The Tombs fa-4

by Clive Cussler

  Dressed in black clothes covered with dirt from the field, they carried their heavy armloads of ancient war gear into the lobby. They both had dirt smeared on their faces and hands. When Sam stopped at the front desk, the clerk looked at the ancient helmet and seemed uneasy. “Sir?” he said.

  “I’m Samuel Fargo from Room 27.”

  “Yes, sir. Is everything satisfactory?” He eyed the javelins and the shields.

  “Oh, this? We were just at a costume party that got out of hand.”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve found that any party with a Roman theme seems to be trouble.”

  “I guess we should have asked before we went. Right now, I’d like to rent a second room. I’d like one on a different floor, different hallway. Is that possible?”

  “That we can do.” He looked at a computer screen, produced the papers for Sam’s signature, and then the room key. “Room 315, sir.”

  Sam and Remi took the Roman arms to the new room and leaned the shields and javelins against the wall.

  Remi shook her head. “Too easy to find. It’s precious.”

  Sam picked up the engraved shield again, opened the window, and climbed out of the gable onto the steep roof. He walked to the nearest chimney and stuck the shield between it and the slate shingles at the peak. Climbing back inside, he locked the window.

  Sam said, “We’ll have to go out and look around. I think we should find the men who are trying to kill us.”

  Remi said, “I’d like you to repeat that to yourself and see if it sounds like a good idea.”

  “Not the men, exactly,” he said. “What I’d like to find is where they’re hiding the treasure.”

  “And how do you want to do that?” she said.

  “Well, let’s think about who they must be. They appear to be a group that isn’t usually involved in stealing ancient artifacts. They didn’t notice the shield with the inscription and they left extremely valuable Roman artifacts in the chamber just because they weren’t made of gold.”

  “You’re right,” said Remi. “So who are they?”

  “Friends and allies of Arpad Bako—almost certainly business connections. So what business is Bako in?”

  “According to Tibor, the main one seems to be diverting prescription drugs he manufactures to illegal channels.”

  “I’m guessing these men are local drug dealers.”

  “Seems reasonable.”

  “So let’s call Tibor.” He took out his cell phone and hit Tibor’s preprogrammed number.

  “Yes?” a groggy voice answered.

  “Tibor, it’s Sam.”

  “I was asleep. What time is it? Where are you?”

  “We’re still in France. Bako seems to have called in some French crooks to do the searching, just as we feared, and they’ve beaten us to the treasure, but we found the inscription still in the chamber.”

  “Some bad, some good. Is there any way to get the treasure before they move it?”

  “We managed to lose the French shooters who came after us. We think they’re related somehow to Bako’s illegal activities, so they’re probably in the drug trade. I’m wondering if we can find the addresses in France where Bako ships his legal pharmaceuticals.”

  “I’ve been working on this since we suspected someone else was in France. I called a cousin who works for the shipping company Bako uses. I haven’t found a place in France where he ships medicine. We think any legitimate sales are shipped into France by a Belgian company. But he has a supplier for chemicals called Compagnie Le Clerc. They send him chemical compounds in special containers and when he’s unloaded them he ships them back. There are people who believe that when he ships the containers to France, they’re not empty.”

  “Do you have the address of Compagnie Le Clerc?”

  “Yes.”

  Sam took out a pen and a five-euro bill and wrote down the address. “6107 Voie de la liberté, Troyes.”

  They returned to the rental agency, parked the car, and took their truck again. “I was hoping I’d seen the last of this thing,” Remi said. “How much do we owe them for the bullet holes?”

  “They’re still adding it up.”

  “And don’t forget the broken window.”

  “I’ll drive,” Sam said. They drove out of town, and Remi used the map on her cell phone to find the route and distance. The two cities were just about seventy-nine miles apart, so the drive took them a bit over an hour and a half on the E17.

  When they found the address in Troyes, their mood began to brighten. There was a small blacktop parking lot, a truck garage, and a medium-sized warehouse. As they approached, Remi said, “Slow down so I can look in the parking lot.”

  In the lot, close to the warehouse, were the Range Rover with its broken windshield and, beside it, the truck that had run into it. The truck was missing its front bumper, and the left front wheel of the SUV was out of alignment. Sam pulled over on the highway so they could study the complex carefully. There were no windows in either the warehouse or the garage, but each had skylights on its roof. There were no lights turned on and no men walking around on the grounds.

  Sam drove onto the blacktop. They sat there for a few minutes with the motor running, but nobody opened a door or came out to see who they were. “Can they have all gone home?” asked Remi. Sam looked at the side of the warehouse, studied the slope of the roof, then backed in the truck so the cargo box fit neatly under the eaves.

  He and Remi got out and exchanged a look. It took no words for them to execute the plan. Remi reached into the truck behind the seat, opened the toolbox, and found a tire iron and a rope. They stepped onto the front bumper, onto the hood, up to the cab’s roof, then to the top of the cargo box, and finally onto the roof of the warehouse. They knelt by the closest skylight and stared down into the building.

  There were white plastic containers the size of ten-gallon paint cans stacked nearly up to the skylight. On either side were open aisles on a concrete floor. There were two forklifts, and there was an office.

  Sam said, “Look away,” swung the tire iron to break the skylight, then reached in and cleared away all the broken glass stuck to the frame. Then he tied the rope securely around the steel strut in the middle.

  “Here goes,” Remi whispered and lowered herself on the rope to the top of a row of plastic containers. She tested them. “They’re full of something,” she said. “Pretty stable.”

  Sam followed her down. They made their way to lower and lower stacks of containers until they reached the last stack, which was only three high, and they got to the floor. They split up and began to search the warehouse. They kept at it until they’d checked every bit of open space and the office that occupied the end of the building.

  Sam stepped close to Remi. “It was a promising idea, but promising ideas don’t always pan out. I thought they’d hide the treasure where they store their drugs.”

  Remi shrugged. “We haven’t found those yet either. These all seem to be chemicals.” She was staring at a stack of plastic containers. She stepped to the nearest container and read the label, then tipped the container an inch, moved to another row and lifted another container, then another row and container.

  Sam did the same. They all seemed identical, around forty pounds each. Sam and Remi moved from row to row, sampling the containers randomly within each row. Finally, just as Remi set one back down, she saw Sam using his pocketknife to unscrew the band around the top of another. Remi came close as he lifted the lid and they saw the familiar gleam of gold.

  The two went to work, quickly lifting each container and setting aside the ones that weren’t filled with an identical quantity of chemical. Some were heavier, some lighter, and many made noises if they were shaken. Sam pushed a wooden pallet close to the row and started putting the containers of artifacts on it. After about twenty minutes, the pallet was loaded, and he brought another. They were expert at spotting the off-weight containers now, and the pallets were loaded more quickly. When they had found ev
ery one they could, and all they checked were full of chemicals, Sam said, “Find the switch that opens the doors.”

  While Sam brought a forklift to lift a pallet loaded with containers of antiquities, Remi found the right button. As he approached the door, it rose and he drove out, and Remi ran to bring the truck to the front. Using the pallets and forklift, he and she loaded the rental truck within a few minutes. The load consisted of three pallets, each one four containers high and four wide. When they were done, Sam drove the forklift back inside and then returned. They closed the warehouse door, buttoned up their truck, and drove off.

  They arrived at their hotel in Reims at four a.m. Sam said, “I’ll get the weapons and things out of the new room and you get our belongings we left in the old. Then we’ll head for Paris.”

  They hurried inside. When Sam reached the door of the second room, he could tell something was wrong. There was a light glowing under the door. It was about three minutes later when Remi arrived, pulling the one suitcase they shared. Sam was climbing in through the room’s window. The armor and arms they’d left all seemed still to be there, but the expression on Sam’s face told her all was not well.

  “Oh, no,” she said. “Did they get it?”

  Sam held up his empty hands and closed the window. “While we were in Troyes robbing them, they were in Reims robbing us. They’ve got the shield with Attila’s inscription.”

  CHARLES DE GAULLE AIRPORT, PARIS

  “THE SADDEST TREASURE OF ALL IS THE THIRD. IT LIES in the grave of my brother Bleda, who was the one chosen to die on the River at Apulum.”

  “I have no idea where that is,” Remi said to Albrecht and Selma.

  “No, but I have no doubt that Bako will know as soon as he reads the shield,” Albrecht said. “Apulum is the Roman name of the city that the Romans made the capital of Dacia, which was a province of the Empire from the time of Hadrian until around 271 C.E. Dacia was the first Roman province to be abandoned in the contraction of the Empire. It would have been a familiar place to the people of Central Europe during Attila’s time, so it would be familiar to anyone obsessed with Attila. And, of course, the River is the same one that runs into the Tisza River in Bako’s hometown of Szeged. Apulum is now called Alba Iulia and it’s in Transylvania, a part of Romania.”

  “We’ll have to try to beat him to it anyway,” said Sam. “We’ve got a few more minutes before we board our plane for Bucharest. Now is the time to tell us anything you can about Bleda’s grave.”

  “Attila calls it a sad story, and it is,” he said. “In 434, Attila and his older brother Bleda became co-kings of the Huns when the last king, their uncle Ruga, died. Shared monarchies are fairly rare in history, and this one probably reflects the fact that the younger brother, Attila, was also a phenomenon that’s rare in any population—a great fighter, great leader, and charismatic personality. The two brothers ruled for about a decade with immense success. They operated in complete agreement, as though they were a single mind with two pairs of eyes and the ability to be two places at once. Under their rule the Huns grew stronger and more numerous through conquest, richer and more feared by enemies. Then, during the years 444 and 445, there was a period of peace. Attila and Bleda, like other kings between wars, occupied themselves with hunting. In 445 Bleda and Attila rode eastward into the Transylvanian forests, apparently to hunt boar and deer. What happened out in the forest is still the subject of speculation. Some say Attila used this opportunity to set up a hunting accident that killed his older brother so he could be sole king. I’ve always preferred the other version, and the inscription engraved in the shield seems to indicate I’m right.”

  “What’s the other version?”

  “That the hunting trip was an attempt by the elder Bleda to get Attila out in the wilderness, where only their close henchmen were around, and kill him. The attempt was botched, Attila fought back and killed Bleda.”

  “Why that version?”

  “A little something about sibling psychology. The older sibling—particularly a male heir—is a little king from birth, doted on by everyone in his world. When a younger male sibling comes along, the firstborn is supplanted at the mother’s breast and feels threatened in every way. It is the older sibling who bears the resentments, who feels wronged and robbed by his own brother, by his family and society. So he’s more likely to be the aggressor. The younger brother is usually the unsuspecting offender who’s easily taken by surprise. What’s different here is that Attila was not unsuspecting or easily defeated. It doesn’t fit anything we know about him. He was a born fighter. He had lived at the Emperor’s court in Rome as a hostage when he was a teenager and could probably smell a conspiracy from a hundred miles off.”

  “What evidence is in the inscription?” Remi asked.

  “He said Bleda ‘was chosen’ to die. He didn’t just die. Fate or the Creator chose one of the two brothers over the other. That implies that both were at risk, as in a fight. This is also the saddest of all the deaths of Attila’s life up to that time. He had already lost his mother, father, uncle, and two wives that we know of. One thing that would make Bleda’s death worse was if he forced Attila to kill him.”

  “It’s horrible,” said Remi, “but the more I think about it, the more likely it seems.”

  There was a call for passengers to board the flight to Bucharest. “Thanks, Albrecht. We’ll talk to you when we’re on the ground again.” She quickly dialed Tibor’s number.

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Remi and Sam,” she said. “The address you gave us in France was correct. It worked out. We’ve turned the treasure over to French authorities for safekeeping. The next spot is in Transylvania, on the River near Alba Iulia, and we’re on the way. But Bako got the inscription too. Could you please—”

  “We’ll watch them every minute,” said Tibor. “We’ll know exactly where they go.”

  “Thanks, Tibor. They’re already calling our flight. We’ll call you from Bucharest.” She turned off the phone, and they got up to join the line of people entering the collapsible boarding tunnel to their airplane.

  The plane rumbled down the runway and rose into the air. When it leveled, Remi lifted the armrest between her and Sam, leaned her head on his shoulder, and promptly fell asleep. The uninterrupted race from one country to the next, the heavy physical labor at night and searching in the daylight, had finally exhausted her. After a short time, Sam slept too.

  They awoke when the pilot announced the approach to Bucharest Airport. After clearing Romanian customs, they picked up their rental car. As they drove toward Alba Iulia, Remi read a history about Attila and his brother Bleda that she had downloaded to her phone at the airport in Paris.

  “It says here that Bleda had a famous Moorish dwarf named Zerco in his retinue. Bleda was so fond of him that he had a special miniature suit of armor made so he could go on campaigns with him.”

  “If I were Zerco, I think I would have passed up the honor,” Sam said. “It must have been like getting into a fight where everyone else is twelve feet tall and weighs a thousand pounds.”

  “I suppose having a king’s favor and protection must have seemed worth the risk.”

  Sam was silent for a moment. “Is there any mention of what Zerco did after Bleda was killed?”

  “No,” she said. “But that doesn’t mean much. This is a travel guide, not a serious history.”

  They drove directly to Alba Iulia without stopping until they reached their hotel. After checking in, Sam called Tibor on his cell phone.

  “Yes?”

  “We’re in Alba Iulia,” said Sam. “Any news?”

  “Yes, but it’s all bad,” Tibor said. “Bako is still at home. He’s working in his office at the factory right this minute. But his favorite five security men have all packed up and driven eastward into Romania. I have my brother and two cousins following them and, so far, they’re heading straight for you.”

  “Thanks for the heads-up,” Sam said.

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nbsp; “They’re traveling in two vehicles, both American-made SUVs, both new, both black with tinted windows. They’ve been on the road since early this morning, so they might already be there. If you see them, don’t let them see you.”

  “Thank you, Tibor. We’ll look carefully before we do anything.”

  “Good luck.” Tibor signed off.

  Remi said, “We could find some central place in town and watch for them.”

  “Not this time. They know we had a chance to see the inscription on the shield before they did and they’re rushing here. They must have gotten a call from the people at Compagnie Le Clerc and left within an hour or so. If Bako isn’t with them, they won’t be coming into the center of town for good hotels and restaurants. I think they’ll be out searching until they find the grave even if it means sleeping on the ground in the woods.”

  They went back to their car, drove to the River, and followed the road that ran parallel to it, searching for any landmark that might signal an undisturbed piece of ancient masonry. They kept going for a couple of hours, then turned around and started to drive in the other direction. As they did, Sam’s cell phone rang.

  “Hello?”

  “Sam, this is Tibor again. Bako just went home and came out with two of his men. They were dressed in gear like they were going on a safari. Then a third man pulled up in a truck. I think it means that Bako got a call saying that his men have found the burial chamber. I’m in a car following them at a distance, and I’ve got another car to switch places with me now to keep them from spotting me.”

  “This is the second chamber they’ve beaten us to,” said Sam.

  “You ended up with both treasures so far, and maybe we’ll end up with this one,” Tibor said. “It can still be sent to a museum and not melted down into bars in Bako’s bank.”

  “We’ll try to accomplish that much, at least.”

  “I’m calling my brother next to see what Bako’s men have found.”