Hunt felt the realization wash over him like the waves lapping at the beach a few feet away. He gazed at the tiny screen in amazement, staring at it until it made sense to his eyes like one of those blurry posters that slowly materialized into a recognizable shape after squinting at it long enough.
“I see it now,” he said, his voice low and even. “It would form a series of concentric rings, wouldn’t it?”
Chapter 29
Daedalus shot his brother a hard stare. “You mean to tell me that you’ve found no trace of them whatsoever — they’ve vanished?”
Phillipo shifted his weight from leg to leg while he answered. “Unfortunately, that is correct.” His eyes were downcast as he said the part he looked forward least to delivering. “We found a tunnel that leads from inside the underwater pyramid.”
“Did you follow it?”
“Yes, it came out on that island there…” He handed his brother a pair of binoculars and waited while he put them to his eyes and focused on the distant spot of land among the Bimini Road area of ocean.
“It came out on that island?” Daedalus lowered the binoculars to look at his brother.
“Yes, and on the island, three of our divers engaged the targets in combat, but they escaped by boarding a passing fishing boat.”
Daedalus clenched his jaw tightly in barely-controlled anger. “Which men were responsible for this failure?”
Phillipo pointed to two employees down on the dive platform taking apart their scuba gear, and then to one more man on the opposite side of the platform who was smoking a cigarette.
Daedalus glanced at them for a split second before saying, “They will be punished. But we must stay on site for now in order to work on the golden pyramid. That alone is worth astounding benefits. I will alert my specialty team as to Carter Hunt’s activities.”
Phillipo’s expression grew fearful for a moment before he resumed the hard façade. Treasure, Inc.’s “specialty team” was a euphemism for Daedalus’ hit-man, an Israeli ex-special forces sniper who defected some years ago, and who was reportedly wanted by the Mossad. The fact that he was still alive, Daedalus claimed, was testament to the fact that he was a very talented agent, indeed.
And now this individual would be set loose on Carter Hunt and his unsuspecting friends.
On the dive platform, a technician gave a countdown. Phillipo pointed to the Bimini Road over the missing capstone that led to the pyramid. “Watch this…”
And then a low rumble was heard as the underwater explosives were detonated.
“We’re blowing away more of the road stones to hopefully make an opening big enough to get a mini-sub down to the pyramid. Then we can remove the gold tiles with the grapple arm, get more heavy equipment down there.”
Daedalus watched the slow wave that formed from the blast as it reached the ship, rocking it gently.
“At least something’s going right. You are to inform me immediately with any word on Carter Hunt or his associates.”
Daedalus’ brother nodded. “In the meantime, I put out the word to our operatives in the Bahamas to be alert at all ports of call.”
“The seaplane — I thought I told you to scuttle it?” Anger rose again in Daedalus’ face, his skin reddening.
“There was a shootout, Daedalus. We tried but failed to stop them from taking off.”
He glared at his brother. “Did you note how much fuel was in the gas tank of the plane?”
Slowly, Phillipo shook his head.
Daedalus let loose a sigh of exasperation. “We will need to address these systemic failures once this situation is resolved. For now, find out the range of the plane assuming it had a nearly full tank of gas, and draw a circle on a map around the Bimini Road with the plane’s range as its radius. Can you do that much?”
Phillipo squinted ever so narrowly at his brother. “Of course.”
Chapter 30
Maddy shook the lost pages of the Critias in her hands while she talked to Hunt. “Why couldn’t Atlantis have been in Cuba? It’s the Atlantic, it’s not far from Bimini, which has been proposed as an Atlantis location. The concentric ring pattern is here.”
Hunt shrugged as he looked around at the islet and sea. “If it is, though…then where is it? The buildings, the roads…the treasure?”
Maddy stared back down at the ancient manuscript, brow furrowed in deep concentration. “There’s something special about these pages.”
Hunt’s eyes widened. “Well, yeah — they’re about 2,400 years old! That makes them pretty special.”
“No, something more than that.” She paused for a few moments in deep thought, then continued. “Consider for a minute what the story of Atlantis as told by Plato was really about?”
Hunt took a deep breath as he looked out across the sea to the verdant Cuban mainland. “it’s an allegory for what happens to a civilization that becomes greedy and corrupt.”
Maddy nodded slowly as a smile spread across her face. “Precisely. Because what supposedly happened in the Critias and Timaeus documents that already existed before we knew about this?” She shook the scroll in her hand.
“The gods punished the people of Atlantis by unleashing a deluge of floods and massive tidal waves that destroyed the city and submerged it permanently beneath the ocean.”
“Also correct. But what if the Atlanteans had a plan to escape and rebuild after that catastrophe? To relocate to another area and start a new life?”
Hunt held her gaze for several moments during which he reflected ever so briefly on their past times together, before replying. “Sounds like that would be called a second chance.”
“A second chance—exactly!”
“But how would the logistics of that work — moving all the building materials, which were supposedly exotic, rare Earth metals, and the treasure, the cultural items like books that made them a people to be admired in the first place — how would they preserve and move all of that?”
“Good question.” Maddy held the pages up to the sun and looked up at them. “See how some of the words are fainter than others? When you look at it straight down against a surface it’s not really noticeable, but when I shine light through it like this, it’s much more apparent.”
Hunt leaned in and looked up at the unfurled scroll of parchment Maddy held up to the sunlight. “Oh yeah, I do see that. It’s like they had a bold font all those years ago!”
Maddy’s laughter carried on the sea breeze along with the squawks of gulls. “They did it the old fashioned way, with a quill using extra ink — probably some kind of plant extract mixed with animal blood — on select words. But why these particular words, Carter?”
He took a closer look at some of the words. “Sorry, but the words themselves are all Greek to me.”
She smiled at him. “I see you haven’t lost that sense of humor I remember.”
“Some things are worth holding on to.” He looked away from the manuscript and into Maddy’s eyes. They sparkled for a moment and then she pointed to one of the words on the parchment that was emboldened by the sun. “I really do need to be in my office for this, but I can make some sense of it. This word here, I don’t know what it means, for example. It is literally Greek to me!” She gave Hunt a playful shove. “But take this one here…” She moved her finger across the parchment to another boldened word.
“Vacated…” She moved her finger to another part of the scroll. “Southern…” Again, she moved to a different bolded word. “Province.”
Hunt made prolonged eye contact with her. “And Cuba is the ‘southern province’?”