Dateline: Atlantis (22 page)

He shrugs. Her lips part as her chin drops. She knows she's cartoonish. She must look the part.

“You prick. You disgusting worm. I thought I was sleeping with a Maya king and all you are is a selfish bastard. Just like all the rest. All the rest.”

She realizes she's crying and rubs the tears into the edges of her eyes. She knows he can see her tears, but he doesn't change his expression, looking even more the part of the Mexican aristocrat. She can see she's nothing to him. Just another American with whom to play games.

“And I don't want any of your help. I'll get to the airport myself.”

She slams the door and waits to hear his footsteps sound down the hallway.

#

At Miami International Airport, Amaryllis has never felt so glad to be an American citizen. Immigration is packed to the baffled ceiling tiles with Spanish-speaking visitors and green-card holders. Under the sign that says “U.S. Citizens Only” there are only two gates, both empty. She picks one, plops her American passport in front of a man sporting a crew cut and heavy,
dark-rimmed glasses. He scans her booklet with the little machine that reads magnetic markings, then stamps a page without the tiniest of glances.

“Welcome home,” he says, comparing her face to her picture. Amaryllis winces, because she remembers how horrid that photo is. She's reminded of the Erma Bombeck line: “You know it's time to come home when you look like your passport picture.” Or something like that.

“Yeah, thanks,” she says to the security agent, scooping up her hand luggage and entering the throng at baggage retrieval and customs. Once through customs, she has several places to contact, but the first is the FBI. She pulls out the business card she obtained at the Chicago hospital and uses her cell phone to find the agent who was in Garret's room. He puts her in touch with the Miami office. They tell her to get right over there, although from the sound of the agent's voice, no one is desperate to see her.

By the time she arrives at the deliberately discreet FBI office, a simple brick structure that could house anything from postal station to a small manufacturing plant, she is sweating and barely able to produce enough money for the taxi ride, plus tip.

“Is there an ATM around here?” she asks the driver. She realizes he doesn't speak English, but “A-T-M” rings a bell.

“
Interno
,” he says gesturing at the FBI building. It would figure the feds had their own money machine. She smirks to herself. She gives the cabbie all her currency and goes through the process of being admitted to the federal office. She has no gun. They search her handbag. They stow her luggage in a squat storage locker. She gets the green light and meets her interviewers, who offer a simple Q-and-A routine. It's obvious she doesn't know much about Garret's abduction and death. But the agents seem to be right on top of the case, right down the information on Hewitt being spotted in the Bahamas. She asks about Garret's photos and they tell they've found the suspect who will produce them. It sounds to her as if they are giving someone the
bright-lights and bare-table interrogation in Chicago. She's free to go, but no one will share any more details about the case, even after she explains about her parents' death and the coroner's report.

“That's a different case,” shrugs the female officer. “We are strictly working on the Garret Lucas homicide.”

So, she hauls herself over to the ATM in the hallway, a bit dizzied by the sound of voices bouncing off the vast walls and high ceilings, and realizes that the air-pressure in her ears has not yet returned to normal. She shakes her head violently, agrees to the ATM's service charge and withdraws a couple hundred dollar's worth of bills.

After reclaiming her baggage, she slumps into a bus stop bench, even though she has no intention of taking mass transit, and pulls out her cell phone. Kids playing across the street distract her, and her fingers seem to work of their own accord. The number she dials is Donny's, not Wright's, so she's caught off-guard when Donny answers the phone in his business voice.

“Gregorios,” he says.

“Donny?” she croaks as a bus pulls away spewing fumes. “Amy?” He doesn't sound angry. Relieved, perhaps. Definitely not expecting her.

“Yeah, it's dumb old me. I'm in Florida again. Surprise, surprise. The FBI wanted me for questioning.”

“Should I come there and get you?”

“No, no. It was nothing big. Standard questions. I guess I wasn't supposed to sneak off to the Bahamas.”

“The Bahamas? Is that what you did? Jeez, Amy. It's February now, and I sure could use another touch of warmth.”

The double entendre sits between them like a sly cat, and guilt enflames her face. She decides to change topics at once.

“Did you use the crystal?” Now, it's his turn for a beat or two of quiet.

“Yes.”

“And?”

“I understand. Not that I know how that stupid piece of glass can do…”

“Quartz,” she interrupts.

“Whatever. But I do understand why you left.”

“Good. Good.” She looks at the landscape of gravel and dusty palm trees. It has been a dry winter here, whereas the Bahamas had its share of storms. Odd. The Bahamas are only about one hundred miles away. Its smells are different, too. The aromas of sea grass and surf have disappeared only to be replaced by scents of city air.

“Amy, what are you going to do now? I can come with you, and we'll look for caves where…”

“No. Don't. You are far more useful finding out who those bastards are who killed Garret.”

More silence.

“Amy?” he says, his voice becoming serious, almost his trial voice. “What are you really looking for? What do you want? ”

She kicks the ground in front of the peeling wooden bench. She pinpoints the smell: exhaust and dry palm fronds. Her nose itches. She realizes she hasn't had a shower in two days.

He's persistent. “I mean, what do you
really
want?”

She throws her head back and lets out a silent scream.

“Donny, I want family. Family. Do you get that? Take it any way you want. I'm an orphan, and I want closure on my parent's demise. I feel like they've been taken from me a second time now that I know about the murder. I'm an adult with a newspaper family, and I feel an obligation to them to get this story. I'm thirty-three years old and my damn biological clock is starting to sound off a loud alarm. I swore it would never happen to me, but I can't deny it. I want my own family. And I'm alone down here, and some crazy Mexican guy wants me to find a lost civilization—the first family of the world. Now, what am I going to do with all that?”

Donny listens without interruption, then speaks with tenderness. The trial voice disappears.

“You're stressed out, Amy. Check into a hotel and hang around the pool for a few days. Buy some warm-weather clothes. Go to a spa. I've been checking on the academic mafia, as I call them. You were right about the religious connection. We've been following the money. When you get settled, I'll fax you what I have.” He pauses a beat. “Make sure you get a hotel with a business center. I'll pay for it.”

She stares at the ozone-hazy sky, which causes solid structures to wave and lose solidity as if they are underwater. She's never been so without direction in her life. Certainly not since the social workers dropped her off on the Quigley/Lang doorstep in Chicago.

“Donny?”

“Yes?”

“How easy is it to change your name?”

He laughs in that easy way she loved from childhood. It has a sweetness to it that she can never resist.

“It's really easy, why?”

“I'm Amaryllis Lang from now on, okay? It's really essential that I reclaim that part of my identity. Can you do the paperwork for me?”

“Sure, Amy.”

“Amaryllis.”

“Yes, Amaryllis. Take care. Let me know where you are staying. And please use the hot tub.”

“Oh, yeah, sure. You just want me to stew like a prune.”

Donny laughs. “Never that.”

She hangs up with a chuckle. Across the street a man sits on the opposite bus stop seat. Although he's not standing up, he appears to be short. He's Hispanic-looking—although who isn't in this town? He pulls a newspaper quickly in front of his face, as if he had been reading. Her throat tightens. She knows who he is, and she realizes she's been cornered again.

“What's this thing called again?” Dr. Treadwell asks, holding a roughly bound tome in her hands.

“A publisher's proof,” Pitch rasps. “It's what they send out to potential reviewers.”

She gazes at the cover:
Time before Time
by Isaac Thorgeld. She riffles through the book, stopping to skim a page or two. After a few minutes, her face pales to the color of the paper stock. She passes the bound volume on to the Committee member to her right.

“My dear comrades,” Pitch says, speaking like a master of ceremonies to the gathered live audience and Web cams. “What we have here is a book written by someone who broke with our ranks. I'll make sure you all get a copy.” He nods to the row of computer cameras. “Now that our traitor has left us, he has put a great deal of guesswork into writing.”

There is an audible sigh from the computer-generated image of del Cristo.

“I thought when he walked away that he simply didn't approve of our methods,” the South American says via the audio program. “I didn't think of heresy.”

The Rev. Caine's face perks up on his computer screen. “Heresy,” he seconds.

“And heresy it is, Professor and Reverend,” Pitch says. “He has taken a great deal of material from Ms. Knox and added his own wild hypotheses to come up with a book on a supposed civilization that flourished during the Ice Age.”

A few laughs bounce off the walls, but Pitch's glower silences them, just like the wall of velvet curtains.

“No one's going to take it seriously,” Dr. Ricketts protests.

“The public took
Sphinx Decoded
pretty seriously,” Pitch says in his most withering tone. He half closes his eyes at the memory of the last bestseller that caused an uproar in the field of Egyptology. Not only did the book purport fantastic early dates for the Sphinx, but it also made the fabulous claim that there was a secret chamber below the ancient sculpture's body. The book had made life miserable for Fayheed Saheem, who was besieged with digging-permit applications from treasure seekers all over the globe. Even now, the scientific community is still in a dither over the age of the Sphinx, with geologists contending it must be old enough to have been weathered by rainwater, when Egypt stood in a fertile plain several thousand years ago. Egyptologists keep trying to find experts to refute the geologists' claims, but for the time being, the rock specialists have the public's confidence. It makes better television.

“You don't need to worry,” Pitch says to Saheem. “This book is more of a compendium of fables, myths, and linguistic tables. Not much on Egypt.”

“No worries,” the Australian, Conrad Bell, says via Internet. “We'll issue a press release and explain the whole thing is madness.”

“You think so?” Pitch says, voice filled with hauteur. “Eagle Press is planning a fifty-thousand-volume press run.”

A few cognoscenti in the Committee let out gasps. They were lucky to sell a couple thousand of their scholarly tomes.

“And that's the first printing,” Pitch continues. “They also hope to take the States and Australia by storm. I know how they warm up the publicity machine for a blockbuster. That's what they are planning for this. Next, a television special will be in the works.”

“We laugh it off then,” Bell continues. “A few of us go on the BBC, and the controversy is over.”

Pitch laughs without a trace of glee. “Thorgeld is writing his second book now that will connect this,” he shakes the proof
with scorn, “to the New World. He's on his way there now with Knox, Grundenstand, and a few others.”

“America?” the Reverend asks, eyes lighting up.

“That would be the New World, yes,” Pitch says, enjoying baiting the ignoramus. The preacher's money is good, but his mind is mush.

“Well, don't we have Hewitt over there now?” Treadwell asks, still blanched from her peek at the book's contents.

“Oh, yes, we do. And he's spotted our young Miss Quigley, or Lang, there as well,” Pitch says, rubbing his palms together, as if to ward off the incessant chill of the chamber. “Luckily, Cruz is free again. We can take care of two problems at once.”

“And I can alert some of the faithful in Florida,” the Rev. Caine adds. Pitch bows to the screen.

“That would be much appreciated. But concentrate on Miss Quigley only. And you also would do well to pull your men out of Chicago, where Ricketts has made a hash of things.”