The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

They made their way to the far end of the room and went through a door that led to a set of descending stairs.

Golov nodded, and they all removed their masks.

He pointed at Kulpa. “You wait here. Make sure we are left alone. I’ll station a man up here with you to keep you company.”

Kulpa’s eyes wandered to the staircase. Golov could tell that the utility foreman desperately wanted to know what they were up to, but he was either smart enough or scared enough not to ask.

“Of course,” Kulpa said. He looked around and, seeing no chairs, plopped down on the floor.

“Stay with him,” Golov said to Monroe, who nodded and took up a post standing next to the door.

The rest of them went down the stairs, carrying the boxes that had been on the handcart. As they entered the lower part of the church, the walls changed to exposed brick held in place by crude mortar. A musty smell pervaded the air.

They were in the cathedral’s age-old catacombs. For the benefit of tourists, the ancient floor had been covered over by modern material, and soft lights at the base of the vaulted walls cast a moody glow. Although there was a maze of passages, clues Napoleon left in the diary pages would allow them to narrow down the search area considerably.

“Where do we start?” O’Connor asked as he set his box down.

Golov oriented himself so that he was facing north. “The pages from Napoleon’s Diary indicated the treasure would be somewhere in that direction.”

Finding valuables hidden away inside the cathedral wouldn’t be unprecedented. Twenty years ago in the same cathedral, workers installing electrical cables discovered a cache of pre–World War II antiques secreted behind a wall. They had been sealed up as the Nazi invasion began, and then remained there after those who’d hidden the treasure were killed in the war, taking the knowledge of the secret stash with them.

Golov was certain Napoleon’s men had similarly hid the treasure from Moscow. They had stowed it in a large chamber and then sealed it up so that the barrier looked like any of the other walls in the catacombs. After the men who did the work succumbed to the bitter cold during the remainder of the retreat, the emperor was left as the sole remaining person who knew exactly where the treasure was hidden. That information had died with him. Given the thickness of the walls, attempting to penetrate them with any type of sensing device would be useless. Brute force was the only way the riches would be unearthed.

Golov nodded to Sirkal, who unzipped his bag. He took out a handheld electric demolition hammer and a loop of heavy-duty extension cord.

“Find somewhere to plug that in,” Golov said. “Let’s start digging.”

FORTY-NINE

Rain had been pelting the river for an hour and it didn’t show any signs of letting up. The fabric cover kept Juan dry as he piloted the Sea Ray during the monotonous search pattern up and down the river, three hundred yards in one direction and three hundred yards in the other, until they’d exhausted a grid and moved on to the next section. They’d been able to rig up covers for the metal detecting equipment, but Linda and Gretchen had to monitor the displays with only their rain jackets to shield them from the weather. Trono and MacD kept out of the way inside the cabin, playing cards.

The tedious operation had been going on for six hours now without a peep from the sensors. They ate sandwiches as they worked, and the boat had a small head, so there was no need to stop until they ran out of fuel. Their supply would last them until it was dark, at their current slow trolling speed.

The routine left Juan a lot of time alone with his thoughts. Gretchen had said little to him when they’d all met for breakfast to finalize their plans. His bed was empty when his alarm went off that morning.

Juan had set a rule for himself that he’d never get involved with a member of his crew, but Gretchen wasn’t part of the crew. At least, not yet. His comments about her joining the Oregon were serious, but now he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. The spark between them had always been there. It’s just that they’d never acted on it while they were both married.

“Chairman,” Trono called from inside the cabin, “I’ve got Eric on the line. Says it’s urgent.”

“All right,” Juan said. “Take the wheel for me.”

“I thought you’d never ask. It’s been a while since I’ve been powerboat racing.”

“Restrain yourself. Three knots is all we need.”

They switched places. Juan took the mobile phone from him and ducked into the cabin. Raindrops hammered against the roof so loudly that Juan put his finger in his free ear.

“What have you got for me, Stoney?”

“Chairman, Murph and I have made some discoveries you need to know about.”

“On the diary code or the words that Marie Marceau told us?”

“Both. We don’t think Marceau said zings, like you thought. It’s more likely that she said Zingst, which is a town along the Baltic coast—Zingst, Germany.”

That certainly made more sense than anything else Juan had come up with. “What’s the significance?”

“There’s a huge transformer station there. One that feeds all of the power from the largest offshore wind farm in the world to the European electrical grid.”