The Atlantis Code

THE
ATLANTIS CODE

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE ATLANTIS CODE

Copyright © 2009 by Trident Media Group, LLC.

All rights reserved.

Map by Rhys Davies

A Forge Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor-forge.com

Forge® is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Brokaw, Charles.

The Atlantis code / Charles Brokaw.—1st ed.

    p. cm.

“A Tom Doherty Associates book.”

ISBN 978-0-7653-1531-1

1. Linguists—Fiction. 2. Excavations (Archaeology)—Fiction. 3. Treasure troves—Fiction. 4. Atlantis (Legendary place)—Fiction. 5. Code and cipher stories. I. Title.

PS3602.R6424A94 2009

813'.6—dc22

2009028185

First Edition: November 2009

Printed in the United States of America

0    9    8    7    6    5    4    3    2    1

This book is dedicated to my family, especially to my wife, who endured a great deal as I wrote it. I love you, and I thank you from the bottom of my heart.

 

And to Robert Gottlieb, who has been a driving force for this project from the very beginning, I can’t thank you enough for your support, creativity, and help.

Thanks to Robert Gottlieb at Trident Media Group, LLC and all the terrific agents who work with him at Trident Media Group. Thanks also to all the librarians who helped me find obscure material on ancient artifacts, the travel agents who verified that transit was possible in the far corners of the globe, and to my friends in law enforcement who took me out to the shooting range and demonstrated the many weapons I describe in this book. I’d also like to thank my editor, Bob Gleason, and Linda Quinton from Tor for their terrific input on and help with this book.

KOM AL-DIKKA
ALEXANDRIA, EGYPT
AUGUST 16, 2009

T
homas Lourds abandoned the comfort of the stretch limousine with reluctance and an unaccustomed sense of foreboding. He usually enjoyed opportunities to talk about his work, not to mention the chance to solicit funding for archeological programs he believed in and consulted for.

But not today.

Under the sweltering heat of the Egyptian sun in full midday bloom, he dropped his scarred leather backpack at his feet and gazed at the huge Roman theater that Napoléon Bonaparte’s legions had discovered while digging to build a new fortification.

Although the Kom Al-Dikka dig site had been explored for the last two hundred years—first by treasure hunters, then by learned men seeking knowledge of ancient times—the Polish–Egyptian mission that had been established there more than forty years ago continued to make new and astonishing finds.

Burrowed into the ground, Kom Al-Dikka stood as a semicircular amphitheater not far from the train station in Alexandria. Passengers stepping off the platform had only to cross a short distance to peer out into the ancient stage. Cars passed nearby on Nabi Daniel and Hurriya Streets. The ancient and modern worlds lay side by side here.

Constructed of thirteen tiers of marble that provided seating for up to eight hundred spectators, with each seat carefully numbered, the theater’s history reached deep into the past and throughout the ancient world. Its white marble stones had been quarried in Europe and brought to Africa. Asia Minor had provided the green marble. The red granite had been mined in Aswan. Geometric mosaic designs covered the wings. Roman houses and baths stretched out behind it. The whole complex was a symbol of the global reach of the great empire that had built it.

Lourds studied the vast stone structure. When Ptolemy was still a young man and his greatest works were ahead of him, Kom Al-Dikka had been here, hosting plays and musicals and—if some of the inscriptions on the marble columns had been translated correctly, which Lourds believed they had—wrestling.

He smiled to think that Ptolemy might have sat in those marble seats and worked on his books. Or thought about them, at least. It would have been incongruous, like a Harvard professor of linguistics attending a World Wrestling event. Lourds was such a professor, and he did not follow wrestling. But he loved to think that Ptolemy had.

Although Lourds had seen the place a number of times, the sight of it never failed to stir within him a desire to know more about the people who had lived here during those years when it was new and filled with crowds. The stories they’d told barely survived these days. So much had been lost when the Royal Library of Alexandria had been destroyed.

For a moment, Lourds imagined what it must have been like to walk through the halls of the great library. Its collections were reputed to include at least a half million scrolls. They supposedly had contained the entire known world’s knowledge of the day. Treatises on mathematics, astronomy, ancient maps, animal husbandry, and agriculture: all those subjects had been represented. So had the works of great writers—including the lost plays of Aeschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, and Menander, artists of such power that their surviving works were still performed. And more.

Men, knowledgeable and clever men, had come from all over to make their contributions to the ancient library and to learn from it.

Yet all of that was gone, shattered and burned.

Depending on the latest round of politically correct scholarship, the destruction was ordered by either Roman
dictator perpetuo
Julius Caesar or Theophilus of Alexandria or Caliph Umar. Or maybe all of them, over the course of time. Whoever had been ultimately responsible, all those wonderful writings had burned or crumbled or vanished. Along with the secrets and wisdom held within them. At least for now. Lourds still hoped that someday, somewhere, a treasure trove of those works—or at least copies of them—might still exist. It was possible that during those perilous years someone had cared enough to protect the scrolls by hiding them, or by making transcriptions that they hid once the library was destroyed.

The desert surrounding this city still held secrets, and the dry, hot sands were wonderful for preserving papyrus scrolls. Such treasures still turned up, often in the hands of rogues, but sometimes under the supervision of archeologists. Scholars could read only the scrolls that again saw the light of day. Who knew how many more caches were still out there, waiting to be found?

“Professor Lourds.”

He picked up his backpack and turned to see who had spoken his name. Lourds knew what the speaker saw: He was a tall man, slender from years of soccer. A short-cropped black goatee framed his strong chin and softened the hard planes of his face. His wavy black hair was long enough to hang in his face and fall over the tips of his ears. Trips to the barber took too much time out of his day, so he went only when he no longer could truly stand to go unshorn. That time was getting close, he realized, brushing hair out of his eyes. He wore dun khaki shorts, a gray khaki shirt, Gore-Tex hiking books, an Australian Outback hat, and sunglasses. All well broken in and a bit worn around the edges. He looked, he thought, like a working Egyptologist, much different from the tourists and hawkers working the amphitheaters.

“Ms. Crane,” Lourds greeted the woman who had called out to him.

Leslie Crane strode toward him. Men’s heads turned in appreciation. Lourds didn’t blame them. Leslie Crane was beautiful, golden-haired and green-eyed, dressed in shorts and a sleeveless white linen shirt that emphasized her tan and trim figure. Lourds thought she was perhaps twenty-four, fifteen years younger than he was.

She took his hand and shook it. “It’s so good to finally meet you in person.” She had a crisp English accent, and in her lush contralto voice, the effect was soothing.

“I’ve been looking forward to this as well. E-mail and phone calls aren’t a replacement for actually spending time with another person.” Although either of those forms of communication were rapid and kept people in touch, Lourds preferred speaking in person or on paper. He was something of an anachronism about that—he still took time to write long letters to friends who did the same in return. He believed that letters, especially when someone wanted to get a point and a line of thinking across without interruption, were important. “Handshakes do have their advantages.”

“Oh,” she said. As if just realizing she still held his hand, she released it. “Sorry.”

“No problem.”

“Did you find the hotel suitable?”

“Of course. It’s wonderful.” The television company had put him in the Sheraton Montazah, a five-star hotel. With the Mediterranean shoreline to the north and King Farouk’s summer palace and gardens to the south, staying there was an incredible experience. “But it’s close enough that I could have walked here. Though the limo was lovely. A university professor isn’t quite the same as a rock star.”