The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

“That was exactly my question. We’re not talking about the kind of breaker that would keep a shorted hair dryer from causing your lights to pop out. She was aiming at huge power station breakers that could take out a city grid. I gave her some info about the breaker control software, but I didn’t end up writing the code. My ethics may be questionable, but even I know taking out a power system of that size gets whole countries after you.”

“And asking her what she was doing wasn’t an option,” Gretchen said.

“Of course not. So I backtracked her IP address. It was spoofed very well, but I had discovered some of her favorite methods when I was working with her in the past. But when I found her computer and hacked in, she had only a few files on it that weren’t encrypted. Most of them were irrelevant, but I found an obscure folder buried down deep. It was marked Dynamo Op Res.”

“Op Res could mean ‘operation research,’” Murph said. “Was Dynamo the code word they were using for the operation?”

Kula shrugged. “She never told me they had a name for it.”

“What was in the files?” Juan asked.

“It was bizarre. There were notes about Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812 and a subsequent search for his treasure.”

“What treasure?” Gretchen asked.

“According to the files I found, Napoleon attacked Russia in the summer of 1812 with one of the biggest armies ever assembled until that point, over six hundred and fifty thousand men.”

Juan nodded. “Yes, and it ended up being one of the greatest military disasters in history. Russia pioneered the scorched-earth tactic, leaving nothing for Napoleon’s army to forage. He retreated from Moscow in December, during a particularly brutal winter, and crossed back over the Russian border with fewer than thirty thousand soldiers.”

“But what most people don’t realize,” Kula continued, “was that Napoleon looted everything he could along the way. The Russians weren’t able to take all their valuables with them when they fled in front of Napoleon’s army, and the fires were concentrated on the food stores and lodging. When Le Général reached Moscow, much of it was still intact, including the Kremlin. It is thought that the French acquired two hundred wagonloads of gold, gems, antique weapons, and other valuabl

es.”

“What happened to it?” Murph asked.

“No one knows. When Napoleon began the retreat, he took the treasure with him, but they were losing horses at a staggering rate due to the cold and hunger. Two hundred thousand horses are estimated to have died. Many of the soldiers ate them or cut them open and crawled into their bellies for warmth. Because of the shortage of horses, Napoleon had to abandon the treasure along the way. The amount of gold alone could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Some think he sunk the entire treasure in a lake, but no one’s been able to find it in two hundred years.”

Gretchen shook her head in disbelief. “What does this have to do with a bank heist and shutting down electrical systems?”

“Most of the files in the folder were unreadable, but I found mentions of banking system encryption algorithms and utility maps of Europe. There’s definitely some kind of connection. I also found the PDF of a letter from a French naval lieutenant named Pierre Delacroix. It was secretly sent to a French businessman after Napoleon supposedly died.”

Juan narrowed his eyes at Kula. “What do you mean ‘supposedly’?”

“I don’t speak French, so my online translation may have been spotty. But it seems that the businessman hired Delacroix to abduct Napoleon from St. Helena in order to help him find the treasure. According to Delacroix, the abduction was a success.”

“Wait a minute,” MacD interjected. “Ah’ve been to Les Invalides in Paris. That’s where Napoleon is buried. He died on St. Helena, in 1821.”

“That’s the year the letter is dated,” Kula said. “They supposedly carried him away on a submarine called the Stingray.”

MacD laughed. “Oh, come on! A submarine? Mah kid could come up with a better story than that.”

“I thought the same thing. But Smithsonian magazine had an article about real plans for such a rescue by some of his most fanatical followers. Now it looks like someone actually went through with it.”

Murph, who was tapping on his tablet, said, “He’s right. I just found the article. The sub was based on one designed by Robert Fulton, the same guy who invented the steamboat. He demonstrated it for Napoleon’s navy, but they thought it wasn’t practical even though the test was a success. Fulton’s sub was called the Nautilus.”

“Did this Delacroix find the treasure?” Juan asked Kula.

“The letter didn’t say. The reason Delacroix wrote it was because Napoleon had some demands before he would lead them to the treasure. The emperor also implied that he left behind clues to its whereabouts on St. Helena to suggest that someone else might find it first. He had been planning to smuggle the information off the island so that the treasure could be found by his loyalists and fund his triumphant rescue.”

“What were the clues?”

“He wouldn’t reveal them, but Delacroix suspected that they may have been in a book he left behind. Napoleon ripped some pages from it before they escaped, but the information on those pages seemed to be incomplete.”

“What book?”

“Homer’s Odyssey. It’s also called Napoleon’s Diary. ShadowFoe was intent on getting it in the hope that it would lead them to the treasure.”

“And she might,” Murph said, looking at his tablet. “It’s being auctioned off in Malta in two days.”