The Prisoner's Gold (The Hunters 3) (6 page)

‘So,’ Cobb asked, ‘the brothers brought the scholars back to Beijing?’

‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘Their mission was complicated by the
sede vacante
.’

‘I am not familiar with that term,’ Cobb admitted.

‘It was a period of vacancy between Pope Clement IV’s death in 1268 and his successor, Pope Gregory X, taking over three years later. Niccolò and Maffeo – the brothers – managed to bring the oil to the Khan, but the date of their arrival is uncertain. They also tried to bring some Dominican monks with them, but the men were terrified and turned back long before the group reached China. Along with Niccolò’s son, the brothers stayed in China for another seventeen years before they returned to Europe. During that time they amassed an immense fortune, yet when they returned to Italy the riches that they had with them paled in comparison.’

‘In other words,’ Sarah suggested, ‘they hid the bulk of their treasure before they reached home.’

Maggie smiled. ‘Perhaps. There are certainly those who believe that is what happened. The brothers were not stupid. They knew upon their return that the government and the church would seize most of their wealth, and that is precisely what occurred.’

‘So,’ McNutt said, ‘what happened to Nico and Muffy?’

‘Niccolò and Maffeo,’ she corrected gently. ‘Very little is known about what happened to the brothers. Most assume they died shortly after they returned to Italy because the legend no longer focused on them. Instead, it shifted to Niccolò’s son. Now a man, the son went to war in a conflict between Venice and Genoa. He was captured by the Genoese and imprisoned for nearly four years. During that time, he told a fellow prisoner of his adventures.’

Sarah grinned. ‘And the prisoner wrote a book about him.’

Maggie nodded. ‘Yes. You have it.’

McNutt grimaced. ‘Am I the only one who doesn’t know this story? What was the title of the book?’

‘The book has several names,’ Maggie explained. ‘Its author called it
Livre des Merveilles du Monde
.’

Papineau translated the French. ‘
Book of the Wonders of the World
.’

‘In Italy, it was called
Il Milione –
which means “
The Million
”.’

‘Now we’re talking,’ Sarah said as visions of treasure danced in her head. ‘The Million
Dollars
? The Million
Diamonds
?’

‘Nope. The Million
Lies
.’

‘Ugh. I’m guessing the Italians didn’t believe his story.’

‘Many of them did not,’ Maggie admitted.

McNutt stared at her, waiting for the punchline. ‘And what do we call it in English?’

Maggie smiled. ‘
The Travels of Marco Polo
.’

FBI Field Office

New York City

Special Agent Rudy Callahan stared at his calendar and groaned.

It was a torturous routine that played out every morning when he reached his desk and several times throughout the course of the day. Like a prisoner scratching lines on a wall, he was obsessed with the length of his confinement. Only instead of a cell, Callahan was trapped in a windowless office at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.

The previous August he had been doing what he loved most: chasing down leads on the streets of New York. Now he wondered if he would ever see that type of action again. He realized that his last assignment had ended poorly, but he also knew that he wasn’t to blame. Unfortunately, his superiors viewed the episode as a colossal failure and decided to make an example out of him and his partner, Special Agent Jason Koontz.

Seven months later, they were still paying the price.

All because of a single incident in Brooklyn.

While conducting surveillance on the waterfront estate of Vladimir Kozlov – a Russian criminal who ran a local syndicate known as the Brighton Beach Bratva – Callahan had gotten caught in the middle of a firefight. On one side were Kozlov’s guards. On the other, a team of highly skilled thieves who were trying to escape the mansion under a torrent of gunfire and a series of well-placed explosives. The skirmish had left several gunmen dead, even more wounded, and the neighborhood engulfed in flames. Yet, for some reason, the thieves had gone out of their way – even returning for him at one point during their escape – to make sure that Callahan was okay.

It didn’t make sense then, and it didn’t make sense now.

Not that he was complaining.

Though his superiors were thrilled that he had survived, they had been furious to learn that neither he nor his partner, who had been parked outside the mansion in a high-tech surveillance van that was able to detect a mouse fart from over a mile away, had recorded anything but static during the confrontation.

No thieves. No gunmen. No crimes of any kind.

Both men had sworn that the equipment had been functioning perfectly throughout the evening, and each was at a loss to explain what had happened. Their best guess was that someone had scrubbed the signals to cover the incident. Their bosses had laughed at the notion, claiming that it would have taken an elite hacker with inside knowledge of the FBI’s technology to access their surveillance feeds, much less alter them.

Little did they know, that was exactly what had happened.

Hector Garcia had worked his magic and erased everything.

Regardless of the cause, the result was inexcusable. For their efforts, or, more accurately, the lack thereof, Callahan and Koontz had been pulled from the streets for the last seven months. Assigned to a drab office in Federal Plaza, they were forced to watch old recordings of news from around the world, while writing tedious reports that explained how the events might be relevant to the FBI: a government agency that had no authority outside the United States.

It was the Bureau’s version of busy work.

And it was wearing Callahan down.

Even though his shift was just starting, he grabbed a black magic marker from his desk and drew a giant X through the seventeenth day of the month. Then he sat back and admired the string of identical markings that covered the previous blocks in March. ‘Two more months. Just two more months until I’m free.’

‘Talking to yourself again?’ Koontz asked from the office doorway. ‘My grandfather used to do that, too, right before we had him committed.’

Callahan defended himself. ‘I’m not senile. I just want this torture to end. Only two more months, then we can get the hell out of here.’

‘No,’ Koontz said, ‘in two more months we’re
eligible
to leave here. There’s no guarantee of anything. We might be stuck here for the rest of the year. Besides, there are a million other assignments that they could give us that don’t involve fieldwork. Given their take on things, they might send us back to the academy to teach the cadets how
not
to do surveillance.’

Callahan couldn’t bear the thought. ‘They wouldn’t do that … would they?’

‘I doubt it. They hate us a lot more than that.’

Callahan groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. His day was just starting, and the stress was already taking root in his shoulders. If he wasn’t careful, he would be incapacitated by a migraine before lunch.

‘Two more months,’ he mumbled again. ‘Just two more months.’

Koontz laughed as he tossed his jacket onto the floor in the corner of the room. Unlike his partner, he didn’t mind their current assignment. The Bureau’s ‘punishment’ allowed him to watch television for several hours a day, only now he was getting paid for it. ‘Speaking of our superiors, I shared an elevator with the bald, fat one this morning.’

‘You mean the Assistant Director in Charge?’

‘Yeah, that’s the prick. Anyway, he said he was so impressed with our recent reports that he was giving us an extra special case to work on today, one with – and I quote: “international significance”.’

Callahan hoped for the best. ‘Really?’

Koontz nodded. ‘Unfortunately, he was
laughing
when he said it, so you should probably temper your enthusiasm a little bit. On the bright side, at least he’s talking to me again. That has to mean something.’

‘Yeah, it means he doesn’t know that you call him “a bald, fat prick” behind his back.’

‘That’s nothing. You should hear what I say about you when you’re not around. It’s a lot worse than that.’

‘I can only imagine,’ Callahan said with a smile. ‘So, the suspense is killing me. What are we working on today? The Nazis invading Poland? Melting glaciers in the Arctic? Or is it something closer to home?’

‘Nope. Today’s assignment is the bombing in Alexandria.’

‘Egypt? You mean the incident from four months ago?’

‘Yep. That’s the one.’

Callahan cursed under his breath. All things considered, he would rather watch videos on global warming than media coverage of a terrorist attack. As someone who had survived 9/11, he certainly didn’t want to relive that nightmare by watching footage of a bombing that was far from the Bureau’s jurisdiction. Even if they found something in the video footage, they couldn’t take action. And it was an
old
bombing. Stale, as far as investigations went. Much of the damage had already been rebuilt. He’d seen a story about it in the
Times
.

‘You’ve got to be joking! They already know what happened over there. The block was blown to hell with Semtex. What else do they expect us to tell them?’

Koontz shrugged. ‘You’re preaching to the choir. It’s not like we can do anything about it anyway. If the CIA wants to know something about the bombing, let their trolls figure it out. Just because we’re the ones with
Investigation
in our name doesn’t mean we should do all the research.’

Despite their situation, Callahan laughed. He had been in the Bureau for over twenty years and had never heard that line. He’d be sure to use it the next time he was stonewalled by someone at the Agency – which happened way more often than it should. ‘Let’s be honest: it’s not like anyone actually reads our reports anyway.’

Koontz nodded. ‘I know I don’t.’

The Travels of Marco Polo.

McNutt smiled when he heard the title. ‘Marco Polo had a treasure?’

Maggie nodded. ‘Supposedly, yes.’

He whistled softly. ‘Holy hell, that has to be huge! He invented polo
and
that game where people call out his name.’

Garcia stared at him. ‘Actually, he did neither.’

‘Really? What about Polo cologne?’

‘Nope.’

‘Are you positive? Double-check that on your computer.’

‘I don’t have to. Marco Polo died in 1324. Polo cologne came out in the 1970s.’

‘Exactly. So they owe him, like, six hundred years of royalties!’

Sarah grinned. This was the McNutt she remembered from their previous missions, not the polite ass-kisser from upstairs. ‘It’s about freakin’ time. Where have you been?’

McNutt glanced at her. ‘When did I leave?’

‘Anyway,’ said Papineau, who rolled his eyes at McNutt’s antics, ‘the book is a good place to start, but it is merely an introduction to the subject matter. On his deathbed, Polo himself said that he had only revealed half the story.’

‘Let me guess,’ Cobb said. ‘Our job is to figure out the other half.’

Papineau nodded. ‘Don’t worry, Jack. I have something to help your cause.’

Without saying another word, Papineau strolled past the railing that separated the room into two and sat at the head of the computer table. The others got the hint and followed his lead. Within seconds they had taken their normal seats around the hi-tech device.

Still worried about fitting in, Maggie stared at the lone empty chair – the one where Jasmine used to sit – but opted to remain standing off to the side out of respect.

That is, until Sarah spoke up.

‘What’s wrong? Not used to sitting in chairs? You can sit on the floor if you’d like.’

‘Actually,’ Maggie said, ‘I’m Chinese, not Japanese. We’re big fans of chairs. In fact, we probably built most of the furniture in this house.’

McNutt laughed. ‘You’re probably right!’

Sarah pointed at the chair. ‘Then what are you waiting for?’

Maggie nodded and took her seat.

Papineau tapped a few keys on his virtual keyboard. ‘Hector, I’ve just sent you the name of a file on our server. Please project it on the wall behind me.’

Garcia did what he was told, and the video screen came to life. But unlike the large maps of Eastern Europe and Ancient Egypt that the team had studied in previous briefings, the only thing that appeared on the screen was the name of a single file: UA11273_MP.

Cobb recognized the UA prefix as belonging to the Ulster Archives, a private facility in Küsendorf, Switzerland, that had aided their efforts in the past. He rightly assumed the MP was for Marco Polo, but he wasn’t quite sure about the numbers.

Garcia clicked on the file, and the first page appeared on the screen. It was a scanned copy of a worn and yellowed document, with cramped writing in a foreign language that the team struggled to translate. That is, everyone except Maggie.

She gasped as soon as she saw it. ‘Wait. Is that …?’

Papineau smiled but did not reply.

Sarah showed her frustration. ‘What are we looking at? Polo’s book?’

‘I don’t understand,’ McNutt said. ‘I know we have his book in the library upstairs. I’ve seen it. Why don’t we just look through that one? It’s typed
and
in English.’

Maggie shook her head. ‘That one is most likely a compilation of over fifty manuscripts, each edited by different publishers and editors over the centuries, and based on multitudes of sources, notes, and ideas.’ She stared at the image on the screen. ‘What we’re looking at is something different. This appears to be penned by Rustichello da Pisa himself: the man who wrote the original version of the book.’

‘The prison mate?’ Cobb asked.

Maggie nodded as she struggled to translate the document on a notepad.

Sarah opted to fill the silence. ‘I have to admit I’m kind of impressed. Who knew that Josh had been in the library – let alone looked at the books?’

‘Hey, I read. Not the so-called “classics” and literary novels. That stuff is crap. I was looking for the latest Kuzneski.’