Andy McDermott - The Hunt For Atlantis

“Seventy-three!” they both cried simultaneously.

“Like the number of statues?” Chase asked, frowning as though he now had a new pain inside his head to add to all his other aches.

“Yes! Of course! That’s why Plato said there were a hundred! It was a misinterpretation of the Atlantean numerical system over the centuries. In their system, it’s the equivalent of one hundred, when the third digit comes in-but it’s not decimal or base eight. It’s a completely unique system.”

“But Qobras won’t know that,” Kari pointed out. “Which means that when he converts the latitudinal figures from the map into modern figures, they won’t be accurate.”

Nina brought the map into her mind’s eye. “No, they’ll be way off! They thought that the circumflex on its own was nine, and a circumflex plus a tick was ten. But a circumflex plus a tick really equals nine. Their figures are wrong-they’re one off! They thought the Cape of Good Hope was at latitude fifteen south-it’s not, it’s at latitude fourteen ! So they should have divided the thirty-five degrees difference by seven Atlantean units, not eight, which means one Atlantean unit is five degrees. Atlantis is seven units north of the Amazon, and seven times five is-”

Chase laughed. “Even I can manage that! Thirty-five degrees north.”

“Plus one degree to account for the Amazon delta’s latitude above the equator,” Kari added. “So Atlantis is at thirty-six degrees north-which is in the Gulf of Cádiz! You were right!”

“They’re hundreds of miles off course!” Nina exclaimed, unable to hold in her excitement. “We can find it first; we can still beat them!”

Castille finished treating the wounded Indian. “All that is well and good, but I have a suggestion-before we start congratulating ourselves, can we at least get out of the jungle?”

“The satphone’s in my rucksack, Hugo,” said Chase, sounding tired. “Chuck it over and I’ll call the cavalry.”

“Ai, merveilleux,” Castille complained as he found the pack. “Another helicopter.”

Nina looked up at the circle of Indians still watching her. “What are we going to do about the tribe? Never mind the temple, their homes have been trashed because of us. They’re going to need help.”

“I can take care of that,” said di Salvo. “As a representative of the Brazilian government, I can say that the tribe has been officially located and contacted, eh? That means they are now protected.”

“Not quite the contact we were hoping for,” Nina observed. “They killed Hamilton, remember?”

“At least they didn’t kill us too,” Chase reminded her as Castille handed him the satellite phone.

“I can make sure they get whatever they need,” Kari said. “The Frost Foundation has some influence with the Brazilian government; we’ve provided aid in the past. We can make sure they survive. After all, they’re quite possibly the only direct descendants of the Atlanteans. A DNA analysis could be fascinating…” She stared into the darkness at the temple.

Di Salvo explained the situation as best he could to the Indians. Some of them, particularly the elders, looked extremely unhappy. “They’re worried that if more outsiders come, they’ll try to raid the temple,” he told Kari.

“Raid it of what?” Chase asked sarcastically, looking up from his phone call. “Helicopter parts? There’s nothing left to steal!”

“No, they’re right,” said Nina. “Even if a large part of it’s destroyed, there’s still a lot of gold in there.”

“I can arrange for security,” Kari said. “The Foundation has reliable people who aren’t motivated by money-they can protect the tribe while they provide aid. And I think it’s best if the knowledge of exactly what the temple contains remains our secret, don’t you?”

“I didn’t see any gold,” commented Chase with exaggerated innocence as he finished the call. “All I saw were crushy things and crocs with big teeth and a puzzle we couldn’t work out the answer to.”

“Oh, it was forty, by the way,” Nina told him casually, leaving him open-mouthed. “Forty lead pellets. Now that I understand the numerical system, it was easy.”

“You’re joking, right?” he asked. Nina just gave him a knowing smile in reply. “Okay… Anyway, they’re sending the chopper for us. It’ll be a couple of hours, though-even with a GPS fix, they still have to find us in the dark.”

“Will Agnaldo be all right for that long?” Nina asked Castille. “Don’t we need to get him to a hospital?”

“Don’t worry about me,” di Salvo told her sleepily. “It’s not the first time I’ve been shot.”

“He’s stable,” Castille said. “I’ll do what I can to help the other Indians while we’re waiting.”

Kari went to Chase and took the phone. “I’ll call my father and let him know what’s happened so that he can make all the arrangements with the Brazilians. And then…” she came back to Nina, squatting next to her, “we need to get you to a map. We may have lost the information in this temple, but we can still get to Atlantis before Qobras. The hunt is still on.”

Gibraltar

Chase examined the chart covering the table in the hotel suite, running his finger along the line marking thirty-six degrees north. “That’s a lot of sea to cover.”

“Fortunately, we don’t have to,” said Kari. “One of my father’s survey aircraft is already doing a high-resolution synthetic aperture radar survey of that region of the Gulf seabed. If there’s anything buried beneath the sediment, it will show up-even up to twenty meters deep.”

Chase raised an eyebrow. “And if it’s over twenty meters deep?”

“Then, as you like to say, we’re fucked.” Nina smiled; it was the first time she’d heard Kari swear, and it sounded incongruous coming from her. “Has there been any more word on Qobras?”

“Oh yeah,” Chase said. “I’ve got a friend in Morocco; she’s been keeping an eye on things.”

“She’s not pregnant as well, is she?” Nina couldn’t resist asking.

“Funny you should say that… She says Qobras’s people set sail from Casablanca yesterday. He’s got a survey ship-not as flashy as yours, Kari, but it had a submersible aboard. You were right, Nina-he’s looking in the wrong place. If he holds course, he’ll be over two hundred miles southwest of us.”

“We’ll just have to hope that he stays there,” said Kari. “I’m still very concerned that his people managed to track us so quickly in Brazil.”

“The Nereid would’ve attracted a lot of attention,” Chase mused, “but yeah, I don’t like it that Starkman came right to us. Could be there was a tracker on the boat, but we’ll never know now.” The burnt-out wreck of the Nereid had been found capsized in the river, hit by an antitank missile fired from one of the helicopters. “So we need to keep the knowledge of where we’re going to as few people as we can. How many crew are there on your ship?”

“Twenty-four,” said Kari, “but they’re all loyal to my father.”

“You absolutely, one hundred percent sure about that?” Kari’s lack of an immediate reply gave Chase his answer. “I’d keep exactly where we’ll be going to just the captain and the navigator until we actually arrive, if I were you. And even then…”

“We’ll just have to wait and see what the radar survey shows,” said Kari, seeming pensive. “Thank you, Mr. Chase.”

“If you need me for anything, I’ll be next door,” he said, before walking out.