The Atlantis Code (30 page)

Unprofessional, and worse, inexcusable since they were doing this on the q-t. Bess promised herself that she’d never work with the man again.

The man who’d just entered the house was in his forties and a little overweight. He wore khaki shorts, a golf shirt, and sandals.

Judging from the casual shoes, Bess figured him for a neighbor. Nobody’d be stupid enough to walk very far in those things. He was probably just watching the house for a friend.

“Who are you?” the man demanded.

Bess stepped around the corner. “We’re with the gas company. Someone reported a gas leak in the area.”

The man looked at the pillowcase stuffed with stolen loot on Sparrow’s back. “I don’t believe you.” The man took a cell phone from his hip.

That was one technological advance that had been put into the hands of almost everyone, and which made a professional burglar’s job even harder. Every idiot on the street could report a crime almost immediately these days.

Sparrow reached to the back of his waistband and took out a revolver.

Bess didn’t know what kind it was. She never worked with guns, and she never stole guns. There was no telling where some mark had gotten a gun, or how he’d used it, and the last thing she wanted to do was get picked up for breaking and entering then get charged for someone else’s murder. But before she could stop Sparrow, he fired.

The pistol’s detonation filled the house and sounded incredibly loud in the enclosed space.

The neighbor staggered, put a hand to his chest that came away bright with blood, and went down.

Bess didn’t waste time checking to see if the man was alive. She didn’t waste time cursing Sparrow. She looked at him.

“Get out of here now,” she instructed.

Sparrow stood frozen for a moment.

“Get out!” Bess ordered more loudly.

Sparrow went, but he couldn’t take his eyes off the fallen man. “He was going to call the police. I had to—”

Bess ignored him and returned to the office. She unhooked the external drive she’d brought to download the computer’s files onto. At least the program had finished running. whatever the target had had on the hard drive inside the computer was now mirrored on the hard drive she had.

The job was accomplished.

She skirted the man on the floor, left the house, and pulled the door closed behind her. Sparrow sat in the van’s passenger seat.

Bess slid into the driver’s seat, started the engine, and pulled out onto the street. She pulled a disposable TracFone from her coverall. Before every job, she bought one in the hopes of never having to use it.

She dialed 911, reported the shooting, and hung up.

“Why did you do that?” Sparrow asked.

“That man might still be alive. He shouldn’t have to die just because you got greedy.” Bess drove methodically as she wound through the streets.

“Hey, what I got wasn’t all that much. This job didn’t pay—”

“It paid fine,” Bess said. “The man who hired us didn’t want any complications. That, just so you know for future reference, was a complication.
Big
complication.”

Sparrow slumped against the seat and folded his arms over his chest like a petulant child.

“Give me the gun.” Bess held out one gloved hand.

“Why?”

“The gun,” Bess said.

“It’s
my
gun.”

“Now.”

Sullen, Sparrow gave it up.

Working one-handed, Bess wiped the gun down. She even opened the cylinder and wiped the cartridges. Thankfully the gun had been a revolver. Nothing had been left behind but the bullet.

She chose her route deliberately and drove over the Longfellow Bridge. A Red Line train was crossing the tracks in the center as she drove across.

Midway, Bess had Sparrow roll down the window and she threw the pistol into the Charles River as they headed into Boston. She hoped that would be the end of it.

RADISSON SAS HOTEL LEIPZIG
LEIPZIG, GERMANY
SEPTEMBER 3, 2009

Leslie’s cell phone rang while she was staring out over Leipzig. The caller ID showed that it was her producer. It was 11:18 P.M. This couldn’t be a good call.

She debated answering between the second and third rings, then muted the television and pressed the TALK button.

“Hello,” she said.

“Tell me you’ve got something.” Philip Wynn-Jones didn’t sound like a happy man.

“What would you like to me to tell you?”

“Don’t be flip.”

“I’m not. We’re in Leipzig—”

“I knew that the moment the credit card bills started coming in on the hotel. Tell me something I don’t know.”

Leslie stared out at the cityscape and tried to think calm thoughts. “We’re still on the trail of those missing instruments.”

“But are you getting anywhere?”

“Lourds is beginning to think we may need to go to West Africa.”

There was silence on the phone for a moment. “
West bloody Africa? The four of you
?”

Leslie decided not to pull any punches. Gary was a given, and—even though she didn’t care for Natasha Safarov—the Russian policewoman had skills and access to information that she herself couldn’t get. Yet.

“Yes. The four of us.”

Wynn-Jones let out a long breath and followed it almost immediately with an equally long string of curses.

“You’re breaking my bloody balls here, Leslie. You know that, don’t you?”

“You’ve got to give us a little more time.”

“Time is money in this business, love. You know that.”

“I also know that exposure means money.” Leslie turned back from the window because the traffic in the streets below was too distracting. She looked at the television.

She’d turned to
Discovery Channel
out of habit. The programs there could offer ideas and markets for what she wanted to do, as well as give her an idea of the competition she faced.

Bizarrely, given the dinner conversation, tonight featured one of the retread documentaries on Atlantis. With the excavation going on in Cádiz, the whole world was thinking about Atlantis.

But the program gave Leslie’s mind—fueled by desperation because she felt certain Lourds would proceed on without her at this point—an idea.

“The remnants of a prehistoric band isn’t going to be worth much,” Wynn-Jones protested.

“Not prehistoric,” Leslie said automatically. She knew she was mentally channeling one of Lourds’s lectures over the last few days. What was that phrase he’d used?

“What?”

“Prehistoric refers to a time before there were any written records. The bell and the cymbal are definitely from . . .” She fumbled for the term. “. . . the historic period.”

“Great. You’re getting an education. Not exactly what I had in mind when you and the professor went haring about the world.”

Leslie’s eyes focused on the television screen. Stock footage of great crystal towers from some cheesy science fiction movie rolled. After a moment, tides swept over the city and shattered it into a million pieces.

“What if,” Leslie said, “I can give you Atlantis?”

Wynn-Jones snorted. “In case you haven’t noticed, they’ve found Atlantis. It’s in Cádiz, Spain.”

“What if they’re wrong?” Leslie said.

“The Roman Catholic Church is backing that dig.” Even though Wynn-Jones remained a naysayer, interest sounded in his voice. “They’re seldom wrong about things like that.”

“They’re wrong all the time. Think of the sexual attitudes of their priests.” Before Wynn-Jones could say anything, Leslie hurried on. “The bell and the cymbal have writing on them that Lourds has never seen before. He’s tracked the cymbal to the Yoruba people—who live in West Africa, hence the need to go there—and found indications that the artifacts are remnants of the civilization of Atlantis.”

“They came from Spain?”

“No. It’s beginning to look like Atlantis was off the coast of West Africa. Or part of the coast of West Africa.” Leslie thought that was how Lourds had explained the situation.

“They’re pretty certain about Cádiz,” Wynn-Jones said.

But Leslie knew she had the man thinking. Both of them were driven to grab attention to themselves if they could.

“What if they’ve got it wrong?” Leslie asked. “What if, given time, we can deliver the true location of Atlantis?”

“That’s a tall order.”

“Think about it, Philip. International media has been making love to this story since it began.
Atlantis Found!
Remember all those headlines we laughed about?”

They had laughed about those, but they’d also grudgingly admitted they wished they had gotten to work the story.

“The public’s appetite has been whetted for this story,” Leslie pointed out. “If Lourds can get us into part of that story, we’d be a smash. But if we could steal it away from them—”

She left the rest unsaid. She knew Wynn-Jones. His mind would cycle through the possibilities.

“All right,” Wynn-Jones said. “I’ll give you West Africa. But you’d better hope there’s a bloody story there.”

Leslie did. She didn’t know if it was Atlantis, but she was certain there was enough there to mollify the corporation when the time came. If there wasn’t, she might be out of a job. But that was the risk. Playing it safe wasn’t going to get her anywhere. And she planned on going places, big-time.

After thanking Wynn-Jones, she rang off and started to punch in Lourds’s room number to let him know they’d been cleared for Africa. But she was still slightly flush with the wine. There was also that itch she had to contend with.

She decided to deliver the message in person. She opened her handbag and took out the spare key for Lourds’s room. He hadn’t thought anything of the fact he’d gotten only one key.

Smiling, feeling hopeful, she headed out the door.

Natasha stepped out of the elevator in time to see Leslie walk past. Suspicious, still bothered by how easily Patrizio Gallardo and his men seemed to find them in Odessa, Natasha followed.

After dinner had broken up, she’d taken a cab to a club a few blocks away and checked in with Ivan Chernovsky. She didn’t want him to know what hotel they were staying at. He hadn’t been home. His wife had told Natasha that Chernovsky was working a murder.

That news had made Natasha feel guilty. Chernovsky was out there on the streets, possibly facing danger, and she wasn’t there to cover his back. His wife, Anna, had let Natasha know she was concerned about her. Evidently Chernovsky had been talking to her about everything. Natasha had assured Anna that she was fine and asked her to tell Chernovsky that she would call again soon.

Natasha stayed back, but if Leslie had turned to check, she would have been caught. Thankfully, her room was also this way. She had an excuse.

But Leslie didn’t turn once from her destination. She headed straight for Lourds’s door. She halted there and raised her hand to knock. Then she reached into her handbag and took out a card.

She swiped the card and watched as the light flashed green. Then she went inside.

Natasha never broke stride, but she felt deeply disturbed. The thing that bothered her most was she didn’t know why she felt that way. It had been apparent from the beginning that Leslie was crushing on the professor. Natasha wondered, though, if Lourds would be vain enough to think it was anything more than that.

That could be a problem. Natasha needed Lourds up and thinking correctly if she was going to have a real chance at finding Yuliya’s killers.

But Natasha was also aware that on some level she didn’t like the idea of Lourds being with another woman.
Another
. She caught that quirk in her thoughts and was unhappy with herself.

She thought about going to Lourds’s door and crashing the party, then decided that was too juvenile. Instead, she went to her room and ordered a bottle of Finlandia Vodka. It gave her a small sense of satisfaction to put it on the room’s tab and know that Leslie was going to have to account for it.

Excitement burned through Leslie when she heard the running water and the steam coming out of the bathroom. Lourds was in the shower. It wasn’t exactly what she had in mind, but it would be fun. She felt a smile spread across her face.

The television was on and was tuned to CNN. The computer was open on the desk and she could see that he’d been working.

Leslie hesitated, though.
Okay, you’re in or you’re out
, she told herself. She took a quick breath, dropped her handbag, kicked off her shoes, and peeled her clothes off.

Totally starkers, she stepped into the bathroom.

Lourds lay in the deep bathtub with his head back and his eyes closed. At first Leslie thought he was asleep. But when she moved toward him and her shadow tracked across his face, he snapped his eyes open.

When he saw her, he didn’t try to cover up or act modest. He just lay there and looked at her. Then he smiled.