“We ended the Bratva threat,” he said. “With your help. With their help.” He meant the CIA. “But we’re free now.”
“You think,” Heidi said. “Don’t forget R24 abducted us and attacked them at that final meet. They might blame you. We just don’t know.”
“My immediate thought,” he said, “is what would Cross do?”
Heidi reached out. “He’d be happy that you think like that.”
He stayed quiet, thinking that her point about the Bratva was a good one. Until they returned to reality, they just didn’t know. The flames took his attention, and he stared into their burning heart, wondering if he could conjure up an old memory of the Forever Gang, a good one that could take him away, but all he could seem to think about was the time they’d saved Darcey from the bullies. If the Forever Gang reminded him of his relic hunter friends, then the members of R24 were the aggressors from that long-ago day. Thinking of them that way made his situation easier to deal with.
He settled down, deliberately wading through past memories to find better ones.
It took a while, but it was worth it. Those memories were the only stable reality of his life.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
The morning trek was dismal, undertaken amid a cold mountain mist and full of treacherous pitfalls. The mist made the rocks slippery. They were forced to descend halfway down Mount Draci before they could start ascending its adjoining partner. While the heights weren’t always dangerous in themselves—they were far lower than many other mountain ranges—threats still lurked at every turn.
Up here, Bodie could think of no way to escape. He considered his team at every step, every turn in the path, but found himself hoping that after the Polish Black Pond, they would start descending.
They moved steadily around the mountain, reaching its far side by midmorning. The mist still hung thick and low. Their vision was minimal. Mercenaries trudged alongside and in the middle of their group. There didn’t seem to be any order among them. The members of R24 walked at the front and back. Bodie saw Lucie at Dudyk’s side and wished for the thousandth time that he could help her.
They came around a jagged outcropping, ducking their heads to avoid a particularly sharp edge, and were forced to lean out over a two-hundred-foot precipice. After that they angled downward for a while, skirting a black hole in the ground. Another ten minutes of hiking, and then an enormous overhanging boulder had to be negotiated. Even as they crept under it, the granite mass shifted, as if the slightest sound might set it loose. Bodie held his breath all the way under and then again as each member of his team risked a nasty fate. When they were past, even Gurka gave a loud sigh of relief.
“Almost there,” he said.
He sent the mercs ranging ahead. Bodie came around a gentle curve in the pass, emerging into a wide bowl with rock walls to two sides. The third side fell away into a steep canyon, while the fourth was open, a visible plateau leading down the mountain. Bodie assumed that was where the train tracks passed below.
At the center of the bowl was a deep lake, waves lapping over a smooth shore. Wreaths of mist swirled across its dark surface and sent gray tendrils questing, but even in the spooky half light, Bodie could see that the water was black.
“Why is that?” he wondered aloud.
“Something to do with the color of the volcanic stone that forms the lake bed,” Lucie said from the back of the group.
“Either that or it’s full of dead souls,” Gunn said. “Evildoers trapped for eternity.”
More than one merc and Dudyk gave him a hard look, but Gunn wasn’t watching. He was staring at the lake.
“What the hell was that?”
Bodie stared hard at the rippling waters. “What?”
“Didn’t you see? I thought I saw something break the surface. A curved spine or something.”
Cassidy turned on him. “Fuck, man, are you fucking serious?”
Gunn shook it off. “Must be my imagination.”
Despite this, the mercs arranged themselves warily, close to the water’s edge, with guns ready.
Gurka spoke the last clue from memory: “The monument at the Polish Black Pond.”
To their left stood a six-foot-tall slab of rock. It was light gray and shaped like an altar, with an apex on top. Light mists drifted around it, lending it indistinct form, but even from here Bodie could tell it stood right at the edge of the canyon.
“What are you all waiting for?” Gurka snapped. “Move.”
Bodie acquiesced. He wanted down from these heights as much as R24 did. He, Yasmine, and Cassidy reached the monument first but deferred to Caruso.
“Any ideas?”
“It isn’t easy. You should let them do it.”
Bodie struggled to catch Caruso’s answer. When he did, the clarity of it drove a splinter of suspicion into his brain. Was Caruso having a lucid moment? Was he warning them?
Or . . .
Probably the former. Bodie tried to hold the Italian’s gaze, but the man turned away, head bobbing, now gawping at the undulating waters. When Gurka approached, Bodie turned to him.
“He doesn’t know. I can’t see anything.”
“Look harder,” Nina snapped, then turned to the three closest mercenaries. “Help them.”
Bodie, Yasmine, and Cassidy moved to the safe side, leaving the perilous flank overhanging the canyon to the mercs. The drop at the verge of the monument was over eighty feet, but it was staggered. It would be a long, fast, slippery, unstoppable ride to the bottom.
Bodie pretended to scrutinize the slab of stone just below the apex.
“That Nina annoys me more than any of them,” Cassidy whispered, “with her comments.”
Yasmine bent down with them. “She reminds me of you.”
“What?” Cassidy looked affronted, but Yasmine shook her head. “Not her actions. Her mannerisms. You know, if you guys had taken a different path, fallen in with someone other than Pantera and Cross, you might have become these people.”
Cassidy didn’t answer, and Bodie saw the truth of it. It didn’t take much to follow the wrong turn on a path strewed with obstacles. “Hope you’re not suggesting we feel sorry for them.”
“Not after what they’ve done and what they’re threatening to do. No.”
“Losing Cross,” Cassidy said softly, “made me see my own mortality. When you love your team, it’s like loving your family. You never believe that sooner or later one of them is gonna die.”
Yasmine touched her. “You have to believe that Cross loved you,” she said, “just as you are. He wouldn’t want you to change, the same as he wouldn’t want me to change. That’s why I still want Lucien. Why I’m following orders. I’m staying true to me.”
Cassidy nodded at Yasmine gratefully. Before Bodie could say anything, something else took their attention.
One of the mercs had leaned out precariously while one of his colleagues held on to his waist. “It’s clean,” he reported now. “Nothing out here.”
Bodie was wondering if Caruso had indeed confused this clue with another when the Italian, looking excited and engaged once more, said, “Can you see all of it out there?”
The merc stepped to safety. “No, the outer side of the apex is too high.”
“Ahh,” Caruso said.
“Check it,” Nina barked. “Get on with it. What else are we paying you for?”
Bodie stood back and watched the unfortunate mercenary size up the slab. He asked for a boost from both colleagues and was soon clinging to the apex with both arms spread, looking like he was giving the monument a hug.
Cautiously, he peered over the top of the weather-beaten peak. “I can see writing,” he reported. “Looks quite fresh.”
“I don’t care how it looks,” Gurka growled, shaking his head. “I want to know what it says.”
“Give me a break, man. I’m reading it upside fucking down.”
“Use your phone.” Nina shook her head at his incompetence, then motioned t
wo mercs to grab his legs and steady him. “Just take a photo and come down.”
It took some dicey maneuvering, but the merc reached over with a hand to take several snaps of the writing that ran across the canyon side of the monument. Once done, he jumped down and handed over the phone. “You’re welcome.”
Gurka snatched it away, fingers flexing close to his gun. Bodie imagined if R24 hadn’t needed all their mercs, one would be dying right now. The scarred man turned the screen upside down and shared it with Nina.
“Down into the Valley of Amber, beyond the great tributary, look for the tracks and the cave.”
“It’s quite legible,” Nina commented suspiciously.
“It’s on the leeward side,” Lucie explained. “Away from the worst of the elements.”
“Thoughts?” Gurka turned to Bodie.
Jemma answered quickly. “It’s leading us back to the tracks and then a cave. ‘Valley of Amber’ has to be a metaphor.”
“And I guess we follow a stream or a river,” Yasmine added, but her last words were lost under an ominous noise from the direction of the lake. Everyone’s head spun at the same time, examining the restless waters. At the center they were choppier than ever, waves undulating outward. Thick mists swung away from the area and reformed elsewhere. A large wave broke against the shore.
“Now my imagination’s working overtime,” Bodie said. “Shall we get the hell out of here?”
For once, R24 and the mercenaries were in unqualified agreement with him. The entire party moved as close to the sheer canyon as they dared and skirted the lake, keeping weapons trained on its black surface. Bodie knew their fears were impractical, but so far they’d come across wolves and panthers on this mission. Who knew what else might haunt the Tatras? And up here, rational thinking wasn’t always advisable.
With his team around him and Lucie at the rear, he headed for what they now knew would be the final leg of their journey. The sloping plateau ahead led to the valley floor, where a cave was home to the Amber Room.
What happened when they got there, what decisions were made by every person present, would decide all their fates.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Their descent was quicker, but it was past midafternoon before they gained the valley floor. The plateau was steep, littered with rocks that they could rest against and gullies where they could ease the tension on their hamstrings. Bodie fell in next to Cassidy and Heidi.
“This is the end,” he said. “You two ready?”
Cassidy adjusted her pack. “You know me, boss. Always ready. I’ve been saving myself for a final fight. And what Yasmine said earlier, about Cross, it makes sense.”
Bodie nodded. “Yeah, it does. I’m starting to like her.”
Heidi never stopped scanning the terrain. “There’ll be no running this time,” she said. “We have to finish it.”
Bodie agreed. “When it happens, go for weapons first. I’ll pass it along to Yasmine and Pantera.”
A merc wandered close, momentarily ending the conversation. Bodie stopped to speak to everyone, preparing them for what was to come. As they descended, the mists receded, giving them the false impression that the day was just starting, brightening steadily. It was an odd sensation. Bodie watched the valley floor emerge through rolling hills.
It was a wide, oblong plain—a patchwork of random greens and browns, bordered by relatively low rock faces and dissected by a narrow, fast-flowing river. As far as Bodie could see, they were the only living souls for miles around, but he didn’t take it for granted. On the plus side, it did become progressively warmer, easier on the feet, and far less dangerous.
They rested on level ground, which was in itself a relief. More than that—it was soft ground, a welcome change from recent days and nights. A decent meal and a full bottle of water, and forty minutes later they were headed across lush flatland toward the banks of the river. Gurka broke out a map.
“We’re here,” he said, pointing. “The largest tributary close by is there.” He jabbed at the map.
“Spread out,” Nina said. “Look for train tracks along the way. And look carefully, because they will be long overgrown.”
It was unnecessary, and Bodie noticed lots of eye-rolling among the mercs, but R24 had been asserting its authority throughout the quest. He wasn’t surprised.
They spread into a long line across the plain, several feet between each person. Walking forward, they started kicking at shrubbery and loose soil. Caruso professed to know nothing of their journey from here on out but did start talking about an old airplane, which just confused everyone. Dudyk and Lucie were on the far side, nearest the river. Several mercenaries walked between them and Bodie, thus continuing the historian’s isolation. Gurka was not slackening his unyielding rule.
Bodie walked close to Heidi. “Did you get a look at the map? The tributary looked to be about six miles away. At this pace it’ll be practically sundown when we reach it, never mind find the cave.”
“Another night,” Heidi said, “will give the CIA more time to find us. It’s not a bad thing. You know why.”
“It could be,” Bodie said. “Look at the cliffs.”
Heidi turned her head slightly, scanning to her right. She was surprised to see a group of men up there, perhaps twenty strong, standing and watching their progress. “Crap, that’s not good.”
“Could it be the Agency?”
“Not a chance. First, they shouldn’t be here yet—it’s statistically possible but realistically too soon—and second, they sure wouldn’t reveal themselves like that.” She shook her head warily. “Could be a local gang or drug runners or something?”
Gurka had spotted the newcomers too, but he gave no outward sign save to instruct the mercs to ensure their hardware was on show. At this stage, he wouldn’t want a battle. Far better to avoid it.
“Do you think they know what we’re up to?” Bodie asked Heidi.
“How could they?”
“Are you kidding? There are thirteen mercs here, plus five R24 assholes with all the morals of a half-starved snake. To a man—and woman—they’re governed by profit.”
“Again, why would they reveal themselves?” she said.
Bodie shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s one more obstacle. Did you think this would be easy?”
When she didn’t answer, he looked over and caught her smiling. He said, “With you on board? Not for a minute.”
“You’re saying I’m trouble, then?” she asked.
“A magnet,” he said. “For danger. Just look at my life since I met you.”
“Since I saved your ass, you mean.”
“You gonna keep holding that one over me forever?”
“Damn right. I haven’t seen you saving my ass lately.”
They passed the time with banter, easing the mounting tension that they both felt. They progressed slowly, periodically checking the cliff for the men lined up above them. The figures just stared down, weapons in hand but held loosely. They barely moved.
“Makes you wonder how these train tracks were never discovered,” Heidi said as the hours wore on. “I mean, all the people who built them. The men and women on the train. Those who unloaded the treasures. Did they all just forget after the war?”
“I know a little of this”—Gunn was to Heidi’s right and close enough to overhear—“from reading about the Amber Room. The tracks, most of them, will already have been in situ. The Germans would have diverted just the last few miles or so to suit their own route. In war, it’s a normal scenario. Nothing is sacred to invaders. As for the people . . .” He made a sad face.
“They killed them.” A new voice spoke from Bodie’s side. “It is what happens when people become superfluous.”
Bodie looked over to see one of the mercenaries with a slight smile on his face. The implication in his words was obvious.
“How can that be true?” Bodie asked. “When you’re still alive?”
The man smirked, not lifting his eyes fr
om the ground. More time passed, and the tributary could clearly be heard before it came into sight. Bodie dug hard at the earth as he walked, kicking with heel and toe, sometimes bending and scraping soil or grass aside to look below.
Inevitably, with almost thirty searching in a grid line, the tracks were found, and a merc caught Gurka’s attention. It was all low key so that, Bodie assumed, Gurka could keep the find hidden from the watchers. Soon, they were gathered closely, as if pausing to take onboard refreshments.
Most took advantage of the stop to do just that.
“The tracks run dead straight right there.” Gurka indicated a spot. “I do not know if our stalkers are aware, but this search is almost over.”
Bodie didn’t like the sound of that. “You have no clue what’s inside the cave. You’re still gonna need help.”
“True.” Gurka nodded. “Caruso—what will we find in the cave?”
The Italian bit his lower lip and answered with a question. “The Amber Room?”
Gurka snorted in disgust. “I don’t know why we even brought you along. But we will put up with all of you for a little longer. And if we need you to fight”—he nodded toward the cliffs—“you will fight for us, to keep your loved ones safe.”
“That wasn’t part of the deal,” Bodie said.
Gurka slid out his long blade. “Then I’ll cut your throats now,” he said, “with pleasure. Anyone who doesn’t want to fight, stand up.”
“Do the tracks follow the line of the river?” Pantera asked to grab the killer’s attention.
“It appears so. Once we get past the tributary, they should run to the cave. The tributary will slow our new friends down, since it swings to the right, cutting across their path, not ours.”
“The river narrows ahead, after the tributary.” Nina was consulting the map. “But there are still mountains to both sides of the valley.”
“The other problem,” Bodie said, “is darkness. It’s already close to sundown. It’s not as dangerous down here, but we could still miss something vital.”
The Amber Secret Page 18
