Raising Atlantis (31 page)

Serena looked up as the chopper circled overhead. A ladder was lowered for her. She grabbed the first rung and started climbing. When she reached the top a strong hand helped her in. She looked up to see the face of Colonel Zawas. In his right hand was an automatic pistol and it was pointed at her.

She was numb with shock as Zawas smiled, the wind blowing his cap off.

“You do not disappoint, Doctor Serghetti.” He held up her green thermos. “Now that I have the Sonchis map there is nothing to stop me from returning one day to complete that which I’ve begun. History, as I’ve mentioned, is written by the victors.”

Maybe, she thought, but a quick glance told her it was just Zawas and the pilot aboard. “Tell me, Colonel, did you twist the thermos shut clockwise or counterclockwise?”

“Clockwise.” Zawas eyed her dubiously. “Why do you ask?”

She smiled and said, “Oh, nothing.”

Zawas’s confidence began to waver. He lowered his gun to untwist the thermos. As he did, Serena tried to kick the gun out of his hand. She missed the gun but hit his arm and the gun went off. The chopper veered up, throwing Zawas off balance, but not before he put two more bullets through the window in his efforts to kill her.

Serena looked at the pilot and saw that he had been hit.

She jumped in front, shoved the man aside, and grabbed the controls. She looked over her shoulder in time to see an angry Zawas rise to his feet.

“Colonel!” she screamed. “Do you know how to fly a helicopter?”

Zawas frowned. “Of course, woman.”

“So do I.”

She banked sharply and watched Zawas tumble out the door.

He dropped like a stone, his arms windmilling until he hit the surface of the churning water and disappeared.

She took a deep breath and steadied the chopper. A quick scan of the instruments told her she might, if she was lucky, have enough fuel to make it within radio range of McMurdo and land on more solid ice. But she couldn’t make herself proceed without looking back. She scanned the ice below, fighting back the tears. The city was gone and her fuel gauges were dropping.

As she hovered in the gusty skies over the hardening ice, she prayed for the soul of Conrad Yeats. Then she turned the chopper in the direction of McMurdo Station on the Ross Ice Shelf and flew away.

38

Dawn: The Day After

AT 0600 HOURSZULU,Major General Lawrence Baylander, a hard-nosed New Zealander, led his UNACOM weapons inspection convoy of Hagglunds around a fissure and crossed into the target zone.

The area had been wind-whipped, and any evidence of American nuclear testing would not be visual. Dosimeter readings, thermal scans, and seismic surveys would be necessary to detect any radiation, buried facilities, and the like. Even then they would have to drill for subglacial core samples, he thought. If only they had more time.

But Baylander had already pushed the search and rescue team too far, he realized, and supplies and thus time were running low. He had already concluded they’d have to abandon the tractors and fly back once air support arrived. Worst of all, international politics and funding being what they were, he knew there would be no returning to this wasteland. About the only thing he would get out of this frozen hell was the grim satisfaction that the U.N. would stick the Americans with the tab.

He could feel his opportunity to nail the Americans slipping away. Exhausted and irritated, he was about to radio back to base to tell them that his team was ready to turn around when the convoy found the way blocked.

A red Hagglunds tractor, half protruding from the ice, had apparently sunk into a fissure, its wafer treads locked.

It was still upright, slightly skewed. The forward cab was smashed.

Baylander swore and radioed the convoy to brake to a halt. Pausing just long enough to square up his custom-made polyplastic snowshoes, he decided to keep his engine running.

He yanked his cab door open, jumped down, and started across the waist-deep snow in long, slow strides.

He surveyed the wreck grimly and circled it once.

Something behind the cracked, fogged-up windshield caught his attention and he leaned over for a closer look. There was a figure inside, curled up in a fetal position. A frozen corpse. If it was an American, he had his proof. Baylander straightened and ran over to the cabin door.

He knew the handle would be useless, but he tried anyway.

It was frozen solid. He then took his metal staff and smashed the side window and carefully crawled in.

The man was lying across the leather seats. Baylander turned him over. The pasty white face had once belonged to a relatively young, handsome man. For a long minute Baylander stared down at the ghostly apparition, then bent down to listen for shallow breathing. There was none.

Baylander proceeded to unbutton the corpse’s coat to discover a UNACOM uniform underneath. Bloody hell, he thought. He must be one of ours, from the first team. He could find no identification.

He studied the body to determine a time of death. It must not have been too long, he decided, maybe twenty-four hours, because the corpse was only now turning a dull shade of blue.

Remarkable, considering how long it had been there. The cabin must have provided enough of a shield from the elements to enable the inspector to have survived far longer than he expected. Baylander suspected the man’s last hours were an unforgiving mix of semiconsciousness, delirium, and the slow shutdown of vital organs. It must have been an altogether unpleasant way to go.

Baylander removed his thick gloves and put two fingers on the carotid artery. To his astonishment he could detect the faintest rhythm of a pulse.

39

Dawn: Day Two

CONRADYEATS AWOKEthe next afternoon in a private room inside the main infirmary at McMurdo Station. He lay still for a long time, becoming slowly aware that his hands were swathed in bandages and one shoulder was in a sling. His head, meanwhile, pounded like a drum. He found a buzzer and pushed it with a bandaged hand, but the navy nurse who came told him to lie quietly.

So he lay and, piece by piece, recollected the events of the previous day until the middle of the morning. Along the way he drew a picture by gripping a pen between his bandaged hands. After that he dozed off again. When he woke, a woman was sitting by his bed. She smiled.

He stared at her. “Just like the hospital rooms in the old days—a bed and a sister,” he said. He tried to smile, but it hurt. His voice was not much stronger than a whisper. “How long have you been here?”

“Only a few minutes,” she said, her smile warming him.

But Conrad knew she was lying. He had awakened in the middle of the night and seen her sleeping in that chair. At the time he thought he was dreaming. “You’re alive.”

He reached for her hand, and she touched his bandage. “So are you, Conrad.”

“And the rest of the world?”

“Everything’s fine.” A tear sparkled on her cheek.

“Thanks to you.”

“What about Yeats?”

She seemed to stiffen. “Past Pluto by now, I should imagine.”

“You think what he said about me was crazy?” Conrad searched her eyes.

“No more than a lost city under the ice cap.”

Conrad paused. “Does that mean yes it’s crazy or no it’s true?”

“There is no city, Conrad,” she said. “The whole affair’s over. Complete. Finished. Do you understand?”

“Not quite,” he told her. “I’ve made one hell of a discovery, Serena. Look at this.”

He showed her the rough sketch he had made of the Solar Bark.

Serena frowned. She looked so beautiful.

“Don’t tell me I made that up, Serena,” he said.

“No, you didn’t, Conrad,” she said. “I’ve seen it before.

The original blueprints for the Washington Monument looked exactly like this about two hundred years ago, including the now-missing rotunda at the base.”

Conrad stared at his drawing and realized that Serena was right. Suddenly he decided he would have to get back to Washington. There was his father’s estate, naturally, and tying up loose ends. Maybe some of those loose ends included files from his father’s office at DARPA.

A new journey was beginning to form inside Conrad’s head, but apparently Serena didn’t like what she was seeing.

“Listen, Conrad,” she told him gently, almost seductively. “You’re a great archaeologist, but a lousy amateur in every other way. You’re going to publish nothing.

You’re going to produce nothing. For one thing, you’ve got nothing to produce. No Scepter of Osiris. Nothing. The only memento of our great escapade is the Sonchis map, and it’s going back to Rome with me, where it belongs.”

Conrad glanced over at his nightstand. “Where’s my camera?”

“What camera?”

He grew still. “What about us?”

“There is no us. There can’t be. Don’t you see?” There was pain in her eyes. “You have no story to tell. You have no evidence. The city is gone. All that remains is your personal word. If you insist on talking, nobody will believe you except some of Zawas’s friends in the Middle East, and they’ll come after you. You were the victim of your own lunatic ambitions. You’re lucky to be alive.”

“And you?”

“I’m director of the Australian Antarctic Preservation Society and an adviser to the United Nations Antarctica Commission investigating breaches to the environmental protocols of the International Antarctic Treaty,” she said.

“You’re all that?”

“It was my team that found you in the ice,” she went on.

“Since you’re the only eyewitness to alleged events, any information you can recall would be deeply appreciated. I’ll include it in my report to the General Assembly.”

“They picked you to write the report?” Conrad managed a weak laugh. Of course, he realized. Who else had the international standing or passion concerning the preservation of this great white virgin continent?

Serena stood up to leave. She looked down at him, eyes tender but her body stiff with resolve. “Oh, lucky man.” She leaned over and kissed him on the cheek. “God’s angels were watching over you.”

“Please, don’t leave.” He really meant it. He was afraid he’d never see her again.

She turned, hand on the doorknob. “Take a word of advice from Mother Earth, Conrad.” She spoke bravely, but he could tell she was fighting back tears. “Go back to the States, bang some more coeds, and stick to university lectures and cheap tourist haunts. Forget about everything you think you saw here. Forget about me.”

“Like hell I will,” he said as she closed the door.

He stared into space for what felt like an eternity, thinking about Serena. Then a nurse entered and the spell was broken. “There’s a phone call for you,” she said. “Oh, and the doctor said it’s OK for you to drink coffee if you’d like. It took me forever to find that thermos you wanted.”

“Sentimental value,” he said as the nurse placed the green thermos on the nightstand. “It was kind of Doctor Serghetti to keep it for me. I hope you replaced it as I requested.”

“I packed her one just like it with your little gift inside,” she said. “I’ll come back and pour your coffee for you in a couple of minutes.”

“Thanks,” he said as she left.

He looked thoughtfully at the coffee thermos, then awkwardly picked up the phone with his mitts for hands.

It was Mercedes, hisAncient Riddles of the Universe producer in Los Angeles, laughing on the line. Everything about their last encounter in Nazca was forgiven and forgotten. “I just saw the wires on the Internet,” she said.

“What happened down there? Are you all right?”

Conrad cradled the phone on his good shoulder. Somehow he felt strangely content. “I’m fine, Mercedes.”

“Awesome. When are you going to be mobile?”

The door was cracked open and Conrad could see a couple of U.S. Navy MPs posted outside. “Give me a couple of days.

Why?”

“The sweeps are over and the networks are looking for filler. We’ve cooked up a special that’s right up your alley.

How does Luxor sound?”

Conrad sighed. “Been there, done that.”

“Picture yourself standing among the ruins of a slave city,” Mercedes said. “You’re revealing to the world how the Exodus is true. We’ve even got a Nineteenth Dynasty Egyptian statuette of Ramses II to prove it. You’ll get twice the usual fee. Just make sure you patch things up with the Egyptians. When can you start?”

Conrad thought. “Next month,” he told her. “I have to stop over in Washington first.”

“Awesome. By the way, this Antarctica thing. Is there a story?”

“No, Mercedes,” said Conrad slowly. “No story.”

40

Dawn: The Third Day

Rome

SERENA’S PLANE FROMSYDNEYcame into Rome as dusk was setting in. She was met by Benito in a black sedan and taken to the Vatican for a debriefing with the pope. They talked in private until almost three in the morning. At the end, His Holiness placed his trembling hands on her forehead and uttered a brief prayer.

“Well done,” he said simply. “The city is buried, the Americans know only half the story and will keep it to themselves, and now the U.N. can focus its energies on more productive causes. And since Colonel Zawas is gone, all evidence has been swept away.”

For the most part, Serena thought, this was true. But the memories were there all the same. And she doubted she could ever sweep those away.

The pope looked her in the eye. “What about Doctor Yeats?”

“He won’t talk,” Serena said. “If he does, nobody will believe him. I have his digital camera and the original Sonchis map.”

Serena reached into her pack and produced a green thermos. The pope leaned forward expectantly as she felt for the outer shell and frowned. There was no outer shell. It was a different thermos.

“Problems?” His Holiness asked.

Serena thought back to her visit at Conrad’s bedside and the teary good-bye. “He stole it!”

The pope’s craggy face broke into a wide grin, and he laughed harder than she had ever heard him laugh. So hard, in fact, that he began to cough and required a gentle pat on the back.

Serena didn’t find anything funny about it. “I promise I’ll find a way to get the map back.”