Dateline: Atlantis by Lynn Voedisch Page A

nearly exploded. I had to go over and double-check everything. If the cops don’t hate me by now…”
    He lightly drops a fist onto his desk. Files, startled, slip out of place. Amaryllis pats his sinking shoulder and promises she owes him one. Hagren nods and slides down into his chair. He looks as if he’ll be shuffling over to Fitzgerald’s after work for a good belt of scotch.
    Wright can be a ball breaker if he wants something with enough intensity. Because of Amaryllis, Hagren got the worst of it.
    â€œSo what are we supposed to do?” she asks, ashamed but still in need of information.
    â€œThe cops have nothing for us. Nothing. We just have to sit tight. If it’s a standard kidnapping, someone will contact us for ransom. If it’s just random violence, well…” He doesn’t finish. He doesn’t need to.
    â€œI’m sure it’s a kidnapping. They deliberately stole the photographs. They stole mine, too.”
    â€œI know, but the cops really don’t care. They’re bewildered and that usually means nothing gets done. The best we can hope for is that this becomes a federal case and that involves crossing state lines. Or national boundaries. Then it stops being a local crime and the feds take over.”
    Amaryllis casts him a worried look and promises she won’t make any more trouble for him. Hagren nods and stares off into space. She retreats to her own department down the hall.
    Slipping back to her desk, with a coy smile directed at Barney, she tries to look as busy as possible. That silly quitting idea is long forgotten, she figures. She reaches for her mail and starts extracting useless public-relations sheets. They fly into the garbage as soon as she gives the header a cursory glance. Junk, garbage, wait—this goes to Bill Epstein, city news department. As the papers fill the round file, she mulls over her next plan of action. No great ideas are coming to her.
    A figure looms by the desk and she spots Barney sending semaphore in the distance. She lifts her head. Wright is standing almost on top of her, and he’s out of his element. The features staff stops in mid-stride. Phones go silent. The clickety-click of typing ceases. Smiles droop. The rest of the workers pull away, like waves retreating from a beach. Wright never comes into the features office.
    â€œAmy, we’ve got to talk,” he says. “They found him. Alive. Maybe our story is still good.” Her pulse races for the third time this morning.

CHAPTER FOUR: ENOCH AWAKES

    The sea spray spits into Landon Hewitt’s face with pitiless hostility. He had only gone up to the prow of this North Atlantic fishing vessel to get a small peek at the boat’s progress. For this imposition, for daring to doubt the craft, he gets a blast of brine, icy cold and sticking to his stubbly, graying beard.
    â€œDamn weather,” he mumbles as he staggers backward, feeling the waves shift his balance sideways, then his knees buckle as the deck shoots upward. His sea legs will take a while to develop, but he can tell the Elaine’s crew is snickering up their sleeves at the sight—a slightly balding academic, dressed in a skimpy pea coat and jeans, trying desperately to fit in with the salty dogs. Hewitt grabs a railing and remembers the acupressure bands he wears on his wrists. At least he won’t be losing half his dinner, the way he did on his last trip to the Azores.
    The Azores. The previous time he had to journey out here to this godforsaken bit of real estate in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, some nut case had found “evidence” of prehistoric civilization. It was supposed to be a clever, well-constructed road that dove from mountaintop to below the water’s edge. It held proof, the Atlantis wacko said, that a flood had covered much of the Azores’ true history. Hewitt and his archaeology students sailed out from England to put this nonsense to