by Mims, Lee
“Yeah, the Coast Guard did stop the boat. There were three guys on it. Duchamp had hired them to take it to his home in Louisiana.”
“So, they didn’t have a boat,” Bud said, playing devil’s advocate. “Plus, it takes over four hours to reach the Magellan by boat.”
“If you leave from Morehead or Beaufort it does, but it’s only forty-five miles to the ship from Oregon Inlet. Departing from there, depending on wind and tides, it would only take a little over an hour with an offshore excursion boat. You can rent them from several places up there and they can easily run forty to fifty miles an hour. The twins waited, lights off, at agreed-upon coordinates outside the area the drillship’s patrol boat covers. He swam to them, they picked him up, went ashore, and met up with Duchamp. The big question: Where did they go from there?”
Pierce said, “I see what you mean. It wouldn’t take a rocket scientist to put that together—”
“Mom!” Henri and Will gasped in unison upon busting into my room. “Oh my God, Mom, your face!” Henri wailed.
My face?
“Henri!” Bud cautioned. “What did I tell you?”
“Oh,” she sobbed, both hands over her mouth.
“Somebody get me a mirror, right now!” I demanded.
“I’m outta here,” Pierce said, pulling the door back open. Then, he stopped, turned to me, and said, “I forgot to tell you that I looked into matching the material we found twisted in the vic’s watchband with the jumpsuits worn by Voyager’s crew.”
“Yeah?” I said, now less interested in all the recent skullduggery and more concerned about my face.
“Yeah, and it wasn’t a match. Not even close. But I shouldn’t have bothered.”
“Huh?” I said. “Why not?”
“Because it was four in the morning. Why would the twins be wearing their work duds? ROV crews only work during the day.”
I didn’t say a word about this already occurring to me. “Then why did Duchamp threaten me saying if I wasn’t careful I could end up just like Hunter? He had to have known Hunter was dead because he replaced him with Viktor before the body washed up on shore,” I said. Henri was still staring at me, stupefied. “Mirror!” I shouted. She gulped and nodded.
“The fact that he got someone replaced on a job just means he obviously had connections at Voyager. Doesn’t necessarily prove he knew the guy was dead, only that he could get a friend a job pretty damn quick.”
I held out my hand to Henri.
“Right,” Pierce said, picking up on the hint and taking one step closer to the hall. “Keep in mind, we’re still going to pick up Duchamp in the matter of drawing a gun on me and pushing you overboard. But there were no witnesses to that; we only have your statement. You are going to press charges this time, right?”
Henri handed me a compact. I heard Pierce say, “Uh, we’ll talk later.” Taking a deep breath, I opened the compact, held it up, and stifled a scream.
I looked like Frankenstein. See-through steri-strips covered large blue stitches holding together a 4-inch gash running along my hairline from my widow’s peak to my right temple. My hair was caked in dried blood, the first 3 inches of it being spiked up like a punk rocker while the rest hung in limp strands. Purple circles were forming under my eyes even as I stared in abject horror at myself. Quietly, I closed the compact, handed it back to Henri, and turned my face to the wall.
“Mom,” Will said. “I don’t understand. What did he mean about pressing charges ‘this time’? Were you attacked before this? You’ve been attacked more than once in a couple of weeks?”
“Not now,” Bud said. “Mom needs her rest.”
“Come on,” Henri said glumly. “We’ll wait for them at Seahaven. Oh, and before we go, Mom’s friend left this at her house.”
I turned back over to face them. “What? What friend? Left what?”
“Your … friend. You know? Viktor. I went straight to the house after Dad called and told me to pack some of your clothes and to wait there until you were ready to see us. I called Will and—”
“When did you see Viktor?” I interrupted her, noticing Bud over her shoulder as he quietly slipped from the room.
“Let’s see,” Henri said, handing me a small white envelope. “I guess it was around eleven o’clock last night. He seemed in a hurry. Just gave me that, said to give it to you when you got home, and left.”
Inside was a note from Viktor.
I know you think I have forsaken you. I have. That does not mean I did not care for you. Trust me, the only way to put the Amber Room back where it belongs in the Ekaterina Palace is to go along with Davy and the plan he has for it. Time is short. We’ll meet again.
The note was signed Afanasy Viktor Kozlov.
EPILOGUE
Clackity-clack rumbled my carry-on as I exited the skybridge into the terminal in Prudhoe Bay, Alaska, and headed for the ladies room. Since my brush with death a little over six weeks earlier, I’d spent over a week recuperating at Seahaven. Bud had hired a nurse for me, as he wasn’t there. I’d only stayed as long as I did in hopes that he’d come back so we could talk and I could explain that I never meant to hurt him; that I’d wanted to tell him all about the sub and the treasure that day on the Magellan, but then he’d showed up with her and well, things just went from there.
Finally I gave up waiting and moved back to Morehead with Will and Henri where I finished my recovery and did a few light consulting jobs. Global had capped off the well awaiting production, and the Magellan had steamed away to other adventures on another exploration site.
I’d heard Elton’s next job had him down in the Gulf on one of the ultra-deep wells. I smiled, knowing he’d be just fine. Strangely, I’d heard very little from Detective Pierce except to say that he was stymied in his investigation of Hunter’s death and my being thrown overboard because Duchamp and the twins had left the country. He seemed to have lost some of his determination, but it was hard to tell for sure.
Seeing the ladies room up ahead, I headed toward it but got a call on my iPhone just as I stepped inside. My contractor at the house in Raleigh. He had completed his renovations. We made arrangements to do a walk through. After using the facilities, I dabbed a touch more concealer at my hairline. I had been assured that the bright purple, ultra-thin scar revision—plastic surgeon speak for turning a horrific scar into a less horrific one—would fade over time. Satisfied, I adjusted the girls and took off for the car rental kiosk.
The stifling heat of late August in North Carolina had me looking forward to the cooler temperatures afforded by a two-day consulting job for a small independent energy company on the Alaska North Slope. Trudging along on my way to the parking lot, I caught sight of the general aviation building and a magnificent Bombardier Learjet 35, the ultimate daydream aircraft for me. That’s why I knew the custom paint job on this one was called Phantom Grey Metallic. To me, this beauty was more than just a bad-to-the-bone rich man’s toy, it was a work of art.
The area wasn’t fenced off, so I sauntered over for a closer look. Several service vehicles were parked nearby. Heat still radiated from the engines, but since no one seemed to be around, I reached up to feel the craftsmanship of the almost invisible door seam. That’s when the center seam popped open, the top half of the door rose, and a large man with dark curly hair, Slavic features, and a poorly fitting suit lowered the stairs.
“Pleased not to touch plane, Miss,” he said in an accent I was familiar with.
Totally embarrassed, I backed up as another large and muscled man, this one bald, angled himself out of the jet and stood by. Then Viktor Kozlov stepped into the doorway.
Though I heard my case clatter to the concrete—I’d unconsciously let go of the handle when my fingers curled into fists at my sides—I wasn’t really surprised and knew instantly that he’d arranged this “chance” meeting. After all, hadn’t hi
s note said we’d meet again? I’d wondered at the time if he was just blowing smoke or if he really meant it. Apparently he had, and from the looks of it, he’d meant to do so in fine style.
But how had he known where to find me? My eyes narrowed as he slowly walked up and stood just out of my reach.
“Your plane?” I asked icily.
“In a manner of speaking,” he replied nonchalantly as though nothing serious—such as his absconding with a priceless treasure and leaving me empty-handed—had happened between us.
“Nice ride.”
“Yes,” he agreed. Curly and his sidekick eased over to stand behind him, but he motioned them away. The jet’s turbines ticked as they cooled and I studied the subtle differences six weeks had made. His hair was shorter and slicked back. He was wearing a black silk casual shirt and charcoal Armani slacks. His python loafers were Ferragamos. But more than his appearance, his demeanor had shifted slightly from easygoing, fun-loving student to a cooler, more sophisticated person.
“I suppose you are very angry at me,” Viktor said.
“Ya think?” I said. “I flew out here in that nasty commuter over there jammed in beside a very large woman who needed two seats but only paid for one. But never mind that, why are you here?”
“I must speak to you on an urgent matter and time is limited.”
“Well, that makes two of us, because I’ve got an urgent question for you.”
“Okay, but quickly.”
“Why’d you do it, Viktor? Why’d you double-cross me?”
“For the same reason you went after Manteo One. For my country .”
I looked at him. “Cut the crap.”
“No!” he said firmly. “You of all people know it’s true! I am sure you went after the gas first for your country, second for your own personal gains. Yet, when I take back what belongs to Russia, somehow I’m the bad guy. Why is that?”
“You don’t know me at all,” I said, shaking my head. “I went after the gas first for myself, second for my country. It’s always been my motto to take care of myself so others won’t have to.”
“Yes,” he said, nodding his head like an old sage. I was seething as he continued, “That may be so. I won’t argue that point. But you do take care of others. After all, you put the old professor in a nicer retirement home in Florida.”
“How the hell do you know that? No one else but my lawyer does! For that matter, how did you know I’d be here?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“It does to me.”
Viktor ignored my questions. “And for the record, it is you, who doesn’t know me at all.”
“Clearly.”
“For instance, you don’t know that my parents were murdered when I was a toddler. That up until the time I was eleven, I was raised by a band of street urchins. That a kindly bureaucrat took me in and raised me after I was caught in one of the many street roundups and sent to a labor camp.”
“Oh, boohoo. So you came up hard. Lots of people do. That doesn’t give you the right to turn into a lowdown, self-serving polecat. And, personally, I don’t give a rat’s ass about any of that.” I knew I should dial it back, that I was getting way too fired up, but I couldn’t help myself.
Viktor’s face flushed, but he remained calm. “Who I am has everything to do with turning into a ‘lowdown polecat,’ as you put it, and placing my country and family first.”
“I thought you said your family was murdered?”
“There are all kinds of families,” he shot back, then looked around to see if the two goons were listening to us. They weren’t.
“Besides,” I said, aiming for a calmer tone, “how did you know I wasn’t going to give the Amber Room back to Russia? Yeah, maybe I was thinking of extracting a small finder’s fee, enjoying the fame that comes with uncovering one of the world’s greatest treasures, maybe even writing a book … but what did I get? Nothing. Not even the satisfaction of seeing the stinking map.”
Viktor looked as if he were deliberating over something. “It was written in German and in code. You and I alone could have done nothing with it. A team of German and Russian experts had a hard enough time. Then the diplomats got involved … ”
Diplomats?
A hint of a smile pulled at one corner of Viktor’s mouth. “I must say though,” he continued, “the hiding spot old Koch chose was very clever. No one would have ever thought to look in that particular German salt mine because it wasn’t abandoned at the time he hid the crates there. He disguised them as containing explosives, shoved them to the back of a supply room, and marked them Water damaged—Don’t Use. Years later, by the time the mine closed, all kinds of junk had been abandoned there, including the spoiled explosives.”
“Yeah, yeah,” I said sarcastically. “Koch was a real Einstein. So where is the Amber Room now? How come there’s been no great fanfare coming out of Russia about the big discovery? Oh, wait. Could it be because your note to me was all a lie? You fell right in with Davy Duchamp and slipped those crates out of Germany, didn’t you? And there’s no news of the Amber Room being returned to Russia because it’s in China!”
Viktor bit his lip, counted a few beats, and said, “The China deal was, shall we say, cancelled. Davy was compensated with full immunity from prosecution of any crimes he may have committed in your country and awarded a very lucrative contract with Russia’s largest state-owned oil company. His sons quit Voyager and are back working with him. They are running seismic data off the coast of North Africa now.”
Duchamp was compensated? How? By who? Is that what the diplomats were for? And for that matter, how did Viktor possess such a wealth of information about me—about everything, actually—including my current geographic location? Suddenly it dawned on me. I’d been a world-class chump. There existed a dark and slimy world, a viper pit, really, of international industrial espionage. And I, literally a babe in the woods, had been squashed by it without even knowing what did the squashing.
I pointed my finger at Viktor. “You’re an agent of some kind, aren’t you? Russian Intelligence planted you with Duchamp to make friends after they somehow learned, probably from hacking his private email, that he might have found the Amber Room.” I shook my head at my failure to see what had been right under my nose and looked in his eyes. As you may remember, I’m pretty good at reading poker faces and though I’m sure Russian Intelligence trains their agents well in the art of stoic expressions, I had enough personal experience with this man to know I’d hit on some version of the truth. “Wow,” I said. “Imagine his surprise when you double-crossed him too. Thing I can’t understand is, what happened? Where is the Amber Room now?”
“I’m afraid you’re not going to have the answers you seek. And what I’m requesting you do—for both of our sakes—is to forget this extremely exciting but ultimately very dangerous episode we shared.”
That was a nonstarter. I was quite sure I’d never see Viktor again after this day, so if I was going to get answers, now was the time. “But, I’m confused about so much,” I said. “Are you or aren’t you a geologist? Are you really a doctoral candidate at Duke?”
“Yes to your first question,” he said, patiently. “Of course I’m a geologist. As to Duke … well, that part has been changed. I’ll be conducting my dissertation work somewhere else.” He started to leave.
My brain was still working frantically to process everything. “Just please tell me this one last thing, did you somehow kill Hunter? I mean, your people?”
“No,” He shook his head—sadly, I like to think—and moved to take his leave again.
“Wait! This is important to me,” I said, my tone pleading now. “I’ve thought so much about all that’s happened. I never told you this, but the first night I was onboard Magellan, the night Hunter died, he attacked me and I’ve come to believe he did it because he thought I was looking for the
ROV’s internal log. Maybe he saw me—who showed up out of nowhere to consult—and thought I was checking on the discrepancy between it and the time he’d logged for the ship’s billing records. So he decided to kill me. Only someone killed him first and because I fainted, I still don’t know who it was. Was one of your people aboard? Did they use the incident with me to disguise his murder because he was causing trouble? Tell me! Please, I have to know!”
Just then a man in a captain’s hat stepped to the door of jet, looked down at us, and pointed to his watch.
Viktor nodded, turned to me, and said, “I have to go now. Please, tell me you’ll take my words to heart.”
“Okay,” I said. “You don’t have to worry about me anymore. Just please, tell me who—”
Viktor lifted my palm to his lips, kissed it, held it against his heart, and for a brief moment, I was again with my carefree young Russian friend. “Listen carefully, as I have one final piece of advice: stay close to your ex-husband. He takes very good care of you.” Then he did a strange thing. With his other hand, he reached into his pant’s pocket, removed something, and placed my recently kissed palm over it before I could see what it was. Slowly, I clinched my fingers around it and withdrew my hand. He smiled wistfully, then turned on his heel and left. Without even looking, I rammed the object in my jeans pocket, retrieved my carry-on, and booked it for the parking lot.
The balmy Alaskan summer day now had a chill to it. At least that was my excuse when, with shaking hands, I fumbled and dropped the key fob upon reaching my rental car. When I finally bleeped the door open, I heard my text tune but didn’t read it. Locking the door, I retrieved the object Viktor had stealthily slipped me, and knew two things instantly: I was holding a piece of history in my hand and, more than likely, only I would ever be able to enjoy it. Shaking my head sadly, I turned the palm-sized medallion of carved amber in my fingers.
Of course I could never be positive, unless the Amber Room was restored to its rightful place during my lifetime and I could visit as a tourist, but I was reasonably sure this medallion had once been part of the intricate wainscoting I’d seen in historical photos of the room. Raising the lovely translucent artifact to the light of the car window, I smiled at two little ants caught in the smooth center of a carved flower. Quite naturally, they appeared to be swimming as they would have been—for a few seconds anyway—after dropping into a big glob of sap millions of years ago.
