She heard a clasp being undone and then an aluminum hoop being sprung open and lifted off the lip of her barrel. Hands popped the top off and then lifted the layer of loose towels on top of her. Remi stood up.
She recognized the two large women from the airport. They both wore coveralls now instead of the loose work dresses and their hair was pulled back and knotted. Behind them were two men. They might have been the ones driving the getaway truck and possibly helped lift the barrel on and off vehicles. But now one of them held a short, nasty-looking Stechkin APS machine pistol like those made for Spetsnaz units of the old Soviet army. She knew they were still used by police because they fired cheap, readily available ammunition and had low recoil. She could see these two were fitted with silencers. They hadn’t been manufactured with tournament accuracy, but, at six hundred rounds a minute, they could certainly hit a girl in a cardboard barrel.
There were two other men in blue jeans and windbreakers. They both carried short-barreled Czech Škorpion machine pistols. A few feet beyond all of these men was another man, this one wearing a light gray tailored suit that fit him perfectly. He was clearly the man to watch. He nodded and smiled at the four people in coveralls, then said something in Russian to the whole group. They moved quickly, first to help Remi out of the barrel and off the truck, then to put a pair of plastic restraints around her wrists to bind her hands behind her.
The man in the suit maintained a cheerful smile through these proceedings and an easy manner that belied the military obedience and discipline of his underlings. He looked to Remi like a prerevolutionary aristocratic gentleman spending the summer on his country estate. He wore a crisp white shirt and a blue silk tie, and, while she watched, he lit a cigarette and turned his attention to her. “You looked like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus being lifted out of your scallop shell, Mrs. Fargo.”
He waited a moment, then said, “You’re not speaking to me?”
“I don’t want to prompt you to say anything that will make you think you have to kill me.”
He nodded. “Very wise, in general. But kidnapping in Russia is about the same as it is in the United States—if I’m caught, I’m dead. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You will be treated well and respectfully, but locked in your room. Every day someone will come, have you hold up that day’s newspaper, and take your picture. We will be in touch with your husband. When he meets my demands, you will be freed.”
“What are your demands?”
“Ah,” he said. “So you are interested.”
“Of course I am.”
“I know about the search for Attila the Hun’s five treasures. You and your husband found the one near Mantua, Italy. You stole the one at Châlons-en-Champagne, France. You got Arpad Bako arrested for finding Bleda’s tomb goods. You stole the treasure buried along the Danube. You were on your way to find the final treasure when I stopped you.” He watched her. “Aren’t you going to deny any of this?”
“Would you believe me?”
“So you and your husband now have control of at least three very large hoards of ancient riches—ones from Italy, France, and Hungary. All came after prolonged campaigns of conquest and looting by the Huns. I’ve been told that each of them had to be moved by trucks.” He was studying her reactions closely. “I believe your husband will trade those three treasures for you. It’s a simple exchange.”
“We don’t have possession of any treasures now,” she said. “We have made finds before. You can look them up. We always follow the international treaties and the national laws of the countries where we find things. Most of the time, the rules prohibit exporting any archaeological treasures from the country. In instances where the governments approve sale of any artifacts, we donate our percentages to our foundations. We don’t keep any of it. The three finds that you mentioned have all been taken into custody by the Italian, French, and Hungarian governments. It could be years before we know what the disposition of the artifacts will be.”
“Then your husband will have to enlist officials in those governments to help him, I suppose.” He smiled. “This is an interesting chance for you both to see how much gratitude your generosity to governments over the years has bought you.”
“What happens when my husband can’t give you all those precious bits of those countries’ histories? Are you going to kill me?”
“Am I? Of course not. I have people who do that kind of work for me. And I can tell you, I’m not a lunatic or a fool. If your husband delivers enough of these hoards so I know he’s sincerely done his best, I’ll release you.”
Remi said, “You don’t strike me as a man who cares about museum pieces. What about asking my husband for a simple ransom instead? He would certainly pay a million dollars for me.” She saw his look of derision. “Say five million, then. And it would be so much less trouble and risk for you. He could transfer the money into your account electronically and you could transfer it instantly to another account in a country that won’t allow it to be traced. No trucks, no border searches, no risk, no selling stolen antiquities for a hundredth of their value.”
“Thank you, but I’ve heard enough,” the man said. “My friends will show you to your quarters. Regardless of how things go, you and I probably won’t see each other again. But I’ll be hoping for your husband to come through for you.” He turned and walked away. She could see he was heading toward a large garden a few hundred feet from a large mansion.
One of the men with the Škorpion machine pistols led the way. The two women guided Remi by the arms, and the other men walked a few paces behind, their Stechkin pistols ready. They took her through the opulent house, which looked as though it had been built between 1850 and 1870. There were old, dark paintings on the walls—some dramatic, stormy seascapes, some battles, and portraits of bearded men and bejeweled women.
The furniture was graceful and most certainly French, with silk upholstery and highly polished wood. They entered a large kitchen, then passed a butler’s pantry. She assumed they were conducting her to a dungeon-like basement, but instead they led her, single file, up a set of narrow back stairs past several landings to the top, fourth floor. This was a route that had been designed and built for servants and led to a hallway of tiny rooms that had probably housed chambermaids and kitchen help.
They led her to a room halfway down the hall and to the right that had no windows, only a big, thick wooden door. In the room there was a single bed, a table and chair, a small dresser. There was a second door that led into a bathroom. From her experience of old houses, Remi suspected that the windowless bedroom had been for an upper-level servant and the bathroom had been the room of another servant. The remodeling had produced a comparatively comfortable cell with no means of entrance or exit, and no way to know if it was day or night.
The two women backed Remi up against a bare wall, lifted a Russian-language newspaper off the dresser and put it in her hands, and then one of the men took her picture. After they checked to be sure the picture was clear, they all left.
Remi listened as the door closed. It was solid, not hollow. She heard the key turning in the lock but no snap of a dead bolt. Good news.
Remi sat on the bed. She knew that the thing she was entitled to do now was to cry, but she refused. The right thing to do was to search the suite for any surveillance equipment—pinhole cameras, peepholes, any place where a camera might be hidden. There were none. Next she began her examination of the furnishings, especially the bed and the plumbing, for pieces of metal she might remove and use as tools.
These people had no idea, she thought. That man, that character out of the Romanov era, thought of her and Sam as victims, people he could simply rob or hold for ransom or kill as he wished. But since the Fargos’ business had become successful over ten years ago, they had become potential kidnapping targets. They had known it was possible that at some point either one of them might be
taken and had planned their response carefully, agreed on every move each of them would make as soon as they were separated. The prisoner would never stop learning about the place and the captors, always preparing to signal his or her location when the time came, and to facilitate a rescue. And the one outside—Sam this time—would simply never stop looking. If no break ever came their way, he would still be searching, a year from now or twenty years from now.
Sam would never give up, never let a lead go uninvestigated, never let a day pass without progress. She thought about Sam and tears welled up. Right about now he would be appearing to let the Moscow authorities handle the problem but would actually be quietly, relentlessly pressuring the U.S. authorities to help him.
MOSCOW
SAM SAT PATIENTLY IN THE U.S. CONSULATE’S WAITING room, not pacing or drumming his fingers or showing irritation. In the glaring evening sunlight, the room looked like a waiting room in a Midwestern doctor’s office with leather easy chairs, a couch, and a lot of magazines on a table, even though the consulate on Bolshoy Deviatinsky Pereulok was an aggressively modern and efficient-looking eight-floor box.
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 package 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.”