“How?” Wendy said. “What?”
“Have you ever heard of a Chinese puzzle box?”
“Yes.”
“Think of what you have before you as the mother of all Chinese puzzle boxes. As it so happens, I believe I have the combination to the initial locking mechanism. Shall we get started . . . ?”
Three hours later Sam and Remi, now awake, refreshed, and armed with cups of tea, joined Karna before his laptop just in time to hear Pete exclaim through the iChat window, “Got it!” On-screen, he and Wendy were leaning over the worktable, the Sentinel box between them. It was brightly illuminated by an overhead halogen lamp.
Another iChat screen popped up on the screen, this one displaying Selma’s face: “Got what?”
“It’s a Chinese puzzle box,” replied Wendy. “Once we got past the combination, a narrow panel popped open. Inside were three tiny wooden switches. Following Jack’s directions, we flipped one. Another panel opened, then more switches, and so on . . . How many moves now, Jack?”
“Sixty-four. One more to go. If we’ve done our job, it’ll open. If not, we may lose the contents forever.”
“Explain that,” Sam said.
“Oh, goodness, I didn’t mention the booby trap, did I? So sorry.”
“Mention it now,” Remi said.
“If the box contains a disk, it will be suspended in the middle of the primary compartment. Set into the sides of that compartment will be glass vials filled with corrosive liquid. If your last move is the wrong one or you try to force the compartment open . . .” Karna made a hissing sound. “You get an unidentifiable lump of gold.”
“I hope I’m wrong,” said Selma, “but I don’t think there’s a disk in there.”
“Why?” asked Pete.
“Odds. Sam and Remi stumble upon the only Sentinel box ever found and it just happens to contain the one genuine disk in the bunch?”
Karna said, “But they didn’t ‘stumble’ upon it, did they? They were following in the footsteps of Lewis King-a man who had spent at least eleven years chasing the Theurang. Whatever his motives, I doubt he was on a goose chase that day at Chobar Gorge. It appears he never found the Sentinel’s burial chamber, but I suspect he wasn’t there for an empty box.”
Selma considered this. “Logical,” was all she said.
“One way to find out,” Sam said. “Who’s going to do the honors? Pete . . . Wendy?”
Pete said, “I’m nothing if not chivalrous. Go ahead, Wendy.”
Wendy took a deep breath, reached into the box, and flipped the appropriate switch. An inch-wide rectangular hatch slid open beside her fingers.
Karna said softly, “Now gently slide your pinkie finger up along the inside of the box until you feel a square button.”
Wendy did so. “Okay, got it.”
“Slide that button . . . let me see . . . slide it to the right-no, left! Slide it to the left.”
“Left,” Wendy repeated. “Are you sure?”
Karna hesitated a moment, then nodded firmly. “Yes, left.”
“Here I go.”
Through the laptop’s speaker Sam and Remi heard a wooden snick.
Wendy cried, “The top’s open!”
“Now carefully lift the lid straight upward. If it’s there, the disk will be suspended from the underside.”
Moving with exaggerated slowness, Wendy began lifting the lid an inch at a time. “It’s got some heft to it.”
“Don’t let it swing,” Karna whispered. “A little more . . .”
Pete rasped, “I can see a cord hanging down. Looks like catgut or something similar.”
Wendy kept lifting.
The halogen light reflected off something solid, a curved edge, a glint of gold.
“Be ready, Peter,” said Karna.
Wendy lifted the lid the rest of the way. The remainder of the cord rose from the box. Dangling at its end: the prize, a four-inch-wide golden disk.
With latex-gloved hands, Pete reached out. Wendy lowered the disk into his palms, and he transferred it to a foam-lined tray on the table.
The group let out a collective breath.
“Now comes the hard part,” Karna said.
“What?” Wendy said with exasperation. “That wasn’t the hard part?”
“I’m afraid not, my dear. Now we must ascertain whether we do in fact have the genuine article.”
21
The Fiat’s dashboard clock clicked over to nine a.m. just as Sam and Remi passed the welcome sign for Vlore. Albania’s second-largest city, of a hundred thousand souls, sat nestled on a bay on the west coast, overlooking the Adriatic with its back to the mountains.
And with any luck, Sam and Remi hoped, Vlore was still home to one of the Sentinel disks.
An hour after Wendy and Pete had extracted the Theurang disk from the box and set about determining its provenance with Karna, Selma’s face reappeared in an iChat window on Karna’s laptop’s screen.
In her characteristically curt manner she said, “Jack, your research methods are impeccable. Sam, Remi, I think his theory about the two priests holds water. Whether we can find them and the other two disks is another matter.”
“What else have you been able to discover?” asked Sam.
“At the time of their deaths, both Besim Mala and Arnost Deniv had risen to the rank of Bishop and were highly respected in their communities. Both had helped found churches and schools and hospitals throughout their home countries.”
“Which suggests their burial sites could be more elaborate than a six-foot-deep rectangle in the earth,” Karna said.
“I found no mention of the particulars, but I can’t fault your reasoning,” replied Selma. “In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the EOC-”
“The what?” asked Remi.
“Eastern Orthodox Church. The EOC-especially those based in the Balkans and southern Russia-tended to make a big deal of such deaths. Crypts and mausoleums appear to be the customary method of interment.”
“The question is,” Karna said, “where exactly were they laid to rest?”
“Still working on Deniv, but Church records state that Bishop Besim Mala’s final posting was in Vlore, Albania.”
With time to kill until Selma could give them a more specific target area, Sam and Remi spent an hour touring Vlore, marveling at its beautifully blended architecture that felt at once Greek, Italian, and medieval. Shortly before noon, they pulled into the parking lot of the Hotel Bologna, overlooking the blue waters of the harbor, and took a seat in a palm tree-lined outdoor cafe.
Sam’s satellite phone trilled. It was Selma. Sam put the phone on Speaker.
“I have Jack here as well,” Selma said. “We have-”
“If this is going to a bad news/good news call, Selma, just give it to us,” Remi said. “We’re too tired to choose.”
“Actually, this is an all good news call-or potentially good news, that is.”
“Shoot,” said Sam.
Jack Karna said, “The Sentinel disk is genuine, I believe. I can’t be one hundred percent sure until I can check it against the wall maps I mentioned, but I’m optimistic.”
