“Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me help take something from Bako for once. And because your check wasn’t a fake.”
“Your help wasn’t fake. You saved Albrecht’s life.”
“You saved Albrecht. I just said, ‘Do as I say or this crazy man will kill you.’”
“You must have said it right.”
Tibor studied him. “You’re planning something else. What is it?”
Sam smiled. “They don’t need me to dig up this field. But I think I can do something that will fool Bako and keep his men busy so these people can do their work.”
“Arpad Bako is a very big man. You saw just one of his businesses. He has money and power, and he has rich, powerful friends here and elsewhere. You have to be careful.”
“He’s after the tomb of Attila the Hun, just as you thought.”
Tibor laughed. “Not the Fountain of Youth? Not the Ladder to Heaven?”
“I’m sure you know the stories. Attila was supposed to have been buried in secret with his treasure and then the Tisza River diverted to cover the grave.”
“Ah, of course. We’re all told that as little children,” said Tibor. “Arpad Bako must be the only child who ever believed it. Besides, the Tisza is a thousand kilometers long, and it used to be even longer. Lots of it has been diverted, some parts cut off and left dry. All the swampy parts were drained.”
“That’s the beauty of it, Tibor. Remi and I are not going to find the tomb. We’re just going to make Bako watch us look for it.”
“I want to join you.”
“Welcome aboard. Speaking of boats, do you have any relatives with boats?”
“Not a relative, a friend. He would rent it for, say . . . nothing.”
“Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Well, you just risked your life to rescue a friend from a compound full of armed men and paid me a fortune for spending a day and a night helping you. It’s good business to be your friend.”
The next morning, a thirty-foot fishing boat, Margit, puttered up the Tisza River at five to ten knots. Sometimes it would idle, barely holding against the lazy current of the river, and then begin to make diagonal crossings. The Margit was towing something, but it was impossible to tell from the shore what it was because it never rose above the surface.
A sharp-eyed observer might have seen that there were five people aboard—a helmsman, two men who stood watch, a man who operated whatever was being towed, and a slender auburn-haired woman who watched the screen of a laptop computer on a shelf that was mounted just inside the cabin.
After less than an hour of this, a truck with an enclosed cargo space moved slowly along the road above the river.
In the cargo space were four men, sitting on a bench along one side. They used a camera with a telephoto lens, two marksman’s spotting scopes, and a video camera with a powerful zoom lens, all mounted through holes in the side of the truck. The leader of the group was a man named Gábor Székely. He was in the first position behind the driver so he could direct the actions of any of the others.
His cell phone buzzed and he lifted it and said in Hungarian, “Yes?” He listened for a time and then said, “Thank you.” He put the phone away and announced to the others, “The man in the stern with the cable in his hands is Samuel Fargo. He had some equipment flown in overnight: a metal detector, some pairs of night vision goggles, and a Geometrics G-882 marine magnetometer, which detects small deviations in the earth’s magnetic field, especially those caused by pieces of iron.”
“The iron coffin,” said the man beside him.
Gábor didn’t see fit to acknowledge that. “The woman must be his wife, Remi Fargo. They have been staying at the City Center Hotel.”
The third man said, “We’ve got rifles here with scopes. We could easily kill anyone on deck from this truck.”
“We don’t want to do that just yet,” said Gábor Székely. “The Fargos are experienced treasure hunters. They’ve found important treasures in Asia and the Swiss Alps and elsewhere. They have the boat and the equipment for the search.”
“We’re going to wait until after they find it?”
“Yes. That’s what we’re going to do. When they find the outer casket of iron, we’ll move in before they can raise it to the surface. They’ll have a terrible accident and we’ll find the tomb. Mr. Bako will be a hero for finding a national treasure.”