Sam gave it little thought. He knew he was right about the Atlanteans. They needed redundancy in their systems, and that meant escape routes. If he was right about the greatest wealth of Atlantis being hidden inside this room, then he just assumed he was right about the next part.
Right on cue, Tom said, “Look at this. I think we just found your priest hole.”
It was a large tunnel leading downwards. The water could be seen where it had been flooded and Sam hoped that it hadn’t been destroyed by the torpedo.
“I just wonder where it leads now that Atlantis is nowhere near where it was supposed to be when that thing was built?”
“No idea, but I’m sure it will get us out of here. Of course, I’m not too sure where we’ll go from there. If Andrew Brandt and his goons are smart, they’ll be waiting for us on the surface.”
“And even if they aren’t, it’s unlikely they’re just going to have left our Snow Cat there waiting for us. Which means we’re going to have a mighty long, cold, walk.”
Sam remained staring at the wall for another ten minutes before Tom interrupted him again. Like a map, the place depicted a coastline, and in the middle a small island. At the center of the island were those five rings Sam was starting to associate with Atlantis.
Above them, he noticed that the ceiling of the cavern was surrounded by celestial markings. There were notes, which appeared like an ancient almanac, with the image of shooting stars next to it. The math and the astronomy were too much for Sam to make any useful sense of. He took a dozen photos of the ceiling as well as a three-minute digital video. With the exception of a few stars he recognized, the entire ceiling was beyond him, but one thing appeared obvious — the code to Atlantis was somehow tied with stars.
He studied the map for a few more minutes, mesmerized by the detail. How a land based population could gather such detail without the aid of satellite imaging, he would never understand.
Tom interrupted his concentration. “If we take a few pictures of it, we could get Elise to run it with every coastline in the world for its closest match. It would have changed substantially in the past eleven thousand years, but if we run all known images of coastlines with a plus or minus variance of water levels, we might just get lucky.”
Sam grinned. “I already know where that is.”
“Really? Then what are you trying to work out?”
“How the hell I’m going to convince the Mayor of New York that we have to dig one heck of a hole in Manhattan.”
Chapter Sixty-Eight
The Andre Sephora slowed to an idle along the Congo River. They were getting close to where the pygmy king had told them it would be.
Billie looked at the little pygmy, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying his own adventure as their guide to the real temple of Poseidon. “You’re certain it’s here?”
“Yes.”
Billie looked up. “Jason, what’s our depth sounding at here?”
“There’s a lot of water below us, Dr. Swan.”
“How deep, exactly?”
“Seven hundred feet. Much too deep to dive.”
“Okay, keep us here.”
“You can’t dive to that sort of depth. It may as well be the bottom or the Mariana Trench for all its accessibility.”
“Leave that problem to me,” Billie said, frustrated. “Zanzibe, how certain are you this is the place?”
“It’s here Dr. Swan. I promise you. My father took me to this place to worship as a boy, as did his father, and his father’s father, since the great Congo River first swallowed the temple.”
She studied his face. He was certain. That was enough for her. “Okay, we stay here.”
Billie laughed at the irony of it all.
“What’s so funny Dr. Swan?” Edward asked.
“The temple of Poseidon lies at the river bed below us at a depth of nearly 720 feet! As though that’s not impossible to dive on its own, the river is one of the most powerful and turbulent on the planet. And the only two people in the world who are not only dumb enough, but possibly skilled enough to have a chance of reaching it, I sent to Siberia on a wild goose chase!”
Edward looked at her. “Are you finished with your rant yet?”
“I think that pretty much sums it up.”
“Good, because there’s still work to be done. We have less than two weeks to save the world, and I intend to do so.”
“Did you happen to bring a deep sea submarine with you?”
“No, Dr. Swan I did not. But don’t worry, I did bring two submersible ROVs.”
“Of course! We don’t need to bring anything up with us. All we need is to see the inside of that temple and the first half of its code!”
Chapter Sixty-Nine
Billie sat in the computer room, watching the live feed from the camera mounted at the nose of their submersible remotely operated vehicle, or ROV for short. Even from the safety of their sports cruiser, the water below appeared turbulent. Edward struggled to maintain the little ROV in position, while the river constantly attempted to force it to run away.
The ROV was connected to the neutrally buoyant tether which ran from the back of the Andre Sephora like a giant spool of wool. At the base of the monitor a number of instrumental readings were displayed, including depth, water speed, and temperature.
Sinking past the six-hundred-foot depth marker, Edward suddenly felt his controls become more stable. The water speed increased and the temperature warmed.
“What just happened?” Billie asked.
“We seem to have entered a small eddy,” Edward said, his fingers tapping rapidly over the controls.
The ROV began to rise quickly. Releasing more air, Edward tried to reduce its buoyancy and then powered forward at full speed.
Nothing happened.
The ROV was stuck in an upward spiral. Billie watched at the submersible became helpless to the whims of the deep river eddy.
“Can you do anything about it?” she asked.
Edward took his fingers off the controls. “Nothing that I haven’t already tried. Now I just get to watch and see what happens.”
A moment later the image on the screen showed the ROV had punched through the upwards spiraling eddy and was now on the other side. Edward’s fingers continued to work the controls in fast, specific motions.
“We’re out of it.”
“Hey, you’re increasing your depth again — fast!” Billie said noticing the sounder showed the ROV had dropped another 50 feet since penetrating the spiraling wall of the eddy.
Edward looked toward the depth gauge. “You’re right, too fast! We must be caught in a deep river waterfall.”
The spool of tether, hanging on the back deck, began running as though a giant marlin had taken the bait.
“Mark, get out the back will you,” Edward said. “I need you to secure the tether and make sure we don’t lose it!”
“Understood, sir.”
Billie turned to stop Mark. “Don’t bother.”
“Why not?” Edward asked.
“Because we just snapped the ROV’s tether line.”
Chapter Seventy
The second ROV was ready to launch twenty minutes later. It was slightly larger, and Edward explained that he was worried the submersible may have trouble accessing the temple of Poseidon, especially if some of the challenges were still intact. Zanzibe had assured them that the temple of their Gods was left unarmed while it sunk into the river so they could study it and try to replicate it as best they could.
Lowered into the water by a load-carrying umbilical cable, the second ROV remained in its tether management system, known as a TMS, until it reached the bottom of the river. The TMSwas a garage-like device, which housed the ROV during the lowering process through the splash zone and then worked to lengthen and shorten the tether so the effect of cable drag where there were underwater currents was minimized.