The Emperor's Revenge

FORTY-SIX

After disabling the location feature on Marie Marceau’s phone and ensuring that it was not equipped with any kind of tracking device, Juan and the others went back to the Oregon to see if there was any actionable intelligence on it. Within an hour of handing Marceau’s phone over to Eric and Murph, the two computer experts called a meeting to report their findings.

The Oregon’s senior staff assembled in the conference room along with Gretchen. Maurice unobtrusively set out a spread of smoked duck, Brie and Camembert cheeses, and French bread for them to eat while they talked. Juan didn’t realize how hungry he was until he took his first bite. He and the others munched happily while Eric began the talk.

“As you suspected, Marie Marceau has been working with ShadowFoe for quite a while. We’ve found emails on her phone dating back six months.”

Murph shook his head in disappointment. “A crying shame. And I was planning to ask her out, too. Eventually.”

“Sure you were,” Eric teased. “Of course, you would have been dating the accomplice of a murderer.”

“So procrastination worked for me yet again.”

“Anyway,” Eric continued, “there was enough incriminating evidence in those emails to send her away for life, if she had lived.”

“She even had a cool hacker alias,” Murph said. “MasqueBleu, or Blue Mask. She was flaunting her double life, as a police employee and as a criminal, while keeping it hidden. Almost worked until she tried to get the two of you shot and took the bullet instead.”

“Did you find anything about zings or lightning grid?” Juan asked.

Eric shook his head. “We did a cursory search for both, but nothing jumped out. We’ll keep working on it.”

“Make sure you include Germany in your search terms,” Gretchen said. “I got the impression that whatever they’re planning will happen in Germany somewhere.”

“Could be,” Murph said. “The attack on that Frankfurt power station already gives us a link to Deutschland. We’ll look into it.”

“Marceau also mentioned something about a formula,” Juan recalled. “She said, ‘The formula is in the treasure. Polichev. It’s the code.’ Did you find anything related to those terms?”

Eric shook his head again. “Nothing.”

“Why would a formula be in the treasure?” Max asked.

“We probably won’t know until we find it,” Murph said. “And we have no clue who Polichev is or was. But we do know that it’s a Russian surname, so it could be linked somehow to the treasure Napoleon took from Moscow.”

“Okay,” Juan said. “Keep searching.”

“Chairman,” Eric said, “we did find one email that I think you’ll find interesting. It was sent from Marceau to ShadowFoe two weeks before the bank heist.”

“Is it about how to get into the bank’s system?” They knew ShadowFoe’s offer to return their money had been a ruse, but Juan still wanted it back.

“Unfortunately, no. But, fortunately, it is about where the treasure can be found.”

Juan chewed on a piece of bread slathered with Brie. “You’re right. I’m interested.”

Murph turned on the large display screen at the end of the table and linked it to his laptop. “It seems that our cute computer traitor was doing some extracurricular work for ShadowFoe. The original email from ShadowFoe asked Marceau to use the Monaco Sûreté’s forensic lab to analyze the writing on both sides of the three missing pages from Napoleon’s Diary. Even though a university lab would have better equipment, they didn’t want to risk using one.”

Eric jumped in. “Apparently, the pages had been stored poorly and faded quite a bit in the two hundred years since Napoleon’s death. They’d also suffered some damage and tearing, so the emperor’s handwritten margin notes were illegible to the naked eye.”

“Go ahead, Murph,” Juan said. “I can see you’re dying to get to the kicker.”

Murph rubbed his hands together in glee. “I give you the missing diary pages.” He punched a key on his laptop and six book pages appeared on the display. They were frayed and worm-eaten, but Juan recognized them as having the same typography as the copy of The Odyssey he and Gretchen had taken from Malta.

Juan leaned forward. “Are we sure these are authentic?”

“One hundred percent,” Eric said. “The torn edges match up precisely with the missing pages in the diary. Marceau must have used their lab equipment to enhance the images artificially.”

“So Antonovich had the pages all along,” Gretchen said.

“Which is why he needed the diary,” Murph said. “These pages tell where the treasure is, but they’re incomplete.”

“You see those missing spots?” Eric said, pointing at the parts that had been chewed away over the years by pests. “They included some of the details that would help us find it. But it does confirm there is a treasure to be found.”

“Do the notes tell us anything about the location?” Max asked.

“Yes,” Gretchen said, getting to her feet. She traced one of Napoleon’s notes with her finger and translated the French. “Here it talks about a river that they followed on the retreat from Moscow. It’s called the Neris.”

Linda looked at Juan with a grin. “You called it, Chairman. They dumped the treasure in a river.”

“Where’s the Neris?” Juan asked.

“In Lithuania,” Eric said. “It fits the path that Napoleon took, back out of Russia.”

Max frowned. “Did he get any more specific than a whole river?”

Gretchen went to another page. “It says here that they unloaded it somewhere between Vilnius and Grigiškės.”

“That does seem to narrow it down,” Juan said. “Stoney, show us the river.”

Eric put the map up on the screen. Grigiškės was practically a suburb of Lithuania’s capital, Vilnius. The town was only five miles from Vilnius’s city center, but the winding river’s route doubled the distance.

“How long would it take us to search ten miles of river using a metal detector?” Juan asked.

Murph’s eyes jittered as he did the calculation in his head. “Maybe only three or four days, but it depends how much mud and silt has covered the objects in the last two hundred years.”

“Whatever Antonovich has planned,” Juan said, “it’s going down soon, so we need to get moving. Linda, tell Tiny to get the plane ready to take us to Lithuania. We need to begin the search as soon as we can. Linda, Gretchen, Trono, MacD, and I will go. Eric and Murph will stay here and continue working on the diary and column clues to see if they can narrow down the search grid.”

“We’ll also keep nosing around with those other items that Marceau mentioned before she died,” Eric said. “Polichev, zings, and lightning grid.”

Murph said, “They sound like an antidepressant, a Hostess snack, and a game show round.”

“Whatever they are,” Juan said, “I want to know why Marceau thought they were important enough to use her dying breath to get them out. In the meantime, Max, I want you to take the Oregon up to Hamburg. My gut tells me that the Achilles is part of the plan — as is something in Germany, according to Marceau — and I want to be ready to intercept that yacht if we need to.”

“And if we meet her again,” Max said, “how do we defeat them?”

Juan paused as all eyes were on him. “I’m working on that.”

“One more thing, Chairman,” Linda said. “We’re going to require a boat and scanning equipment in Lithuania. I’ll have to find a supplier. It may take a while to procure exactly what we need.”

“We may be able to get NUMA’s help on that one,” Juan said as he gave a knowing look to Gretchen. “Kurt Austin and I owe each other a favor.”