“Noah,” said Scott with a nod to Noah.
“What do you mean, add a little something of your own? What are you even doing here?” Tom said, unable to get over his surprise even as he embraced his uncle.
Scott took him by the arm, led him aside a short way and whispered: “You won’t find what you’re looking for here. It’s been somewhere else for fifty years.”
51
Admiral Scott Wagner’s house, Washington D.C.
“Say that again. You work for . . .?” Tom looked at his uncle in disbelief.
“The CIA. I report to the president personally. When you and I got tangled up in this break-in, it was clear to me that something big was at stake. The president confirmed my suspicions and told me the incredible story of the stone. Since then, I’ve flown halfway round the world trying to track it down. But what amazes me is that you found your way into the same story, from a completely different direction.”
Tom was speechless. His uncle, a CIA agent? Secretly, Tom was pleasantly surprised—but he was still a little put out that Scott had never told him.
“And were you successful?” Hellen asked.
“I’m afraid not. And the stone stored in the Vatican was stolen yesterday.”
“What? We were just at the Vatican. We saw that part of the stone!” said Tom in shock.
The others listened with no less astonishment. Tom’s uncle had their full attention.
“It’s true. A team like the one that broke in here forced its way into the archive and got away with the stone. They must have gotten inside information from somewhere.”
The faces surrounding Scott fell. “They got it from us,” Tom said meekly.
Scott looked at him, not understanding, and Tom told him about the bug.
“I know I should have guessed that AF would plant a bug. AF is the organization that—”
“Thank you, Tom. We know what AF is,” his uncle interrupted him.
Tom nodded. “Okay, that’s something the CIA actually ought to know.”
“Not only do we know what AF is, but we also know that one of your former colleagues worked for them.” Scott looked grimly at Tom. Tom returned his gaze with a mixture of surprise and doubt. “That young Cobra officer who showed up at the bar in Washington and took you off to see your chancellor.”
Tom’s eyes widened. “Leitner?”
Scott nodded. “He tried to kill me in Vienna. It looks like he saw me and reported my location to AF. I can’t imagine why else he would show up in my hotel room in the middle of the night and unload a clip into the mattress of my bed.”
“He did what?” Tom could not disguise his shock. He was about to ask something, but Scott spoke first.
“If you’re wondering what happened to him, well, I’m here and still alive. I’m afraid I can’t say the same for him.”
Tom shook his head. He had to tell the chancellor that the Cobras actually had an infiltrator in their midst. AF seemed to be everywhere.
“Scott, you said you knew where part of the stone was,” Noah said, turning the discussion back to their reason for being there. “How safe is it?”
“We have to get the stone,” Tom said adamantly. “Wherever it is, it’s no longer safe. If AF managed to get into the Vatican, then the stone here is in danger.”
“Where is it?” asked Hellen, beating Noah to the question.
“If you know about the Vatican’s secret archives, then you also know we’re dealing with parts of the ancient Library of Alexandria,” Scott said.
Tom, Hellen, Cloutard and Noah looked uncertainly at Scott. Hellen was the first to gather herself.
“Parts? We thought . . .” Hellen let her sentence unspoken. She wanted to hear what Scott had to say.
“What neither the Pope nor anyone else knows is that more material from the Library of Alexandria exists than what is in the Vatican. Here in the States, we have an archive similar to the Vatican’s, and it also contains a small part of the library. And to tell the truth, it’s not that far from here.”
“Now I’m confused,” said Hellen. “How did part of the Library of Alexandria find its way to the USA?”
52
1945, a salt mine in Altaussee, Austria
Most of his comrades were sleeping soundly. Tents had been pitched around the entrance to the mine, but there were far from enough, because they had had to bring in reinforcements: a virtual mountain of treasure needed to be packed and taken away. The mine contained literally thousands of works of art stolen by the Nazis after they came to power in the 1930s. For the last three days, he and his people had been removing them from the mine. The hoarded treasures were being trucked as quickly as possible to the coast, where a U.S. warship was waiting to carry them to America.
Captain Jack Gordon led the so-called “Monuments Men,” the special U.S. Army unit responsible for recovering Nazi-plundered treasure. Gordon was not only a soldier, but also an art historian, as were some of the others in his unit. But he was not an expert in modern, baroque or renaissance art—he was a professor of Egyptology at Harvard University. And Captain Gordon had a secret. In one of the side tunnels, he had made a discovery that held little more than passing interest for his colleagues. With all the paintings, sculptures, tapestries, antique furniture, Persian carpets, gold and jewels in the mine, no one cared much about a pile of boxes filled with old scrolls.
No one apart from Captain Gordon, at least. When he first saw the crates bearing the inscription “Austrian Archaeological Institute – Ephesus – Arsinoe,” he had been surprised, and the following night he had entered the mine alone and pried open the crates. Although the mercury had dropped below freezing again—he and his team had been chilled to the bone for weeks—Captain Gordon suddenly felt a wave of heat run through him. He could not believe what he was holding in his hands.
The next day he informed the director of the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, who in turn contacted President Harry S. Truman personally. Truman was neither an aesthete nor an art lover, far from it, and God knew he had enough other things to keep him busy these days, but he was no idiot. The importance of the discovery was clear to him immediately. Captain Gordon was ordered not to let the crates out of his sight until a special unit of Marines arrived in Altaussee to take them into safekeeping. That night had now arrived. Gordon led the Marines into the tunnel, and they did their job quickly and quietly. While everyone else slept, they loaded a pair of trucks with the crates. Two hours later, they were gone.
Gordon’s heart bled to see them go. He would have loved to explore the contents of the crates himself. Later, he tried his best to do so: back in the States, after the war was over, he tried to retrace the route the crates had taken. He contacted the Smithsonian, worked his way up the chain of command in the Marines, even wrote to President Truman himself. But there was no trace of the crates, which Captain Gordon was convinced contained parts of the ancient Library of Alexandria.
53
Admiral Scott Wagner’s house, Washington D.C.
“I see,” said Hellen, when Scott had told them the story of the Monuments Men.
“Come on. We don’t have time to sit around. We’re all after the same thing. Where is this stuff these days?” Tom said, and Hellen gave him her most scathing stare.
“It’s in Alexandria. Where else?” Scott smiled.
“Pardonez-moi. I thought la bibliothèque was here in the United States,” Cloutard said, puzzled.
“It is. We have a town called Alexandria here, too. It’s just a stone’s throw to the south of here, in Virginia.”
“Isn’t that where the George Washington Masonic National Memorial is?” Hellen asked.
“Correct,” said Scott. “More precisely, the library is deep below the George Washington Memorial.”
Hellen could hardly believe it. Things were getting more incredible by the minute. Her father would never have dreamed of this.
“Then call your boss and tell him we have to get the stone
someplace safer,” Tom said.
“The president would never permit it. As far as he’s concerned, it’s already safe where it is,” Scott said. “And besides, it really is safe in there. One hundred percent.” He paused as he realized that the CIA cardinal in the Vatican had surely thought the same thing.
“Then we’ll have to just have to go and break into the Library of Alexandria ourselves.”
The room fell quiet for a moment. Everyone first had to digest what Tom had just thrown out. Then everyone started talking over each other.
Scott listened to the chaos for about two seconds before he bellowed: “Enough!”
The team fell silent.
“Tom’s right. We have to do something.” Scott could hardly believe it, but he too had just switched to the dark side. Tom was right—they did have to get the stone to safety. His own mission, in fact, called for just that. They had to get in there as soon as possible, if not today then tomorrow.
Hellen, who had been studying her phone, now spoke up: “There’s a charity concert and dinner taking place there tomorrow night; a super-rich hotel heiress is hosting her annual cancer charity gala. They’re expecting all kinds of celebrities, influencers and business leaders.” She had wasted no time in accessing the memorial website. “There’ll be a concert in the memorial theater and dinner afterward with a celebrity chef.”
“How do we get in?” Tom asked.
“That’s easy,” said Noah. “We make a donation. A big one.”
“I don’t really need to be there, you know. Americans simply don’t know how to cook. Whatever that ‘celebrity chef’ serves we would not feed to the street dogs in Paris. I will pass,” said Cloutard, reminding everyone once again why the whole world thought the French were pretentious snobs.
“Phew!” Hellen said, when she looked at the ticket prices. “If you want to be there, you’ve got to dig deep. One seat will set you back ten thousand dollars,” she said.
Cloutard whistled in surprise. “And no doubt it will be impossible to buy a normal ticket so close to the event. To get a seat now, I’m afraid we will have to dig a little deeper,” he said.
Noah, who had been tapping away quietly on his laptop the whole time, said, “I think I might be able to help with that.”
All eyes turned to Noah.
“How, exactly?” Cloutard asked, curious about how Noah could conjure up that kind of money at short notice.
“Easy. I still have access to one of Mossad’s under-the-radar accounts. They use it to finance ops that are not exactly legit. With the money stashed in this account, I don’t think they’ll begrudge us a hundred grand or so.”
He turned the laptop around to show Scott and the others, and they all gaped dutifully at the balance on display: close to fifty million dollars.
“Cool!” said Tom. “Mossad is taking us to a party.” He gave his old friend a congratulatory clap on the shoulder. “Nice work.”
“Putting it through as we speak,” said Noah.
Cloutard’s mobile phone suddenly buzzed. “Excuse me for a moment,” he said.
Noah looked over his shoulder at Cloutard as the Frenchman stood up. He could tell by his expression that it had to be the same caller who had already gotten him worked up back in Salzburg.
“What’s up with him?” Tom asked.
“I’m not sure,” Noah said somewhat absently, and his eyes followed Cloutard thoughtfully.
Cloutard took the call in the backyard. This time it was a video call, and after a moment Farid’s face filled Cloutard’s screen.
“So you are calling by video now to back up your threats with your nasty face? I have a plan, and we have a deal. I still have time,” Cloutard muttered. He kept his voice low and had his back turned to the house. He could feel eyes on his back.
“I’m not so sure you’ll come through. And since I can’t hold a gun to your head around the clock, you could say I’ve found a substitute.”
Farid disappeared from the screen and after some jiggling and blurring, the image once again settled down. Cloutard inhaled sharply when he realized where Farid was and what he had done.
“Giuseppina? Mamma?”
Things had suddenly turned very, very personal, and not just for Cloutard. Farid had no idea of the wasps’ nest he had just stirred up. Cloutard had to sort out this mess once and for all.
54
Admiral Scott Wagner’s house, Washington D.C.
“Morning,” said Tom as he stumbled drowsily into the living room to find Hellen, Scott and Noah sitting stone-faced at the dining table.
“Sit down, Tom,” his uncle said, and pushed a chair out for him.
Tom yawned. “What’s up?”
“Cloutard’s gone,” Hellen said.
“What do you mean, gone?”
“He got into my laptop during the night. He shifted everything left in the Mossad account to a Swiss account number. Now he’s disappeared.”
“Fifty million bucks?”
Noah nodded, his face both earnest and sad. He turned the laptop around to Tom and started a video.
“This is one of my temporary security systems,” Noah said. “I don’t have my own laptop here, so I had to improvise. If someone, in this case Cloutard, logs in with my password . . .” He paused, “I obviously have to be more careful about who’s looking over my shoulder,” he mused, then continued his previous line of thought: “If they don’t deactivate the secondary security measures, the webcam is automatically activated.”
Tom stared incredulously at the monitor and saw Cloutard wildly navigating the laptop, looking behind him repeatedly in the dark room. Just before he closed the laptop, Tom saw him pick up his cell phone to call someone. Tom, deeply troubled by what he was seeing, leaned back in his chair.
Noah went on: “I first noticed that something was going on with him in Salzburg, but I didn’t want to say anything until I was sure. And then that mysterious call last night . . . I hacked into his phone records afterward.”
“You hacked Cloutard’s phone and didn’t tell me?” Tom looked at Noah a little reproachfully.
“I just wanted to be sure before I said anything.”
Tom nodded. He could see Noah’s point.
“He’s back in touch with people from his old life. Someone’s after him for money. Cloutard was being blackmailed and he decided to help himself,” said Noah. “Once a thief, always a thief. Who knows? Maybe AF got to him and he’s done more than just stolen the money. God knows he’s got enough information. Now that we found their bug, maybe they needed a new source.”
Tom rubbed both hands roughly over his face and through his hair. It all felt like a bad dream: first the bug, and now this.
“No way. Cloutard isn’t with AF.” Tom didn’t know what else to say.
“Cloutard was a career criminal who lost his assets and his status overnight. It would make sense for him to exploit an opportunity like this. And we know for sure that his ex is AF. Maybe it’s she who’s blackmailing him,” Hellen speculated.
Tom’s brain was working at full speed. Had he really been naive enough to let a man he considered one of his closest friends and confidantes pull the wool over his eyes? A man with whom he’d already survived more than one potentially deadly situation? Cloutard had saved his life in Cairo, and without him he would never have been able to rescue Noah so quickly.
“Fuck! If Cloutard’s really working for AF, we can sure as hell expect company tonight.” Tom jumped to his feet. “Uncle Scott, you and Noah sort out our tickets. Send a picture of Cloutard to security on site—I don’t want any surprises there. Hellen and I are going to get the right clothes and a car fit for this kind of bash,” Tom said, switching to military-command mode. Everyone nodded and went to work.
55
Somewhere in the United States
Ossana Ibori’s laptop trilled: an incoming video call. She clicked the green button and both sides activated their cams. The first thing she saw was a chunk of emer
ald-green stone, filling the center of the screen.
“Mission accomplished,” said Hagen, whose face replaced the stone onscreen a moment later.
“Good. Finally, something goes as planned.”
“When you and I call the shots, things always go as planned,” Hagen said with a trace of pride that Ossana ignored.
“Are you on your way to the airport?” she asked.
“Of course.”
“Slight change of plans. You’ll pass the stone to one of our couriers at the airport. He’s a pilot with Egypt Air. He’ll take the stone to Hurgahda, and we can get it to the yacht quickly from there. Daddy’s already getting restless.”
“You really want me to hand over the stone? I’d feel a lot better taking it to Hurgahda myself.”
“No. You’ve got a new job to do. You might get a kick out of this one, too.”
Hagen raised his eyebrows with interest.
“Really? I’m all ears.”
“You need to eliminate someone—someone who knows too much and who’s always sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. He could be dangerous to us in the final stage. I’d do it myself, but Daddy insists that I lead the next phase personally.”
Hagen listened closely as she told him the details.
“You’re right. This one’s going to be a real pleasure.”
“And do a better job of it than Leitner did in Vienna. He was supposed to take care of Admiral Wagner. But no, he let a broken-down old man on the verge of retirement get the better of him. You can’t trust beginners,” Ossana said.
56
Cloutard’s house, Tuscany, Italy
Cloutard had never thought he’d be back so soon.
The Library of the Kings (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 2) Page 15
