The Adventurers Read online

  THE

  ADVENTURERS

  A novel

  by

  K.T. TOMB

  Acclaim for K.T. Tomb:

  “Epic and awesome!”

  —J.T. Cross, bestselling author of Beneath the Deep

  “Now this is what I call adventure. The Lost Garden will leave you breathless!”

  —Summer Lee, bestselling author of Angel Heart

  “The best adventure novel I’ve read in a long time. I can’t wait to read the sequel. Count me a fan. A big fan.”

  —P.J. Day, bestselling author of The Sunset Prophecy

  “K.T. Tomb is a wonderful new voice in adventure fiction. I was enthralled by The Lost Garden...and you will be, too.”

  —Aiden James, bestselling author of Plague of Coins

  OTHER BOOKS BY K.T. TOMB

  STANDALONE ADVENTURES

  The Last Crusade

  The Kraken

  The Adventurers

  The Swashbucklers

  The Tempest

  Sasquatch Mountain

  THE CHYNA STONE ADVENTURES

  The Minoan Mask

  The Mummy Codex

  The Phoenician Falcon

  The Babylonian Basilisk

  THE EVAN KNIGHT ADVENTURES

  The Lost Garden

  Keepers of the Lost Garden

  Destroyers of the Lost Garden

  THE PHOENIX QUEST ADVENTURES

  The Hammer of Thor

  The Spear of Destiny

  The Lair of Beowulf

  THE CASH CASSIDY ADVENTURES

  The Holy Grail

  The Lost Continent

  The Lost City of Gold

  THE ALAN QUATERMAIN ADVENTURES

  The Road to Shambala

  The Seal of Solomon

  The Shroud of Turin

  The Adventurers

  Published by K.T. Tomb

  Copyright © 2014 by K.T. Tomb

  All rights reserved.

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Dedication

  The author wishes to dedicate this book to the late

  Philip K. Dick.

  The Adventurers

  Prologue

  It was a little too good to be true, he thought, I mean, did Cortez ever find that blasted city of gold? Or the Iram of the Pillars? Of course not, because that’s ridiculous.

  Then again, after all was said and done, maybe he did find that city of gold, maybe he just couldn’t tell anyone, or maybe he was just too stupid to realize what he was looking at. The Internet made it really easy to meet people and obsess about anything that pleased you, so it wasn’t surprising that it was where we had all found out about the convention. At the time, I was teaching anthropology in Atlanta, and was dying for an escape. If they had told me they were going to go unicorn hunting, I would have been the first one to sign up.

  We called our little group “The Adventurers”. I’d always hated that name, but Adam came up with it and everyone loved Adam. We were a group of people who felt strongly dedicated to discovering something new. I thought that, most likely, we were just bored.

  The name “Adventurers” came from a convention, “The Prometheus Torch”, where we had originally met; all of us except for Mark, of course. He’d come into the picture a little bit later. It was really hard to find people in the real world that honestly wanted to “explore”; there were times when I actually told people “I’m an Explorer”, and they would ask “Really? What exactly are you exploring?” My take on the matter was that not everything had been explored and, more so, not everything had been discovered. In my estimation, all you had to do was Google ‘lost treasures’ to see how much was still out there to be found.

  “This group of yours,” the young reporter asked, “could you tell me a little about how you all met?” At that point, I’d thought maybe I should just gussy up the story; make myself out to be the hero. Maybe the attractive reporter would find me more interesting because of it. I’d been trying to get her attention since the press conference, now we were finally alone and it would have been the perfect opportunity to color myself courageous.

  The truth was, we’d all gone to Russia for our own selfish reasons, and it had nearly gotten me killed.

  ***

  London, England

  “Sir, I must insist you provide more details about the plans for your stay here,” said the immigration agent at Heathrow, as he scratched his nose.

  “I already told you,” Travis sneered, becoming increasingly annoyed with the man. “I’m just passing through; a three day layover, nothing more than that. My plans are to get some sleep, eat a meal that doesn’t come out of a plastic bag and get out as soon as it’s time for me to leave.”

  “Sir...” the man replied.

  He kindly urged Travis to provide a few more details, reminding him that it was in his best interest to do so. Travis looked behind him; there was a long line forming and he hated being the center of any sort of attention; whether good or bad.

  Then he leaned into the counter and said, “I plan to see some museums, eat some fish and chips, and maybe piss in the Thames.” Then placing his British Airways platinum Executive Club card on top of his passport he added, “All that while seriously thinking about whether Munich or Zurich might make a more attractive gateway to Europe and the Orient than Heathrow has been recently!”

  “Sir!” the immigration officer exclaimed dutifully, as he wrote down what Travis said. Then he paused and sighed, the line wasn’t getting any shorter. He handed the documents back and waved Travis through, sarcastically adding, “Enjoy your stay”.

  Strangely, baggage claim and customs weren’t half as dramatic as immigration had been and he was soon headed for the concourse. The restaurants and shops were almost too much for him to resist, but he was on a mission. His friend Adam had arrived ahead of him and was waiting at the airport’s subway station.

  “I thought you were going to be waiting for me with a taxi,” Travis stated with a condescending tone.

  “Are you kidding me? You’re from America. What could you possibly know about the Underground? Furthermore, the traffic is horrendous and the cabs are metered,” laughed Adam, before the sound of the subway train cut him off. Adam tended to go off on rants, and there was a good chance he would have kept going until Travis told him to shut up.

  Travis let out a huge smile, he hadn’t seen Adam in a few years, they’d attended college together, but after graduating Travis had gone back to his native Georgia while Adam traveled the world. They both still frequented The Prometheus Torch though. Adam would log on to the site to troll and harass other users. Meanwhile, Travis would attempt to pick brains for anything useful he could use to launch a modern day treasure hunt.

  “I’m glad to see you haven’t changed much,” Travis sat down next to Adam and propped his feet up across the train car. Travis was a fairly tall guy, and next to Adam, he looked like a giant. He’d been teased his entire life for being shorter than most men his age, but Adam took it in stride. Travis had always thought that maybe it was why he talked so much.

  “The next stop is Gloucester Road. Mind the gap,” a recorded female voice said over the train’s loudspeaker.

  “So Adam, have you met the others yet?” Travis inquired.

  “Well, you’ve been talking to Thyri; you know the one who’s funding the trip.” Adam replied back excitedly.

  “That’s something I found rather strange from the beginning. Didn’t you?”

  “The next stop is Knightsbridge. Mind the gap.”

  “I sort of did. She has a strange name too,” Adam confessed. “But apparently, we’re not the first ones from the forum she’s funded expeditions for. Rumors on the forum are that she comes from North Sea oil, but I’d keep that to myself if I were you,” Adam suggested. “Really, she seems like a cool girl, but you’ve gotta wonder; with money like that, what kind of things could she have done to us?”

  “True,” replied Travis. He paused to think about the situation for a moment. “But I’d also say unnecessarily suspicious of you. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the ride, okay? Her name is Norse by the way, Viking possibly, so it isn’t strange, just traditional. Anyway tell me about the others.”

  “As you know, Xenia, who asked us to come do the investigation, is in Russia,” Adam said. “She will pick us up in St. Petersburg in a few days. She was also Thyri’s source of help when it came to the visa applications and other arrangements for us.”

  Xenia came across the forum looking for information after her family claimed they spotted the fabled invisible city.

  “The next stop is Hyde Park Corner. Mind the gap.”

  “The other girls,” Adam paused for a moment; he had a poor memory when it came to names. “They’re something else. There’s Savannah, you know her as ‘babylonianprincess101’ on the site, and she’s pretty cool. She teaches too, ancient history at Yale. Hey, look at that, you guys got something in common already.”

  “Great,” Travis sarcastically replied. He never usually found his peers attractive, he preferred the artistic types.

  “The next stop is Green Park. Mind the Gap.”

  “Savannah’s a very interesting character. You know the type; she can hold a conversation on any topic from cooking to aeronautics but she still prefers whiskey to wine,” Adam shrugged. “I don’t know how to categorize that.”
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  Travis knew the type only too well; he worked with about six of them in his department and the rest of university’s professors’lounges were full of them. ‘Intellectual-ites’, he called them. He shuddered at the thought.

  “But then there’s her friend, Fiona,” Adam said. “Damn is she gorgeous, exactly like the girls you typically go after. She’s a bit nuts though, a ‘tree hugging’ environmentalist with diplomatic connections. She came home last night in the back of a car...”

  “And, so what? She sounds like a girl that likes to have fun.”

  “Well...she was in the back of a cop car.”

  “Yikes...”

  “I know, but Savannah insisted she come. She said she won’t travel without her. So we didn’t have a choice. You know, without Savannah, we don’t have a translator, and this trip won’t happen. Our girl in Russia doesn’t speak very much English. She’s a quiet one, but she sure knows a lot about the phenomenon.”

  “The next stop is Piccadilly Circus. Mind the gap.”

  The doors opened and someone almost stumbled over Travis’s legs as she rushed to get out. Travis rolled his eyes, and held his tongue. He nearly called the woman a rude name, but he resisted; it might have created attention and he didn’t want that.

  “Well, our stop is after this one, hope you’re ready to meet the others. They’ve been waiting for you.”

  “And just why would they be ‘expecting’ me?” Travis inquired of Adam, with an air of suspicion in his voice.

  “Well, I told them you were the editor for Natural Geographic Magazine.”

  “Greeeeeaaattt...” Travis sighed, as the train stopped and doors opened.

  “Come on, don’t be a jerk. Let’s go!”

  Chapter One

  The two men walked slowly, but with purpose, to their hotel room. Travis was tired, and simply wanted to go to sleep. Adam however wanted Travis to socialize. Thyri came through for them again; first with the plane tickets, and now she’d also taken care of their accommodations. It wasn’t the most expensive hotel in London, but just from the look of the lobby it was clear that the rooms were most certainly going to be the best either of them had ever occupied in their lives. Room service would also be complimentary for the entire group the next few days there.

  Thyri had been absurdly rich her whole life; not much could phase her when it came to the cost or quality of things. Her family was one of the richest in Norway and had been for ten generations. They had been in the fishing industry long before they struck oil, but when they had extracted the first barrels of Brent crude in 1851, they had taken less and less interest in fishing until finally they had sold the company and its fleet to an Alaskan outfit. She had been overseas at school since she was ten years old and even after graduating from Paris-Sarbonne with a Bachelor’s in Art History, she continued to travel the world, rarely going home to Oslo.

  The hotel was rather well restored and nicely situated as well. It was close to everything without being smack in the middle of it. In fact, many of the buildings on the street looked restored to Travis. The last time he’d visited London, he’d had a hard time differentiating between the slums and the middle class areas. If it hadn’t been for the homeless people that enjoyed urinating publically in those red telephone booths, he wouldn’t have even known he entered a bad neighborhood. A lot had changed in London, and for the better he might add.

  After they checked in, Travis took his shoes off and lay down on the bed for a minute. He was glad to finally be able to stretch his legs out and relax. The flight from Newark had to circle Heathrow for three hours before it could land; he didn’t even bother to listen to the pilot’s excuse for that. All he cared about was that it had turned an already dreadful eight hour flight into an eleven hour nightmare.

  The more he thought about it, it seemed like everything had been going wrong from the very beginning; ever since he had received the airline tickets in the mail. First, he couldn’t find his passport; he’d been absolutely sure it was in his bedside table drawer in the folder with all his pertinent documents, but it wasn’t. He’d been just about ready to apply for a new one when he found it in a pocket of his laptop bag; how strange. Then the kennel called him to let him know there was no way they could keep Angelo, his Jack Russell terrier for the amount of time he had applied; it was inhumane they’d said. What was humane then; leaving the dog in the apartment to fend for himself? In the end, an ex-girlfriend had volunteered to look after the dog, which meant he’d had to drive Angelo to Macon the day before his flight out of Atlanta. That had not been much fun.

  But now he was finally in London, in his own room, and all the worries of the world could be forgotten for a minute...or at least for thirty seconds. That’s how long Adam gave him before interrupting the quietest moment he’d had that entire week. Adam was wasting no time trying to get Travis introduced to the others. He groaned at Adam, but he had to admit that he was just as eager to meet the others, especially the girls

  “I talked to Savannah,” Adam informed Travis, as he walked down the hallway. “She said she just saw Thyri head back to her room.”

  Thyri’s room was three doors down the hall from Travis’. It was only natural that he would want to thank the person who’d financed their trip. It didn’t hurt that she was a rich socialite, who was apparently quite pretty as well. The two men knocked on Thyri’s door, but there was silence. They waited for a few seconds, and thought that she might be indisposed, or maybe sleeping off the jet lag.

  “Come on, let’s go, she’s not there.”

  “I think she is,” replied Adam, ever sure of himself. “The girls said they just saw her go in, not even two minutes ago...you know this reminds me of when you gave me—”

  “No one cares, Adam, please,” Travis interjected before he could begin his rant. Travis was pleased with himself that he had retained the ability to predict them after all these years.

  They knocked on the door again, this time inching their heads closer to the door until finally their ears were pressed up against the wooden frame.

  “Do you hear that?” Adam asked. “She’s mumbling something in there; I can’t make it out. Is she on the phone, do you think?”

  “No way of telling really,” Travis replied. “Maybe we ought to leave her alone for a few minutes.”

  “Hey! Thyri! It’s Adam!” he shouted in the familiar whiny tone that Travis hated. “Travis is here and wanted to meet you; we’ll come back in a little while!”

  Travis rolled his eyes in frustration. Adam had never seemed to understand the concept of tact and his mouth was a never ending fountain of words that never shut down.

  “Guess we better go look for the girls then,” suggested Adam, as the two men walked back to their room. “I think I know where to find one of them...”

  Behind them, a door slammed followed by a sultry voice with a remarkable, yet understandable, Scandinavian accent.

  “Good afternoon, gentlemen,” said the polished voice behind them. The two men turned around. Travis and Adam were both dumbstruck at the sight of Thyri. She had an imposing stature, at least five foot ten inches tall, a slender, fit body, “waist length” blond hair and a beautiful face. She was dressed in black leather pants and a white lace blouse with fire engine red lipstick. She reminded Travis of the vampire movies from the eighties where the female vamps were always bombshell types dressed in Victorian clothing.

  “Ahh, there you are,” Adam said, trying to regain his composure. “I hope we weren’t imposing.”

  Quickly, Travis turned on his ‘Professional Travis’ persona and extended his hand to her.

  “I just wanted to thank you in person for the trip, before the jetlag puts me into a coma,” he said. “I’m Travis, by the way, Travis Monnahan.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” Thyri replied, taking his hand and shaking it daintily. “I was just on the phone with Xenia. The connection was so bad that I wanted to finish up with her before I answered the door.”

  “Understood,” Travis replied, smiling broadly at her.