"Twins?" Jack asked, now feeling that they were on a wasted mission to the Chavez house. He pushed the last bedroom door open and peered inside the already tossed and torn-apart room.
"Diamonds. Legend has it that Peter the Great had made a gift of twin diamonds the size of — hell, I don't know, lemons or something. Well, this lumber magnate supposedly was in possession of one of them."
"I've never heard of anything like that," Collins said as he dejectedly placed the handgun back into his pants. He also wondered why nothing was mentioned in Europa's investigation about these diamonds.
"Well, they supposedly disappeared around the time of the Russian revolution, along with everything else of value, including the tzar and tzarina."
"Well, we know where they went, don't we?" Jack said.
Alexander watched as Collins shook his head and started down the stairs. When he joined him at the bottom, they saw Sarah and Ryan throwing a few of the items still remaining in the coat closet out into the hallway. Sarah straightened and then looked at Jack, and shook her head.
"This is going nowhere fast. What in the hell was I thinking, that this asshole would leave a note behind telling us who his employer was?"
Sarah took his arm and squeezed it. Ryan was also aware the colonel was just grasping at straws, trying out anything for a single lead.
Punchy Alexander slapped Jack on the back and then walked passed. "Don't worry, Jack, we'll turn a rock over soon enough and find out where she's at."
They heard footsteps running up the stairs from the basement. Will Mendenhall soon opened the door and then with his breathing coming in short gasps, said, "Colonel, Captain Everett says you've got to take a look at this."
Jack immediately went to the door and followed Will down the long flight of two different stairs. When they reached the bottom, he saw Everett standing in the middle of a dirt floor with his hands on his hips and staring at one of the outer walls. Collins felt the others behind him as they stopped; he held up a hand when he saw that Carl was thinking something out.
"Number one, the percentage of basements in Southern California is so low I don't even want to think about it," Everett said without turning away from the far wall. "I lived here, in a house just like this in Oxnard. Pre-World War II, stone, just like a million others. Hell, that was the bulk of cheap building material back then, no brick, just rocks."
Jack moved his eyes from Everett's back where he was just staring at the walls, to the open and broken bits of crates, old cardboard boxes, broken furniture, and moldy old clothes. He felt Ryan stir behind him, getting ready to ask the captain a question, but again, Collins held his hand up, wanting Carl to think through what he was tossing about in his head.
"How many tons of rock went into building this house — fifteen or twenty, maybe even thirty?"
"Captain, I don't see one rock down here."
Everett finally turned and looked at Ryan. "That's the point, flyboy, the basement isn't constructed of the same material as the house, which means it was—"
"Recently added," Collins finished for him.
Carl smiled. "Not only that, Jack, look over here." Everett moved forward and pointed at the dirt that made up the floor of the giant basement.
Where most of the dirt was rough, full of footprints from the police investigation, there was a spot about the width of the entire rear wall that was perfectly smooth, as if the entire width had been artificially dragged smooth.
"Remember our antiquities thief in New York, Westchester County, and his remarkable basement?"
Jack smiled at Everett and then walked quickly to the far wall and started looking. Everett, Sarah, Ryan, and Mendenhall did the same, remembering the amazing basement that another antiquities thief had built using a false floor and winding stairway.
"Without sounding downright stupid, may I ask what it is you are looking for?" Alexander asked, placing his hands on his hips as the others started feeling around the walls.
"A switch, or a release of some kind," Sarah said as she went to her knees and started feeling around the bottom of the drywall.
Suddenly, the room grew quiet as they all felt it at the same time, Jack, Punchy, and Everett just a split second before the others. They all three turned as fast as they could and then stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the three men with automatic weapons aimed directly at them. The men were Caucasian and were all very well dressed. Their suits were expensive and their weapons, Israeli Uzi submachine guns, were even more so. The man in the middle of the three shook his head negative and with his eyes, ordered their weapons to be removed without uttering a single word.
As the seven people complied, they heard slow, methodical footsteps descending the stairs. One step at a time, and it seemed to go on forever. Finally, a well-polished shoe appeared, and then the other. A tall blond man stepped down onto the dirt floor. In the bare-bulb light of the basement, Jack and the other members of the Event Group could not hide the shock they felt at seeing the tall, immaculately dressed man standing before them. He wore a white shirt and was wearing a plain pair of black slacks, but his identity was unmistakable.
"How many of your nine lives do you have left, Henri?" Collins asked, keeping his hands at his side.
Colonel Henri Farbeaux, archcriminal and a decade-long enemy of the Event Group, stood arrogantly before them. He slowly placed a hand in his right pocket and then shook his head. The last thing the Event Group knew about the former French colonel was that he had been supposedly swallowed up by the Ross Ice Shelf as it cracked apart and sank into the Ross Sea three months before.
"It's not the lives, Colonel, it's the man. I just happen to know when to bet one of those lives; sometimes as you can see, that wager pays off."
Sarah stepped forward from where she had been looking for the switch that would open the wall. She was actually happy to see Henri alive; after all, it had been the Frenchman who had saved her, Senator Lee, Alice Hamilton, and the kids from the Leviathan, inside the cave known as Ice Palace.
"Little Sarah, how nice it is to see you again, and the fact that you made it home alive is something that makes me smile."
"Thank you, Colonel. Tell me, how in the hell did you survive?"
"We will save that for another time, my dear. For the moment, I must ask how it comes to be that the Event Group is in the basement of one of my acquisitions people."
Jack shook his head, really smiling for the first time. "Damn Henri, it is a small world, isn't it? But when I think about it, the illegal antiquities community is so small and tight, this was probably inevitable."
"I'll ask again, Colonel, why are you here, and where is my employee?" Farbeaux took a step forward, his right hand coming free of his pocket.
"Chavez is dead. They found his body washed up under the pier at Huntington Beach this morning." Jack watched for a reaction.
Farbeaux lowered his head in thought and half turned to his men and whispered something. Two of the men spread out so they could cover the group better. Jack heard the ominous clicks of their weapons being removed from their safe positions. Henri Farbeaux then turned to face Collins.
"The murder of my man doesn't sound like you, Colonel Collins; it's not your style," Farbeaux said, taking a step toward Jack.
"No, but it is your style, Henri. What did this Chavez do for you that could get him murdered?"
"That is what I am here to find out. I'll start by asking you once more, why you are here?"
"Henri, we need to know what this man Chavez removed from the Denver Museum of Natural History for you," Sarah asked before Jack could pull her back behind him.
"First, who murdered my man?" Henri asked, focusing his considerable personality on Sarah.
"Two ruthless bastards, Gregori Deonovich and Dmitri Sagli," Sarah said quickly.
Collins half turned and looked at Sarah, making her wish she hadn't said anything.
"The names are not unfamiliar to me. They are a little beneath my standards for
a working relationship, but I have heard of them."
"That I find hard to believe," Collins said, making Farbeaux look up and into his eyes. "Nothing is really beneath your standards, are they, Henri?"
Farbeaux remained quiet for a moment, eyeing Jack, and then turning his attention to the others. He stepped forward and moved between Collins and Punchy Alexander, who was totally confused as to who it was that had them cornered like rats inside the basement. He walked to the far wall and stood in the left-hand corner. He placed his right hand up against an ordinary piece of Sheetrock. When he finally removed his hand, the wall started to slide outward. He watched for a reaction as the Event Group watched the space widen into the walled and excavated entrance.
"Elysian Park was once riddled with dry underground riverbeds. We built this wall when we used to store stolen goods down here. Imagine our surprise when the excavation we were doing opened up into a natural storage facility. I believe this is what you were looking for?"
Farbeaux stepped aside and saw their reaction to the immense wealth of antique Queen Anne and Hawthorne furniture, a veritable art gallery of paintings and even rows upon rows of glass cases filled with stamp, coin, and paper-currency collections. Also there were row upon row of books — thousands of them.
"This is just one of my many storage facilities. All of it awaiting my soon-to-be-realized retirement."
Jack turned and looked at Henri. His smile was genuine, at least until he noticed Collins staring at him.
"No judgments today, Colonel Collins; you of all people will not sit in judgment of me. I would trade all of this and all of the others just like it, for one more day with my wife. So don't give me any indignant looks, not today."
"What are you planning, Henri?" Sarah asked after she had ceased admiring one of Farbeaux's many caches of merchandise. After the question, she saw the eyes of the man and the hate reflected in them as he looked at Jack.
"You have once again placed me in a harsh situation, little Sarah. I cannot let you go, and I cannot allow you to hurt this operation more so than what has already happened."
"Colonel Farbeaux, do you have the Lattimer Papers, or a Russian journal penned by a colonel named Petrov?" Jack asked, once more pulling Sarah to his side.
"Worthless. They were destroyed soon after they were contracted for, on my orders. They were a hoax."
The Frenchman watched as Collins visibly deflated, making him curious as to why it visibly affected the American.
"I will have to ask you to wait inside of the storage room until I can figure out — until I can make a few arrangements. So, please, all of you," Henri gestured for them to step inside of the large room. Sarah kept looking back, unable to believe what Henri may be contemplating. She thought she may have learned something about Farbeaux in the time they had spent imprisoned on Leviathan, but as she watched his eyes, Jack pulled her along. She could see the depth of the coldness that haunted them.
"I am truly sorry, but once more your agency was someplace it should not have been." Farbeaux reached out and placed his hand in the same spot. The door started to pull back into the wall. Jack locked eyes with the French colonel and they met like two thunderheads inside of a small valley.
Sarah bit her lower lip as the wall was only two feet from closing. She suddenly made a decision and pulled free of Jack's grip and quickly squeezed through the wall before the outside world was shut out.
"Damn it!" Collins shouted as the room went dark.
"Is she nuts, Jack?" Punchy Alexander asked.
Collins was quiet as he turned away and leaned against the cool dirt of the expanded cave.
Everett stepped up to Alexander, barely seeing his silhouette in the darkness.
"No, not nuts, but Sarah's just like Jack, and that pisses him off to no end."
* * *
The three men turned with raised weapons as Sarah came bounding out of the hidden room just as the wall slammed home. She saw she was about to be shot and she skidded to a halt on the dirt floor. Farbeaux, who had already started for the wooden staircase, saw what was about to happen.
"No!"
The three men didn't shoot, but kept their weapons trained on her as Sarah looked from the muzzles pointed at her to the Frenchman standing on the bottom step.
"Brave little Sarah, you could have been shot." He stepped down and made the man closest to him lower his weapon. He gestured with his right hand for the others to do the same. "I see you are no better at following orders than you were before."
"Please, Henri, I need to explain why we're here."
"I want no reasoning from you or Colonel Collins. You are in the wrong place at the wrong time, and I have too many valuable items in that room to lose to your Group, or the authorities. I'm sorry. I have other places I need to be at the moment."
Sarah watched as Farbeaux turned his back and started back toward the stairs.
"You know we wouldn't ask for your help if it was for any of us. We need that diary or anything else that may lead to Sagli and Deonovich, we don't care about that damn room or what's in it."
Farbeaux turned and tilted his head in Sarah's direction. He remained silent and she decided he would hear her out.
"It's Jack's sister, his little sister. She's been kidnapped by those two maniacs, for what reason, we don't know."
"I would suspect that Colonel Collins's personality may run in the family and that has led to this young lady's downfall."
Whatever the Frenchman had been going through since she last saw him, Sarah could see that his eyes were still distant, meaning to her that the death of his wife down in the Amazon basin was still not far from the surface.
"We are tracking them and this may be our only shot, Henri. You wouldn't want a young woman to get brutalized by these bastards by withholding something that may help her."
"I noticed you have the head of the Montreal division of CSIS with you. Why is he here?"
"He was with Jack's sister when she was taken." Sarah thought something through very quickly. "How did you know Mr. Alexander was Canadian, and the head of his intelligence division?"
Farbeaux didn't comment, he just started to turn toward the steps again.
"They cut off her finger just to prove to her employers what they are capable of."
"Who is her employer?" he asked without turning back.
"She's agency."
Farbeaux started to laugh, but there was a serious lack of real humor coming from the eerie sound. Even his three men looked at each other with smiles. Henri started up the stairs.
"Place young Sarah back with her friends until I decide how to dispense with this problem." He started up the stairs. "You have been a most helpful friend, Sarah."
"What if it was Danielle that was taken and you needed Jack to help find her?" she blurted out as one of the three men took her by the arm.
Farbeaux only hesitated briefly on the stairs leading up into the house, then he continued on. "Follow my orders and place her in the storage room."
My God, Sarah thought, he's really going to kill us all.
The wall was opened only partially and Sarah was thrown back into the storage room. She fell to the floor and Jack, Everett, and Alexander were there to help her up.
"You go ahead and try something like that again, Lieutenant, and I'll have your ass!" Collins hissed.
"That was very stupid, young lady," Punchy said as he swatted some of the dirt from Sarah.
Everett walked toward the back of the room when he heard Ryan and Mendenhall coming back toward the front.
"Well?" Carl asked, when he saw their darkened outlines.
"Nothing. A solid wall of concrete — it would take dynamite to get through it, and then about three days of digging," Ryan answered.
"How's Sarah?" Mendenhall asked.
"I guess Farbeaux wasn't in the negotiating mood."
Up toward the large sliding wall, Jack took Sarah by the arm and steered her away from the others.
"Well?"
"He's not listening, Jack. He hasn't changed his attitude toward us. He still blames us for Danielle's death."
"You mean me."
"It really doesn't matter; all of us are his problem at the moment."
Collins squeezed her arm and then pulled her to him and looked at her in the darkness. "Thanks for trying anyway, Short Stuff."
"So what are we going to use to defend ourselves when that door opens and those Froggies open fire on us with those automatic weapons?" Mendenhall asked from the rear of the storage room.
"Well, we have a whole bunch of books to throw at them," Everett said.
"Great," Ryan and Will offered at the same time.
* * *
Ten minutes later, the wall fronting the storage room separated. It only traveled four feet before it stopped.
"Colonel Collins, and only Colonel Collins, step through the opening please," Henri said from outside in the basement.
Sarah pulled on Jack's arm and he could see her now that a dim light filtered into the room as she shook her head.
"No, make him come in and get us all, you stay put, Jack," she said, the pleading evident in her words and Collins could tell she was close to crying.
"Listen," he said in a low voice, "Farbeaux's a lot of things, Short Stuff, but I don't think he's capable of cold-blooded murder." He smiled. "At least not here, and not now."
Sarah still tried to pull Jack back as he stepped through the opening.
Jack saw the lighted room beyond and the only man standing there was Henri Farbeaux. Collins stood and watched the Frenchman. His men were nowhere to be seen. Henri just stood in the center of the room waiting with his right hand in his pants pocket.
"Young Sarah should be a defense lawyer, she has quite a talent for lost causes." Farbeaux took a few steps toward Collins. "For whatever good it may do you, Colonel, I will assist in your endeavor to recover your sister. I make no promises, the task will be arduous and difficult, but between myself and a mutual friend of ours, I think I know where it is your Russian friends are going.
"You may tell the others they may come out now, if you accept my offer of help."
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