A sudden realization hit Sam like a thunderbolt.
He had just discovered the missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle.
“Are you telling me that the hunt for the last airship was never about the gold?”
John Wolfgang knew the second he’d ended the phone call with Blake Simmonds that the man had been keeping something from him. Simmonds was as ruthless as he was calm. His voice hadn’t changed a bit when he mentioned that Carl was dead.
There was something else that Simmonds was withholding, John was certain of it. He knew people, especially some very deceitful people, and Blake was the worst amongst the lot of them. At least a thief could be relied upon to steal. Even terrorists believed in something with certainty, but Blake worked on an entirely different set of values, which Wolfgang couldn’t even begin to understand.
And how can you trust a person you don’t understand?
John replayed the conversation in his mind. There was something about the way that Blake seemed so overly focused about where he’d just been, almost as if he were worried about his location…
Did he know something about the Magdalena?
Then it hit him like a bomb.
Carl wasn’t trying to kill Sam Reilly — he was trying to protect him — but from what?
The answer presented itself to him, simply.
From discovering the location of the Magdalena!
Holy shit! That snobby English bastard knows exactly where it is — and yet still he tries to chase me up for his boss! He’s known all along where she is, and that means that he doesn’t want his boss to find her either!
John picked up his phone, and punched in the phone number that he never wanted to call.
“Yes,” said the man, in his dark, cold voice.
“I have it. I need you to send the team in,” John paused for a moment, and then said, “I’ll text you the GPS coordinates for the location where I’ll meet them. You’ll need to have them there within the hour to secure the location.”
John gave serious consideration to telling the man that Blake Simmonds had been a traitor all along, but thought better of the idea.
Some hands are best played close to the vest.
After Sam had finished explaining to Aliana how he had come to hear of the existence of the Magdalena, and what really happened to cause him to sink, Aliana became even more confused and angry than she ever thought possible.
“I refuse to believe that my father had anything to do with this! I mean, he has spent his life trying to make up for what his grandfather did during the Holocaust.”
“Then who else would have been trying to kill me from aboard a ship, with a helicopter bearing the name Wolfgang Corporation?”
That question, she was unable answer.
“I have no idea, Sam, but you have to believe me when I tell you that my father wasn’t responsible for that. Can you believe me?”
“I do understand that you believe it to be the truth.”
It was a diplomatic answer, but she could tell from the expression on his face, that he didn’t believe it.
“How can you say that? Don’t you trust me?”
“No. I don’t,” Sam told her, plainly. Even before he spoke, his eyes had given her his answer. And what made it worse, she knew that he had reason not to trust her.
Those words hurt her even more than acknowledging the fact that, deep down, she believed that her own father had been keeping dark secrets from her.
She started to speak, but couldn’t get the words out.
Then, she made another attempt, “Why not?” She wanted to sound both strong and defiant, but her weak tone of voice betrayed her greatest misgivings.
How much could he possibly know?
“There was a moment… after I fell, when I saw something in your expression. It was only there for a second at most, but I’ve seen betrayal before, and I know how to spot it when it rears its ugly head. You wanted to leave me there. You considered whether or not you might be able to outrun me if you left me and continued up the Via Farrata alone.”
“No, you don’t understand…” Aliana tried to explain, but Sam cut her off short.
“I’m not done. It was only when you saw the other man, Carl, coming down the Via Farrata, that you changed your mind. Almost as if you were frightened, with a glimmer of uncertainty, about just who your enemies were on the mountain, and among them, who you could possibly trust. It was then that you grasped at your only hope, and sided with me.”
“It was nothing like that, Sam… you don’t understand at all.” Aliana tried to offer him an explanation faster than her mind was capable of forming one. “Many years ago, when I was only a child, my father was so poor that we were on the cusp of starvation. The Berlin Wall had just come down, and my father was approached by a man who offered him financial backing to create his pharmaceutical company. That company was how he went on to become rich, and powerful. It eventually earned him a Nobel Prize. That man asked my father for only one thing in return for his backing — that my father find the final resting place of the Magdalena, and once she was found, to give him control of the deadly virus she carried on board.”
“So, your father sold out the rest of humanity for gold?” Sam replied, in disgust.
“He was desperate, Sam. We all were desperate, and he truly believed that it never would be discovered. Then, when I saw him last week, he told me that the same man, who he hadn’t heard from in twenty years, had contacted him with new information, which would help narrow the location of the Magdalena.”
“Which was…” Sam asked.
“You.”
Realization could be seen in Sam’s eyes, as he came to grips with her role in it all.
“My father was obliged to repay his long-standing obligation to this man by offering him something that he never thought he could.”
“The destruction of mankind?”
“Exactly. He wouldn’t tell me what his plan was, but he did tell me that there were a number of treasure hunters after it, and that they were all closing in on it like a pack of hungry wolves. He said that he had a team of people searching, but had already learned that there were others who had come close to finding it. He told me that we needed to be the first to locate it, and that the cost of another person discovering it first would be catastrophic. He also told me that on that very same day, he had heard about a man from Australia who had come here armed with secret information, and that was who he perceived to be his greatest threat. I put two and two together and knew what I had to do. With your knowledge of underwater recovery, you would be the most well equipped to find her at the bottom of one of these lakes.”
“And so you tried to kill me?” Sam’s face looked more hurt than angry.
“No, of course not! I never could have done that. How can you say such a terrible thing? All I wanted was to discover what you knew.”
“So, your father put you up to this. You only came to me for the knowledge. The kiss, the intimacy, all of that was just an act?”
She slapped him hard.
“No, the intimacy was real, Sam. My father had told me to discover what you knew, and that…”Aliana’s eyes stared at the twinkle of the glowworms in the cavern’s ceiling, but her mind was a thousand miles away, “he would take care of you, once I had the information. But, you’re real, Sam. It may have been my intention to become close to you for the sake of gaining information, but since then, we’ve both become close. You are the most amazing man I’ve ever met, and for what it’s worth, I love you.”