The Tombs fa-4

by Clive Cussler

  He knew they were observing him, running a slapdash background check to see who he really was, and they needed time to accomplish it. Just as he was beginning to wonder whether the result had been negative, the door across from him opened. A man in a dark suit came in, his face set in a flexible expression that was not a smile, but was not unfriendly. “Hello, Mr. Fargo. I’m Carl Hagar, Diplomatic Security. Sorry to keep you waiting.”

  “Thank you for seeing me,” said Sam.

  “I’ve been briefed on what happened,” Hagar said. “And I’m very sorry and very concerned. We haven’t experienced this kind of thing in Moscow since the Cold War. The idea that an American citizen could be kidnapped from Sheremetyevo Airport is unprecedented. There have been terrorist attacks there, and times when people coming in at the airport have been arrested at customs, but never kidnappings.”

  “I don’t think this was the Russian government. It’s more likely to be some underworld group that’s learned of our attempts to find a series of treasures from the fifth century.”

  “That’s what we think too,” said Hagar.

  “You’ve been looking into my wife’s disappearance already?”

  “As soon as we heard about it. We always investigate the disappearance of any U.S. citizen from Moscow. But when we began asking questions about who you were, we ran across your years at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency. They make your story more credible and make you a potential military asset. Rube Hayward had flagged your record, asking to be notified if you got in trouble. I’m sure you can imagine what that means to us.”

  “I’m sure I can’t,” said Sam. “I’ve known Rube for twenty years, but, whatever he does, he doesn’t talk about it with civilians.”

  “Let’s just say you have friends in high places. We’ve been in touch with our contacts in Russian law enforcement, letting them know we’re extremely interested and won’t go away if they ignore this. I’m convinced they’ve given us what they know so far.” He placed a file on the table, opened it, and pushed five photographs across to Sam.

  Sam could see they were fuzzy black-and-white screen grabs from surveillance cameras mounted in the airport.

  Hagar pointed at the first one. “Here is Mrs. Fargo entering the ladies’ room at the airport. Next you see the two female janitors let two other women in after her, then put out a sign that says ‘Closed for Cleaning’ and lock the door. Here’s what happens when the door opens.” The photograph showed the cleaning women pushing out a flatbed wheeled cart with two big cardboard barrels on it.

  “I saw those women,” said Sam.

  “What did you see?”

  “They came out, pushed the cart around the first corner, and then went out through an unmarked doorway.”

  “The Russian police don’t know who these two women are. They’ve blown up their pictures and they don’t match the photo ID of anybody who works there. They’ve fast-forwarded their way through about eight hours of tape, and Mrs. Fargo never comes out that door. We think they had your wife in one of those barrels.”

  “This is awful,” said Sam. “I wasn’t really worried yet when I saw them. They didn’t register as out of the ordinary because I didn’t know what was or wasn’t ordinary.”

  “Of course.” He brought out another photograph. It showed the women outside the big terminal building, rolling one of the barrels onto a hydraulic lift at the back of a truck operated by a man in coveralls. There was Cyrillic script on the side.

  “What does that say?”

  “Len Sluzhby. Linen Services,” he said. “They got into the truck, left the other barrel and the cart, and drove off. There really is a company with trucks like that and they do supply linens for the airport. The police say this truck isn’t one of theirs.”

  Sam said, “I have a suggestion. I think the people who did this must have a connection with a man named Arpad Bako, the owner of a pharmaceutical business in Szeged, Hungary. He has been attempting to find the treasures before we can and he’s shown he’ll do anything to succeed. The people who did his searching and shot at us in France worked for a man named Le Clerc, who has been buying illegal prescription drugs from Bako. Somebody here must be importing Bako’s drugs to Russia or supplying him with raw materials.”

  Hagar said, “I’ll find out and get the results to you.”

  “Thank you.”

  “There’s one more thing,” said Hagar.

  “The ransom,” Sam said.

  “Right. If they took Mrs. Fargo so they can exchange her for the artifacts you found in these hoards and tombs across Europe, they’ll be getting in touch with you. They might already be watching you, so they’ll be aware you went to the police at the airport and probably that you’re here too. They’ll threaten to kill her if you have anything more to do with us. You’ll have to appear to go along with their demands.”

  “I’ve considered that.”

  Hagar reached into his pocket and then handed Sam a cell phone. “We’re giving you a new phone. At some point they’ll try to separate you from your cell, so, when they do, give them the old one. We’ll use this cell’s GPS to keep track of your location. We’ll also try to watch you in other ways, so if you don’t have a phone, we don’t lose you.”

  “Okay,” Sam said. He put the new cell phone in his pocket. “I should find a hotel and wait for them to call me. We weren’t planning on stopping in Russia except to change planes.”

  “We’ll put you up at the Hilton Moscow Leningradskaya Hotel. It’s a building Stalin put up near the Kremlin in 1954 and it’s big, with a lot of clear space around it. While you’re going there to check in, we’ll see who follows. That probably won’t be what pays off, but something will.”

  “I’m sure it will,” said Sam. He got up and shook Hagar’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “There will be cabs outside. Take the first one that pulls up. I wish we could have met under happier circumstances. Rube Hayward was right. He said you’d be coolheaded and not afraid of anything.”

  “I appreciate Rube’s compliment, but he’s wrong,” he said. “These people have found what I’m most afraid of on the first try.”

  Sam went out the front door of the consulate and saw a line of cabs. He stepped to the curb and the first one pulled up. Sam said, “Hilton Leningradskaya Hotel?”

  The driver said, “Da, da,” and gestured for Sam to get inside. The driver seemed a bit impatient, as though he had other appointments to occupy him.

  Sam got in and the man pulled out into traffic. Sam had to keep himself from looking behind him out the rear window to try to spot the tail the kidnappers would have on him and the American surveillance team trying to identify the tail. He had been awake all night and all of the following day. Now the exhaustion was beginning to slow his brain and made it hard for him to focus on the challenges he needed to see coming.

  As he rode through the city streets, the evening sunshine seared his eyes and reminded him that Moscow was much farther north than the major cities of the United States and the sun would stay out longer. He might be able to use the time.

  The driver pulled up in front of the tall-towered hotel. “Six hundred rubles.” Sam knew that was about twenty dollars. He shuffled through the rubles he’d bought at the airport and handed him seven hundred as he took the carry-on luggage he and Remi had brought and got out. The cabdriver accepted his money and handed him a small wrapped package.

  “What’s this?”

  “Take it,” the driver said.

  Sam accepted it, then turned to look behind them up the road. If any car was following, he couldn’t spot it, and he knew that knowing wouldn’t help anyway. He heard the cabdriver hit the accelerator and he turned again to get the license number. He stared at the rear plate, but it was caked with dirt. After a second, he realized the dirt was probably spray paint or a mixture of rubber cement and dust applied an hour ago.

  He checked in at the hotel and went up to his room and sat on the bed. He set the p
ackage on the bed beside him and looked at it. He dialed his home number in La Jolla.

  “Hello, Sam,” said Selma. “Any word yet?”

  “I think I’m about to get word. I’m going to leave this cell on while I open the package I just got. I’d appreciate it if you could listen to what happens, but don’t speak until I tell you it’s clear.”

  “All right.”

  Sam unwrapped the paper around the box, looking closely around the sides for anything that might be a wire attached to an initiator. As he raised the top, he scrutinized it from the side, but there wasn’t anything that didn’t belong. “It’s a cardboard box, plain, like a candy box. There are no trip wires, no explosives. The cabdriver gave it to me a few minutes ago. There is a cell phone. There is also a picture of Remi holding a Russian newspaper. The numbers for the date indicate it’s today. She’s wearing the same clothes as last night and she seems unharmed. There’s nothing else.”

  The cell phone in the box rang. Sam picked it up and said, “Hello.”

  “Hello, Mr. Fargo. Since you received this telephone, then you also must have the picture and know we have your wife. She’s very beautiful, and seems to be very intelligent too. You must miss her terribly.”

  “What is it that you want terribly?”

  “Right to the point. All right. You have recovered three hidden portions of the loot that Attila the Hun stole from European cities when he conquered them in the fifth century. You have one found in Italy near Mantua, one from Châlons-en-Champagne, France, and one from the shore of the Danube in Hungary.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Don’t interrupt and don’t argue. I know that you have taken them, and now you will give them to me. I want those finds.”

  “All three have been turned over to the national archives of those countries,” Sam said. “There are treaties and laws that prevent people from—”

  “I told you not to argue with me. Do I sound to you like someone who cares about treaties between foreign politicians? Getting the ransom is your problem. As soon as you have the three hoards in your possession, call me by pressing the programmed number on your new phone that says Remi.”

  “What happens if I can’t get the three treasures?”

  “Why make yourself afraid and unhappy? I hope I don’t need to think of something terrible to do. I don’t want to promise you some horrible last videotape of your wife if you fail. Succeed. I would rather have you confident and strong, thinking only about collecting my gold and delivering it.”

  “Even if I can do this, it will take some time.”

  “Time is not weighing on me. If you don’t want her back for a week, take a week. A month? Take a month. Take six months.”

  “Where can I—” and Sam realized that he had prolonged the conversation as long as he cold. The kidnapper had hung up. He turned off the new cell phone, took it to the bathroom and wrapped it in a towel, closed the door, and went back to his own telephone. “Selma?”

  “I’m here,” she said. “I recorded that. But I didn’t learn anything except that he’s Russian, speaks English well, and isn’t afraid.”

  Sam said, “How about you, Consulate? Do you have anything?”

  The voice was calm, quiet, and American-accented—not Hagar, but someone who was a lot like him. “We have determined that a Russian trading partner of Arpad Bako is a man named Sergei Poliakoff. The Russian police are putting together a file for us.”

  “Where does he live?”

  “Nizhny Novgorod. He has an import-export business, and an estate west of the city. The Russians haven’t tipped us on what they know ahead of their report, but the officer who passed me the information implied that he’s a pretty unsavory character. He has people in a lot of places, possibly even the U.S.”

  “Thanks. I’ll have to get started on this right away. I’m going to leave both cell phones in my room. If you can, please get somebody to move the kidnapper’s phone around a bit—drive it around, ship it to friends in Italy or France. He’ll be tracking the GPS to find out where I am.”

  “But where will you be? You can’t go off alone in this country. You don’t even speak the language. You can’t operate without the Russian police and that means dealing through us. I want you to promise me that you won’t try to do anything like that.” The man, whose name was Owens, stopped talking and listened. There was nobody on the line.

  He switched to an internal line. “We’re about to lose track of Fargo. He’s left the hotel. He’ll probably turn up near Nizhny Novgorod in a week or two. He left our cell phone and the kidnapper’s cell in his room. Send somebody to pick up both. Then send the kidnapper’s phone on a vacation to Rome, Paris, and Budapest. It’ll keep the poor guy’s wife alive for a while.”

  NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA

  Sam is coming. Sam will come for me no matter what. He’s coming for me already. He will have found something to trace.

  Remi lay in bed even though she suspected it was late morning. She had read somewhere that experimenters living in caves without sunlight or clocks would gradually lengthen their sleep cycles to a twenty-six hour day. She heard the quiet knock of the girl who would be bringing her breakfast. She was sensitive to Remi’s feelings. She knocked even though Remi was locked in and she had the key.

  The girl’s name was Sasha—a boy’s name, usually, but maybe it was a nickname, or even a name that she’d assumed because she worked for a criminal and didn’t want to be identified. She was about eighteen, slim and blond, with pale green eyes. She had come in about five times now. Each time she entered, Remi would make sure to talk to her.

  Remi said, “Good morning, Sasha. What a nice breakfast you’ve brought me. Thank you very much.”

  Sasha put the food down on the small table and pulled out the chair for Remi as she always did. The girl never let on during the first few visits that she spoke English, but Remi had tested her. Remi had rattled on in English each visit as though the two were friends, and had planted ideas.

  Once she had said she missed being outside and seeing the sun, and, most of all, she missed flowers like the ones that she had seen growing on the estate when she was brought here. The next visit Sasha put a bud vase on her tray with a small yellow rose in it. Remi had expressed great gratitude, and she repeated her thanks just as enthusiastically the next time a flower appeared. Remi liked the strong-brewed Russian tea Sasha brought in a glass with sugar in it. But the second time, she’d decided to sacrifice it. She had said, “It’s too strong for me. Would you like it?” and with a reassuring expression gave the tea to Sasha. Remi said that what she liked best was coffee sweetened with a little honey. The next day, Sasha brought the strong tea as usual and kept it as her own, but she also brought coffee and honey. Sasha sat on the bed with her tea and stayed with Remi while she ate.

  Each breakfast included coffee and tea, each lunch had a flower. When Remi talked, she would ask Sasha questions about the world outside. When there was a particularly beautiful purple-and-white tulip, Remi asked where it grew, and Sasha used cups, napkin, plates, and silverware to make a little map of the estate. As she placed the pieces she called them “house . . . garden . . . road . . . stables . . . pasture . . . garage” in English.

  With every visit, Remi kept trying to solidify the friendship and learn whatever she could about the house, the grounds, and its occupants. Sasha didn’t volunteer much information. Instead she listened to Remi, took a minute or two to ask herself whether the information could be dangerous, and then invariably devised some way to answer without saying anything that might get her in trouble.

  Four days—twelve meals—passed this way. In the end, Remi knew—partly from observation the morning she’d arrived and partly from Sasha—the approximate layout of the house and grounds. She knew that there were twenty men on the estate who were not usually there and that they made Sasha’s work much harder since they required much more cooking, cleaning, laundry, and dishwashing. And they were the sort of men who g
ave Sasha the creeps.

  What Sasha didn’t know was that Remi had slipped a fork up her sleeve the second day. Sasha would never have suspected that Remi had used a hole drilled in the steel bed frame to bend all the tines on the fork but one, that she had a husband who had taught her to pick a lock, and that she had broken one tine all the way off to use as a tension wrench.

  During her sixth day of captivity, Remi unscrewed a small metal strut that strengthened the corner of the bathroom cabinet and tested its utility tapping on the pipes to make noise. That way, after using it, she could leave it where it belonged and never have it found if the room was searched.

  She further endeared herself to Sasha by dividing her first dessert evenly and sharing it, all the while talking about what city they were near and which direction was Moscow in. When she was sure the house had gotten quiet for the night, she used her tine pick and tension wrench to line up the pins on the door lock’s tumbler and open it. She practiced again and again until she could do it easily and quickly. It occurred to her while she did that Sam would be amazed at how good she was at picking locks now that it mattered.

  She slipped out and spent about five minutes exploring the quiet, dark hallway to find the back stairwell she had climbed to get here, looked out two different windows at the large estate and the big black river beyond, and found the room at the top of the stairway where she could hear two guards snoring. Then she had the feeling that she had ventured as much as she dared and went back to her room, relocked the door by poking the pins out of line, and slept.

  On the seventh day she practiced the Morse code that Sam had insisted she learn for this kind of occasion despite her protests that no military organizations still taught it. She abbreviated her message to “Remi 4th floor” and began to tap it on the pipe that fed her sink. The taps had to be soft and at a low volume and continued for long periods so the regular occupants of the house got used to them and didn’t notice anymore. She and Sasha had a conversation in English about the mild, clear weather outside and the pretty view of the Volga from Sasha’s room. When the house was dark again, Remi picked the lock of her room and went out again into the dark hallway.