Once a Hero

by Jan Thompson

  Jake wondered. How long had Philomena known about this vault? Why hadn’t she told anyone? It could’ve been her insurance.

  Instead, the very person whom Molyneux killed was the one who could have led her to the Amber Room.

  That was, if there really was anything left of it.

  From the size of the door and the church above, Jake figured that only small parts of the Amber Room were behind that door—if any at all. Most experts believed that the original Amber Room no longer existed.

  After a couple more hours of rearranging the stones to fit certain permutations, one of them worked.

  “Take a photo of the pattern, Ben.” Beatrice wiped her forehead.

  Her face was red and her blouse was soaked through. Rivulets of sweat flowed down her forehead and cheeks.

  Jake had ordered fans to be brought in, but it took a while for them to arrive.

  Click!

  Everyone froze.

  Beatrice nodded to her dad. Benjamin helped the white-haired man to stand up. His hands shook as he pulled the door handle.

  As soon as the door opened, a whoosh of dust came out, and the fans blew it all around the room. Everyone coughed and covered their noses and eyes.

  Jake heard a soft trickle of what sounded like water.

  The floor in the room was wet.

  There, among statues, sculptures, gargoyles, and work tools from the nineteenth century, were crates. Five, six, seven or more of them.

  In shackles and handcuffs, Molyneux and her handler shuffled to see, but she didn’t get first dibs. Representatives from the Russian Consulate, holding their phones while live-streaming the event to the Catherine Palace curators in Russia, were the first to enter the space.

  Jake knew there was a reward for finding the Amber Room, and it seemed that this discovery would go a long way toward helping Chisolm stay out of long-term prison. A thief he might be, but he was no murderer like Molyneux.

  “Open a crate already,” Chisolm said, waiting at the door.

  “This could have been ours,” Molyneux said to him.

  “It belongs to the Russian people,” Chisolm replied.

  “And that might be why Philomena never told you about it.”

  Chisolm didn’t say a word to her.

  Jake found himself standing next to Beatrice. She had tears in her eyes. Jake leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “It’s going to be okay.”

  Beatrice reached for his hand. “My birth mother died for this.”

  “Who?” Jake asked. “I thought you didn’t know who your birth mother was.”

  “Dad told me.”

  Slowly, the realization hit Jake. “Philomena?”

  Molyneux had killed Philomena. And everything Molyneux had done in the last four or five years was for the express purpose of getting to the Amber Room.

  It would have made her at least half a billion dollars richer if she had sold pieces of it on the black market.

  “A very small part of the Amber Room,” Chisolm said. “Open up, people. I waited decades years for this.”

  Using one of Molyneux’s crowbars, the Russians opened the first crate.

  There were panel after panel of eighteenth century art carved into amber. Stacks and stacks of them.

  Pieced together, they would form parts of the Amber Room. Jake didn’t know what percentage of the room would be covered.

  “Someday we’ll go to Russia and see the Amber Room with these real panels in it,” Jake said to Beatrice.

  She nodded. And squeezed his hand gently.

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Reinstated as an FBI Special Agent, Jake Kessler spent the next six months at a temporary position at the cybersecurity arm of the FBI overseeing hackers and going undercover to keep an eye on them. He felt like he was on a stage, acting in a play.

  It was less dirty work than when he had been in deep undercover at Molyneux’s lair. Jake felt relieved to see her on trial for war crimes. However, it wasn’t over yet.

  Meanwhile, he had a new job to do.

  Jake’s good friend Stella Evans had vouched for him at the National Cyber Investigative Joint Task Force, getting him a position there. Yet he wasn’t interested in his own heroics.

  He took the job because the jailed Molyneux refused to cooperate with the authorities about her extensive cyberspace presence. Since the FBI needed the information to shut down her operations, it must be mined in another way.

  This was where the NCIJTF came in. An agent there, Stella Evans’s team stood poised to destroy Molyneux’s Internet stranglehold. Jake would deliver the black box, so to speak.

  After this was over, Jake might choose a career outside the federal government. Maybe he could leave the Bureau altogether and go work for Helen Hu, or better yet, go work with Beatrice Glynn. Right now, neither one had panned out.

  Helen had enough people working at Hu Knows, Inc. Jake would end up as a contract investigator, if at all.

  As for Beatrice, their adventure ended, and Jake had no reason to hang around Charleston, especially when Beatrice was probably not there.

  In fact, he had no idea where Beatrice went. She traveled a lot, and that was a problem for Jake.

  He wanted to settle down. He did not want a relationship in which both spouses traveled to everywhere but home.

  Perhaps Beatrice was not for him.

  Perhaps God had other plans.

  Had he considered moving on?

  That might be another reason he needed work. He had to get his mind off Beatrice.

  After church one Sunday, he packed for a weeklong conference in Zurich. He had been given a choice to attend a conference in San Francisco or Zurich.

  He didn’t want to go back to California. Too many memories of Beatrice. Every time he thought about it, his heart simply ached.

  So Zurich it was.

  Unfortunately, his new partner and old friend Stella Evans had been preoccupied with babysitting a bunch of hackers in Atlanta in a classified project. She could not go.

  His direct supervisor told him that they would send someone else to go with him to the Cyberspace Meets Real Life conference, in which a surveillance target of theirs would attend.

  The target was the missing link between a Libyan arms dealer and Molyneux’s organization.

  The cybercriminal known as 819A repeatedly broke into museum computers and manipulated their security systems. After he cracked open the museum back doors, his clients would enter later to steal artifacts worth millions of dollars.

  If Jake could record 819A talk to at least two or three prospective clients about what he would do for them and how he made his living, Jake would hit the jackpot.

  The FBI Art Crime Team would like to talk to him, as would several countries in Europe whose museums had been broken into in the last several months.

  Shortly after Jake packed, he made the fifteen-minute drive to the Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, where he boarded his airplane to Zurich. It would take over sixteen hours of flight with two stops, one in Atlanta and the other in Amsterdam, where he would change planes.

  On long flights like this, he’d rather not be alone, but there was nothing he could do about it.

  Post COVID-19 virus pandemic, everyone onboard wore masks, so when Jake walked down the aisle, he couldn’t see anyone’s faces. That could pose a problem for law enforcement. However, that wasn’t his capacity today.

  In the business class, the seat next to Jake was empty. It was supposed to be Stella’s seat. Since it was an aisle seat, Jake moved and sat there instead. He stretched his long legs.

  As everyone took their seats, Jake recharged his phone at the USB socket in front of him. He thumbed through the movie offerings. Seeing nothing of interest, he decided he’d take a short nap until they reached Atlanta, and then take a longer nap—something like eight hours—on the connecting flight to Amsterdam. From Schiphol airport to Zurich, he probably should stay awake for the two-hour flight
.

  He wished he had someone to talk to on the flight. He recalled his conversations with Beatrice in her Gulfstream. He had never gotten along with anyone else better than he had with Beatrice.

  Think about work, Jake.

  In his head, he ran through the itinerary for the next day. He was supposed to hit the ground running by attending something like five workshops that were useless to him. That would go on for four days and then on the fourth night, he would attend a ball. Since he didn’t dance, he’d have to do other things while all the time trying to get close enough to 819A to record his conversations.

  He closed his eyes and thought of all the things he could do to kill time when he arrived in Zurich the next day.

  Read a book.

  Read two books.

  Watch the news.

  Read more books.

  Maybe keeping busy would take his mind of Beatrice. He wondered what she was doing and thought of texting her as he had done occasionally in the last six months since they had put Molyneux away.

  He tried to see her face in his mind. Her smile.

  Jake could hear her voice. Calm, quiet, unassuming.

  He smiled as he recalled the times she had saved his life.

  Calling Helen when he was drowning in the fishing vessel at sea outside France.

  Pulling him to the ground so he didn’t get shot in San Francisco.

  Rescuing him and Earl in the redwood forest. He did return the favor by keeping her safe later on.

  Rescuing him again in her dad’s cabin when Molyneux’s men beat him up and tortured him.

  And fighting off Molyneux before she could blow them all up to kingdom come.

  Being rescued so many times made Jake feel like he had only been a hero once. Of course, he had come through when duty called, but she did more things for him than he had done for her.

  The flight took off for Atlanta, and he dozed off for the entire flight without eating anything. An hour and forty minutes later, he disembarked and boarded a bigger plane.

  All around him, people wore masks again. Just as well because his own mask hid his face from view.

  Jake found his seat, and once again, the aisle seat was empty.

  He moved over and buckled in. He tried to go to sleep sitting up.

  “You’re in my seat.”

  Jake’s eyelids sprung open so wide that his eyeballs were going to pop out. Fortunately, he was wearing a mask, so no one could see his jaw drop.

  He was hearing things, surely.

  He blinked. Looked to his right.

  Big brown eyes above a floral mask smiled back at him. He could recognize those eyes anywhere. Her hair was hidden beneath a baseball cap.

  “Bee…uh… What’s your name?” He almost gave away her name in front of all these strangers.

  “Sandra. And you are?”

  “Matt.”

  “Well, Matt, you’re in my seat.” She waved her phone at him.

  He thought he was looking at an e-ticket, but the message said, “Hello Jake.”

  Jake’s heart swelled, and he unbuckled his safety belt. He returned to his original seat.

  “Thank you.” Beatrice sat down. She was carrying a small crossover satchel to match her mask.

  “Where are you heading?” Jake swallowed.

  “Zurich. You?”

  “Same.”

  “Really?” She chuckled. “What are you doing there?”

  “Meeting some friends. I might see someone whom I…love.”

  She went quiet before she said, “Sounds like a vacation.”

  “It can be when I see the right people.” He was surer of it now, more than ever.

  “Does that person know about your love?” she asked.

  “I don’t know if I’ll ever tell…her.”

  “Oh? Why not?” Beatrice placed a blanket on her lap.

  “Because I’m not sure if it’ll ever work out. We work in different worlds. We might not get to see each other all year long.”

  “It’s hard to be separated like that.”

  “For sure.”

  “Well, nice to chat with you now but don’t expect me to talk much throughout the flight,” Beatrice said. “I’m planning on sleeping most of the way.”

  “Same here.”

  “Good. Glad we established some ground rules—I mean, flight rules.” She buckled in and closed her eyes.

  Jake had questions for her.

  Would she be attending the same conference as he was?

  Who had called her? Hired her? Was it Stella who recommended her?

  So many questions.

  Yet the most important thing right now was how God had given him his heart’s desire. He had wanted to see Beatrice again.

  And here she was.

  He leaned toward her. “I can’t believe you’re here.”

  She placed her hand in his without saying a word.

  He held it.

  Even if they didn’t talk the rest of the flight, he was simply satisfied to sit with her.

  Was this what love looked like? To be together without having to say a word?

  Whether it was or not, Jake felt content.

  He would sleep soundly tonight.

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  The Zurich weather in November was cold and colder, but inside the ballroom was anything but cold. The heat was up, especially when Beatrice spotted Jake entering through a set of double doors.

  She wasn’t supposed to recognize him at all. And yet they had sat in adjacent seats in the airplane on Sunday night, and their hotel rooms were across the hallway from each other’s.

  Anyone who could put two and two together would realize that this wasn’t random.

  Tonight, Beatrice had dressed modestly in a shimmery gown that she was afraid of tripping on. As a result, she walked very slowly and careful along the length of the ballroom, looking for a chair to sit down and watch the couples, hoping nobody would invite her to the dance floor.

  Her glasses were thick, but they stayed on her prosthetic nose.

  People milled about here, talking. She sat there, listening.

  “May I have this dance?”

  Beatrice lifted her face. It was Jake, with a poor attempt at a mustache.

  “That looks…awful,” she said quietly.

  “Thick glasses. Another nose,” he replied.

  “Careful. Walls have ears. You don’t want to insult me right now.” Stern warning? Too stern?

  “I’m astounded you’re still here,” Jake said. “May I have this dance?”

  “I hate to confess I’m not much of a dancer.”

  “Neither am I.”

  “Sit with me a while, then.” She patted the empty spot on the beach seat.

  Jake sat down, but the conversation was cut short.

  A tipsy 819A ambled by.

  Why would anyone name himself a number? Beatrice wondered what she should call him.

  “Excuse me. Sandra, right?” 819A asked.

  Beatrice nodded. “Have you considered my offer, Mr. 819A?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes.” He leaned toward her, the smell of liquor all over his breath. “But first, may I have this d-dance?”

  “Of course.” Without looking at Jake, Beatrice stood up and went with their quarry.

  She tried to enjoy the waltz, but every time they passed by Jake, she could tell that he was not happy to see her dance with someone else—especially someone who had tried to kiss her cheeks numerous times.

  She half-expected him to cut in, but was grateful that he did not.

  She didn’t want to go through this another time. 819A was one of the vilest men she had ever met. This was the only time she had agreed to help Stella.

  Because she wanted to get a gift for her brother.

  And she thought she would see Jake again.

  Although not this pouting Jake.

  “I can give you the world,” 819A said in the middle of hanging on to her because his footwork was less t
han synchronous with the live orchestra music.

  “Really?”

  “Would you come with me to explore the world?”

  “Where would be our first stop?” Beatrice asked sweetly.

  “Anywhere you want.”

  “Caribbean?”

  “Sure.”

  “Mediterranean?”

  “By all means. You don’t ask for much.” He tried to kiss her on the lips, but Beatrice was faster than he was and turned the other cheek.

  From the corner of her eye, she spotted Jake springing to his feet.

  She might be running out of time if Jake came over here and broke up her conversation.

  “Are you saying you’re more adventurous than I am?” Beatrice asked.

  “Yep. I go places you’ve never dreamed of.”

  “Oooh. Take me. Take me. Where is one of the most exotic places you have been?”

  His eyes lit up. “Have you ever been to Libya?”

  “Isn’t that in Africa somewhere?”

  819A nodded. “In the desert. It’s hot and you’ll have to take off all your clothes.”

  Beatrice tried not to react. “Libya is a whole country. Any particular place in mind?”

  “Have you ever heard of Benghazi?”

  Chapter Fifty

  FBI Special Agent Stella Evans waited for Beatrice after the ball that evening, and so did Jake.

  “What’s taking her so long?” Jake paced the floor.

  “She’s on her way up in the elevator,” Stella said. “I told her I’d be here waiting.”

  Jake drew a deep breath. He felt more uptight than usual. Maybe it was the memory of seeing 819A putting his hands on Beatrice’s shoulders or his incessant kisses on her cheek. Beatrice cleverly averted her lips—something she hadn’t done with Jake.

  “I’ve never seen you so antsy.” Stella processed something on her laptop.

  Jake stopped in front of Stella. “He could’ve discovered the wire.”

  “Why would he? It was only a dance. It wasn’t like she was going to sleep with him.”

  Jake bristled.

  “I was kidding.” Stella chuckled. “It’s all spelled out in her contract. What we expected of her and what we wanted her to do to get the information out of 819A.”