The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER ONE

Silvio Mendoza felt the rush of power coursing through his veins as he pushed his way through the Vienna rain. It was only a matter of time now before he would lay his hands on the greatest treasure of them all.

With only Aurora Soto and his own deluded thoughts for company, the former Mexican drug cartel lord scuttled along the backstreets of the Austrian capital. He disliked the city. He held no place in his heart for Baroque gardens, Sachertorte and opera houses. Mendoza was an outlaw, a man from the jungle who knew only the harshest realities of life, not this ludicrous fairytale version with Ferris wheels and Lipizzaner horses. What these people knew about the real world you could write on the head of pin.

He moved deftly through a crowd of people who were watching a man eat fire to a bizarre medley of Strauss. He pulled up his collar and cursed the northern hemisphere as the autumn wind came off the Danube and whipped through the cobblestone streets of Leopoldstadt. How anyone could live here was beyond his comprehension. The sooner he got out of here the better, but first he had to track someone down.

He smirked as he surveyed the people around him. Umbrellas, scarves, hurrying home to get out of the cold. There were many differences between him and these people, not least the fact that he was about to become one of the richest men alive, something every last one of them would crave but never achieve.

He checked his cell phone one last time as he slipped up the steps to an apartment block on an expensive boulevard with Aurora one step behind him. An old habit made him check over his shoulder before his next move, and then when the coast was clear he rang the door buzzer. Moments later a man in his seventies opened the door just a crack. He reminded him of Albert Einstein.

“We spoke on the phone,” Mendoza said in heavily accented English. “You are Huber?”

The old man nodded and eyed him suspiciously through the crack in the door, which was still chained. “You have the object you described?”

“Let me in, old man. We’re not discussing this on the street.”

The old man was hesitant, but nodded in reluctant agreement and closed the door for a moment while he slipped the chain off. When the door opened again, the two Mexican gangsters stepped briskly inside. Mendoza pushed the old man aside and booted the door shut with his heel. He couldn’t be certain how many drug cartel lords this Viennese professor had dealt with in his time, but he was sure it was somewhere around zero, and that as a consequence he would be nervous and unsettled.

Huber led Mendoza up an intricate sweeping staircase, his paper-white hand leaning down on the wrought-iron banister for support as he went. The two men made no conversation as they walked to the apartment and Soto was equally silent. When they got inside, Mendoza wasted no time in pulling a small golden idol out of the inside pocket of his jacket and holding it in front of the old professor’s face.

Huber’s jaw dropped when he saw the ancient artefact.

“So what is it?” Mendoza said flatly.

“This… this can’t be real… may I?”

Mendoza studied him for a second and then handed the idol over.

“It’s real enough, old man. Can’t you feel it in your hands?”

Huber looked like he had seen a ghost, and for a moment was unable to speak. “I can’t believe it,” he said, his hands beginning to tremble. “Where did you find it?”

“Inside the entrance to the Aztec underworld — Mictlan.”

Huber looked at him sharply. “Mictlan is real?”

Mendoza nodded sharply. “You don’t want to know more than that.” He didn’t like to dwell on Mictlan. Sometimes when he closed his eyes he could still see the Russian girl strapped to the altar and Wade’s volcanic dagger pushing into her flesh. “Tell me — it’s worth something, no?”

Huber said nothing, but collapsed in his swivel seat and pulled a red book from a shelf, entitled Religious Icons of the Punic-Iberian Period.

When he saw the dusty tome in the professor’s fragile hands, Mendoza curled his lip. “What is this shit? I’m not here for a lecture, old man.”

Huber ignored him. Instead he turned the pages of the old book until he reached what he was looking for, and then turned the book around so the impatient Mexican could see.

Mendoza gasped and took a step back. Aurora’s eyes widened like saucers. They were looking at an exact replica of the idol. Identical to the one he’d snatched from under the noses of the ECHO team in the Mictlan Temple back in the Lacandon Jungle. “What is this?”

“This, my friend, is la Dama de Elche, or the Lady of Elche.”

“I don’t understand… what is it?”

“She is a limestone bust which was unearthed in an archaeological site near Elche, in Valencia near the Spanish coast… near Alicante.”

Aurora eyed the page suspiciously. “But the idol was discovered on the other side of the world. How can they be sure the bust is from Spain?”

“Limestone is an organic sedimentary rock because it has the fossilized remains of deceased organisms within it and this helps us locate its origin.”

“Maybe it’s fake,” Mendoza added.

“Many believed it to be a forgery, but this was conclusively dismissed when the bust was subjected to a series of x-ray dispersive spectrometry analyses by an electron microscope. They proved it was as old as the original archaeological claims and from the Punic era.”

“La Dama — who is she… or what is she?”

“No one knows, but most academic opinion believes she is connected strongly to the Phoenician goddess Tanit — the main deity of all Carthage.”

“But… it’s identical…”

“It’s almost identical,” Huber corrected him. “There is a Nahuatl word which describes this — ixiptla, or likeness.” His hands began to shake again.

Mendoza was starting to think this could be bigger than he had thought, and watched as an expression of confusion clouded the professor’s face. “You look lost, old man.”

“Some have speculated that the Lady of Elche is in fact an Atlantean goddess worshipped in the lost, mythical city of Tartessos — an Atlantean colony — but I’ve always dismissed it as drivel, naturally, but now…” He shook his head and his eyes furiously scanned the text for just one clue. “None of this makes sense!”

He got up — the idol still gripped in his hand, and used his free hand to rub his eyes for a moment. “It’s like I am losing my mind! How can any of this be real? By 146BC the Carthaginian Empire was all but extinguished. So what I want to know is how a statue of Tanit ended up in a temple in the Mexican jungle that hadn’t been opened in thousands of years?”

Mendoza watched the old man with contempt as he wiped a tear from his eye. He wanted to mock him for his weakness but then he noticed something he hadn’t realized before this moment — his own hands were shaking almost uncontrollably. He took a step closer to Huber and the idol, slipping his hand in his pocket and grabbing his switchblade as he went. “What does the inscription say?”

“It’s hard to tell. It’s the weirdest blend of Aztec and Punic-era Phoenician… it’s so strange… almost intoxicating. It’s like it wants to reach out to me and whisper the ancient truth it has concealed for so long…”

“So it’s worth a lot of money, right?”

Huber stared up at him in disbelief, his old eyes watering from the effort of straining at the strange symbols carved into the idol. “What? Something like this could never be sold. It’s priceless.”

“We’ll see about that. What does the inscription say? Does it lead to more gold?”

Huber shook his head as he stared at the strange carving of a sun in the base of the idol. It looked like a solar flare. He looked lost as he studied the intricate carved shape of the base — like a seven-pointed star but with peculiar terraces carved into it, receding in undulations like an inverted ziggurat. “I must have this wrong because if not, then God help us all.”

Aurora sighed and took a step closer to Huber. “Let the cat out of the bag, old man.”

“First, there are two inscriptions. The first is a very simple symbol that refers to the sun, and is as old as the idol — but it seems to show the sun exploding. The second series of symbols carved into the back are later, without a doubt. They’ve been added by someone else… a later culture perhaps.”

“And what do the later ones say?”

“I can’t read them, not with any certainty, I’m sorry. Maybe it’s some kind of ancient code — perhaps a reference to a flooded city, and then this business about the sun… You need someone else.”

“I thought you were supposed to be the best?”

Huber looked up at them, insulted and embarrassed. “I am the best public figure, but there are others with a greater knowledge who prefer to keep a veil drawn over their activities. One in particular stands out.”

“Go on.”

“His name is Kruger. Dirk Kruger. He’s an archaeologist, of sorts.”

“Where can I find this man?”

“He’s from South Africa but at the moment he’s in Munich on business. I spoke with him a few days ago. He’s at the Hotel Sendling.”

“Business?”

“He sells… relics.”

Mendoza thought for a moment about the way the old man had said relics and wasn’t sure he was telling the whole story. It sounded like maybe there were a few things hiding behind those relics. “And he will be able to tell me what this idol says?”

Huber nodded. “Yes, I think so. If anyone can, Dirk Kruger can.” Once again he held up the idol of Tanit in his hands. The late afternoon Viennese sunshine flashed on her golden face and weird headdress. The old man fixed his jeweller’s loupe into his eye once again. “She’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

Mendoza took the idol from the old man’s hands. He noticed two police cars pull up outside the apartment block, followed by a third large police vehicle and cursed inwardly as he directed Aurora Soto to look through the window. Yes, he thought, this idol must be of great value if the authorities were already tracking him through Europe.

He turned to Huber. “I must thank you so very much for your help, Herr Huber. You have been of immense assistance to me. It is true what they say about you — you really are a very clever man.”

“Well… I study very hard and… what are you doing?”

In a heartbeat Aurora Soto stepped aside as Mendoza took his knife from his pocket and as fast as lightning he pushed the blade against the wrinkled skin of Huber’s throat. “You’re coming with me, old man.”

“What are you talking about? Put that knife down!”