The Atlantis Stone

CHAPTER 1

Time was running out for Yuri Sokolov.

Sokolov sat in a shabby room in a third rate hotel in Amsterdam, writing a letter. He scrawled his signature at the bottom of the page and placed the letter in an envelope, along with an old map and a faded photograph. He sealed the envelope and wrote the address. He added a stamp.

Bracing himself against the battered wooden end table he'd been using for a desk, Sokolov rose, wincing at a pain in his hip. He turned off the light and moved to the window. Careful to stay to the side, he pulled back a flimsy curtain and looked out onto the street and canal three stories below.

It was past midnight. On the other side of town, in the red light district, there were crowds and police everywhere. In this part of the city the streets were deserted. All the good citizens were in their beds.

Yuri wasn't looking for good citizens.

He couldn't see anyone watching. A flicker of hope fluttered in his chest. It was possible they didn't know where he'd gone when he left Moscow.

The postbox was two blocks away, next to a newsstand on the other side of the canal. He shrugged on his long overcoat, thankful for the warmth of the fine wool fabric. He stepped into the hall and closed the door to his room behind him. The elevator was broken, forcing him to take the stairs. They were narrow and poorly lit. His heart pounded against his ribs as he thought about who might be waiting for him on the next landing. On the ground floor, the concierge slept in his metal cage. Yuri slipped out the entrance into the raw night. A thin mist shrouded the city.

He glanced to the right and left. Still no one. Wisps of fog rose from the black waters of the canal. He hurried to the footbridge spanning the canal and crossed to the other side, his footsteps sending muffled echoes from the sleeping buildings lining the canal.

Sokolov's destination appeared in the mist. The stand was closed at night but the bright orange TNT box was on the outside, where he could get rid of his burden. With a gasp of relief he reached the box and thrust the envelope into the left-hand slot, reserved for mail leaving the country.

Now he would go back to his room, gather his few things together, and head for the train station. By tomorrow he would be in Paris.

The concierge was nowhere to be seen when Yuri entered the hotel. The lift was still broken. He began the climb back to the third floor.

Later, when the police questioned the other guests of the hotel about events that night, no one had anything useful to say about the man in room 314. No identification had been found on the body. No one had heard cries coming from the room, though the victim had been brutally tortured before he died. The only other occupant of the third floor was an elderly lady who kept asking investigators to repeat what they'd said.

A tenant on the second floor reported loud music playing for a while but had heard nothing else. Nobody knew anything, which was often the case in hotels where the residents wanted to avoid the police at any cost. The arrests of a minor drug dealer and a petty thief were small compensation for the failure to identify either the murder victim or his assailants.

The morning after the murder, the postal box was emptied. The envelope was sent on its way to America.