The Emperor's Revenge

FORTY-NINE

Rain had been pelting the river for an hour and it didn’t show any signs of letting up. The fabric cover kept Juan dry as he piloted the Sea Ray during the monotonous search pattern up and down the river, three hundred yards in one direction and three hundred yards in the other, until they’d exhausted a grid and moved on to the next section. They’d been able to rig up covers for the metal detecting equipment, but Linda and Gretchen had to monitor the displays with only their rain jackets to shield them from the weather. Trono and MacD kept out of the way inside the cabin, playing cards.

The tedious operation had been going on for six hours now without a peep from the sensors. They ate sandwiches as they worked, and the boat had a small head, so there was no need to stop until they ran out of fuel. Their supply would last them until it was dark, at their current slow trolling speed.

The routine left Juan a lot of time alone with his thoughts. Gretchen had said little to him when they’d all met for breakfast to finalize their plans. His bed was empty when his alarm went off that morning.

Juan had set a rule for himself that he’d never get involved with a member of his crew, but Gretchen wasn’t part of the crew. At least, not yet. His comments about her joining the Oregon were serious, but now he wasn’t sure that was a good idea. The spark between them had always been there. It’s just that they’d never acted on it while they were both married.

“Chairman,” Trono called from inside the cabin, “I’ve got Eric on the line. Says it’s urgent.”

“All right,” Juan said. “Take the wheel for me.”

“I thought you’d never ask. It’s been a while since I’ve been powerboat racing.”

“Restrain yourself. Three knots is all we need.”

They switched places. Juan took the mobile phone from him and ducked into the cabin. Raindrops hammered against the roof so loudly that Juan put his finger in his free ear.

“What have you got for me, Stoney?”

“Chairman, Murph and I have made some discoveries you need to know about.”

“On the diary code or the words that Marie Marceau told us?”

“Both. We don’t think Marceau said zings, like you thought. It’s more likely that she said Zingst, which is a town along the Baltic coast — Zingst, Germany.”

That certainly made more sense than anything else Juan had come up with. “What’s the significance?”

“There’s a huge transformer station there. One that feeds all of the power from the largest offshore wind farm in the world to the European electrical grid.”

“That fits with our intel that ShadowFoe was looking into the power system. Do you think they’re targeting that station like the one they did in Frankfurt?”

“It’s possible, especially since we’ve deciphered what Marceau meant by lightning grid.”

“Don’t keep me in suspense,” Juan said.

“When I was doing my Internet search, the Dutch translation of lightning grid popped up. It’s bliksem raster. The reason it came up is that Bliksem Raster is also the name of one of the largest suppliers of industrial-grade electrical equipment to the European Union.”

“Any connection to Antonovich?”

“Just that he owns half of it as part of a joint venture.”

Juan shook his head in amazement.

“It gets better,” Eric continued. “The other half of Bliksem Raster was owned by Lars and Oskar Dijkstra.”

“Why is that important?”

“Because Lars and Oskar are currently dead. Their private jet went down in Gibraltar last week on their way to the auction in Malta. Authorities still have no theory why the plane crashed, but one witness said the wing was glowing red before it caught fire.”

“Sounds like the work of a high-powered laser.”

“That’s what we thought.”

“Wait a minute. I know the Dijkstra name. They own a shipping line, don’t they?”

“You stole my thunder. Guess what shipping line owned the Narwhal.”

Now it was all coming into focus. The Dijkstras must have gone into business with Antonovich and then something went wrong. Perhaps they had learned about the treasure and planned to acquire the Jaffa Column and Napoleon’s Diary out from under him to find it themselves, but Antonovich killed them before they had the chance.

“What’s the connection between Bliksem Raster and the transformer station in Zingst?” Juan asked. “Why would Marceau think those two pieces of information were important enough to tell us while she was dying?”

“We’re still working on that one. Now Murph wants to talk to you.”

Juan heard the phone shuffling and then Murph spoke.

“Chairman, I just got done with my analysis of the column. I wanted to make sure I had it right before I sent you on a wild-goose chase.”

Juan frowned. “What do you mean?”

“I was able to reconstruct the etchings on the part of the Jaffa Column that was damaged and compare it to the notes in the diary. It took a bit of massaging, but I think I teased out the location of the treasure.”

“You’ve got an exact spot on the river where we should look?”

“Not exactly. I don’t think it’s in the river at all.”

“What are you talking about? The diary pages were clear.”

“I think they were forged. Impressive job, if you ask me,” Murph said.

“How do you know?”

“Because of what I found in the part of the diary we have. See, ShadowFoe must have known we’d be able to narrow down the location of the treasure to Vilnius, so they couldn’t just direct us to somewhere in, I don’t know, Belarus. They had to make the location of the treasure believable but not where it really is. So they came up with this alternative.”

“Then where is the treasure?”

“The code in the diary comes down to a fairly simple cipher that refers to specific letters in the diary itself. Then we transferred those letters to Greek inscriptions on the column, which referred to corresponding Latin characters underneath them. The damage obliterated some of the markings, but the ones that remained helped me partially spell out a particular location.”

“Which is?” Juan asked impatiently.

“I’m texting it to you now.”

Moments later, the phone dinged with the message.

“It’s the best I could do. I think it’s supposed to spell out ‘Catacombes Cathédrale Vilnius.’ The Vilnius Cathedral is in the center of the city, practically right next to the Neris River, and there’s extensive catacombs underneath it.”

Juan grimaced at being deceived. Marceau was just a pawn. She was killed simply as a diversion, to make him believe the information that had been planted on her phone. And he had been manipulated into wasting his time looking in the wrong place.

“We’re on our way there,” Juan said, then yelled up to Trono, “Mike! You’re going to test your power racing skills after all.”

“Really?” Trono called back with glee.

“I want to be in Vilnius as soon as you can get us there. Gun it.”