A search for the real Atlantis centers on Plato"s model for its description. During the search, terrorists and drug barons attempt to trump the archeologists from the beginning. Professor Borchad of Chicago agrees with Professor Adolf Schulten that the lost city of Tartessus in Andalusia, which disappeared over 2,500 years ago, was Plato"s template for Atlantis. That city was the hub of a trading empire, a cosmopolitan seaport known to the ancient world as the richest city of the Bronze Age. Like the city of Atlantis in Plato"s Timaeus, Tartessus was situated in the west beyond the Pillars of Heracles (Gibralter), upon an island ringed with canals. Ancient writers placed the lost city in southern Andalusia on the banks of the Baetis River, upriver from the seacoast and visible from the Atlantic. The city disappeared around 500 BC with the rise of Carthage. In this quest, beautiful women, uncooperative territory, and deadly foes add a new dimension to the search for a vanished city.