“That you’re wrong about this. Problem is, that doesn’t happen very often. Let me see your phone.” She gave it to him. He got out his Swiss Army knife and went to work.
Sam, his head bent over the dissected iPhone in his lap, finally muttered, “There you are.”
Remi leaned down. “Something?”
Using his knife’s tweezers, he lifted a pinkie nail-sized circuit chip from the iPhone’s innards. A pair of monofilamentlike leads trailed down to the phone’s battery. “The culprit,” he said. The good news was, the bug was set to transmit only when the phone was on; no signal ping would alert Kholkov that they’d found the device. Sam detached the leads and dropped the chip into his shirt pocket and started reassembling the iPhone.
Twenty minutes later, with most of the mist dissipating under a sun-filled blue sky, they rounded the Hirschau Peninsula. Saint Bartholomae came into view, its bright red onion domes glowing in the sun and the snow-veined granite of the mountains rising behind them. The meadow in which Saint Bartholomae’s sat was on a forty-acre wedge of shoreline extending back to the forest. There were two dock areas, one for visitor arrivals and departures; the other, situated nearer the chapel, a covered boathouse. Strung out behind the chapel on islands of green lawn and meandering paths were a dozen wooden outbuildings, all rough-hewn and ranging from barn- to cabin- sized.
The captain circled the dock area once, waiting for another electric boat to disgorge its passengers, then headed in and glided alongside the pier. A crewman jumped across the gap, tied off the stern and bow lines, then swung up the boat’s protective railing.
Scanning their fellow passengers for familiar faces, Sam and Remi disembarked, pausing to drop some
“Didn’t see anyone,” Sam muttered as he stepped onto the dock, then offered his hand to Remi. “You?”
“No.”
Theirs was the second boat of the morning to put ashore; the majority of the first group was still lingering in the landing area and around the gift shop, snapping photos and studying maps. Sam and Remi moved along the split-rail fence that encircled the landing, scanning faces before the crowd had a chance to disperse.
As they walked they could hear several tour guides starting their introductory speeches over the background babble:
“Originally built in the twelfth century, Saint Bartholomae was once considered the protector of alpine farmers and of milkmaids. . . .”
“. . . find the interior floor plan is based on the Salzburg Cathedral and the exterior stucco work was done by famed Salzburg artist Josef Schmidt. . . .”
“. . . until 1803 the hunting lodge adjacent to the chapel was the private retreat of the Prince-Provosts of Berchtesgaden, the last of whom . . .”
“. . . After Berchtesgaden became part of Bavaria, the lodge became a favorite Wittelsbach hunting cabin. . . .”
Sam and Remi completed their circuit of the landing and ended up back at the dock. They’d seen no familiar faces. A half mile up the fjord, two more electric boats were coming around the peninsula.
Sam said, “We can wait here and check faces as each boat comes in or mix with the crowds and start hunting for clues.”
“I’m not a big fan of waiting,” Remi said.
“Me neither. Let’s get moving.”
They made their way into the gift shop, where they selected a pair of sweatshirts—one a pale yellow, the other a dark blue—from the rack, then a pair of floppy hats from another display. They paid for their purchases and headed to the restrooms to don their new clothing. If Kholkov and his men had been observing them from the Schonau docks, these rudimentary disguises, combined with the crowds, which had by now swelled to over two hundred, might provide Sam and Remi enough cover to move about anonymously.
“Ready?” he asked.
“As I’ll ever be,” Remi replied, tucking her auburn hair under her hat.
For the next twenty minutes they loitered around the landing area, taking pictures of the fjord and the mountains until Remi said, “Got him.”
“Where?” Sam replied without turning.
“The boat that’s circling, waiting to dock. Starboard side, fourth window back.”
Sam turned and pointed his camera across the fjord and caught the incoming boat in the corner of the frame. He zoomed in, took a few pictures, lowered his camera. “Yep, that’s Kholkov. I counted three others. Wait here.”
Hat pulled low over his eyes, Sam strolled back toward the dock. “Hey, there, just a minute,” he called to the deckhand who was getting ready to untie the docked boat. “Forgot the
“Certainly, sir, go ahead,” the deckhand said.
Sam hopped aboard, dropped the note and transponder chip into the
He made his way back to Remi, who asked, “Think it’ll work?”
“It’ll work. They won’t have a choice but to follow it. The question is, how will Kholkov handle it?”
Following the throng, half of whom were taking a guided tour, the other half on their own exploration, Sam and Remi made their way down the broad, white-graveled path toward the chapel. Back at the dock, Kholkov and his three companions were disembarking.
“You think they’re armed?” Remi asked.
“I’d put money on it.”
“We could find someone, see if there are any security guards.”
“I don’t want to put anyone in Kholkov’s way. Who knows what he’d do? Besides, right now we’re still a step ahead. No use in squandering that. Let’s keep going, finish the job, find what we’ve come for, and go.”
“Okay. So: the riddle. The first half we’ve solved,” Remi said. “That leaves us with two lines: ‘The Genius of Ionia, his stride a battle of rivals’ and ‘A trio of Quoins, their fourth lost, shall point the way to Frigisinga.’ Something about that first line keeps nagging me.”
“Such as?”
“Something from history. A connection I’m overlooking.”
From behind them they heard a voice: “Pardon me, please . . . excuse me. . . .”
They turned and saw a woman on crutches trying to get past them. They stepped aside, and the woman smiled her thanks as she passed. Remi’s eyes narrowed as she watched her move off.
“I know that look,” Sam said. “Lightbulb pop on?”
Remi nodded, her eyes still fixed on the woman. “Her crutches. The one on her right is set a notch lower.”
“So?”
“Put it another way: Her stride isn’t ‘a battle of rivals,’ ” she replied, her face lighting up. “That’s it, come on.” She hurried down the path to where it widened before the chapel and stopped at the fence, making sure they were away from prying ears. She hurriedly began tapping on her iPhone’s screen. “There! Got it! You’ve heard of the Ionian League—ancient Greece, a confederation of states formed after the Meliac War?”
“Yes.”
“One of the members of the Ionian League was the island of Samos—the birthplace of the ‘Genius of Samos,’ also known as Pythagoras. You know, the father of the triangle?”
“I’m still not following.”
“The woman’s crutches . . . one was shorter than the other. If you stretch your imagination they formed a
