The Atlantis revelation

43

Conrad squinted at the setting sun as he raced out the west end of the Street of Knights into Kleovoulou Square, the police close behind. He could feel Serena's heart pounding as she barely held on. He turned onto the wide, shady Orpheos Street and, to the right, spotted the wall linking the interior wall and the main wall of Old Town. He found what he was looking for-the Gate of St. Anthony-and rode up the ramparts, leaving the police cars blocked below him.

He flew past the iron benches and artists drawing portraits of tourists, scattering easels and eliciting shouts and curses. Then he turned left into a dark tunnel.

A moment later, he burst out of Old Town through the impressive d' Amboise Gate. Two policemen started shooting as he drove across the arched bridge and over the dry moat into the New Town. He cut right onto Makariou Street and thundered down toward the harbor.

"I've got a seaplane by the windmills at the breakwater," Serena said, coming to life.

"I've got a boat, I think. One of Andros's."

"I'll fly us out," she said.

There were sirens growing louder from all directions. All at once the street opened up into Kyprou Square, and he could see two triangular traffic islands in the middle of an intersection of seven streets from seven angles. There were no traffic lights, and most of the cars whizzing through were police or driven by Greek citizens.

"Hang left!" Serena shouted.

"Right," he said.

"Left as in straight ahead!"

"I know!" he shouted, and drove in the channel between the two islands to the other side, barely clearing two cars that hit their brakes.

Conrad could hear the squealing and then the crash of metal and horns behind him. In his mirror, he saw that three police cars had locked fenders.

He turned right and slowed down as he passed Starbucks and the post office and vanished into the early-evening shadows that had fallen across the seaside cafes.

At the breakwater front by the secluded windmills, Conrad could see Brother Lorenzo waiting by the Otter seaplane. The priest started to shake at the sight of him. Conrad drove up the stone pier to the edge of the water.

"They're saying a roadside bomb went off in the Knights' Quarter," Lorenzo said breathlessly as he helped Serena off the bike. "Two bodies were found."

"Benito," she told him.

Lorenzo looked at Conrad. "They said that the Israeli defense minister was the target and that the Egyptian terrorist behind it, Abdil Zawas, accidentally blew himself up. Your picture is on the television as one of his associates."

"Point that bony finger at me and I'll break it off," Conrad snapped. "What the hell are you doing here?"

Serena stopped him with a weak hand. "His instructions were always to fall back here if we ran into trouble," she said, and climbed on board and started the props.

Conrad glared at Lorenzo, who quickly followed Serena into the Otter and frantically waved him in.

Conrad rolled the motorcycle into the water, climbed into the plane, and pulled up the door behind him. Soon they lifted off into the evening sky and banked to the east as Conrad looked down to see flashing lights descend on the harbor below.