Spartan Gold

by Clive Cussler

  Back at their hotel in Yevpatoria, fifty miles up the coast from Sevastopol, they laid the contents of the satchel out on the bed and went to work, with Selma watching on via webcam. After an hour of cross-checking what they already knew about Bondaruk’s estate, they were sure Bohuslav’s material was the real deal. Every entrance, every stairwell, and every room in the mansion was accounted for, but more importantly so, too, were the rumors about Bogdan Abdank’s smuggling tunnels. Khotyn was riddled with miles of them, starting in the cliff face below the mansion, where cargo was unloaded, and branching into myriad storage chambers and exits, some of which emerged from the earth almost a mile beyond the estate’s grounds.

  More surprising was the discovery that the Zaporozhian Cossack had not been the only one to take advantage of the tunnels. Every subsequent occupant, from the Crimean War’s Admiral Nakhimov to the Nazis to the Soviet Red Army, had used them for a variety of purposes: ammunition depots, fallout shelters, private brothels, and in some cases as vaults for their own spoils of war.

  However, the one piece of information they most needed was missing from Bohuslav’s information—where precisely Bondaruk might be keeping his bottle from Napoleon’s Lost Cellar.

  “Of course, there’s another possibility,” Remi said. “Perhaps he’s got it locked away somewhere else.”

  “I doubt it,” Sam replied. “Everything about Bondaruk’s personality suggests he’s a control freak. He didn’t get to where he is by leaving the important stuff to chance. Something he’s this obsessed about he’d want to have close at hand.”

  “Good point.”

  “Assuming that’s right,” Selma said over the webcam, “there might be some clues in the blueprints. If he’s a serious collector—and we know he is—then he’s going to keep his most prized pieces in an environmentally controlled area—that means separate air-conditioning units, humidity-control systems, backup power generators, fire suppression. . . . And he’ll probably have it separated from the rest of the mansion. Check Bohuslav’s notes for any mention of those things.”

  It took an hour of work, picking their way through Bohuslav’s chicken-scratched notes, which were written in both English and Russian, but finally Remi found a room in the mansion’s western wing that was labeled SECURE UTILITY ROOM.

  “The location fits,” Selma said.

  “Here’s something else,” Sam said, reading from another note: “ ‘Denied access western side.’ Add that to the secure utility room and we may have found our X.”

  Ironically, the mansion itself was laid out in the shape of a peace symbol, with the main portion of the house in the center, two wings radiating out to the southeast and to the northeast, and a third wing to the west, and all encircled by the low stone wall.

  “The problem is,” Remi said, “the plans show the smuggler’s tunnels merge with the mansion in two places—at the stables a couple hundred yards north of the house and in the southeast wing.”

  Sam replied, “So we either have to hoof it—no pun intended—across the open ground to the west wing and hope we find a way in, or come up on the southeast wing and pick our way through the house and pray we’re able to dodge the guards.”

  Surprising neither of them, Selma had found them a reliable equipment source in Yevpatoria, an old Soviet Red Army surplus store run by a former soldier turned body-shop mechanic. Their outfits for the evening were a pair of Cold War-era naval commando camouflage coveralls; their transport a five-foot rubber dinghy complete with a battery-powered electric trolling motor.

  Suited up, their faces streaked with black face paint, they inflated the raft, affixed the motor to the transom, then lowered the raft over the side of the fishing boat, donned their backpacks, and climbed in. Remi pushed the trawler’s gunwale and within seconds it disappeared in the fog. Sam turned the motor’s ignition and it hummed to life. Sitting on the bow, Remi aimed her compass at the lighthouse, then lifted her hand and pointed into the fog.

  “Damn the torpedoes,” Sam said, and throttled up.

  The trolling motor was quiet, but slow, pushing them along at three knots, barely a walking pace, so it was an hour before Remi, who had kept a steady fix on the lighthouse’s pulsing beacon, raised her hand, calling a halt. Sam throttled down.

  All was quiet save the waves lapping at the raft’s sides. Fog swirled around them, obscuring all but a few feet of black water around them. Sam was about to speak when he heard it: in the distance, the muffled crash of waves. Remi looked at him, nodded, and pointed again.

  Ahead lay their first hurdle. Given the nature of the Black Sea’s currents they’d decided to approach from the south; while they wouldn’t be fighting the tide, they would have to pick their way through the spires of rock that jutted from the bay beneath Bondaruk’s estate, a dicey proposition in the dead of night, let alone in the fog. Worse still, assuming Bondaruk had guards posted on the cliffs, they’d decided against flashlights. On their side they had Remi’s keen hearing and Sam’s quick reflexes.

  Moving at half throttle he aimed the raft’s nose in the direction Remi had indicated for thirty seconds then throttled down. They listened. To their left and right, distantly, came the hiss of waves. Eyes closed, Remi turned her head this way and that, then pointed a few degrees left off the bow. Sam throttled up and kept going.

  After twenty seconds, Remi’s hand shot up. Sam let up on the throttle, keeping on just enough power to hold position. In the sudden quiet they heard the crash of waves, very close, to the right. Then more on the left. And behind. They were surrounded.

  Suddenly dead on the bow, a towering rock wall veined with rivulets of whitewater appeared in the fog. The waves, stacking atop one another in the shoals beneath them, lifted the raft and shoved them forward.

  “Sam!” Remi rasped quietly.

  “Hold on! Drop flat!”

  The spire loomed before the bow. Sam waited until the raft dropped into a trough, then twisted the throttle to its stops and pushed it hard right. The propeller bit down, shooting them toward the spire before veering away. The rock swept past on the left and disappeared in the gloom. Sam drove on for a ten count, then throttled down again. They listened.

  “Closer on the right, I think,” Remi whispered.

  “Sounds closer on the left to me,” Sam replied.

  “Toss a coin?”

  “No chance. Your ears are better than mine,” he said, and steered left.

  “Stop,” Remi called ten seconds later. “Do you feel that?”

  “Yeah,” he replied, looking around.

  The raft was moving sideways, and gaining speed. They felt their stomachs rise into their throats as the raft was lifted on another crest. Ten feet to the right they caught a glimpse of jagged rock and then it was gone, lost in the fog.

  “Paddles,” Sam called, and grabbed his from the floor of the raft. In the bow, Remi did the same. “Sharp eyes . . . ” Sam muttered.

  “Behind you!” Remi called.

  Sam turned, paddle coming up in his hands like a spear.

  The spire was right there, within arm’s reach.

  He slammed the tip of the paddle into the rocks, then leaned all his weight into it and pushed, but the wave was too powerful and the raft simply rotated around the pivot point the paddle created.

  “Coming around,” he called between clenched teeth.

  “Got it!”

  Remi was already moving, turning on her knees to face the other side, her paddle raised and ready. With a splintering thunk she slammed it into the rocks. The raft, its momentum slightly slowed, bounced off the rock and spun again.

  Sam leaned back, dropping his center of gravity back into the raft, and reached for the throttle. His hand was halfway there when he felt his stomach rising again and heard the suddenly unmuffled whirring of the motor as the raft’s tail end came out of the water.

  He had only a fraction of a second to call “Remi” before he felt himself tossed into the air. Knowing the rock was close, but not
how close, he turned his head, looking for it. Then out of the fog he saw it rushing toward his face.

  CHAPTER 36

  Seconds or minutes or hours later Sam felt his mind groping back toward consciousness. One by one his senses started to return, beginning with a feathery sensation on his cheek, followed by the distinct and familiar smell of green apples.

  Hair, he thought, hair brushing my face. Coconut and almonds.

  Remi’s shampoo.

  He forced open his eyes and found himself staring into her upside-down face. He looked around. He was lying in the bottom of the raft, his head resting on her lap.

  He cleared his throat. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Am I okay?” Remi whispered. “I’m fine, you dummy. You’re the one that almost drowned.”

  “What happened?”

  “You slammed headfirst into the spire, that’s what happened. I looked over just as you started to slip into the water. I threw you the line. You hadn’t blacked out yet. I shouted at you to grab the line and you did. I reeled you in.”

  “How long have I been out?”

  “Twenty, twenty-five minutes.”

  He squeezed his eyes shut. “My head hurts.”

  “You’ve got a gash in your hairline; it’s pretty long, but not very deep.”

  Sam reached and probed with his fingertips, finding a stretchable bandage wrapped around the upper part of his forehead.

  “How’s your vision?” Remi asked.

  “Everything’s dark.”

  “That’s a good sign; it’s night. Okay, how many fingers am I holding up?”

  Sam groaned. “Come on, Remi, I’m fine—”

  “Humor me.”

  “Sixteen.”

  “Sam.”

  “Four fingers. My name is Sam and you’re Remi and we’re floating in a raft in the Black Sea trying to steal a bottle of wine from Napoleon’s Lost Cellar from a mafia kingpin. Satisfied?”

  She gave him a quick peck on the lips. “You’re right on all counts except the raft part.”

  “What?”

  “After I pulled you in, I beached us. I’m not sure where we are.”

  “You navigated through the rest of the spires? Heck, you should have been driving the whole time.”

  “Dumb luck and desperation.”

  “Sounds like a good name for a boat. How is it, by the way? The raft, I mean.”

  “No leaks that I could find. We’re still seaworthy.”

  “What time is it?”

  “Just after midnight. Feel up to having a look around?”

  More remarkable even than Remi having picked her way through the spires without suffering so much as a scratch was that she’d found the patch of shale beach on which the raft now rested. Measuring no more than ten feet deep and twenty feet wide, the beach narrowed in both directions to stone paths no more than two feet wide.

  Once Sam was on his feet and had shaken out the cobwebs, they first set out to the south, but found the way blocked by a rock wall after only a few hundred yards. To the north they fared better, walking almost a half mile before coming across a rickety wooden stairway set into the cliff. They climbed to the top and looked around.

  Here, high above the ocean’s surface, the brisk wind had driven the fog away, but far below, the ocean was still shrouded in mist. Using the compass, they got their bearings. Sam said, “Well, you either headed farther south of the estate or past it to the north. How long was it until you found the beach?”

  “Twenty minutes. But I made several loops, I’m sure, so don’t count on that.”

  “How was the current?”

  “For the most part, choppy and almost dead on the bow.”

  “Probably headed south, then.” Sam lifted the binoculars and started scanning. “Do you see the light—”

  “In fact, I do. There it is,” she replied and pointed. Sam looked down her outstretched arm. “Wait for it,” Remi whispered.

  A few seconds passed, then in the darkness a single white light pulsed.

  “No more than two miles away,” Sam said. “We’re still in business.”

  Ten minutes later they were back in the water and motoring north, taking care this time to keep within hearing distance of the waves hissing against the cliff face. It was slack tide now and the swells were slow and rolling, but still Sam and Remi were keenly aware that somewhere to their left were the spires. Ebb tide or not, neither of them wanted to risk another run through the labyrinth.

  After thirty minutes of travel, Sam throttled down and let the raft coast forward. Remi looked over her shoulder, a questioning look on her face. Sam held a cupped hand to his ear and pointed off the bow and whispered, “Boat.”

  The rumble of a high-powered engine at near idle echoed through the fog, seemingly crossing from left to right somewhere ahead of them. There came the squelch of a radio, then a tinny voice saying something neither Sam nor Remi could make out.

  Ten seconds passed.

  To their right, a spotlight glowed to life in the haze and began tracking over the water nearer the beach. After thirty seconds the light popped off and the boat began moving off, heading back the way Sam and Remi had come.

  “Bondaruk’s guards?” Remi whispered.

  “Or a Ukrainian navy coastal patrol,” Sam replied. “Either way, they’re someone we don’t want to run into. If it is part of Bondaruk’s security, we can take it as a good omen.”

  “How’s that?”

  “If we’d been spotted, they would have sent more than one boat.”

  For the next hour they continued moving north along the coast while playing cat-and-mouse with the mystery patrol boat, which continued to move unseen through the fog around them, engines gurgling and spotlight occasionally glowing to life, scanning over the water, then disappearing again. Three times Sam had to use the trolling motor to circle slowly away from the panning light.

  “It’s on a schedule,” Remi said. “I’ve been timing it.”

  “That will come in handy,” Sam replied. “Do your best to keep track of it.”

  “It has to be Bondaruk’s. If it were the navy, why would they be patrolling this same patch of water?”

  “Good point.”

  After a few more minutes the boat’s engine noise once again faded and Sam put the raft back on course and before long they saw the glow of lights to their right, high up on the cliff. Remi took a bearing on the lighthouse and said, “That’s it. That’s Khotyn.”

  With Remi perched in the bow, eyes scanning ahead, Sam steered toward shore. Remi’s hand came up, pointing left. Sam veered that way and saw to their right the cliff face materialize out of the fog. He turned parallel to it and kept going.

  The hum of the trolling motor changed its tone, echoing off stone walls as they slipped inside the bridge beneath the estate. From the drawings and blueprints of the island, they knew it was a cavernous open-ended tunnel, measuring eighty feet high and two hundred yards wide and running parallel to the shore for a hundred yards. Large enough to accommodate a medium-sized cruise ship.

  “We have to risk a light,” Sam whispered.

  Remi nodded and pulled from her pocket a cone-nosed flashlight, which she clicked on and began playing over the passing rock.

  “Now we see if Bohuslav is the real deal or a con man,” Remi said. The words had no sooner left her mouth when she murmured, “Well, speak of the devil. Call me a believer. There, Sam, right under my beam. Back up, back up.”

  Sam eased up on the throttle, then reversed, inching backward until they drew even with the spot from Remi’s flashlight.

  Jutting from the rock face at chin height was what looked like a rusted railroad spike; a foot above it was another, then another. . . . Sam leaned his head back as Remi scanned the flashlight upward, revealing a ladder of staggered spikes.

  CHAPTER 37

  If they stick to their schedule they’re already headed back this way,” Remi said. “Four or five minutes away at most.”

/>   The presence of the patrol boat had dramatically changed the linchpin to their exit strategy: the raft. If they left it here it would almost certainly be found and the alarm would be raised, and there was no time to find a place to stash it, which left only one option.

  They donned their backpacks and then Sam found a pair of handholds in the rock face and held the raft steady as Remi used his shoulders as a step stool to the first spike. Once she had ascended high enough to make room for him, he flipped open his Swiss Army knife and slit the raft’s side tube from bow to stern, then gripped the spike and pulled himself onto the face as the raft sank below him with a soft hissing sound.

  “Time?” Sam asked.

  “Three minutes, give or take,” Remi replied, and started climbing.

  They were halfway to the top when Sam heard the rumble of the outboard engines to their right. As had the raft’s trolling motor, the tone of the patrol boat’s engines suddenly changed, echoing through the arch.

  “Remi, company’s arrived,” Sam muttered.

  “I’ve got a tunnel opening here,” she replied. “It goes horizontally into the face, but I can’t see how far—”

  “Any port in the storm. Just go.”

  “Right.”

  The gurgle of the boat’s engine was directly below them now, skimming along the face. Sam looked down. While the boat itself was invisible in the fog, he could see the mist cleaving before it like smoke around an object in a wind tunnel. The spotlight popped and began playing over the cliff, zigzagging upward.

  “I’m in,” Remi whispered from above.

  Eyes alternating between the spikes above him and the rapidly ascending pool of light below him, Sam climbed the last few feet then suddenly felt Remi’s hand on his own. He coiled his legs beneath him and pushed off while simultaneously pulling with his arms. He rolled into the tunnel and jerked his legs inside as the spotlight hovered over the opening for a moment then continued on.

  They lay huddled together in the darkness, Sam trying to calm his breath as they listened to the boat make its way through the arch and the engine noise finally faded.