The Atlantis Revelation Read Online Free Page B

cannot tell you how many nightmares this baron gave me growing up. My parents told me stories about what happened to those who crossed the baron—or children who didn’t listen to their parents. Being a naughty boy myself, I had nightmares of his skull floating in the air and hounding me to Hades.”
    Conrad said, “I didn’t find a metal briefcase with any papers.”
    “Of course you wouldn’t,” Andros said. “Von Berg always liked to say—”
    “‘It’s all in my head,’” Conrad said, completing the sentence. “I know. But what, exactly?”
    Andros shrugged. “At least you confirmed he’s dead.”
    “Along with Stavros and the rest of the crew of your boat,” Conrad said. “All at the hands of Sir Roman Midas. So now we plot revenge. Isn’t that what you Greeks do?”
    A cloud formed over Andros’s face. “I’m but a humble billionaire, my friend, and barely that. Roman Midas is that many times over, and far more powerful. Especially if he has this weapon you say he took from the Nausicaa . Look outside.” He walked out to the open balcony.
    “I saw it,” said Conrad, limping over with the Metaxa and looking out at Garitsa Bay.
    To their right the sun was setting behind the old town, its colonnaded houses dating back to the island’s days under British rule. To their left the stars were rising above the old Venetian fortifications.
    “Look closely,” said Andros.
    Conrad set the bottle of Metaxa on the balustrade and picked up a pair of Zeiss binoculars. Beyond the stone fortifications of the Old Fort, the superyacht Midas was anchored in the bay, with small boats ferrying well-dressed men and barely dressed women to and from shore.
    “Looks like he’s celebrating his catch of the day,” Conrad said. “Any way I can get a closer look?”
    “Not a chance. Greek coast guard boats are maintaining a perimeter. And the island is crawling with security.”
    “Why’s that?” Conrad swept the deck with the glasses and noticed the chopper had returned.
    Andros said, “The Bilderberg Group is holding their annual conference at the Achillion.”
    Conrad looked at the ornate palace atop a hill opposite the bay.
    “Ironically, it was Baron von Berg’s headquarters during the war,” Andros told him. “Built by the empress of Austria and later bought by Kaiser Wilhelm II of Bavaria as a winter retreat. It’s a fanciful place, with whimsical gardens and statues of Greek gods all over the place. I deflowered many a girl there myself.”
    “What’s the structure next to the palace?”
    “The House of the Knights,” Andros said. “The kaiser built it to house his battalions. There are nice stables, too, for the kaiser’s horses. For all its romance, the Achillion has a long history of military staging. It was strafed by Allied planes in 1943 during the baron’s stay and then turned into a hospital after the war. Later, it became a casino featured in a James Bond movie.”
    “And now?”
    “It’s a museum, used on occasion as a spectacular backdrop for meetings of the G7 nations, the European Union, and apparently, the Bilderberg Group.”
    The Bilderbergers. Conrad knew a few of them, including his late father, who had attended a couple of the conferences back in the 1990s when he was acting head of the Pentagon’s DARPA research and development agency.
    Officially, the Bilderberg Group brought together European and American royalty in the form of heads of state, central banks, and multinational corporations to freely discuss the events of the day away from the glare of the press. Unofficially, conspiracy buffs suspected the Bilderbergers set the world’s agenda, orchestrating wars and global financial panics at will to advance some totalitarian one-world government that would arise from the ashes.
    “I’m thinking Midas is a member of the Alignment,” Conrad told Andros.
    Andros looked at Conrad as if he were talking about Atlantis, which in a way he was, as the Alignment considered