The Hunt For Atlantis by Andy McDermott

Author:Andy McDermott [McDermott, Andy]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller

Chase checked his watch. “We’ve only got eighteen minutes left.”

“Then we need to keep moving,” said Kari. She took out the sextant arm. “Find where this needs to go.”

“Maybe we could just leave it here and pretend we put it back,” Nina said, not entirely joking.

“I think they might check,” replied Chase sarcastically.

“Well, it was a thought… Oh.”

They had reached the end of the passage.

Chase lifted the flashlight. Even its bright beam was almost lost in the huge room beyond.

“The Temple of Poseidon,” Nina whispered.

Chase stared in awe. “Bloody hell.”

By Nina’s estimate, the great chamber was two hundred feet long, half the length of the entire building, and nearly as wide. The vaulted stone ceiling, wreathed with gold and silver, rose like a cathedral roof, supported along its length by buttresses at the sides of the vast room. In each alcovelike space between the buttresses was a statue, glinting with the unmistakable color of gold. There were dozens of them, ranks of unimaginable riches.

But they were nothing compared to what had seized the attention of the three explorers. At the far end of the chamber, stretching to the very highest point of the ceiling nearly sixty feet above, was another statue.

Poseidon.

“My God,” said Nina as she walked towards it, any concerns about traps completely banished from her mind. “It’s just as Plato described it…”

“There was the god himself standing in a chariot, the charioteer of six winged horses, and of such a size that he touched the roof of the building with his head,’” recited Kari alongside her.

“You’d get a few quid for that on eBay,” Chase remarked.

“Those must be the hundred Nereids,” said Kari, ignoring him and pointing at a circle of much smaller statues around Poseidon’s chariot.

“Doesn’t look like a hundred to me,” Chase said as they headed for the giant statue.

“I bet there’s sixty-four of them,” said Nina. “In base eight, that would be the number as important as a hundred in base ten. Plato was using a word translated from a different numerical system, but the actual number it represented was different-”

“I count seventy-three,” interrupted Kari.

“What? Seventy-three?” Nina snapped incredulously. “What the hell kind of system would use seventy-three as an important number?”

“Nina? Seriously? We don’t care,” said Chase. “We’re here-now let’s do what we’ve got to do before we all get killed, okay?”

“Okay,” Nina pouted. “But it still doesn’t make any sense…”

Behind the massive statue was an opening leading to a flight of stairs. They ascended to find another chamber, smaller than the main temple, but even more elaborate-and extravagant. Although it was lower, the ceiling was vaulted to match the temple outside. But where that had been made from stone, this was something else.

“Ivory,” said Kari as Chase directed the torch upwards. She frowned. “According to Plato, the roof of the entire temple was meant to be lined with ivory…”

“This isn’t the Temple of Poseidon,” said Nina. “It’s a replica, a copy. The Atlanteans tried to re-create the citadel of Atlantis in their new home.

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