The Atlantis Code (54 page)

“What we’re after tonight is the most important artifact God has ever delivered to his chosen people,” Murani said. “It has the power to remake the world.”

Sbordoni’s eyes met Murani. The Swiss Guard lieutenant nodded in anticipation.

“It was used once before,” Murani said. “By unbelievers and those corrupt with the lust for power. They wanted to be like God.” He paused. “This is God’s holiest work, and it must be used by those who love God. I know you love God as I love God. Together, we will make this world once more into the place that God intended for it to be.”

“Praise God,” Sbordoni said.

Murani asked them to bow their heads while he prayed to Mary for her protection.

Lourds sat bound in the canopy-covered back of a truck. His head felt like a balloon, and he was groggy from the aftereffects of the drug he’d been given.

Beside him, Leslie looked bleary-eyed as well. “Where are we?” she asked.

“I don’t know.” Lourds swept his gaze over the night-darkened coastline visible through the opening at the rear of the truck. Moonlight shone on the rolling waves. “Near the sea.”

“When did they get you?” Leslie licked her lips and tested the handcuffs.

“After they got you,” Lourds told her. “They told me they’d kill you if I didn’t come to them.”

“Your new girlfriend didn’t stop them?”

Lourds sighed. Being taken captive was dangerous enough, but being held captive with a young woman with an axe to grind over amorous misadventures was worse.

The drug she’d been given had caused her to talk while she’d been unconscious. She hadn’t been generous in her references to Lourds. The offensive comments had provided tremendous entertainment to Gallardo’s minions. Lourds was just thankful he hadn’t recovered much earlier than she had.

“I’m not the only thing they used you to get. Gallardo called and told me if I didn’t give him the instruments, he was going to kill you.”

“You gave them the instruments?” she shrieked.

“Yes. Gallardo meant it. That part about killing you, I mean.”

“I bet
that
didn’t go over well with the new girlfriend. The part about you giving up the instruments for me.”

“Natasha isn’t my new girlfriend,” Lourds said.

“Don’t tell me she decided to just use you and lose you?” Leslie feigned sympathy.

“Why are you worried about my love life?” Lourds held up his manacled wrists. “Has it occurred to you that we might be in some trouble here?”

“You have a point.” Leslie took a look around at the hard faces of the men guarding them. “Okay. You’re right. The good thing is that they haven’t killed us.”

“That,” Lourds said, “might not be as good a thing as you think.”

______

After the truck rolled to a stop, one of the men grabbed a fistful of Lourds’s shirt and yanked him to his feet. The man hauled Lourds to the rear of the truck, then over the tailgate. It hurt like fury.

His captors didn’t seem to be too worried about bruising the merchandise.

Lourds tripped and fell heavily to the ground, his breath rushing out of his lungs. Spots whirled in front of his eyes. Before he had a chance to recover, the man in charge of him yanked him roughly to his feet. Pain burned through Lourds’s wrists. He pushed himself upright as quickly as he could.

An elegant man in cardinal’s robes stepped in front of Lourds. A small army bristling with weapons stood behind him.

“Professor Lourds,” the man said. “I’m Cardinal Stefano Murani.” He smiled.

The priest’s expression sent chills down Lourds’s spine.

“Under the circumstances, I can’t say this introduction is exactly a pleasure,” Lourds said.

Leslie pressed in close to him. In the face of so many foes, she wasn’t quite so unforgiving of his past trespasses in the boudoir.

“Not a pleasure at all,” Murani said. “But you have been something of a surprise. A pleasant surprise for me, but I’m afraid it could end unpleasantly for you.”

Lourds didn’t say anything, but cold, unrelenting fear wormed through his stomach.

“Have you figured out the riddle of the instruments?” Murani asked.

“No.”

Murani raised his voice. “Lieutenant Sbordoni.”

A lean man with a jutting goatee stepped forward and unlimbered a pistol. “Cardinal?”

“The woman, I think,” Murani said.

Immediately the man raised the pistol to point at Leslie. Lourds stepped between the pistol and Leslie. She gripped his shirt and held him firmly in place in front of her. It wasn’t exactly the reaction Lourds had hoped for, but he couldn’t blame her.

The bearded lieutenant Murani had called Sbordoni barked an order. Two men stepped forward and grabbed Leslie. She yelled, kicked, and screamed as they pulled her away.

“Thou shalt not kill!” Lourds shouted. “That’s one of the top ten edicts from God, isn’t it?”

Murani’s soldiers pressed Leslie to the ground. The lieutenant stood over her with his pistol aimed point-blank into her face.

“That commandment is not applicable when soldiers have to go out and fight holy wars for God,” Murani said. “And this is a war. You have become our enemy. God will forgive us the trespasses we make in His name today. We’re here to rid the world of evil. The instruments you located are our weapons.” He stared at Leslie on the ground. She’d curled into a fetal position, but her hands over her face wouldn’t stop bullets. “You will help us. I’m willing to have the girl killed to prove to you how serious I am in this regard.”

“I haven’t figured out the riddle of the instruments,” Lourds said as truthfully as he could. There hadn’t been a riddle in what he’d translated yet. “I’m still working on the inscription. I’ve got most of it. But there’s no mention of a riddle.”

Murani looked at him.

“I swear to you,” Lourds said. “I’ll help you do whatever you want to do. I don’t want her to die. I don’t want to die either.” Blood roared in his ears as his heart hammered frantically. “I’ll try again. That’s the best that I can do.”

The cardinal stared fixedly. Finally, when Lourds was growing more certain that Murani was going to have Leslie killed anyway, Murani looked at the lieutenant and said, “Bring her along.”

Thank God
, Lourds thought. He let out a breath. Somehow, it didn’t seem to ease the tightness in his chest.

“Load them into the truck,” Murani commanded.

Hard hands grabbed Lourds again. He gritted his teeth against the pain and endured.

Once more seated in the uncomfortable confines of a truck, Lourds sat on the metal deck between two long benches of the black-suited warriors. He believed the men were Swiss Guards, and that they hailed from Rome. He’d deduced most of that from the conversations he’d overheard.

A short length of chain connected Lourds’s manacles to the truck bed. No running to safety this time. He rocked and surged as the truck traveled over the uneven terrain.

Flaps hung across the rear opening of the truck kept most of the view outside at bay, but there was enough sway to the journey they were on to occasionally open them to the view outside. The course they were on shadowed the coastline. Lourds’s attention was torn between Leslie, Murani, and watching for landmarks he could use to let police know where they were.

Leslie sat beside Lourds. Her body bumped softly against his and brought back memory of more pleasant times. It also reminded Lourds how vulnerable Leslie was.

Despite the apparent willingness of these men to kill for Cardinal Murani, Lourds didn’t think they would rape Leslie. At least she was safe from that. He hoped. Gallardo and his crew sat among the guardsmen, too. Their hot gazes often traveled to Leslie. Lourds found it uncomfortably easy to read their intentions.

“Thomas.”

Lourds looked at Leslie. “Yes?” he asked.

“I’m sorry.” Unshed tears glimmered in her eyes.

“For what?” Lourds felt sorry for her. She hadn’t been trained for something like this. Neither had he. Truthfully, he felt sorry for both of them.

“For being such a bitch.”

“Look, the night with Natasha . . .” Lourds stopped, unsure what to say. The night with Natasha had been incredibly wonderful. So had the nights with Leslie. But he didn’t think he owed anyone an apology. He’d been up front with his intentions the whole time. He liked women. He wasn’t ready to settle down with any one woman. And he hadn’t pursued either of the women. They’d made themselves available.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” she said.

Lourds relaxed. A little. Sometimes when women faced trying or difficult times, they said things they thought they were supposed to say but not what they truly felt. He’d learned that the hard way.

“At least, not
really
wrong. You’re a guy and you have some basic limitations. And you aren’t, as a species, terribly loyal.”

In the corner of the truck, Gallardo and one of his men listened to this conversation and grinned.

“Perhaps there would be a more appropriate time for us to discuss this,” Lourds suggested.

“There may not be another time for us,” Leslie said. She looked exasperated. “This isn’t exactly an ‘oops’ situation where we’re going to be inconvenienced for a while then returned to our normal lives.”

“I was rather hoping it would be.”

Leslie rolled her eyes at him. “We’re sitting in a truck full of bad guys, and you want to go Pollyanna on me?”

Lourds suddenly realized she was on the verge of getting mad at him all over again.

“We’re not ‘bad guys,’ ” Murani said.

“Yeah, right.” Leslie shifted her attention to the cardinal. “Like kidnapping people and threatening to shoot them is so heroic?”

“I’m trying to save the world,” Murani protested. “I’m not the villain.”

Anger flooded through Lourds when he thought how Gallardo—or one of the other men in Murani’s employ—had killed Yuliya, and shot at Leslie’s team back in Alexandria. No matter what the man said, Murani was a villain.

“And how do you propose to save the world?” Leslie demanded.

Murani sighed. “Through God’s Word. Now be silent or I’ll have you gagged.”

Leslie quieted, but she leaned more heavily against Lourds.

“Anyway, I’m sorry,” Leslie said to him in a whisper.

Lourds nodded.

She looked at him with irritation. “Aren’t you going to tell me you’re sorry, too?”

Lourds froze. What was he supposed to be sorry for? He took a guess. “I’m sorry I convinced you to go along with me.”

Leslie growled at him and shifted away. “You,” she declared, “are an
idiot
.”

Gallardo and his men laughed out loud. Even Murani seemed somewhat amused.

Lourds couldn’t believe he was supposed to fear for his life and feel guilty about his relationships with women at the same time. If he wasn’t so curious about what they were going to find at the Cádiz dig, he figured he’d have gone mad by now. He concentrated on remembering the inscription. He rebuilt the language again in his mind so he could translate it once more.

Later—although how much time had passed, Lourds couldn’t be certain—the truck stopped. Voices sounded outside the truck. A glance through the open flaps before one of the guardsmen tied them together revealed that they were undoubtedly at the Cádiz dig. Media vehicles ringed the area.

Desperation flared through Lourds. Surely all he had to do was yell for help and people would—

“Don’t,” Murani said coldly. “Stay silent or I will kill your friend. I need that brilliant mind of yours for a little while longer. But Miss Crane’s company is merely a convenience for you, one you retain solely based on your good behavior.”

Lourds subsided. He heard Leslie take a deep breath beside him. Almost immediately one of the guardsmen slapped a hand over her mouth. She squealed behind the hand, but the sound was mostly trapped.

The truck’s engine rumbled, and they got under way again.

Natasha stood in shadows that ringed the dig site and surveyed the two trucks that pulled through the gate in the hurricane fence. The fence had gone up from the beginning in anticipation of world interest and media coverage. Ten feet tall and topped with razor wire, the fence wouldn’t be proof against an armored division, but it held out journalists, curiosity-seekers, and those that had mere larceny in their hearts. Searchlights patrolled the rocky terrain.

To the right, the Atlantic Ocean beat against an eight-foot-high retaining wall that had been constructed to keep the sea at bay during high tide. The wall wasn’t meant to be permanent, but she could see it was the best money could buy. The Roman Catholic Church hadn’t spared any expense in making certain their people were safe.

Thinking of going down into the caves still left Natasha feeling slightly sick to her stomach. Even the subway tunnels under Moscow left her feeling that way. She didn’t like the idea of being trapped underground. The possibility of being drowned while underground was even more terrifying.