The Emperor's Revenge (The Oregon Files)

by Clive Cussler

  The Oregon’s senior staff assembled in the conference room along with Gretchen. Maurice unobtrusively set out a spread of smoked duck, Brie and Camembert cheeses, and French bread for them to eat while they talked. Juan didn’t realize how hungry he was until he took his first bite. He and the others munched happily while Eric began the talk.

  “As you suspected, Marie Marceau has been working with ShadowFoe for quite a while. We’ve found emails on her phone dating back six months.”

  Murph shook his head in disappointment. “A crying shame. And I was planning to ask her out, too. Eventually.”

  “Sure you were,” Eric teased. “Of course, you would have been dating the accomplice of a murderer.”

  “So procrastination worked for me yet again.”

  “Anyway,” Eric continued, “there was enough incriminating evidence in those emails to send her away for life, if she had lived.”

  “She even had a cool hacker alias,” Murph said. “MasqueBleu, or Blue Mask. She was flaunting her double life, as a police employee and as a criminal, while keeping it hidden. Almost worked until she tried to get the two of you shot and took the bullet instead.”

  “Did you find anything about zings or lightning grid?” Juan asked.

  Eric shook his head. “We did a cursory search for both, but nothing jumped out. We’ll keep working on it.”

  “Make sure you include Germany in your search terms,” Gretchen said. “I got the impression that whatever they’re planning will happen in Germany somewhere.”

  “Could be,” Murph said. “The attack on that Frankfurt power station already gives us a link to Deutschland. We’ll look into it.”

  “Marceau also mentioned something about a formula,” Juan recalled. “She said, ‘The formula is in the treasure. Polichev. It’s the code.’ Did you find anything related to those terms?”

  Eric shook his head again. “Nothing.”

  “Why would a formula be in the treasure?” Max asked.

  “We probably won’t know until we find it,” Murph said. “And we have no clue who Polichev is or was. But we do know that it’s a Russian surname, so it could be linked somehow to the treasure Napoleon took from Moscow.”

  “Okay,” Juan said. “Keep searching.”

  “Chairman,” Eric said, “we did find one email that I think you’ll find interesting. It was sent from Marceau to ShadowFoe two weeks before the bank heist.”

  “Is it about how to get into the bank’s system?” They knew ShadowFoe’s offer to return their money had been a ruse, but Juan still wanted it back.

  “Unfortunately, no. But, fortunately, it is about where the treasure can be found.”

  Juan chewed on a piece of bread slathered with Brie. “You’re right. I’m interested.”

  Murph turned on the large display screen at the end of the table and linked it to his laptop. “It seems that our cute computer traitor was doing some extracurricular work for ShadowFoe. The original email from ShadowFoe asked Marceau to use the Monaco Sûreté’s forensic lab to analyze the writing on both sides of the three missing pages from Napoleon’s Diary. Even though a university lab would have better equipment, they didn’t want to risk using one.”

  Eric jumped in. “Apparently, the pages had been stored poorly and faded quite a bit in the two hundred years since Napoleon’s death. They’d also suffered some damage and tearing, so the emperor’s handwritten margin notes were illegible to the naked eye.”

  “Go ahead, Murph,” Juan said. “I can see you’re dying to get to the kicker.”

  Murph rubbed his hands together in glee. “I give you the missing diary pages.” He punched a key on his laptop and six book pages appeared on the display. They were frayed and worm-eaten, but Juan recognized them as having the same typography as the copy of The Odyssey he and Gretchen had taken from Malta.

  Juan leaned forward. “Are we sure these are authentic?”

  “One hundred percent,” Eric said. “The torn edges match up precisely with the missing pages in the diary. Marceau must have used their lab equipment to enhance the images artificially.”

  “So Antonovich had the pages all along,” Gretchen said.

  “Which is why he needed the diary,” Murph said. “These pages tell where the treasure is, but they’re incomplete.”

  “You see those missing spots?” Eric said, pointing at the parts that had been chewed away over the years by pests. “They included some of the details that would help us find it. But it does confirm there is a treasure to be found.”

  “Do the notes tell us anything about the location?” Max asked.

  “Yes,” Gretchen said, getting to her feet. She traced one of Napoleon’s notes with her finger and translated the French. “Here it talks about a river that they followed on the retreat from Moscow. It’s called the Neris.”

  Linda looked at Juan with a grin. “You called it, Chairman. They dumped the treasure in a river.”

  “Where’s the Neris?” Juan asked.

  “In Lithuania,” Eric said. “It fits the path that Napoleon took, back out of Russia.”

  Max frowned. “Did he get any more specific than a whole river?”

  Gretchen went to another page. “It says here that they unloaded it somewhere between Vilnius and Grigiškės.”

  “That does seem to narrow it down,” Juan said. “Stoney, show us the river.”

  Eric put the map up on the screen. Grigiškės was practically a suburb of Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius. The town was only five miles from Vilnius’s city center, but the winding river’s route doubled the distance.

  “How long would it take us to search ten miles of river using a metal detector?” Juan asked.

  Murph’s eyes jittered as he did the calculation in his head. “Maybe only three or four days, but it depends how much mud and silt has covered the objects in the last two hundred years.”

  “Whatever Antonovich has planned,” Juan said, “it’s going down soon, so we need to get moving. Linda, tell Tiny to get the plane ready to take us to Lithuania. We need to begin the search as soon as we can. Linda, Gretchen, Trono, MacD, and I will go. Eric and Murph will stay here and continue working on the diary and column clues to see if they can narrow down the search grid.”

  “We’ll also keep nosing around with those other items that Marceau mentioned before she died,” Eric said. “Polichev, zings, and lightning grid.”

  Murph said, “They sound like an antidepressant, a Hostess snack, and a game show round.”

  “Whatever they are,” Juan said, “I want to know why Marceau thought they were important enough to use her dying breath to get them out. In the meantime, Max, I want you to take the Oregon up to Hamburg. My gut tells me that the Achilles is part of the plan—as is something in Germany, according to Marceau—and I want to be ready to intercept that yacht if we need to.”

  “And if we meet her again,” Max said, “how do we defeat them?”

  Juan paused as all eyes were on him. “I’m working on that.”

  “One more thing, Chairman,” Linda said. “We’re going to require a boat and scanning equipment in Lithuania. I’ll have to find a supplier. It may take a while to procure exactly what we need.”

  “We may be able to get NUMA’s help on that one,” Juan said as he gave a knowing look to Gretchen. “Kurt Austin and I owe each other a favor.”

  FORTY-SEVEN

  VILNIUS, LITHUANIA

  As their SUV crawled through the center of Lithuania’s largest city, Golov could barely contain his excitement at the possibility of seeing the fabled treasure Napoleon had spirited out of Moscow during his retreat. Normally, he wouldn’t come along on a shore mission like this, but he wanted to lay eyes on the Russian hoard before it was destroyed forever.

  Much of the seven-hundred-year-old city was a winding jumble of cobblestone streets flanked by
quaint row houses that were topped with red tiles, but the area where they drove teemed with modern skyscrapers and smooth asphalt roads. It was nearly the end of the workday, and traffic was at its worst. But even if they were late, Golov was quite sure that the person they were meeting would wait.

  He, Sirkal, O’Connor, and two of their former Special Forces mercenaries had arrived in Vilnius just a day after the assassination of Marie Marceau. The deception had been conceived by his daughter.

  They’d had the three missing pages from Napoleon’s Diary for over a month, thanks to Maxim Antonovich’s purchase from an underground rare-documents dealer, the same one who’d sold them Polichev’s mathematical formulas a year ago that had set the Dynamo plan in motion. They’d known about the treasure and Napoleon’s St. Helena kidnapping from Delacroix’s letter, but the location of the loot had been a mystery until the pages showed up. By then, the operation to steal the diary and column from the auction in Malta were well under way, so Golov, at the time, thought that finding the treasure himself just to get rid of it was superfluous and would expose them to unnecessary risk.

  He did, however, know where it was, courtesy of those three pages Napoleon had taken with him when he escaped exile. He pictured them in his mind, completely intact and pristine.

  The images Ivana had loaded onto Marceau’s phone had been digitally altered with the information they wanted the Oregon crew to have. Although most of the emails were, in fact, unaltered messages that Ivana and Marceau had actually exchanged, the message about the missing pages was a complete fabrication. The elaborate ruse to convince them that the data was real counted on them thinking the assassination attempt was intended for their captain, not Marceau. Of course, Sirkal had been instructed to make it look like he missed his target. Marceau, who knew how good a shot he was, wouldn’t have realized until it was too late that she had been used.

  The deception gave them time to get to Lithuania and carry out their mission to wipe out the treasure and the evidence of the formula that it held. As a side benefit, Golov got another chance to strike at the country that had ruined his career. Russia would never be reunited with the precious items that had been taken from it.

  The SUV arrived at the prearranged meeting place, a coffee shop two blocks away from the glass-clad offices of the local natural gas utility, Metanas Energija. Golov, Sirkal, and O’Connor entered the shop, while the two other men stayed with the vehicle.

  They all ordered drinks and sat down. Two minutes later, Robertas Kulpa entered, surveying the other customers before letting his eyes settle on Golov. He was a burly man in his forties with long sideburns and an aquiline nose that looked like it had been broken several times. He took a seat at their table without ordering.

  “This is not a good place for me to meet,” Kulpa said in a low voice. “People I know from Metanas may come in.”

  “That is your problem, not mine,” said Golov. “You’ve been paid well enough to take the risk. I assume you received the deposit?”

  He nodded as he kept an eye on the front door. “Thirty thousand euros, just as you promised. And the other half?”

  “On completion of our project.”

  Kulpa’s eyes glittered at the thought of the next payment. The avarice fairly radiated from Metanas’s most senior operations foreman, and Golov was sure they’d picked the right man. Ivana had identified Kulpa as the person at the company most likely to be compromised because of massive gambling debts he’d accrued.

  “We sent you a list of equipment that we’ll need,” Golov said. “Is it ready for tomorrow?”

  Kulpa nodded eagerly. “I’ve signed out a van and it’s loaded with all of the gear you asked for.”

  “And the location I specified?”

  “It shouldn’t be a problem—”

  “Shouldn’t be?” Golov interrupted.

  Kulpa corrected himself quickly. “I mean, it won’t be a problem to evacuate the building as you wanted. I have the authority to declare an emergency. Our company’s men will be told it’s a drill and instructed to stay away. We’ll even have police officers stationed outside to keep the building secure.”

  “Good.”

  “How long will you need?”

  “Three days. Perhaps five, if we are unlucky in our search.”

  Kulpa was shocked. “Five days?”

  “Is that a problem? If it is, then give us our money back and we’ll go.” He stood up as if he were about to leave.

  Kulpa’s hands went up in supplication. “No!” He looked around again after his outburst and lowered his voice again. “No, five days will be fine, if you need it.”

  “Good. We’ll meet you at seven tomorrow morning. I’d better be satisfied with your preparations.”

  Kulpa swallowed and nodded.

  Without another word, Golov strode out of the coffee shop, flanked by Sirkal and O’Connor. They had another supplier to see before they turned in for the night.

  As he got in the SUV, Golov imagined his American counterpart from the Oregon also beginning a search at the same time tomorrow. The news of the discovery and simultaneous loss of the cache hidden for two centuries would certainly make international headlines. He wished he could see the look on the Oregon captain’s face when he realized just how close he’d come to finding the treasure.

  —

  As Juan had expected, by the time he and his people had flown into Vilnius, NUMA had come through with a thirty-foot Sea Ray powerboat and scanning equipment borrowed from the Lithuanian Maritime Academy. The boat and gear were being trailered from the coastal city of Klaipėda and would arrive in Vilnius by dawn.

  With the equipment acquired, Linda, Gretchen, Trono, and MacD planned the Neris River search grid in Juan’s hotel room after dinner. Linda and Gretchen would operate the metal-sensor array while Juan drove the boat, and Trono and MacD would use their scuba equipment if the sensors picked up anything worthy of inspecting more closely in the river. They decided to start on the far side of Grigiškės and work their way back toward Vilnius.

  They wrapped up at ten o’clock. In the morning, they’d head out as soon as the boat arrived.

  Gretchen lagged behind as the others said their good-nights and went to their rooms.

  “I’ve been wondering about Marie Marceau,” she said.

  “About why she got involved with ShadowFoe?” Juan poured himself a scotch from the mini-bar. “Want one?”

  “Please. No, I was wondering why she said she was betrayed.”

  Juan emptied another small bottle and handed her the glass. He took a seat on the room’s sofa. “It does seem odd for her to make that switch so quickly. One minute she’s planted there as bait to get us sniped and, the next, she’s saying she was betrayed and giving us information about their plans.”

  Gretchen put two cubes of ice in her glass and sat down next to Juan. “If what she told us is useful information. Maybe it was all phony. Maybe it was her last act to protect ShadowFoe.”

  Juan shook his head. “I was looking into her eyes when she spoke. She really did think they double-crossed her.”

  “Or she knew she was dying and wanted to atone for her sins.”

  Juan shrugged. “Could be. Either way, it’s been good getting back into the spy game with you for a little while.”

  “Do you miss it?”

  “The CIA? No. The Oregon is where I belong.” He put his drink on the table and looked up to see Gretchen staring at him. He returned her gaze just as intensely. “But I’d forgotten what a good team we were.”

  “Yes, we were.” Her hand grazed his softly. “If the last week has proven anything, we still are.”

  When he’d worked with Gretchen before, Juan had resisted the attraction between them because of his marriage. But now there was no reason to hold back and he gave in to their mutual chemistry.

  As if pull
ed by a magnet, he leaned toward her. She came to him at the same time, and their lips met, tentatively at first, then building in intensity until they were locked in a passionate embrace.

  It was clear to both of them that Gretchen wouldn’t be leaving the room until morning.

  FORTY-EIGHT

  At eight a.m. the full-sized Metanas Energija van crossed the bridge over the Neris River, Robertas Kulpa in the driver’s seat and Sergey Golov sitting next to him. Sirkal, O’Connor, and the two other men—Jablonski and Monroe—were nearly finished changing into uniforms in the back. Thick clouds portended the heavy rain that was forecast for later in the day. Two more blocks and they reached their destination.

  “There it is,” Kulpa said, nodding at an imposing white neoclassical church.

  The Vilnius Cathedral, built over the remains of a pagan temple, was fronted by a row of six huge columns, an homage to ancient Greek architecture. The dominant feature of the vast plaza outside the church was a freestanding bell tower. It seemed to be leaning, like the famous tower in Pisa, but Golov couldn’t decide whether it was an optical illusion or not.

  “I’ve seen the church already,” he said. “We came here yesterday to take the tour.”

  Kulpa gaped at him. “Are you crazy? Then they will recognize you!”

  “Relax. The guide was the only one who saw us, and the tours don’t start until eleven. She won’t be here.”

  Kulpa shook his head but kept driving. He slowed to a stop in front of the entrance next to two white and green police cars.

  “I called ahead to get the evacuation started,” he said.

  The few tourists visiting the cathedral at this early hour were being ushered out of the building calmly but urgently. The cover story given to the church leaders was that a gas line running under the church had ruptured, detected by a drop in pressure at the central monitoring facility. Kulpa and his “workers” were there to determine if there really was a leak and where it was coming from inside the structure.