Dateline: Atlantis (29 page)

“Praise God,” Freya answers.
What? No, this can't be happening.

“Freya, what was
that?
”

“What was what? Who is this? Amy?”

“Yes, it's me, Aunt Freya. Why did you answer the phone that way?”

“Oh, we all do at the Church of the Word.” Church of the Word. Logos. Amaryllis is starting to get the connection. The scripture on the wall says, “In the beginning there was the Word.”

“You never were religious before,” she asks, careful not to step on any landmines.

“Not when you were living at home, but we met the nicest preacher, the Rev. Caine. So personable. You'd like him a flash. He has a church in the suburbs and we joined it. Well,
I
joined it. Sean said he didn't want anything to do with that church.”

“Good for him.” Amaryllis gulps as she considers that she's just insulted her aunt, but she plunges ahead anyway. “Listen, I'm worried about this. Two men tried to kidnap me today. They still have a friend of mine. And a guard was killed right in front of my eyes.”

“Amy, are you hurt?”

“No, just rattled. But listen carefully. Those men were from Logos.”

There is silence as Freya digests this distasteful bit of news.

“It can't be,” she says. “They preach love. They always have.” There is another pause and Amaryllis knows that Freya is floundering, looking for easy answers. “Hey, I know. I'll have our Logos prayer group pray for your friend.”

Amaryllis' mind begins to spin as she realizes what's been happening at these innocent prayer get-togethers.

“Did you tell them to pray for me before? Did you tell them I was in Florida?”

“Well, yes. We prayed to keep you safe.” Amaryllis head begins to steam. The Rev. Caine may be many things, but he certainly is a clever man.

“Do you realize that Logos is an extremely dangerous organization, and your prayer group led them right to me?”

“Impossible.”

“No. It's true. Ask Donny if you don't believe me. He faxed me several reports all showing that Logos is tied to a survival-ist camp, gun running, cult training, mercenary soldiers, the works.” She pauses, letting her aunt take it all in. “The money you put in the collection plate doesn't go to starving children. It pays for rounds of ammo.”

“Amy!”

“It's the truth and you have to put away your emotional feelings for this group and accept the facts. We have documents that show where the money is flowing. Donny and the FBI have tracked it.”

“The FBI,” Freya says with a tremor in her voice. This reader of true crime novels is beginning to crack. Say FBI, and she'll believe.

“Yes. Now, listen closely. Logos joined with the same group of people responsible for killing Mom and Dad.”

“So, that's why they wanted
you,
” Freya sounds as if she's coming out of a dream. Her responses are quicker and livelier now. She's the good old aunt who loves to solve a mystery.

“Now, please. No prayer group. Go back to the Catholic Church. Become an Episcopalian. Turn Buddhist, for heaven's sake. Do anything other than going back to that church.”

“Okay, Amy. It will take breaking some ties, but I'll do it if what you say is real.” Freya sounds as if she has had the wind punched out of her. “I'll do whatever it takes to keep you safe.”

“Thank you, thank you,” Amaryllis says, grateful and relieved. “It's really important that you don't tell them anything more about me. I'll let you know what the police find out.” Amaryllis pauses, then decides to blurt out the vivid mental picture that's been bothering her for days. “And would you take that sign off the wall? Please?”

Freya lets out a small chuckle as she agrees. They exchange a little small talk, Amaryllis gives her the cell phone number, and Freya hangs up.

Amaryllis expects a little down time to get her thoughts together, but she looks up to see Thorgeld hovering over her with a panicked look on his long face.

“I thought they got you again,” he says, indicating the vast open lobby. It's true that there are few places to hide in this wide expanse of gilded furniture and crystal chandeliers. She managed to find it. Thorgeld looks positively feral. He has made an attempt to comb his thinning hair, but now it's standing at attention and the cowlick is spewing blond strands in every direction. “We got a call from the police.”

Amaryllis bolts to her feet. “What did they say?”

“They found her. We must go to police station and fetch her.”

“Well, what are we waiting for? Tell the doorman to hail a cab.”

#

At precinct headquarters, Sybil looks like a drowned rabbit. Her strawberry blonde hair is soaked and sticks to her ears and neck. Her pastel top and slacks are sodden, her eyes are pink-rimmed from crying. But she's unharmed. Amaryllis gingerly moves toward her for a tentative hug. She never makes it, because this simple gesture starts a fresh flood of Sybil's tears. Amaryllis stands back as Sybil begins to wail.

“So how did they find her?” Amaryllis asks the watch commander as she hands Sybil some tissues.

“Says here the officers were driving down a swamp road and saw a ‘gator lumbering along the highway as if it was on its way to a meal. They drove another one hundred yards and saw a bundle by the side of the road all tied up with clothesline.

“The kidnappers dumped her on the side of the road in alligator territory?”

“Yup. Says so on the report. We don't know if they intended on feeding her to the wildlife. Most likely, they were just trying to dump her. But she's a lucky lady there.”

“Is she pressing charges?”

“I should say so. Or we should say the state of Florida is pressing charges. Kidnapping is a felony.”

“And the two assailants are in custody?”

The cop nods, causing his combed-over hair to reveal the beginnings of a freckled bald spot. “We're going to need both of you to i.d. them in a lineup.”

“That'll be easy.”

“Why don't you take her back home and get her some clean clothes. She's been through enough already.”

“I should say so,” Sybil yells from her side of the desk. “It was horrible. They kept saying things like ‘have you been washed in the blood of the lamb?' Crazy talk about the Rapture and how I shouldn't be left behind. I think the only thing that saved me was that I told them I was born again.”

Amaryllis looks at her friend, the agonistic, with widened eyes. “Are you?”

“You kidding? I'd say anything to get out of that van.” Sybil gulps again, choking back tears. “But I never considered an alligator.”

“Come on, Sybil. Let's get you into something comfy.” And something that doesn't smell like jungle rot.

Thorgeld keeps looking at his watch and Amaryllis remembers the meeting with Shoshanna he promised.

“Maybe you can take Shoshanna over to Sybil's and we'll order a pizza. Would that be okay? I can't leave Sybil alone like this.”

Thorgeld agrees and she writes out Sybil's address on the back of one of her business cards. He turns it over and stares perplexed at the name.

“I thought you were Amaryllis…”

“That's me. It's a long story. I'm Amy Quigley at the newspaper. You can call me Amaryllis.”

“Yes, I shall,” Thorgeld says, slipping the thin card in his shirt pocket. “I will see you in one hour with Ms. Knox. I hope you feel better soon, Ms…Sybil.” He bows in a European fashion and turns for the door.

Amaryllis half-supports, half-guides Sybil to a cab on the street and soon, they are flying through the Miami streets to an apartment on a more humble side of town.

#

Sybil perches on the edge of her couch, dressed in a lightweight warm-up suit, when the intercom makes a sick sort of electronic whine. Amaryllis hops up, talks into the squawk box, and buzzes in their guests. When a human hand knocks at the door, Amaryllis opens it to find Thorgeld standing with the pizza box in hand, and a tall, imposing black woman in a long purple dress at his side.

“Glad to meet you,” Shoshanna says without waiting to be introduced. “You must be Amaryllis.”

Amaryllis nods and then points to Sybil, “And this is…”

“The one who almost became a ‘gator snack,” Shoshanna interrupts, laughing. Coming from anyone else, the line might have cued another rush of tears from Sybil, but Shoshanna speaks with such good-natured honesty that everyone in the room chuckles along with her. It was easy to see why Thorgeld struck up a friendship with her. As formal and soft-spoken as he is, Shoshanna is the polar opposite. She does things her way, Amaryllis notices, and makes sure people respect her for it. The two of them surely play a respectable game of Good Cop, Bad Cop when digging for research.

Sybil pulls some Mexican beers out of her refrigerator and they settle around the coffee table, munching on pepperoni-and-mushroom slices and taking long pulls at their bottled beverages.

Thorgeld can't wait to tell Amaryllis about Shoshanna's work with the recently discovered carved writing in the Azores that is similar to samples from the Canary Islands.

“That was my first run-in with the Committee,” Shoshanna says, pushing away the imaginary foes with her hand. “Some lame asshole named Hewitt was running the show there and thought I'd debunk the carvings for him. Well, I thought ‘not so fast' when I viewed them upfront and personal. Turned out that humans made those markings, and the script was extremely ancient. Later, I traced it back to proto-Berber script, which has some similarities to the Canary language.”

“But it gets better,” Thorgeld says, casting a fond gaze on this fast-talking dynamo. “They have a resemblance to ancient proto-Egyptian script, also.”

“Oh, just cut me off when I'm getting to the good part,” Shoshanna says, pulling a giant string of cheese off her slice of pizza and plopping it in her mouth. After chewing a millisecond, she swallows and continues. “I was traveling in Egypt, looking up the script that is considered pre-dynastic. Do you know about the Scorpion King?”

“Only the movie,” Sybil says. Shoshanna gives her the hairy eyeball.

“That dude was real and lived far before the supposed first pharaoh of Egypt, a man purported to be named Narmer. I believe the Scorpion King was one of the earlier pharaohs. The script found with his name on it and other pieces of early glyphs are extremely rare, but they have some examples at the Met in New York and at the Cairo Museum. So, I high-tailed it over to Cairo to have a look and damn if I didn't find some other glyphs match with the Azores and Canary carvings.”

“I was in Egypt working on my book when I ran into Shoshanna at the same display case at the museum,” Thorgeld says, getting his words in while he can. “We started comparing notes and the next thing I knew, I had a collaborator.”

“'Cept when he told me he used to work with the Committee. Then I almost jettisoned him to the stratosphere.” She gives Thorgeld a playful punch, which he takes like a man unaccustomed to roughhousing of any kind. He smoothes his linen shirt.

“I told her that was ancient history,” he says with a cough and washes down the rest of his thoughts with beer. Amaryllis laughs at his unintentional pun.

Shoshanna recalls that they were scanning the news when they heard the spectacular story of the submarine near Cuba, and they were determined to get into that country to look at the relics themselves. It was a major change of direction, but both
researchers knew they had to be there. However, Shoshanna—an American citizen—couldn't get clearance into Cuba.

“So, right now, we are hanging out in Miami, trying to come up with a plan that will get us over there but keep me out of jail.” Shoshanna downs the rest of her pizza with a flourish. Then suddenly, her attention turns on Amaryllis. She wants every syllable of her story from the death of her parents right up to the present.

Amaryllis complies, halting at first, unsure how much to spill to this engaging stranger. When she gets to the part about the Nav-Tech tower, Thorgeld's eyes become beacons of laser light. He pumps for more information. Sybil jumps in with everything she knows about the mysterious structure. The tale telling wanders long into the night. But eventually, they break up, standing at Sybil's apartment door making plans for the next day.

Once back at her own hotel, Amaryllis realizes it's too dicey to stay there any longer. Gathering her belongings, Amaryllis dials Donny and hears the familiar greeting of his cheery voice mail. She hasn't been able to get through to him since she met Thorgeld, which is a major annoyance. She's still a little jumpy about Thorgeld's true allegiance and wants to bounce this latest turn of events off of Donny's ever-reliable B.S. detector.
Well, I might as well leave a message. I've got to get through to him somehow.

“Donny, I'm cleared by the FBI, and I'm afraid I have to check into a different hotel tomorrow. Don't fax any more material. What you gave me was crucial, though. I met some people who can help and I'm off to Nav-Tech. It's in international waters but close to the Bahamas. Remember the name. It might be important: Nav-Tech. I want someone to know where I'm going. But please don't talk about it to anyone. And if you get me on a cell phone, don't say the name. Use, uh, ‘torre' instead.”
Tower in Italian. It's lame, but the best I can do for now.