The Malta Escape

by Chris Kuzneski

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Assuming it was safe to come out, Kaiser limped toward the quay. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! You laughed when you saw I brought one. Now you’re blaming me for not bringing more?”

  Jones laughed. “Didn’t you say it was the job of the supply sergeant to know the needs of his personnel before they did? Well, how hard is it to count to two?”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jarkko’s men had his boat ready to go. Payne hopped in first but let Jarkko get behind the wheel. It was his boat to captain, and he knew these waters better than anyone. Without delay, the boat rocketed forward despite being in a no-wake zone.

  “Kaiser,” Payne said over the roar of the engine. “He makes a good point. Aren’t you supposed to be a mathematical genius—someone who can juggle multiple numbers in your head at one time to calculate prices and shipping rates—yet you can’t even count to two?”

  Kaiser laughed over the comm. “I can definitely count to two, because I’m listening to two assholes right now.”

  Payne smiled. “One of whom saved your life. So watch your tone, mister!”

  “You’re right. My bad. I meant to call you a ‘heroic asshole’.”

  Payne nodded in appreciation. “That’s more like it!”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “So,” Jones said as he stared across the water, “are you planning to join us for the hunt, or are you going to stay hidden in your cave like a scared troll?”

  Kaiser finally reached the gate. “Turn around and see for yourself.”

  Jones looked back and smiled. “Glad you could make it. Just waiting on Uber.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jarkko grinned as his boat raced past the isthmus. “Two minutes out.”

  Payne glanced into the cove and realized it was littered with bodies. “Hey Kaiser, we need to start clean up before it gets too dark. Have your men tend to their mess, and send someone down to the submarine. I don’t have time to tend to mine.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Unfortunately for Volkov, he didn’t have a chopper waiting on Vallisaari.

  In fact, he didn’t have an escape plan at all.

  He had been so confident in his men and his drones that he hadn’t bothered to prepare for failure. Of course, that was a common flaw in the egotistical. They were so used to having things go their way that they were unable to handle defeat. And since Volkov had built his empire on fear, he had no one to bail him out when he needed it the most.

  No friends. No family. No one.

  All he had was himself.

  And that wasn’t good enough.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jarkko picked up Jones and Kaiser at the quay in front of the King’s Gate before they raced across the channel toward Vallisaari. Although Payne was riding shotgun, his weapon of choice was an assault rifle. He held it against his chest as they charged forward.

  Despite the late hour, the sun was still setting in the western sky, giving them all the light they needed to follow Volkov’s wake. With no other boat traffic around, they didn’t need any drones or fancy gadgets to track the Russian. The trail of churned water was as visible as bloody footprints in a fresh patch of snow.

  “There he is,” Jarkko announced to the others.

  But his words weren’t necessary.

  Their weapons were already raised.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Ivan Volkov had always lived for the hunt. To him, there was nothing more satisfying than seeing the pure, animalistic fear of his prey when he finally closed in for the kill.

  The way their lips quivered.

  The way their legs trembled.

  The way their eyes begged for mercy.

  That had brought him more joy than anything else in the world.

  But now the roles were reversed.

  Now he was the hunted. The man who was running.

  And he refused to be the source of someone else’s happiness.

  When he heard the roar of the engine, Volkov glanced over his shoulder and knew his time on earth was nearly done. With the Finn at the helm and the Americans on board, he realized there was no escape from their wrath. He could have turned and fired on them in order to buy a few seconds more, but he didn’t want to give them the satisfaction of the kill.

  So he did what he had always planned to do when the enemy was at his door.

  He put his gun to his head, smiled defiantly, and pulled the trigger.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jarkko stopped his boat next to the dinghy for final confirmation.

  Ivan Volkov was definitely dead.

  A piece of his skull was missing, and so was a chunk of his brain.

  Blood pooled in the bottom of the boat around his limp corpse.

  Payne and Jones watched as Kaiser snapped a few pictures of the body to preserve the moment, but he did so without glee. Not because he didn’t get a chance to kill Volkov himself, but because he knew someday he might be the one leaking brains.

  Until then, he would make the most of his time on earth.

  Doing the things he loved while surrounded by friends.

  After all, that’s what life was for.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-THREE

  Sunday, June 17

  Küsendorf, Switzerland

  Marissa and Ulster had tried to distract themselves with work upon their arrival at the Ulster Archives on Saturday, but they had been far too worried about their friends’ safety to accomplish much of anything in the way of research.

  Having agreed to keep the discovery of the tunnel system in Malta from the rest of Ulster’s staff, Marissa had spent most of the day uploading their pictures and videos to Ulster’s office computer, while checking her phone every five minutes for an update from Payne.

  Still, that was much more than Ulster had accomplished.

  In times of crisis, he often found himself in the kitchen. First he would glance through his shelves of cookbooks until he had spotted a tasty treat that he was capable of creating, and then he would make a mess while trying to bake something that resembled the picture next to the recipe. In the end, his personal chef would always help him salvage the final product before Ulster carried the treats from room to room like a proud father showing off his newborn.

  Except in this case, Ulster urged people to eat his creation.

  Thankfully, the call they had been waiting for had come just before midnight, and Payne had told them that everything had gone as planned. Although he didn’t provide many specifics, he had assured them that he, Jones, and Jarkko were unharmed and Volkov would be out of their lives forever. That had set off a lively celebration between Marissa and Ulster, which had resulted in the opening of a bottle of vintage champagne and the devouring of Ulster’s remaining cream-cheese brownies.

  Despite their late-night merriment, they had agreed to meet for an early breakfast, followed by a long day of research in the archives. Both of them followed through with their promise, and they were well fed and ready to work before nine.

  Unable to talk about the tunnels during their meal, they waited until they were in the privacy of the conference room in the lower level of the Archives to discuss their plan of attack.

  “Where are you going to start?” Marissa asked as she logged into Ulster’s private network with one of the laptop computers that he kept in the room. It would allow her to access all of the pictures and videos that she had uploaded to his office system.

  Ulster answered her question with one of his own. “It’s not where I’m going to start—it’s when. Ever since we came across that wall at the bottom of the ramp in Cassar’s tunnel system, I have been thinking about the date on the cornerstone: June 1798. As you are well aware, that date is quite significant in the history of Malta because it marks the arrival of Napoleon in Valletta. But what else does that date represent?”

  Marissa glanced at him across the wooden table. “The date that Hompesch left Malta.”

  “Exactly,” he said with a grin. “And if our theory is correct—that Hom
pesch loaded up the Maltese treasure before Napoleon arrived—then it stands to reason that he would check on its status after he departed Valletta. So my goal is to track Hompesch’s movement after he left the island and before he landed in Trieste, Italy.”

  “And how are you going to do that?”

  Ulster sighed. “I have no bloody idea.”

  Marissa laughed. “Well, I’m here if you need me.”

  He leaned back in his chair. “And what about you, my dear? What thread of history will you be tugging on today in order to unravel this mystery that we face?”

  She motioned toward the door. “Although I treasure—pardon the pun—the vast amount of resources that are at my disposal in the archives, my initial focus will be on the images that we captured in the tunnel itself. Two things dawned on me late last night while I was struggling to fall asleep. One, I should never eat multiple cream-cheese brownies after midnight, no matter how tasty they are. And two, unless I’m mistaken, we overlooked one major thing while stumbling around in the dark of the tunnel system. Care to guess what it was?”

  Ulster rubbed his hands together with anticipation. “A mystery inside our mystery. How absolutely delicious! I will most definitely hazard a guess!”

  Marissa smiled at her mentor. “Somehow I knew that you would.”

  “Truth be told,” he said with a twinkle in his eye, “there is so much to unpack in your brief-yet-brilliant monologue, I’m not even sure where to begin. Actually, I take that back. I know exactly where to start. Never—and I do mean never—apologize to me for a good pun. You know how much I enjoy wordplay!”

  She laughed. “Point taken.”

  “Secondly, thank you for such kind words about my brownies. I slaved all day making those magical morsels, so I am glad you appreciated them on the way down. Like you, I started to regret my lack of restraint at some point during the night when those chocolate demons congealed together in my colon like the stone and mortar that sealed the tunnel near Marsamxett Harbour, and yet I get the sense that I will make that same mistake again in the near future. Perhaps not with a viscous substance like cream cheese, but certainly with another culinary delight that I whip up in a time of distress.”

  “Some people drink. You like to bake. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

  “Actually,” he said as he patted his stomach, “I like to do both, and I think that will eventually lead to my downfall. Or, at the very least, a larger belt.”

  She smiled at him. “Don’t ask me why, but I get the sense that you’re stalling.”

  Confusion filled his face. “Stalling?”

  “You know, my mystery inside a mystery?”

  “Good heavens! It seems I’ve done it again! I don’t know what is wrong with me lately, but as soon as I start talking about desserts, my mind tends to wonder. Speaking of which, did you know that the word ‘dessert’ comes from the French word desservir, meaning ‘to clear the table’. I don’t know about you, but when dessert is on the way, I certainly push things aside in order to make room for it!”

  “Petr,” she said with a laugh. “You’re doing it—”

  Ulster cut her off. “I swear, my dear, that one was intentional. I figured my use of a French term would actually serve as a backdoor to your original puzzle, since Hompesch was hiding the Maltese treasure from the French. Anyway, while replaying your words in my mind—which I was able to do while droning on about desserts—I realized that you pointed toward the door at the start of your monologue. Whether your signal was intentional or not, I do believe that is the one major thing we overlooked while examining the tunnel system. It was lacking a door.”

  Marissa grinned in amazement. She had no idea how Ulster had picked up on the scent so quickly or how he had managed to use a mid-sixteenth century French word to get there, but somehow, in a matter of seconds, he had figured out the issue that had kept her awake.

  “Exactly,” she said as she carried the laptop to his side of the table. “We were so focused on the limestone tunnels and the two stone walls that we failed to look for a way in. If we assume the dates on the two cornerstones are correct, the southern wall was built in January 1798 in order to close the tunnel system off from the other auberges. That would allow Hompesch and the German knights to work in private. And the northern wall was built near the harbor in June 1798 to seal off the tunnel system for good. But if that is true, how did the knights access the tunnel in the five months in between? I didn’t see any sealed passageways in the ceiling of the tunnel, and I find it hard to believe that the knights walked up that long spiraling ramp each and every time they wanted to do their mystery work in the tunnel. That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  Ulster rubbed his chin in thought. “Unless…”

  “Unless what?” she demanded.

  He continued to think. “What if the wall was actually a wall?”

  She stared at her mentor and sighed. “Petr, I think it’s time to set some ground rules here. Desserts are one thing—at least I enjoy those—but if you drift off on a philosophical tangent and start to talk about Kierkegaard’s theories on existence, I swear to Jarkko, I’m going to work in another room. It is far too early in the morning to deal with theoretical rhetoric.”

  Ulster laughed. “No, my dear, you completely misunderstood my question! I meant it quite literally! What if the wall wasn’t a barricade of some kind? What if it was the side of a room?”

  She blinked a few times. “A room?”

  “Yes!” he blurted much louder than he had intended. “When we came across the southern wall, we naturally assumed it had been built to seal off the tunnel from the rest of the system in order to give the German knights privacy. But what if that theory is partially incorrect? What if our wall—the one built in January of 1798—was the second wall that Hompesch had built in the tunnel system? What if the wall he had built to give them privacy was actually farther south into the system? That would mean the space in between the wall we inspected and the one even farther into the system would be…”

  “A room!” she exclaimed.

  Ulster grinned, glad that she had eventually caught on. Normally he liked for his students to figure things out on their own, but in major moments like these, it was tough for him to stifle his personal enthusiasm. “Think about it, my dear. If Hompesch secretly moved the Maltese treasure through the tunnel system after his predecessor’s death like we assume he did, he would have needed some place to store it.”

  She nodded with excitement. “And why waste the time and energy to carve a vault out of the limestone underneath their auberge when all they needed to do was build a wall to cut themselves off from the rest of the tunnels? That would have given them all the privacy and protection they needed—especially if Hompesch used his men to guard the harbor door.”

  “Exactly!” he said as he sorted through the possibilities in his mind. “Obviously the original barrier would be a solid wall to protect the treasure, but it stands to reason the wall that we inspected would most likely have a way in. After all, someone would be coming to move the treasure eventually. Only we didn’t know to look for a point of entry.”

  “Wait!” she said as she pointed at the computer. “You don’t think…”

  “Actually, my dear, I do think.”

  “Wait, wait, wait!” she said on the verge of freaking out. “You actually think there’s a chance that the treasure is still sitting in our tunnel on the other side of that wall.”

  Ulster leaned back and smiled. “Who cares what I think? Based on the excitement in your voice, I’d much rather hear what you think.”

  “Okay!” she said as she leapt from her chair and started to pace the room as she tried to connect the dots in her head. If this had been a week earlier, she would have been unwilling to put her name on a theory that involved so much speculation, but ever since they had discovered a secret tunnel system underneath the streets that she had walked on many times before, she had started to view history in a whole new w
ay.

  Suddenly it was a living, breathing thing that could morph in the blink of an eye.

  And she was at the forefront of change.

  “Pictures!” she blurted as she rushed back to the table to search through the files she had uploaded the day before. “If our wall is the northern edge of a room—one that would eventually be opened by Hompesch or his men when it was time to ship the treasure from Malta—then you’re right: there’s no way that the wall is solid. Maybe some of it was solid for structural integrity, but it stands to reason that the very center of the wall would be made of a different substance. Perhaps a different kind of brick, or even a different type of mortar.”

  Ulster pointed at the screen. “I know I took several photos of the wall with my phone. Did you get them onto my computer?”

  She nodded as she continued to scroll. “That’s what I’m looking for now. I know they’re in here somewhere, but there were so many files that it will—”

  “There!” Ulster shouted. “That one! Go back to that one!”

  She stopped and scrolled back to reveal a photo of the upper wall. She had taken it herself after she had finished filming the entire vault with the video camera.

  “Can you enlarge it?” he demanded.

  She clicked a few buttons and started to zoom in. “Which part do you want to—”

  “To the left and down. A little more. There! Do you see it?”

  The center section of the upper wall filled the entire screen. The image was zoomed in far enough that she could see individual stones and the substance in between. Having just mentioned mortar a moment earlier, her gaze was naturally drawn to it. She leaned in close, looking for anything that looked suspicious in the ancient cement.