“Who was he?” Jones asked.
“His name was Alexei Kozlov. He was ex-FSB.” Payne handed him Kozlov’s badge. It was gold with Cyrillic lettering. “He assured me it was fake.”
Jones recognized the emblem. “It damn well better be or we need to leave now. We don’t want to tangle with the FSB.”
“Don’t worry. I’m confident he was telling the truth.”
Jones nodded. He trusted Payne’s judgment. “What else did you learn?”
“He killed Byrd. Never got paid, though. Kozlov worked through an intermediary with the Russian Mafia. They gave him a phone number to call. He talked to the man who hired him but never knew his name. He was told to find Byrd, figure out what he was doing, and then kill him before he left town.”
“Anything else?”
“His boss spoke with a Mediterranean accent. Couldn’t tell if it was Greek, Turkish, or Italian. But definitely Mediterranean.”
Jones fiddled with the badge. “This sure looks real to me.”
“At one time, it probably was. But killing pays better than government work.”
“It always does.” He handed it back to Payne. “Should we be worried about the Mafia?”
Payne shook his head. “He wasn’t in the Mafia. This was a contract job, plain and simple.”
“Which means Allison is safe.”
“She is from Kozlov. I can guarantee that.”
No explanation was necessary. He knew what Payne meant.
“Changing subjects,” Jones said. “Any theories on Byrd?”
“Not yet. I’ve been kind of busy. What about you?”
“I found a stack of phony passports and foreign currency. Either Byrd was on the run, or he was expecting to be.”
“Then why come to Russia? And why bring Allison with him?”
“Those are two good questions, especially since he didn’t take her to Italy.”
“Hell,” Payne said, “he didn’t even tell her he went to Italy. If she hadn’t seen the airport tags on his suitcase, she wouldn’t have known.”
“Exactly. So why bring her to Saint Petersburg and not take her to Naples?”
“Only one reason to do that. He
Jones nodded. He was thinking the exact same thing. “If I had to guess, this has to do with Schliemann. According to her, she knew a lot more about Schliemann than Byrd ever did. That has to be the reason he brought her here. To help him with Schliemann.”
Guys!” Allison called from the dining room. “I might have found something important!”
Payne and Jones left the guest room and joined her at the table. A small journal, yellowed with age, was open in front of her. Next to it sat a modern-day legal tablet. It was filled with crisp white pages and several columns of information. The words were written in blue ink.
Jones studied the top page. “Someone’s been busy.”
“Not me,” she assured him. “This is Richard’s notebook. I found it in his files.”
“And what is that?” Payne asked, pointing at the journal.
“
Payne and Jones glanced at each other, amused. They had just been discussing that topic in the other room. Intrigued, Jones slid out of his chair and moved behind her. He wanted a better view of the book, which looked more than a century old.
Allison continued. “Remember what I told you last night? When Richard returned from Naples, he asked me all kinds of questions about Pompeii and Herculaneum, the two cities that were destroyed by the eruption from Mount Vesuvius. Schliemann had toured that area prior to his death, and I assumed that Richard went there to figure out what he had been looking for.”
“A fair assumption,” Jones remarked.
“Well, I was wrong. That might have been a smoke screen. I’m pretty sure Richard went to Naples to buy
“If we did,” Payne said, “we wouldn’t be staring at you.”
“It’s a transcript of Heinrich Schliemann’s final words, recorded by one of the police officers who found him unconscious on the street. I think Richard bought it in Naples.”
Jones leaned closer to inspect the journal. “How could it be a transcript? If he was unconscious, how did he talk?”
“According to this journal, Schliemann was taken to the police station while they tried to establish his identity. At one point, despite being incoherent, he started talking in his sleep.”
“Were you aware of that?”
“Not at all. But rumors have circulated for years about Schliemann’s final days, including his quest to find the largest treasure of all time. Most academics assumed it was part of the hype that he had created during his lifetime. I mean, this was a man who funded the construction of his own mausoleum and paid for the inscription to read, ‘To the Hero Schliemann.’ ”
Jones laughed. “The guy wasn’t modest.”
“No, he wasn’t. That much is certain. But little else is. When it comes to Schliemann’s life, there is always a fuzzy line between fact and fiction.”
“Tell us more about the journal,” Payne said.
“At first glance, I thought it was written by an idiot. Every other word is badly misspelled or abbreviated. I could tell that right away, and I don’t even speak Italian.” She picked up the legal tablet and showed it to Payne. The top page was divided into several different categories. “Then I found this. Richard had gone through the journal and translated everything into English.”
“What’s with the columns?” Payne asked.
“Each column represents a different language.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember, Schliemann wasn’t an Italian. He was a German who had lived all over the world. A man who could speak twenty-two languages. From what I can tell, he used several of those languages on his deathbed. The officer did the best he could to write the words phonetically. It was the only way he could keep track of what was being said.”
She ran her finger down the first column. The word ENGLISH was written at the top. Next were columns for GERMAN, GREEK, RUSSIAN, ITALIAN, and FRENCH. Then she flipped the page. Six more columns appeared. They were labeled SPANISH, PORTUGUESE, DUTCH, and so on. Some of the columns were filled with words; others were nearly empty.
“Richard went through the journal and placed words in corresponding columns. Then he translated each of those words and tried to figure out what Schliemann was saying.”
“And?” Jones asked, excited by the possibilities.
“Unfortunately, Richard came up with gibberish.”
“Damn!”
She glanced back at Jones, who was looking over her shoulder. She was thrilled that he cared enough to curse. “Don’t worry. There’s still hope. I have plenty of information to work with. Give me some time and I might be able to figure it out.”
“Or maybe not. I’ve seen a few people die. They didn’t always make sense at the end. In fact, some of them were pretty damn delusional.”
“Well,” she said, trying not to think about it, “I’ll do my best.”
Payne asked, “At first glance, does anything stand out?”
She nodded. “One word is repeated over and over in many different languages.
