The Atlantis Gene: A Thriller (39 page)

I debated at length on how much to spend. I thought of spending more, maybe even a $1,000, but two things convinced me not to. The first is that I need capital to start a new life. $11,000 probably won’t do, but I can find a way. I certainly won’t be taking the Immari job, so the capital on hand is all I’m going to have. The second, a more important reason, is that I don’t think it’s what Helena would want. She would smile and gladly accept the gaudy ring, but she wouldn’t want it. She grew up in a world where fine jewelry, silk clothes, and towering homes were as common as a drink of water. I think those things have lost their luster for her. She craves genuine things, real people. We so often seek what we’re deprived of in childhood. Sheltered children become reckless. Starving children become ambitious. And some children, like Helena, who grow up in privilege, never wanting for anything, surrounded by people who don’t live in the real world, people who drink their brandy every night and gossip about the sons and daughters of this house and that house… sometimes they only want to see the real world, to live in it and make a difference. To have genuine human contact, to see their life mean something.

Ahead of me, the street ends as it meets the rock. I need somewhere to sit down, to get off the leg. I stop and look around. In the shadow of the white rock rising to the right there’s a simple Catholic church. The rounded wooden doors of the plaster Spanish-style mission open and a middle-aged priest steps out into the sweltering Gibraltar sun. Without a word, he extends a hand into the dark opening, and I walk up the stairs and into the small Cathedral.

Light filters in through the stained glass windows. It’s a beautiful church, with dark wood beams and incredible frescoes across the walls.

“Welcome to Our Lady of Sorrow, my son,” the priest says as he closes the heavy wood door. “Have you come to make a confession?”

I think about turning back, but the beauty of the church draws me in, and I wander deeper inside. “Uh, no Father,” I say absently.

“What is it you seek?” He walks behind me, his hands clasped in front of him in a stirrup-like figure.

“Seek? Nothing, or, I was in the market to buy a ring and…”

“You were wise to come here. We live in strange times. Our parish has been very fortunate over the years. We’ve received many bequests from parishioners passing from the world of the living. Farms, art, jewels, and in recent years, many rings.” He ushers me out of the worship hall and into a cramped room with a desk and leather bound volumes crammed into floor-to-ceiling bookcases. “The church holds these items, selling them when we can, using the funds to care for those still among the living.”

I nod, not quite sure what to say. “I’m looking… for something special…”

The man frowns and sits down at the desk. “I’m afraid our selection is not what you might find elsewhere.”

“It’s not that, size, or type… A ring… with a story.”

“Every ring tells a story, my son.”

“Something with a happy ending then.”

The man leans back in the chair. “Happy endings are hard to come by in these dark ages. But… I may know of such a ring. Tell me about the lucky young lady who will receive it.”

“She saved my life.” I feel awkward answering the question, and it’s all I can manage to start.

“You were injured in the war.”

“Yes.” My limp is hard to miss. “But, not only that, she changed me.” It seems like a disgraceful summary of what she’s done for me, for the woman who made me want to live again, but the priest simply nods.

“A lovely couple retired here several years ago. She had been an aide worker in South Africa. Have you been to South Africa?”

“No.”

“A savage place. And only recently of any interest to anyone. Since around 1650 it had only been a watering hole on the trade routes to the East. The Dutch East India Company built Cape Town as a stopover on the Cape Sea Route. Built it with slaves from Indonesia, Madagascar, and India. And that’s what is was, a train stop on the sea, at least until the 1800s, when they found gold and diamonds and the place became a true hell on earth. The Dutch had massacred the local African population for centuries in a series of frontier wars, but now the British came and brought modern war, the kind that only European countries can fight, but I think you know about that. War with massive casualties, famine, disease, and concentration camps. There was a soldier who had fought for the British in the South African War, and as the spoils of war go to the victors, the end of the conflict several years ago left him with quite a bit of money. He used it to invest in the mines. A strike made him rich, but he fell ill. An aide worker, a Spanish woman who had worked in the hospital during the war nursed him back to health. And softened his heart. She told him she would marry him on one condition: that he leave the mines for good and donate half of his wealth to the hospital. He agreed, and they sailed out of South Africa for good. They settled here in Gibraltar, in the old city on the coast of the Mediterranean. But retirement didn’t suit the man. He had been a soldier and a miner all his life. Some would say that all he knew was the darkness, pain, struggle; that the light of Gibraltar shone too bright for his heart of darkness, that the easy life left him to reflect on his sins, which haunted him, tormented him day and night. But whatever the cause, he died a year later. The woman followed him several months after.”

I wait, wondering if the story is over. Finally, I say, “Father, we have very different ideas about what constitutes a happy ending.”

A smile spreads across the man’s face as if he’d just heard a child say something funny. “This story is happier than you think — if you believe what the church teaches. To us, death is only a passage, and a joyous one for the righteous. A beginning, not an end. You see, the man had repented, had chosen to forsake his life of oppression and greed. He had paid for his sins — in all the ways that matter. He was saved, as so many men are, by a good woman. But some lives are harder than others, and some sins haunt us, no matter how much we pay for them or how far we sail from them. Maybe this happened to the man, and maybe not. Maybe retirement doesn’t suit the industrious. Perhaps there is no solace in rest for a hard-working man. And there is another possibility. The man had sought war and riches in South Africa. He craved power, security, a sense of knowing he was safe in a dangerous world. But he forsook it all when he met the woman. It’s possible that all he wanted was to be loved and not to be hurt. And when he was, when he finally found love after a life without, he died, happy. And the woman, all she ever wanted was to know that she could change the world, and if she could change the heart of the darkest man, then there was hope for the entire human race.” The priest pauses, takes a breath, studies me. “Or perhaps their only folly was retirement, of living a sedentary life where the past could catch up to them, if only in their dreams at night. Regardless of the cause of their deaths, their destiny was certain: the Kingdom of Heaven is the domain of those who repent, and I believe the man and woman live there to this day.”

I consider the priest’s tale as he gets to his feet.

“Would you like to see this ring?”

“I don’t need to see it.” I count out five $100 silver certificates and place them on the table.

The priest’s eyes grow wide. “We are happy to accept any donation our patrons see fit, but I should warn you, lest you seek a refund, that that amount is much more than this ring is worth… in the current… market.”

“It’s worth every penny to me, Father.”

On the walk back to the cottage, I barely notice the pain in my leg. I have a vision of Helena and I sailing the world, never stopping anywhere for more than a few years. In the vision, she works in the hospitals. I invest in the mines, using what I know to find savvy operators and promising sites, mines that pay the workers a fair wage and provide good conditions. It won’t be as profitable at first, but we’ll attract the best people, and in mining as in every other business, better people make all the difference. We’ll put our competitors out of business, and we’ll use the money to make a difference. And we’ll never retire, never let the world behind us catch up to us.

Kate closed the journal and leaned forward to inspect the bandages on David’s chest. She pulled at the edges of them and then smoothed them out.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing, but I think you’re still bleeding a bit from the chest wound. I’ll change them in a little while.”

David sighed theatrically. “I always was a bleeding heart.”

Kate smiled. “Don’t quit your day job.”

CHAPTER 86

August 13th, 1917

Helena’s childhood home is more grand than I could have imagined, mostly because I’ve never seen anything like it. It sits just off a massive lake, nestled among thick English forests and rolling hills. It’s a masterpiece of stone and wood, like some medieval castle that has been decorated for modern times. The fog is thick in the lane as the loud gas car carries us from the train station down the tree-lined gravel road to the home.

Her father, mother, and brother are there waiting on us, standing at attention like we are visiting dignitaries. They greet us graciously. Behind us, the house staff unpacks the car and disappears with our bags.

Her father is a tall, burly man, not portly, but by no means thin. He shakes my hand and looks in my eyes, squinting like he’s inspecting something, my soul maybe.

The next few hours pass in a haze. The dinner, the small talk in the drawing room, the tour of the home. All I can think about is the moment I ask him for his daughter’s hand in marriage. I glance at him every now and then, trying to glean some little bit of information, something that might tell me what he’s like and what he might say.

After dinner, Helena lures her mother out of the room with a question about a piece of furniture, and to my relief, her younger brother Edward asks his father’s leave.

We are alone at last in the wood-paneled drawing room, and the nerves start to get to me. I’ve been careful with the pills today, taking only one. The pain has gotten better of late, or maybe I’m just “learning the leg” as Dr. Carlisle said I would. But it’s still there, nipping at me through the nervousness. Even so, I stand, waiting for him to sit.

“What do you take, Pierce? Brandy, scotch, bourbon?”

“Bourbon’s fine.”

He pours a glass almost to the top, doesn’t bother with ice, and hands it to me. “I know what you’re here to ask, and the answer is no, so let’s just get that little bit of unpleasantness out of the way so we can enjoy the evening. Now Kane tells me you’ve come around on the Gibraltar dig, says Craig gave you the nickel tour of our little project.” He fixes me with a coy smile. “Now I’d like to hear your impression of it — as a professional miner. Will she hold until we can get through?”

I start to speak several times. Wicked thoughts run through my head.
He brushed you aside like a door-to-door salesman
.
He’s Immari, a snake as bad as Kane
. I take a long pull of the drink and speak as evenly as I can. “I’d like to know why.”

“Let’s not be uncivil, Mr. Pierce.”

“She’s in love with me.”

“I’m sure she is. War is an emotional time. But the war will end, and feelings will fade. The real world will set in, she’ll come back to England, and she’ll marry someone who can give her the life she truly wants, a life of civility and grace. A life you can’t appreciate until you seen the savagery of the rest of the world. That’s her what’s in store for her. I’ve already made the arrangements.” He crosses his legs and sips at his brandy. “You know, when Helena was a girl, she used to take in every flea-ridden, diseased, wounded, and otherwise half-dead animal that ever wandered onto the estate. She wouldn’t relent until they either died or recovered. She has a good heart. But she grew up and lost all interest in rescuing animals. Everyone goes through phases like that, especially girls. Now I’ll hear your opinion on our tunnels in Gibraltar.”

“I don’t give a damn about those tunnels or what’s down there. It’s a dangerous mine, and I won’t work it. What I will do is marry your daughter, with or without your permission. I’m not a wounded animal, and she’s not a little girl anymore.” I set the drink down on the glass table, almost breaking it and sloshing brown liquid all over it. “Thanks for the drink.” I rise to leave, but he sets his own drink down and heads me off at the door.

“Just a minute. You can’t be serious. You’ve seen what’s down there. You’d turn away from that?”

“I’ve found something that interests me a great deal more than lost cities.”

“I’ve told you — I’ve already made a match for Helena. It’s settled. Let’s put that aside. As for the dig, we can pay you. That’s my role in this, incidentally. I manage the purse — the Immari Treasury. Kane runs the expeditions, and a great deal more, as I’m sure you’ve gathered by now. Mallory’s our master of spies. Don’t underestimate Craig, he’s quite good at it. So what will it take? We can double it. $2,000 per week. In a few months you could set yourself up any way you like.”