The Atlantis revelation

51

The Flammenschwert was gone.

Conrad stood with Serena inside the King's Chamber-an expansive vault in the shape of a perfect one-by-two rectangle, its height of forty cubits exactly half the length of its eighty-cubic floor diagonal. In the center of the stone floor stood the three globes, but the armillary globe was split open like an empty womb. On each of the chamber's four walls was a towering archway, each leading down its own tunnel.

Four tunnels, two people, little time, Conrad thought. The Flammenschwert could have been taken down any one of the four shafts.

But Serena was already ahead of him, reading the ancient Hebrew letters over the archways, trying to figure out which tunnel to take, because they'd only have one shot.

"This is incredible," she said. "Do you know what these say?"

"I have my suspicions," he told her. "The star shafts of an inverted pyramid obviously can't point to the heavens. So I figured there weren't any beneath the Temple Mount. These are well shafts."

"Each one leads to a different river," she said. "Their names are written in some kind of Proto-Semitic language. It's practically pre-Atlantean. That door says Tigris, that one says Euphrates, that one over there says Pishon, and this one here says-"

"Gihon," Conrad said. "The four rivers of Eden. So Uriel is the angel with the flaming sword at the gate of Eden after all."

Serena said, "But Eden was in Mesopotamia, where the ancient Babylonian civilization originated."

Eden was like Atlantis, Conrad knew. Everybody had a different idea about where it could be, and archaeological evidence to back it up. But Jewish legend pinpointed the land of Israel as one distinct possibility. What seemed to throw off most archaeologists was the second chapter of Genesis, which described four separate rivers in the Land of Eden that shared a common headwater source. Only two were ever found-the Tigris and the Euphrates. Nobody had discovered the rivers Pishon or Gihon. But Genesis never said all four rivers were aboveground.

"Mesopotamia is just where the Tigris and Euphrates empty out," Conrad told her. "Their headwater source could be down here somewhere, along with the underground waterways of the Pishon and the Gihon."

"Genesis does refer to underground waterways providing water to the surface," she said, the linguist in her apparently rising to the surface. "The original Hebrew word is 'springs.' Genesis says the springs came up from the earth and watered the whole surface of the ground. And the Book of Revelation says that at the end of time, those four rivers will flow out from the temple."

Conrad closed the armillary globe and locked its two hemispheres in place. He could feel Serena's stare as he began to adjust the dial that controlled a tiny marker in the spiral groove representing the motion of the sun.

"This works just like the observatory deck at the Temple of the Water Bearer in Atlantis and the west patio of the U.S. Capitol," he said. "The only difference is that this deck is underground. You can't look at the skies with your naked eye to mark the position of the sun in relation to the stars. You have to use these globes."

"Gellar said the armillary uses planetary geometry," Serena said.

"It does," he said. "The planets align to form the Star of David. Which was how the Israelis got their national symbol in the first place. It's astrologically derived, just like the fish symbol of the early Church in the age of Pisces. Anyway, the trick is to follow the path of the sun across the alignment until X marks the spot. In this case, it's a location beneath the Temple Mount."

"Uriel's Gate," Serena said all of a sudden. "The gate to paradise. That's where Midas has taken the Flammenschwert."

"Eureka." Conrad checked the clip in his Glock again and rammed it back in. The click broke Serena's trance; she stared at the gun and at him. Which was what he'd intended. "The sun marker points to the Gihon shaft to reach Uriel's Gate," he said.

"You have to be sure, Conrad."

"This isn't a panel discussion at some conference. Look around you. We're in an ancient chamber deep beneath the Temple Mount with three globes and four doorways. The Gihon Spring of Jerusalem obviously has its source in the same Gihon River of Eden."

He stopped and stared at the gateway marked Gihon.

"That's it, Serena. That's the revelation of the globes: The Temple Mount guards the gate to Eden."

"The River of Life," Serena said. "The properties in the water contain the building blocks of life on earth."

Conrad nodded. "This is what Midas was after all along, what all the money in the world can't buy him: life. He's using the Flammenschwert to light the Gihon ablaze and trace it back to its headwater source."

"And at the same time destroy the Dome of the Rock," Serena said.

Conrad heard another click of a Glock, but it wasn't his. He looked up at Serena, who was staring over his shoulder, and then heard a voice say, "Hands up, Yeats."

Slowly, Conrad turned to see an Israeli soldier pointing a gun at him-Sam Deker. Conrad knew him from his earlier digs at the Temple Mount. A good if humorless man.

"It's your boss you should be after, Deker," Conrad said.

Deker kept the gun trained on him. "What makes you sure Gellar is involved?"

"Because he told me," Serena said when a bullet struck Deker in the shoulder.

Conrad turned to see Vadim pop up from the entry of the Gihon Gate. He made a grab for Serena, and she screamed as he pulled her down into the hellhole.

"Serena!" Conrad shouted and ran over to the tunnel as a flurry of bullets flew up at him from the dark. He dove for cover. Breathing hard, he realized that Midas and Vadim were one step ahead of him-the final step. They must have removed the Flammenschwert from its globe and were preparing to detonate it at the source of the Gihon below. And now they had Serena.

"There's another way down to the Gihon," said Deker, who was sitting up against another wall, his hand on his shoulder, blood seeping through his fingers.

"Oh, so now you're convinced that I'm not with Gellar?"

"Just tell me what you're really after, Yeats."

Conrad said, "Stopping Armageddon. Midas has an incendiary weapon that's about to ignite the Gihon and everything on the surface. I have to stop it, and you have to go back up and stop Gellar if I fail."

"You know how to dispose of a nuclear device? Because that's what I do," Deker said. "Maybe I should go down and you go back up."

"It's not exactly a nuke, but I can disarm it," Conrad said. "But I can't disarm Gellar if I go up. Or stop your government from overreacting after the Arabs overreact if the Dome of the Rock blows."

Deker nodded to the Pishon Gate on the other wall. "You can take that shaft down to the end and turn right. Follow the riverbank, and it will lead you to the two pillars by the Gihon."

Conrad helped Deker to his feet and then made his way to the Pishon Gate. He looked back inside the King's Chamber. Deker had already disappeared back up to Solomon's Stairway, and Conrad realized that he had forgotten to tell Deker about the C4 under the Dome of the Rock well shaft.

No matter, Conrad thought as he started down the shaft. Deker had as much chance of reaching the surface as Conrad had in reaching the Flammenschwert in time to stop it.