the lifeboat and then they took them to the yacht and loaded them onto the deck. So we think they’re getting ready to take the artifacts somewhere by water. The Danube runs through Germany, Austria, Hungary, and Romania to the Black Sea. Many rivers feed it. They could go anywhere without setting foot on land.”
“Have the police arrived?”
“Nobody has seen them yet.”
“All right,” said Sam. “Let’s go see if we can make Bako unhappy.”
Tibor clapped his hand on Sam’s shoulder. “I’m glad I lived to meet you two. Nobody has made me laugh so much since I was a kid.”
Sam rubbed his shoulder. “Okay. Let’s get the truck to a place where we can see the yacht.”
Tibor drove them down to the road that ran along the Danube and turned east. After a few minutes, the road swung inland a bit to avoid a row of old estates along the river. When it swung back to the river, Tibor pointed. “There. See it?”
“The one with the high bridge?”
“That’s the one.” It was sixty-five feet long, with an aluminum lifeboat hanging from davits in the stern.
“All right,” Sam said. “Remi and I need to put on our scuba gear.”
“I have nephews in the back of the truck. I’ll get them out and let you get changed.” He stopped the truck by the side of the road and opened the back, summoned the two young men out, and let Sam and Remi in to put on their wet suits and organize their gear.
Sam tested the underwater light and examined the tools that he’d requested. He put them in a net bag and attached it to his belt. “We’ll drift with the river’s current. When we get there you’ll have to hold the light so I can see what I’m working on. I’ll try to work quickly.”
Remi looked at him suspiciously. “You’re not saying what you’re working on?”
“I know how much you like surprises. But don’t surface no matter what. Stay as deep as you can.”
Tibor’s nephews helped Sam and Remi go down a path to the water on the far side of the truck, where they couldn’t easily be seen from the yacht. They put on their flippers and stepped backward into the dark water of the Danube. As soon as there was enough water to cover them, they submerged.
The big white yacht was at least a hundred yards from shore, anchored just at the edge of the channel where much larger boats and small freighters traveled. Sam and Remi headed for the yacht, staying deep in the murky water and checking their progress occasionally by shining the light on the riverbed below them and ahead of them.
Finally Remi’s light found the anchor chain approximately where they had expected it, a straight diagonal line from the upstream end leading up to the dark shape above them on the silvery surface.
Sam gestured to Remi and slowly rose, coming up under the hull, but not touching it. He swam along the keel to the stern and looked up at the propeller protruding on its shaft from the lower part of the stern.
Remi clutched his arm and in the light she held he saw her shake her head. He could see the anxiety in her eyes through her mask. He put his hand on her shoulder, patted it gently, took her hand, and aimed her light at the propeller. They both knew that if the men in the boat started the engine, Sam could be chopped to pieces in seconds.
Sam proceeded methodically. First, he found the cotter pin and removed it from the nut with a pair of needle-nose pliers. He used the pliers to lift the tabs that held the locking ring, returned the pliers to his net bag, and wedged a wrench between a propeller blade and the stern to keep the propeller from turning while he used an adjustable wrench to remove the nut. He placed his feet against the stern and pulled the bronze propeller off its shaft, then carried it a distance into the deeper channel before he dropped it.
He returned to the stern of the yacht and surfaced cautiously. He took off his flippers, his tanks, and his mask and hung them on the bare propeller shaft and climbed the stern ladder to get aboard.
Just as he reached the rear deck, his eye caught a sudden movement to his left. He spun and saw a man by his left shoulder swing what looked like a pipe. He ducked into the man’s torso so the pipe went over him, gave the man a quick jujitsu punch to the jaw, and held him in a choke hold until he was unconscious. He found a length of rope on a cleat, used it to hog-tie him, and then tore the man’s shirt to make a gag.
Sam saw the wooden crates on the rear deck covered with a tarp. He pulled back the tarp and quietly lowered ten of them into the lifeboat at the stern. They were heavy, and it took nearly an hour of backbreaking work. Then Sam draped the bow rope in the water and freed two pins on the davits to lower the boat to the river. The lifeboat made an unexpectedly loud ratchet sound as it hit the water with a splash. Behind Sam there came a sound of running feet and a call: “Stashu?”
Sam jumped from the stern, grabbed his tanks, mask, and flippers from the propeller shaft and put them on and cleared his mask as he sank deeper.
Remi had seen the loose bow rope and now she held it out and they both grasped it and pulled. She and Sam swam, diving deeper and pulling the boat along the surface above them. As they went, Sam kept looking behind them and around the yacht to be sure none of the crew were jumping into the water after them.
First came the muffled sounds of shots from the yacht above the surface, but with each shot they heard a
Next Sam and Remi heard the engine start and knew the propeller shaft was spinning freely. Without the propeller, the engine was just noise. The helmsman didn’t seem to understand at first because he just gunned the engine harder and louder while the crew at the bow used a power capstan to weigh anchor.
As soon as the anchor was off the bottom, the yacht began to drift downstream, powerless to fight the current or to steer. The anchor kept rising nonetheless, and the boat drifted farther and farther from Sam, Remi, and the lifeboat. At some point the engine stopped, but by then its noise was so far away that Sam and Remi had lost it among the many passing engines above them on the Danube. Sam guessed that they would drop anchor again, but the yacht was too far away to pick out in the murky water.
Sam and Remi arrived at the shore and hauled the lifeboat up onto the mud. Almost instantly the two brawny nephews were beside them, taking the heavy crates out and loading them into the back of the truck. Sam and Tibor joined them. The crates were heavy with precious metal, but ten crates took no more than a few minutes to load. Sam and Remi got in the back, the boys got into the cab with Tibor, and the truck rumbled off into the big, busy city.
As Remi took off the wet suit and set her gear aside to put on street clothes, she said, “We’re not done yet, you know. We’ve still got to find the message from Attila. It will be in one of the graves.”
“Let’s hope the ones waiting for us there are Albrecht’s professor friends and not Arpad Bako.”
AS THE POLICE OFFICER HELPED REMI CLIMB UP OUT OF the open grave, she smiled and waved to Sam. She jogged across the damaged garden to Sam’s side. “It was engraved on the wall. I’m sending the pictures to Selma and Albrecht.”
“The bad part is that Bako’s men probably read it hours ago.”
“I know,” she said.
Tibor said, “If he’s got it, then it didn’t make much of an impression or he didn’t understand it. He’s back in his office at the pill factory, looking innocent.”
Sam said, “If he gets arrested, we won’t be able to prove anything unless somebody else saw his men excavating here. And if he ends up in court, so will we. He could send his security men ahead to the next spot, wherever that is.”
“I’d better go,” said Tibor. “It’s my turn to take charge of the surveillance crew. When they translate the message, let me know what it says.” Tibor got into his car and drove up the gravel drive to the highway.
Sam and Remi walked back toward the open graves, looking at the careless devastation that Bako’s men had left behind. They had apparently been ordered to find just the gold and simply thrown everything else aside. There
