“Agnaldo,” Nina whispered. “Can you understand them?”

“Some of it,” di Salvo grunted, face tight with pain. “They know what it is, but… I don’t think any of them have ever seen it before.”

“Can you talk to them?”

“I can try.”

“Tell them… tell them we’re bringing it back to them,” Nina said. “Tell them we’ve brought it back to-to the city of the water god.”

Through his pain, di Salvo managed an incredulous look. “That might be hard to translate.”

“Just do it!” she ordered.

Both Kari and Chase gave her glances of mixed surprise and admiration as di Salvo followed her order and began talking haltingly. The Indians listened, still suspicious-and confused whenever the Brazilian lost something in translation-but they apparently got the message. The man holding the artifact said something back to di Salvo.

“What’d he say?” Nina asked.

“I think they’re going to take us to their village. Something about the tribal elders… I couldn’t make it all out.”

“They’re not going to kill us?” said Philby. “Oh thank God!”

“Yeah,” Nina told him grimly. “Too bad about Hamilton.” Philby’s face fell.

“I wouldn’t start celebrating just yet, Prof,” added Chase. “If these tribal elders don’t like us, we’re going to end up as the new ‘keep out’ signs on the river.”

After tying their prisoners’ hands behind their backs, the Indians led them deeper into the jungle.

“Can’t believe we got ambushed like that,” Chase said almost apologetically to Nina and Kari. “No way that would have happened if I’d still been in the SAS. God, I must be going daft.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nina tried to reassure him. “This is where these people live. They know the terrain. And they’re obviously big on keeping out visitors.”

“That’s not the point! The SAS has never been successfully ambushed on jungle patrol.”

“None of us saw them, Edward,” said Castille, his voice still raspy from being choked.

“Yeah, but…”

“Eddie,” said Nina, “we’re still alive, that’s the main thing. If you’d started shooting, more of us might be dead. Maybe even all of us.”

“The day’s not over yet,” he reminded her.

The trail began to rise, a low hill cautiously peeking above the great flat expanse of the Amazon basin. Nina noticed more signs of human presence, other paths joining the one they were traveling, converging on one location.

The hill became steeper, the path zigzagging towards the top and the trees thinning out.

“My God,” Nina gasped as they reached the summit.

The hill was not tall, but it was high enough to give a spectacular view of what lay below. Greenery dominated the landscape, a branch of the river winding through it, but between the gaps in the trees she could make out the ruins of ancient buildings, the tumbledown remains of what must at one time have been an expansive settlement.

There was one building that was not in ruins, though. And she couldn’t take her eyes off it.

From the air it would be mostly shielded by the overhanging jungle, little more than a broken shadow. But from this angle Nina could see it clearly, a brooding, menacing structure. And huge, around sixty feet high, four hundred feet long and about half as wide.

No, she thought. It’s exactly half as wide.

She remembered a line from Critias: “Here was Poseidon’s own temple, which was a stadium in length and half a stadium in width, and of a proportionate height, having a strange barbaric appearance.” The dark stone structure before her certainly fitted the bill, the ancient Greeks considering “barbaric” just about anything that wasn’t Greek. If anything, to Nina it seemed more like an Incan or Mayan structure, large blocks of carved stone carefully slotted together with almost unnatural precision. Jagged spires rose from its corners, foliage entangled around them, further camouflaging its shape. The lower parts of the walls were stepped like a ziggurat, but the curve of the roof resembled something more modern, like an aircraft hangar.

She was looking at the Temple of Poseidon, god of the sea.

Or rather a replica of it, a copy. The original, according to Plato, had been sheathed in precious metals, whereas this was just raw stone, covered in moss and vines. It was also smaller, well short of the length of a Greek stadium, 607 feet.

Unless she had been right all along-and an Atlantean stadium was smaller than a Greek one. Which would make a profound difference to the search for the island’s location…

Nina didn’t have a chance to think any further on the subject, the Indians driving them down the slope. She could now see that while the city was in ruins, it hadn’t been abandoned. At the nearest end of the temple was a village of wood and stone huts. She counted fifteen of the circular structures. Either the tribe was spread out in more than one location, or their numbers were very small. It didn’t seem likely that there could be many more than a hundred people.

The group was led into the village, the face of the temple looming over everything. Other Indians-young and old men, women, children-emerged from the huts to watch them pass, suspicion clear in their dark eyes. Near the base of the temple wall was a hut larger than any of the others.

“They’re calling for the elders,” said di Salvo, listening to the Indians’ excited chatter. The animal skin covering the hut door was pulled aside, and three men emerged. Ancient, faces wrinkled beneath headbands adorned with feathers, but still strong and vital.

“Amazing,” Kari whispered, more to herself than to Nina. “The genetics… With a population this small and this isolated, inbreeding would normally have caused clear genetic abnormalities by now. But there’s no sign of it in any of these people. A superior genome… I’d love to get a DNA sample for the foundation to analyze.”

“Let’s convince them not to stick us on spikes before we ask if we can drain their blood, eh?” said Chase.

The Indians prodded the group into a ragged line before the elders, who regarded them with cold scorn as they listened to the leader of the hunting party. Their expressions changed as the hunter produced the Atlantean artifact. Awe… mixed with anger.

One of the elders asked a sharp question, the hunter pointing at Nina. The elder advanced on her, scowling as he examined her face closely. She tried not to show the fear racing through her body. After an agonizing moment, he made a slightly dismissive sound and turned his attention to Kari. His stern expression became more like fascination as he stared into her blue eyes, then reached up to touch her blond hair. She raised an eyebrow, but submitted.

Then he turned back to Nina, asking something. She glanced helplessly at di Salvo.

“He’s asking about the artifact,” di Salvo told her. “I think he wants to know where you found it.”

“You think?” Nina said, her voice rising a couple of octaves. “If I say the wrong thing, he might kill me!”

“Just tell him what you know! I’ll do the best I can to translate. The dialect’s similar to those of tribes from much farther north.”

“Similar’s not the same as identical!” Nina pointed out. The elder was still watching her coldly. “Okay, okay! Tell him we took it from a thief in another land, that we followed the map on it to return it to its people.”

Di Salvo began the translation. “You sure it’s from here?” Chase asked quietly.

“It has to be. They know what it is.”

The elder spoke again, di Salvo listening intently before translating. “He says it was stolen by white men in the time of his great-grandfather. They punished some of the white men, but the others escaped.”

“The Nazi expedition,” said Kari. “It must be.”