by Tom Wilde
“Blood? Where the hell did you get that?”
“It’s Vanya’s,” I said. “I managed to stick him with the needle before he fell out of reach. He won’t need it anymore.”
Smith took the syringe like a man taking hold of a holy relic, and then I finally let my body collapse while the medic examined my shoulder. I was too tired, too injured to do anything more than lean back and shiver with cold and fatigue. All I could do now was pray.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
New York
“What happened then?”
I was standing inside the private office of the Argo Foundation. I’d just flown back to the States from Germany on this day to meet with Nicholas Riley and Mr. Singh for the last time. The main offices of Argo reside in one of the classic brownstones on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, but you could walk past here every day of your life and you’d never know the truly strange events that are recounted within these walls. Nick’s personal office is a large room, the walls covered to capacity with venerable old books, and furnished with dark, aged mahogany so that the place resembles a private club from the turn of the last century. I’d lost track of all the time I spent within this room, either planning a new venture, or reading for knowledge for its own sake, usually while I recovered from the exhaustion and injuries of my most recent mission.
Nicholas Riley’s rough voice brought me back to the here and now, and I turned back to the table. Nick was holding court in his favorite high-backed chair, his tailored shirt unbuttoned and the sleeves rolled up, while Mr. Singh sat at his right hand, impeccable as ever. I was wearing donated military clothes and was looking forward to dressing as a civilian again. I went back to my own chair across the wide mahogany table, still moving like an arthritic old man due to my accumulated injuries, and resumed telling my tale. As per our long-standing practice, nothing was recorded or written down, but I’ve never known Nick Riley to forget anything.
“Even with a military attack helicopter, it took us hours to get back to Vanya’s island,” I said. “And when we did, the place looked like my worst trip to Baghdad—everything was all shot to pieces. The Navy SEAL teams had done their job all right, but when Vanya’s soldiers felt they were finished, they all committed mass suicide. No doubt following the last wishes of their master.”
“Mother of God,” Nick rumbled softly.
I thought of all the young, serious men I had seen, and I deeply wished that Vanya was now being tormented in the hell he claimed he didn’t believe in. “And thank God for Peter Weir,” I said. “When everything was getting blown to pieces, he managed to gather up most of the involuntary workforce, including Dr. Song, and Vanya’s collection of young women, and hide them out until the Navy SEALs broke through to the bunker.”
“But what about Caitlin?”
“It was close. Too damn close. She was almost into the final stages of the Pandora sickness, but Dr. Song was able to whip up a serum out of Vanya’s blood sample, and she saved Caitlin’s life.” My mind went back to all the hours and days I spent pressed to the glass in the medical observation bay, watching Dr. Song and her team, dressed in decontamination suits that made them look like they were ready for outer space, work on a pale and unmoving Caitlin, and how I watched the medical monitor screens, counting every beat of her heart. “That tough old bastard Ombra pulled through too,” I added. “But don’t ask me how. Dr. Song kept saying how it was all touch and go for a while.”
“What about the Pandora virus itself? Who’s got their hands on that now?”
“The nice man from the government told me not to worry about it.”
I recalled my last meeting with Sam Smith, which I’d had the day before. We were standing on a balcony outside the living quarters on Vanya’s island, feeling the cool Mediterranean Sea night breeze gently blow away the sultry air. Once Caitlin and Ombra had been deemed noncontagious and on the mend, we were all moved to the guest quarters and had been living like hurricane survivors who’d been trapped in a luxury hotel. I was still carrying my arm around in a sling, courtesy of the marine medic who did a good job stitching up my shoulder, despite the fact he didn’t look old enough to shave, and my chest felt like it was slowly petrifying as it healed. That night, I’d brought along a six-pack of Heineken and a couple of Cuban cigars that I’d liberated from Vanya’s supplies during one of my foraging expeditions.
Smith was in the process of lighting my cigar when I noticed he was using a familiar item. “Isn’t that mine?” I asked around puffs.
Smith held my battered Zippo up and looked at it as if noticing the etched dragon motif for the first time. “Is it? Well, so it is.”
He obligingly returned my lighter when he finished igniting our cigars and I asked, “So where the hell have you been?”
“Hey, I’ve been busy. Cut me some slack.”
I believed him. For the past three days I’d seen and heard helicopters flying in and out on a frequent basis. I was restricted to the upstairs quarters, along with the rest of the survivors, and there were heavily armed American soldiers guarding all the elevators.
“So how are your patients?” Smith inquired.
“Critical. They both say that if they have to eat my cooking much longer, it’ll kill them.”
Smith laughed. “No worries there. Matter of fact, we’re shipping all of you out tomorrow. Speaking of which, have you seen Ombra around?”
I shrugged and took a drink of my beer in lieu of answering. As a matter of fact, I’d seen Mr. Ombra earlier that night. I was coming back with a load of supplies just as he was exiting the room he had next to Caitlin’s and mine, dressed in tan military fatigues. We both stopped and stared at each other for a moment, and then Ombra nodded, as if in salute, and I returned in kind, then we both went our separate ways. As far as I was concerned, the war was over. Besides, no one appointed me to be anyone’s guard.
“Well,” Smith mused. “We’re on an island. He can’t wander too far off.”
“What about Vanya’s Pandora plague?” I asked.
Smith blew a cloud of smoke out toward the starry sky. “No worries there, and we can thank dear departed Vanya for that. The old boy went and outsmarted himself. My government geek squad got into his computer system and found a whole stash of prerecorded speeches Vanya must have kept around to cover up any extended absences. We’ve been broadcasting them via satellite right on schedule. And with the news blackout covering up the sinking of the yacht, as far as the rest of the world knows, Vanya is still alive.”
“But what about all his cult members who had plague devices?”
“We found that list too. Don’t worry, we’re taking care of business on that account.”
“What’s going to happen to them?”
“Don’t ask,” Smith said flatly.
“Were there any survivors from Vanya’s yacht?”
“A few, and they’re in custody. They won’t be talking to anybody for quite a while yet. But Vanya went down with his ship.”
“And Rhea?”
“No sign,” Smith answered shortly. I had a short, sharp flashback of Rhea falling into the flaming guts of the ship, screaming like a demon as she went.
“So all’s well that ends horribly for some?” I asked.
Smith took another puff and said, “Which brings me to my point. What do you say about joining my outfit full time? We make a hell of a team.”
I damn near spit out a mouthful of beer. “Team? What team? All you did was keep me in the dark, when you weren’t out-and-out lying to me, and then you let me get shot, stabbed, and beat half to death more times than I can count.”
“Like I said, we’re a good team.”
I was in the process of recalling my colorful and invective-filled refusal to Smith as Nick Riley said, “But what about the cave under the Corsican watchtower? What the hell happened with that?”
I sighed. “According to Smith, the French authorities reported that the underwater cave opening completely collapsed, a
long with part of the tunnel that led from the watchtower down to the cave. As far as the French government is concerned, the whole operation was to stop a gang of international terrorists who had been using Corsica as a secret place to stash their explosives. From what I’ve heard, the news networks just reported a minor earthquake occurred on Corsica that coincided with the accidental sinking of a private boat out to sea.”
“So everything you saw, the glass sarcophagus of Alexander the Great, Napoleon Bonaparte, and even the Nautilus, everything is lost?”
“Not lost,” I protested. “I know exactly where they are. They’re just buried under tons of rock.”
“They wouldn’t be if you hadn’t blown up the damn cave!” Nick rasped.
“Not my fault. How was I to know that two-hundred-year-old bombs would still be dangerous?”
Mr. Singh turned a large book around on the table, orienting it toward me. It was the same book I had studied years ago when I was taking my crash course on the history of submarines. “Did the craft you saw look like this?” Singh inquired.
I looked at the design Robert Fulton had created for his Nautilus. “Oh, yeah. Except when I saw the real thing, someone had added the reinforced ramming spur on the bow.”
“According to history, Fulton’s prototype submarine was dismantled when Napoleon chose not to finance it,” Mr. Singh said.
I laughed. “Napoleon probably stiffed old Fulton, then had his own engineers construct the actual Nautilus using Fulton’s designs. With improvements.”
Mr. Singh nodded and pointed to a teardrop shape on Fulton’s blueprint. “This was the mechanism Fulton designed to sink enemy ships. Not a conventional torpedo, as we know it today. This was a bomb designed to be towed from behind the submarine on a cable. When the submarine dove under an enemy warship and pulled the bomb into place under the hull, it was detonated by an electrical current along a wire. Ingenious for its time.”
“Yeah. Not to mention really well made to stay potent after a couple of hundred years. Those damn things must have stayed airtight. But more importantly, who could have built such a thing as the Nautilus back then and kept it secret all these years?”
Mr. Singh displayed one of his rare, brief smiles as he turned the book back toward himself and flipped to another page. “It is interesting to note,” he said, “that Robert Fulton died in 1815, before he could work on his new design. But there was also a confederate of his, an Englishman named Captain Robert Johnstone, who had worked with Fulton on his earlier submarine projects. According to historical records, Captain Johnstone was also a smuggler, a privateer, and a soldier of fortune.”
“Sounds like he could have worked for Argo,” I opined, with Nick grunting agreement.
“Indeed,” Mr. Singh said as he consulted the book again. “In 1817, Captain Johnstone was arrested in England on charges of conspiracy. He was suspected of collaborating in a plot to rescue Napoleon Bonaparte from exile on Saint Helena Island. Specifically by planning to build a submarine for that very purpose.”
“Damn,” I breathed. “With all things considered, from the Nautilus to the secret underground harbor, you’d think Jules Verne must have come across this information somewhere. At least he got to live to tell his tale, unlike poor Percy Shelley. Madame Ombra told me that she and her organization were in the business of keeping secrets throughout the ages, but whoever Ombra’s people are, I’m betting Verne was one of them.”
Nick trained his sharp blue eyes on me like a pair of lasers. “Speaking of the cavern under the watchtower, you mentioned earlier that you found evidence that people had used the cave during the Second World War?”
“Yeah. That threw me for a bit. But between the shotgun booby trap and the German Army ammunition boxes, it’s certain that someone had been down there up until the 1940s at least.”
“German ammunition boxes, you said,” Nick rumbled.
“Yeah.”
Nick and Mr. Singh traded looks. “Rommel’s treasure?” Mr. Singh asked aloud.
“I’d bet on it,” Nick growled.
“Someone want to fill me in?” I inquired.
It was Mr. Singh who spoke. “It is said that during the Second World War, Rommel’s Afrika Corps smuggled out a quantity of gold, silver, and jewels from North Africa and hid them in an underwater cave near Corsica. The treasure was purportedly carried inside metal ammunition boxes.”
I saw in my mind’s eye how the insides of those rusted old ammo boxes gleamed with traces of gold. “Oh. Well, if there was any treasure there, then someone cleaned it out long before I arrived.”
“Which brings us back to the fact that for all of your efforts, you’ve got nothing to show for it. Not even one measly Chinese bronze vase,” Nicholas grumbled. He stared out into space for a moment, and then said, “Was it truly Napoleon Bonaparte in that tomb?”
“I didn’t get close enough to see myself. But Rhea sure as hell saw something that pushed her over the edge. And speaking of the sarcophagus, just what the hell did Napoleon do with the body of Alexander?”
“We may never know the truth of it,” Nick growled softly. “Let’s face it—if there’s one thing we’ve all learned in this business, it’s that there are Lies, Damned Lies, and History.”
I nodded silent agreement, seeing in my mind’s eye the secret library hidden away in the depths of the Château de Joux as it burned in the searing flames, and wondered how many long-buried secrets were lost in the ashes.
“And now,” Nick mused, “all we’ve got to show for our troubles is one tattered old letter from Lord Byron.”
“Do me a favor?” I asked. “Give Byron’s letter to Abby Pennyworth. She really helped me in getting this whole thing figured out. She deserves something.”
“Great,” Nick rasped sourly. “I give away the one artifact we recover, and I lose my best man in the bargain.”
Nick’s words brought me back to the finality of the moment. Too many people, especially government types, had seen what a dangerous creature I’d been made to be. There was no way Nick could afford to keep me with his band of pirates and still maintain the fictional innocent cover of the Argo Foundation. I watched Mr. Singh take the china teacups away from the table, the tea being yet another ritual of our meetings, and I thought of how much I would miss all of this as Nick Riley reached for the bottle of twenty-one-year-old Scotch, the traditional signal that our business was concluded and it was time for the toast.
But I had one last thing to do before I left. I reached down to the hardwood floor and picked up the plain black nylon bag I’d carried with me all the way from Vanya’s island. I placed the bag carefully on the table as Nick poured drinks for himself and me and Mr. Singh returned with his teacup refilled. “What’s that you got?” Nick asked.
“Something you may be interested in,” I announced as I lifted the old rectangular wooden box out of the bag. “I found this while rummaging around Vanya’s island. This is the Egyptian scroll I picked up when I was in the catacombs of Paris. From what I was told, this could actually be the books of magic that Septimius Severus placed inside the tomb of Alexander back around 200 AD. It may even be one of the legendary Books of Thoth.”
Old Nick’s eyes bulged underneath his shaggy brows as he slowly reached a hand across the table, but I slid the box back toward myself before he got there. “Of course, since you had to fire me, I guess that makes me an independent businessman now.”
Nick had to try twice before he ground out the word “What?”
“So I guess the bottom line is, how much are you willing to pay me for it?”
I thought Nick was going to explode. And he did. With laughter. And while he roared, I saw a twitch of a smile from Mr. Singh, though it was almost concealed by his thick black beard.
When Nick finally wound down, he wiped away an imaginary tear from his guileless-appearing blue eyes. He leaned back and placed his hands on the equator of his belly and said to no one in particular, “It’s always a bit sad when
the children grow up.” Then he graced me with his most gentle smile as he said flatly, “Let’s talk.”
In the end, I came out with more money than I expected, which was a complete reversal from my usual poker game losses I’d suffered at that very table over the years. We all said our farewells in the time-honored way of men, and I left as something welled up in the base of my throat—I was damned if I was going to be the only one to give an emotional display.
It was nearly ten o’clock at night when I walked out to the sidewalk, where a summoned cab awaited. I turned and took one long, last look at the fortress-like brownstone that was the one fixed point in the chaotic pattern of my second life. Then I turned away and settled into the backseat of the cab as one of Mr. Singh’s countrymen expertly drove me to the busy, noisy streets of Midtown Manhattan. I looked out the window at all the people making their way along the crowded sidewalks. At that moment, I was content just knowing that every single one of them could just go about the everyday business of living, and they would never have to know about the imminent catastrophe that they’d just missed.
I let the taxi drop me off near Times Square and walked with the bustling crowds under the frantic, megalithic marquee lights up toward the Algonquin Hotel. I nodded to the doorman and said hello to the cat as I made my way through the wood-paneled lobby then headed up the stairs toward what I hoped to be my future. I quietly opened the door and went toward the bed in the darkened room. In the light that came through the window I saw Caitlin’s golden hair spilling across the white pillow. I knelt beside her and let my eyes adjust until I could see her face. I’d spent a lot of time just watching her sleep back on Vanya’s island. It was a sight I knew I’d never grow tired of.
She must have sensed my presence because she slowly stretched her arms above the covers and opened her lovely eyes a bit. “Hello, you,” she said sleepily.
“Hi yourself. Hey, I’ve got money.”
“That’s good,” she said with her secretive smile playing on her lips. “I certainly didn’t marry you for your looks.”
