The Hunters h-1

by Chris Kuzneski

  ‘I told you, he was trying to attack me.’

  ‘Because you were stealing gold! And a body!’ Sarah laughed.

  ‘Tell me again,’ Jasmine teased, ‘why are you here?’

  ‘Do you really think after all we’ve been through that I was going to miss this? Besides, you need me. I can smell a hiding place for miles.’ She looked out the windshield. ‘At least it doesn’t snow much here.’

  ‘Not much,’ Jasmine agreed. ‘Not in the coastal regions.’

  In the rear driver’s side seat, Garcia fumbled with one of the numerous electronic gadgets he had crammed into the vehicle. Even with the limited space available, Garcia had still insisted on two tablet computers, two military-grade GPS units, and two satellite-linked communications systems. On the opposite side of the second row, McNutt inspected his personal items: an FN Herstal P90 submachine gun and a Kahr PM9 pistol. Both were considered ‘smaller’ firearms, but each packed more than enough firepower for McNutt’s satisfaction.

  Each man had his own understanding of redundancy.

  ‘Can you get a ballgame on that thing?’ McNutt asked. ‘Anything. I don’t care if it’s a bobsled race. I just can’t listen to them anymore.’

  Garcia chuckled as he shifted images around the screen of his iPad. ‘Sorry.’

  ‘Seriously, I think I liked it better when they didn’t like each other.’ McNutt closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. ‘At least I don’t think they liked each other. Who knows? I give up.’

  ‘Not exactly what one wants to hear from their fearless leader,’ Garcia said. ‘If Papineau knew you were in charge …’

  McNutt opened his eyes and looked across the vehicle. ‘Hey, I never asked Cobb to put me in charge of anything. If he thinks I should make the final call on things because of my military training, then that’s his problem. As far as I’m concerned, you guys can do whatever you want.’ He closed his eyes again and pulled his hat down low over his brow. ‘Just let me know when you need me to step in and settle things.’ With that, he raised the P90 that was strapped to his shoulder, signifying the method with which he would handle any arguments.

  Garcia just shook his head and laughed. ‘Speaking of Cobb, what could possibly take him away from all this?’

  ‘All this?’ McNutt asked. ‘You mean frostbite and constant bickering?’

  ‘I mean the possibility of frozen assets,’ Garcia replied, smiling at his pun.

  ‘Oh … all of that. Yeah, that’s the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question, isn’t it?’

  ‘I’d say it’s a little more than that.’

  Cobb had decided against joining the rest of the team who were en route to Alaska. The prospect of freezing temperatures didn’t bother him; rather, he sensed an opportunity to get some answers. As the others traveled east by rail, Cobb drove west in his rented car — he’d had more than enough of trains. He sped through Hungary and Slovenia, across the northern edge of Italy and a quick stretch of highway in France, finally arriving at his destination after nearly twenty straight hours behind the wheel.

  The Hotel Beau-Rivage.

  Geneva, Switzerland.

  Jasmine pointed out the windshield. ‘Right there!’

  They had locked their GPS onto one of Papineau’s satellites and punched in the coordinates that they had established from what Andrei had told Jasmine. They had learned that while Prince Felix’s Romanov military escort fled via Yalta, the officers loyal to the crown had gone in the opposite direction — settling in a place the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would never find them or what they carried.

  Now all four could see what little remained of the pole that marked the start of the last attempted excavation of the Bering Strait Tunnel between Russia and America. Sarah drove around it as Jasmine craned her neck over her shoulder to face the back seat.

  ‘Hector, you’re up,’ she said.

  The undercarriage of the Hilux had been fitted with ground-penetrating radar, and Garcia now studied the images it produced on his tablet. ‘The buried rail line will have some sort of unique metal signature,’ he said. ‘Something that should make it stand out against the rock and ice. All we have to do is follow it.’

  The women stared through the windshield, surveying the area for anyone or anything. There was coal, natural gas, tin, and tungsten being mined near the peninsula’s few cities, but here the sparsely pocketed indigenous people, the Chukchi, who were descended from Paleo-Siberians, survived by fishing, whale hunting, and even reindeer herding.

  Thankfully there was no sign of any of that. From what they could gather, the Chukchi and Siberian Yupiks considered this area ‘spoiled’ by the early twentieth-century incursion.

  Sarah turned her head and impatiently addressed Garcia. ‘Well, what do you see?’

  Garcia sighed in frustration. He pulled a cable from his backpack and plugged it into the side of his tablet. He tossed the other end of the cable over Jasmine’s shoulder.

  ‘Plug it in. See for yourselves,’ he said.

  Jasmine plugged her end of the cable into the auxiliary port on the vehicle’s in-dash display, which mirrored what Garcia saw on his screen. Sarah and Jasmine huddled closer to the monitor in the front seat while McNutt leaned toward Garcia to see for himself.

  As the image panned forward, a distinct, bright line appeared on the screen.

  ‘Is that a crack in the ice?’ Sarah asked.

  ‘Cracks are jagged,’ Garcia replied. ‘That’s straight. That’s-’

  ‘Bent track!’ Sarah screamed.

  With that, she opened the overhead moonroof to get a better look.

  Following Sarah’s lead, Jasmine also stood up in the cab.

  The view was magnificent: as if a furry, white rug stretched out to a sparkling green sea, with a ceiling of the bluest skies any of them had ever seen. It was cold. It was windy. But it was worth it.

  After only a minute, the biting weather forced them back inside. Their noses were red and their cheeks were chapped, but their smiles were warm and bright.

  Jasmine couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘Let’s go see what’s down there!’

  When Cobb’s team viewed the contents of the treasure train for the first time, Papineau had given Garcia not one, but two IP addresses that were to receive the feed of the broadcast.

  The first IP address — a unique, numerical identifier that allowed computers to find each other across the Internet — belonged to Papineau’s computer, which Garcia traced to Papi’s train outside of Vladivostok. But the second IP address led somewhere strange: to a computer at Quai du Mont-Blanc 13, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland.

  The site of the Beau-Rivage hotel.

  Garcia’s research had told them that the Beau-Rivage was one of the finest hotels in the world, a five-star, ninety-room, eighteen-suite enclave for those wishing to experience the height of luxury. It was also the international headquarters of Sotheby’s auction house. Cobb wondered if the person on the other end of the video feed had been making arrangements to sell the Romanov treasure to the highest bidder — either through a legitimate auction that would have given the Romanian government a chance to reclaim their treasure, or through off-the-books transactions that would see the treasure sold, piece by piece, to the world’s elite collectors.

  Either way, Cobb figured he had little time to waste.

  As he took his parking stub from the valet, Cobb felt confident he had come to the right place. He knew that whoever had financed their operation — and it wasn’t Papineau — had more than enough money to burn, and this place reeked of old-world opulence. The building appeared to be constructed of polished stone blocks, with twenty-foot-high, arched windows spaced evenly around the main floor. Everything about the building was warm and inviting. The dusky glow behind the hotel and the recessed lighting under the eaves of the roof gave the hotel an ethereal, heavenly look, which only added to the moment.

  Cobb had come for a name.

  He wouldn’t leave until he had one.
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  Sarah used the small plow extension of the Hilux to dig away the frosty surface and reveal a small, metal plate in the ground.

  ‘They used a dromos,’ Jasmine said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a marked entrance that leads to a passageway. The Egyptians used them to mark the entrances to their tombs.’ She beamed at Sarah. ‘In many countries they’re virtually invisible amid the hillsides-’

  ‘Jasmine,’ Sarah said, putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘Give it a rest for just a minute, okay? I need to focus.’

  ‘Sure,’ Jasmine said, wounded. ‘Focus.’

  Meanwhile, McNutt pulled a heavy chain from the storage in the bed of the truck. He anchored one end of the chain to the tow rings at the front of the Hilux while Sarah looped the hooked end of the chain behind the metal plate. When she was finished, she used a hand gesture to let McNutt know that things were secure on her end. McNutt nodded and slapped the hood of the truck. Garcia shifted the truck into reverse and floored the accelerator. The metal plate, locked in by decades of frost, held for a breathless moment, then gave in to progress.

  It popped off, revealing a small rectangular opening in the tundra.

  All four hurriedly grabbed their supplies from the truck and prepared to enter the unknown. Guided by flashlights and glow sticks, they squeezed through the gap they had created and entered a gently sloping hall. Pressing forward, they quickly discovered that the passage widened into a great cavern that sloped down and stopped just a hundred feet ahead.

  Against the north wall were three blue and gold Romanov train cars.

  The group ran toward them, barely able to contain their excitement. Jasmine jumped up into the first car as the rest of the group raced past her to investigate the others.

  ‘It’s a passenger car,’ Jasmine announced. ‘Nothing but seats.’

  ‘Same here!’ Sarah yelled.

  ‘Seats and crates,’ McNutt shouted. ‘Broken, empty crates.’

  ‘Garcia?’ Sarah screamed, hoping for good news.

  ‘Nothing but wood,’ he said as he glanced through several wooden crates that had been discarded near the train cars. ‘They’re empty.’

  ‘Shit!’ Sarah cursed as she kicked a seat. ‘Shit! Shit! SHIT!’

  After a few minutes of searching, the four explorers regrouped beside the train. They sat in the snow, deflated and depressed, trying to come to grips with the fruitless end of their adventure. The light from the glow sticks that had once seemed warm and welcoming now cast an eerie radiance on the train as it lay there, taunting them.

  Eventually, McNutt got fed up.

  ‘Fuck this,’ he growled.

  Before anyone could stop him, McNutt opened fire, unloading the entire fifty-round magazine of the submachine gun into the cabin of the nearest car.

  When the temporary fog caused by the hot muzzle flare finally melted away, they could see the aftermath of McNutt’s assault: numerous holes had been torn into the side of the car.

  Holes that revealed the faintest glint of metal.

  Jasmine hustled forward to inspect the damage McNutt had caused — and the metal he had revealed. To the best of her knowledge, seats from Prince Felix’s era were made of wood, covered in soft padding and leather to cushion the ride. But the gunfire had proven that these seats had been shaped from something shiny.

  Something that twinkled in the soft light of the cavern.

  ‘Guys, what would you do if you were a Russian soldier who wanted to keep his treasure safe until the revolution was suppressed?’ Jasmine didn’t wait for the others to answer. ‘You would hide it in plain sight!’

  Sarah stepped forward and brought out a switchblade. She quickly cut across the top of the seat nearest them. She pointed her flashlight down and gold reflected back.

  ‘Holy shit!’ she shrieked in sudden realization.

  Then she looked for someone to hug.

  She grabbed Jasmine excitedly. The two of them were quickly wrapped up by McNutt in a massive bear hug, a split second before Garcia joined the party. Then the four of them jumped up and down in unison, long before they had a chance to do the math.

  Each seat concealed a layer of gold bars — bars that they estimated weighed twenty pounds each. Each layer consisted of three rows of twelve across. That meant thirty-six bars in each seat, with ten seats in each row, and two rows in each of the three cars.

  Two thousand, one hundred, and sixty bars of solid, untraceable gold.

  Gold that had never been reclaimed because the revolution succeeded. Gold that simply sat there because the handful of men who had hidden it had died in the bloodbath that followed the tsar’s abdication.

  Jasmine turned to the group. ‘What now?’

  Three smiles beamed back at her.

  ‘The US is that way,’ McNutt said, ‘with a long, unguarded coastline. Chekov, plot us a course for home.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ Garcia replied.

  Sarah wrapped her arms around the men’s shoulders. ‘And it just so happens I know this whaler in Port Spencer who owes me a favor …’

  Cobb’s expectations deflated the moment he pushed through the double doors into the lobby. The place was literally in ruins. Scaffolding stood next to every wall, where hundreds of spackled holes dotted the paneling all the way to the ceiling. The marble floor was pockmarked with tiny cracks and fissures. A stretch of plywood, hastily covered with a roll of plush, maroon carpet, led guests to the inner halls, a branch spurring off toward the registration desk.

  Peering deeper inside, Cobb saw a large, marble fountain in the middle of a towering atrium. The water no longer flowed from the top spout, and Cobb could see where bullets had damaged the walls of the pool.

  Determined to hear the story behind whatever he had missed, he stopped the first member of the hotel staff that crossed his path.

  ‘Hey, what the hell happened here?’ Cobb asked.

  The preoccupied concierge did a double take before he could manage a response. ‘Oh, Mr Cobb,’ he finally offered. ‘Please, right this way. We’ve been expecting you.’ With that, he returned to the front desk, motioning for Cobb to follow.

  The young employee stood behind the desk, staring at his computer screen and clicking his mouse repeatedly. ‘I’m terribly sorry about the renovations,’ he said as he typed. ‘Things around here have been very interesting lately. Who knew an air conditioner explosion could cause so much damage? Thank God that no one was hurt.’

  That’s bullshit, Cobb thought. He had seen enough firefights to know the damage caused by bullets and flying shrapnel. There might have been an explosion, but it definitely wasn’t an air conditioner. More like an anti-personnel mine or a grenade.

  But it wasn’t the lie that bothered him.

  ‘Did you say you’ve been expecting me?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ the concierge replied. ‘We’ve got you … ah! Right here.’ The concierge looked up at Cobb and offered him an envelope. His name had been neatly printed on the front, and a copy of his driver’s license photo had been paper-clipped to the corner. ‘We’ve got you in the Imperial Suite. It has a great view of the lake. I hope that will be satisfactory.’

  ‘You’ve been expecting me?’ Cobb asked again. ‘For how long?’

  The concierge glanced back down to his monitor. ‘The reservation was made on …’ His face scrunched into a curious frown. ‘Well that’s odd. The date is missing, and so is the name of the patron who made the reservation. But your suite is definitely in the system.’ He looked up at Cobb. ‘Perhaps it’s explained in the letter?’ He nodded toward the envelope that Cobb still had not taken from the counter.

  Cobb picked up the envelope and stepped aside. He ripped it open as he tried to piece things together. Inside, he found a room key and a single, typewritten page.

  Mr Cobb,

  Welcome to Switzerland. Please stay as long as you’d like.

  Bill all of your local expenses to the hotel.

  All my best.
>
  PS — Try to enjoy yourself. You’ve earned it.

  Epilogue

  Same Day

  Palace of the Parliament

  Bucharest, Romania

  Maurice Copeland was led to a lavishly appointed sitting room buried deep in the bowels of the Romanian government’s central headquarters. One of more than 1,100 rooms spread over nearly eighty-five acres, the space included several suede couches and chairs, as well as heavy, polished oak tables. The marble-topped bar in the corner and the accompanying racks displayed only the finest wines and spirits. A magnificent crystal chandelier hung from the ceiling, and the walls were adorned with portraits of the Romanian ruling families — not only those that came after the country’s independence, but dating as far back as the fourteenth century.

  Copeland, a South African who had made his fortune in America, sensed that this was not a room frequented by outsiders. This was a place reserved for the back-room conversations of Romania’s highest authorities. A place where they could feel safe and converse in private about matters with which the general public would not — should not — concern itself. He smiled. Given his purpose in being there, it was the perfect setting.

  ‘Nicolai will be with you shortly,’ the aide related before closing the door behind him as he left the room.

  There was neither small talk nor an invitation for Copeland to make himself at home. This wasn’t a social call. It was business. Nevertheless, Copeland chose a sofa and sat down. He spread his arms wide and rested his hands on the farthest ends of the overstuffed cushions supporting his back. He knew he would not be alone for long.

  Impeccably dressed in a custom-made suit, Copeland thought of his subordinate, Jean-Marc Papineau. The Frenchman had once again proven his worth on this mission. After a decade of faithful service, Copeland had few doubts about Papineau’s abilities to handle the day-to-day details of a complex operation. It was this faith that allowed Copeland to avoid the spotlight until victory was at hand. Unlike most men of extraordinary wealth, Copeland preferred to work in the shadows, protected behind a curtain of anonymity like the great and powerful Oz.