Atlantis Stolen (Sam Reilly Book 3) (26 page)

JFK Airport –
12 Hours Remaining

Sam Reilly
stepped off the plane. The presidential motorcade met him at the tarmac. A U.S.
Marine in dress uniform held the door open for him. Sam casually stooped to get
into the car. His father had financed the President’s campaign. He wasn’t
intimidated by the man. If anything, he was relieved. If he was here, it meant
that the Secretary of Defense had taken him seriously.

“Hello, Mr.
President.” Sam shuffled to the far side of the car, affectionately known as
the Beast. Tom followed, and the door was shut immediately afterwards. They
both shook the President’s hand. Next to him sat the Secretary of Defense. Her
red hair was tied back in a perfect, military bun. Sam considered if she really
did have a permanent scowl, or if it was just an act when she spent time with
him. Somehow, despite the anger in her eyes and displeasure every time she
spoke with him, she was possibly the sexiest woman he’d ever met. That being
the case, he could think of no one he’d less like to spend the evening with.  

“Mr. Reilly, one
day I would really like to know what you were doing looking into our long
buried secrets from last century in Siberia. But if you’re anything like your
father I know I would be wasting my breath. For now, I need to know precisely
how much time we have left?”

“On the Atlantis
counter?”

“Yes, on the God
damn Atlantis counter.”

“A little under
twelve hours,” Sam replied. “Did you find what I asked for?”

“Yes. The
original Costello map – we’ve just picked it up at the Smithsonian Institute. The
oldest known map of Manhattan is now in your hands. Also, one of the curators
there has found a series of engineering plans for the original water lots. We
have more than a thousand of our people looking for that entrance now.”

“Good.” Sam
picked up the delicate papers and began searching for what he needed. “Did the
NASA’s Near Earth Object Program find anything?”

The President
answered. “No, they’ve reassured me, there’s nothing that is in a direct
collision course with us. Several that may come close, but if we were in
danger, we’d have known about it by now.”

“Did you send
them the images of the celestial cavern we found in Poseidon’s temple?” Sam
asked.

The Secretary of
Defense said, “Yes, and they had a look at the comet that appears to be on its
way toward earth. A Dr. James Bradley from their Near Earth Object Program
assures me that nothing short of earth changing its gravitational pull would
cause that stone to fall from the sky.”

“Get him on the
phone now!” Sam replied.

“Why?” The
President asked, the slightest of alarm in his voice. “He already said it’s
going to narrowly miss earth’s orbit.”

“Because, let me
guess, it will pass over head in around 12 hours’ time.”

The President nodded
his head, realization striking him hard.

“Here, have a
look at this.” Sam handed him the images he’d printed on the flight. “They’re
celestial markings found inside Poseidon’s temple. At first they didn’t make
any sense, but I just worked out what they are. They’re charts of comets that
pass earth close enough to be pulled into our gravitational field. Atlantis
somehow affects that pull, changing the direction of the comet from its
original path.”

“Any chance we
can take out that comet before it reaches us?” Tom suggested.

“Impossible.” The
President’s answer was firm. “We have systems in place to destroy an
extraterrestrial collision of this sort, but they would take months to put into
effect. No, I suggest we now utilize our resources to making certain that no
one activates Atlantis.”

Sam skimmed the
construction notes for the water lots that were built in 1653 – the first of a
series of land reclamations within the island of Manhattan. When his eyes
reached a series of names – mostly the owners or companies who were building he
stopped. “Okay, here it is. This one! It says the owner was a Mr. Felix Brandt.”

“Are you
certain?” the President asked.

“Yes. Andrew
Brandt is the one who we believe kidnapped Dr. Swan. There must be a connection
somewhere. He needs something that Billie has – my guess, she managed to find
the code to Atlantis.” Sam thought about it for a few seconds. “Okay, let them
know it must be hiding in relatively plain sight. Dr. Billie Swan was there
just five weeks ago. If she reached it on her own, then it means she hasn’t
been doing any serious excavation, or your people would already know about it.
We’re looking for somewhere that descends below that building.”

“There’s only one
problem…” the President looked seriously at him.

“What?”

“That building
was torn down in 1930.”

“It has to be
that building! Why was it torn down?”

“To make way for
the construction of the Bank of America Financial Center on the corner of Wall
Street and Water.”

Sam looked at the
Costello map, comparing it to where the modern day Bank of America Building
rested. “Okay, I have it. Get me to that building. I know where those tunnels
are. And I think I just worked out how Billie managed to find it so easily in
the first place.”

Sitting in wet cargo
pants for the duration of the remaining flight would have been a small price to
pay for the knowledge that she’d upset her captor, but his words, “Good, she is
almost ready,” seemed far more ominous.

The jet was still
taxiing when someone grabbed her from behind and forced her to stand. Soon
she’d discover exactly what Andrew needed from her before she died. The plane
stopped moving, and she found herself walking down a series of steps, to where
another chopper was waiting.

Fifteen minutes
later, the helicopter landed. She was pulled out of it by a man who’d been
waiting for her. The wind nearly knocked her off her feet. Below, a long way
down, she could only just barely hear the cars honking their horns.

Well, that answered
whether or not Andrew knows where Atlantis is – he’d taken her to the top of
the Bank of America’s Financial Center.

They walked her
into a waiting elevator.

It dropped five stories
before coming to a halt on the 18th floor. There, she felt a man’s rough hands
pull at her bound wrists, forcing her to step out. A man reeking of rich
cologne swiped a key card to open up the bank’s most secure elevator.

It was a security
measure to make it more difficult to rob the bank’s elite private vaults.
Owners who utilized the bank’s private security boxes, were forced to enter the
lobby, take an elevator up to the 18th floor, where they would pass more
security checks, before entering a completely different elevator – its elevator
shaft completely separate to the rest of the elevators in the building. The
elevator lowered nearly 45 stories below, taking them deep below the building,
where a secret vault housed some of the world’s most precious secrets and
valuable items.

The secret vault
was not made known to the general public. The bank offered a security deposit
box system for its regular customers on an entirely different level. This
secret vault had reached the same status as an ancient legend. A place where
some of the most unique items from around the world, were stored for its
absolute security.

Billie had only
reached her conclusion to the location of Atlantis because she too held a
safety deposit box in the secret vault. A place where she stored many of the artifacts
and notes she’d obtained on her quest to complete what her grandfather started.
Based on her calculations from the looking glass within the Mayan pyramid,
she’d determined the location of Atlantis as the corner of Wall Street and
Water Street, New York. The second she saw it, she imagined the only place that
such a secret could be maintained over the centuries.

The elevator came
to an abrupt halt, and she was forced to step out. The temperature dropped
several degrees. She recalled that the secret vault was maintained at an
artificially lowered temperature to protect some of the older, more fragile, artifacts.

Still
blindfolded, she was pushed toward the end of the room. Her hands were unbound,
her head was pushed downwards, and she was forced inside a metallic tunnel. The
smell of burnt waste still festered. She knew precisely where she was now.

Crawling slowly,
she felt the sharp prick of a knife on her legs every time she stopped.

Climbing out the
other side, she heard the tiny door behind her close with a metallic clank,
followed by several turns of its security lock, like that of a submarine hatch.

Once in the
ancient tunnel of Atlantis a man removed her blindfold for the first time since
she’d been kidnapped from the deck of the Andre Sephora. A blond-haired man
greeted her with a well-practiced, and disarming smile. He then carefully
removed her gag. A curious grin on his face, it appeared as though he was
fascinated by what she might say or do now.

When she said
nothing, he displayed the resignation of a bully who’d been told that the
child’s mother was here now, and that he could no longer torment it.

“Now, Dr. Swan, I
would like you to show me how to beat the challenges of Atlantis.”

Edward examined
his little pygmy friend, Zanzibe.

He’d dressed the
king in a Vivienne Westwood suit. Somehow, it transformed him from what looked
like an albino child, to a rich, albeit very short businessman. The bank’s
security staff wouldn’t dare take a second look at him, dressed as such.
Zanzibe smiled his perfectly white teeth, sharpened to razor points.

Edward sighed.
“Perhaps no smiling at anybody, my friend.”

“Very good. No
smiling.”

“Okay, are you
ready?”

“Yes, of course.
I was born to protect Atlantis.”

Fanaticism never
ceased to amaze Edward. His friend had spent his entire life preparing for
tonight’s event. One look at the little pygmy, and he knew that the man would
gladly give his life to protect the legacy of his Gods.

“All right. Let’s
do this.”

It was early in
the evening. The main bank was closed, but its secret vault never slept. The
staff saw themselves as the divine custodians of some of the world’s most
precious items, and their owners could visit their secrets twenty-four hours a
day, three hundred and sixty-five days a year. Edward drove up to the main
gates in his own car. A security camera confirmed his details, and then opened
the gates. He drove into the bank’s underground security drive.

A valet
immediately approached. “Welcome back Mr. Worthington. Will you be staying
long?”

Edward handed him
the keys and replied, “Perhaps an hour, thank you.”

The vault offered
an enforced valet service to reduce the risk of bank robbery, because the
getaway car would be parked in a separate building’s carpark. The night manager
approached, and cordially greeted them. “Welcome back Mr. Worthington.”

Edward shook the
manager’s hand and said, “This is Mr. Zanzibe. My friend from the Democratic
Republic of Congo, who I told you about. As you can imagine, he needs to store
some of his better discoveries.”

The bank manager
nodded his head. And he did know, too. The DROC was synonymous with the best
quality diamonds in the world as well as corruption. One look at Zanzibe, and
he instantly would have imagined a tribal man who’d found the ultimate blood
diamond. “Of course, right this way, gentlemen.”

The valet
disappeared with Edward’s Audi, and then the three men entered the elevator. It
went up to the 18
^th
floor. There, the pygmy had the retinas of his
eyes and his fingertips scanned, followed by a DNA sample. He chose a password
involving a combination of 42 letters, numbers and accented characters.

Zanzibe was given
his safe deposit box number. The two men then stepped into the elevator and
began their descent into one of the most protected vaults on earth. 

Edward said,
“Now, they advised me that the last occupants down here left thirty minutes
ago. But for that to be true, it would mean that Andrew had already won.”

“Perhaps, my
friend, he has?” Zanzibe replied.

“No, that’s not
possible. Because if he had, none of this would still be here. It’s more likely
that he had someone else sign him out of the vault. You might want to prepare
yourself, in case we have company when this elevator comes to a stop.”

“I will be
prepared.”

Edward looked
next to him, where Zanzibe had already put together his two Uzis. His sharpened
teeth glistened like a banshee. And then the elevator doors opened.

Billie studied
the first of the three challenges with intensity. She already knew the answers
to all three, but now had a much greater contest to overcome. Inside Poseidon’s
temple, the Sphere of Atlantis waited eagerly to release its evil power of
destruction. The time was narrowing, and soon she must act to overpower her
captor.

It was always a
game, but now the price of the challenges was no longer merely her life. Now,
failure meant the end of the human race. She considered simply refusing to beat
the challenges at all, but with the Sphere of Atlantis already poised, Billie
had to reach it with the code if she wanted to stop it.

No, she would
have to reach the inner sanctum. But somewhere along the way, Andrew Brandt
must die.

The first room
involved the challenge of Strength, with its long tunnel and descending
roofline, filled with spikes, Billie quickly wondered if Andrew would be naive
enough to wish to go through first. She watched as Andrew studied the mechanism
that lifted the roof by maneuvering the cantilever. He lifted it up so that the
roof levelled, revealing the half opened exit at the end of the long tunnel,
and then slowly lowered it again.

The spikes dropped
like a machete.

He grinned at her
wickedly. “I guess I better let you through first. Then you can open up for
me?”

“Why, don’t you
think you’re strong enough to work it out on your own?”

“Of course not,
that’s why I went to great lengths to bring you here, Dr. Swan. Now, in case
you get the urge to keep running once you’re on the other side, may I remind
you that only I hold the code to Atlantis.”

Andrew stared at
her.

His piercing gray
eyes tormented her indecision.  

When she didn’t
respond, he said, “And that means that this building and everything within it
is going to be levelled within the next two hours.”

“And if I help
you get through. Then what?”

“Then I win, and
you lose.”

“But we all die
anyway?”

“No, you die,
everyone else dies, but I have all the power that comes with the Sphere of
Atlantis and its access code.”

“Doesn’t sound
very fair to me,” Billie pointed out.

He sighed. “No, I
dare say it’s not very fair. But hey, so long as you and I are together,
perhaps you’ll find your chance to win. I doubt it, but it’s the best hope
you’ve got, isn’t it?”

She turned to
show him her hands were still bound behind her back.

“I’m going to
need these off if you want me to make it through the challenge.”

“I’d really
rather I didn’t.”

“Then I guess we
may as well both lie down here and die. You see, halfway up the tunnel, a lever
needs to be pulled to open the final exit. If I can’t reach it, I can hardly
help you reach your all powerful sphere.”

He grabbed her
forcefully. Placing his knee into the nape of her neck, he removed the
handcuffs that bound her. She quickly stretched her arms and moved them to her
front. A second later, Andrew clipped them again.

“There. Now you
should be able to reach the lever, but still less likely to pick up a rock and
beat my skull in.”

She smiled with a
meekness that she would never truly feel. “Okay, let’s see how strong you are
then.”

Within minutes,
Billie passed the first challenge and having reset the lever so that Andrew
could follow her, was now studying the second one. This one involved choosing
the correct weight to place on the pedestal. Instead of the gold ingots of the
Congo temple, this one had bars of solid orichalchum. Each one glowed red in response
to their dim flashlights, sending shards of red into the dark chasm blocking
their progression.

She stood there
considering how to overcome the challenge and get her captor killed in the
process. And then Andrew began picking up the ingots and the weights and piling
them on the ancient balancing scales. Within two to three minutes, he laughed
and carried several of the bars of orichalchum over to the pedestal.

Without asking
her if he had chosen correctly, Andrew dropped them.

The pedestal
glowed red, and seconds later the hidden bridge swung into position.

“That was lucky,
wasn’t it? I guess I might not have needed you after all?”