Dateline: Atlantis (19 page)

Her ears roar with the sound of exhaled air bubbles surging upward. The noise disorients her, until she fixes herself on breathing with calm resolve. She repeats a mantra over and over to quiet her mind, “in and out, in and out, breath goes in and out.” As she swims toward Tim, the rumbling bubbles become background noise, easy to filter out of mind.

They move at a crawling pace through the translucent waters, passing sea turtles, manta rays, even a barracuda. Her usual fear of sharks rises in her throat when a tiny member of the species swims across her plane of view. But she remembers Gabriel and the boat captain, who are both spotting for any telltale dorsal fins.

Tim gives her the signal to descend and she begins the process of breathing steadily and watching her gauges, controlling the pressure of seawater on her body. She stops when her finned foot touches the edge of some rock. It's sturdy like granite, not grainy sandstone. She bends to look at it, and notices that it's hardly native to this area unless a glacier deposited it there. The edges are remarkably straight. Ruler straight with ninety-degree angles. Wellington descends a tiny bit more, and she follows suit, suddenly realizing that she's come to rest on a step.

Now, gazing upward, she sees the flat top of a stepped structure. The divers nod to each other and go down inch by inch, feeling the walls for any signs of man-made design. Most likely a skeptic would say they've discovered a natural phenomenon—a pile of rocks that tumbled together in a way that reminds them of a pyramid. Amaryllis snaps some photos anyway. Who's to say what is natural and manmade at this point? She hopes the pictures look convincing in raw daylight. So many underwater images, even those taken by famous photographers, end up murky and amorphous.

She and her companion poke and prod at the sides of this underwater behemoth and find only crustaceans and anemones. The structure has become a reef for fish and other marine life. A school swerves and turns as one unit when the divers swim over this enchanted lair of waving plants and towers of coral. Tim takes out a knife and scratches at one bump on the side that stands out from the flat surface. The more he pokes at the lump, the more excited his motions become. He motions Amaryllis over to his side.

As the scaly sea detritus falls away, the image of a grotesque face appears. Not a simulacrum of a face—the kind a daydreamer might imagine in clouds or on an outcropping of rock. This was a definite depiction of a human visage, complete with two eyes, bulbous nose, huge ears, and a mouth with a tongue hanging out in an undignified expression. She snaps more photos. Below the sculpture are scribbles that could be writing. She records them also. Then, as she is snapping images of whorls and other deliberately created markings, she sees a sign that is exactly like the one she saw in Mexico and on the ships' sails in her vision: a cross with two concentric circles laid over it.

She digs her own knife into the cross and finds that it's deeply incised. Certainly, this is not the work of a passing ship scraping its hull on the rock. It's not a bit of graffiti, either. No one would have the time to dig so deeply into the granite on a simple holiday dive. She stares at the carvings hoping to draw their meaning by intuition, but she has no clue what they might mean. She wonders helplessly if there is a crystal up in the top of this tower—a match for the one she found in Mexico.

In the undulating haze, she picks up the view of a line of straight boulders—megalithic blocks that must weigh tons. She paddles with her frog feet attempting to get a good view of this odd portion of the sea floor. Next to the rectilinear “paving stones” are long, cylindrical stone formations. She maneuvers herself close to one and realizes it is carved with a floral motif. A toppled pillar? She looks further into the wavy water and sees several more of the same sort of columns. She remembers reading about some other adventurer finding pillars at the Bimini location, but skeptics labeled them “ballast” ejected from passing ships. These scroll-decorated objects are anything but common ballast.

She swims back a bit to get a wider view of the entire site. It looks for all the world like a toppled building, maybe a temple. Is she looking at the remains of a ruined city? She snaps some pictures, then swims forward again, trying to get detailed shots
of the scrolled decorative carving. What sort of edifice could this have been? A home? A palace? A residence for the priests of the pyramid temple?

Jerking her out of her reverie, she feels a warning tug on the lines connecting her and Tim to the boat. The warning could be for any reason, but she remembers that her surroundings hardly are benign. This is a dangerous world and she frets about sharks—or of being trapped inside some unseen cave. Somehow, her parents' fate is tangible down here amid the waving seaweed and the slithering eels. She regards the pyramid and wonders if it is the sort of thing her mother and father wandered into, just as she dove without thinking into a pyramid in Mexico.
So reckless. So stupid.
She tries to push the memory away and attend to practicalities.

The ascent is terrible, for while the divers would have loved to bolt to the surface, they must follow procedure to avoid “the bends.” At each level, they stop and check their waterproof watches. Then up again, as awkward as babies crawling across a kitchen floor. Finally, Amaryllis breaks through the surface of the water and sees Gabriel peering over the edge of the boat with an unreadable expression. He tosses a line and grabs her hands as he hoists her aboard. She knows the captain is doing the same for Tim.

She pulls out her mouthpiece and yanks off her wetsuit hood, then blurts out the first word that's on her mind.

“Sharks?”

“No, no,” Gabriel says, face a little less grave. His eyes almost smile. “We have guests.” He points across to the west where a large craft is surging toward them.

Without thinking, she shoves the camera at Gabriel. “For God's sake, hide this thing.” He nods and stows it under some life preservers, then throws a tarp casually over the top. As the cruiser nears, they see no governmental or military insignia. However, this is not a fisherman's craft, either. Just a rented cabin cruiser. They play along and wave a friendly greeting to the
people on board. In a few minutes, the fishing boat holds steady, bobbing in the water next to them. An average-sized white man with a red beard appears to be in charge.

“Hello there,” he calls out. “We were wondering if you have a permit to dive in these waters.”

She frowns. The English accent falls like acid on her ears and she recalls Garret's tale of kidnapping and drugging. She decides to step around this man's questions as if they were landmines.

“I was under the impression that these are international waters,” she says with no emotion.

“Probably, but we were wondering why anyone would dive out here in the middle of nowhere.” He grins. It isn't convincing.

“What business is it of yours?” she says with an impatient toss of the head. Her wet hair slaps her shoulders. “Are you a government official?”

“Just nosy,” the man says, still smiling. He flips a card over to their deck. It nearly falls into the drink, but Amaryllis saves it on the edge of the railing. She picks it up to read:

Landon Hewitt, Ph. D.
Staff Archaeologist
British Museum, Dept. of New World Studies
Russell Square, London WC 1B 3DG

Hewitt continues to speak as the others on Amaryllis' boat crowd around to read the card.

“We're just treasure hunting. Galleons, sunken ships, that sort of thing,” the Englishman says. “Anything to add to our collection. We were afraid you were onto something we might like.“ His smile is beginning to annoy Amaryllis, but she has to admire the way his entire body takes on an easy-going, loose demeanor. She knows he's lying, but he hides it like a professional thief.

“No,” she says. “We heard there is a sponge pen around here and wanted to check it out.” She mimics Hewitt's smile and relaxed mood.

“Way out here? The sponge pens tend to be closer to the islands. Hard to harvest anything out here.”

“We were told it was forgotten,” Gabriel chips in. “And the fish are said to be splendid.”

“You're tourists then?”

Everyone on board nods in assent, even the captain.

“Right, then,” Hewitt says. “Call me if you see anything we could use. Lots of treasure hunters will destroy beautiful artifacts just to get their hands on some gold.”

They nod again.

“And by the way,” Hewitt adds. “We are also looking for an American reporter named Amy Quigley. Ring me up at the hotel if you happen to meet up with her. She may have found something we'd like to purchase.”

Amaryllis barely raises an eyebrow.

“I don't talk to the press,” she says, as a cool as a Las Vegas gambler. Hewitt gives a brisk wave and tells his crew to cast off. As they depart, Amaryllis flips the business card over to see where Hewitt has written by hand:

Andover Hotel, Andros

Too close. Way, way too close.

#

The margaritas are cold and the sunlight like fire at the little island café she stumbles upon. She waits for Gabriel, who hustled off with the camera to make digital images at a neighborhood druggist. Amazed that high-tech photography has made it to these quiet islands, Amaryllis has taken the time to shower off the sticky seawater and change into something cool—white, gauzy cotton, an outfit she paid an outrageous price for at the Miami airport. She leans back in her chair and realizes she would be in an ideal spot for a vacation if she were not bobbing her feet and tapping her fingers with anxiety.

That English accent and academic position make Hewitt a dangerous individual in her mind, and she is eager to get off this island and head to a secluded inlet where they can go out and examine the ruins in safety—without being followed by this archaeologist. She ponders the connection between the Yucatan wonders she experienced with Garret and Gabriel and the artifacts for which her parents were searching. She can't connect the dots, but realizes there is some reason she is heading into the same sort of danger that robbed her of a mother and father.

She picks up the Nassau newspaper lying on the vacant table next to her and finds, between the horoscope and a cosmetic-surgery ad, a small story about a Cuban submarine that has done sonogram imaging of the seafloor. The crew found triangular structures in the region between Cuba and the Yucatan. More dots to connect. Was that the same area they were diving in yesterday? The sea is so vast, it's hard to tell. The hugeness of the pattern is beginning to make her mind spin. She orders another margarita, knowing it will just put her to sleep or give her a headache, and continues to wait while paging through the paper.

She reaches the comics when she feels a gentle touch on her shoulder. Gabriel stands, rigid as always, and says they must share some information.
Always so formal.
She gestures for him to sit down, and he perches at the edge of the chair. He has been to the library, as well as the druggist, and is carrying photocopies of maps and oddly blotched aerial photographs.

Amaryllis insists on lunch first, so they order something cool—two fruit salads and a club sandwich to share. She begins to feel the buzz of the cocktail begin to wear off as she eats.

She fills Gabriel in on Garret's kidnapping and death and the danger that an odd pairing of professors and survivalist Christians poses for them. She tells him of her parents' deaths several miles north, off the coast of Florida. She stresses the academic connection there, too.

“And the crystal?” Gabriel's eyes are glowing with a dark heat that she doesn't like. “Did the kidnappers get that, too?”

“No,” she says, annoyed that he skims over her parents' murder without a care. “I have it.” She watches his deep gaze, searching for his motive. “Or I had it. I gave it to someone I trust. Someone who will guard it every minute.” She pictures Donny at home staring into the gem, and her torso squeezes.

Gabriel nods and spears some more mango with his fork, eyes still fierce. “I want it, you know.”

“You want to throw it away.”

The Mexican darkens even more and seethes for many minutes, chewing, considering his answer.

“Do you know of the legends?”

“Which ones? A lost civilization? Atlantis? Sure, every kook in the world thinks he has found it. Some people even think it's in Antarctica.” Deciding to appear flippant, she shakes her head in derision. She's not ready to tell him what she thinks she's found on the dive. It's best not to rush to conclusions, especially with someone as eager as Gabriel listening to her every word.

Gabriel takes a long pull off his beer bottle and nearly growls as he answers. He looks severely masculine in this foul mood, she thinks. His eyes pull her in; his dense muscles seem to be straining the seams of his thin t-shirt.

“My people have a fable that our forefathers come from the east,” he says. “The ancestors were escaping a great calamity right about here.” He points emphatically at a map on the table, making the ice in the water glasses jingle. “It was called Aztlan. On the beach that day of the bombing, the crystal replayed the entire scene of destruction for me. Water filled our cities, and a lucky few escaped by boat.”