The Atlantis Code (37 page)

“Not even for a chance to see a new culture?” Lourds asked.

“Not for love or money. And I wouldn’t be here either, if it wasn’t all so exciting.” Gary shook his head. “Truth to tell, I shouldn’t even be haring about with you, Leslie, and Natasha the Terminator.”

Lourds frowned. “I don’t think Natasha would like hearing you refer to her in that manner.”

“Prolly not. That’s why I don’t do it around her.” Gary shot him a crooked grin, then got up to go connect to a nearby wall outlet.

Lourds took a last glance at Leslie, feeling troubled all over again but realizing there was nothing he could do about the way things were between them. Resolving to let matters lie until he could manage them better, he turned his attention to the Yoruban documents he’d copied at the Max Planck Institute.

He paid particular attention to the legend of the five instruments: the cymbal, the drum, the flute, the bell, and the pipe. If he’d translated everything right, he might be on to something.

POPE INNOCENT XIV’S STUDY
STATUS CIVITATIS VATICANAE
SEPTEMBER 6, 2009

Father Sebastian stood at the balcony of the pope’s private study and peered out over Vatican City. After spending months in Cádiz, rarely journeying outside the base camp and the small town that had sprung up nearby to cater to the excavation team’s needs, the city felt claustrophobic to him.

But it didn’t come close to how he’d felt that night in the burial vault when the cavern flooded. If not for the Swiss Guards who watched over him, he would have died.

No
, he told himself.
Not just the guards. If God hadn’t saved you from harm, you would have died. Never forget whose hands you’re ultimately in
.

“Emil,” a boisterous voice called in greeting.

Turning, Sebastian saw the pope approaching.

“Your Holiness,” Sebastian said as he dropped to one knee and bowed his head.

Pope Innocent XIV helped his old friend to his feet and they embraced.

Sebastian could never get over the fact that his dear friend had become the pope. They’d never even joked about such a thing when they’d worked together in the Church libraries.

The pope, back when he’d been a nothing more than a parish priest, was fascinated by Sebastian’s stories about journeying with his father. He’d even read all Sebastian’s journals from those times.

“I’m glad you’re all right,” the pope said. “When I first heard about the cavern collapse and thought you were lost to us, I prayed for your survival. I felt guilty for sending you there.”

“Nonsense.” Sebastian waved that away, then wondered if such a gesture was permissible now that his friend was pope. “You’ve given me back my life, Your Holiness. I love the work of uncovering the past. It is something my father, God rest his soul, would have loved to do. This excavation has brought me back to him—and to myself—after too many years.”

“I’m glad you feel that way. Especially in light of everything that’s happened. The flooding . . . I heard what the news channels said, but they dramatize everything. How bad is it?”

“Bad, but perhaps not permanent. Dario Brancati insists that he can pump Cave Forty-two dry in two weeks or possibly three. After that, we can resume exploration.” The idea filled Sebastian with cold fear. He had yet to walk back into the cavern after the collapse, and truthfully didn’t know if he could.

“Where’s the water coming from?”

“Brancati’s divers believe it’s from another chamber deeper in the catacombs. They’re searching for the source now. We’re fortunate that the air pressure equalized as quickly as it did.”

“What do you mean?”

“When we opened the burial vault, the air pressure that had been trapped there escaped. The change allowed the water to break through a compromised wall in the cave system. It could have been much worse. The whole system could have become submerged. Had such been the case, the casualties would have been much, much worse. I certainly wouldn’t be standing here.” Sebastian paused as a chill ghosted over him. He believed his escape could truly have only been divine intervention. “You have to remember, Your Holiness, all of the Atlantic Ocean waits close by, ready to reclaim those caves.”

“I know.”

Silence stretched between the two men for a time. Sebastian could tell by the strained look on the pope’s face that his thoughts were as troubled as his own.

“Even though we were lucky, we lost two men this time, Your Holiness,” Sebastian said.

The pope sighed and shook his head. “You’re wondering if what we’re doing is worth those lives.”

Sebastian remained silent. He couldn’t bear to put his fears into words.

“I told you when I first put you in charge of this excavation that this was possibly the most important work any of us could be doing at this time.”

“You mean the graves?”

“More than that. I mean the necklace you found.”

“You mean this?”

Taking his hand from his robe, Sebastian opened his fingers and released the pendant. The shining figure, one hand stretched forth and the other holding the Sacred Text, spun in the ambient light.

“May God have mercy,” the pope whispered. He reached for the pendant with trembling fingers.

“After everything mankind has done to reject God’s gifts, I don’t know how He could possibly have any mercy left for us.”

The pope cradled the pendant tenderly.

“Do you think it still exists down there, Your Holiness?” Sebastian couldn’t even mention the name aloud. “The sea has destroyed so much.”

“Everything God created is eternal.” As if torn by some emotion too strong for words, the pope squeezed the pendant so fiercely, the skin of his knuckles turned white. “When you get to the end of your journey down in that dig of yours, my friend, you’ll find the Garden of Eden. But you’ll also find the greatest danger that God ever set forth in the world.”

DAKAR, SENEGAL
SEPTEMBER 6, 2009

Lourds sat in the passenger seat of the Land Rover they’d rented at Dakar-Yoff-Léopold Sédar Senghor International Airport and stared out at the hot afternoon sun that baked Dakar. Heat waves shimmered on the hot pavement even through the sunglasses he wore.

The city was the westernmost of the continent of Africa. They traveled the highway leading from the airport. The Atlantic Ocean spilled across the white sand beaches that led up to modest houses flanked by pockets of scrub trees that offered scant shade. Fishermen and tourists plied the water.

Dakar was a mix of the old and modern. Tall buildings stabbed at the sky, but small houses ringed the city. Many of them were without modern utilities. The future and the past sat side by side.

“So,” Gary said good-naturedly, “I assume Gorée Island is an island and we can’t drive there.”

“We’ll take the ferry,” Lourds said.

“But you haven’t mentioned why we’re going there.”

“Île de Gorée, as the island was once known, has an infamous past. It held the large slave markets that supplied the whole world with African slaves. Thousands of men, women, and children were funneled through there and auctioned off to bidders from nearly everywhere. Even though England and a few other countries eventually outlawed slavery on their home turf, there were always men willing to buy them here and sell them in the Americas and the Caribbean.”

“Doesn’t explain why we’re going there, though.”

“During the long years of the slave auctions,” Lourds went on, “Île de Gorée also became a repository for documents and artifacts. Ships’ logs. African carvings and pottery. Jewelry. Everything that came out of Africa was put on display there.”

“Surprised they didn’t sell it.”

“Actually, they did. For a profit. Much of what once existed in the lands where whole tribes were decimated by the slavers has now disappeared. Whole cultures were lost to time and greed.”

Seagulls and egrets spun out over the gray-blue water. Farther out, a few cruise ships and fishing boats departed and arrived at the port.

“But that’s an old story,” Lourds went on. “Everywhere one civilization has risen in power over another, that’s happened. In England, the Picts were routed by the Romans and all but destroyed. They were forced to retreat to the Scottish Highlands. In the Americas, it was the Native Americans. Many tribes were wiped out entirely as European settlers swept over the continent, and even today the ones who remain are struggling to hang on to their cultural identity. Cultural destruction is most complete when the cultures being flattened have only oral histories instead of written ones. When you kill the storytellers of a tribe without written language, you kill the culture forever.”

“So what are you hoping to find on that island?” Gary asked. “Storytellers?”

“I want to follow up on an interesting legend I read about while at the Max Planck Institute.”

“What legend?” Natasha asked in Russian.

Ah, the language barrier
, Lourds thought.
Bilinguals can always use
that to isolate themselves from others. And to point out the differences between
us
and
them.

“There’s an ancient legend,” Lourds answered in English, “that involves a set of five instruments. A pipe, a flute, a drum, a bell, and a cymbal. And how they were divided among cultures after a flood.”

“Our bell?” Leslie asked in English.

“The cymbal Yuliya was working on?” Natasha asked in Russian.

“Which flood?” Gary asked.

“Good questions, all of you. I don’t know if it’s the bell and cymbal we’ve come in contact with,” Lourds admitted. “But I think this was the direction Yuliya was pursuing while she was researching. Remember, she knew that the cymbal hadn’t been made in Rus.”

“She believed it had been brought there by traders,” Natasha said in English. Evidently she decided to join the others in their language since Lourds wasn’t going to acknowledge hers.

“Correct.”

“Except that it didn’t make sense because the cymbal wasn’t worth anything.”

“Also correct.” Lourds paused for a moment. “Technically. But what if the instruments had a worth that wasn’t tied in to their intrinsic value? What if they were all tied to a common disaster?”

“The flood?” Gary asked.

“One of the most common archetypes of the universal mythic base found in all cultures is that of the flood. Besides the story of Noah, you’ll find tales of deluges in Sumerian, Babylonian, Norse—though those concerned a deluge of blood from the frost giant Ymir—Irish, Aztec, and many other countries. The Greeks feature stories about the world ending in flood
three
times.”

“Including the one that sank Atlantis,” Gary said.

“Actually, those flood tales don’t include Plato’s yarn about the sinking of Atlantis,” Lourds amended. “That was a different story entirely. In it, the world survived, just not Atlantis. The flood story with the instruments was bigger. Much bigger.”

“You think the instruments were linked to the great ancient flood?” Natasha asked. “The Hebrew flood that God sent to wipe evil and wickedness from the world?”

“The legend I read wasn’t clear. I don’t know. Possibly. But it’s just as possible that it’s another flood entirely. The world has—at one time or another—undergone major floods that inundated most of the land masses. Much of the United States was once undersea. Archeologists constantly find evidence of prehistoric marine life in the deserts and wastelands of the West. Much of Europe has been underwater, too. They’ve found a whale skeleton halfway up a mountain in Italy.”

“But, the instruments . . . You think they’re tied to that flood?” Leslie asked.

“I don’t know. It’s an old legend, from an oral tradition that was almost lost. It doesn’t matter what they’re tied to. I just want to confirm the myth that talks about those instruments. If I can, I’d like to find out if there’s any more to that tale than the bit I know. I think it might be important.”

SACRED COLLEGE OF CARDINALS
STATUS CIVITATIS VATICANAE
SEPTEMBER 4, 2009

Even though Murani had arrived for the meeting early, he was the last to enter the room. He wore his cardinal robes, laying claim to the power of his office through the virtue of God’s armor.

The underground room was not well known throughout the Vatican. Only a handful of people had keys to the two doors that allowed entrance to it. Due to the huge labyrinth carved out beneath the Vatican in the course of the thousands of years the site had been occupied, some of it in disrepair, it was easy for such rooms to exist without the knowledge of the general populace. In fact, it was easy for such spaces to exist where no one knew about them at all.

There was probably no more private space on earth.

Wall sconces held candle lanterns that lent a golden glow to the stone walls and the burnished wood of the long table in the center of the room. Someone had clearly wiped it off when they brought in the lanterns. A thick layer of dust coated the cobblestone floor and the cobwebs in the corners. This wasn’t a space on the itinerary of the cleaning roster. The chamber hadn’t been used much, and never since Murani had taken office.