“You two. Your history together.”
“Did you think Sam and I were lovers?”
“Yes, weren’t you?”
“Christ no!”
“But you said you and Sam had an unbelievable past?”
“We do, and if you and I are still alive by the end of the year, I’ll tell you the entire story.”
Sam boarded his father’s Gulfstream at LAX.
He knew what was coming and decided to head to Washington to deal with it before they came to him. Stopped at the end of the runway, the pilot increased the engine’s power in preparation for takeoff, and then shut it down completely.
Sam stood up to find out what was wrong, but had a terrible gut feeling he already knew.
“Your guest, Mr. Reilly.”
“Then you’d better send her in,” Sam said, not waiting to ask who had stopped his jet.
He remained sitting, while the woman walked along the sleek interior of the plane. Her slim, yet overriding figure taking his breath away.
Despite his complete distrust of the woman in front of him, he couldn’t help but admit, that for one of the most powerful women on earth, she was by far the sexiest redhead he’d ever met — not that it made their meetings any more pleasant. After all, she’d expressed on many occasions how that sentiment was mutual.
His mind quickly considered the events of the past month, and he wondered what, precisely, she was going to go after.
Behind her strong jawbone, starry blue eyes, dark, short-cropped hair, and genuinely attractive face, Sam thought her perfect smile somehow always appeared halfway between beautiful and a constant scowl. At times, he wondered whether that, too, was a mask that came with the position.
“Good morning, Madam Secretary,” he said, standing up.
“Sit down, Mr. Reilly,” she commanded. “Tell me, what did you find in the Gulf of Mexico?”
So, that’s what this is about?
He was glad his father had hidden the Ark of Light before anyone acknowledged it had even been discovered.
“Very little. As you know, Madam Secretary, you destroyed all of it.”
“We did?” She shook her head. “No, Mr. Reilly, I assure you, if we wanted its secrets destroyed, that stupid girlfriend of yours, Dr. Swan, wouldn’t have survived.”
“Not you?” Sam was genuinely surprised. “Then who?”
“Someone else who’s been closing in on our hunt for the Master Builders. And you’d better pray, you beat them to it.”
“If they were as powerful as I’m starting to believe, we’d better all pray that our enemies don’t discover them first.” Sam laughed. “So Billie’s still alive?”
The Secretary of Defense ignored his question, as she so often did.
“Oh, and Dr. Swan’s not my girlfriend.”
The U.S. Secretary of Defense smiled. Her perfect white teeth, glaring, and replied, “Yes, Mr. Reilly, we know all about your history with that girl. Do you think that by sending her there while you went in search of the Mahogany Ship, it would keep us from finding out the truth?”
He shuffled his feet uncomfortable in the seat, and then replied, “I had hoped so.”
“So, do you have another lead?”
“Not yet, but I’m hoping, if Billie is alive, she will make contact soon,” he said. “Perhaps when I return from Washington?”
“You’re not going to Washington. There’s no one there who wants to speak with you. I suggest you turn your father’s toy airplane around, and go home.”
“As you wish, Madam Secretary.”
At 2 a.m. Billie turned up at his house. Despite the U.S. Secretary of Defense suggesting she was still alive, he hadn’t completely believed it.
“Jesus, Billie,” he said, throwing his arms around her. “I was starting to think you were actually dead!”
“Yeah, well, that’s what they would have liked, wouldn’t they?” she replied, quickly removing his arms from her torso. She studied his face, and then said, “Damn it, you knew they would come, didn’t you?”
He turned to avoid her gaze.
“When Rodriguez asked me to help him find the Mahogany Ship I had personal reasons to go searching for it. Specifically, it was the first shipwreck that my father and I ever hunted together. My feelings were tied because I really did want to know more about the sunken Mayan pyramid.”
“But you knew that the Master Builders were involved!”
“No. Well, not at first. I reluctantly agreed to think about going with Rodriguez on his expedition. It was only when I replayed the recording I’d made of the king’s sarcophagus that I saw the image of the Mahogany Ship on the wall.”
“And then you realized that the Mahogany Ship was built by the Master Builders!”
“That’s right. And I knew I had to distance myself from the discovery as fast as possible. I hoped they would assume that if I’d discovered anything of value, then surely I wouldn’t have left the project to someone else. Giving you enough time to find some answers. Instead, now all we have are more questions.”
“I might just have one answer…”
“What about?”
“The communication device… it was made out of a stone, not too dissimilar to a diamond in chemical makeup.”
“How could you have possibly done that? Everything was destroyed?”
“Yes, but before that happened, I broke off a little.”
He examined the stone, which fit comfortably in the palm of his hand. It looked like an enormous blue diamond. Even with today’s technologies, nothing even resembling its brilliance could be synthetically manufactured.
It sparkled in his hand under the limited light of the night lamp.
“Is it a diamond?”
“No. I’ve taken it to three leading experts in geology. None of them can tell me what is, only what it isn’t.”
“And what’s that?”
“It’s not synthetically made, and it’s never been seen before.”
Sam looked at it again, wondering in the back of his mind if he’d somehow seen a similar stone, somewhere else. “Could they tell you anything about the type of stone it resembles, other than a very sparkling diamond?”
“They each identified that it has some unusual properties.”
“Such as?”
“The stone transmits light and sound more than a thousand times faster than water. And is the first naturally occurring substance harder than diamond.”
“Interesting. I suppose that explains how it was used to see other parts of the Mayan pyramid,” he said.
Billie laughed, “You and I both know that’s not true, don’t we?”
Ignoring her statement, he said, “So we lost the greatest lead for Master Builders we’ve ever had?”
“Yes.”
“And it was all for nothing, with exception of the discovery of the best fake diamond the world has ever seen?”
“No.” Billie smiled, holding her hard drive. “Because I think I just found a map to Atlantis.”