The Gods of Atlantis (10 page)

‘This rock isn’t part of the ceiling, it’s a dislodged chunk of lava that must have been blown up here during the eruption five years ago. You can tell because it’s wedged upwards, not downwards. A little help and it might go.’

Costas clipped the detonator into the two-metre section of cord he was trailing, and wrapped it into gaps around the rock. ‘You ready?’ Jack gave the okay sign and swam back five metres to the other side of the recess, followed seconds later by Costas. ‘Turn your back to it and press your visor against mine.’ Costas held Jack tight. ‘Three. Two. One. Fire in the hole.’ There was a sharp bang, and Jack felt the shock wave ripple against his back; he was thankful for the Kevlar pressure suit. They both turned just as the lava chunk fell in a tumble of smaller pieces, splashing into the molten lava below them and exploding into fiery fragments that quickly melted and sank. Jack pulled Costas over to the hole and they looked up. There was a crack about a metre by half a metre wide, and above that he saw the open ocean.

‘There’s no way we’re getting through that opening with all this gear,’ Costas said.

‘We’ll have to ditch it and swim for the sub.’

‘This is a one-way ticket, Jack.’

‘But you’ll be there waiting for me.’

‘No. You first.’

‘No way,’ Jack said. ‘I need to see that you can get though that hole. You’re wider than me.’ In a few moves he stripped off Costas’ backpack, holding it in front of him with the air hoses still attached. Costas did the same for him, and they both floated under the crack. Jack felt the heat of the water searing into his elbows and knees where the thermal
layer of the suit had melted. ‘Okay?’ he said. ‘Relax, take six long, deep breaths, then hyperventilate for four. Give me the okay signal when you’re ready.’ He heard Costas breathe fast and hard and hold his breath, and then saw him put his forefinger and thumb together in the diver’s okay signal. He quickly disengaged the hoses from Costas’ helmet and heaved him upwards, watching him disappear in a welter of bubbles. He breathed in deeply, then looked down.
This was not happening
. A huge ball of fire was surging towards him, an explosion of lava that would rip right through the crack and erupt on the surface of the volcano. He had no time to hyperventilate. He took one huge breath and held it, then pulled out his hoses. On a second’s impulse, he held the pack down and knocked open the safety release valve on the main tank, causing gas to rip out at high pressure. He held it for as long as it took to rocket through the crack into the sea above the volcano, then he let it spiral away. He finned frantically sideways just as the lava shot up in a geyser behind him, the force of the displaced water pushing him further. Below him the magma chamber imploded, the roof dropping into the space where they had been swimming only minutes before, now a fiery mass of molten lava.

He spun around, disorientated, seeing the plume of red fall back into a slick mass on the seabed. He could see no sign of the submersible, nor of Costas. He sensed the shadow of
Seaquest II
far above, but ignored it. He would never make it to the surface. Then he saw a yellow smudge down the slope of the volcano. It was the light from the submersible’s lamp array that could be activated externally.
Thank God
.
Costas had made it
.

He forced his vision to narrow into a tunnel, to exclude all sense of his surroundings other than his destination. He began to swim hard, ignoring the tightening in his chest, the feeling at the back of his throat that was his body’s first attempt to stop him breathing in water and drowning. He was eighteen metres, maybe fifteen metres away. He could see the submersible clearly now, a yellow cylindrical form about ten metres long, raised above the seabed on retractable legs, allowing divers to enter via a hatch in the floor. He saw Costas beneath it,
frantically twisting something. The hatch swung open and Costas pulled himself upwards, his head out of sight, then dropped back down into the water, facing Jack. His helmet was gone, but he was wearing the black safety mask they kept as a backup in a pocket on their legs. Jack was ten metres away now, eight, focusing on Costas’ beckoning hands, trying not to black out. He felt his diaphragm heave upwards as his body counted down the final seconds to unconsciousness. The tunnel darkened, and his limbs felt impossibly heavy. Then he was grabbed and heaved upwards in a cascade of water. Costas slammed the locking points on either side of his helmet and the visor sprang open, flooding him with air.

Jack settled back in the water in the open hatch in the floor of the submersible, breathing in great gulps, his arms draped over Costas’ shoulders, his eyes dazzled by the fluorescent glow inside. He reached his left arm up to the camera pod on the front of his helmet, detached it and lowered it in front of his face, then pressed the record button. The little LCD screen lit up and showed a video image, at first a scatter of reflected light from particles in the water and then a sharp view of the chamber in the volcano. It was all there.
It had been real
. He saw the skulls, the basin, the paintings on the cave wall. The image zoomed in to his final discovery, the extraordinary pillars, and then it went blank. He carefully placed the camera pod on the floor of the submersible, then shut his eyes with relief and slumped back over Costas’ frame, breathing deeply, letting the energy return to his limbs.

‘Jack.’

‘What is it?’

‘The bear hug.’

Costas’ forearms were up on the edge of the floor, entirely supporting Jack’s weight, and his head was wedged sideways against Jack’s helmet. Jack gave a half-hearted kick, then slumped back. ‘Can’t,’ he gasped. They remained still for a moment, locked together, and then they both began to laugh uncontrollably. They kicked and heaved, and Jack pulled himself up until he was sitting on the edge of the hatch. He reached out to help as Costas clawed his way up on the other side and sat down
heavily. They stared at each other’s dripping forms, and then reached across the water and slapped hands. Jack closed his eyes.

They had come here on a wing and a prayer.

But they had done it.

They had returned to Atlantis
.

The Taklamakan Desert, western China

T
he man felt himself being pushed out of the vehicle, and then being held roughly by one pair of hands while another untied his wrists from behind his back. He flexed his fingers, trying to bring back the circulation. His blindfold was yanked off, but he had the sense to reach into his overcoat pocket to find his sunglasses, putting them on before opening his eyes. Even so the glare off the desert was blinding, and he blinked hard a few times before beginning to discern anything of his surroundings. He glanced at his watch and saw that he had been in the Toyota for a little over two hours, from the time when the helicopter from Kashgar had left him at the appointed place, a remote location where a branch of the southern highway that skirted the desert had come to an abrupt end. The desert track beyond had been spine-jarring, little more than the natural rocky substrate cleared of sand, and the four-wheel drive had been engaged for most of the way. Yet the secrecy had been a charade. The one he had come here to find was already aware that he knew the location of this place. The discomfort of the past two hours had been to make a point. He was in someone else’s territory now.

An arm appeared from behind him, pointing ahead, and his driver spoke in a heavy Chinese accent. ‘Follow this track until you reach the fort. Wait there.’ The car door slammed, and the Toyota roared off in a cloud of dust. The man put his hand over his nose and mouth against the dust and walked forward as instructed, keeping slow in the searing heat. After a few minutes, he had descended from the dunes to a hard surface of compacted dirt that looked as if it had been deliberately cleared of sand. A few long-dead tree stumps surrounded a crumbled well-head, and beyond that he saw a water-tanker truck in front of the settlement, a motley collection of prefabricated single-storey structures. It had clearly once been a small desert oasis, one of numerous pockets of humanity that thrived in the Taklamakan at the time of the Silk Road, but had since been extinguished by the howling winds that pushed the dunes over everything in their path. The houses were typical of forced modern settlements in the desert, attempts by the Chinese authorities to stake their claim in a region that was one of the least hospitable on earth yet contained huge untapped mineral and oil reserves. He reached the first house and continued walking, passing men and women who seemed intent on some unknown business. It was odd that they ignored him completely, a European in a fine suit and overcoat striding out of the dunes and walking through their midst, but then he remembered that this place was not what it seemed.

Ahead, beyond the houses, he saw what looked like eroded rocky outcrops sticking out of the sand, but as he got closer he realized that they were the crumbling towers of an ancient desert stronghold, probably abandoned a millennium or more ago when the trade routes dried up. The road changed to a rough track covered with fragments of old pottery as it took him under a precarious-looking stone gatehouse. Inside was an ancient timber door, wind-worn and rent with cracks. He peered through, seeing a desolation of ruins surrounding a domed structure half buried in the sand, once perhaps a mosque or a Nestorian church. He pushed the heavy iron latch, to no avail, and then stood back, protected by the tower roof from the sun and the blowing sand. Suddenly there was an electric hum, and the entire surface around him
began to lower, an elevator platform large enough to take a small truck. He had expected something like this, but even so it took him by surprise. As it dropped below head height, another platform slid over to close the opening, and he was plunged into darkness. Then all movement ceased and a fluorescent light illuminated the elevator chamber, showing three tunnels leading off in different directions. Doors slid down over two of the entrances, and the elevator platform turned so that he was facing the remaining one. He paused for a moment, touching his tie and brushing the sand off his legs, and then walked forward.

After about a hundred metres, another door slid down behind him and he was in darkness again. He stopped walking, and felt the ground beneath him moving, some form of escalator. It came to a halt, and he was left in utter stillness. There was a curious scent in the air, jasmine perhaps, and he sensed that he was in a larger space. Then a shaft of light came down from high above and lit up a leather chair a few metres in front of him, facing away. Another shaft lit up a large table in front. A man with Chinese features was sitting behind the table, his face looming out of the shadows, the outline of a computer monitor to his right. The man in the suit walked up to the chair, then carefully smoothed his overcoat beneath him and sat down.

The man behind the desk stared at him for a moment and then spoke in English, his accent a mixture of refined British and American. ‘So. You found out how to contact me, and now you have discovered my fortress. Normally anyone who comes within fifty kilometres of this place without my invitation is liquidated by my men, but for you I have made a temporary exception.’

The other man said nothing, but crossed his legs and looked casually at the ceiling, then to his left and right. It was as if his gaze had activated a lighting system, and the dark recesses of the chamber filled with subtle shades of colour. He saw that he was within a domed structure, seemingly extending off into infinity. Above him was a dazzling representation of the night sky, projected on to the inside of the dome as if they were in a planetarium. To his left was a long
rectangular pool, its water dark and utterly still, surrounded by long-legged ibexes, some with their necks up and others bent down with their bills close to the water. But the most striking apparition was the rows of warriors on either side, hundreds of them, identically armoured and holding long poles terminating in elaborate bronze dagger-axes. They seemed alive, staring at him, their eyelids occasionally flickering, a slight rustle and rasp of movement in the background. Beyond them the sky appeared to be swirling, like a desert dust storm, the illusion of movement enveloping the chamber as if they were in a tunnel about to be sucked with the warriors down a vortex into the eye of the storm.

He let his gaze fall back to the man behind the desk, and then spoke. ‘A representation of the interior of the third-century
BC
tomb of the first Chinese emperor Shihuangdi, based on the
Records of the Grand Historian
by Sima Qian.’ He spoke quietly and precisely, his English impeccable but with a hint of a French accent. ‘The tomb chamber, of course, remains undiscovered beneath the great mound at Xian, though the terracotta warriors and the bronze birds from the pits surrounding the mound are real enough. I hosted a reception at the British Museum at the opening of the travelling exhibition last year. The weapons are more varied than the classic Qin dagger-axe you present here, but then you surely know that. It is a small point.’ He gestured up at the stars. ‘Outside this chamber, I imagine, you can see this very view at night, in the desert sky unpolluted by the modern world. But you would be deathly cold, and the sand would sting your eyes. In here, you have the illusion of control over the cosmos. That was the conceit of the First Emperor too. It was a conceit that began when Stone Age men first turned their backs on the world of nature, the world they could not control. To some, it made them think they were gods. But such fantasies are just that. The First Emperor remains dead in his hole in the ground, surrounded by crumbling illusions. Adolf Hitler came to a squalid end in a ditch outside the Führerbunker.’ He waved his hand dismissively at the room. ‘In my world, power does not come from computer-generated fantasies.’ He took off his gloves, laid them on his knee and
folded his hands over them. ‘I have come to discuss a business arrangement.’