The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller (38 page)

“I’ve slept enough.” David leaned back in the bed. “You’ve got to get out of here, Kate.”

“I’m not going anywhere—”

“Don’t. Don’t do that. Remember what you promised me? In the cottage by the sea. You said you would follow my orders. That was my only condition. Now I’m telling you to get out of here.”

“Well… Well… This is a medical decision, not a… whatever you call it, ‘command decision.’”

“Don’t play with words. Look at me. You know I can’t walk out of here, and I know how long that walk is. I’ve made it before—”

“About that, who is Andrew Reed?”

David shook his head. “Not important. He’s dead.”

“But they called y—”

“Killed in the mountains of Pakistan, not far from here, fighting the Immari. They’re good at killing people in these mountains. This is not a game, Kate.” He took her arm, dragging her down onto the bed. “Listen. You hear that, the low buzzing, like a bee in the distance?”

Kate nodded.

“Those are drones — predator drones. They’re looking for us, and when they find us, there’s nowhere we can run. You have to go.”

“I know. But not today.”

“I’m not—”

“I’ll go tomorrow, I promise.” Kate grabbed his hand and squeezed. “Just give me one day.”

“You leave at first light or I’ll go over the side of that mountain—”

“Don’t threaten me.”

“It’s only a threat if you don’t intend to do it.”

Kate released his hand. “Then I’ll be gone tomorrow.” She stood and walked out.

Kate returned with two bowls of thick porridge. “I thought you might be hungry.”

David simply nodded and began eating, quickly at first, only slowing after he’d eaten a few bites.

“I’ve been reading to you.” She held up the journal. “Do you mind?”

“Reading what?”

“A journal. The old guy… downstairs… he gave it to me.”

“Oh, him. Qian.” David took two more bites rapid-fire. “What’s it about?”

Kate sat down on the bed and spread her legs next to his as she had when he was unconscious. “Mining.”

David looked up from the bowl. “Mining?”

“Or, war maybe, no, actually, I’m not really sure. It’s set in Gibraltar—”

“Gibraltar?”

“Yes. Is that important?”

“Maybe. The code,” David searched his pockets like he was looking for his keys or wallet. “Actually, Josh had it…”

“Who’s Josh? Had what?”

“He’s, I used to work with him. We got a code from the source — the same person who told us about the China facility — I want to talk about that, by the way. Anyway, it was a picture of an iceberg with a sub buried in the middle of it. On the back, it had a code. The code pointed to obituaries in The New York Times in 1947. There were three of them.” David looked down, trying to remember. “The first was a reference to Gibraltar and the British finding bones near a site.”

“The site could be the mine. The Immari are trying to hire an American miner, a former soldier, to excavate a structure several miles under the Bay of Gibraltar. They think it’s the Lost City of Atlantis.”

“Interesting,” David said, deep in thought.

Before he could say anything else, Kate cracked the journal open and began reading.

August 9th, 1917

It’s late when I arrive home, and Helena is at the small kitchen table. Her elbows are on the table and she holds her face with both hands, like it will plummet to the ground if she releases her grip. There are no tears but her eyes are red, as if she’s been crying and can’t any more. She looks like the women I used to see leaving the hospital, followed by two men carrying a stretcher covered by a white sheet.

Helena has three brothers, two in the service, one too young to join, or maybe he’s just signed up. That’s my first thought: I wonder how many brothers she has now?

She jumps up at the sound of the door and stares at me, wild-eyed.

“What’s happened?” I say.

She embraces me. “I thought you’d done it, taken that job or gone off and left. Or, I don’t know.”

I hug her back, and she buries her face in my chest. When the crying subsides, she peers up at me, her big brown eyes asking a question I can’t begin to decipher. I kiss her on the mouth. It’s a hungry, reckless kiss, like an animal biting into something he’s hunted all day, something he needs to sustain himself, something he can’t live without. She feels so delicate in my arms, so small. I reach for her blouse, fingering one of the buttons, but she clasps my hand and takes a step back.

“Patrick, I can’t. I’m still… traditional, in many ways.”

“I can wait.”

“It’s not that. It’s, well, I’d like you to meet my father. My whole family.”

“I’d like that very much, to meet him, all of them.”

“Good. I’m off at the hospital for the next week. I’ll ring him in the morning. If it suits them, we can leave on the afternoon train.”

“Let’s… make it the day after. I need, I need to get something.”

“Very well.”

“And there’s something else,” I say, searching for the words. I need the job, at least a few weeks of the pay, then I’ll be set. “The job, I did, actually, have a look and it, um, might not be so dangerous—”

Her face changes quickly, as if I’d smacked her. The grimace is somewhere between worry and anger. “I can’t do it. I won’t. Every day, waiting, wondering if you’ll come home. I won’t live like that.”

“This is all I have, Helena. I’m not any good at anything else. I don’t know how to do anything else.”

“I don’t believe that for a second. Men start over all the time.”

“And I will, I promise you that. Six weeks, that’s all I need, and I’ll throw in the towel. The war might be done by that time, and they’ll have another team in there, and you’ll be shipping out of here, and I’ll need to… I’ll need money for… making arrangements.”

“Arrangements can be made without money. I’ve got—”

“Out of the question.”

“If you get killed in that mine, I’ll never get over it. Can you live with that?”

“Mining’s a lot less dangerous when people aren’t dropping bombs on you.”

“How about when you’ve got the whole ocean on top of you? The whole Bay of Gibraltar over your head. All that water, constantly pressing on those tunnels. How would they ever pull you from that cave-in? It’s suicide.”

“You can see the sea coming.”

“How?”

“The rock sweats,” I say.

“I’m sorry Patrick, I can’t.” The look in her eyes tells me she means it.

Some decisions are easy. “Then it’s settled. I’ll tell them no.”

We kiss again, and I hug her tight.

David put a hand on Kate’s. “This is what you’ve been reading? World War One-era Gone With the Wind?”

She pushed his hand back. “No! I mean, it hasn’t been like this so far, but… Well, you could probably do with a little romance in your literary diet. Soften that hard soldier heart of yours.”

“We’ll see. Maybe we can just skip the mushy parts, get right to the point where they say the bombs or secret labs are located here.”

“We’re not skipping anything. It could be important.”

“Well, since you’re enjoying it so much, I’ll endure it.” He clasped his hands on his stomach and stared at the ceiling stoically.

Kate smiled. “Always the martyr.”

CHAPTER 84

Clocktower HQ
New Delhi, India

“Sir?”

Dorian looked up at the Immari Security officer lingering nervously in the doorway to his office.

“What?”

“You asked to be kept apprised of the operation—”

“Make your report.”

The man swallowed. “The packages are in position in America and Europe.”

“Drones?”

“They’ve acquired another target.”

CHAPTER 85

Kate thought the buzzing in the distance, the bee searching for them, was getting louder, but she ignored it. David didn’t say anything either.

They sat together in the small alcove overlooking the valley, and Kate continued reading, stopping only for an early lunch and to give David his antibiotics.

August 10th, 1917

The pawnbroker watches me like a bird of prey perched in a tree as I browse the glass cases at the front of the store. They’re full of rings, all sparkling, all beautiful. I assumed there would be three or four to choose from, that it would be rather simple. What to do…

“A young man seeks an engagement ring, nothing more warms my heart, especially in these dark times.” The man stands over the case, smiling a proud, sentimental, smile. I didn’t even hear him move across the room. The man must move like a thief in the night.

“Yes, I… didn’t think there would be this many.” I continue skimming the case, waiting for something to jump out at me.

“There are many rings because there are many widows here in Gibraltar. The Kingdom has been at war for almost four years, and the poor women, the war leaves them with no husband and no source of income. They sell their rings so they can buy bread. Bread in your belly is worth more than a stone on your finger or a memory in your heart. We pay them pennies on the dollar.” He reaches inside the glass case and pulls out a velvet display rack that holds the largest rings. He places the rack on top of the glass case, just a few inches from me, and spreads his hands over them as if he were about to perform a magic trick. “But their misfortune can be your gain, my friend. Just peek at the prices. You will be surprised.”

I take a step back without realizing what I’m doing. I look from the rings to the man, who motions toward them with a greedy grin. “It’s alright, you can touch them—”

As if in a dream, I’m out the door and back on the streets of Gibraltar before I realize what’s happened. I walk fast, as fast as I can with one and a half working legs. I don’t know why, but I walk out of the main business district toward the Rock. Just before I reach it, I cut across Gibraltar, out of the western side, the modern side of the city, which faces the Bay of Gibraltar. I walk into the old village, which lies on the eastern side of the Rock, on Catalin Bay, facing the Mediterranean.

I walk for a while, thinking. My leg hurts like hell. I didn’t bring any pills. I hadn’t expected to walk this much. I did bring $500 of the nearly $11,000 I’ve saved.