Spartan Gold - Clive Cussler

“No,” Remi replied. “And this doesn’t mean anything to you, Ted?”

“No, I already told you.”

“No strange phone calls or e-mails about it? No one showed any curiosity?”

Frobisher groaned. “No, no, and no. When can I go home? I’m tired.”

Sam said, “Ted, I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“What? Why?”

“He knows where you live—”

“Ah, he was just some nut. Probably high on something. It’s just a piece of wine bottle, for God’s sake, and he has it. It’s over.”

I doubt it, Sam thought. And neither did he think the man was a nut or a druggie. For whatever reason, someone felt this punt, this odd piece of green glass, was very important. Important enough to kill for.

Forty-five miles away, Grigoriy Arkhipov lay unmoving beneath the low-hanging branches of a tree, his face covered in mud, eyes tracking the movements of the Somerset County sheriff’s deputy as the tow-truck driver finished hooking up the Lucerne. In some primitive part of his brain Arkhipov wanted to move, to act, but he quashed the urge and concentrated on remaining still. It would have been so easy—not to mention satisfying—to take the deputy and the tow-truck driver by surprise, dispatch them, then take one of their vehicles and disappear into the night, but he knew that would cause him more trouble than the pleasure was worth. A murdered police officer would bring down a manhunt, including roadblocks, random stops, and even perhaps the FBI, none of which would help him on his mission.

He’d been awoken from the blow to his head by the glare of white light and the nearby warbling of sirens and had opened his eyes to find himself staring into a pair of headlights. He’d stayed still, certain he’d see figures running toward him, but when no one came he slowly rolled onto his belly and started crawling away, behind the boilers and into the trees where he now lay.

Don’t move, he commanded himself. He would stay here, stay invisible, and wait for them to leave. The rental car had been secured with a false driver’s license and a sanitized credit card, neither of which would lead the police anywhere. The rain had turned the junkyard into a morass, so there were no signs of a struggle to pique the police’s curiosity. At this point all they had was an abandoned car and what they would likely decide was a prank OnStar call from some teenagers.

Now, that had been a clever trick, Arkhipov thought, as was their ambush of him. Humiliating, yes, but the professional in Arkhipov appreciated the ingenuity of the thing. The sheer nerve of it. His foot throbbed with pain, but he didn’t dare check it until he was alone. The mud had absorbed part of the stone’s impact, but his two smallest toes were probably broken. Painful but not debilitating. He’d experienced much worse. In the Spetsnaz, a broken bone rarely even warranted medical treatment. And Afghanistan . . . the mujahideen were savage fighters who liked nothing better than to kill up close and personal, face-to-face and knife-to-knife, and he had the scars to remind him. Pain, Grigoriy Arkhipov knew, was a simple matter, a thing of the mind and nothing more.

So who were they, he wondered, these mysterious rescuers? Not your average good Samaritans, that much was certain. Their actions showed skill and courage. And resourcefulness. Friends of Frobisher’s, the man had said. It had been a fleeting slip of the tongue that Arkhipov was only too happy to exploit. It would be enough. He would find them—hopefully before he had to report this incident to his employer.

Clearly they had close ties with the antique dealer. Why would they risk their lives otherwise? So, two plus two equals four. If Frobisher didn’t want to cooperate and tell him where he’d found the shard, perhaps this other man and woman would be more accommodating.

And if not, well, he would simply settle the score and move on. Ingenious as they’d been in their ambush of him, he felt it only fair he find an equally novel way of repaying them.

CHAPTER 7

POCOMOKE RIVER

What do you think the chances are Ted will stay away?” Remi asked, giving the outboard motor’s starter cord a tug.

Sam climbed into the skiff’s bow and pushed off the dock with his leg. “I think I got through to him, but with Ted you never know. That shop is his life.”

After questioning Frobisher for another half hour the night before and satisfying themselves they’d gotten the whole story, Sam had ordered a cot from the reception desk and put Ted, who was by then more than a little tipsy from three servings of brandy, to bed.

The next morning after breakfast they’d convinced him to take a vacation, then made some calls and found a beach house on Fen-wick Island that belonged to a friend of a friend of a friend. It was unlikely anyone would trace Frobisher to there. Whether Ted would stay there, they didn’t know, but short of tying him up it was the best they could do.

The question for them was whether to get any further involved. Par for his personality and his solidly Libertarian ideals, Ted had dismissed their suggestion that he get the authorities involved. He had little love or use for the government and asserted the police would simply take a report and file it away, which Sam and Remi tended to agree with. They doubted Ted’s abductor had left enough of a trail to follow.

While they mulled it all over, Sam had decided they’d continue with their original plan of identifying the mini sub trapped in the inlet, then return to their search for Patty Cannon’s treasure.

Remi got the engine started, then brought the skiff about and pointed the nose downriver, the engine puttering softly in the cool morning air.

“What a difference a day can make,” she said, staring up at the sky.

“Amen,” Sam replied.

The previous night’s rain had stopped just before dawn, giving way to a bright blue sky dotted with cotton-puff clouds. Along the river-banks, birds chirped and flitted from branch to branch. The surface of the water, cloaked in a thin mist, was flat save a ripple here and there as a fish popped to the surface to catch an unwary fly or water bug.

“Say,” Remi said, “have I already mentioned how proud I am of you?”

“For what? Finding us those croissants this morning?”

“No, you dummy. For last night. You were downright heroic.”

“Yes, you mentioned it. Thanks. Don’t forget, though, I had some fantastic help. Couldn’t have done it without you.”

Remi shrugged and smiled at the compliment. “You looked rather sexy, you know, all covered with mud and carrying that rebar around. Very cavemanish.”

“Ugh-ugh.”

Remi laughed.

“Sorry about your sweater, by the way.”

Her cashmere turtleneck hadn’t survived the previous night’s adventure, having taken on the distinct and irreversible odor of wet goat.

“It’s just a sweater. It’s replaceable—which isn’t true of everything,” Remi said with an affectionate smile.

“Don’t I know it,” Sam said.

“I assume you’ve taken steps to make sure it doesn’t happen again?” Hadeon Bondaruk asked.

Arkhipov clenched the phone tighter against his ear until his knuckles turned white. “Yes. Three of my best men are here now. I’m guessing they have an hour’s head start on us.”

“What are their names?” Bondaruk asked.

As Arkhipov had predicted, finding the identities of Frobisher’s rescuers had been a relatively easy task.

After the deputy and the tow-truck driver had left, Arkhipov had half jogged, half limped up the road to the nearest farmhouse, where he found an old Chevy truck parked behind the barn with the keys in it. He drove back to Frobisher’s shop and parked the truck behind the garage, then went inside and turned the house upside down, finding what he needed in ten minutes. Frobisher had only a few dozen names in his Rolodex, half of them businesses, the other half personal, and of these only eight were couples. A quick Google search gave him what he needed.

From Frobisher’s house to the Princess Anne Greyhound station was a short five-minute drive. The truck he parked on a side street and the license plates he stuffed into a nearby trash can under some coffee grounds and a bucket of KFC chicken bones.

Twenty minutes later he’d recovered his backpack from the rental locker and was checked in to a nearby Motel 6 under a different driver’s license and credit card.

“Sam and Remi Fargo,” Arkhipov now told Bondaruk. “They’re—”

“I know who they are. Treasure hunters, and good ones at that. Damn! This is a bad sign. Their being there can’t be a coincidence. Clearly Frobisher figured out what he had and called them in.”

“I’m not convinced of that. I’ve interrogated a lot of men in my time and I know what lying looks like. Frobisher was telling the truth, I’m certain of it.”

“You might be right, but assume he was lying. Assume the Fargos are after the same thing we are, and act accordingly.”

“Yes, sir.”

“How soon do you leave?”

“The boat’s ready now.” Armed with the Fargos’ names and particulars it had been simple work to track their credit card purchases to the boat rental shop in Snow Hill. “It won’t take long to catch up to them.”

Sam had carefully marked the inlet’s position on the map so they found it with little trouble. The previous night’s rain had piled up even more branches at the mouth of the inlet. It now looked like a hunting blind, a patchwork of crisscrossing branches and leaves, both dead and still-green alike. Remi steered the skiff alongside the pile, then tied the painter line to one of the sturdier branches. They let the boat drift until the painter line was taut and Sam was sure it would hold, then Remi slipped into the water and onto the bank. Sam swam around to the side, handed up to her the two duffel bags containing their gear, then accepted her hand and climbed onto the bank himself.

With a duffel bag over each shoulder, Sam led the way through the tall grass and shrubbery along the bank, veering inland twenty feet until they reached the edge of the inlet. To their left through the undergrowth they could just make out the branch pile and the river’s main channel beyond it. As it had the day before, the inlet had an eerie quality to it, a tunnel of green that felt somehow separated from the rest of the world.

Of course, Sam conceded, part of that feeling probably had something to do with the algae-draped periscope jutting from the water only a few feet in front of them, like the neck of some primordial sea serpent.

“A little spooky, isn’t it?” Remi whispered, crossing her arms as though warding off a chill.

“More than a little,” Sam agreed, then dropped the duffel bags and rubbed his hands together in anticipation. “Never fear, the Fargos are here.”

“Just promise me one thing,” Remi said.

“Name it.”

“After this, a vacation. A real vacation.”

“The destination is all yours, Mrs. Fargo.”

The first order of business was to get down there and determine the general condition of the submarine, look for any markings they might use to identify it, and hopefully find an entrance. This last goal Sam hadn’t yet shared with Remi, knowing she would forbid his entering the wreck, which was admittedly the prudent course. But Sam was confident that between his diving skills and Remi’s reliability they’d have no trouble handling anything that came up.

To that end they’d brought along a dive mask, a pair of truncated swim fins, waterproof flashlights with extra batteries, four coils of nylon towing-grade rope, and three ratchet blocks to secure the sub in position lest it slip during Sam’s inspection. If they even got that far.

Additionally, the day before he’d asked Selma to FedEx him a trio of Spair Air emergency pony tanks, each of which contained enough air for roughly sixty breaths, or two to five minutes.

“I know that look on your face, Fargo,” Remi said. “You want to go inside, don’t you?”

“Only if it’s safe. Trust me, Remi, I got my adrenaline fix last night. I’m not going to take any stupid chances.”

“Okay.”

Sam slid down the bank into the water, then stroked over to where the periscope rose from the water. He grabbed ahold of it, gave it a tug and several shakes. It seemed solid. Remi tossed him two ends of rope, both of which he secured around the periscope. Remi took the other ends, secured each of them to a ratchet block, then each of those to nearby trees. Sam climbed back out and together they cranked the ratchets until the lines were taut. Sam gave each one a tug.

“It’s not going anywhere. Okay, I’m going to have a quick look around. Three minutes, no more.”

“Do you want me to—”

“Shhh,” Sam whispered, a finger to his lips.

He turned his head, listening. Five seconds passed and then faintly, in the distance, came the sound of a boat engine.

“Coming this way,” he said.

“Just fishermen.”

“Probably.” But after last night . . .

One thing that had been nagging at Sam was the proximity of their submarine to where Ted had said he’d found the punt shard. It was unlikely the two were connected, but not so unlikely that Ted’s assailant might choose to search this area of the Pocomoke.

He crouched beside one of the duffel bags, rummaged around, and came up with a pair of binoculars. With Remi on his heels, he ran back along the bank to where they’d tied off the skiff. They dropped to their knees in the high grass and Sam aimed the binoculars upriver.

A few seconds later a powerboat appeared around the bend of the river. It contained four men. One at the wheel, one on the bow, and two sitting on the afterdeck. Sam zoomed in on the driver’s face.

Scarface. “It’s him,” he muttered.

“You’ve got to be kidding,” Remi replied.

“I wish I was.”

CHAPTER 8

The skiff!” Sam rasped softly. “Come on!”

He slid belly first down the bank and into the water. A quarter mile upstream Scarface had turned the powerboat into the mouth of another inlet, which the man in the bow was scanning through a pair of binoculars. Sam heard Scarface’s voice echo over the water, followed by another voice saying, “Nyet.”

Great, more Russian heavies.

Sam stroked over to where he’d secured the skiff’s painter line, quickly undid the knot, then swam back and grabbed the bow cleat. He glanced over his shoulder. Scarface was bringing the powerboat about and turning their way.

“Sam . . .”

“I see them.”

He wrapped the painter around one fist then accepted Remi’s help up the bank. “Pull,” he whispered. “Pull hard!”