Spartan Gold - Clive Cussler

Why Pelletier/Arienne had chosen to reveal the secret on his deathbed neither Sam nor Remi knew, but it seemed clear that he, Laurent, and Napoleon were the only ones who’d known about the Siphnian Karyatids. Nor would they probably ever know how the three men had found the columns in the first place.

Selma’s completed translation of Laurent’s diary/codebook had solved two smaller riddles: Ten months after he and Arienne picked up the wine from St. Helena, having spent nearly a year secreting bottles around the world, they received word Napoleon had died. Heartbroken, but already enroute to Marseille, Laurent hid three bottles at Château d’If before returning to port. Of the other bottles, he’d said nothing.

As to why Napoleon’s son, Napoleon II, never took up the quest his father had devised for him, this too was a source of despair for Laurent. From the time he returned to France with Arienne to his death in 1825, Laurent wrote Napoleon II dozens of letters begging him to obey his father’s wishes, but Napoleon II refused, stating he saw no reason to leave the comforts of the Austrian royal court for a ‘childish game of hide-and-go-seek.’ ”

Sergeant Léon Arienne Pelletier, it turned out, had one living descendant, a distant cousin named Louisa Foque. She was twenty-one and deep in debt after her parents had died in a car crash a year earlier and left her a thrice-mortgaged Beaucourt farmhouse.

“How do you think she’ll take it?” Remi asked.

“Let’s find out. One way or another her life is about to change.”

They climbed out of the car and walked up the path to the front door. Remi pulled a leather cord and a bell tinkled. A few moments later the door opened to reveal a petite woman with light brown hair and a button nose.

“Oui?” she said.

“Bonjour. Louisa Foque?”

“Oui.”

Remi introduced herself and Sam then asked if Louisa spoke English.

“Yes, I speak English.”

“May we come in? We have some information about your family—about Léon Pelletier. Do you know the name?”

“I think so. My father showed me our genealogy once. Please come in.”

Inside they found a kitchen done in quintessential French Provincial: yellow plaster walls, a lacquered oak dining table, and a sage green sideboard displaying a few pieces of Chinoiserie pottery. Cheerful orange-checkered toile curtains framed the windows.

Louisa made tea and they sat down at the table. Remi said, “Your English is very good.”

“I was studying American literature at Amiens. I had to quit. There was a . . . I had some family problems.”

“We know,” Sam replied. “We’re very sorry.”

Louisa nodded, forced a smile. “You said you have some information about my family.”

Taking turns, Sam and Remi outlined their theory about Pelletier, the Lost Cellar, and their connection to the Siphnian Karyatids. Remi pulled a half dozen newspaper clippings from her purse and slid them across the table to Louisa, who scanned the articles.

“I read about this,” she said. “You were involved?”

Sam nodded.

“I can’t believe it. I had no idea. My mother and father never said anything.”

“I’m sure they didn’t know. Aside from Napoleon and Laurent, Pelletier was the only other person, and he kept the secret up until his death. Even then he didn’t tell the whole story.”

“No one believed him.”

“Almost no one,” Remi said with a smile.

Louisa was silent for half a minute, then shook her head in wonderment. “Well, thank you for telling me. It’s nice to know someone in our family did something important. A little strange, but important still.”

Sam and Remi exchanged a glance. “I don’t think we’ve made ourselves clear,” Sam said. “There are some bottles still unaccounted for.”

Louisa blinked at them. “And you think . . . Here?”

Sam pulled out his iPhone and pulled up a picture of a cicada. “Have you ever seen this anywhere?”

In response Louisa got up and walked to the pot rack hanging above the sink. She pulled down a sauté pan and set it on the table before Sam. The handle was a thumb-sized steel rod. Set into its end was a cicada stamp. It was identical to the one they’d found in Laurent’s crypt.

“My father found that in the attic a few years ago,” Louisa said. “He didn’t know what it was for so he used it to fix the pan.”

Remi asked, “Do you have a basement?”

While their research into Sergeant Pelletier had uncovered a number of surprises, it had also challenged one of their basic assumptions: that Laurent alone had placed the bottles in their hiding spots.

Having spent so much time consumed by the chase they’d begun to think like Laurent and Pelletier, and so it took them only fifteen minutes to find what they’d come for.

In the northwest corner of the basement beneath a wall next to the root cellar they found a block bearing the cicada stamp. As usual, Sam did the prying, Remi the probing. Louisa stood behind them with a flashlight.

Remi slid her hand out of the hole and got to her knees. “Seven,” she said.

“Oh, my Lord . . . ” Louisa breathed. Remi scooted aside so the girl could kneel down and look for herself. “How long have they been there?”

“A hundred and ninety years, give or take,” Sam replied.

“What happens now?”

Remi smiled. “Louisa, you’re rich. You pay off the farm, go back to school, and live happily ever after.”

Hand in hand Sam and Remi walked out the front door to their car. “We got eleven bottles out of twelve,” Remi said. “Not bad.”

“Better than not bad. Think about it: Those bottles survived a trip around the world, the fall of Napoleon, and two world wars. I’d call that miraculous.”

“Good point. I have to say, I feel a little let down.”

“About?”

“The end of the adventure,” Remi said wistfully.

“The end? Not on your life. Patty Cannon’s treasure is still out there, and we’ve got most of the Pocomoke Swamp left to search.”

Remi laughed. “And after that?”

“After that, we pick a spot on the map and go.”