The Atlantis Stone

CHAPTER 19

At the desk of the hotel, the clerk gave them directions to the ruins and assured them it was safe to visit because the government had posted guards for the protection of tourists.

As they left the lobby Ronnie said, "I sure feel safer now."

They were doing their best to look like tourists. It wasn't hard. No one would think they were anything but what they appeared to be. Selena wore loose slacks and a lightweight, long-sleeved shirt to protect her skin from the sun. A wide brimmed straw hat and large sunglasses completed the image of a foreign woman on vacation.

Nick and Ronnie wore jeans, desert boots and loose, short-sleeved shirts. Baseball caps and sunglasses rounded out their outfits. They might have been brothers. No one would mistake them for locals.

Stalls filled with goods lined the road leading out of town. They petered out after the first kilometer. Except for the potholed highway, there was nothing to see but the Mediterranean off to the right and empty miles of sand to the left. The area was deserted. The roadside stands they saw along the way were shuttered. Faded signs proclaimed souvenirs and guide services in Arabic and tortured English.

The air conditioner in the Rover didn't work. A hot wind coming through the open windows smelled of dust and heat and provided little relief.

They passed an abandoned building advertising bottled water, food and souvenirs. Slogans in Arabic had been spray-painted across the front.

"I wonder where all the people have gone?" Selena asked

"It's because of ISIS," Nick said. He took one hand off the wheel and wiped sweat away from his forehead. "Out here, you're either with them or against them. If you're with them, you're probably off fighting in Libya. If you're against them, you're either a slave or dead."

Selena looked at a map she held in her lap. "Libya's not far away. We should reach the ruins soon."

Ronnie pointed ahead. A low building stuck up from the flat monotony of the coastal plain.

"That must be it."

They reached the temple complex ten minutes later. Nick parked in a paved lot big enough for a hundred cars. It was deserted except for a dented Volkswagen camper bus and a military jeep.

At one time this had been an important temple. The ruin was impressive. A dozen broken columns lined a wide forecourt. Three massive columns carved to represent date palms stood at the entrance, supporting an intact, flat roof. Each column was fifty feet high.

The sun beat down on the ruin, making it shimmer with golden light. The interior of the temple looked shady and inviting.

A bored attendant took a small entrance fee from them. Two soldiers sat nearby, playing a desultory board game in the shade of an awning stretched out from the side of the attendant's shack. Their rifles were propped against the wall.

"Do not wander far," one said as they walked by. "Touching anything inside is forbidden." He gave Selena a lewd look. "Perhaps you would like a private tour of the ruins?"

"I don't want one, but would you like to show my husband around?"

The guard looked confused. His companion laughed.

When they were out of earshot Nick said, "You couldn't resist, could you?"

"Did you see the way he looked at me? I wanted to slap him."

They reached the forecourt and stopped. Selena looked up at the temple and the inscriptions along the walls.

She shook her head. "This can't be the right place."

"What do you mean?" Nick asked. "This is the spot marked on the map."

"That mark is only an approximate location. Stephanie scanned the area marked on the map and found this temple. It's in about the right spot, so we all assumed this was what was meant. But this is too new, too recent. I'd guess the building dates to eleven or twelve hundred BCE, during the New Kingdom period. The pillar in the photograph goes back to King Menes, two thousand years before that. No way the Russian who marked that map found it here."

"Maybe this was built over an earlier site."

"That's possible. But if it was, they would've torn everything down and used the materials in the new building. That was common practice in ancient Egypt. Look at this place. They would never have left that column lying around."

"So what do you want to do?"

"We're here. We might as well go in but I don't think we're going to find what we're looking for."

The interior was cool and dim, a pleasant change from the heat and harsh light outside. The walls were painted with hieroglyphics.

Selena studied the writing. "I was right. This was built in the reign of Ramesses X. That puts it almost at the end of the New Kingdom."

Ronnie said, "Nothing on those walls that says 'this way to Atlantis?'"

"Smartass. It would make things a lot easier, wouldn't it? This is a dead end."

They went outside and back to their car. Another vehicle had pulled into the parking lot. A man and a woman were getting tickets. They looked European. The soldiers had quit their game and given in to boredom.

"You notice those M-16s they got?" Ronnie said.

"Dirty," Nick said.

"My DI would turn purple and scream if he saw someone with a rifle like that."

"Mine would have the poor bastard doing push-ups while he was yelling at him."

"With his foot planted in the middle of the guy's back."

"Yup."

"Are you two done remembering the good old days?" Selena studied the map. "If this is even close to accurate, that spot where the pillar was found has to be nearby."

Nick gestured at the empty desert stretching away to the horizon. Heated air rose in shivering ripples from the sands.

"We can't go wandering around out there hoping to stumble on it."

"If there's another ruin, the ticket taker might know where it is."

"Then let's go ask him."

"You wait here. He's more likely to tell me if you're not standing around looking threatening."

"Threatening?"

"I saw the way you looked at that guard when he offered to give me a private tour."

"I wouldn't call that threatening. Annoyed, maybe."

"If you say so. I'll be right back."

Katerina Rostov and Dimitri moved away from the ticket shack toward the temple. They pretended to be interested in the architecture.

Selena got out of the car.

"There she is," Katerina said.

"How do you want to handle it?"

"We can't do anything here. We watch. And wait for an opportunity."

"She's going over to the shack."

The two Russians watched Selena talking to the attendant.

"She slipped him a bribe," Dimitri said. "Now he's talking to her like they're old friends."

"She's going back to the car."

They waited until the car left the parking lot and headed west, toward Libya. Katerina and Dimitri walked back to the shack.

"Excuse me," Katerina said. "We wondered what our friends were talking to you about."

"Friends?"

"Well, not friends exactly, but we're all staying at the same hotel."

Katerina slipped a hundred pound note across the counter. It disappeared under the attendant's hand.

"They wanted to know if there were any other ruins in the area."

"Are there?"

The attendant seemed disinterested. Katerina slipped another note across.

"Yes, there is a much smaller temple a few kilometers from here, but it is not visited much. I would not advise it."

"Why not?"

The attendant shrugged. "Some people do not like foreigners around here. The place is isolated."

Perfect, Katerina thought.

"Where is this ruin?"

"You go out to the main road and turn west toward the border. Two kilometers from here there is a track turning south into the desert. Follow that for another five kilometers and you'll come to it. But there is not much to see. A few broken columns, some stones. The track is rough. I do not advise it," he said again.

"Thank you," Katerina said.

The attendant watched the woman and the man go back to their car. They pulled away from the lot and turned west, as the other crazy foreigners had.

"The blond one was pretty," one of the guards said. "All those Western women are whores. I wouldn't mind trying her out."

"You couldn't afford her. Besides, she looks like she'd kick you in the balls if you tried anything," the other guard said. "Come on, I'll give you another game."

The two men settled down to their board game. The attendant went back to the magazine he'd been reading.

Nothing ever happens here, he thought.