Chapter 2

The head waiter—rotund, sweating, and dressed in a formal white jacket that the heat turned into a damp rag—smoothed the front of it with stubby fingers. He balanced a silver tray on his shoulder as though it were part of his body, never taking his eyes off the crystal pitcher riding on top.

“¿El doctor Bolon quiere agua fría en este calor… a qué hora?” he asked, careful not to slosh a single drop.

Across the poolside bar, the younger man polishing a glass barely looked up. His posture said he had long since stopped being surprised by Dr. Bolon’s demands. He nodded toward the lone figure on the observation platform that cantilevered from the beach house roof, over open water.

“Cuando él la quiera,” the barkeep said, voice lazy with the midday lull. “Todo aquí es de él. ¿Por qué preguntas?”

The waiter gave a helpless shrug, more habit than complaint, and stepped off the shade of the bar into the glare. Upkeep on the estate was always hard work, but it was never unfair work—just endless. If he complained, it was the kind of complaining that belonged to the job, like salt belonged to the sea.

Most of the staff had never seen a gringo like Dr. Mauk Bolon. He made no attempt to dilute their customs; he paid to preserve them. Even their uniforms—pressed Spanish jackets, polished buttons, the whole theatrical colonial flourish—had been his idea, chosen with a patron’s grin. The locals adored him for it. They adored him for a dozen other reasons too.

There were rumors, of course. Rumors that Bolon would run for office, that he would replace half the provincial government with his own people, that he was too popular to remain only a doctor. But he showed no interest in politics, at least not the kind that required speeches and votes. He had a different kind of influence—quiet, expensive, and efficient. He gave the community more than their own officials did, and in doing so he collected enemies who smiled in public and nursed grudges in private.

The Bolon compound—more commonly called the Bolon Clinic—was a state-of-the-art neurological facility. Patients arrived from all over the world, flown to the landing field at the north end of the grounds near the trauma wing. Today, however, no new patients were arriving.

Today the entire compound was on alert.

The beach was closed. Staff had been sent home. Only the doctor’s personal team remained, and even they moved with subdued urgency. The head waiter had plenty to complain about: he and the bartender had been ordered to prepare an evening meal for a dozen people—fine food, expensive wine, and absolute discretion. Dr. Bolon was expecting visitors, and visitors meant problems.

He climbed the spiral wooden stairs, each step creaking softly under his weight, and emerged onto the roof where the lacquered teak planks shone under the sun. The helipad sat empty and pristine. Beyond it, the observation platform extended toward the bay like a finger pointing into the blue.

Bolon stood at its end, leaning over the rail, gaze fixed on the water below with the calm focus of a man reading a page.

A tiger shark glided through the coral heads beneath the platform, sleek and indifferent. It cut a tight arc as it closed on a wounded hogfish, the reef’s colors flashing around it like stained glass.

The estate’s beach house had been built out over the bay, which Bolon owned for sixty miles in either direction. He had personally supervised its construction, insisting on a carbide-steel pillar foundation set to minimize damage to the reef below. The result was less a building than a hovering statement of wealth and intention: the reef remained intact, sheltered, and thriving, a sanctuary that attracted more life each season.

The waiter stepped beside the doctor and placed the crystal pitcher on a simple wooden shelf built into the deck. He drew breath to speak.

The phone on Bolon’s belt vibrated once.

Relieved, the waiter turned immediately and retreated, tray still poised like a shield. Whatever was about to happen on that platform, he wanted no part of it.

Bolon answered on the first ring. He always did. His voice was calm and steady, giving away nothing.

“Bolon.”

The reception was clean, except for a faint, rhythmic hitch—an almost imperceptible click in the line every half second. Not enough to interrupt speech, but obvious to a trained ear. Beneath it, Bolon heard rotors and turbine whine: a helicopter pushing hard through air.

A pause, as if the man on the other end was recalibrating to the doctor’s lack of greeting.

“Ah… Dr. Bolon, sir. Gregor Yodlovsky.” The Russian accent arrived like a signature.

Bolon kept his eyes on the horizon, as though the ocean could whisper the future to him. “Go ahead, Mr. Yodlovsky.”

“I’m four clicks out. Coming in low—under most radar. Are you sure this frequency is secure?”

“Yes,” Bolon said. “It is.”

The phones were paired and synchronized, hopping through a hierarchy of high-band frequencies every five hundred milliseconds—a slice of spectrum reserved for military traffic. The tiny breaks Yodlovsky heard were the handshake, not a flaw.

“Good. Good,” Yodlovsky laughed softly, relief disguised as bravado. “I received your deposit in Frankfurt. I decided to wait to talk to you before liquidating all the stock.”

Bolon’s eyebrows rose. A rare smile touched his mouth and vanished as quickly as it appeared.

“A wise move, Mr. Yodlovsky. A very wise move.”

Minutes later, the helicopter broke the horizon at the precise point Bolon had been watching. He crossed his arms and studied the approach as if evaluating a surgical instrument.

It came in low and fast: a Kamov Ka-52 “Hokum,” compact and predatory, bristling with hardpoints and stub-winged menace. The rotor wash began to ruffle the surface of the bay. Salt spray jumped against the platform’s railing.

The aircraft pulled up at the last moment, skimming within a breath of the structure, then slid onto the rooftop pad with effortless control. The turbines wound down. Men in black fatigues leapt out and moved with rehearsed speed, unloading heavy canvas bags and dragging them toward the rooftop access.

Bolon walked to meet them.

“Hello, sir.” Yodlovsky extended a heavily muscled arm.

Bolon was not a large man, but he was not the sort of paper-thin bureaucrat Yodlovsky usually dealt with at this level. His handshake was firm, his posture relaxed, his eyes sharp behind the sunglasses.

“Mr. Yodlovsky. A pleasure,” Bolon said. “If you and your men will follow me, I’ll show you your quarters. Then we proceed to the conference room for a briefing.”

Bolon bent, seized one of the bags—barrel-shaped, dense, and unmistakably not full of clothing—and lifted it as though it weighed nothing. Yodlovsky barked a command to his five men and fell in behind the doctor, watching in silence. He knew that bag’s weight. One of his soldiers would have strained to carry it alone.

They passed the guest quarters without stopping, leaving two bags behind with quick efficiency. Then Bolon opened ornate mahogany double doors and led them into a long conference chamber. The men set their equipment on an expansive table as if laying offerings before an altar.

Bolon checked the contents quickly. Trust mattered, but one mistake could ruin everything.

“This is impressive, Mr. Yodlovsky,” he said at last. “The Kremlin kept the best equipment for itself.”

Yodlovsky shifted, pride and caution warring on his face. “Yes, sir. The breakaway republics have depots, but we… centralized substantially. Despite the chaos.”

Bolon removed his sunglasses and slipped them into his breast pocket. His gaze swept the room, taking in each man’s stance, each subtle mark of experience. Then he spoke in Russian, casually, as if the question were only academic.

“I assume you’ve had to repatriate the Russian mafia as well.”

The temperature in the room changed. Yodlovsky’s face hardened. His men adjusted their weight—an almost invisible tightening of bodies that had learned to expect violence without warning.

Yodlovsky replied in thick, controlled Russian. “I assure you, Mr. Bolon, there is a new nationalism in Russia. We are eradicating our crime problems… in one way or another.”

Bolon held his gaze for a few seconds, reading him. Nationalism was a better ally than greed for what Bolon intended. Greed splintered. Nationalism endured. Yodlovsky was telling the truth—at least as far as men like him were capable of truth.

“Good,” Bolon said in English, and turned to the wall.

A large map of Egypt hung there, laminated and marked with careful pins. Bolon produced a laser pointer. A red dot danced at the Nile delta, then slid southwest across harsh, empty space to a remote desert location inside Libya. Bolon stepped forward, marked the point in ink, and faced his guests.

“This is Shining Path,” he said. “They arranged with Qaddafi to train at this site and have done so for over a year. Unfortunately, their backers are pulling out with the regime’s collapse. Their drug distribution has been reduced to nearly nothing. Their membership is down to skeleton numbers.” His tone remained clinical, but his eyes carried a scientist’s interest in the decay of systems. “It seems Peru’s economy—and Argentina’s democratization—has taken most of the steam out of their slogan. For now.”

He clicked the laser off and folded his hands behind his back.

“At any rate, their base camp is ripe for being overrun. They maintained limited contact with Libya proper and almost none with South America. That buys us time. We will have at least a week before anyone with authority understands what happened there—if anyone ever does.”

Yodlovsky scribbled in a leather-bound notebook, refining his own outline of the operation. Bolon continued, pacing slowly as he spoke, each sentence placed as carefully as a scalpel cut.

“From the base camp, we will have twenty-four hours to neutralize any couriers or unexpected tangos that may drop by. I have a working model of their communications timetable.” He tapped the map again, this time at the delta. “Our final target is here. The Nile delta. The Sphinx—an archaeological dig site you won’t find on any tourist brochure.”

The men exchanged glances. Some nodded. Yodlovsky had given them a stripped briefing on the flight in, but Bolon’s certainty carried its own gravity.

They were an unusual team: six men drawn from Russian counterintelligence and elite forces. Between them were doctoral degrees, languages spoken like weapons, specialties in demolition and sabotage and tactical engagement. Each had trained in multiple disciplines of hand-to-hand combat. Each had seen war and the uglier quiet that follows it. And yet, as Bolon spoke about Egypt, every one of them looked less like a soldier and more like a scholar leaning forward at the edge of discovery.

Bolon noticed. He allowed the anticipation to build, then cut it with his next sentence.

“Believe it or not, my foremost concern was bringing men of ideas.”

He paused just long enough for them to feel the weight of that.

“You will be part of the largest single change in the evolution of man—ever. After the extraction in Egypt, it will be our combined mental prowess that determines the future of mankind.” His voice remained steady, but the words carried an edge. “No paltry physical skill you imagine you possess will be of any use.”

A murmur rolled across the table—excitement breaking discipline. Two men began to speak at once. Yodlovsky snapped a command, forcing silence.

Bolon continued as if the interruption had been expected.

“We are retrieving the lost scrolls of Atlantis.”

For a heartbeat, no one moved.

Then one of the men slammed a fist into the table. “Unbelievable!”

The room erupted into rapid Russian debate—too fast, too animated, like a symposium detonating inside a military briefing. Hands cut the air. Voices overlapped. Skepticism and hunger and awe tangled together. Bolon watched with his arms crossed, amused at how quickly the poets surfaced inside his trained killers.

Yodlovsky shouted again, louder, dragging them back into order by force of will.

“All right, gentlemen,” Bolon said, and the room quieted around his calm. “We have four days to prepare here before our connection arrives. We will use every hour.”

The equipment was cleared from the table. Chairs scraped back into place. Bolon distributed thick packets of documents to each man and powered on the projector. The first slide lit the screen with clinical brightness.

It would be an intensive evening. Tomorrow, the men would be tested to their physical limits. Bolon needed certainty about each of them—what they could do, what they would do, and what they would do when fear and ambition squeezed the air out of the room.

Because the Sphinx was not the danger.

It was the doorway.

And none of them were ready for what came next.