Thomas Greanias - The Atlantis revelation

"You say Nephilim and I say Atlantean," Conrad said. "But at the end of the day, we all share the same ancestral DNA."

"Some more than others."

Conrad shrugged. "Hasn't helped me yet."

"But it helped me back in D.C.," she reminded him. "Your blood provided the vaccine that saved me from the Alignment's military-grade flu virus."

"Oh, right," he said. "We've already swapped bodily fluids."

Serena's warm gaze embraced him even as she maintained her one-inch distance. It was all Conrad could do to keep from grabbing her.

"Why did you come back, Conrad?" she asked him. "After what I did to you?"

"I knew there were other forces at work, Serena," he told her. "I had to find out what they were."

Her face looked sad, defeated. "And then what?" she pressed him. "What were your plans for our future-if we had one?"

"You mean if you weren't a member of the Alignment? Or a nun?"

"Technically, I'm not a nun. I had to give up my role with the Carmelites for the Dei. And since the Dei doesn't recognize women as such, I'm pretty much a lay leader in the Church."

Conrad felt a glimmer of hope. "That's wonderful," he blurted, grasping her hand. "The best news yet."

"So how many children do you want, Conrad?" she asked, obviously trying to scare him. She was no wallflower. "You'll have to take care of them, you know."

"Me?" he asked.

"Just because I'm not a nun doesn't mean I'll be giving up the Lord's work traveling to the farthest corners of the earth to help the helpless."

"Okay with me," he said, playing along. "The ruins I explore tend to be in the same places. You can just strap the little guys to your back and swing from trees all you want."

"What's wrong with little girls, Conrad?"

"Nothing," he said. "But biologically, aren't I the one to decide that? Guess there's only one way to find out." He gently pulled her closer to him, and his voice turned tender. "You're the only thing I have to show for my life, Serena. Everything else is dust. That Hebrew slave settlement I found by the pyramids in Giza. Gone. Atlantis in Antarctica. Gone. The only thing I ever recovered were the globes, and you and Uncle Sam stole them from me."

"I'm so sorry, Conrad. I really am."

"No, you don't understand, Serena. I'm okay with it. I don't need to make any great discoveries. We can make our own. You're what I've been searching for all my life. I knew it the moment I saw you. And I don't ever want to lose you."

Her eyes sparkled with tears. She threw her arms around his neck and turned her lovely mouth up to his and kissed him.

His whole body and spirit seemed to come alive as they embraced. He couldn't believe this was about to happen.

"Please forgive me, Conrad, for all I've done to you," she said, kissing him again. "For what I'm going to do to you."

His head was swimming in ecstasy. Or was it something else? He opened his eyes and saw the room spinning behind Serena's blurred face.

"I hate you," he groaned as whatever drug she had applied to her lips took hold of his body.

"Forgive me," she whispered as she kissed him generously, passionately, until he blacked out.

1740!" Conrad shouted, and bolted upright in bed.

He opened his eyes. He was inside an Airstream trailer with a loud but familiar hum around him. The air was cold, and there was a woman sitting next to him, but it wasn't Serena. It was Wanda Randolph, the former U.S. Capitol Police officer who had taken shots at him in the tunnels beneath the U.S. Capitol.

"Where am I?" he asked.

"You're on U.S. soil now, so to speak," she said, and smiled. "Everything's okay."

He looked at the wires and electrodes attached to his body. "The hell it is," he said, and with his right arm struck Wanda in the head and knocked her against the Airstream's wall. He pulled off the wires, opened the trailer door, ran out into a cavernous hangar, and looked for an exit.

"Stop!" Wanda shouted, running up behind with a gun pointed at him.

He ran past a chopper and a tank to a large door and found the button to open it. Warning lights flashed and an alarm sounded. As the door slowly opened from the top down, Conrad realized where he was even before he saw the curvature of the Mediterranean Sea thirty thousand feet below.

There were more shouts and the thunder of boots on the metal flooring, and Conrad turned to see a team of U.S. airmen surround him with their guns drawn.

"Step away from the panel, sir," an airman ordered.

Conrad knew he was going nowhere and stepped away.

The airmen holstered their guns and closed the door as Wanda escorted him back to the Airstream trailer, where Marshall Packard was waiting with some files.

"Good, you're up," Packard said.

"Where's Serena?" Conrad demanded.

"On her way to Rhodes," Packard said. "She exchanged you for our celestial globe. She was actually going to attempt to slip a forgery past the Alignment, which never would have worked. Now she can deliver the goods at the EU summit and be our eyes and ears inside the Alignment."

Conrad shook his head. "You don't need me, Packard. Why did you do it?"

"Your girl said she needed you off the playing field to convince the Alignment you're dead, like she promised, and she had some bizarre notion that you might not play along," Packard said. "So we'll keep an eye on you."

"Not a chance," said Conrad. "You know she's dead meat once she turns over those globes."

"That's a risk she's willing to take to identify the remaining officers of the Alignment. Meanwhile, we've already seen both globes and know what the Alignment is getting. So there's no downside for us."

"You're idiots," Conrad said. "The globes work together. You have no idea what the Alignment has."

"Enlighten me."

"The number of Baron von Berg's safe deposit box was for the date 1740."

"Yeah, yeah, we're ahead of you, son," Packard said. "The only thing that popped up in history for that year was the death in Rome of Pope Clement XII, who had forbidden Roman Catholics from belonging to Masonic lodges on pain of excommunication. Von Berg's joke. Ha, ha."

"Joke's on you, Packard. That was also the year that the Masons in Berlin established the Royal Mother Lodge of the Three Globes. I don't know why I didn't see it before. I guess I needed Baron von Berg and his box number to finally make the connection."

The color drained from Packard's face. "Three globes?"

"That's right," Conrad said. "There were three of them all along. The Masons must have kept one in Europe and let the other two go to the New World. How much you want to bet that the Alignment has had the third globe all along? Now Serena is about to hand them the other two."

"But for what purpose?" Packard demanded. "What the hell do three globes do that two globes can't?"

"Reveal the target and timetable for detonating the Flammenschwert, that's what," Conrad said.

The early-morning sun glinted off the calm waters of Mandraki Harbor as Midas's yacht, the Mercedes, motored past the long breakwater with its three windmills toward the medieval city of Rhodes. There, atop its highest point, its massive fortress walls dwarfing the city below, was the Palace of the Grandmaster.

At least the Mercedes could enjoy the intimacy of the harbor with its pleasure craft and seaside cafes, Midas thought as they entered the mouth of the harbor. The Midas would have required them to anchor farther away.

Much smaller than the Midas, the Mercedes was a mere 250-footer that he picked up in Cyprus the day after Mercedes's funeral in Paris. He had planned to arrive in Rhodes in the Midas. It had taken two days to acquire a yacht large enough to take in a submersible. Midas had contacted his rogue submersible that had been roaming the deep with the Flammenschwert all this time. As soon as the captain emerged after five days underwater, Midas rewarded him with a bullet to the brain and dumped him overboard.