Выбрать главу

“Oh my goodness!” Maddy exclaimed, looking down inside it. “Is that….could it be?”

Both Jayden and Hunt stayed on the rim of the pit while she climbed down into it. The object of interest was white and tapered, protruding from the dusty limestone.

“If I didn’t know any better, I’d say it looks like an elephant tusk,” Hunt said.

Maddy’s voice echoed off the bottom of the pit since she couldn’t bear to turn away from the amazing find. “Not elephant,” she shouted, “but wooly mammoth! Oh, I really shouldn’t be doing this, but look!”

Jayden gawked at the white tusk as Maddy began to tug at it where it disappeared into the coral. “Wooly mammoth? You mean, like those big hairy elephants that went extinct….how long ago?” He and Hunt slid down into the pit to give her a hand.

“It’s been documented that mammoths still existed 10,00 years ago.”

“And Atlantis flourished about 11,000 years ago,” Hunt pointed out as he put an arm on Maddy’s leg to steady her while she worked at extracting the gargantuan tusk.

“Did you know,” Jayden said, his voice brimming with childlike enthusiasm, “that wooly mammoths were alive when the great pyramids of Egypt were being built?”

Maddy looked up from the pit. “But not in the same place.”

“If this was Atlantis,” Hunt said, waving an arm around the Cuban island, “then there were mammoths roaming around Atlantis?”

“I like to picture Atlantean hunters riding them,” Jayden said, staring at the partially unearthed tusk. “That’s what I would have done.”

“No doubt,” Hunt said. “But even with this impressive find, it seems like we’re getting farther away from Atlantis, not closer. In the Bahamas we actually found a gold pyramid. Here we’ve got an animal tusk. Not to mention, whoever was camped here — Treasure, Inc. or someone else — didn’t think it was worth coming back to after they left in a hurry.”

Maddy again looked up from the tusk to answer. “This looks like a pretty standard camp to me — either archaeology or maybe paleontology. Except for the guns,” she said with a frown.

“Could be that a regular archaeology or paleontology team was working here, and just like with what happened to your team in Giza, they got run off by Treasure, Inc,” Jayden offered. “They seem to monitor important dig sites around the world.”

“The number of spent shell casings around here seems to bear that out,” Hunt agreed.

Maddy suddenly took off her pack and removed from it the rolled up scroll. Once again she unfurled it.

“It’s like that thing is a Harlequin Romance novel or something — you just can’t get enough of it!” Jayden quipped.

“Seeing the mammoth made me remember something I read in here earlier that made no sense, but now it might…” Her eyes scanned the document’s Greek words.

“How about if Jayden and I see if we can get this thing out of the ground while you work with the manuscript,” Hunt suggested. Maddy nodded absentmindedly without taking her eyes from the scroll while Hunt and Jayden maneuvered into place around the mammoth tusk. The two men worked at chiseling more coral away from the tusk while Maddy pored over the manuscript, lips moving silently as she worked through the cryptic words.

Jayden chipped away at the coral with one of the rock-hammers left behind while Hunt pulled on the tusk. Jayden would break chunks of coral loose and Hunt would pull out another section of tusk, until they could see the base of the massive tooth.

“Hold up,” Hunt said, stooping to examine what they had uncovered. “Wow, it looks like it’s still attached to the skull!”

“Geez, what if the entire skeleton is in there?” Jayden exclaimed.

Maddy glanced up from the manuscript. “Oh my God. It is! I mean, it will be, you’ll see. This place was Atlantis. But they moved it and reestablished it in another location. And now I know where.”

Chapter 31

Bimini Road, Bahamas

Daedalus paced the foredeck of the Historica impatiently as his brother climbed the steps leading from the lower deck. He was eager for news of the search efforts to find out where Carter Hunt had escaped to in the seaplane. Phillipo paused for a bit at the top of the stairs, catching his breath while smoothing out his pants and tucking in his shirt.

“What are the results of the search?” Daedalus asked, not waiting for his brother to begin when he was ready.

“We have not yet actually located the subjects or their plane,” Phillipo said, smoothing out his shirt and walking the rest of the way to Daedalus, but I am confident that I know where they are.”

“Continue,” Daedalus ordered.

“Our operatives tell me that they have still not attempted any conventional landing at a Bahamas airport, including the one they rented the aircraft from, which would have been the fastest and easiest thing for them to do.”

“Except that they knew we would locate them if they did that,” Daedalus said smugly. “So it’s really not the fastest or easiest. Go on.”

Phillipo took a deep breath before continuing. “They’ve also not checked in at Miami, Fort Lauderdale or other major Florida airports within range. It’s possible that they landed the plane near a remote part of the shoreline, a mangrove area, perhaps, and then abandoned the plane to come ashore on foot.”

“Do you have people looking into that?” Daedalus asked.

“We do. But I think the most likely scenario is that they went south.”

“South? To where, the Florida Keys?”

“Even farther south, although they would have been very low on fuel.”

There was a beat as the two brothers locked eyes. At length, Daedalus answered. “Cuba.”

His brother nodded.

“Site 6?”

“That’s right.”

Daedalus looked stern, but gradually his expression lightened until he laughed out loud. “Good! Let those buffoons waste their time in the abandoned camp. There is nothing for them to find there. And if we’re lucky, they’ll end up in a Cuban prison for a few years while Castro figures out if they might be spies.”

Phillipo had to chuckle at this. “Yes, and speaking of that, brother, for that reason it is not wise for us to pursue them there, do you agree?”

“We are an antiquities trading company, Phillipo, not a military outfit. I quite agree. Unless we know for a fact that the lost city lies within Cuban territorial waters, we have no reason to go there.”

“If we are really lucky,” Daedalus went on, seeming to ignore his brother, “they’ll be blasted with one of those sonic weapons that was used in Havana on American diplomats! Wouldn’t that be perfect?” He erupted into cackles of laughter.

“I have a feeling that the means used by Cuban authorities for intercepting persons arriving in an unannounced aircraft with no visas would be far less subtle.”

“Of course you are right,” Daedalus said, his laughter fading out. “I’m just trying to have a little fun in the midst of all this chaos, brother, perhaps you should try it some time.”

Phillipo stared at his brother without saying anything for a moment before continuing. “They will almost certainly find the wooly mammoth remains.”

Daedalus shrugged dismissively. “Let them have those old bones if they want them. We have more important work to do.”

“Such as?”

“Such as figuring out where Atlantis is and getting there first.”

Chapter 32

Bahia Honda Bay, Cuba