Текст книги "The Tombs"

Автор книги: Clive Cussler

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Текущая страница: 7 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

“But you don’t think anyone is following us?”

“No. The one who’s been behind us all this time drives like my grandmother. Anybody we have to worry about would be bold and crazy.”

Sam and Remi caught each other looking out the back window and smiled. Sam said, “At the next town, let’s double back and see if he does too.”

“Good idea,” said Tibor. He pulled up next to a restaurant at the next town, then drove around it along a narrow and winding road that would accommodate just one car at a time, emerging again near the restaurant. Then he pulled back onto the highway. They didn’t see a car ahead of them, but they could no longer see the car behind them either, so they felt reassured.

Sam used the GPS on his phone and directed Tibor the rest of the way. When he saw they were nearing the edge of a huge vineyard outside the city of Kiskunhalas, he said, “Turn your headlights off.” The road ahead went dark, and the car rolled to a stop. In the moonlight it was possible to see, on their left, a low hillside gently curving upward like an amphitheater. There were long rows of vines on weathered stakes connected by strands of wire for support. Sam, Albrecht, and Remi got out of the car, took the metal detector, the night vision goggles, and the short-handled, sharp-bladed spades for digging in the sandy soil out of the trunk and closed it quietly. Sam bent close to Tibor’s window and said, “Wait for us somewhere out of sight, and keep your phone on. If you see someone coming, or the sun is about to rise, call.”

“There are woods up ahead. I’ll be waiting there.” Tibor drove slowly off, turned, and disappeared into the night.

The three climbed a low rail fence and walked to what they judged to be midway along the crescent-shaped accumulation of soil. Then Sam turned on the metal detector and began to search. He bent over, to present a low profile, and walked up and down the rows of vines, stopping at the end of each row and then moving to the next.

Albrecht and Remi knelt at either end of the rows, watching through their night vision goggles for any sign of people coming. Occasionally they would switch to the infrared setting to see if they could pick up heat from a human being in any direction, then switch back to normal night vision. None of the three shone any light, and there was no sound except for the steady, faint summer breeze through the grapevine leaves and the slough of Sam’s shoes on the soft ground between the staked vines.

Sam moved methodically from the upper end of the crescent down toward the flat land. The crescent framed a loop made in the river where the channel curved and the water slowed. The alluvial soil had been deposited there before the river was diverted—highest at the midpoint of the curve and tapering on both ends.

Suddenly all of the metal detector’s readings changed. Sam saw the needle bury itself at the upper end. He moved a few steps and the needle dropped again. He came at it from the side and got a similar reading. He stood up straight and waved to the others, then knelt down. Remi and Albrecht came from their stations and knelt beside him.

“Is this it?” whispered Albrecht.

“It could be a lot of things,” Sam said. “All I know is that it’s metal and that it’s big.”

Remi rose and went to the end of the row, then came back with the spades. They began to dig, each moving apart from the others and digging quickly in the sandy soil. The work went steadily, and soon they were down about five feet, lifting each shovelful up above their shoulders to throw aside. Sam’s shovel rang out as it hit metal. A second later, Remi’s scraped a smooth, hard surface.

They set aside their spades and used their hands to clear the dirt off a metal plate. It was a flat rectangle, perhaps six feet long and three feet wide. Albrecht whispered, “There’s rust. The material is an impure form of iron. This could be the lid of the sarcophagus.”

“Let’s clear around it to get a better look,” Remi said.

Sam and Remi moved to the ends and began digging around the outside, so Albrecht began on the long side. They dug in silence, the suspense goading them to work harder and faster. But as they dug, each of them hit a second surface, just below the iron slab, that seemed to be stone.

Sam said, “Let’s see if we can budge it.”

All three stood at one side of the iron slab and used their spades to try to make it move. They strained, tried inserting the tips of their spades under the edge and pushing. The slab budged a fraction of an inch. “It moves. Let’s dig a space beside it and push the lid in it.”

They increased the size of the hole by three feet so that there was an empty space for the lid. They pushed again but made little progress. “Let’s try something else,” Sam said.

He climbed out and went to the nearest row of grapevines, where there were wooden stakes with sixpenny nails driven partway in to hold the wires for the vines. He began to pull the nails out. Sam looked closely at each one, twirled it in his fingers. He put some in his pocket and rejected some, pushing them back into the holes in the stakes.

“How many do you want?” asked Remi.

“Thirty or forty. Don’t take any that are bent.”

Albrecht and Remi collected nails until Sam said, “That’s enough to test the theory.” They all got back in the hole.

“Now we use our spades to try to pry up one end. A quarter inch will do.”

They pried an end up, and Sam held his spade down with one hand and bent to insert a nail sideways between the iron sheet and its stone base. Once one was in, he could insert twenty others without much strain. They repeated the process on the other end of the slab. Albrecht said, “Your theory is sound. Let’s hope your rollers are big enough.”

Sam knelt at one side of the slab of iron and moved it easily aside, rolling on the sixpenny nails. The three looked down through the opening with their night vision goggles. Albrecht said, “This isn’t what I expected. It looks like a stone room.”

“Let’s hope it’s not an air-raid shelter,” said Remi. “Or a septic tank.”

Sam said, “I can see part of the floor.” He took off his belt and slipped it over the handle of his spade and through the buckle. “Each of you hold one end of the spade and I’ll lower myself down a bit and jump.”

Remi put her hand on his shoulder. “Sam, I weigh eighty pounds less than you do.” She took the end of the belt and sat at the edge of the opening. She pushed off, rappelling down a few feet, then extended her arms and hung from the belt. Then she dropped into the darkness.

They heard the soft thud of her feet hitting the stone floor. There was silence as she walked into the part of the stone room where they couldn’t see her.

“Remi, talk,” Sam said. “Just so I know it wasn’t full of carbon monoxide, or fifty-year-old nerve gas.”

“It’s full of . . . nothing.”

“You mean grave robbers have been here?”

“I don’t think so,” she said. “Grave robbers are messy. Wait. There’s another big piece of iron. This one’s only tarnished, not much rust. It’s got something carved in it. Looks like Latin.”

“The Romans are my regular specialty,” said Albrecht. “I’ve got to see it.”

“Here. Hold on,” said Sam. “Exactly the way Remi did it.”

Albrecht held the belt and eased himself over the edge, then held on and rappelled a few steps, hung, then dropped the last couple feet.

Sam put the three spades together like spoons, slipped his belt around them and through the buckle, and propped them across a corner of the opening. He then lowered himself down.

The room was made of big river sandstone, worked roughly into rectangular blocks. They had been put together with mortar, so the room was waterproof.

Sam found Albrecht engrossed, standing beside Remi with his night vision goggles on and staring at the big piece of iron that had been burnished and then had Roman letters carved deeply into it. “Can you translate for us?” asked Sam.

“‘You have found my secret but have not begun to learn it. Know that treasures are buried in sadness, never in joy. I did not bury treasure once. I buried treasure five times. To find the last, you must reach the first. The fifth is the place where the world was lost.’”

Sam said, “Remi, your phone has a flash. You’d better get a shot of this.”

“But somebody could see it.”

“Unless you want to carry that chunk of iron to Szeged, we’ve got to chance it.”

She took off her night vision goggles, raised her cell phone, and took the picture. Then she said, “I’ll send this to Selma as soon as we’re aboveground and can send a signal.”

They all heard a sound like footsteps coming from above and froze in place, barely breathing. There was a voice, male, speaking quietly as he walked. Then someone laughed once, like a cough.

Sam jumped up, caught the end of the belt, and pulled it overhand. The spades came with it and dropped into his arms. They made a slight metallic noise, but he hoped it hadn’t been loud enough to reach the people above. He, Albrecht, and Remi crouched in the far end of the room, away from the entrance, waiting for the intruders to pass by the hole they had dug or come closer to examine it.

As the three watched, the steel slab was pushed across the opening, narrowing the faint rectangle of moonlight until it became a slit and then disappeared.

KISKUNHALAS, HUNGARY

THERE WAS THE SOUND OF DIRT BEING SHOVELED ONTO the iron slab that sealed the stone crypt. The shoveling continued. The first few loads of dirt were louder, and the ones after that quieter, but it was clear the dirt they had removed to dig down to the crypt was all being returned to the hole to cover it.

Sam whispered, “Stay still, and don’t use more oxygen than we have to.”

The three sat on the floor of the crypt, leaning against the stone walls, waiting. A half hour passed, then an hour.

“Do you hear anything?” whispered Remi.

“No,” Sam said. “I think they’ve gone.” Sam stood and moved to the space just below the slab of iron. “I think we can get out.”

“How?” asked Albrecht.

“We dug down about eight feet. The hole was eight feet wide and ten feet long—six hundred forty cubic feet. This room is ten feet wide, ten feet long, and ten feet deep. That’s a thousand cubic feet. We can let the dirt fall in here. We’ll spread it on the stone floor as it comes in and it will raise us as it does.”

“So simple,” said Albrecht. “You think like a Roman.”

“I just hope they haven’t left guards on the surface to watch the site,” Remi said softly.

Albrecht said, “I say we take the chance. We breathe about sixteen times a minute and consume about twenty-four liters of air. We’d better get started.”

“Right,” said Remi. “Let’s lift Sam up to reach the slab.”

“No,” said Sam. “It would take both of you to lift me, but I can lift you both. If I brace myself against the wall, you can each step up on one of my knees, then to my shoulder. Push your shovel blade between the wall and the iron slab and pry it open an inch or two. That should be enough.”

“He’s right,” said Albrecht. “The two of us can exert more force than Sam can alone.”

Sam selected a spot, braced his back against the wall, and bent his knees. Albrecht and Remi took off their boots. Albrecht took a shovel, then stepped from Sam’s knee to his shoulder. Remi stepped on the other knee and shoulder. They worked the blades of their shovels into the crack between the iron slab and the stone entrance. They moved both hands down to their shovel handles for maximum leverage. Remi said, “On three . . . one . . . two . . . three.”

Sam didn’t have to wait to find out if his plan had worked. The fine, sandy soil that had made this such a perfect place for viniculture immediately began to trickle from the narrow opening that they had made. It soon fell in an unbroken curtain, coming down steadily, in front of his eyes.

Remi came down from his shoulder and helped Albrecht step down. Sam raised himself up and sidestepped past the falling dirt. Whenever the soil under the opening got to be a foot deep, the three would shovel it into the empty end of the stone chamber in front of Attila’s message. As the minutes passed, the level rose steadily, and they stepped up on it repeatedly, rising higher and closer to the ceiling each time.

Filling the stone chamber with dirt left less and less space for air. When the floor level had risen about four feet, Sam lifted his shovel and worked it up into the narrow space between the stone and the iron slab, increasing the opening, and then scraped along the wall’s edge, bringing more dirt into the crypt.

Remi said, “What are you doing?”

“Trying to speed up the process before the air in here gets too scarce. I’ve cleared a few inches of space so we can slide the slab into it and make a bigger opening on the other side.”

The three stood about a foot apart and pushed the slab the other way with their shovels. The slab moved on its rollers, first closing the narrow opening they’d made, then going another few inches. A much wider opening appeared on the other side of the slab, and the dirt sifted in much faster than before.

“Let’s rest for a while,” Sam said. The others sat down while Sam spread the dirt around. The rate was much faster now, and when they were within four or five feet of the ceiling, the flow stopped. Sam pushed his shovel up into the opening and it broke through the last of the dirt above it. A shaft of sunlight shone through, illuminating particles of dust floating in the chamber.

They all took off their infrared goggles, blinking in the light. They listened but heard no sound of men above them. There were random chirps of birds, flitting from one row of grapevines to the next. Fresh air flooded in.

They gathered beneath the opening and worked to clear more room above that side so they could push the slab into the newly cleared space. When they rolled the slab back, there was enough of an opening to allow Remi to slip out. She climbed up, then called down, “It’s still early morning. I don’t see anyone. Pass me a shovel.”

Sam pushed the shovel up through the opening and she worked for a few minutes. “Okay, push the slab another few inches.”

Sam and Albrecht moved the slab again, and now there was enough room for them to slip through too.

“I can hardly believe this,” Albrecht said. “We’re out.”

They used the shovels to cover the iron slab, but they didn’t have enough dirt left aboveground to level it with the surrounding land. Sam looked around. “Hear that?”

“A car,” said Remi. They all ducked low in the depression. Remi raised her head and peered out. “Wait. It’s Tibor’s car.”

The car sped up and stopped and then Tibor got out. “Why didn’t you call?” he asked. “Didn’t you find it?”

“We’ll explain later. Just get us out of here,” said Sam. “And not toward Szeged.”

They all climbed in and Tibor drove off. “I’ll go the other way, toward Budapest.”

“Perfect,” said Sam. “We need to figure out what that message meant. We’ve got a head start. When those men dig their way into the chamber, they’ll be expecting to find a tomb, just as we did.”

“It wasn’t a tomb?” Tibor said.

“It’s more than that,” Albrecht said. “Much, much more. How far is it to Budapest?”

“About fifty miles. Maybe an hour, if I push it.”

“Then push it,” Sam said. “We’ll try to fill you in on the way.”

THE ROAD TO BUDAPEST, HUNGARY

TIBOR DROVE FAR ABOVE THE SPEED LIMIT, BUT IT WAS early in the morning and they saw few other cars. Albrecht sat in the passenger seat beside him and the Fargos were in the back.

Sam said, “Remi and I plan to go after the five treasures. How do you feel about joining us?”

“This is my life’s work,” Albrecht said. “Of course I’m in.”

“Five?” said Tibor. “ Fivetreasures? I’m in five times.”

“But how do we want to proceed?” asked Albrecht.

Sam said, “I’ve given it a little thought. First, we need to decipher the message that Attila left us and be sure we understand it.”

“Fortunately, it’s only Latin.” Albrecht took the newspaper Tibor had left on the seat, then used his pen to write out his translation. “‘You have found my secret but have not begun to learn it. Know that treasures are buried in sadness, never in joy. I did not bury treasure once. I buried it five times. To find the last, you must reach the first. The fifth is the place where the world was lost.’ In this section he tells us where the most recent treasure is.”

“Where can that be?” asked Remi. “When was the world lost?”

“There are a couple of good candidates for that description,” Albrecht said. “Remember that, to Attila, the world meant the land between the Ural Mountains and the Atlantic.”

“Let’s call Selma,” Remi said. “Maybe she and Pete and Wendy can help us sort this out.” She pressed a key on her cell phone. There was a ringing sound and then Selma’s voice on the speaker.

“Hi, Remi.”

“Hi, Selma. You’re being included in a very important discussion. Did you get the Latin inscription I e-mailed you?”

“Yes,” said Selma. “It was like a puzzle—or maybe just the beginning of one. Are you going after it?”

“Yes,” said Sam. “First, we need to know where ‘the world was lost.’ Albrecht was just saying there are a couple of candidates. Go on, Albrecht.”

“Well, certainly if Albrecht—”

Albrecht interrupted. “We called because we want you to verify the facts, and, in the end, we’ll want your opinion too. Our command of history and its principles will give us an advantage. But Mr. Bako has done a decades-long obsessive study of Attila’s life. He’s probably got an incredible command of the details. Buffs and fanatics can be powerful opponents in a contest of trivia.”

“You said you saw two possible meanings for when the world was lost,” Remi said. “What are they?”

“One would be the battle Attila fought at Châlons-en-Champagne, France, in the year 451. The Huns had advanced to the west through Germany and most of France, pillaging and destroying cities. The Romans, under Flavius Aëtius, along with a larger contingent of allies, raced to cut off the Huns’ advance. They met on the plain at Châlons. Both sides lost many men, but there was no conclusive winner. This was the farthest west that Attila ever got. If he had won a clear victory, he would have gone on and taken Paris, and then possibly the rest of France. He would have ruled most of the area from the Urals to the ocean.”

“What’s the other candidate?” asked Selma.

“It’s a bit more complicated story,” Albrecht said. “It began a year earlier, in 450. Honoria, the sister of the Roman Emperor Valentinian III, was in exile, living in Constantinople, the eastern Roman capital, because at the age of sixteen she was pregnant by a servant. Now she was about to be married off to a Roman Senator she didn’t like. Her solution was to write a letter to Attila the Hun, asking him to rescue her. Attila definitely interpreted the letter as a marriage proposal. He believed she would bring him a dowry consisting of half the Roman Empire.”

“Was that really what she had in mind?” Remi asked.

“It hardly mattered, because her brother Valentinian wasn’t going to let it happen. He hustled Honoria back to the Western Empire, to Ravenna, Italy, where he had his court.”

“Attila wouldn’t have put up with that,” said Tibor.

“He didn’t,” Albrecht said. “In 452, after his disappointment in France, Attila and his men went south and east into northern Italy. They took Padua, Milan, and many other cities. Attila, at the head of his huge army, moved south toward Ravenna, forcing Valentinian and his court to flee back to Rome.”

“And Attila followed?”

“Yes. Until a delegation met him south of Lake Garda, near Mantua. The delegation included noble Romans, led by Pope Leo I. They begged for mercy, asking him to spare Rome. History says he turned around and left for Hungary.”

“That’s all?”

“I said it was complicated. He had taken northern Italy almost unopposed. He wasn’t a Christian and wouldn’t have been interested in the Pope’s request. Italy was at his feet. They had no army comparable to his. I think that his great army made the conquest of Rome impossible. The country was in the middle of a terrible famine. There was also an epidemic. The descriptions indicate it was probably malaria. If Attila pushed on for Rome, there would be no food to feed his huge army, and many would die from illness. So he left, planning to return another day.”

“Is that what you think is the meaning of ‘where the world was lost’?”

“Yes,” said Albrecht. “He was already receiving annual tribute from the Eastern Roman Empire. He controlled most of Europe, from the Urals to central France. If he’d been given the Western Roman Empire, legitimized by the hand of the Emperor’s sister, that was pretty much what he would have considered the world.”

“Albrecht is the expert, but if my opinion makes a difference, I heartily agree,” said Selma.

“It’s a year later than the battle in France,” said Sam. “At the end of his life, I think he wouldn’t say the battle was the most recent loss, and ignore losing Rome when he had it in his hands.”

“Exactly,” said Albrecht. “Fighting to a standstill in France was important. But having Rome was having the world.”

“Attila says he buried a treasure. So it’s off to Italy.”

“The place where the world was lost was where he stopped his army and went home,” Albrecht said. “We’ll research it carefully, but it would be south of Lake Garda near Mantua.”

“All right,” said Sam. “Beginning now, we’re in a race. Arpad Bako will dig up the crypt, expecting to find us in there dead. He’ll find the message, get it translated, and head where we’re headed.”

“If that’s his interpretation of the message,” said Remi.

“Right. What’s the plan?” asked Tibor.

Sam said, “I think that Bako has more reason than ever to want to snatch Albrecht. Interpreting these ancient messages is going to be crucial. So we fly Albrecht to California on the next flight so he can work with Selma in the research center at home in La Jolla. It’s also extremely important that we know what Arpad Bako and his men are doing and where they are from hour to hour. The only one who can hope to accomplish that is Tibor, so he returns to Szeged and recruits people he can trust to help him. Remi and I will catch the next plane from Budapest to the area south of Lake Garda and get started on the search. Other suggestions?”

“No,” said Albrecht. “Perfectly right.”

“I’ll be honored to work with you, Albrecht,” said Selma. “All right, everyone. Your plane tickets will be waiting at Ferihegy Airport at Budapest. Except you, Tibor. Might I be so presumptuous as to suggest that you take a different route home?”

“Thank you, Selma. I will.”

“And Selma?”

“Yes, Sam?”

“See if you can get a scrambled satellite phone to Tibor, programmed with our numbers and yours.”

“Right away.” They could hear her computer keys clicking at a furious rate. “And while I’m at it, I’ll get new ones for you too.”

“Good idea,” said Sam.

“And nobody forget,” Remi said. “A few hours ago, Bako’s men tried to bury us alive. Don’t anybody ever stop looking over your shoulder.”

SZEGED, HUNGARY

ARPAD BAKO SAT IN HIS OFFICE OVERLOOKING THE TISZA River and the bridge. On the other side of the river he could see the lights of Új-Szeged. It seemed to him that the lights brightened and extended farther every time he looked. He was in such high spirits that he began to feel a creeping sadness. He should have prepared some kind of celebration. A moment like this should not have been wasted. Gábor Székely and two of his men had reported good news from a vineyard on Route 53 at Kiskunhalas.

Somehow the two Americans and Albrecht Fischer had sorted out the twists and turns of the Tisza that had disappeared since Attila’s time and found it. They had found the tomb. Székely had received the report from his surveillance team at three a.m. but had the consideration to wait at Bako’s house until he had awakened at seven.

The surveillance team had followed Tibor Lazar’s sedan all the way to the experimental vineyard, using a transponder they had attached to it. When they caught up, they found Fischer and the Fargos actually inside Attila’s tomb. The two surveillance men had read the situation and made a quick decision not to try to drag them out. They had simply moved the heavy iron seal back over the opening, replaced the dirt, and driven away to wait for them to suffocate.

Bako could hardly believe his luck. He had the tomb of Attila, containing one of the great treasures of ancient history. And he had trapped inside it the only people capable of preventing him from retrieving it. Last night, Arpad Bako had won the prize of his life. But now it was night again. Why was Székely taking so long?

His telephone rang. It seemed terribly loud in the dark and solitude of his office. He reached into his suit pocket for it. “Yes?”

“This is Gábor Székely, sir.”

“Good. I’ve been waiting.”

“The news is . . . unexpected,” Székely said. “We’ve dug down to the tomb, but it had been filled with dirt. We dug down into it carefully, brought in more men, and emptied it. There was no treasure, no body of Attila, and there never had been. Attila’s men had simply buried an iron sheet with Latin writing on it. We’ve photographed it, and I just sent it to you as an attachment to an e-mail.”

Bako whirled his chair around to face his desk and turned on his computer. “What about the Fargos and Professor Fischer?”

“They aren’t here, sir. They must have escaped, which would explain why the underground chamber is filled with dirt. As the chamber filled up, they—”

“If you’re sure you’ve found everything, close that chamber and bury it again so no outsider will be able to find it. I don’t want some third party joining the hunt for the tomb.”

“Yes, sir.”

“And then come back here to my office. I’ll have orders ready for you.”

“Yes, sir.”

Bako saw the e-mail, headed “no subject,” from Székely. He opened it, downloaded the attachment, and saw the picture. He enlarged it so it filled the two-foot screen on his desk. The rough, tarnished surface was gouged deeply, and he could make out the letters easily. He had gone to the best school. While his Latin wasn’t good enough to do justice to Livy or Suetonius anymore, this was the crude and simple Latin of soldiers. He translated it as he read.

“‘You have found my secret but have not begun to learn it . . . The fifth is the place where the world was lost.’”

Bako laughed aloud and punched the air above his desk. “Five treasures!” He would be one of the richest men in Europe. His mind raced. Of course he knew the place where the world was lost. Anyone would know that. It was the site of Attila’s defeat, the battlefield where Aëtius and the Visigoths joined forces to stop his advance on Paris!

Then he remembered something unpleasant. His enemies had been trapped in that stone chamber with the message scraped into the iron sheet. They had gotten out alive. They would be rushing to Châlons right now. There was no time to waste.

Bako snatched up his phone and dialed 33, the code for France, and then a private number. It was the cell phone of Étienne Le Clerc.

“’Allo?”

“Étienne!”

“Hello, Arpad,” he said wearily. “You have caught me at dinner. Is there trouble?”

“There is only opportunity. I’ve discovered the location of one of Attila’s hidden treasures. It’s in a place where you can easily help me get it. But there are other people rushing to get there before I do.”

“So you’re planning to win the race by substituting a person who was born at the finish line? How much do I get?”

“You will have a third of this treasure, but I must see all of it—everything that is found—before we split it.”

Bako could almost hear Étienne Le Clerc’s shoulders shrugging. “ Oui, bien sûr.But I’ll need specific information on where it is. I’m not going to dig up half of France searching for it. Who, and how many, are the competition?”

“There are an American couple named Sam and Remi Fargo. They’re amateur treasure hunters. They’ve joined with a German archaeology professor named Albrecht Fischer. I’ll send you their pictures by e-mail. And there’s a Hungarian taxi driver named Tibor Lazar. I don’t think they’ll bring anyone else. They’ll want to slip into France, find the treasure, and get out.”

“And where is the treasure to be found?”

“Before I tell you, are you sure you’re willing and able to do this and to stick to my terms?”

“We must both look at everything and then each take half.”

“I said one-third!”

“You said ‘split.’ To me, that means ‘split down the middle.’ I’m taking all of the risk and doing all of the work. And I’m doing it in my own backyard.”

“Oh, all right. We don’t have time to argue, and there will be more wealth than we can spend in our two lifetimes. Take half. But no matter what you learn during all this, it remains a secret.”

“Oui.”

“The treasure must be buried on the field of the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, at Châlons-en-Champagne. Look for a buried chamber on the east side of the high stone outcropping in the center of the field near the Marne River. It should show up with metal detectors.”

“Will do, my friend. When we’ve dug up the treasure, I’ll call you.”

“Good,” said Arpad. “And when the Fargos and their party arrive, please do what you can to solve that problem too.”

“If they were to have a fatal accident, it would be a pity, but these things do happen sometimes. If it does, I’ll expect additional monetary consideration. Men who can and will do this sort of thing don’t come cheap.”

“I’ll be waiting. Thank you, Étienne.”

Bako clicked his cell phone to end the call and put it in his inner coat pocket. He was feeling like a great general who had just committed a corps of foreign troops to the distant wing of his battle, neatly outmaneuvering his opponents and trapping them. He had acted decisively, even ruthlessly, a little like Attila.

He thought about Étienne Le Clerc. He was an unapologetic gangster, not a legitimate businessman who cut a few corners. He lived very well by a combination of several schemes that Bako knew about—money laundering, melting stolen jewelry into bars and selling the loose gems, counterfeiting several currencies and trading them outside their home markets for euros, smuggling Bako’s prescription drugs into France—and probably other schemes Bako didn’t know about. Le Clerc had dozens of operatives, dealers, smugglers, and enforcers in his organization and they were already in France, not far from the place where the world was lost.