Into the Black (36 page)

While it would have been far simpler to just enter the enclosure and grab the Fleece, that would have meant abandoning the galley and all its other secrets to Severin.  And since the galley was completely intact and relatively small, raising it in its entirety was only a matter of hard work, not technical know-how.  The fact that it now bobbed a few feet away seemed to bear witness to his abilities as an amateur marine salvager.

The canvas blankets concealed much of the ship from his view, but he immediately began comparing the suppositions of contemporary scholars with what he was seeing.  The colonnaded superstructure was inconsistent with theory, but other features were right on the mark.  A girdle of ropes, now gilded, encircled the hull like a net.  Kismet recalled that the purpose of this arrangement was to add strength to the overall structure, especially when battle conditions required the sailors to ram another vessel. 

The bow of the ship--a galley, and not an early Bronze Age explorer scout as the Argo would have been--rose high above the gangway, even above the roof of the enclosure.  Kismet could make out a gilt ladder ascending to the bowsprit and the carved foremast.  The latter, an ornate spar that protruded out over the water ahead of the vessel, had been crafted to resemble a woman both delicate and fear-inspiring.  Remembering the altar stone he had first viewed in Harcourt's photograph, Kismet wondered if he wasn't looking at a likeness of Medea herself.  Directly below the bowsprit, the hull swept ahead at the waterline and continued forward beneath the surface to form the galley's ram.

Irene crossed over to stand beside him.  "I'm really very impressed, Nick."

"You're not the only one.  Come on; let's clear some of this stuff away."

As they started removing the three remaining makeshift float bladders from the net slings, Irene noticed something that Kismet had missed.  "It's not glowing anymore."

Kismet stood up and scanned the golden surface.  He could see the impressions of their footprints, stamped in the soft metal overlay, but there was no hint of the illumination that had pierced the undersea darkness.  A sudden wind came up, blowing against the tarps and causing them to flap noisily.  "That's strange." His words were lost in the clamor.

Anatoly crossed over to join them.  "May I see it?"

Kismet nodded and led the way back to the entrance to the hold.  The interior was dark, no longer illuminated by the glowing metal.  "I guess we'll need a light or something.  Wait here."

Before either of them could protest, Kismet had ducked out of the hold and jumped back over to the trawler.  Anatoly quickly followed, but Kismet waved him off.

"I'll just be a minute.  Stay there."

He knew exactly where his flashlight was; tucked in his waist pack, the batteries still relatively fresh.  But he had another purpose for returning to the fishing boat; a detail which had been nagging at the back of his mind ever since the failure of his previous attempt to recover the Golden Fleece.  It was a matter that he had not been able to resolve, primarily for lack of an opportunity, but now a chance had presented itself.

The instruments were basic; the trawler was almost as much an antique as the golden galley.  He quickly located the bulky marine band radio transmitter and laid a hand on the case; it was still warm.  The radio had been used recently.  He drew back his hand and stared at the metal box, as though it had confirmed his suspicions.  There was nothing he could do about it now. 

A glance over his shoulder confirmed that the others had not left the golden ship.  He raised the headphones to one ear and switched on the radio, making a note of the frequency to which it was tuned.  He then adjusted that knob to another position and sent out a brief message, nothing more than a greeting, but using code words in the Russian language.  He continued to do this, nudging the tuner until he received a reply.  He then rattled off several sentences, all of which would have seemed harmless and not especially noteworthy to any eavesdroppers.  He waited for a confirmation then switched the set off, after which he quickly loosened the antenna wire.  He had almost passed from the wheelhouse before remembering to return the tuner to its original frequency.  As he departed the wheelhouse a second time, his gaze fell on a battered electric lantern, powered by a large dry cell battery. Deciding that the lamp was better suited than his MagLite to the pretense upon which he had made his exit, he scooped it up then raced back to the golden ship, painfully aware that he had been gone for nearly five minutes. 

"Here it is," he called, waving the light like a trophy.  He pushed past them into the hold and switched the lamp on.  Its beam shot through the darkness, glinting off of the now dormant metal and was reflected throughout the structure.

"It's beautiful," gasped Irene.

The cargo had not shifted dramatically during the ascent.  The ship had rolled over almost right away, guided to an upright position by the air bladders strategically positioned on the hull.  The cask which had contained the Golden Fleece itself had tipped over, and was now lying in the aisle at the center of the hold.  "Give me a hand here."

With Anatoly's help, he turned it over so that the opening he had made was facing up.  He then set the lantern down, and thrust both hands into the crate.  "It's still here," he said, grinning. 

It felt profoundly heavier as he lifted it from the confines of the box.  Anatoly and Irene reached out to help him lay it out flat on the empty crate. 

"So that's the Golden Fleece," Irene remarked.

Spread out before them, Kismet had to admit that it seemed rather ordinary; an animal skin, maybe large enough to be worn as a shawl over the shoulders but for the prodigious weight of the gold.  He brushed a hand through the gilt wool, and then inspected his fingertips in the lamplight.  Tiny particles of metal dust glinted in the whorls of his fingerprints.  Impelled by curiosity, he flipped back one corner of the Fleece, revealing sodden leather.

"Not what you were expecting?" Anatoly inquired.

"I'm not sure what I was expecting," confessed Kismet.  He played the beam of the flashlight around the hold once more, inspecting the dozens of almost identical cargo crates that lined the walls.

"Shall we open them?"

"Maybe in a minute.  First, I want to test a theory."  He set his flashlight down beside the Fleece and switched it off, plunging them into darkness.  Irene's sigh of irritation was audible in the sudden blackness that filled the hold. 

"Scientific method," he muttered.  His fumbling fingers unscrewed the wire leads from the battery terminals.  He then brought the wires in contact with the Fleece and was instantly rewarded with illumination.  "Aha! I think we can safely say that it is an electrical phenomenon at work here, not a magical..."

The light at his fingertips suddenly flared with blinding intensity.  Before he could even think about letting go, the bulb imploded with a pop that startled all of them and returned them once more into darkness.

"Was that part of the experiment?" remarked Irene.

"As a matter of fact, it was," he replied, matching her sarcastic tone.  "Anyway, there's not much more we can do in here now.  We'll wait until we're safely ashore to find out what other secrets this ship is hiding."

"I agree," rumbled Anatoly, breaking his long silence.  "I don't like the feel of this wind.  I don't want to have to navigate the harbor, towing this ship, in the middle of a storm."  The big Russian turned to leave the hold, but Kismet forestalled him.

"Wait.  We can't go back there."

The fisherman faced him, his features growing stern.  "We must.  There's nowhere else to go."

"We've got to get this ship away from Russian waters.  Severin's jurisdiction extends to the Georgian Coast.  If we go back, he'll just kill us and tow the ship back to Sevastopol."

"I don't believe that would happen," Anatoly replied in a grave voice.  "But it does not matter.  This discovery belongs to my people, Nikolai Kristanovich.  Surely you must respect that."

"I'm afraid I agree with him," Irene intoned.  "If you take the ship away from Georgia, then you'll be no better than Grimes and his thugs."

"Under normal circumstances, I would agree.  But these aren't normal circumstances.  Listen, I don't care who claims ownership of this galley.  But if we don't let the world know what we've found, then no one will ever learn of it.  This is a secret that the Russians would kill to protect."

"You're being paranoid."

"I don't think I am.  Severin tried to do away with me once already.  Not only that, if we take this ship back to harbor, do you think Grimes won't notice?  Our only hope is to get into Turkish waters.  Then, when I've announced the discovery to the world under the aegis of my office, we can worry about whose property it is."

As he spoke, Kismet became increasingly aware of the ship's undulations.  The sea was no longer the calm surface it had been during the salvage.  Anatoly had been correct about one thing: a storm was rising.

"We must put into port," Anatoly urged.  "I understand your concerns, but the sea is not a safe place for us to be right now.  As long as my boat tows this ship, both vessels are in danger of being battered against each other."

Kismet couldn't argue with the immediacy of the threat posed by nature's fury.  "You're right.  You take Irene back to Poti.  I'll ride the storm out aboard the galley."

Irene jumped forward, shouting into his face.  "Are you out of your mind?  You'd never survive."

"It's either that, or we sail for Turkey.  You decide."

Anatoly's eyes drew into narrow slits.  "You risk all our lives with this foolishness, but I will do as you ask."

"Great.  You go back to the trawler and let out the tow cable.  Irene and I have some work to do here."

Both the Russian and Irene asked simultaneously.  "What?"

"An ancient Greek galley, overlaid in gold is a bit obvious, don't you think?  We'll try to rearrange the tarps to camouflage it.  Make it look more like an ordinary boat.  We'll float over on the inner-tubes as soon as we're done."

As they moved out onto the gangway, it became apparent that the weather was changing more rapidly than Kismet would have thought possible.  "Storms rise quickly on the Black," Anatoly shouted over the roaring wind.  Nevertheless, Kismet could not believe that the clear night had so quickly become filled with thunderheads.  Distant lightning licked at the water, and the rolling detonations of thunder, followed quickly.  The storm was not far off.

Anatoly loosened the ropes binding the two vessels and the galley immediately began to drift away.  Larger and heavier than the trawler, the golden vessel seemed a perfect target for the tempest; the wind and swells quickly pushed it away to the full length of the towrope.  The cable snapped out of the water, springing taut, and then the galley, driven by the persistent wind, started pulling the fishing boat along backwards through the water.  Anatoly corrected this problem by revving the engine, but the strain on the tow cable was audible over the howl of the storm.

Kismet and Irene worked quickly, first stowing the inner-tubes between the columns and the hold, then draping tarpaulins and nets along the hull.  The gusting wind made this task all but impossible.  At one point, a sustained blast tore a canvas blanket from their combined grip.  It sailed away into the night, skimming along the waves like a magic carpet.

"This is crazy!" Kismet admitted, shouting to be heard, as fat raindrops began pelting them at a forty-five degree angle.  He took Irene's hand and led her back to the hold.  The sound of the storm was muted, but when the rain changed to hail, it banged on the gold-covered enclosure like an enormous snare drum.

"I agree," replied Irene, when they were sheltered.  "Why didn't you just let Anatoly tow us back to port?"

"Because Anatoly is an FSB agent, or at least an informant."

"That's ridiculous.  You weren't there when Captain Severin questioned us.  He hates Anatoly.  He thinks he's a traitor for helping my father escape."

"All an act.  Ask yourself this; how did Severin find us out here?"

"An informant in the city.  Severin admitted as much."

Kismet shook his head.  "An informant might have seen us leave, but he wouldn't have known where we were going.  Only Anatoly could have supplied that information."

"Severin said that he found us when Anatoly radioed for a weather report."

"Well, I think that he called for another weather report just after we raised this galley.  Funny that he didn't mention that a storm was rising.  I'd say the forecast calls for trouble."

* * *

The slopes on the eastern face of the Caucasus were calm.  No wind stirred the dusting of snow that had fallen earlier in the day; no breeze caused the bare limbs of the trees to sway.  But something was passing through the woods, something unseen like the wind, but with a greater potential for destruction.

The men were by no means invisible, but the white camouflage shells that covered their winter parkas blended in with the snowscape and made them almost impossible to see.  Their stealthy progress through the forests and up the slopes would not have attracted the notice of a casual observer. 

After hours of hiking and climbing, their destination was nearly in site.  As they crested a hill, getting a good look at the German encampment, they paused briefly to go over the plan and make a few last minute modifications, and then fanned out, encircling the small tent city.

Lysette Lyon took the opportunity to review her objectives: recover the plans for the EMP bomb, capture or terminate Halverson Grimes, and if possible, bring back the Golden Fleece.  This raid, if successful, would accomplish the second of the three.

So far, Kismet had mostly outmaneuvered her efforts to recover the data, smuggled from Germany to the United States via Morocco.  She had received a severe dressing-down for having involved her former lover in the first place, a civilian in the employ of the United Nations, though to Lyse it had seemed like a perfect plan.  However, that indiscretion was quickly forgotten when she had delivered the spy, captured at Kismet's apartment, as well as the news that Halverson Grimes was a traitor, to her section leader.