The Hunt For Atlantis

“Just keep your story consistent, and your payment will be waiting for you by the time you get back to America. Should you discover that anyone else is trying to follow the path of the Wildes in the future, you’ll inform me at once, of course?”

“It’s what you pay me for,” Jack said sullenly.

A cold smile, then Qobras looked up to watch the helicopter approaching, its navigation lights aglow against the darkening sky.

Five minutes later it departed, leaving behind nothing but bodies.

ONE

New York City

Ten Years Later

Dr. Nina Wilde took a deep breath as she paused at the door, her reflection gazing pensively back at her in the darkened glass. She was dressed more formally than normal, a rarely worn dark blue trouser suit replacing her casual sweatshirts and cargo pants, shoulder-length auburn hair drawn back more severely than her usual loose ponytail. This was a crucial meeting, and even though she knew everyone involved, she still wanted to make as professional an impression as possible. Satisfied that she looked the part and hadn’t accidentally smudged lipstick across her cheeks, she psyched herself up to enter the room, almost unconsciously reaching up to her neck to touch her pendant. Her good-luck charm.

She’d found the sharp-edged, curved fragment of metal, about two inches long and scoured by the abrasive sands of Morocco, twenty years before while on an expedition with her parents when she was eight. At the time, her head full of tales of Atlantis, she’d believed it to be made of orichalcum, the metal described by Plato as one of the defining features of the lost civilization. Now, looked at with a more critical adult eye, she had come to accept that her father was right, that it was nothing more than discolored bronze, a worthless scrap ignored or discarded by whoever had beaten them to the site. But it was definitely man-made-the worn markings on its curved outer edge proved that-and since it was her first genuine find, her parents had eventually, after much persuasion of the typical eight-year-old’s highly repetitive kind, allowed her to keep it.

On returning to the United States, her father made it into a pendant for her. She had decided on the spur of the moment that it would bring her good luck. While that had remained unproven-her academic successes had been entirely down to her own intelligence and hard work, and certainly no lottery wins had been forthcoming-she knew one thing for sure: the one day she had not worn it, accidentally forgetting it in a mad morning rush when staying at a friend’s house during her university entrance exams, was the day her parents died.

Many things about her had changed since then. But one thing that had not was that she never let a day pass without wearing the pendant.

More consciously, she squeezed it again before letting her hand fall. She needed all the luck she could get today.

Steeling herself, she opened the door.

The three professors seated behind the imposing old oak desk looked up as she entered. Professor Hogarth was a portly, affable old man, whose secure tenure and antipathy towards bureaucracy meant he’d been known to approve a funding request simply on the basis of a mildly interesting presentation. Nina hoped hers would be rather more than that.

On the other hand, even the most enthralling presentation in history, concluded with the unveiling of a live dinosaur and the cure for cancer, would do nothing to gain the support of Professor Rothschild. But since the tightlipped, misanthropic old woman couldn’t stand Nina-or any other woman under thirty-she’d already dismissed her as a lost cause.

So that was one “no” and one “maybe.” But at least she could rely on the third professor.

Jonathan Philby was a family friend. He was also the man who had broken the news to her that her parents were dead.

Now everything rested on him, as he not only held the deciding vote but was also the head of the department. Win him over and she had her funding.

Fail, and…

She couldn’t allow herself even to think that way.

“Dr. Wilde,” said Philby. “Good afternoon.”

“Good afternoon,” she replied with a bright smile. At least Hogarth responded well to it, even if Rothschild could barely contain a scowl.

Nina sat on the isolated chair before the panel.

“Well,” Philby said, “we’ve all had a chance to digest the outline of your proposal. It’s quite… unusual, I must say. Not exactly an everyday suggestion for this department.”

“Oh, I thought it was most interesting,” said Hogarth. “Very well thought out, and quite daring too. It makes a pleasant change to see a little challenge to the usual orthodoxy.”

“I’m afraid I don’t share your opinion, Roger,” cut in Rothschild in her clipped, sharp voice. “Ms. Wilde”-not Dr. Wilde, Nina realized. Miserable old bitch-“I was under the impression that your doctorate was in archaeology. Not mythology. And Atlantis is a myth, nothing more.”

“As were Troy, Ubar and the Seven Pagodas of Mahabalipuram-until they were discovered,” Nina shot back. Since Rothschild had obviously already made up her mind, she was going to go down fighting.

Philby nodded. “Then if you’d like to elaborate on your theory?”

“Of course.” Nina connected her travel-worn Apple laptop to the room’s projector. The screen sprang to life with a map covering the Mediterranean Sea and part of the Atlantic to the west.

“Atlantis,” she began, “is one of the most enduring legends in history, but those legends all originate from a very small number of sources-Plato’s dialogues are the best known, of course, but there are references in other ancient cultures to a great power in the Mediterranean region, most notably the stories of the Sea People who attacked and invaded the coastal areas of what are now Morocco, Algeria, Libya and Spain. But most of what we know of Atlantis comes from Plato’s Timaeus and Critias.”

“Both of which are undoubtedly fiction,” cut in Rothschild.

“Which brings me to the first part of my theory,” Nina said, having anticipated the criticism. “Undoubtedly, there are elements of all of Plato’s dialogues-not just Timaeus and Critias-that are fictionalized, to make it easier for him to present his points, in the same way that timelines are condensed and characters combined in modern-day biopics. But Plato wasn’t writing his dialogues as fiction. His other works are accepted as historical documents, so why not the two that mention Atlantis?”

“So you’re saying that everything Plato wrote about Atlantis is completely true?” asked Philby.

“Not quite. I’m saying that he thought it was. But he was told about it by Critias, working from the writings of his grandfather Critias the Elder, who was told about Atlantis as a child by Solon, and he was told about it by Egyptian priests. So what you have is a game of Chinese whispers-well, Hellenic whispers, I suppose”-Hogarth chuckled at the joke-“where there’s inevitably going to be distortion of the original message, like making a copy of a copy of a copy. Now, one of the areas where inaccuracies are most likely to have been introduced over time is in terms of measurements. I mean, there’s an oddity about Critias, which contains almost all of Plato’s detailed descriptions of Atlantis, that is so obvious nobody ever seems to notice it.”

“And what would that be?” Hogarth asked.

“That all the measurements Plato gives of Atlantis are not only neatly rounded off, but are also in Greek units! For example, he says that the plain on which the Atlantean capital stood was three thousand stadia by two