The Emperor's Revenge (Oregon Files 11)

“That fits with our intel that ShadowFoe was looking into the power system. Do you think they’re targeting that station like the one they did in Frankfurt?”

“It’s possible, especially since we’ve deciphered what Marceau meant by lightning grid.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Juan said.

“When I was doing my Internet search, the Dutch translation of lightning grid popped up. It’s bliksem raster. The reason it came up is that Bliksem Raster is also the name of one of the largest suppliers of industrial-grade electrical equipment to the European Union.”

“Any connection to Antonovich?”

“Just that he owns ha

lf of it as part of a joint venture.”

Juan shook his head in amazement.

“It gets better,” Eric continued. “The other half of Bliksem Raster was owned by Lars and Oskar Dijkstra.”

“Why is that important?”

“Because Lars and Oskar are currently dead. Their private jet went down in Gibraltar last week on their way to the auction in Malta. Authorities still have no theory why the plane crashed, but one witness said the wing was glowing red before it caught fire.”

“Sounds like the work of a high-powered laser.”

“That’s what we thought.”

“Wait a minute. I know the Dijkstra name. They own a shipping line, don’t they?”

“You stole my thunder. Guess what shipping line owned the Narwhal.”

Now it was all coming into focus. The Dijkstras must have gone into business with Antonovich and then something went wrong. Perhaps they had learned about the treasure and planned to acquire the Jaffa Column and Napoleon’s Diary out from under him to find it themselves, but Antonovich killed them before they had the chance.

“What’s the connection between Bliksem Raster and the transformer station in Zingst?” Juan asked. “Why would Marceau think those two pieces of information were important enough to tell us while she was dying?”

“We’re still working on that one. Now Murph wants to talk to you.”

Juan heard the phone shuffling and then Murph spoke.

“Chairman, I just got done with my analysis of the column. I wanted to make sure I had it right before I sent you on a wild-goose chase.”

Juan frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I was able to reconstruct the etchings on the part of the Jaffa Column that was damaged and compare it to the notes in the diary. It took a bit of massaging, but I think I teased out the location of the treasure.”

“You’ve got an exact spot on the river where we should look?”

“Not exactly. I don’t think it’s in the river at all.”

“What are you talking about? The diary pages were clear.”

“I think they were forged. Impressive job, if you ask me,” Murph said.

“How do you know?”

“Because of what I found in the part of the diary we have. See, ShadowFoe must have known we’d be able to narrow down the location of the treasure to Vilnius, so they couldn’t just direct us to somewhere in, I don’t know, Belarus. They had to make the location of the treasure believable but not where it really is. So they came up with this alternative.”

“Then where is the treasure?”

“The code in the diary comes down to a fairly simple cipher that refers to specific letters in the diary itself. Then we transferred those letters to Greek inscriptions on the column, which referred to corresponding Latin characters underneath them. The damage obliterated some of the markings, but the ones that remained helped me partially spell out a particular location.”