Their leader beckoned Parker and Jane closer. “Alexander asked me to share certain information with you. However, I must have your agreement.”
“On what?” Jane asked.
“Next steps. Alexander wants your trust. As partners in this search. A search you completed.”
“Deal. Here, you probably want these back.” She gave him the three guns. “What can we do to help?”
The man touched his chest. “My name is Filip. Thank you.”
Parker’s injured arm left him as the odd man out, watching while everyone else worked. Jane and Filip carried the chests to the fence, near where the Russians had parked their SUV. Gold bars went over first, one at a time, then the chests, which were then repacked and loaded into the vehicle.
The other Russian continued to dig, muscles cording on his forearms as dirt flew. Four additional chests surfaced in short order, one significantly lighter than the others. It rattled when they moved it.
“Time is short.” Filip pointed to a band of light gray tingeing the horizon. “We will open these later.”
They carried the last four chests to the vehicle and loaded them in. Filip set the last chest, the smallest one, in the rear, and then motioned to the middle row of seats.
“Please,” he said. “Ride with us. You can return for your car later.”
When they were underway, Filip leaned forward in his seat to Parker and Jane. “How did you open the first three chests?” he asked.
Jane flashed the key. “This. Now tell us about Alexander.”
“Why do you guys all wear those red rings?” Parker asked. “You all have them. So did the others in America and Luxembourg.”
Red fire filled the car when Filip lifted his ring to the light. “These rubies represent a dynasty. Those who wear it are the descendants of men and women who have protected the true Russian leaders for centuries. My father wore one, as did his father before him, along with many generations stretching back for centuries. We guard the House of Romanov.”
Jane gasped. “Wait. You’re telling us Alexander is related to the Romanovs? Their line ended in 1918 when the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas II and his entire family.”
Filip frowned. “They tried to destroy the Romanovs. They failed. Nicholas II’s oldest daughter was Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. The Grand Duchess served as a nurse, tending to soldiers wounded in the First World War. In 1916 she became involved with a wounded soldier. This resulted in a pregnancy, the issue of which was a boy. Emperor Nicholas ordered the child hidden away in the months before he abdicated, providing for his care by creating an order whose sole purpose is to ensure the child’s safety. My grandfather led these men.” Filip drew in a breath. “It is the same order I serve today.”
“What happened to the little boy?”
“He escaped detection and grew up in hiding, supported by our order and resources provided by the emperor. As an adult he married and had a child.” Filip twisted the ring on his finger. “A boy named Alexander.”
Cold lightning coursed through Parker’s spine. “Alexander Nichols.”
“Yes.” Filip leaned back. “Alexander Nichols. His full name is Alexander Nikolayevich Romanov. The great-grandson of Nicholas II and true emperor of Russia.”
Filip held out his hand for the key, and Jane handed it to him without protest. “Now you know why we are here.” He pointed to the chests in the cargo hold. “May I?”
Jane nodded.
Filip told the driver to pull over, and the vehicle stopped a safe distance off the road before they all got out. Filip opened the rear hatch and pulled the first of the chests from the second grave toward him.
The key fit its lock, just as it had with the other chests. And as before, the ancient metal shouted as it fought decades of grime before turning with a sudden release. Jane took Parker’s hand in hers as Filip lifted the lid to reveal stacked gold bars.
The next two chests offered more of the same.
Figures dashed through Parker’s head. “Six chests, ten bars in each. Six million per chest makes thirty-six million dollars in gold.”
“Worth far more than that to Russia,” Filip said. “A small piece of the lost Romanov treasure. Our supporters will rejoice now that it has been found.”
Jane frowned. “What’s in the last chest?”
Filip handed her the key. “You should open it.”
She looked to Parker. He squeezed her hand. “Why not?”
Jane took the key and forced the lock to surrender. She lifted the lid.
The world exploded in a dazzling burst of color.
Epilogue
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Two Weeks Later
“Hugh said hello. He asked if you grew that awful beard back.”
Jane set her phone on Parker’s coffee table and sat down on his office couch. He’d recently redone the room to include a billiards table, though he didn’t want to play Jane any longer. A lifetime spent playing snooker gave her an uncanny ability to wipe the floor with him every time.
Which she loved to do. “Fancy another game?”
“Not right now.” His pride couldn’t take another beating. “How’s Hugh?”
“Grand. Lonely. Trying to persuade me to come back.”
“Only once the lawyers say it’s safe.” Parker’s chair creaked when he leaned back. “Unless you want to go now and risk ending up in a German jail.”
“The company would be infinitely preferable.” She threw a pillow at him. “However, I suppose I can suffer for a few more days.”
Parker caught the pillow and flung it back in one smooth motion, then leapt from his chair. “I was afraid you’d say that.” He strode over to the mini-fridge, pulled out two beers, and tossed one to Jane. “It’s close enough to five.” He plunked himself down on the couch beside her.
“Couldn’t agree more.” Jane opened her beer and took a long pull. “You think the German government would appreciate recovering a Gutenberg Bible enough to fast-track their investigation.”
“Attempted murder charges in foreign countries create red tape. But don’t worry, it’ll get worked out. I have good lawyers. Damned expensive, too.” He could have bought a second home for what they charged. “They took care of the Austrian charges for us.”
“Those were bogus to begin with.” Jane pushed a wayward strand of hair behind her ear. “Frank Weidel’s people trumped them up. Whoever they are.”
“I doubt we’ll ever know.” Parker’s attorneys had poked holes the size of boulders in the prosecutor’s case, which had unraveled in short order. It didn’t take long for the Austrian government to drop all charges related to the fabricated attempted homicide at the cathedral. As for who had turned a falling block into attempted murder in the first place, that remained a mystery. Parker and Jane were welcome back in Austria any time they liked. “People with pull like that never get caught.”
Sun painted the walls as they drank in companionable silence. A fan turned overhead, throwing bands of shadow around the room. Eventually Jane reached over and laid a hand atop Parker’s.
“What do you think Alexander will do with the treasure?”
Parker shrugged. “My guess is he thinks it’s a way to energize people and bring them to his cause. Restoring the monarchy, in a way. Who knows? He might have a chance if enough people are fed up with Putin.”
Jane snorted. “Did you read about how he wants to change the Russian Constitution?”
Parker had. “If the legislature agrees, he’ll be president for another twenty years. Wouldn’t be surprised if a few more political opponents catch a case of radiation poisoning.”
“You’d think people would have had enough by now.”
“Most people just want tomorrow to be the same as today. They want stocked grocery stores, jobs, and the cops to leave them alone. Make that happen and you’d be surprised what people put up with.”
“I wish you were wrong.” Jane finished her beer and set the bottle on the ta
ble. The phone beside it buzzed. She peered at the screen. “That’s for you,” she said. “It’s Nick.” She tapped the phone to connect the call and put it on speaker. “Hey Nick. How’s the ankle?”
“Aches like hell.” Nick had been up and moving a week after the surgery, throwing his crutches in a closet and locking the door. “I’ll be fine. Did you hear the news?”
“What news?” they asked in unison.
“Frank Weidel had an accident.”
Jane frowned. “He’s in solitary confinement. How could anything happen to him?”
Frank Weidel’s downfall had been extensively covered in German media, the salacious details fodder for tabloids and respected outlets alike. It wasn’t every day the head of a party was found handcuffed to a corpse with unlicensed weapons at his side. In a foreign graveyard beside two opened graves, no less. German authorities had had no choice but to charge him with a litany of crimes when his prints were discovered on the murder weapon. A nice touch by Filip’s men, wrapping Weidel’s hand around the 9mm Parker had used to shoot Weidel’s two thugs. Weidel had still been unconscious when they’d done it.
“Frank Weidel fell down a staircase and broke his neck,” Nick said. “He died an hour ago. Weidel was a minion,” he continued. “Somebody way above him pulled the strings. Weidel took the fall.”
Jane laced her fingers and twisted them back and forth. “Why would Frank Weidel be sent after stolen Nazi loot in the first place? It makes no sense. He had even odds at winning re-election and his party controlling Germany’s government until he did this.”
“And the election went disastrously wrong,” Nick said. “The National Freedom Party lost half their seats. Any influence they had is gone.” He paused, and his tone became serious. “If you want my advice, don’t ask questions. The kind of people who make accidents happen in jail don’t take kindly to them.”
“Don’t worry, we’re not interested. We only want to have these charges cleared up.”
“A friend told me it’s happening soon,” Nick said. “Another day or two at most. Then Jane can go home. I’ll be in touch as soon as I hear anything.”
Nick hung up, and Jane turned to Parker.
“They killed him in jail,” she said. “Do you know what that tells me? We were in way over our heads. We’re lucky to be alive.”
“True.” Parker reached for Jane’s neck, hooking a finger under her gold necklace. “Look at it this way. We uncovered Claus Elser’s path, found artifacts the Nazis stole from good people, and will get them back to their rightful owners. Alexander recovered his family gold and turned the Caravaggio from Father Bakker’s office over to the authorities. He might even start a revolution. And you got a nice memento.”
Vibrant shades of red reflected in the sunlight streaming through his office windows. The ruby hanging around Jane’s neck was the size of a walnut. A present from Alexander. Not that he would miss it, given the final chest had overflowed with cut diamonds, emeralds, rubies and hundreds of other precious stones.
“It is,” Jane said. She took his hand from her neck, holding it tight. “I’m grateful. For everything. And for you. I wouldn’t be alive if you hadn’t been with me.”
He reached up and brushed a hair from her face. “So am I. Now for the hard part.” He grinned. “What next?”
“There’s no hurry. We can figure it out. Together.”
Parker blinked. “Yes. Yes, we can.”
<<<<>>>>
Author’s Note
I hope you enjoyed this tale. However, now I’d like to separate fact from fiction. While Parker’s Russian adventure is rooted in fact, parts of the adventure were found in my imagination as opposed to the history books. Which ones? Let’s find out.
The Engima Machine (Ch. 2) is one of the most well-known encryption devices of the past two centuries, used most infamously by Nazi Germany during World War II. The machine is as described in this story, with an electromechanical rotor mechanism used to scramble the 26 letters of the alphabet by transforming the letters into an encoded format. The devices are used in concert with other Enigma Machines, and to translate a message from one to the other, both operators must set three rotors situated above the keyboard to identical settings. This allows the machines to work in concert so a receiving machine accurately deciphers the encoded message from the sender.
The Reichsleiter Rosenberg Taskforce (Ch. 3) is real and functioned as described by Otto. Led by Alfred Rosenberg, the task force was an official Nazi Party organization tasked with appropriating cultural artifacts during the War. Rosenberg was a Nazi theorist and ideologue who was one of the main drivers of the party ideological creeds, including Jewish persecution and inferiority, the concept of an Aryan master race, and a leading proponent of opposing what he considered to be degenerate artwork. The Task Force looted material across Europe, ranging from precious books or manuscripts from national libraries and archives to important artifacts of religious authorities, while also stealing any valuable cultural property belonging to Jews. Such theft included thousands of pieces of art, including several pieces mentioned in this story. To give an idea of the vast extent of this pillaging, it is estimated that between 1941 and 1944 the Task Force sent over 1.4 million railcars containing books and works of art from outlying nations back to Germany.
The church where Parker and Jane meet Father Bakker (Ch. 4) does not exist and was created for the purposes of this story. However, Caravaggio’s St. Matthew and the Angel was a real painting. Sadly it was lost near the end of the war and is presumed to have been destroyed. The last known location for this masterpiece was in Berlin, which suffered extensive bomb damage near the end of the war, one casualty of which is suspected to be Caravaggio’s masterpiece.
Parker and Jane decode a message from Claus pointing them to a location across the road from the Villa Pauly (Ch. 4), which in this tale is a private bank. While Falcon & Landolt may not be real, the history regarding the Villa Pauly is very much true. Originally built in the 1920’s to house a surgeon’s practice, the Villa Pauly resembles a castle from the Renaissance. History determined it would serve a darker purpose in 1940 when the Gestapo began using it as their headquarters. Cellar vaults were used for torture and interrogations. After the war ended, it was used by the Luxembourg government. Today it houses several societies and has been designated a historic monument.
While there are untold thousands of artifacts, paintings and books now missing or destroyed due to the Nazi regime’s insatiable greed, one painting is widely regarded as the single most important painting missing across the globe since World War 2. Raphael’s Portrait of a Young Man (Ch. 7) is thought to be a self-portrait of the artist which, if found, would be valued in the hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars today. The painting was taken from Poland by the Nazis, despite a Polish nobleman rescuing it from a museum prior to the Nazi invasion in 1939. The painting was later discovered and sent to be part of the Fuhrer’s private collection until 1945 when one of Hitler’s deputies, a man named Hans Frank, took it to Krakow for his personal use. Frank was arrested by American forces later that year, by which time the painting had gone missing. He was executed in 1946, taking any information regarding the location of Raphael’s work to his grave.
Frankfurt Cathedral (Ch. 8) truly was the location where Holy Roman Emperors were crowned. It really burned down in 1867, after which it was rebuilt. Tragedy would strike again when Allied bombardments laid waste to Frankfurt during the war. The Cathedral was later rebuilt in the 1950’s, though if there is a basement chapel where hidden messages are stored, I am not aware of it.
As to the crux of this story, there are more questions than answers (which is what makes for the best tales, if you ask me). Tsar Nicholas II’s family gold reserve (Ch. 14) is a monumental tale of half-truths and supposition, all cloaked in the hazy gauze of time passing. The legend of how, or if in truth, the Tsar’s gold traveled from his vaults to its unknown final destination is a summation of several stories outlin
ing what may have happened. While it all makes for a wonderful tale, the question remains – where is the gold now, or did it ever exist? In truth, no one knows. Should you ever find yourself on a path chasing it, be cautious and may fortune favor you.
Sinwell Tower at Nuremburg Castle (Ch. 14) is real. The basement, however is not. I created that level as part of the story. Nuremburg Castle dates from the 13th century and actually sits on top of a ridge in the middle of the city. As for the treasure Parker and Jane found in that basement, you may be interested to know the lost Faberge egg called Alexander III is real – and it has been missing for nearly a century. No one knows what happened to it.
The bells at Salzburg Cathedral (Ch. 17) are real and exist as described. The bell named Maria bell truly does date from 1621, though to my knowledge there are no stones with any type of writing on them in the belfry. If a Gutenberg bible is secreted on the Cathedral grounds, it has yet to be found.
St. Mark’s Cemetery (Ch. 19) across from Wagner’s house in Vienna does not exist, though the description and address of the composer’s home are accurate.
Finally, the sad truth of Tsar Nicholas II’s fate is that no members of his family survived. Nicholas, his wife Alexandra, and their five children, including Olga, were shot and bayoneted to death by communist revolutionaries. Rumors of the Grand Duchess having a child with a wounded soldier do exist, but they are simply that; rumors. No children have ever been proven to exist.
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A Tsar's Gold (Parker Chase Book 6) Page 25
