The Amber Secret

by David Leadbeater

  Bodie paused for a moment to catch his breath.

  And that was when he heard it. A distant roll of thunder, followed quickly by another. He looked up.

  A large, irregular boulder had broken free from the lofty heights above. It had plummeted for fifty feet and then gotten caught between two ledges, but it was threatening even now to start falling again, and this time it would plunge straight down the vertical rock face into them.

  “Lucie!” He saw immediately who it would strike. “Move! Move!”

  It was rocking, rolling toward the edge.

  “Lucie!” His shout was torn away by the cutting winds.

  Bodie ran, head down. It was all he could do. The boulder was gaining momentum. Lucie was staring at him, Dudyk too, as if he’d lost his mind. Bodie smashed two mercenaries into the rock face on his way past as they tried to stop him, leapt past a shocked Yasmine, and screamed, “Look out!” as he ran straight at Lucie.

  He calculated the boulder would be almost upon them.

  He hit Lucie open armed, driving her back against the mountain. With only a split second to decide, he reached out and grabbed Dudyk too, unable to just let the man be crushed to death.

  They struck the rock face hard.

  The boulder smashed down just two seconds later, impacting the ledge with a resounding crash. To Bodie, it sounded like the whole mountain had collapsed upon them. Lucie screamed again, high pitched and right in his ear. Dudyk had been struggling in his grip but lost all his fight then, allowing Bodie to push him back against the rock.

  The boulder took four feet of ledge with it as it crashed down and swept past. Luckily, it wasn’t the four feet Bodie occupied.

  Several moments passed, and the mountain grew quiet once more. All sound except the incessant wind stopped.

  Then Cassidy’s voice: “You all right, Guy? Luce?”

  Bodie let out a long breath, let up his grip on Lucie and Dudyk, and tested limbs and muscles. “I think so.”

  Lucie fell to her knees, overwhelmed, the events of the last few days catching up with her. Bodie helped her gently to her feet, whispering, “It’ll be okay. We’ll find a way out of this. Trust me.”

  Dudyk heard him and regarded Bodie with utterly blank eyes. “You saved my life.”

  “I’ll try not to let it happen again.”

  Bodie held the man’s eyes a moment longer and thought he saw a glint of respect there—just a shimmer, but at this stage even a shimmer was better than nothing at all.

  “We still have that gap to cross.” Bodie stared at the new four-foot-long hazard. “Maybe you could lay down, mate, and we’ll walk across your back.”

  Dudyk almost smiled.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  The entire group—mercenaries, Russian relic hunters, and captives—worked together as a team to set up camp, in preparation for a lonely night out on the mountain. Heidi Moneymaker toiled alongside mercenaries and members of R24 to make their temporary shelter as secure as possible. She’d heard the wolves earlier, but nothing for a long time.

  Were they being tracked?

  After Bodie had saved Lucie and Dudyk, the group had navigated much more carefully, with lookouts to front and rear as well as spotters watching the slopes. Another rockfall had hindered them for thirty minutes, and then a dead-end pass had forced them to find another route.

  Now, they were three-quarters of the way across the range. The sun was ebbing to the west, throwing lengthening shadows. One saving grace was they weren’t as high now as they had been earlier, making the cold less bitter and the winds weaker. It was a good place to camp in the lee of the mountain, protected by a high overhang.

  Heidi settled with her back to the wall, bone tired. Despite her situation it felt extraordinary just sitting there, in the quiet vastness, with endless, incredible vistas to all sides. The isolation itself was grand, the quietness overwhelming, the vault of the sky a wonder.

  It had been a long, hard, rough day. She’d used muscles she hadn’t known she had, and now those muscles were complaining. Slowly, she rolled her shoulders to ease away the stiffness.

  “Want a massage?” Bodie dropped down next to her.

  “I’m good for now, thanks.”

  “Maybe later?”

  She looked at him. There had been this unspoken thing between them since they’d first met. A connection. An attachment that they hadn’t explored. Still, it remained, and Heidi wondered if they’d ever get to exploring it.

  “One more crazy adventure,” Bodie laughed.

  Which was something else causing tension and conflict between them. Bodie and his crew wanted out of CIA constraints. They mentioned it almost every chance they got. The entire scenario stupefied her. Heidi was caught in the middle of the conflict between the CIA and Bodie’s bunch.

  She already knew the outcome would cause chaos, which moved it far down her chain of thoughts.

  Bodie interrupted. “You okay? Thinking about your daughter?”

  She hadn’t been, but she nodded. “I missed the first meeting she’s agreed to in months.”

  “You can’t deal with that right now. But you can handle it when we get back.”

  “I wish it was that easy.”

  Bodie shuffled into a more comfortable position. “Well, I’m here if you need me.”

  Heidi felt a moment’s amusement. “You? What could you know about conversing with an eleven-year-old?”

  Bodie shrugged. “I take care of Gunn every day.”

  Heidi smiled and cocked her head. “It’s not the best résumé, is it?”

  “I guess not.”

  “All this came at a bad time for you too, huh?”

  Bodie sighed. “The world’s a poorer place without Cross in it. I used to lean on him more than I realized.”

  “Well, lean on me now. I can take it.” Heidi switched the subject to something that had been on her mind the last couple of days. “Have you spoken to Caruso? Do we know how much further we have to go before we reach the Amber Room?”

  Bodie lowered his voice, staring at the ground. “I tried,” he whispered. “But I think the guy genuinely can’t remember. He has early dementia, but it’s the excitement of being around relics that stimulates him enough to fire his memory again.”

  Heidi’s suspicions were reinforced by her experience as a CIA agent. “I don’t completely trust that opinion. The most likely scenario is he’s terrified for his family and drawing this out, praying for some good fortune.”

  Bodie nodded, sitting back. Heidi closed her eyes, grateful for his close presence and the easy regard in which they held each other. Throughout the night they catnapped and chatted, keeping an eye on everyone else, including the mercs and R24. Gurka, Nina, and Vash sat side by side, chatting frequently. The mercs wandered to and fro, seeking out dangers along the pass in which they sat. Heidi watched Lucie at the far end of the line and saw her trying to engage Dudyk in conversation. It was a good strategy, though Heidi wasn’t sure Lucie realized she was doing it for any tactical reason. It was just Lucie, trying to adapt and make the best of a bad situation.

  The night passed slowly, a deep chill forcing them to huddle together. Heidi found peace in Bodie’s warm body and fell asleep.

  When she woke, it was to his gentle shaking. “Breakfast.”

  A tasteless bowl of camping rations later, the group broke camp and continued across the mountain, following a circuitous route and coming up against another dead end before finding a path that began to wind its way downward.

  Heidi’s spirits lifted when she saw foothills rolling between gaps in the rock faces. “A fine sight,” she said aloud.

  But then she began to worry about what came next.

  Once the group was free of the mountains, Gurka called a brief halt for refreshments. It was clear from the spirited conversation that everyone was happier in the foothills. As she ate, Heidi saw Gurka walk over to Jemma. Bodie moved to back their researcher up, so Heidi walked over to lend her weight.r />
  “Do you have coordinates for where you spotted the train track?” Gurka asked.

  “I do.”

  “Enter them now. We can’t be far away.”

  Jemma tapped numbers into a handheld GPS device and held it out to Gurka. The leader of R24 nodded. “Forty minutes.” His face broke out into a rare grin. “Let’s move out.”

  Heidi focused, concentrating on the position and well-being of the thirteen mercenaries still living. Two had collected injuries along the mountain paths, but nothing more than a twisted ankle and bruising. She herself had hurt the fingers of her right hand while grabbing a crumbling handhold. Nobody had escaped the mountains in great condition.

  It helped her to think of their predicament as a mission, an operation where they had to extract themselves from a dangerous enemy. She’d received training for that dilemma at least. But no training during her time at the CIA had prepared her for the moral quandary she knew she would face if they ever escaped from this. The CIA would never willingly let the relic hunters go, but Bodie and his team were close to forcing the issue. She was their handler, but she felt for this team. She knew what they’d been through and what made them do what they did. She accepted it, even admired it in a way.

  They were friends. Maybe, with Bodie, maybe more than that. Could she really turn them in? Could she effectively chase them down if they ran? The questions threatened to pull her mind apart, so she shelved them as best she could to focus on the upcoming threat.

  As they reached the coordinates Jemma had given them, she became hyperaware. The distractions of the last few days, the journey, R24, the mercenaries, the wolves, and especially deliberations on how to approach her daughter—it all melted away.

  They slowed beyond the foothills, approaching a rolling plain, a far more hospitable terrain. Heidi cast a glance back toward the mountains. They hadn’t heard or seen anything to suppose the wolves were still tracking them, and if they were, hopefully the flat land would put them off.

  Gurka walked alongside Jemma. “We should be able to see the tracks by now.”

  The mercs were kicking at the ground, which was a mix of green and brown. A dusty haze surrounded them. Heidi knew the tracks would have been overgrown by more than seventy years of neglect. Jemma started to walk in a pronounced curve before stopping and pointing at the ground.

  “If you dig around here,” she said, “you should find them.”

  “The next waypoint?” Gurka asked.

  “No. We should make sure the tracks exist first, don’t you think?”

  Gurka threw a hard glance at Caruso. “Fair point.”

  Heidi walked over to the Italian. “Anything coming back, Dante?”

  “It would be better if my family were here. Your Lucie is there—she is captive, but you see her every day. I have not seen my wife and son since . . . since . . .” He choked up a little.

  Heidi still couldn’t tell if the man was purposely deflecting or genuinely afflicted. Either way, the absence of his family had to be almost unbearable.

  But this wasn’t the time for kid gloves. “It’s a shitty situation, for sure, but if you don’t start producing the goods, it’s gonna get a hell of a lot harder. For you and your family.”

  Mercenaries put their weapons down and broke out small shovels from their packs. Several started digging. It wasn’t long before the first clang rang out. Gurka ran toward the noise, bent down, and helped clear soil and scrub away.

  Heidi saw the brown, rusted train track less than six inches below the surface. Dante wasn’t totally full of it, then. Hidden in plain sight, as Gunn commented. Jemma got her bearings from the track, pinned it on the GPS, and then pointed to where it ran.

  “The curve begins over there,” she said. “Not far now.”

  Heidi readied herself as they approached the specific series of curves that the picture diary had indicated. It was a large area, but they had a large crew with which to search. Gurka, Nina, and Vash shouted orders, and soon several groups were digging.

  Nina ordered the relic hunters to spread out and stand guard.

  Bodie confronted her. “Guard with no weapons? I don’t think so.”

  “A guard will watch you. If you spot anything, use your tongues while you still have them. Try to run, and we’ll shoot one of you in the leg. Then you’ll see how much it hurts keeping up the rest of the way.”

  She turned away, as merciless as the mountains they’d just crossed.

  Heidi ranged from the group, heading toward Lucie, who was sitting behind Dudyk on a low rock, but stopped when her bodyguard leveled a rifle. He didn’t speak, just stared and waited. Heidi veered off in a different direction.

  The mercenaries sweated. Most of the members of R24 joined the dig. Only Dudyk and one other mercenary watched the relic hunters, but it was enough. Heidi found herself staring at the mountains and the rolling plains, wondering how the hell they were going to find a way out of this.

  They needed Caruso, a phone, a map, and an escape route. Preferably a weapon too.

  Heidi watched the mercs curse and swelter into midafternoon. Today, the sun rode openly in the sky, not shielded by clouds. The whole area felt vast and humbling to her. It had stood for millennia and would stand for millennia more. She faced the sun and drank in the feel of it on her face, basking in the glow, if only for a moment.

  “Got something!” one of the mercs shouted at last, half a day after they’d started digging.

  Heidi started to walk back.

  Two mercenaries knelt inside a coffin-shaped hole that sat beside dozens of other coffin-shaped holes their colleagues had been digging. The entire area now resembled a desecrated graveyard. Mounds of dirt marked the holes and the curving course of the tracks.

  Bodie took it all in as he approached, from the stances of the mercenaries and positions of their weapons to the tired hunch in their bodies. Gurka was crouched down at the edge of the hole.

  “What is it?” Bodie asked.

  “A chest,” someone said. “Heavy mother too. It’s gonna take some lifting.”

  “It has been lifted before, though,” a sharper man said. “It’s loosely fitted down here with slack sand all around the edges, not the kind of compressed earth that seventy years would produce.”

  Bodie watched Gurka organize the mercs and his own team. They dug around the chest, exposed it, and looped a thick strap around it. Then a man started to heave. The chest rose steadily.

  It came over the top amid a pile of sand and filth. Bodie saw a rusty metal chest with a black strap on each side. A lock drained sand onto the ground. Gurka ordered it dragged well clear of the holes and onto a patch of grass. Then he turned to Nina.

  “Careful. Take your time.”

  Nina looked at him reproachfully. The expression on her face made him think of Cassidy. The two women were definitely similar, he thought. It gave him an odd reference that he tried to repress. At best, these people were cruel criminal counterparts to his team. He’d do better not to humanize them. He needed every ounce of focus right now.

  Nina either picked or broke the lock; Bodie couldn’t see, but soon it fell to the floor, where she started unstrapping the leather fastenings. Gurka stepped forward to open it.

  Bodie craned his neck to see inside.

  Shit, he thought. That’s really, really bad.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  “It is a Sniper’s Badge,” Lucie said, and Nina nodded.

  “I have seen them before, even in Russia,” the woman said, peering at the object. “Though they are rare. Remember, Gurka? We traded one of these two, three years ago?”

  Lucie, among them for the first time in days to lend her expertise to the find, ignored R24’s conversation, speaking to Bodie and the other members of his team.

  “A first-class Sniper’s Badge was given exclusively to members of the SS. You see the gold sewing on the edges of the badge? Second class would be silver. These were awarded to a sniper with over sixty confirmed kills i
n the war and only to members of Aryan ancestry. Normally”—she rubbed the patch and turned it over in her hands—“they are plain on the back, but someone has taken the time to sew a man’s name into this one.”

  “The owner,” Gurka said. “Obviously. What is the name?”

  “Klaus Meyer,” Lucie said, handing the badge over.

  “Is that everything?” Nina was glaring at the chest as if it might be hiding another treasure. “Could someone have taken the clue? Perhaps it was you?” She turned accusing eyes on Caruso and brought out a cell phone. “I need only press one button to send your family to Hell.”

  “I unearthed it,” Caruso admitted. “And buried it again. The badge was on its own. It is the name you need.”

  “You realized you’d need to follow the clues again?” Bodie asked. “From start to finish?”

  “I know my limitations.” Caruso hung his head after a moment. “Through the years, I have done this kind of thing many times.”

  Bodie heard a distant howl and looked uneasily into the mountains. Many pairs of eyes followed suit. A pervasive air of fear existed amid the group that hadn’t been dissipated by the new landscape or the bank of fog that was rolling in up there. It wasn’t just the wolves either. The mountains themselves felt sinister. Several times Bodie had wondered if they were being watched. Was something else out here, tracking them, observing them?

  Something worse than wolves?

  “I hate this god-awful place,” one of the mercs growled, and there were several accompanying curses.

  Bodie agreed with them and studied his surroundings. There were a thousand places where someone—or something—could hide. And standing here, by the train tracks, they were totally exposed.

  “Can we wind this up?” he said. “We’re sitting ducks out here.”