The Tombs fa-4

by Clive Cussler

  Sam reached for the small clip-on belt holster at Boiardi’s back and took the Beretta pistol and holster and pocketed them. As soon as Boiardi felt his gun slip away, he shouted in Italian—Sam couldn’t understand all the words but he got the gist—“What are you doing here? We are national police on a mission. Put those guns down instantly.”

  The response from one of the men at the door was to fire a short burst from his weapon into the roof. When the two Carabinieri who’d had guns to their heads involuntarily jumped at the sudden noise, the interlopers laughed. They roughly pushed the two men back into the barn and then spread farther apart so that each of them had a better angle of fire at either the group of Carabinieri and Remi or at Sam, Boiardi, Tibor, and his cousins.

  The man who had fired into the roof was a big, barrel-chested middle-aged man with a thick black beard. He charged forward, flung open the door of the truck’s cargo bay, climbed in, and tore open a couple of boxes. He dragged one to the back of the truck and tilted it so the others could see the contents. He called out, “È d’oro. È tutto oro antico!”

  Sam had no trouble understanding those words. The others exchanged quick glances and seemed to catch the man’s joy like a virus. The leader jumped from the truck and stepped close to Boiardi, who said something quick and angry to him.

  The man grinned. “Ci avete seguito.” He moved off toward the place where the two Carabinieri stood and, while his friends aimed their weapons at the police officers, he patted them down. He found one officer had an extra pistol, took it, and brought his rifle across the man’s face.

  “Sorry,” Sam said. “Remi and I must have been too visible.”

  “No, I’m sorry,” Boiardi whispered back. “He says they didn’t follow you. They followed us. They knew that the only cases our office handles involve finds of antiquities, so they waited until we left Naples and followed us.”

  The robbers were busy using the policemen’s handcuffs on them and tying them to the vertical beams of the barn. Then two of them and their leader approached Boiardi and the leader frisked him.

  The leader took his eyes off Sam while he was searching Boiardi and Sam noticed. He drove his left fist into the leader’s face like a piston as his right drew Boiardi’s weapon. He grasped the leader’s coat and jerked him upward to act as a shield and held the pistol to his head. Boiardi snatched away the leader’s SC70/90 automatic rifle and held it on the two men who had come over with the leader.

  The two men set their rifles on the floor, stepped back, and raised their hands in the air. The two Carabinieri who had not been handcuffed yet knelt to pick up their own sidearms from the barn floor and then picked up the two automatic weapons.

  One of the armed thieves saw the meaning of what was happening and decided to stop it. He yelled, “No!” and opened fire. His rifle spat bullets, and his leader collapsed to the floor in front of Sam.

  Sacrificing his leader served its purpose. The other thieves, seeing their leader dead, no longer had a reason to give up. They turned and tried to take cover, carrying their weapons. Boiardi’s two police officers fired on them, and one was hit in the leg and sprawled on the floor. No others offered resistance.

  The man who had shot the leader was not about to capitulate. He fired a burst in the general direction of Sam and Boiardi, who had taken cover behind the boat trailer. Sam climbed over the railing into the boat and crawled to the bow.

  As the man was stalking along the wall looking for an advantage, Sam swung his arm over the gunwale and fired. His bullet hit the man’s upper torso at the collarbone. The man spun around to return fire, but his right arm went limp and he dropped his rifle. Two Carabinieri were on him, handcuffing him and forcing him to sit at the side of the barn with his wounded colleague and the man he had shot. The others quickly lost their weapons and joined him.

  Boiardi telephoned the local police to obtain help, an ambulance and police cars to transport the prisoners. While they waited, he asked the prisoners questions. The answers were defiant and resentful. He was about to give up when Remi said, “Can you find out if they were sent by a man named Bako?”

  He did, then translated. “Who is Bacco? Is he from Sicily? There are lots of Sicilians in the archaeology business lately.”

  “I guess that means no,” Remi said. “Gold just attracts its own trouble.”

  In a few minutes they heard sirens, and the police cars began lining up in the barnyard. The ambulance arrived and the team of paramedics took the two wounded men, and a couple of police officers to guard them, and left. The three healthy thieves were transported. And finally a coroner’s van came for the lifeless leader.

  When they were back at the harbor and Boiardi was about to drive off to Rome, he stepped to Sam and Remi. “This is a disturbing development. The thieves have finally realized that the easiest way to find ancient treasures is to follow the national police officers who are supposed to verify and register the finds. We could be entering a period when no national antiquities officer will be safe. Anybody who doesn’t retire is a fool.”

  “So you’re retiring?” asked Remi.

  “Me? No. Not right away. Not after your husband kept me alive. Maybe we’ll talk about all this another day, but right now there’s so much to do. Arrivederci, Fargos. Travel safe.”

  VERONA AIRPORT, ITALY

  SELMA WONDRASH’S VOICE CAME OVER THE SPEAKER ON Remi’s telephone. “The village of Châlons-en-Champagne has just two hundred twenty-seven people, and the spot Albrecht and I believe is the battlefield is five miles north near the hamlet of Cuperly on D994, La route de Reims.”

  “What are we looking for?” asked Sam.

  Albrecht took over the phone. “Near the center of the battlefield was a rock shelf, a high outcropping, that rose from the ground at an angle. The Roman army, which also included the Visigoths, the Alans, and the Celts, rushed in, in a forced march, to control the high ground before the Huns arrived. When the Huns swept in on horseback from the east, they were greeted by arrows raining down on them from the rocks. The Huns made a tentative attempt to dislodge the defenders, then fell back to the east on lower, level ground. They fortified their position by circling their wagons around the encampment.”

  “How far east from the shelf?” asked Remi.

  “They would have retreated beyond arrow range,” said Albrecht.

  “How far was arrow range?”

  “Well, I suppose you could stand on the top of the rocks and shoot an arrow off at a forty-five-degree angle and see.”

  “I just might do that.”

  “Or you could estimate. I’d say two hundred fifty yards would probably do it.”

  “We’ll take the guess,” Sam said. “Selma, could you send us another magnetometer and a metal detector at the hotel in France?”

  “It’s done. They should be there tonight. You’re staying at L’Assiette Champenoise, an old estate with four acres of grounds and modern conveniences in the center of town.”

  “Thanks, Selma,” said Remi. “If it’s got a nice bathtub I’ll be happy. And I think we could use some sleep. This has turned into a lot of night work.”

  “You’re welcome. Pick up your car at Charles de Gaulle Terminal 1. Head east out of Paris on the N44 to Reims, about a hundred ninety kilometers. Then take D994, La route de Reims, to Cuperly.”

  “Got it,” said Sam.

  “Albrecht, what else can you tell us about the battle?” asked Remi.

  “Well, after the initial skirmish, Attila could see he wasn’t going to take the high ground on the rocky shelf. He fell back to await developments. In those days, that meant watching enemy troop movements and opening up a few birds to read their entrails. Attila let his enemies stew for most of the day. When the afternoon was nearly over, he attacked. The battle lasted until dark and left thousands dead on the field in about equal number for both sides. Attila’s horsemen couldn’t overcome the other side’s advantage of holding the high ground. He fell back to his fortified camp.
The Roman commander Aëtius got lost in the dark, separated from his Romans, and found shelter with some Visigoths, who had lost track of their own leader, Theodoric. His son Thorismund found his body the next day. Attila, apparently not knowing the poor shape his enemies were in, prepared to make a stand. He gathered a huge pile of the wooden frames of his men’s saddles. If he were to die, he wanted his body thrown on them and burned. But then his men noticed that the Visigoths were leaving the field. They were going home so Thorismund could claim his father’s throne. So Attila left, going east across the Rhine.”

  “Perfect,” said Remi.

  “Perfect?” said Albrecht.

  “That’s where the treasure will be.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Sam and I have been thinking about this since we began. The treasures are always buried at some bad moment—a defeat, someone’s death. How did they accomplish that? If we look at the accounts of Attila’s death, there was a huge tent set up for Attila and his retainers, so big that you could ride horses in it.”

  “I don’t think I see where you’re going,” said Selma.

  “The saddle frames never got burned. They were a distraction, a show. Inside Attila’s huge tent, where nobody could see, there were men digging another crypt, a treasure chamber like the two we’ve found. As soon as the hole was dug, the masons would disappear into the big tent to set the stones. Attila’s trusted palace guards loaded the treasure into the chamber without leaving the tent. They sealed the chamber, covered it, and then struck the tent. Nobody had seen any hole or any digging. As they left, they probably herded their horses across the camp. Nobody but a trusted few knew where the treasure was or even that it existed.”

  “I think you’ve figured him out,” said Albrecht. “From Châlons, he went to northern Italy and found new plunder on his way to invading Rome. He was probably already preparing to turn south into Italy the day of the battle. Rome was the biggest prize and probably always was his goal. Everyone knows Attila’s enemies fought him to a standstill at Châlons. What they all forget is that he fought them to a standstill too.”

  Sam said, “The sources say Attila delayed his attack until it was nearly night. Maybe he was delaying until his chamber was dug and the stones brought from somewhere—probably the Marne River, which was right near the battlefield.”

  “I think you’re right,” said Albrecht. “If you can ascertain where Attila’s tent was erected, you’ll find the treasure chamber under it.”

  Their flight from Verona reached Paris in two hours and they picked up their rental car and drove out of the traffic and congestion of the city. Even with Sam’s excessive speed, the one hundred ninety kilometers on the N44 took three hours.

  Sam and Remi found their way to Châlons-en-Champagne, then the road to Cuperly, and drove the five additional miles to the tiny hamlet. Late in the afternoon they were among farmers’ fields, various trapezoid shapes so closely interlaced that the land looked as though every inch belonged to someone and was under full cultivation.

  “Let’s keep searching from the road until we find the rocky outcropping or we run out of daylight,” Sam said.

  “Everything depends on finding that outcropping,” Remi said. “There’s no other feature mentioned in the old story we can use to orient ourselves.”

  They drove for miles on D994, La route de Reims, then went north on D977, then north on D931, La voie de la Liberté. They were just northeast of the Marne when they saw the outcropping. From a flat field, it rose abruptly at a tilt, jutting higher as the eye moved from west to east. Sam pulled the car over to the side of the road and Remi took pictures with her cell phone and sent them to Selma.

  “There,” she said. “If this isn’t it, then maybe Selma, Pete, and Wendy will be able to match the contours to some geographic source—satellite photos or something—and they’ll be able to set us straight.”

  “I’m pretty sure this is it,” said Sam. “If they could have done that, they would have. And we haven’t seen a lot of candidates for the right spot before now.”

  Remi climbed up to stand on the seat of the convertible and then put one foot on the top of the door to raise herself a little more. “Uh-oh,” she said.

  “What is it?”

  “I wish we had binoculars with us. I think somebody has been digging out there in the flat part of the field.”

  “Is it east of the outcropping?”

  “Yes, and it seems about the right distance.” She pointed at the spot. “Do you think that’s beyond an arrow shot away from the rocks?”

  “That would be my guess,” he said. “If people were aiming at me, I’d certainly err on the long side.” He stood on the seat beside her.

  “See?” she said. “There and there. And over there.”

  There were small mounds of fresh dirt around holes in the vast green field. “That’s just about what it would look like if Bako got here first. The small ones could be test holes, and that big one over there would be something they thought might be the chamber.”

  Remi hit a programmed number on her phone and put the call on speaker. “Tibor? This is Remi. I know you’ve been home only a few hours. But has anything changed with Arpad Bako?”

  “No,” said Tibor. “He and his security men are still here. It was the first thing I checked when I arrived. Why? Has something happened?”

  “We’re in France at the next site and it looks like someone has been digging.”

  “I don’t like to hear that,” Tibor said. “But we should have thought of another possibility.”

  “What?”

  “Bako has been here in Hungary. But he has friends and business acquaintances in other places—customers and suppliers, both legitimate and criminal. Maybe he called one in France. I would be very careful if I were you.”

  “We will,” she said. “Let us know if anything changes.” She turned to Sam. “Well, you heard him.”

  “Tibor was right. We should have thought of this. If Bako has friends all over Europe, we’ve got a problem. While we’re rushing to reach the next hiding place, his friends could already be on the scene digging.”

  “Now what?”

  “Behave as though we can still win until somebody proves we didn’t. Drive the rest of the way to Reims, check into our hotel, and spend the last of the afternoon preparing to come back here after dark.”

  * * *

  AT HIS OFFICE in Szeged, Arpad Bako sat at the head of a long rosewood conference table, studying the executives ranged around it listening to a report by the director of foreign sales. He used such times, when they were paying attention to something else, to study them. They were smart men, all of them. Some were scientists—biologists, pharmacists, chemists—who worked to improve various medicines the company sold and discover new ones. Others had medical degrees and performed the drug testing and dealt with hospitals and universities. Still others were lawyers. Bako had gone to the university, but he was not their equal in education or intellect.

  He was, however, a cunning man. It must be obvious to these men that the report they were listening to was impossible, a piece of fiction. The sales of narcotic painkillers and tranquilizers that had value in the underground economy of Europe were being overreported. The numbers on the board showed they were being bought by legitimate foreign entities in far from proportionate numbers in every market. Even in countries that had famous hundred-year-old pharmaceutical companies like Switzerland and Germany, the doctors must all be prescribing Bako products. It was absurd. In a couple of instances, the sales manager reported sales of Bako drugs in distant countries that must be larger than the number of prescriptions written for every other purpose during a year. Yet Bako’s executives listened to it without blinking. No numbers were kept secret from them. Everyone in the room had gotten rich by phantom sales, he knew, and they should be forced to hear the numbers. If they wisely chose not to compare the numbers with anything else they knew or to express doubts, then all must be well for
the present. They were content with the status quo.

  Bako’s cell phone buzzed. A couple of the men jumped and then turned to look at the others with wry expressions, hoping some rival had been caught being rude and foolish in the meeting, but when they saw Bako taking his phone from his pocket they looked away. He read the number on the display and said, “Please excuse me, gentlemen. I need to take this call.”

  All of the dozen men stood up instantly, gathered items like laptops and tablets, pens and coffee cups, and filed out of the room. The last man out was the sales manager, who looked relieved. When the soundproof door was shut, Bako flipped his thumb to receive the call.

  “Hello, Étienne,” said Bako. “I’ve been wondering when you would call. Good news?”

  Étienne Le Clerc chuckled. “It’s such good news that you might think it’s bad. We found the treasure chamber right where we expected it, in the middle of the old battlefield. It’s big. Attila must have left Germany and France without two coins to rub together. You could have left me out of this, done it yourself, and made an extra hundred million euros.”

  “There’s that much, eh? And you could be calling now to lie and tell me that there was no treasure—that someone beat us to it.”

  Le Clerc laughed. “I suppose this means we’re both almost honest.”

  “Nearly so,” said Bako. “Or maybe we choose our victims wisely. The treasure is wonderful news. Can you send me a photograph of the inscription?”

  “Inscription?”

  “The Latin message. Somewhere in each treasure chamber there is a message from Attila. Didn’t you find it?”

  “I suppose we must have taken it. I haven’t seen it yet.”

  “It’s hard to miss.”

  In Le Clerc’s voice was a faint warning, just a small cloud forming on the horizon. He said, slowly and distinctly, “You haven’t seen the contents of the chamber. It is literally tons of gold and silver, much of it ancient, even pre-Roman. If you want Latin writing, I’ve got plenty of that. There are whole books of it, with gold bindings studded with gemstones.”