The Atlantis Revelation: A Thriller Read online

  “Your Eminence,” he said. “Welcome back.”

  Serena, extremely uncomfortable, looked down at the top of the monk’s bowed head and withdrew her hand from his clasp. The Church didn’t allow female priests, let alone female cardinals. But as the head of Dominus Dei, she was automatically considered a “secret cardinal” appointed by the pope. A secret cardinal to hide the secrets of the Church. Not that the current pontiff, as traditional as they came, would ever acknowledge her as such. But to her amazement, the Vatican did secretly acknowledge the rank of her office, if not the officeholder. Her frighteningly eager underlings, hoping to gain the office for themselves someday, took every advantage to freely address her as such.

  “Thank you, Brother Lorenzo. You can call me Sister Serghetti.”

  Lorenzo rose to his feet, but his covetous gaze was fixed on the medallion dangling from her neck. “Yes, Sister Serghetti.”

  As she had explained to Midas, legend had it that the ancient Roman coin in the center of the medallion was the very Tribute Penny Jesus had held up when He told His followers that they should “render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s and unto God what is God’s.” It had been passed down through the ages from one leader of the Dei to the next. Some argued that it represented power greater than the papacy. Which no doubt explained Lorenzo’s disturbing fascination with it.

  Serena broke Lorenzo’s trance with an order: “The globes, Lorenzo.”

  “This way, Sister Serghetti.”

  She followed Lorenzo to the small alcove showcasing the globes, one displaying the surface of the earth, the other displaying the heavens. Each sphere was eighteen inches in diameter and resembled the works of the Dutch master cartographer Willem Bleau’s studio in the sixteenth century. But these had been constructed thousands of years earlier, although her attempts to date them proved inconclusive.

  Both Church and Templar tradition suggested the globes once rested atop the twin columns that stood at the entrance of King Solomon’s Temple. But the Knights Templar believed the globes themselves were crafted far earlier. While Noah was building his ark, other children of Lamech were engraving the globes with the lost knowledge of Atlantis and the antediluvian world so that knowledge would survive the coming destruction of the Flood. The globes, the Templars believed, contained or pointed to some pre-Genesis revelation.

  The only legend that Serena had been able to authenticate with any degree of certainty, however, was that the globes had been unearthed beneath the Temple Mount in Jerusalem by the Knights Templar.

  Centuries later, the Masons took them to the New World and buried them under what would become Washington, D.C. That was where they rested until the twenty-first century, when Conrad Yeats dug them up before the Alignment could.

  The globes apparently worked together like some kind of astronomical clock in a manner that Serena had yet to figure out. But she was positive it involved a secret code or alignment between a constellation on the celestial globe and a landmark on the terrestrial globe. After all, Conrad’s knowledge that Washington, D.C., was aligned to the constellation of Virgo had led him to the location of the globes. So it made sense to Serena that the alignment of the globes themselves led to an even greater revelation—a revelation that for centuries had eluded the Church, the Knights Templar, the Masons, the Americans, and everybody else.

  Everybody, that is, except the Alignment, which had ordered her to deliver the Templar globes next week to the meeting of the Council of Thirty on the island of Rhodes, all under the guise of the European summit on the fate of Jerusalem.

  Serena ran her hand over the smooth contours of the continents on the terrestrial globe, marveling at its three-dimensional, holographic look. “Now tell me what you discovered with the terrestrial globe,” she said to Lorenzo.

  “The terrestrial sphere is full of hidden gear wheels that, in turn, drive the most unique surface dials I’ve ever seen on an ancient astronomical clock.”

  “What dials?”

  “The northern and southern hemispheres of the terrestrial globe are really dials,” he said. “Inside the mechanism are gear trains that drive the dials. The gear trains are driven by a crank that is inserted into a tiny hole at the bottom in Antarctica.”

  She looked closely at the tiny hole in the ancient landmass of East Antarctica. It was in the shape of a pentagon. “How could I have missed it?”

  “It is rather small.” Lorenzo pulled out a tiny S-lever that he had reproduced, inserted it into the hole, and began to crank it. “It works like a keylock, moving the hidden gears within the shell.”

  To Serena’s amazement, the surface of the terrestrial globe began to change before her eyes like some kind of high-definition animation. The continents didn’t move, but the contours within them shimmered for a moment and locked into place. “What happened?” she demanded.

  “This,” said Lorenzo, removing the lever and inserting a penlight into the hole. Three pinpricks of light burst forth from the terrestrial globe in the locations of Antarctica, Washington, D.C., and Jerusalem.

  “It’s a triangle,” Serena said decisively. “Just like the U.S. Capitol, the White House, and the Washington Monument. Those monuments lined up with the constellations of Boötes, Leo, and Virgo. Likewise, these three capital cities from the terrestrial globe should line up with three constellations on the celestial globe.”

  “The problem, of course, is that the real celestial globe is still with the Americans,” Lorenzo reminded her. “And you’ve never seen it with your own eyes, only the terrestrial globe you stole from Dr. Yeats. He’s the only person alive who has seen both globes, which puts us at a terrible disadvantage. The faux globe I’ve created over here is merely my attempt to mirror in astral terms the mapping I’ve gleaned from the terrestrial globe.”

  All true, unfortunately, Serena thought. Her plan had been to procure the genuine celestial globe from Marshall Packard in exchange for her intelligence on Russian mining operations in the Arctic. But that plan had gone up in flames on Corfu. So she had been forced to resort to Plan B.

  “I did the best I could,” Lorenzo explained weakly as he showed her the two globes side by side—the forged celestial globe and the genuine terrestrial globe.

  “Oh, dear,” she said, unable to hide her disappointment. The celestial knockoff looked markedly inferior next to the terrestrial globe.

  “Our metallurgists, meanwhile, tell me that they’ve never seen anything like the copper-bronze ore from which the original globes were cast,” Lorenzo said. “What you see is their best attempt to match its appearance.”

  Serena tried to suppress her alarm. They had but seventy-two hours to fix this disaster, and there were no second chances with the Alignment. “Give me the penlight, Lorenzo.”

  Lorenzo handed it to her, and she inserted it in the tiny hole at the bottom of the forged celestial globe. Three pinpricks of light appeared in the constellations of Orion, Virgo, and Aries: the buckle star Alnilam on Orion’s Belt, the alpha star Spica in Virgo, and the brightest star, Alpha Arietis, in Aries.

  “I selected Orion and Virgo based on what you told me about Antarctica and D.C. And I selected Aries for Jerusalem because Aries is the cosmic Lamb and Jerusalem is where the globes are said to originate.”

  “I can accept that. Now we have to hope the Alignment will accept the forgery as the real thing.” She looked carefully at Lorenzo’s creation. “If we can’t bring our celestial globe up to the quality of the terrestrial globe, then maybe we can degrade the look of the terrestrial globe without damaging it. Maybe dull it down with a coat of something or other.”

  “It still won’t hold up to Alignment scrutiny,” Lorenzo said.

  “Of course it won’t,” she snapped. “I just need it to pass a quick visual and let the Alignment test the terrestrial globe first.”

  “How are you going to get them to do that?”

  She didn’t have an answer yet, and she didn’t want to indulge Lorenzo’s anxiety with an att
empt. The best she could do was fool the Alignment long enough for her to unmask the rest of the Thirty. The American Twelve had been unmasked by Conrad. The remaining eighteen members were European, including her as the head of the Dei. That left seventeen more to unmask at the council meeting on Rhodes.

  “That’s my problem, Lorenzo. Yours is to prepare these globes for their journey to Rhodes. You need to start working with the Greeks to get the globes through security at the EU summit. We’re also going to need two custom shell crates with insulated cavities for transport.”

  Lorenzo nodded and left without another word, closing the heavy ornate oak door behind him.

  18

  GSTAAD, SWITZERLAND

  It was a five-hour drive from Zurich Airport to the chic ski village of Gstaad. The A1 autobahn took Conrad and his rented BMW through the Swiss capital of Bern. He fought the temptation to drive by Midas’s bank containing the secret safe deposit box of Baron von Berg and instead turned onto the A6 to Thun, where he exited on Route 11 for Gstaad.

  He had one shot to break into that bank, and the only man who could help him was hopefully still holed up in these Alps.

  Conrad arrived just after the runs had closed and the five-star restaurants, bars, and discos were filling up with the fashionably rich of Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East. He parked his car several blocks from Sultan’s Palace and walked the rest of the way. He had exchanged plates with another BMW at a restaurant stop outside Zurich while the owner was inside eating. All the same, it would be nice to have the car buried under snow by morning.

  Sultan’s Palace was the grande dame of Gstaad, a multi-spired castle combining the intimacy of Aspen’s Little Nell with the majesty of St. Mortiz’s Badrutt’s Palace. Besides its breathtaking views of mountains and crystalline lakes, it boasted five restaurants, three bars, a world-renowned spa, and the members-only Sultan’s Club, infamous across the Alps for its live music performances, dancing, and endless revelry with no curfew. It was, in other words, the very embodiment of its owner, Abdil Zawas, the man Conrad had come to see.

  Conrad walked a red “flying carpet” across a frozen moat and through a regal gate into the palace’s elegant lobby. At the front desk, he asked for the general manager. While he waited, he looked around at the guests sharing drinks by the fireplaces.

  The hotel certainly attracted an unusual quotient of celebrities and royals, he thought, starting with Abdil himself. His mother’s side of the family traced itself to Egypt’s deposed monarchy, the house of Mohamed Ali Pasha. His father’s side of the family, however, had made Abdil first cousin to the late, great Egyptian air force colonel Ali Zawas, whose death Abdil at one time blamed on Conrad.

  Come to think of it, Conrad recalled, at some point or other Abdil may have issued a fatwa against him. He hoped Abdil had remembered to rescind it after Conrad helped him out with the design of the Atlantis Palm Dubai resort and theme park. It would be just like Abdil to have forgotten that all was forgiven.

  “Guten Abend, herr,” said a man’s voice.

  Conrad turned to see the hotel’s middle-aged general manager looking him up and down. Apparently, the German approved of the ski outfit Conrad had swiped from an unsuspecting doppelgänger back in baggage claim in Zurich.

  “Good evening,” Conrad replied in English. “I’m here to see Abdil.”

  The manager’s eyes narrowed. “You have an appointment?”

  “I don’t need one.”

  The German regarded him dubiously. “And who may I say is calling, herr?”

  “The herr who did this,” Conrad said, and slid the front page of the Berlin daily Die Welt across the desk. He had picked it up in Zurich and now tapped his finger on the photos of the Midas.

  The manager frowned but took the page and said, “A moment, please.” He disappeared into a back office. Conrad could hear the dial tone and clacking of a fax machine. This was followed by a conversation in German that was too quiet for him to make out.

  The hotel manager emerged again, all smiles. “This way, herr,” he said, and escorted Conrad across the lobby to the hotel’s three elevators. “His Highness will see you now.”

  “How high is my friend Abdil these days?” Conrad said.

  The German was not amused. “The Sultan’s Palace rests at an altitude of only thirty-two hundred feet, quite low for the Alps and just right for an undisturbed night’s sleep. But our slopes are over nine thousand feet. So we always remind our guests to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.”

  Conrad said, “I’m sure there will be plenty to drink with Abdil.”

  The doors of the middle elevator opened to reveal two security types, definitely Middle Eastern, with earpieces and bulging shoulder holsters under their expensive-looking suits.

  Conrad glanced at the hotel manager, who gestured to the elevator. “Guten Abend, herr.”

  Conrad stepped inside. The doors closed, and one of the security guards slid a special card key into a slot to unlock access to the hotel’s penthouse floor. He pushed a series of buttons in combination, and the elevator began its ascent to the very top of the palace.

  The doors opened to reveal a spectacular two-story stone-and-glass penthouse. The last rays of sunset streamed in through the atrium windows between rock walls with waterfalls. The room’s size dwarfed that of the hotel lobby, and the clusters of furniture sets, fireplaces, and marble spas were populated with women in various stages of undress.

  A voice called brightly from above: “Ah, the enemy of my enemy!”

  “Is your friend,” Conrad said, glancing up to see Abdil, with the wild mane of a black stallion, waving from the top of the sweeping marble staircase.

  The big Egyptian was in his trademark royal bathrobe and boxers, and as he descended the steps with much fanfare, Conrad could see the pearl handle of a Colt pistol tucked inside his waistband. Abdil fancied himself Lawrence of Arabia without the horses and dung, preferring to plot his next moves from the comforts of his pleasure palaces across the globe. He preferred Switzerland to Egypt in order to better tap the global financial markets—and to avoid extradition for his off-balance-sheet activities.

  “Welcome, my friend,” Abdil said and gave Conrad a kiss on each cheek. “Come to my private dining room.”

  A woman appeared on either side and helped Conrad off with his coat. He followed Abdil to a dining room with a spread of food that resembled the brunch buffet at the Four Seasons in Amman, Jordan.

  “Do you know what it’s like to build the world’s greatest yacht only to have a Russian thug build one but a meter longer?” Abdil said, taking a seat. “I might as well have been circumcised by the Jews.”

  “Well, you’re the…longest on the seas once more,” Conrad said. He was tempted to add that it all would be for naught if Abdil kept walking around with a Colt jostling in his boxers. “So I was hoping you could do me a favor.”

  “Favor?” Abdil’s eyes lit up. Conrad liked that Abdil never resented doing favors; he always trusted his negotiating skills to extract something more valuable in return. “Please tell me how I can help my friend.”

  “Midas owns something you were once interested in,” Conrad said. “A bank in Bern called Gilbert et Clie.”

  Abdil nodded. “The bank of Nazis, Arabs, and other assorted terrorists,” he recited sarcastically. “Slander, I tell you.”

  For several years, Abdil had been on the U.S. global terrorist watch list at the behest of the Saudis, who claimed that Abdil posed a greater threat to the House of Saud than Osama bin Laden. Conrad knew Abdil was no Muslim fanatic, much less a terrorist. Why blow yourself up for seventy-two virgins when you already had them at your beck and call?

  Abdil’s “big idea” had been to flood the Middle East with mobile phones. While the ayatollahs blew hot air in mosques and on state television, Arab boys and girls prohibited from even acknowledging the opposite sex in public could now text each other behind the backs of their parents. Abdil believed mobile netwo
rks would effectively multiply the “disruptive force” of American popular culture—the more profane and nonsensical, the better—and break the centuries-old lock of Islam’s paternalistic society, upending the despots in the region with a true democratic revolution. Abdil was indeed an Arab radical of a different kind.

  What had soured Abdil and the Americans on each other was the CIA’s interference in his operations with cellular network carriers. The Americans wanted to operate or at least control the networks to better monitor voice and text conversations. Abdil couldn’t get them to understand that this wasn’t at all the point and that they were behaving no better than the despots they hoped to depose. The funds at the heart of Abdil’s great Arabian youth mobilization network, held at the bank of Gilbert et Clie in Bern, were frozen. What kind of world was it, Abdil had complained, where you could own your own bank and yet not tap your own money?

  Conrad looked at the giant lobster tail that had just been placed before him and asked, “Why did you let Midas buy the bank?”

  “Because I saw no upside,” Abdil said as he tore into his own lobster. “The rules of Swiss banking and international terrorism are such that if there were any advantage to one party owning the bank itself, then no other parties would hold their deposits there. No fun at all for me. But you obviously think Midas has some advantage?”

  “There’s a safe deposit box inside the bank that he wants,” Conrad said. “It belonged to an SS general named Ludwig von Berg.”

  “The Baron of the Black Order?” Abdil’s eyes grew wide.

  Conrad nodded. “It’s got a four-character alphabetic combination. Midas doesn’t know the code. I do.”

  “One of the older boxes,” Abdil said, leaning forward. “Is it in the seventeen or eighteen hundred series? It must be if Midas hasn’t attempted to break it open.”

  “Yes.”

  “I thought so!” Abdil smiled. “Von Berg’s box probably has a chemical seal that will break and destroy its contents if the combination is off by a single letter. Ha! How it must pain Midas to hold something in his hands and not be able to open it.” Abdil leaned back in his chair and made a steeple with his fingers, contemplating the situation. “You think you can steal it out from under his nose if I can get you inside the bank.”