Thomas Greanias: The Atlantis revelation

Serena stiffened as she felt the barrel of the gun at the back of her neck. "Lorenzo, tell me this is a moment of fear overwhelming your faith-that what Conrad said isn't true."

"Tel Aviv," Lorenzo said, waving the gun between her and Conrad. "Then you will hand me the Dei medallion before General Gellar's men take care of both of you."

"I think you should stick with your vow of silence," Conrad said.

Lorenzo pointed the gun at Conrad, pulled the trigger, and heard the click of an empty cartridge. Lorenzo frantically searched his pockets.

"I've got your bullets in here," Conrad said as he pulled out his Glock from under his shirt and shot Lorenzo in the head.

Serena didn't scream as she gripped the steering column tightly with both hands to keep herself and the Otter steady. But she shivered as she felt Lorenzo's body slide to the floor of the cockpit next to her. And the smell from Conrad's discharged Glock made her ill.

"Looks like the Dei wants you dead, Serena. You should think twice before going back to Rome."

She couldn't look at him. At either of them. She focused on bringing the Otter down for a safe landing off the waters of Gaza.

Conrad, however, was already on his phone. "Andros, it's me."

She could hear the voice on the other end shout, "Mother of God! Where are you?"

Conrad glanced at her while he talked. "I'm a few miles off the coast of Gaza. I need to get in."

"Why?" asked Andros.

Conrad said, "You see that explosion at the EU summit?"

"I told you not to come back to Greece, my friend," Andros said.

"Well, at least I got out," Conrad answered. "Now I need a ride into Gaza. You must have ships making runs here."

She couldn't make out what Andros was saying.

"Jaffa's no good," Conrad said. "Gaza. You must know someone in these waters. Someone who can meet us and take us ashore. Someone you can trust." After a minute, Conrad said, "Fine."

"Well?" she asked him when he hung up.

"Andros says he has just the man for the job. He'll meet us one kilometer due west of the breakwater at the beach north of the port."

Two hours after they splashed down, the twelve-year-old Palestinian shipowner Andros had promised finally arrived in his yellow wooden sardine boat and brought them ashore. His white T-shirt said: TODAY GAZA…TOMORROW THE WEST BANK AND JERUSALEM.

The catering truck pulled up behind Ohel Yitzhak, or the Tent of Isaac, synagogue in the Muslim quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. General Gellar stepped out in a caterer's uniform, glanced both ways, and then gave the signal. The caterers brought out three food cases, each containing one of Solomon's three globes, and wheeled the cases on carts into the kitchen.

The elegant synagogue had been blown up by the Jordanian army in 1948. After Israel captured the Old City in the 1967 Middle East War and annexed East Jerusalem, it was finally rebuilt and rededicated in 2008. One particular modification was a secret underground passage that connected the synagogue to the Temple Mount.

The passageway was supposed to be part of a large underground complex attesting to Jewish heritage in the contested city. It was funded by the semi-governmental organization known as the Western Wall Heritage Foundation, which had signed an agreement with Jewish-American donors to maintain the Ohel Yitzhak synagogue and the areas beneath it. Those donors had been active for decades in settling ultra-nationalist Jews in Arab areas of Jerusalem.

But General Gellar, who was on the board of the foundation, had never shared his purpose for the new passageway with his donors or submitted the final plans to the Israel Antiquities Authority for approval.

The passageway linked the synagogue with the Western Wall tunnels in the Jewish quarter. And those tunnels beneath the Western Wall in turn linked to a more ancient network unknown to either Muslims or Jews. As such, it violated Israel's promise to stop digging within the Al-Aqsa compound. After all, the last time an Israeli prime minister had opened an archaeological tunnel near the holy sites, more than eighty people had been killed in three days of Palestinian riots.

Gellar could only imagine the reaction in a few short hours when the scourge of the Temple Mount would be wiped clean by a pillar of fire that would reveal the power of the one true God.

Israeli troops armed with assault rifles guarded the Via Dolorosa, or the Way of Sorrows, as thousands of Christian pilgrims from around the world crowded the narrow cobblestone streets of Jerusalem's walled Old City for the traditional Good Friday procession. Some Christians even carried large wooden crosses on their shoulders along the route that Jesus was believed to have taken to His crucifixion.

Ridiculous, thought Midas, watching from the curb. He turned to Vadim, standing beside him, and said, "With the beating you've taken, you look like you could be one of the actors here."

Vadim said nothing.

"At least you're still alive." Midas looked at his BlackBerry. "It appears the Israeli coast guard found an Otter seaplane four kilometers off the coast of Gaza this morning with a dead priest inside. Bullet to the head. The Israelis say it was drug smuggling gone bad. The local rabble-rousing Catholic bishop in Gaza City says it was the trigger-happy Israeli coast guard. I say it was Yeats."

The Good Friday procession ended at the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, where tradition said Jesus was crucified and His body laid in a tomb. It was there, on Easter Sunday, that Christians would celebrate His resurrection.

Or so they believed.

The thought that the world would change in minutes, and that there was little Conrad Yeats could do about it, prompted a smile to replace Roman Midas's impatient expression as he and Vadim made their way out the Damascus Gate.

They followed the north wall of the Old City toward Herod's Gate and found an iron gate at the base of the wall. It was the cave entrance to Solomon's Quarries, a huge subterranean cavern that extended beneath the city in the direction of the Temple Mount. Inside the quarries was a secret entrance to the Temple Mount, where General Gellar would meet them.

Midas looked at his watch. It was two-thirty p.m. The first in a series of gates was about to open before him.

The cave was an official tourist site, open to the public, and a couple of Israeli policemen were outside the entrance. But today, by design, it was sealed off for a private event. It was a semiannual ceremony hosted by the Grand Lodge of the State of Israel for the benefit of Masons visiting Jerusalem during Holy Week. Non-Masons were not allowed, which kept the Good Friday crowds away.

Midas and Vadim showed the policemen their identification cards issued by the Supreme Grand Royal Arch Chapter of Israel and were allowed to step into the cave.

Midas followed a well-lit path for a hundred yards as the floor sloped down about thirty feet and opened into a cavern the size of an American football field. It was known as Freemasons' Hall, and the Masonic ceremony that Midas had hoped to avoid was under way in Hebrew and English. Twenty older gentlemen of various nationalities stood in their Masonic aprons as the Mark Master degree ceremony recounted the tale of an irregular rejected stone hewn from these very quarries that had turned out to be the capstone of the entrance to the temple.

But Midas already knew that. Ancient tradition said that the stones for King Solomon's First Temple were quarried here. The cavern was especially rich in white Melekeh, or royal, limestone, used in all the royal buildings. Some caves had been created by water erosion, but most had been cut by Solomon's masons.