The Secret of Atlantis

CHAPTER NINETEEN

“They just left Serbia, sir,”

The Oracle heard the words as if they had travelled miles to his ears. As was often the case, his eyes were closed and his mind was in another time and place. Now, he was thinking about the day he had discovered what had been concealed from them for so long… the day his long life had changed forever.

He hadn’t even been looking for it, but instead searching for other records in the Athanatoi vaults deep beneath Rome. It wasn’t even as if it had been his first time in the vaults, either, and yet there he had found it — the ancient text, the oldest records, a damning truth that had shocked him to his core. It had set his old life on an entirely different path the way two comets might collide out in the furthest reaches of space.

When he’d found those ancient documents his heart had almost stopped. For so long the secret society of which he was a member had spoken in hushed tones of all this but there was never any proof — just rumor, and then just like that the mythological vapor had condensed into reality for the first time, and he knew it was true.

The witless ramblings of the old priests had been real after all, and there was a higher source, and ancient power. It was if someone had handed the Pope undeniable proof of the existence of Adam and Eve themselves. The whole thing had been a terrible shock.

That was where conceit got you, he’d thought.

The conceit that he, as the Oracle, had known everything there was to know about the world, but he should have known better.

Much better.

The world was far too great for a single man ever to know, even a man with his reach and power, and that day taught him more than he had simply been ignorant of the true depth of it all. It also taught him humility. And it gave him an insatiable urge to rip his way though the layers of deceit the way a hungry lion’s lethal jaws tear through the flesh of a trapped gazelle.

Yes, the whole thing had come as a shock, but then the possibilities began to present themselves and his mood began to change very much for the better.

Somewhere in front of him the man was speaking again. He was saying something about the ECHO team leaving Serbia, but his words were hard to hear over the sound of the Mozart which was playing so loudly in his study. Rosina Almaviva was singing about her grave and now the whole thing was being ruined by Joe Hawke.

“Sir?”

“What?” the Oracle snapped viciously.

“They just left Serbia, sir.”

Serbia. He had the vaguest recollection of when Serbia won autonomy from the Ottomans, and a fine piece of diplomacy it was, too. But now the ECHO team was there sniffing about like truffle hogs in the dirt and fungus of antiquity in their pathetic search for a truth they would never be able to accept.

“What should we do, sir?”

The Oracle raised a withered finger to indicate that silence was required, at least from the man, if not the singing Countess, and turned his thoughts inward once again. Their journey to Serbia was a confusing one but he would follow their quest until the very end. Were they working for someone else besides Eden? So many wanted the idol.

“Nothing, just monitor. And get out.”

The old man watched his underling leave the room and then he pulled a cell phone from his pocket. A few seconds of static and someone picked up the call. “Hello?”

The Oracle sighed. “Davis, we have trouble.”

Davis Faulkner, the head of the CIA, took several seconds to think before replying but when he did, it was as cool as usual. “Go on.”

“The Mexicans are dead and Kruger has the idol.”

“Grave news.”

The Oracle watched a line of whitecaps rise on the sea before crashing back down into the ocean in a frothy, milky white foam. “I’ve waited a long time for these idols, Davis. Many forces want to get their hands on them. I can’t let anyone take them from me. Not Kruger, and certainly not the damned ECHO team. You hear what I’m saying?”

“Yes, sir. You know I will do anything for the cause.”

“Of course, and now you have an opportunity to show me just how committed you are.”

A long silence. “Anything, sir.”

“I’m told the ECHO team have a secret hideaway somewhere — a little island.”

Another silence, and the exhalation of cigar smoke. “Yes.”

“I presume you know its location.”

“Yes. It’s a former French naval facility in the Caribbean.”

“Good. I want it destroyed, and everyone on it is to be killed. Is that clear?”

“It could take some time to…”

“I’m not interested in details, Davis. You’re the head of the CIA. If you want to play with some hardware in the Caribbean Sea and use an unknown island for target practice then you can do it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Don’t be too hard on the infrastructure — I’ll add it to my portfolio once your pest control teams have done their work.”

“As you wish.”

This time it was the Oracle stretching the silence as he watched an ocean storm gathering strength to the north. “Don’t let me down, Davis. You of all people know what’s at stake.”