catch up to us.

  Kate closed the journal and leaned forward to inspect the bandag
es on David’s chest. She pulled at the edges of them and then smoothed them out.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, but I think you’re still bleeding a bit from one of the wounds. I’ll change them in a little while.”

  David sighed theatrically. “I always was a bleeding heart.”

  Kate smiled. “Don’t quit your day job.”

  84

  August 13th, 1917

  Helena’s childhood home is more grand than I could have imagined, mostly because I’ve never seen anything like it. It sits just off a massive lake, nestled among thick English forests and rolling hills. It’s a masterpiece of stone and wood, like some medieval castle that’s been decorated for modern times. The fog is thick in the lane as the loud gas car carries us from the train station, down the tree-lined gravel road to the home.

  Her father, mother, and brother are there waiting on us, standing at attention like we’re visiting dignitaries. They greet us graciously. Behind us, the house staff unpacks the car and disappears with our bags.

  Her father is a tall, burly man, not portly but by no means thin. He shakes my hand and looks in my eyes, squinting like he’s inspecting something. My soul, maybe.

  The next few hours pass in a haze. The dinner, the small talk in the drawing room, the tour of the home. All I can think about is the moment I ask him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I glance at him every now and then, trying to glean some little bit of information, something that might tell me what he’s like and what he might say.

  After dinner, Helena lures her mother out of the room with a question about a piece of furniture, and to my relief, her younger brother Edward asks his father’s leave.