The Gulfstream was a few hundred yards from where the Baron was parked. A Ford Explorer was parked nearby and two men were holding the doors open.

"I'll ride shotgun," Willow said. "You guys go in back. Let's roll."

They walked casually to the car,

Never thought about what kind of cars they have here. Got American stuff anyway.

Roland ignored Willow's offer to take one of his bags and moved as quickly as she and Charles to the other aircraft. In the interests of efficiency he did allow one of the men to take them and hoist them aboard. He followed Charles up the steps and took a seat. Within a couple of minutes of them getting strapped in the engines spun up and shortly the aircraft began to move.

Few more minutes and we're in the air. Unless someone has the clout to send somebody's air force after us we're good.

Not that it couldn't happen or couldn't have have ten years earlier but the American reach had been curtailed within a couple of years of the great disaster of 2028 and the Russians and their clique had no love for the American regime.

They leveled off and he leaned back and closed his eyes. Much as he hated to admit it he was always uneasy while flying unless he was the pilot - not so different from driving though.

After a while he opened his eyes. Willow was sitting across from him, that same almost smile.

OK, it's a long ways to Atlantis. Let's do it.

"You OK?" Willow asked.

"Yeah, I'm good. I flew a few hundred thousand miles at least in my other life, always that worry but you learn..."

"The money was good," Willow said.

"You think I care about money?"

"Not now," she replied. "Then probably not so much either. You were about the mission. When it was business and later... and now."

"Right. I didn't intend to...."

"I get it," Roland said. "If I didn't trust you people to know their ass from a hole in the ground I wouldn't be here. Pardon the French or whatever."

"No problem. I've been around the block a time or three."

"What's Atlantis like?" he asked. "We don't get much info here, or have time to digest it."

"It's been stable for six, more like seven years now," Willow replied. "We're fairly confident that it is, otherwise we wouldn't have built the airport. And it seems that the reaction in the outside world is similar - no tsunamis in a couple of years and they're pretty calm."

"That was good for Atlantis I suppose."

"Correct. The rest of the world is still uneasy and there hasn't been any effort to take over Atlantis even with the development they see. Not a state of affairs that we expect to continue for long."

"You're probably right," Roland said. "They're licking their lips as they look at Atlantis. The Euro cabal and the U.S.A. both but only the U.S.A. had the resources."

"Had?"

"They don't realize it," Roland said, "but they couldn't overcome Atlantis no matter how long they try."

"Why is that?"

Something in there....

"We were figuring you have something they don't want to go up against."

"You're right," Willow said, "but you don't need to know what it is. Knowing that it exists is probably something you don't need to know."

"Got it," said Roland. "I'm good knowing you have it."

"We?"

"I know your history," Roland said, "as you know mine. As some say it's all good."

"I agree. As the U.S.A. goes Atlantis is a friend to the legitimate... "

"Regime? Not that it's as bad as it sounds. How about the legitimate Republic?"

"That's what I was thinking. These things get... messed up sometimes."

"Atlantis is pretty well immune to interference," Roland said. "The big boys don't dare attack you and you can do pretty much what you please."

"Strange, isn't it?"

"Yeah, some of us out here in flyover country aren't completely..."

"Zoned out? Yeah, I know that some of the resistance people are pretty well up on things. That's how we came to be involved here - you're not the usual group of partisans striking out at the regime - we were aware some time back that you knew something about Atlantis - it was rather difficult not to notice."

"Yeah, kind of," Roland said. "You had people in contact with Amarillo and Idaho Falls from 2028 when it began to look bad."

"Right. We.... Atlantis has a network in the U.S. - not that we don't have operations in Canada and Mexico..."

"There's that 'we' again."

"I'm as American as you," Willow said. "But my family is part of Atlantis three generations back. I didn't know it until I was a teenager and my father subtly brought me into it. It wasn't as strange as you might think... maybe if your father was in some secret society that you knew something about... the Freemasons or whatever.... but the way I was introduced to it it all made sense... I could see the proof of something that I shouldn't believe... and it became something that I accepted as reality. And when it happened in my own lifetime..."

"You're what... thirty something? What did you see and when did you see it?"

"You know about the fleet?"

"The big fleet around Atlantis?"

"Yeah, that one. Do you know anything about its history?"

"Just that it's there. A lot of ships from all over. When Atlantis came up the people on the ships occupied the new land."

"OK, pretty much. What most of the world doesn't know is that that fleet had been growing for many years - or if they knew dismissed it as a collection of crazy people or whatever - but there was always a plan. A plan going back more than three hundred years."

"Three centuries and change? OK."

"Your own family is involved. Remember your Uncle Patrick? Your cousin David?"

"Both disappeared... never found... what do they have to do with it?"

"Your grandfather Dalton died at eighty-nine, you were twenty-something. Do you remember someone at the funeral? Someone apparently not a relative?"

Grand-dad's funeral... bunch of people and not all family.... woman in black of course.... watching a ways off...

"Yeah," he said. "She caught my eye and for some reason I went over and talked to her."

"Do you remember what you talked about?"

"The usual I guess, at a funeral.... no, she said that... I needed to focus on my future or something... something like that."

"What you didn't know," Willow said, "is that she set you on your future course. Afterwards you quit your job at the bank - a dead end for someone like you - and took another job that you had been offered."

"Yeah, that software company the bank did business with."

"It was a better use of your talents, wouldn't you say?"

"Yeah."

"That led you to a couple of other jobs and then one day..."

"Grant Sullivan. Came out of nowhere it seemed, a crazy idea. Yeah."

"That was 2024," Willow said. "The Sagittarius project."

"Yeah, strange but something made me go for it."

"Some us," Willow said, "I can't say all of us, have a destiny that is fixed. Whatever path we take we will arrive there."

"Yeah, I suppose so."

"You don't seem convinced."

"Should I be? It makes some sense."

"That's as it should be. It wasn't easy for me. I'm preparing you for the next phase in your life."

"Yeah, OK, lead on."

Charles seemed to be asleep, Roland gave Willow a questioning look.

"His drink had something in it," Willow said. "He can use the rest and there was no need for him to hear."

"Why him?"

"Better to get him out of the country. They want him bad, like any of the high-profile prisoners. In Atlantis he has nothing to fear, and there are a few other expats here. Some of them participate in propaganda operations."

"I can see how he would be good at that," Roland said, "if he was interested."

"It's strictly up to him. He'll be a guest of Sir Walter - Lord Walter - for as long as he wishes to remain."

"Sir Walter?"

"Sir Walter Lawrence. Ring any bells?"

"My mother's maiden name was Lawrence."

"Sir Walter's grand-niece," Willow said. "You're related to one of the Lords of Atlantis.

"The woman at the funeral."

"One of the family, she moved to Atlantis a couple of years ago. You'll meet her."

"What are the Lords of Atlantis?"

"You may or may not have heard of the Knights of Atlantis," Willow replied. "After the rise they styled themselves the Lords of Atlantis and formed its government."

"Lords of...."

"A pile of rocks in the Atlantic Ocean? A rather large pile at nearly a million square miles for the main part. Probably half that much again in the islands. And there are some interesting features."

"Interesting?"

"It seems that Atlantis wasn't always underwater."

"OK, the lost continent?"

"A lost continent," Willow said. "As for legendary Atlantis who knows but the founders decided to name it Atlantis. There is evidence of human habitation and other signs that it was once above water."

"OK, I'll buy that - if it's here now it had to be somewhere before. When did it disappear?"

"Probably twenty thousand or more years ago."

"And it had people?"

"So it seems. The Lords didn't just appear in the last few decades - they're desdendants of the Templars - some who escaped the purge - and their ancestors go back a thousand years or more. The rise was predicted almost to the year and a population of more than a hundred thousand colonists was waiting, along with almost that many in the fleet.

"Waiting where?" Roland asked. "The ones not in the fleet."

"Mostly in the U.S." Willow replied. "About ninety percent of them. The remainder in Europe and Scandinavia. A few from other places. The settlers from the fleet moved in first and prepared places to live, bringing construction equipment and supplies with them. As more land was exposed those from other places came. Within a year there were several small towns with about twenty thousand people."

"You had supplies for all that?"

"It wasn't luxurious but they had the necessities and more. The ones coming from the U.S. had been preparing for years and brought considerable wealth with them - some were wealthy and others did some looting before they left."

"Looting?"

"They had been preparing for years," Willow said. "They constructed a network of fake people - mandroids some called them. Existing only on paper or as electrons and magnetic dots. There was an elaborate network - fake businesses that could be used as references when applying for credit cards. Over a period of time the credit lines were built up considerably - most had a half dozen or more with credit lines of ten thousand or more per card. When they prepared to leave they gradually bought stuff - gold and silver mostly, guns and other stuff - and one day they blew town with the loot and got a ride to Atlantis. It would take a couple of months for the banks to realize they had been had and even then it was just a few scattered accounts - no way to find them until they disappeared."

"Like the Hebrews financing their permanent vacation?"

"Yeah," Willow replied. "They made out pretty good, some had a couple hundred thousand or so. One of the first things needed in Atlantis was banks. Where are my manners - want a drink?"

"Thought you'd never ask."

"We don't have any flight attendants to make drinks," Willow said, "but there's beer and some wine coolers."

"Beer is good."

Willow got up and went to the galley and returned with two Heinekens.

Charles was still sleeping and Roland figured if he had been in prison for four years he would probably want some extra sack time for a while. He did wake up just as the pilot began a descent.

"We're about a hundree miles out," Willow said. "If you and Charles look out your windows you can see the fleet as we go over."

Charles sat up and they turned to look as the pilot banked slightly. Ships, mostly in groups, began to dot the ocean. Almost all were large, some looking like cruise ships or ferries, others were container ships and some looked like freighters or tankers. Several helicopters were visible on the large decks of some and he saw one large fixed-wing.

"Probably an C-120," Willow said when he commented. "There are several, about two dozen now, built in Russia."

"Russia?"

"The relationship goes back longer than the rising," Willow said. "Built to spec - it's a small six-passenger and can be winched aboard a ship after landing on water. That's done if it's based on a ship."

"I guess is you want to keep secrets Russia is a good place," Roland said. "And if you have money the Russians will do business."

"Money," Willow said, "something Atlantis has plenty of, and other things."

"The Trump family left for Russia after the election, and Musk and others weren't far behind. I guess Atlantis was already there."

"They helped," Willow said. "Getting some people out was close and in some cases they didn't get out."

"Yeah, one of the Harrison kids. I was surprised they were smart enough to leave early but it's good they did."

"They lost most of their fortunes," Willow said, "but escaped with their lives and live pretty well. And Musk has the satisfaction of seeing all the stuff they took from him fall apart."

"Prepare for landing," someone up front said. Probably the co-pilot handled that duty. Less than ten minutes later they smoothly touched down.

"Welcome to Atlantis," Willow said.