The Explorer's Code

by Kitty Pilgrim

  “John, I really would like to come. But I’m sailing on the Queen Victoria. The ship is leaving Monaco tomorrow evening.”

  He looked up in surprise, his bread suspended.

  “Oh, that is wonderful. How long are you going to be on the ship?”

  “I guess about a week—it goes all through the Mediterranean.”

  “That sounds like a great trip.”

  “I am really looking forward to it. I’m scheduled for a lecture the first day. Then I can disembark at any port I want.”

  “What are the ports of call?” he asked.

  “Down the coast of Italy, Livorno, Naples, then Malta, Crete and then to Izmir, and the—”

  “Izmir? That’s less than fifty miles away from Ephesus. I could pick you up.”

  “Oh, I didn’t realize . . .” She faltered.

  “It would be great,” he urged.

  Evgeny picked up the yacht’s phone and dialed Moscow. With a new Ku-band satellite, he could do business twenty-four hours a day, call anywhere in the world, whether he was docked or at sea. Bulletproof windows in the guest area on the main and upper decks increased his confidence in the yacht’s security. The connection clicked through to Moscow. He didn’t identify himself, but began speaking immediately.

  “We believe we can locate the deed,” Evgeny said. “If the girl has it, we’ll offer ninety-seven million U.S. dollars for the land rights. If she will sell, that will be easy. No problem. Straight legal sale. But if not, we’ll wait until she finds the deed and then take it. After that you can do what you want with it.”

  Evgeny listened for a moment, then replied, “I think it’s pretty simple. If you destroy the deed, you can make a Russian claim on the land. Russian miners settled in Spitsbergen in 1900 and that claim would hold in a court of law.”

  The cat came into the main salon of the yacht, drawn by the sound of its master’s voice, and wound through Evgeny’s legs as he talked. “No, no need for violence,” he explained. “We don’t want to attract attention. We have four people sailing on the Queen Victoria. They will cozy up to her and find out about the deed.” Evgeny stroked the cat as he explained. “We have to keep the Norwegians away from her. We can’t let Norway talk her into giving up the land.”

  The voice on the other end of the phone was harsh and spoke at length.

  “No, I understand,” said Evgeny levelly. “We will get the deed first. Everything is in place, I assure you.”

  London

  The dark-haired man sat in a car in the parking lot of the Queen Mary College in London. He took a lab coat with his fake ID out of the backseat of the car and slung it over his arm. The white coat was a subconscious clue, a badge of legitimacy that showed he belonged in the research building. It was good camouflage to any observer, but more convincing if he carried it casually and didn’t put it on.

  Walking toward the locked service door, he took his time, trying not to look rushed. It was five thirty at night and few people would still be around. The researchers at this facility kept early hours. At least that was what the head office in Moscow told him. The back door opened, and a middle-aged scientist came out carrying a large briefcase overstuffed with papers.

  “Please hold it,” the dark-haired man called in a passable Scottish accent. He jogged up to the open door. “I forgot something.”

  “Sorry, you still need to swipe in,” said the scientist. “Regulations.”

  He stepped aside to allow the other man to scan his ID card.

  “Thank you,” the dark-haired man said. “I must dash back inside. My wife would be upset if I forgot the wine for tonight’s dinner party.”

  “I totally understand,” the scientist said, and continued toward the parking lot.

  The dark-haired man found his way through the maze of corridors and oddly shaped offices. He located Paul Oakley’s office on the second floor, cracked the standard lock, shaking his head at the pathetic security. The door creaked open. The office was empty. He looked around the lab—a squirrel’s nest of academic papers and documents. Only the lab counter and sink were clear. He opened the door on the far side. Oh, this was nice—an office suite with its own loo. That would make the overnight stay more comfortable.

  The man hung his lab coat up on a hanger on the back of the door, sat down at the desk, and took out his newspaper. He had a twelve-hour vigil until the courier was due. He would be here to sign for it. The package had been sent to Oakley from Svalbard yesterday, and Moscow wanted to know if it contained a land deed.

  At 8:30 a.m. the next morning, Paul Oakley was reading the Financial Times and eating toast with marmalade. He chewed and looked out over his back garden. The rain dripped depressingly from the rhododendrons. He was not feeling all that sprightly. He had to stop falling asleep with the telly on. It ruined his REM sleep when he woke up at 3:00 a.m. with the TV blaring. Abominable habit, but living alone encouraged indulgences like that. A domestic partner would have put a stop to it, but it had been awhile since there was anyone to account to. He hated living alone, but somehow he never made the time or effort to meet anyone new. Some weeks he barely acknowledged his housekeeper as she crept around trying to clear up his mess. Paul feared he was going to turn into a recluse if this continued.

  By the time he backed his vintage Bentley out of the garage, it had stopped raining. The forty-minute drive to London was always a pleasure—he enjoyed driving his beautiful car. But today his mind was on the flu samples that would be arriving by courier this morning. He was sure Miles had found a good tissue specimen and he could start working. As he backed out of the driveway, he looked carefully both ways before swinging out into the narrow roadway.

  The sound of the other engine took him completely by surprise; the silver car appeared out of nowhere. He tried to reverse gear rapidly and pull back into the drive just before impact. As he heard the bone-jarring smash, he found himself wondering why in the devil the driver didn’t even touch the brake. It was a full-steam-ahead smash, as if his Bentley were invisible.

  Oakley’s head wrenched backward and then there was silence. He exhaled. His hands were still gripping the steering wheel as if to lessen the impact. When he took them down they were trembling, and damp with perspiration. His mind searched for an explanation. Was it his fault? Why did the car just jump up into his mirror suddenly like that and smash him? He was clearly visible.

  Oakley opened the door and stepped out of the car, his knees weak. He put one hand on his beloved vintage car to steady himself. He didn’t feel injured, but just look at his car! It was crumpled up like tinfoil.

  “Didn’t you see me?” he called back to the other driver. “What in the bloody hell is your problem!”

  A well-dressed young man came toward him.

  “Are you all right?” he asked in a heavy Russian accent. His solicitous demeanor infuriated Oakley.

  “No, you stupid fool, I am not. Just look at my car!”

  “I didn’t see you, you pulled out so fast,” the Russian explained.

  Suddenly Oakley realized that this accident was going to be a major problem. He had no time for this! The tissue samples were arriving at his office this morning. He needed to sign for them. By the time he finished with this mess, the police report and insurance and all the paperwork, the courier would be gone. He quickly calculated that he would have to call Global Delivery Express to see if he could pick up the tissue samples at their package center later that afternoon. Those were not samples he wanted lying around for very long.

  At Queen Mary College research laboratory, the dark-haired man stood up from his makeshift bunk under the cubby of Paul Oakley’s desk. Research reports do not make a good pillow, he noted, and ran his hands over his clothes to smooth them out. He unlocked the office door and put on the lab coat with the fake identity pin on the lapel.

  He was seated at the desk with a Paul Oakley ID tag on his lapel when the Global Delivery Express courier knocked briskly at 9:30 a.m.

  “Dr. P
aul Oakley?” the courier inquired, holding a large Styrofoam package in his hands, secured with the Global Delivery Express logo packing tape.

  “Yes.”

  The dark-haired man could keep a good Scottish accent for a while. For a Russian émigré child, watching James Bond films was useful language training. The only thing was, his voice had always sounded a little like Sean Connery’s.

  The delivery guy watched him sign, completely disinterested in the process.

  “Thank you.”

  “Thanks,” the dark-haired man said with studied gruffness.

  When the door closed, he stripped off his lab coat, crumpled up the receipt, and put it in his pocket. He tucked the package under his arm, draped the lab coat over the package to conceal it, and walked briskly out the back corridor. Within minutes he was unlocking his rental car in the empty parking lot.

  He put the package on the passenger seat and backed up out of the parking space, a little confused by the size of the package. Why would a document be packed like this? Moscow had said it would be an envelope, a document—a “land deed.” He rechecked the label. Yes, this was the package they had been expecting. The sender’s address was Longyearbyen, Norway.

  The dark-haired man pulled his rental car out of the parking lot and into traffic at 9:45, and started driving along the roadway. He wanted to get out of London-proper as quickly as he could. He was starving, and the deep ache in his stomach had been torturing him for hours; now hunger was gnawing into his brain. Twenty-four hours without any food.

  He was driving on the seedy side of town. Houses were interspersed with cheap snack bars and fast-food restaurants. He turned into the Chesterton Kebab and Fried Chicken House. The parking area was at the back, near the chain-link fence, out of the line of sight of the windows. A blind spot. Trash, waxed-paper cups, and discarded chicken wrappers were blowing around in the early-morning wind. The area was pretty rundown and no one was around.

  The dark-haired man took a penknife out of his pocket and began slashing open the package, making a mess all over the front seat with tiny balls of Styrofoam and pellets of packing material. Inside the package, he found very heavily packed glass vials, three dozen or more. They were sealed. His eyes widened with surprise. This was no document. What was this?

  The dark-haired man took one of the vials and pried off the plastic double-lock cap. It required downward pressure, like the childproof caps on medicine bottles. It was hard to turn, but eventually came off. He took a deep sniff of the dark, greasy substance inside. It certainly didn’t smell very good. It had the dark brown, fudgy look of opium chunks. He stuck his index finger into the vial and lifted out some of the goo. He smelled and touched the tip of his tongue to it. No real taste. He licked it harder to be sure. No. Not opium. He wiped his finger on the plush car seat and then on his slacks, and closed the vial.

  Moscow would be angry. This was not what they were looking for. They wanted some kind of legal document. The dark-haired man wondered for a moment if the package would have any commercial value, and decided it did not. On the way into the kebab-and-chicken restaurant he dropped the vials in the Dumpster.

  Inside, the smell of food cooking reminded him how hungry he was. He ordered hastily and sat in the far booth. Only two other people were in the restaurant, hunkered over their breakfasts and not interested in him. They had the gray pallor of night-shift workers, from the look of them: a nurse and a security guard.

  The dark-haired man took a huge bite of his fried chicken and chewed as he dialed his cell phone. The other line picked up, and he began in Russian.

  “Package intercepted. Not documents. Looks like some kind of medical samples, or possibly chemicals for medicine. Not what we are looking for.”

  The person on the other end of the line spoke for a long time. The dark-haired man held the phone cradled against his shoulder while he continued to eat, pulling apart his food into bite-sized pieces. He put small pieces of chicken in his mouth quietly, surreptitiously eating as he listened.

  “No.” He swallowed his food and answered more emphatically. “It was not a document. I told you, it looked like worthless stuff. Just some glass vials of medicine or some kind of samples. Your document must be somewhere else.”

  The other person stopped talking and the dark-haired man snapped the phone shut. Now he could concentrate on his meal. He might just get some chips after this, and another coffee with sugar.

  Outside the Chesterton Kebab and Fried Chicken House, a vagrant rummaged through the bin. Morning was the best, because they would toss out the breakfast food that hadn’t sold by ten o’clock. He always found a few good egg sandwiches this time of day. He put his hand into the bin and pulled out a Styrofoam container. This sure wasn’t a sandwich wrapper. It was large and bulky. A bit heavy. He opened it. Inside were glass vials.

  Monaco

  Cordelia stretched out on her bed at the Hôtel Hermitage for an afternoon nap and listened to the sounds of the marina from the open windows. Lunch with Sinclair had been divine, and, in fact, the whole day had been exciting, and strange. The chemistry between them still sizzled in her blood. Of course, he was a terrible flirt. She had expected that. But she had to admit she was very attracted to him.

  She lay there and thought about the strange incident with the Ferrari. Sinclair had been convinced they were being followed, and even more so when they discovered the Ferrari in the Hotel du Cap’s parking lot. His eyes had narrowed suspiciously. She had watched him take in and memorize the license plate number without saying a word to her. And she had liked the way he had protectively taken her arm on the walk back to the car. It was a small gesture but it had pleased her.

  She lay on the bed and looked at the pink-striped wallpaper. The sounds from the harbor were a pleasant backdrop—the slap of the stays against the masts, the faint murmur of an outboard motor, voices calling across the water.

  She was sluggish, but her mind would not give her rest. After a while, she sat up and started to read her great-great-grandfather’s journal.

  AUGUST 4, 1908

  WHAT JOY! TODAY I FINALLY RECEIVED MY PIERCE ARROW MOTORCAR. I KNOW IT IS A LUXURY MOST CAN’T AFFORD, BUT AVERAGE FAMILIES MAY SOON BE ABLE TO PURCHASE MOTORCARS FOR THEIR OWN USE. I TALKED WITH MR. FORD ABOUT HIS PLAN TO BEGIN PRODUCTION OF THE MODEL T AUTOMOBILE BY THE END OF THIS YEAR. AFTER HEARING OF HIS INNOVATIVE MANUFACTURING—WHAT HE CALLS “ASSEMBLY LINE PRODUCTION”—I WILL CERTAINLY INVEST IN THE COMPANY. AS COMMON AS THESE FORD AUTOMOBILES MAY BECOME, THE PIERCE ARROW IS A REAL THOROUGHBRED. LIGHT GRAY IN COLOR, WITH AN OPEN BODY AND A SIX-CYLINDER ENGINE, THE SOUND OF THE CAR’S MOTOR AS IT TEARS THROUGH THE QUIET OF THE COUNTRYSIDE IS A DELIGHT OF WHICH I WILL NEVER TIRE.

  She flipped ahead several weeks. Here was her great-great-grandfather meeting her great-great-grandmother.

  SEPTEMBER 5, 1908

  AT THE PALATIAL HUDSON RIVER MANSION OF MRS. OGDEN MILLS THIS WEEKEND IN STAATSBURG, I WAS THE WITNESS OF A DELIGHTFUL TABLEAU VIVANT. THE CURTAIN WAS PULLED ASIDE TO REVEAL ASSORTED PEOPLE COSTUMED AND POSED TO RESEMBLE A PRE-RAPHAELITE PAINTING, THE NAME OF WHICH ESCAPES MY MEMORY. I AM AFRAID MANY OF THE DETAILS OF THE ELABORATE SCENE WERE LOST ON ME, AS MY ATTENTION WAS DRAWN TO A MISS ISABELLE VAN TASSEL. SHE WAS MORE CHARMING IN HER FROZEN POSE THAN THE ARTIST’S MODEL COULD HAVE BEEN WHEN THE ORIGINAL WAS PAINTED. I VOWED ON THE SPOT I WOULD FIND AN OPPORTUNITY TO SPEAK TO HER DURING THE WEEKEND ACTIVITIES.

  Here was something about his business. Cordelia read on.

  DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE SEEMS TO BE THE BEST METHOD TO ADDRESS THE NUMEROUS CONFLICTING CLAIMS ON OUR PROPERTY IN SPITSBERGEN. FOR SOME TIME THE GOVERNMENT OF THE UNITED STATES AND THAT OF NORWAY HAVE BEEN IN HEATED DIPLOMATIC CORRESPONDENCE OVER THE TITLE OF THE LAND OF THE ARCTIC COAL MINING COMPANY. HOWEVER, I FEAR THE TITLE MATTER ULTIMATELY WILL HAVE TO BE SUBMITTED FOR ARBITRATION. BUT I TAKE HEART THAT UNTIL THE DECISION OF THE ARBITRATORS OCCURS, NO ONE BUT MYSELF OR MY PARTNER, SIR JAMES SKYE RUSSELL, CAN HAVE TITLE TO ANY
OF THIS PROPERTY.

  Monaco Fencing Club

  Sinclair was late. He bounded up the steps of the Fédération Monegasque d’Escrime. Charles was already lounging on a couch. The main hall was all dark wood, leather furniture, and polished marble floors—it was a real Victorian men’s club, the same as it had been at the turn of the century.

  “Hey,” said Charles when he saw him, and started to get up.

  Sinclair simply tilted his head in the direction of the changing rooms and kept moving. Inside, he pulled open his locker and surveyed his gear. Wire-mesh masks, heavy canvas jackets, sabers, rubber-soled shoes with a special tread on the heel. The club kept everything in good order for him.

  Charles came in and selected sabers from his collection, checking the fit on his mask. He seemed totally absorbed, and disinclined to talk.

  Sinclair remembered the first time they had met at the club. Charles had been tearing up opponents for an hour or so when Sinclair had approached. Charles had beaten him in seconds, the start of a good friendship.

  “Hey, I tried to get you earlier,” Charles said, testing the grip on his saber.

  “I turned off my cell. I went to lunch at Hotel du Cap,” said Sinclair.

  Charles looked over at him.

  “Why, you like the burgers?”

  “No, I ran into Cordelia Stapleton and asked her to lunch.”

  “No. Really? I was going to ask her out myself, but you beat me to it,” Charles admitted. “So . . . what do you think?”

  “Lovely girl,” said Sinclair, checking the fit of his jacket.

  “I told you she was fantastic,” said Charles.

  “No, it’s not like that. I was just being hospitable. I wanted to show her the neighborhood.”

  “Sure,” said Charles.

  “Seriously, I’m not interested in anything right now. I can’t stand another go-around. I’ve had it.”