The Atlantis Revelation Read Online Free Page A

tolerance to the immediate effects of cyanide. But rest assured, I am experiencing all that you are to a lesser degree, and my doctors inform me that my long-term prognosis is the same as yours. We can’t all live forever, can we?” Midas knew he didn’t have to bother with theatrics in order to kill his enemies, but somehow he felt it was deeply important to show them that he had not only beaten them through his cleverness, but he was also, in his physical and mental evolution, inherently superior to them. “As your blood pressure lowers and heart rate slows, you will soon experience loss of consciousness, respiratory failure, and finally death. But you died a hero to the people. Too bad they are the wrong people.”
    The two were already dead by the time Midas had finished what passed for a eulogy. A minute later, he emerged from the chamber. The cyanide dispersed into the air, and two crewmen coughed. He left them to dispose of the bodies and took an elevator topside to the deck.
    As he stepped into the sunlight and blinked, he reached for the sunglasses in his shirt pocket and glanced at his hand, which trembled slightly. It was the only visible neurological damage caused by his long-term exposure to cyanide poisoning as a child. So far.
    He enjoyed watching death—it made him feel so alive. Like the salt that he now smelled in the sea air. Or the sight of Mercedes sunning topless in her chaise longue that he drank in on the foredeck. He made himself a vodka martini and stretched out next to her golden body, looking forward to tonight’s party on Corfu and letting all thoughts of Nazi submarines and American archaeologists fade away like a bad late-night movie.

4
    C onrad Yeats stared at the skull of SS General Ludwig von Berg inside his suite at the Andros Palace Hotel in Corfu town overlooking Garitsa Bay. The balcony doors were open wide, and a gentle early-evening breeze blew in, carrying with it music from the town green below.
    He took another swig from his bottle of seven-star Metaxa brandy. His leg smarted from the harpoon dart, and his mind still reeled from the events of the morning: the Flammenschwert, the loss of Stavros and the crew, and the image of Serena Serghetti filling what he’d thought were his dying moments.
    There was a knock at the door. Conrad put down his Metaxa, picked up a 9mm Glock from under the sofa pillow next to him, and stood up. He moved to the door and looked through the peephole.
    It was Andros. Conrad opened the door, and his friend walked in. Two big security types with earpieces and shoulder holsters were posted outside.
    “We have a problem,” said Andros, closing the door behind him.
    Chris Andros III, barely thirty, was always worried. A billionaire shipping heir, Andros had squandered several years after Harvard Business School dating American starlets and hotel heiresses from Paris Hilton to Ivanka Trump. Now a consummate international businessman, he was bent on making up for lost time and owned the Andros Palace Hotel, along with a string of high-end boutique hotels around the Mediterranean and the Middle East. It was Andros who had helped Conrad find the Nausicaa. Andros claimed the sub was named after his grandmother, who, as a young nurse in Nazi-occupied Greece, had been forced to help the Baron of the Black Order recover from his gunshot wound to the head.
    “Let me guess,” Conrad said. “That superyacht I saw belongs to Sir Roman Midas, and your friends at the airstrip have no idea what was on that private jet of his that took off today or where it was going.”
    Andros nodded and saw the laptop computer Conrad had used for his research sitting at the bar, its screen filled with news and images of Midas. He seemed about to say something else when he saw the skull of SS General Ludwig von Berg on the table. “That’s him?”
    “Silver plate and all.”
    Andros walked over and studied the skull and its metallic dome. He made the sign of the cross. “I