EPILOGUE
IN THE DAYS AFTER THE
INCIDENT the world seemed to spin a little slower. The situation in
Sierra Leone had stabilized with the help of a UN peacekeeping
force and troops from the African Union. Many political prisoners
had been freed, including Djemma Garand’s brother, who was now
being asked to help build a coalition government.
The missing
scientists had been found and returned to their respective
countries. Several were injured, but only one had died. The U.S.
attack force had suffered the brunt of the losses. Thirty-one men
and women from the Memphis were dead or
missing. Eleven naval aviators—pilots and radar officers—had been
killed. But their sacrifices, and the efforts of the NUMA
civilians, had prevented a catastrophic incident from
occurring.
Not a single death
was recorded in the last-minute emergency in Washington. Dozens of
car crashes, hundreds of injuries, but people had remained
remarkably calm in their efforts to reach safety.
Kurt, back in the
States, recuperated. He watched a lot of news and was regaled with
visits from Joe Zavala, the Trouts, and Dirk Pitt.
Joe spent hours
telling him stories of his adventures with the crew of the IL-76,
back in Tangiers. Paul and Gamay had their own stories, not as
lighthearted, but the kind that filled people with pride. He
noticed they never stopped holding hands.
Dirk Pitt
congratulated them all on a job well done and then began adding up
the tab. The Barracuda, the
ultralights, damage to a soccer field, legal issues with the White
Rajah Club in Singapore, and something about a missing
leopard.
“I don’t even want to
know why we’re paying for the capture of a juvenile spotted
leopard,” Dirk said.
Kurt opened his mouth
in an attempt to explain but then shut it. What was the
use?
The IL-76 charter was
next on the list, the expended Lunatic Express, and multinational
cleanup issues regarding oil leaked from the Onyx as a result of his torpedo
attack.
When Dirk finished
going through the list, he smiled. “As I’ve gotten older I’ve
learned a few things,” he said. “One of them is: you get what you
pay for. You and Joe are like one of my cars. Expensive, bad for
the environment, and often a pain in the backside. But you’re worth
every penny.”
As soon as he was
able, Kurt made contact with Katarina, arranging to meet her back
on Santa Maria.
After all that had
transpired, the U.S. and Russian governments had agreed that items
aboard the Constellation rightly belonged to the Russian people.
Both sides agreed that it would be appropriate if Kurt and Katarina
supervised the dives to retrieve them.
Katarina beamed when
she saw him, and she kissed him long and hard as soon as they met
up despite the presence of a small audience.
A few days later they
were out on a chartered dive boat with representatives from the
Russian and U.S. governments on board keeping an eye on the
proceedings.
After one dive as a
run-through, they went down to retrieve the stainless steel trunks.
Using torches to free them from the Constellation’s floor reminded
Kurt of Joe’s narrow escape.
He realized they
wouldn’t have survived had this old wrecked aircraft and its oxygen
bottle not been here. After moving the cases outside the aircraft
and attaching them to floats, which were inflated with air from
their tanks, Kurt went back inside and swam up to the
cockpit.
He reached for the
copilot’s dog tags, which still dangled around the man’s skeletal
neck. He gently pulled them free and then swam from the
plane.
Surfacing, he climbed
aboard the dive boat. Katarina was already working on cutting the
lock off one of the stainless steel cases.
It broke and fell to
the deck. Katarina opened the trunk.
Despite the tight
seal, all these years on the bottom had allowed sediment and water
to seep inside. At first all they saw was murky water, but Katarina
dipped her hand into it and pulled out a necklace of large white
pearls.
She placed the
necklace on the deck and reached in again carefully. This time, she
retrieved a tiara that looked as if it were encrusted with
diamonds.
A representative from
the Russian historical society stood by. Seeing this, he stepped
forward. With careful precision he took the tiara and began to
smile.
“Exquisite,” the
bespectacled man said. “And almost unbelievable. But it is certain
now.”
He held up the tiara.
“This was worn by Anastasia, daughter of Tsar Nicholas the Second,”
he said. “She was photographed in it in 1915. It disappeared, along
with many other jewels, when the Tsar fell to the
revolution.”
Kurt looked over at
him. “I thought all the Tsar’s treasures had been
found.”
“Yes and no,” he
said. “The treasures they were known to possess were discovered
long ago. Indeed, many jewels were sewn into their clothing to hide
them from the guards. Both Anastasia and her sisters were shot and
stabbed to no effect because their clothing was so stuffed with
precious stones that they were all but bulletproof.”
“I figure you have
those,” Kurt said. “So where did these come from?”
“The Tsar’s fortunes
were so vast, the extent of his wealth was never really cataloged,”
the man said. “For political reasons, the Soviets insisted that all
the wealth had been collected and placed in trust for the people.
The Russian government that succeeded the Soviet one continued this
charade, but many photographs from that era display treasures that
were never discovered. It was long assumed they had been lost to
history. Who would have thought that both your government and mine
knew where some of them were?”
Kurt considered what
the man was saying. It didn’t bother him that the jewels would be
going back to Russia, he just wondered how they’d left Moscow in
the first place.
“How’d they end up
here?” he asked.
“I can tell you
that,” a wavering voice said.
Kurt turned. While he
and Katarina were down below on the dive, a new arrival had come
aboard. Kurt knew who he was and had requested he be found and
offered the chance to be present.
Kurt stepped up and
shook the man’s hand.
“Katarina,” Kurt
said, “members of the Russian government, meet Hudson
Wallace.”
Wallace stepped
forward, moving slowly. He had to be almost ninety, though he still
looked like the kind of guy who could thump you if you got out of
line. He wore a bright red Hawaiian shirt, tan cargo shorts, and
boat shoes with ankle socks.
He fixed his eyes on
Katarina and smiled from ear to ear.
“My copilot and I
picked up a fellow in Sarajevo,” he said. “A political refugee
named Tarasov.”
“He was a criminal,”
the Russian man said, “who took the jewels after burying them with
three other soldiers years before.”
“Sure, sure,” Wallace
said. “One man’s criminal is another man’s freedom fighter. Anyway,
we whisked him out of there and brought him to Santa Maria, where
we were supposed to fuel up and hop across the pond. But we got
grounded by a storm, and some of their agents found
us.”
He shook his head
sadly. “Tarasov was shot in the back. My copilot, Charlie Simpkins,
was killed as well. I was wounded. I managed to take off, but an
electrical storm, a couple engine failures, and loss of blood
brought me down. I lost control of the plane and hit the sea. To
this day I don’t remember how I got out.”
“You know,” Kurt
said, “that story was part of the reason we believed in this
hoax.”
Wallace laughed, and
his face crinkled up. “In those days things like that happened all
the time. Instruments iced up, gauges froze, you couldn’t tell up
from down.”
“But what about the
engine failure?” Katarina asked.
“I had a hard time
figuring that myself,” Wallace said. “We kept those babies in prime
condition. Then it hit me. It rained there for three solid days. We
fueled the Connie from their ground tanks. I think we sucked up a
bunch of water when we took on five hundred gallons of the stuff
the day before we left. Damn bad luck, if you ask me.”
Kurt nodded as Hudson
looked down at the tiara and the necklace.
“For sixty years I
always wondered what was in those boxes,” he said. “I guess they’re
filled to the top.”
Katarina smiled at
him kindly. “You’ll be able to see them in a museum, I’m sure,” she
said.
“No thanks, miss,” he
replied. “I came for something much more valuable.” He turned to
Kurt. “Were you able to get ’em?”
Kurt reached into his
pocket and retrieved the dog tags he’d pulled off the copilot.
Wallace looked at them with reverence as if they were made of the
purest gold.
“A Navy team is
coming out tomorrow,” Kurt said. “Charlie will be buried in
Arlington next week. I’ll be there.”
“You?”
“You lost a friend
here,” Kurt said. “But in a way you and your copilot saved a friend
of mine. We’ll both be there. We owe you that much and
more.”
“A long time to come
home,” Wallace said.
Kurt nodded. Yes, it
was.
“I’ll see you there,”
Wallace said. He smiled at Katarina, thumbed his nose at the
Russian expert, and walked back to the boat he’d motored in on. It
took a moment for him to climb aboard. Once there, Wallace grabbed
a wreath and held it out. Then, with a gentle toss, he laid it out
on the water.
THREE DAYS LATER,
after finishing the recovery and spending forty-eight hours with
Katarina that actually qualified as R & R, Kurt was back in the
States.
Katarina denied it,
but he had a sneaking suspicion she’d enjoyed her time as a spy of
sorts. They promised to meet again someday, and Kurt wondered if it
would happen first from careful planning or at random in some
out-of-the-way place with a swirl of international intrigue
unfolding. Either way, he looked forward to it.
He wandered by the
NUMA headquarters and found the place empty for the weekend. A
message from Joe told him to go home.
Heading the advice,
he made his way back to his boathouse on the Potomac.
Suspiciously, he
detected the scent of marinated steaks grilling on a barbecue
emanating from his own deck. He walked around to the back of the
boathouse.
Joe and Paul were
standing on the deck above the river. Gamay sat nearby on a chaise
longue. Paul appeared to have commandeered Kurt’s gas grill, and
what looked like rib-eye steaks for the four of them were sizzling
away on it.
Joe was scribbling
something on a Dry Erase Board, and a bottle of merlot sat on his
corner table along with a cooler of beer and some travel
brochures.
Gamay hugged him.
“Welcome home.”
“You guys know this
is my home,” he said, “not a dormitory.”
They laughed, and
Kurt leafed through the brochures, noticing a theme.
Joe handed him an
ice-cold Bohemia, just like the one he’d liberated from the
captain’s stash on the Argo.
The Trouts sipped the
wine.
“What’s going on?”
Kurt asked, feeling as if he’d stumbled upon a secret
gathering.
“We’re planning a
trip,” Joe announced.
“Haven’t we spent
enough time together?” Kurt said, kidding, and well aware that he
was standing amid family.
“This will be a
vacation,” Gamay said. “No running, no shooting, no
explosions.”
“Really?” Kurt said,
taking a sip of the beer. “Where are we going?”
“Glad you asked,” Joe
said. He walked over to the Dry Erase Board on which three names
had been written. Each had a single check mark on it.
“We’ve all voted
once,” Paul said, “but we have only white smoke to send up the
chimney.”
“So I’m the
tiebreaker,” Kurt guessed.
“Correcto,” Joe said. “And don’t let all the times
I’ve saved your life influence you.”
Kurt stepped closer
to the board, cutting a sideways glance at Joe. “Or all the times
you’ve caused me trouble.”
He studied the
choices.
“Eight-Day Moroccan
Camel Safari,” he said, reading choice number one. It had Paul’s
name next to it. “Have you ever been on a camel,
Paul?”
“No, but . .
.”
“Eight minutes might
be fun, but eight days . . .” Kurt shook his head.
Paul looked hurt.
Gamay and Joe smiled.
“Death Valley Hiking
Trip,” he said, looking at the next line. Gamay’s choice. He looked
at her. “Death Valley?” he said. “Nope, that’s a little grim, don’t
you think?”
“Oh come on,” Gamay
protested. “It’s beautiful there.”
“Yes,” Joe said. He
raised his arms as if he’d won.
“Hold on there,
partner,” Kurt said. “I’m not sure the Gobi Desert even counts as a
vacation spot.”
“Sure it does,” Joe
said. “I saw a commercial. They even have a slogan. ‘Go be in the
Gobi.’”
Kurt laughed. “They
might want to keep working on that.”
“It’s dry there,” Joe
said. “No chance of drowning or freezing or ruining your best
Armani shirt.”
Kurt laughed again.
He could just about imagine Joe wearing Armani in the middle of the
desert. He sighed, guessing they weren’t really serious, but there
was one dry, sunny place he’d always wanted to go.
“I vote for the
Australian Outback,” Kurt said. “Ayers Rock, rustlin’ roos, and
Foster’s.”
They looked at him
for a second, stunned.
“Rustlin’ roos?”
Gamay said. And they broke into a cacophony of noes and long-winded
reasons why Australia would never work. By the time they were done
Paul was flipping the steaks and Kurt had finished his
beer.
“Okay,” Paul said.
“Let’s try again.”
Joe erased the board
and scribbled “Round 2” at the top. Meanwhile, Kurt sat down in the
other chaise, grabbed another beer, and gazed out over the peaceful
river as the nominations came in.
As the names of
various hot and dry places were called out, Kurt couldn’t help but
smile. He had a feeling this might go on for a while. And sitting
there, surrounded by his friends and soaking up the sun, he kind of
hoped it would. In fact, for the moment, he could think of nowhere
else he’d rather be.