“I’d give him a half hour or so, but after that you should be able to reach him at…” Doug replied, and rattled off a different telephone number.
Annja wrote it down and hung up.
The call had lasted less than two minutes. It always took at least three minutes for the cops to trace a number on Law and Order,and while network television dramas weren’t always the most accurate, it was the only gauge Annja had to go by. She hoped they’d gotten it right.
She sat down on the edge of the bed to wait.
The thirty minutes Doug had suggested she wait felt like forever and she spent most of the time pacing across her tiny motel room floor. When the half hour was up she snatched the receiver and dialed the number he’d given her.
He answered on the first ring. “Jeez! Give me a heart attack, why don’t you?” Doug said. “Where have you been? Are you all right? Do you realize how many people are looking for you?”
Annja didn’t have time to explain everything that had happened, so she said, “I’m fine but I need some help.”
She could hear street noise in the background and realized that he must have given her the number for the pay phone on the corner near his apartment. Why he had that number in the first place, she didn’t know, but she was thankful that he did.
“We’ll get you the best lawyer we can, Annja. Right now I think it…”
“Doug?”
“…best if you just turn yourself in to the nearest police—”
“Doug!”
“What?”
“I’m not turning myself in. I didn’t do whatever it is they’re saying I did.”
She could hear the hesitation in his voice as he responded. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea, Annja. The police are looking for you and I think it’d be better if—”
“Listen to me!” she yelled, the stress of the past few days finally getting the better of her. “Lives are in danger here, Doug! I need your help!”
That shut him up. Into the silence, she said, “The men who killed Jimmy Mitchell and Bernard Reinhardt are holding others captive. I’ve got to find a specific location in order to help them and all I have are latitude and longitude numbers.”
“Why don’t you just plug them into a GPS?”
She gritted her teeth. “I don’t have a GPS unit, Doug. That’s why I’m calling you.”
“Oh, okay, hang on. I’ve got one right here on my cell phone.” There was a moment’s pause and then he said, “Give me the coordinates.”
She read the degrees and minutes off the mirror where she had written them earlier.
It took him less than thirty seconds to come back with the information she needed.
“The Genoa Mine in Tallulah Gorge.”
Annja scrawled it on the paper in front of her. “Tallulah Gorge? Where the heck is that?”
“Hang on… Would you believe Georgia?”
Yes, she thought wearily, yes, she would believe Georgia. This had all started in Georgia so it made sense that it would end there, as well.
“Where in Georgia?” she asked.
Doug gave her the details. Tallulah Gorge was located in a state park of the same name at the very northeastern edge of Georgia, about ten miles north of the town of Tallulah Falls and roughly eight hundred miles south of where she now stood.
Annja had another decision to make.
She could call Michaels, give him the coordinates as agreed and hope he’d live up to his word to release Garin once she had located the treasure.
It was the easiest thing to do and would also ensure that she accomplished the goal before the deadline.
She knew that doing so, however, would be an act of sheer stupidity.
Both she and Garin had seen Michaels have his men execute Reinhardt and Mitchell. There was no way that Michaels would let them go free as a result. There was a chance that Garin was already dead, but Annja doubted Michaels would throw away his ace in the hole easily. With Garin alive he could force her cooperation. With him dead, there was nothing stopping Annja from going to the police with everything she knew.
No, she suspected that Michaels would live up to his end of the agreement, at least until he had the whereabouts of the treasure guaranteed.
When that happened, all bets were off. There was nothing stopping Michaels from putting a bullet in both of them at that point except Annja’s own ingenuity. She had to find a way to get Garin out into the open before turning over the coordinates. That way she’d have a chance of getting them both out of this mess alive.
Perhaps Tallulah Gorge was the answer she’d been looking for in more ways than one.
With the police actively seeking her, there was no way she could risk getting on a flight. She was going to have to make the trip from Pennsylvania to Georgia by car, a drive of about twelve hours, if she did it without stopping.
She glanced at the clock and did some quick mental arithmetic. If all went well, she’d arrive at the Gorge with barely an hour to spare before the end of Michaels’s deadline.
Theoretically speaking, it was doable, but that didn’t take into account the events of the past few days. The constant travel combined with her need to be up all night in order to recover the chest from the cemetery had left her dead on her feet. There was no way she was going to be able to make a twelve-hour drive without getting some sleep first. But doing so meant she would fail to meet Michaels’s deadline.
In order to pull it off, she was going to need some help.
“…it’ll be the best episode we’ve ever had!”
She realized with a start that Doug had been speaking to her the whole time. She hadn’t heard a word he’d said nor did she have time to deal with whatever cockamamie plan he’d come up with, so she did what she always did when Doug went off on one of his rabbit trails; she ignored him.
“I’m going to need you to arrange for a car and driver for me, Doug.”
“I know I can get the network’s approval and…wait a minute! What?”
“I need a car and a driver. There’s no way I can make the drive to Tallulah Gorge on my own. You’re going to have to arrange to have someone meet me somewhere. Maybe Richmond?”
Doug tried to catch up with her line of thought. “Tallulah Gorge? Why are you going there?”
“I don’t have time to explain, Doug. Can you get me a car and driver or not?”
He hesitated. “I don’t know, Annja. The cops are already crawling all over me because of that diving equipment I arranged for you. I spent half the day at the police station answering questions and for all I know they’re bugging my telephone!”
That explained the pay phone.
Still, time was ticking and she didn’t have any to waste. Michaels’s deadline was looming closer with every minute.
“A man’s life is at stake, Doug. I need that car!”
“All right, all right. Give me a minute,” he said.
The street sounds got louder as he took the pay phone receiver away from his ear and then she could hear the beeping of his cell phone as he clicked through different screens. She could hear him start speaking to someone on the other line and she tapped her foot impatiently.
There was a rustle as he picked up the phone again and said, “You said Richmond, right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s, uh, in Virginia, right?”
Annja sighed. “Yes, Doug, that’s in Virginia.”
“Cool. Hang on…”
It took him another couple of minutes, and a few more questions, but in the end the arrangements were made. She would meet her driver in the parking lot of the Marriott Hotel just after seven that morning, as the drive to Richmond would take Annja about two hours. A phone call to the rental car company would inform them of the location of their vehicle and the driver would then chauffeur Annja the rest of the way to Georgia. Once in Tallulah Falls, the driver would leave the vehicle with Annja and she could use it for as long as she needed.