He watched as Billie took several pictures of the map on her tablet.
“Can we destroy the map now Dr. Swan?”
“I don’t see why. You and I are the only two people to know of its existence.”
“And Mark, but I pay him well enough to keep any secret. Even so, no reason to take chances. Mark, bring a grenade in here. I want this destroyed.”
“Very good, sir.”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Edward watched as she marked some notes on one of the blank circles. “So you really can understand this?”
“I have an idea. They’re similar to something I saw inside the Mayan pyramid beneath the ocean in the Gulf of Mexico. I just wanted to test my theory.”
“And what does it mean?”
“Well, if I’m right…” Dr. Swan said while she ran her fingers along the groves of the hieroglyphic, “then this is a map to the other group of descendants.”
“Other group of descendants?”
“Yes. As this building is testament to, not all died during the sinking of Atlantis. By the looks of things, it was decided to split the two groups up and send them in different directions to protect the knowledge of the future.”
Mark came back into the tunnel from the opening. “It’s time to go. We have company.”
“Andrew Brandt or Sam Reilly?” Edward asked, reaching for his binoculars.
“Sam Reilly. But if he’s this far up the mountain, you can be sure that Andrew won’t be far off.”
“How far away?”
“Less than a day’s climb. He’ll be here by nightfall!” Mark replied.
“Okay, we’ll leave soon.” Edward looked at Dr. Swan. “You want to go back for them, don’t you?”
Dr. Swan smiled at him. “They could help us.”
“You know that’s not possible, don’t you?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Andrew’s gaining on us, Dr. Swan. And unless you like the concept of losing in this race, I suggest we come up with a plan to throw them off our tail.”
She paused, a piece of chalk in her hand.
And then wrote a note followed by several numbers in the ancient text, before writing in plain English: Love, From Billie.
Edward studied the numbers.
They were written in the ancient text he’d not fully mastered, but the numbers were clear enough. There was something strangely familiar about them. They were GPS coordinates, of course. But where? Then it hit him.
“Very good, Dr. Swan. But don’t you think they’ll know that anything of any value was destroyed there more than a hundred years ago by the American expedition?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Above them, Sam Reilly thought he heard the distant sound of thunder. A crude signal of an avalanche, perhaps? Or worse, someone had beaten them to it. He looked above, where the opening to the cave should have been, another 6000 feet above them.
“Avalanche?” Tom asked.
“Maybe, but it must have been a long way off. If it was above us, we’d have known about it by now.”
“I almost thought it sounded like the echo of a grenade.”
“Then they’ve already beaten us to it?” The thought brought the urgency back into Sam’s mind. “Come on. We’re close. Maybe there’s still time to save her.”
It was early the next morning by the time they reached the opening to the Atlantean Archives. It was built by two rocks overlapping. From the air or the ground, it appeared as one only, but once you stood directly next to it, you could see that there was an opening. It wasn’t very large — big enough for only one person to slip through at a time.
Sam was the first to enter the cave.
He squeezed his broad shoulders through first, with his hands out in front of him, then wriggled until the rest of his body followed. Once on the other side, he was able to stand up in what appeared to be a large cavern. Dark as the deepest sea, and for a moment he thought that it was nothing more than a naturally-formed cave. A musky smell appeared to pervade the emptiness of the cavern. He struck a large glow stick and threw it into the cavern.
The room lit up with the bright glow of light.
“Tom, squeeze your lanky self in here. You’re going to want to see this!”
His friend shuffled into the room. “What have you found?” Tom stared up at the grand room and then said, “Holy shit! It’s Atlantis!”
The walls were massive, giving it the appearance of a football stadium more than a cavern, except for the fact that the roof was quite low. So much so that Sam found himself capable of easily running his hands along it as he walked. At least two hundred circles could be seen covering the roof, and a maze of pictographs and hieroglyphics inside them. The circles that formed the roof were carved from ivory. The walls themselves were made of stone, but a multitude of sapphires embedded in them glowed like stars under the glow stick’s reflection.
“What’s that scent?” Sam asked, as he walked forward. “It’s fresh. Whatever caused it has been here in recent weeks.”
“Musk. And its Billie’s cheap deodorant she uses on her expeditions. We must have only just missed her.”
They walked further into the cavern.
At the far end of the room the remains of four people appeared. They wore Nazis uniforms and the insignia of the Schutzstaffel — the elite SS guard. Sam looked down at their remains. “Who would have thought they were so close to finding Atlantis?”
“The Nazis?” Tom laughed. “What the hell would they want with an ancient civilization?”
“Heinrich Himmler, the man who started the original SS, believed strongly in the perfect bloodline and noble DNA. Like Adolf Hitler, he was obsessed with the concept that Germany came from a powerful bloodline. Throughout the war, they spent a fortune trying to find Atlantis, believing that Germany had originated from it.” Sam looked at them and shook his head. “Himmler made declarations that they had found Atlantis and were in the process of proving their pure heritage, but no one actually believed any of it. Everyone just assumed it was another one of Hitler’s propaganda machines working in overdrive.”
Tom looked at the spears that still rested inside each of the men. “Well, there’s a bit of useless trivia for your children. They got close, but look what they got for their efforts.”
“It’s a timely reminder to us not to become complacent here. This place, as with the real Atlantis, may still be protected by a number of booby traps.”
“That’s impossible. Surely their springs, coils, and firing mechanisms must have broken over the centuries?”
“Yes, but as we have already learned, there are still direct descendants of Atlantis very much alive and keen to protect the secrets stored here.”
Chapter Thirty
Tom stared at it in awe. “It could take us more than a year and an army of archeologists to make sense of this cavern, let alone where they have taken Billie.”
“The good news is this isn’t Atlantis,” Sam replied. “And that means they’ll want to keep Billie alive, and that we probably still have a chance. We just need to find where they’re headed.”
“Still, we’d have to get pretty lucky to make any sense of this in time to catch up. If they’ve already been and left, then we know they got whatever they need from here.”
“Yes, but whoever built this did so to be a library of their history. Therefore, we should find a logical sequence.” Sam scanned through the rows upon rows of circles, until her reached a blank area. “There. The circles are empty.”