Kotler smiled, shaking his head. "The waterway. That's the gateway. This wagon train represents a group of settlers racing to stake a claim on unassigned lands, during the land run of 1889. In a sense, the waterway here represents a gateway to a new world. These men and women are on their way to a new home."
“That’s poetic,” Denzel said, “but how does it help us? Is the key in the water, then?”
Kotler shook his head. “I doubt it. Whoever left that message wouldn’t want to call attention to themselves, if they ever had to retrieve the key. It’s more likely they would have left whatever it is with the statues. Hidden in plain sight, but accessible.”
Denzel eyed the statues. “We’re going to call attention to ourselves if we have to search all of these.”
Kotler walked to the statutes, stopping in front of the depiction of a horse and its rider, thrown to the ground as apparently the horse tripped over a large chest that must have fallen from one of the wagons. "Seems too obvious," Kotler said, eyeing the chest, but he bent over it anyway, looking for any clues. He found nothing.
He looked around again. “The Gateway holds the key,” he quoted. “If the water is the gateway, then maybe the key is hidden closer to its edge.”
“What about the statutes on the other side?” Denzel asked.
Kotler shook his head. “Maybe, but I doubt it. When we think of gateways, we’re typically thinking of entrances, not exits.”
“Play to the psychology,” Denzel nodded.
Kotler moved closer to the water's edge. Here, the vignette depicted a man on horseback galloping quickly toward the water just as the horse was starting to pull back and resist. Another man, seated on a wagon bearing a tarp-covered cargo, is bracing as his two horses rear up, on the verge of plunging into the waters ahead.
Kotler and Denzel started inspecting theses statues closely.
Up close, the statues were immense. Each human figure was roughly twice the size of Kotler and Denzel. Everything was scaled up in this way, making it impossible to inspect the entire statue without climbing atop it.
“Again,” Kotler said, “they’d want to avoid calling attention to themselves.”
“So, they wouldn’t have hidden it up top,” Denzel said.
They moved around the statue, running their hands over it, peering closely at every detail. Denzel even crawled under the wagon, using the flashlight from his phone to illuminate the undercarriage.
They continued this for almost an hour, finding nothing.
Kotler was about to call it, to say that perhaps they’d hit a dead end, when he noticed something on one of the raised hooves of the wagon team horses. “They’re shoed,” Kotler said. He looked up to Denzel. “There’s an old custom of putting horseshoes over doorways.”
“For luck,” Denzel nodded. “My PaPa used to have one over his door.”
Kotler nodded and bent to inspect the horseshoes.
He smiled.
He reached into his coat and pulled out his phone, then hung the coat over one of the horse's knees. He used his phone's camera to take a photo of the horse's hoof, then stood to show Denzel, zooming in on the image.
Etched into the hoof in tiny, nearly microscopic letters, was another set of coordinates.
Denzel pulled out his own phone and entered these into the map app. "Antarctica," he said, looking at Kotler.
“I think we found it,” Kotler replied, smiling.
"Good," a woman's voice said from behind Denzel.
Kotler and Denzel turned to see a woman they didn't recognize. She and two other people, another woman and a younger looking man, each had small handguns trained on them, hidden from view by their clothing and handbags. "We'll take your phone, Dr. Kotler," the first woman said.
"
I am a Federal Agent," Denzel said. "I'm going to reach into my pocket and take out my badge …"
“No need, Agent Denzel,” the woman said. “We know who you are. Gail McCarthy says hello.”
Kotler blinked. “Gail …”
“Your phone,” the second woman said, stepping forward. “Now.”
Kotler hesitated, then slowly started to hand over his phone.
As the woman reached out to take it, Kotler suddenly whipped his coat from over the horse's leg and flung it into the woman's face. He leaped forward, firmly grasping her wrist and turning so that her gun hand was aimed out over the water. He used his other elbow and slammed her hard in the sternum.
“Oof!" she cried, dropping the handgun but not before a shot fired into the canal.
The other two were already on the move, but Denzel had drawn his own weapon during the commotion, and the two leaped to take cover behind the statues. They started firing from behind the bronze wagon.
Kotler twisted again, bringing the woman closer to him and using his body weight to put her on the ground.
Or, that was the plan.
With surprising strength and speed, the woman twisted in his grip, took hold of his own arm, and in seconds had him pinned against one of the bronze horses. He had very little leverage and was struggling even to breathe as she pressed her forearm against his larynx.
He had underestimated her and lost the advantage of his surprise attack.
From where he stood, with his head angled toward the waterway, he could see the woman’s gun on the ground. If he could somehow get to it …
There were screams from the families who had been enjoying the park, and more gunshots rang out. Kotler couldn't see Denzel and had no idea where his partner could be or if he was in danger.
He had to do something.
The woman had him well pinned, but it was clear she was trying to figure out what to do next. Kotler took advantage of the momentary hesitation and went limp.
The result was that he banged his head against the bronze body of the horse, which dazed him slightly, but in her effort to keep him in place the woman went down with him, dragged to the gravel.
Kotler twisted as he fell, pulling free and managing to grab one of the woman's arms. He held tight, but she struggled, squirming and reaching with her free arm toward the gun, which lay only inches from her fingertips.
Now that he was on the ground, Kotler had a bit more leverage. He pushed his advantage, taking hold of the woman’s arm with both hands and then rolling, pinning her in a wrestler’s move.
She cried out, and her free hand slapped at the ground in a desperate effort to reach the gun.
“Get off of her!” a man’s voice shouted from behind.
Kotler didn’t move, but in seconds someone grabbed him by the shirt collar, yanking him up and away from the woman on the ground.
The younger man, armed and holding his weapon inches from Kotler’s head, pulled Kotler up and away. The woman scrambled to pick up her gun and get to her feet. Then, huffing and looking a bit worse for wear, she stooped and picked up Kotler’s phone.
From a distance, Kotler heard an exchange of gunfire and knew that Denzel was engaged in a fight with the other woman.
“Unlock this,” the woman standing before him commanded. She aimed her weapon at Kotler’s chest.
"Forget it," he said, huffing.
The man tightened his grip, shoving the barrel of his handgun into Kotler’s cheek.
“Unlock it, now!” The woman shouted.
"You kill me, and it stays locked," Kotler said, his teeth clenched. "And don't bother kidnapping me. I get that a lot, and I don't give in to torture. Gail knows that."
The woman was shaking with rage. She glanced up at the man holding Kotler and nodded. The man shifted his grip and took Kotler's arms, holding him so that Kotler's chest and stomach were bared to the woman. Kotler braced himself to be punched, kicked, maybe even shot.
The woman squared on him, reared back, and then kicked him square in the crotch.
Kotler immediately doubled over in pain, suddenly wanting to throw up, and sagged in the man's grip. He coughed, wincing. "What the f—!”
The wom
an did punch him then, solid and in the jaw, and the man held Kotler up as his knees buckled and he nearly fell.
“Open the phone, now, or I will do more than torture you,” the woman said, leaning in close.
“Let him go!” Denzel’s voice said.
Kotler managed to look up and see Denzel standing across the gravel courtyard. His weapon was raised. It was a long shot, but Kotler knew his partner could make it if he needed to.
There was a sound from behind them, and the man and woman yanked Kotler around, dragging him toward the water’s edge.
The sound was familiar, and in seconds Kotler placed it. A boat of some kind. Maybe more than one?
“Freeze, and drop your weapons, now!” Denzel said.
Kotler saw that Denzel wasn't alone. Two Oklahoma City police officers had arrived and were assisting him. One had the first woman in handcuffs. The other had his weapon drawn and trained on the people who had Kotler in their grasp.
The man and woman dragged Kotler out into the water, and now Kotler caught a glimpse of two jet skis, each with riders wearing body armor. The man and woman shoved Kotler forward and leaped onto the backs of the jet skis, which sped off along the canal.
Denzel and the officer gave chase but lost them as they circled under the bridge and zipped away at high speed.
Kotler fell to his knees in the shallow water, and then forced himself up, limping gingerly toward the shore. He slumped onto the gravel and rolled onto his back.
“Kotler, are you injured?” Denzel asked, panicked.
“Some bruising,” Kotler wheezed, wincing. “Mostly my … pride.”
“An ambulance is on the way.”
Kotler nodded. “They got my phone,” he said. And then he laughed. “They were stupid enough to take my phone.”
Chapter 7
After clearing with OKC police and returning to their hotel, Denzel and Kotler met in the lobby. Kotler had been given a clean bill of health from the EMTs who had arrived on the scene, but he still felt a little less than alright after the encounter. There were unwritten rules in combat, after all.
“How are the boys?” Denzel asked, stifling a grin.
Kotler was sitting on the cushioned seat of the booth they were sharing in the hotel's restaurant, holding a bag of ice in his lap, hidden by his napkin. "Present and accounted for," he said, wincing a little.
Denzel huffed, nodded, and then to Kotler’s eternal gratitude, changed the subject. “You said you’d fill me in on why it’s a good thing that those two got away with your phone.”
Kotler nodded. “First, all the data is backed up instantly, and I’ve already checked. Everything I’ve pulled together is saved online.”
"Good. I have my people tracking the phone itself to see if we can pick up its last known location."
“And I sent the signal to lock and wipe it,” Kotler said. “I tried finding it with the app but had no luck.”
Denzel nodded. “So why is it a good thing that they took it? And why did they want it anyway?”
"Gail is checking to see if I've solved the riddle. She probably has a team of hackers working to unlock it, so she can dive into the phone's memory. Maybe even hack my accounts."
“And that’s a good thing?” Denzel said.
Kotler smiled. “It is when I’ve been planting false leads in all the data.”
Denzel smiled. “Kotler, sometimes you’re as smart as you think you are.”
“A blessing and a curse,” Kotler grinned.
“So, what will these false leads do for us?” Denzel asked.
Kotler outlined what he’d been doing over the past several days.
Initially, he'd started by merely dropping in random speculation about the map and the artifacts, and what he suspected he would find. From there he developed a narrative. He crafted a story, told through "discoveries and revelations" as he and the FBI worked to crack the riddle of the map.
The trick was to craft the narrative so that he could include the actual data he and Denzel and Liz Ludlum had gathered as part of their investigation but skew the conclusions and outcomes of that data to lead Gail to some specific wrong conclusions.
It wasn't easy. Kotler had been forced to pull everything together without the use of his digital devices, memorizing faux facts as if they were real, and continually checking himself as he updated his notes. He had created a cipher of sorts, with false details standing in for their real-world equivalents.
Kotler suspected that Gail would somehow get her hands on this information. He hadn't quite expected that she'd need to physically steal the phone, but the effect was the same. He and Denzel had gone out of their way to encrypt and protect his devices and must have done a fair job of it, all things considered.
Denzel listened as Kotler explained everything, including details of the false narrative. “So, can we use this to find her?” Denzel asked. “Will this false narrative lead her into a trap?”
Kotler shook his head. “I don’t think so. Some details, like the coordinates to Antarctica, aren’t hidden. If she has the photo, she knows where we’re headed next.”
“So how does all this help us?” Denzel asked.
“Multiple leads,” Kotler replied. “She has the coordinates, but she also has leads pointing her to half a dozen other key components that I’ve speculated on. She can’t afford to let those go. She’ll need to vet them, which means committing resources to them.”
“And?” Denzel rolled a hand impatiently.
"And I made them very, very difficult to vet," Kotler smiled. "I've aimed her at several key points all over the globe, in some hotly contested areas. She'll have to commit military-level resources to all of them if she wants to find what's hidden there."
“Which is nothing?” Denzel asked.
“Not even a ‘Where’s Waldo?’ calendar,” Kotler smiled.
"You're trying to spread her thin," Denzel said. "So, when she comes to Antarctica, she won't have quite as many resources available."
“That’s the plan,” Kotler nodded. “Though I can’t be entirely sure what her level of resources actually is. She clearly has great wealth and a seemingly endless reserve of mercenaries and equipment.”
"Not endless," Denzel said, taking his smartphone out of his inner jacket pocket. He pulled something up and handed the phone to Kotler.
Kotler reviewed it, and looked up, eyes wide. “How did you get this?”
"It took most of a year, and CIA cooperation," Denzel said. "And a lot of agents were burned in recovering it. But we believe it's accurate."
On the tiny screen was an overview of a more extensive report. Kotler read the abstract, and for the first time in two years, he felt a small pressure release somewhere inside him. The FBI, in a joint mission with the CIA, had finally managed to account for nearly all of Gail McCarthy's smuggling empire.
While Gail herself remained elusive, along with some potent resources, the alphabet agencies of the US were finally able to track the larger portion of her dealings, including the funds kept in several offshore accounts.
“You know what this means?” Denzel asked.
Kotler nodded. “If we find her, we’ve got her,” he said.
Denzel took his phone back. “You ready for that?”
Kotler laughed, and it was a bit louder than he’d intended. “Roland, I will cuff her and shove her into a cell myself if you’ll let me.”
Denzel nodded. "Good. Because I've talked to my higher-ups, and we're cleared for Antarctica. We leave in twenty-four hours. We fly out of here and meet up with an outgoing crew in Houston. We fly out from there. It's going to be a rough trip."
Kotler knew that to be true and wasn't exactly looking forward to visiting the bottom of the planet, a land blanketed in ice and snow, and as inhospitable to life as Earth-bound environments tend to get. It wasn't high on Kotler's bucket list. Though he had to admit, there were some intriguing ideas about the continent. There were rumors. Kotler's curiosity was piqued by th
e potential of discovering some heretofore undiscovered lost culture, at least. He just wasn't a fan of the extreme cold. The present state of his genitals excluded.
But for the chance to finally take down Gail McCarthy and her network, it would be worth it. He'd walk the ice naked for that shot.
Gail McCarthy sipped her London Fog while looking out over the water, watching as a tethered hot air balloon, brimming with gawking tourists, rose into the air. Orlando was hot and humid, but it was also a natural place to hide. Local authorities watched the ports and airfields closely, but they were on the hunt for illegal aliens, drugs, and guns. In all that noise, a petite white woman of obvious wealth was practically invisible.
She had arrived by private jet, chartered by one of the off-the-books businesses, and had ridden in a hired car to Disney Springs—one of the most anonymous places on earth. Even now, as she sat on the back patio of the Starbucks surrounded by three police officers who were none the wiser, she felt completely at ease.
What didn’t make her feel at ease was the fact that her network and resources were narrowing.
She’d started to notice a few months earlier. Attrition had always been a part of the business, with planes and ships getting caught in the net of Homeland Security and other agencies, and cargoes getting seized. Uncle Robert had put a lot of redundancy in place, however, and the network could withstand a crackdown. To a point.
These seizures were getting more frequent, though, and it led to an inevitable conclusion: The network was compromised.
As a result, she'd been forced to step up the game with Dan Kotler. He was the key to a resource she needed—a tool that would allow her and her network to move undetected in the world. It would also make her rich beyond the dreams of avarice, she knew. That was the last contingency, however. She intended to use this new resource as a private concern first and as a product second.
If, that was, Dan Kotler could solve it.
He was good at games, she knew. She'd watched him for two years now, gauging his actions and his responses to various threats and challenges. She had entrusted her little puzzle to him because she knew he couldn't resist it. Better still, she knew he could figure it out.
The Antarctic Forgery Page 6