Spartan Gold

by Clive Cussler

“Not at all. We join forces and split the proceeds, eighty-twenty.”

  “We don’t even know what we’re after,” Sam said.

  “Something of great value—both historically and monetarily.”

  “And which of those interests Bondaruk most?” Remi asked.

  “That’s his business.”

  Sam and Remi had no illusions. Her prediction of Bondaruk’s and Kholkov’s plans for them was dead-on. Whatever Bondaruk’s true motives and whatever the prize, there was no way they were going to let it fall into the Ukrainian’s hands.

  Kholkov added, “Let’s just say the items involve a family legacy. He’s simply trying to finish what was begun a long time ago. If you were to help bring that about, he’d be properly grateful.”

  “No deal,” Sam said.

  Remi added, “And you pass along a message for us: Nuts.”

  “You should reconsider,” Kholkov said. “Have a look around.”

  Sam and Remi did so. Standing on the far side of the patio were three of Kholkov’s men—all familiar faces from the Rum Cay cave.

  “The gang’s all here,” Sam said.

  “No, they’re not. I have more. Wherever you go, we’ll be there. One way or another, we’ll get what we want. What you need to decide is whether you wish to live through this.”

  “We’ll manage,” Remi said.

  Kholkov shrugged. “Your choice. I don’t suppose you’re stupid enough to have brought the codebook along with you, are you?”

  “No,” Sam replied. “And we’re not stupid enough to have left it at the hotel, either, but you’re welcome to have a look around.”

  “We already did. I assume it’s already in Mrs. Wondrash’s hands.”

  “Either that or it’s in a safe-deposit box,” Remi said.

  “No, I don’t think so. I think you have your people trying to decode it right now. Perhaps we’ll pay them a visit. I’ve heard San Diego is beautiful this time of year.”

  “Good luck with that,” Sam said lightly, fighting to keep his face impassive.

  “You’re talking about your security system?” Kholkov waved his hand dismissively. “That won’t be any trouble.”

  “Clearly you’re not familiar with my résumé,” Sam said.

  Kholkov hesitated. “Ah, yes, an engineer. Tinkered with the alarm system, have you?”

  Remi added, “And even if you get past that, who knows what you’ll find once you’re inside? You said it yourself: We’re not stupid.”

  Kholkov’s brows furrowed, a flicker of uncertainty, but it was gone in a second. “We’ll see. Last chance, Mr. and Mrs. Fargo. After this, the gloves come off.”

  “You have our answer,” Sam replied.

  CHAPTER 30

  CHTEAU D’IF

  A drizzle had begun to fall shortly before they left the hotel and now, as midnight approached, it had given way to a steady rain that pattered through the trees and gurgled down the rain gutters. The streets glistened under the hazy yellow glow of the streetlights. Here and there late-night pedestrians hurried down the sidewalks under umbrellas or folded newspaper or waited in clusters beneath bus shelters.

  In the alley across from their hotel, Sam and Remi stood in the shadows and watched the lobby doors.

  Down the block a gray Citroën Xsara sat at the curb, a pair of figures just visible in the dimmed interior. Earlier from the window of their hotel room Remi had gotten a look at the driver’s face: he’d been with Kholkov at the Malmousque café. Whether there were more watchers around they couldn’t tell, but they knew it was best to assume so.

  After parting company with Kholkov at the café earlier that afternoon, they’d roamed the Malmousque, shopping and taking in the sights for a few hours. They saw neither Kholkov nor his men until they started back to the hotel, when two men on motorcycles fell in behind their taxi.

  Despite their nonplussed reaction to Kholkov’s threats, Sam and Remi had taken them seriously. Fearing their room was bugged, they found a quiet corner in the mostly deserted hotel bar and called Rube Haywood on the Iridium; he wasn’t at CIA headquarters in Langley, but they reached him at home.

  Sam put him on speakerphone and quickly explained the situation and their worries.

  Rube said, “I know a guy in Long Beach—used to work for the Diplomatic Security Service. He runs his own shop now. Want me to have him send a couple guys to the house?”

  “We’d be grateful.”

  “Give me ten minutes.” He called back in five: “Done. They’ll be there in two hours. Tell Selma they’ll have IDs—Kozal Security Group. They’ll ask for Mrs. French.”

  “Got it.”

  “Don’t you think it’s time to call it a day?” Rube asked. “You’ve seen how far these guys will go. Nothing’s worth this.”

  “We don’t even know what it is,” Remi said.

  “You get my point. I’m worried about you two.”

  “We appreciate that, Rube, but we’re going to see this through.”

  Haywood sighed. “At least let me help you.”

  “What did you have in mind?” asked Sam.

  “I’ve taken a second look at Kholkov. A few years ago he was in Chechnya; we think he was playing middleman for a black-market AK-47 dealer. Wouldn’t take much to get his name slipped onto the Terrorist Watch List. A couple calls and I could put him on the radar of the DCPJ,” he said, referring to the Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire, or Central Directorate Judicial Police, France’s version of the FBI. “There’s nothing they could arrest him on, but they might be able to detain him and his buddies for a while.”

  “Do it. Any breathing room you can buy us will help.”

  “The question is whether they’ll be able to find him. Given his background, he’s not going to make it easy for them.”

  Three hours later Rube had called back: The DCPJ had put out a bulletin for Kholkov, but he wouldn’t know anything more for a few hours, if then. The French, Rube told them, were cagey about sharing information.

  “I don’t suppose you know a French version of Guido the Shoe maker-slash-Arms Dealer?”

  “Sam, the French are rabid about their gun laws; you don’t want to get caught with an unregistered one. But, I do know a guy named Maurice. . . .”

  He gave Sam the phone number and they hung up.

  Now Remi pulled up her jacket collar against the chill and huddled closer to Sam beneath the umbrella. “I don’t see anyone else.”

  “Me neither. Shall we?”

  With one last look around they stepped from the alley and started down the sidewalk.

  Using the rudimentary tradecraft skills Sam had picked up at Camp Perry, they strolled the streets north of the harbor for an hour, doubling back on their path, stepping abruptly into cafés and then out the back door, and generally watching for any signs of pursuit. Satisfied they were alone, they hailed a cab and directed the driver to take them to Rue Loge on the Vieux Port.

  As promised by the rental company’s manager, at a slip in the northwest corner of the harbor they found waiting for them a gray eighteen-foot Mistral. Though essentially a motor whaleboat with a glassed-in pilothouse barely bigger than a phone booth, it was wide-beamed and sported a reliable and quiet Lombardi engine. It would, they hoped, serve their purposes.

  Using the key the manager had messengered over, Sam undid the padlocked hawser and the lines while Remi started the engine. He jumped aboard and she throttled up, pointing the bow toward the mouth of the harbor.

  Ten minutes later the breakwater appeared off the bow. Astern the lights of Marseille, hazy in the rain, reflected off the rippled surface of the water. Working to keep up with the droplets streaming down the pilothouse windscreen, the single windshield wiper thumped softly.

  Beside Remi at the wheel, Sam said, “I’ve been thinking about what Kholkov said.” He saw her expression and quickly said, “Not about his offer—about what Bondaruk’s interest is in whatever-it-is. He said it was a legacy. We know he’s deadly
serious about it, so maybe the answer’s in his family history.”

  “Good point,” Remi said, taking a buoy down the Mistral’s port side. “We’ll turn Selma loose on it. You’re not, are you—having second thoughts, I mean?”

  “Only as far as you’re concerned.”

  Remi smiled in the darkness, her face dimly lit by the helm console’s green lighting. “We’ve been through worse.”

  “Such as?”

  “Well, for starters there was that time in Senegal when you insulted that shaman—”

  “Forget I asked.”

  Thirty minutes later Île d’If appeared, a white lump rising from the dark ocean a half mile off the bow. The château had closed at five thirty and aside from a lone navigation beacon pulsing red against the night sky, the island was completely dark.

  “Doesn’t look as welcoming at night, does it?” Remi asked.

  “Not even close.”

  In preparation for their after-hours tour, they’d used Google Earth to scrutinize the island for hidden mooring spots that would shield them from not only Kholkov, should he and his men happen to follow, but also the Marseille harbor patrol. They’d found a promising spot on the island’s seaward side.

  Now Remi eased the Mistral to port. They spent a half hour circumnavigating the island, looking for other boats or signs of life. Seeing nothing, they came about and proceeded along the northern shoreline. Ahead, the château’s westernmost turret, the largest of the three, came into view above the battlement. Remi steered into the cove below it, throttled down, and let the Mistral glide to a stop at the base of the wall. Aside from a rain-churned surface, the water was flat calm here. Sam dropped anchor and used the boat hook to pull the Mistral closer to the rocks. Remi jumped over and followed, stern line in hand. He jammed the line beneath a basketball-sized rock.

  Hand in hand they picked their way along the wall, hopping from rain-slick boulder to rain-slick boulder until they reached a particularly tall one they’d spotted on the satellite shots. Sam climbed atop it, positioned himself below a notch in the battlements used by archers, then leaped up and grabbed the wall’s inner ledge. He chinned himself up and crawled atop the wall, then he helped Remi up and down the other side. He hopped down beside her.

  “Thank God for bad architecture,” he said.

  If not for the fort’s backward-facing fortifications, they would have needed an extension ladder to accomplish what they’d just done.

  “Don’t see anyone,” Remi said. “You?”

  Sam shook his head. In their research they’d found no mention of the island employing after-hours guards, but to be safe, they would proceed as if there were.

  With Remi in the lead, they crept forward along the curved wall of the turret to where it met the straight western wall and followed this to the end. Beside them, the stone, having been warmed by the sun all day then soaked by the rain, smelled like chalk. Remi peeked around the corner.

  “Clear,” she whispered.

  In Sam’s pocket, the Iridium vibrated. He pulled it out and answered, keeping his voice a whisper. It was Rube: “Bad news, Sam. The DCPJ can’t find Kholkov or his buddies. They know he entered the country on his own passport, but none of the hotels or rental car agencies have any record of him.”

  “Switched to a false passport,” Sam guessed.

  “Probably so. Bottom line, he’s still out there. Be careful.”

  “Thanks, Rube. We’ll be in touch.”

  Sam hung up and gave Remi the news. “We’re not any worse off than we were before. Shall we?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They continued along the southern wall and around the next turret to the château’s side entrance, an arched breezeway that led into the courtyard.

  “Freeze,” Sam whispered. “Very slowly, crouch down.” Together they dropped to their knees.

  “What?” Remi whispered.

  “Directly ahead of us.”

  A hundred yards away across the plaza stood two red-roofed outbuildings. The left-hand one, shaped like a truncated J, abutted the wall along the island’s northern shoreline. Under the eaves they could see four windows, black rectangles in the gloom. They waited, staying perfectly still for a minute, and then two. After three minutes, Remi whispered, “You saw something?”

  “I thought so. Guess I was wrong. Come on.”

  “Stop,” she rasped. “You weren’t wrong. There, at the far corner.”

  Sam looked where Remi had indicated. It took a moment for his eyes to pick it out, but there was no mistake. Barely visible in the darkness was the white oval of a man’s face.

  CHAPTER 31

  They watched the face for a full minute; the man was all but a statue, occasionally rotating his head to scan behind and to the sides, but otherwise still.

  “A guard?” Remi ventured.

  “Maybe. But would a lazy guard trying to stay out of the rain stand that still? He’d be shifting or smoking or fidgeting.” Moving with exaggerated slowness, Sam reached inside his rain jacket and pulled out a Nikon monocular. He aimed it toward the outbuilding and focused on the man’s face. “Doesn’t look like any of Kholkov’s men we’ve seen.”

  “If it is them, how did they get here? We didn’t see any boats.”

  “They’re trained commandos, Remi. Skulking is what they do.”

  Sam scanned the grounds, taking his time, looking into shadows and darkened doorways, but seeing no one else. “Great Christmas present idea,” Sam said. “A night-vision monocular.”

  “My pleasure.”

  “I don’t see anyone else. Wait . . .”

  The man under the eaves moved now, turning again to look over his shoulder. On the sleeve of his jacket was a patch, and on his belt a flashlight and key ring.

  “I’m happy to report I’m wrong,” Sam murmured. “It’s a guard. Still, it would probably be best if we didn’t get caught sneaking about a French national monument in the dead of night.”

  “True.”

  “When I say go, slowly move into the tunnel and stop about halfway. Don’t go into the courtyard. And be ready to freeze.”

  “Right.”

  Sam watched the guard through the monocular until he looked away again. “Go.”

  Hunched over, Remi hurried into the corner, then along the wall and into the arch. Sam kept watching. It took another two minutes, but finally the man moved again and Sam was able to join Remi.

  “My heart’s pounding,” she admitted.

  “The joy of adrenaline.”

  They took a moment to catch their breath, then crept down the tunnel to the mouth of the courtyard, stopping just short of a two-inch-high step.

  To the left of the door was a short wall and a wooden bench. To the right, a set of stone steps bordered by a wrought-iron handrail rose alongside the courtyard’s inner wall then turned left and ascended to a turret, where it branched off into a walkway that wrapped around the courtyard. Sam and Remi scanned the walkway, pausing on each rectangular door or window, looking for movement. They saw nothing.

  They scooted forward, gave the courtyard and walkway one more look, and were preparing to move when Sam saw, set back in the shadows, another archway beneath the steps.

  Nothing moved. Aside from the pattering rain, all was quiet.

  Eyes scanning the courtyard, Sam leaned in and whispered in Remi’s ear, “When I say go, head straight up the steps and into the turret. I’ll be right—”

  Behind them a beam of light filled the tunnel.

  “Remi, go!”

  Like a sprinter coming off the blocks, Remi dashed out and started up the steps, taking them two at a time. Sam dropped to his belly and went still. The flashlight panned through the tunnel, then back out again, then went dark. Sam crawled over the step into the courtyard, then rose to his feet and joined Remi in the turret.

  “Did he see us?”

  “We’ll know shortly.”

  They waited for a minute, then two, half-expecting to see
the guard walk through the arch, but he didn’t appear.

  Sam looked around the darkened interior of the turret. “Are we in the right one?”

  The brochure map had identified several entrances to the oubliette level, one of which was in this turret. “Yes, the next landing down, I think,” Remi said, nodding at the spiral steps; another set led upward to the battlements.

  They started down the steps, Remi in the lead. On the next landing they found a wooden trapdoor in the floor, secured to the stone lip by a padlocked latch. From his waistband Sam pulled a miniature crowbar. Given the predominantly stone construction of the château and recalling Müller’s words about his brother finding the bottles “tucked away in a cranny,” they’d guessed the tool would come in handy.

  While the padlock looked new, the latch itself was anything but, having turned black and flaky by years of exposure to the salt air. Remi pointed her LED microlight at the latch, but Sam stopped her from turning it on. “Let’s wait until we’re out of sight.”

  It took thirty seconds of gentle work with the crowbar’s tip to wriggle the latch free of the wood. Sam lifted the hatch, revealing a wooden ladder dropping into a dark shaft.

  “Better let me test it,” Remi said.

  She sat down, slid her legs into the hole, and started downward. Ten seconds later she whispered up, “Okay. It’s about twelve feet. Go easy. It’s bolted into the stone, but the whole thing looks as old as the latch.”

  Sam climbed in, ducked down on the second rung, and shut the hatch behind him, leaving a gap wide enough for his fingers, which he used to flip the latch back into place; with luck, a passing guard wouldn’t notice the tampering.

  In complete darkness and working by feel alone, Sam started downward. The ladder creaked and shifted, the bolts rasping inside their stone holes. He froze. He held his breath for a ten count, then began moving again.

  With a splintering crack, the rung parted beneath his lowermost foot. He lurched downward. He clamped his hands on the uprights, arresting his fall, but the sudden shift of his weight was too much for the ladder, which twisted sideways. With a shriek and a pop, the bolts gave way and Sam felt himself falling. He braced himself just before impact, slamming into the stone floor back first.