The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

“Max said they got it on board. Eric and Murph are examining it now.”

“Tell them I want to know the minute they have anything to report.”

She grinned at him. “What, am I part of your crew now?”

“Maybe you should be.”

“You definitely live interesting lives around here. It’s been fun doing some fieldwork again.”

“I’ll take that as a job application.”

“I’ll think about it,” she said, but the idea intrigued her more than she let on.

The CAT scan didn’t take long, and Julia pronounced him free of any internal injuries, although he’d probably be sore for a few days. The concussion assessment protocol similarly came up negative. She gave him some pain meds, but he simply pocketed them.

They went up to the deck and found Eric and Murph inside the open container, poring over the engravings etched into the surface of the white granite column.

There were three rows of writing, in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek. According to their analysis of Napoleon’s Diary, specific letters in his copy of The Odyssey referred to Greek letters on the column, and the corresponding Latin letters would spell out some kind of clue. Napoleon must have had a drawing of the Jaffa Column with him on St. Helena in order to be able to create the clues, but the drawings were lost or destroyed after the report of the emperor’s death.

Eric looked up from the tablet computer he was using to take photos of the etchings. “How are you feeling?”

“Nothing that a snifter of Rémy Martin won’t take care of,” Juan said. “Have you made any progress?”

“It’s very cool stuff,” Murph said without looking up from his own tablet computer. “The markings are exactly the kind we expected to find based on the clues in the diary. We think we’ve already narrowed down the location to Vilnius, Lithuania. Got a problem, though.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s something you need to solve with logic, deduction, and creativity, but that’s not important right now.”

Gretchen chuckled at Murph’s reference to the movie Airplane! “You did walk right into that one.”

Juan smirked. “My mind must still be fuzzy. I mean, what’s the problem?”

“The damage to the container,” Eric said. “The metal gouged the column on the underside. It destroyed some of the markings, which could make it difficult to find the exact location of the treasure. We won’t know until we get a chance to remove it and stand it up. Max said he’d rig up something in the hold.”

“What’s the time frame?”

“We should have it removed from the container and standing by morning.”

Murph’s phone buzzed. He answered, then said, “Really?”

He tapped on his tablet and handed it to Juan. “It’s for you. A video call.” He looked at Gretchen. “I think you’ll want to see this, too.”

Juan took the tablet from Murph. Gretchen crowded in as well, intrigued as to who could be calling.

Juan answered the call, and Gretchen immediately recognized the face staring back at them. She had first met him a few nights ago.

It was Whyvern, the Albanian hacker. Now she was doubly curious as to why he would contact them.

“Hello, sir,” Erion Kula said. They had never revealed their real names to him, but they’d left an untraceable number for him to use if he remembered anything else about his break-in to ShadowFoe’s computer. “You look like you’ve had a long day.”

“I feel fine,” Juan answered reflexively. “Do you have some more information for us?”

“In a way. I have a message for you. It’s from ShadowFoe. Somehow, she knew I could contact you. Speaking of which, I’m not supposed to know this, but I found out that the message was routed to me through the computers at Monaco police headquarters.”

Gretchen whispered into Juan’s ear, “Rivard?”

He turned to her and under his breath said, “It would explain why the chief inspector of the Sûreté was such a thorn in our sides during the investigation.”