They pushed out into the alley, but lights swung into the space before they’d gone five steps. A spotlight zeroed in on them and lit them up, as the flashing red-and-blue light bar on the roof dazzled. Both of them stopped in their tracks and put up their hands.
“Maybe it’ll be the same cops who arrested us the other day,” Joe suggested. “They were awfully nice.”
“We should be so lucky,” Kurt said.
The car stopped and two officers in uniform stepped out with guns raised. Kurt and Joe didn’t resist. They were cuffed, placed into the car and hauled off in record time. Kurt noticed they were being driven away from the center of town instead of toward it and its all-too-familiar police station. “We get to make a phone call, don’t we?”
A smiling face turned to look at them. “One’s already been made on your behalf,” the man said. Strangely, he spoke with a Louisiana drawl instead of a Mediterranean accent. “By the Chairman himself.”
The officer tossed a set of keys in Kurt’s lap. “MacD,” the man said, introducing himself. “Your friend in low places.”
Kurt grinned, unlocked his cuffs and then Joe’s. The lights and siren were shut off, the car continued down the road and several minutes later Kurt and Joe were dropped off only two blocks from their hotel.
“Thanks for the extraction,” Kurt said. “Tell Juan the first drink is on me.”
MacD smiled. “He’ll never let you pay, but I’ll be sure to tell him you offered.” Kurt shut the door. MacD motioned to the driver and the car moved off.
“Any chance we can draft Juan and his crew for this mission?” Joe asked.
“Seems like they’ve got their own problems to deal with,” Kurt replied.
He turned toward the hotel and began walking. They were free and clear, soaking wet, ears ringing from the gunfight, but the street was deserted and it was quiet all around. And despite all that — despite what they’d risked — they were no closer to an answer than they’d been the day before.
“Strange evening,” Kurt said.
“That’s the understatement of the year,” Joe replied.
They snuck into the hotel, rode the freight elevator up to their floor and trudged wearily to their room, discovering Renata waiting inside. Unlike them, she was beaming.
“You guys look terrible!”
Kurt didn’t doubt that. “Something tells me your night went a lot better than ours,” he said, closing the door and slumping down in the nearest chair.
“I should have known all those police cars were your doing.”
“Not just ours,” Joe said. “It was a party no one’s going to forget.”
Kurt hoped Renata had something of substance behind her smile. “Tell me you’ve found Sophie C.”
“As a matter of fact, I did,” Renata said. “And she’s not far from here at all.”
29
The news gave Kurt a jolt of energy. “When do we meet her?”
“Hopefully, not for a very long time,” Renata replied. “She’s no longer among the living.”
That was bad news. Or so Kurt thought. “You don’t seem very upset about that.”
“Well, it has been a while,” Renata replied. “She passed away in 1822.”
Kurt looked at Joe. “This making any sense to you?”
Joe shook his head. “The CO2 has affected my advanced reasoning skills and I’m not hearing this right.”
“I know you’re having fun with this,” he said, “but let’s cut to the chase. Who is Sophie C.? And what could a woman who died in 1822 possibly have in connection with Dr. Kensington and the Lampedusa attack?”
“Sophie C.,” Renata said, “is short for Sophie Celine.”
“I was so close,” Joe said.
Kurt didn’t even respond to that. “Go on.”
“Sophie Celine was the third cousin, and the distant love, of Pierre Andeen, a prestigious member of the French Legislative Assembly, which convened after the Revolution. Because both were married to other people, they were unable to officially be together but that didn’t stop them from having a child.”
“Scandalous,” Kurt said.
“Indeed,” Renata added. “Scandalous or not, the birth of that child was a thrilling moment for Andeen and he used his influence with the French Admiralty to have a ship named after the mother.”
“As some kind of present,” Kurt said.
“Trust me,” Joe said. “Most women prefer jewelry.”
“Agreed,” Renata said.
“So what happened to Sophie?” Kurt asked.
Renata put her feet up. “She lived to a ripe old age and was buried in a private cemetery outside Paris after she died in her sleep.”
Kurt could see where this was going. “I’m guessing it’s Sophie Celine, the ship that Kensington was referring to.”
Renata nodded and handed Kurt a printout on the ship’s history. “The Sophie C. was attached to Napoleon’s Mediterranean fleet and happened to be berthed in Malta during the brief period of French rule. As luck would have it, the ship went down in a storm after leaving here loaded with French treasure that had been plundered from Egypt. She was found and the wreck excavated by members of the D’Campion Conservancy, a nonprofit group supported by a wealthy family here on Malta. After keeping the artifacts in their private collection for years, they’ve recently decided to sell some of the items. The museum was to be the intermediary, for a percentage.”
“The same items our violent friends just lifted without paying a penny,” Joe said.
“Kensington said two hundred thousand wouldn’t get them a seat at the table, so they took the whole buffet.”
Joe asked the obvious question: “Why would Kensington point us to the Sophie Celine when he wouldn’t even tell us what was going to be in the auction?”
“The same reason these guys didn’t kill him and take the artifacts until we showed up and started asking questions. There must be something on that wreck they still want, something that hasn’t come up yet.”
“The Egyptian tablets I saw were broken,” Joe said. “Partial pieces, fragments. Maybe they’re after the remaining sections.”
Kurt turned to Renata. “Where’s this wreck?”
“Here’s the location,” she said, handing Kurt the rest of her notes. “It’s about thirty miles east of Valletta.”
“Last I checked, that wasn’t the way to France,” Kurt said.
“Her captain was trying to avoid British ships. He planned a route east and then north, either intending to skirt the coast of Sicily or to cut through the strait between Sicily and the Italian mainland. Apparently, he ran into bad weather before he had the chance to do either. The guess is he turned back but never made it to port.”
For the first time in days, Kurt felt they were getting ahead of the game.
“I guess we know our next move,” Joe said. “And their move as well. When they find out these carvings and tablets are only partials and fragments, they’ll go after that wreck and try to salvage what’s left on it themselves.”
“That’s what I would do,” Kurt said. “I still can’t imagine how this all connects or what they’re after, but if it didn’t truly matter, they’d have cut and run by now. Something tells me we’d better dive on this wreck site before they do.”
30
The Sea Dragon left Valletta with Kurt, Joe, Dr. Ambrosini and a skeleton crew on board. Kurt had sent everyone else back to the States out of an abundance of caution.
“Stay on this heading,” he told Captain Reynolds.
“Aye,” Reynolds said. “But you realize we’re going to miss the wreck by miles unless we turn north.”