unforgiving, and nearly uninhabitable wasteland. The air was heavy with frozen mist, created by the waves that continually crashed against the rocky shores of the Bering Strait.
‘Who on earth would think a tunnel could be built out here?’ Sarah wondered.
‘The Russian railway, that’s who,’ Jasmine said. ‘Andrei told me that Trans-Siberian rail links had been discussed for more than a century, and the Bering Strait tunnel had been planned ever since the nineteenth century. They had built all the way to Vladivostok before they figured out you were right: it’s crazy to build out here.’
They were inside a converted Toyota Hilux off-road truck, specially made for Arctic regions. Complete with forty-four-inch tires, the dependable, comfortable Hilux would hardly look out of place even on tropical roads. Here it was their versatile, reliable home away from home. It was even outfitted with sleeping berths in the back and a satellite dish for cell phone communication.
‘There were boats. Then there were airplanes. Why a tunnel?’ Sarah continued.
‘Why anything?’ Jasmine asked. ‘Simple. People are builders.’
‘People are crazy,’ Sarah said. ‘I once went whaling up here. It’s only-’
‘You went whaling?’ Jasmine looked at her disapprovingly. ‘But that’s-’
‘Illegal?’ Sarah blurted. ‘Is that what you were going to say, Little Miss Shot-a-bad-guy-in-the-face?’
‘I told you, he was trying to attack me.’
‘Because you were stealing gold! And a body!’ Sarah laughed.
‘Tell me again,’ Jasmine teased, ‘why are you here?’
‘Do you really think after all we’ve been through that I was going to miss this? Besides, you need me. I can smell a hiding place for miles.’ She looked out the windshield. ‘At least it doesn’t snow much here.’
‘Not much,’ Jasmine agreed. ‘Not in the coastal regions.’
In the rear driver’s side seat, Garcia fumbled with one of the numerous electronic gadgets he had crammed into the vehicle. Even with the limited space available, Garcia had still insisted on two tablet computers, two military-grade GPS units, and two satellite-linked communications systems. On the opposite side of the second row, McNutt inspected
Each man had his own understanding of redundancy.
‘Can you get a ballgame on that thing?’ McNutt asked. ‘Anything. I don’t care if it’s a bobsled race. I just can’t listen to them anymore.’
Garcia chuckled as he shifted images around the screen of his iPad. ‘Sorry.’
‘Seriously, I think I liked it better when they didn’t like each other.’ McNutt closed his eyes and leaned back in his seat. ‘At least I don’t think they liked each other. Who knows? I give up.’
‘Not exactly what one wants to hear from their fearless leader,’ Garcia said. ‘If Papineau knew you were in charge …’
McNutt opened his eyes and looked across the vehicle. ‘Hey, I never asked Cobb to put me in charge of anything. If he thinks I should make the final call on things because of my military training, then that’s his problem. As far as I’m concerned, you guys can do whatever you want.’ He closed his eyes again and pulled his hat down low over his brow. ‘Just let me know when you need me to step in and settle things.’ With that, he raised the P90 that was strapped to his shoulder, signifying the method with which he would handle any arguments.
Garcia just shook his head and laughed. ‘Speaking of Cobb, what could possibly take him away from all this?’
‘All this?’ McNutt asked. ‘You mean frostbite and constant bickering?’
‘I mean the possibility of frozen assets,’ Garcia replied, smiling at his pun.
‘Oh … all of
‘I’d say it’s a little more than that.’
Cobb had decided against joining the rest of the team who were en route to Alaska. The prospect of freezing temperatures didn’t bother him; rather, he sensed an opportunity to get some answers. As the others traveled east by rail, Cobb drove west in his rented car — he’d had more than enough of trains. He sped through Hungary and Slovenia, across the northern edge of Italy and a quick stretch of highway in France, finally arriving at his destination after nearly twenty straight hours behind the wheel.
The Hotel Beau-Rivage.
Geneva, Switzerland.
Jasmine pointed out the windshield. ‘Right there!’
They had locked their GPS onto one of Papineau’s satellites and punched in the coordinates that they had established from what Andrei had told Jasmine. They had learned that while Prince Felix’s Romanov military escort fled via Yalta, the officers loyal to the crown had gone in the opposite direction — settling in a place the Bolsheviks and Mensheviks would never find them or what they carried.
Now all four could see what little remained of the pole that marked the start of the last attempted excavation of the Bering Strait Tunnel between Russia and America. Sarah drove around it as Jasmine craned her neck over her shoulder to face the back seat.
‘Hector, you’re up,’ she said.
The undercarriage of the Hilux had been fitted with ground-penetrating radar, and Garcia now studied the images it produced on his tablet. ‘The buried rail line will have some sort of unique metal signature,’ he said. ‘Something that should make it stand out against the rock and ice. All we have to do is follow it.’
The women stared through the windshield, surveying the area for anyone or anything. There was coal, natural gas, tin, and tungsten being mined near the peninsula’s few cities, but here the sparsely pocketed indigenous people, the Chukchi, who were descended from Paleo-Siberians, survived by fishing, whale hunting, and even reindeer herding.
Thankfully there was no sign of any of that. From what they could gather, the Chukchi and Siberian Yupiks considered this area ‘spoiled’ by the early twentieth-century incursion.
Sarah turned her head and impatiently addressed Garcia. ‘Well, what do you see?’
Garcia sighed in frustration. He pulled a cable from his backpack and plugged it into the side of his tablet. He tossed the other end of the cable over Jasmine’s shoulder.
‘Plug it in. See for yourselves,’ he said.
Jasmine plugged her end of the cable into the auxiliary port on the vehicle’s in-dash display, which mirrored what Garcia saw on his screen. Sarah and Jasmine huddled closer to the monitor in the front seat while McNutt leaned toward Garcia to see for himself.
As the image panned forward, a distinct, bright line appeared on the screen.
‘Is that a crack in the ice?’ Sarah asked.
‘Cracks are jagged,’ Garcia replied. ‘That’s straight. That’s-’
‘Bent track!’ Sarah screamed.
With that, she opened the overhead moonroof to get a better look.
Following Sarah’s lead, Jasmine also stood up in the cab.
The view was magnificent: as if a furry, white rug stretched out to a sparkling green sea, with a ceiling of the bluest skies any of them had ever seen. It was cold. It was windy. But it was worth it.
After only a minute, the biting weather forced them back inside. Their noses were red and their cheeks were chapped, but their smiles were warm and bright.
Jasmine couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘Let’s go see what’s down there!’
When Cobb’s team viewed the contents of the treasure train for the first time, Papineau had given Garcia not one, but two IP addresses that were to receive the feed of the broadcast.
The first IP address — a unique, numerical identifier that allowed computers to find each other across the Internet — belonged to Papineau’s computer, which Garcia traced to Papi’s train outside of Vladivostok. But the second IP address led somewhere strange: to a computer at Quai du Mont-Blanc 13, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland.
The site of the Beau-Rivage hotel.
