The Atlantis Stone

CHAPTER 23

"I need a shower," Selena said.

"You and me both. You go first," Nick said.

Selena didn't argue. After she finished she dried off and put on a robe provided by the hotel. Still drying her hair, she went to her laptop and turned it on. She loaded the pictures she'd taken on her phone and chose a close-up shot of the fallen slab inscribed with Linear D. She'd begun thinking of it as the language of Atlantis.

Someone had carved the inscription more than five thousand years ago. In her imagination she pictured a man in sandals and a short, white tunic, holding a hammer and chisel as he chipped away.

Who was he, the man who put these characters here? What did he look like? Was he Egyptian? Someone from a land that's supposed to be a myth?

She brought up the notes she'd made on the tablet in the French museum. The writing in the photograph was similar, but there were characters she hadn't seen before. She copied down the new symbols, adding them to the list she'd created before. When she was sure she'd noted everything new, she looked at the result.

She now had a list of thirty-six symbols and characters, each representing a concept or thought. She'd succeeded in assigning an initial meaning to most of the characters. The problem was that a symbol that meant "water" had multiple interpretations, depending on the context.

Slowly she began to piece together a sense of what was written. She lost track of time. She started when Nick came up behind her and put his hands on her shoulders. It jolted her back to the present.

"How's it going?"

"Look at this." Selena pointed at the picture on the monitor. "What does that look like to you?"

"Like an arrow pointing away from a squiggly line, with a hat under it. And three concentric circles."

"What about that round circle with the lines coming off it?"

"I suppose it could be the sun. I've seen pictures of primitive carvings that look like that."

"That's what I think. I think this is a map."

"A map of what?"

"A map that shows where Atlantis was." She traced her finger across the screen. "The squiggly line could represent a coastline. It looks a little like the coast of North Africa."

She pointed at the concentric circles.

"That character under the circles means home. The one next to it means water, like ocean. You see how the symbol for the sun is off to the side of the symbol for home?"

"Yes," Nick said, "but I don't see what it means."

"By checking your position against the sun and this map, you'd know where you were."

Nick thought about it. "If that's the case, the sun always has to be in the same position for the map to mean anything."

"Yes. It must represent a time of day. The most logical time would be noon."

"You think these people navigated using the sun?"

"Why not? Lots of ancient cultures figured out how to sail over the ocean without getting lost."

"Where's the starting point? You need someplace to start from or the map doesn't make any sense."

"I think this symbol that looks like a hat is the temple where we found the inscription. See the arrow pointing toward the circles? If the hat represents the temple, you would follow the line of the arrow toward the circles, using the sun as your reference point. That would put you way out in the Atlantic, if I'm reading this correctly."

"You know how crazy this sounds?" Nick asked. "You're telling me you just found a map pointing to Atlantis."

"It's no more crazy than us being here in the first place," she said. "If the Russians weren't taking it seriously, we wouldn't be here."

"Was there anything on that piece of rock to tell us where the archive is?"

"No."

"Then we're back to square one."

"Not exactly. If this is a map showing where Atlantis was, we might be able to find it. The archive could be there."

"If it is, it's under a hell of a lot of water. You want to go looking for underwater ruins?"

"Those three circles could be the symbol of the capital city. It's logical that the archive would be there." Her face glowed with excitement. "Think about it, Nick. We're talking about Atlantis. We'd be the first people to see it in thousands of years. This map is the key to finding it. We have to try."

"How do you intend to get down there? I can't see Harker going to the Pentagon and asking them if she could please borrow a ship to go look for Atlantis."

"We don't need the Navy," Selena said. "I know someone who has everything we need for deep-sea exploration. I can hire him. The Pentagon doesn't need to get involved."

Every time Nick managed to forget how wealthy Selena was, something happened to remind him. The kind of expedition she was talking about would cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Maybe more. Selena's uncle had been a billionaire. His murder had brought her to the Project and left her with a fortune. She'd given a lot of it away to charity but there was still plenty left over.

All that money hadn't turned her into someone who thought she was better than everyone else. It was one of the reasons Nick loved her.

"We'd have to clear that with Harker."

"We should go home. We're at a dead end unless there's something out there in the ocean. If the Russians come here they aren't going to find out any more than we have."

"The Russians will find that temple, like we did," Nick said. "They'll come to the same conclusion. They'll go look for Atlantis."

"Then we'd better get there before they do," Selena said.