Soul Intent (20 page)

“You were planning to make the deposit on the fourteenth,” Madame Flora said. “But you didn’t.”

Archie bowed his head for a moment. “I had forgotten that,” he said. “I could not make the deposit, because James had fallen out of bed. I asked you…” his eyes narrowed.

“You asked me to reschedule the team for the next day,” she said. “But I didn’t. I deposited that journal you found instead of the gold. They gave me the receipt, and I used a razor blade to scrape off the item list and your signature. I couldn’t remove the date because of that line underneath it.”

Archie stared at her. “And the next day?”

“And the next day,” she said, “I sent a fake team, who filled out that receipt for what you thought was the real deposit.”

Archie dropped the receipt onto the coffee table. “You re-used a depositary receipt?” His voice rose in volume. “You forged my name onto the original? You assembled a fake depositary team?”

“I did.” Madame Flora frowned. “And even with your ring, you never would have known it was me without your little security consultant to figure it out.”

Archie swung around to face me, awfully quick for an eighty-four year old. “Are you in on this?”

Did my soul line ancestor count? “Archie, it was sixty-four years ago. I wasn’t even born then,” I said. “You asked me to catch the thief and find out how Goering’s gold was stolen.” I pointed at Madame Flora. “I found your thief. Now listen to her, and she’ll tell you how she did it.”

She glared at me. “Stop calling me a thief. The Nazis stole the gold, and then Goering stole it from them. All I did was keep it out of his soul line collection.”

Archie walked over to his desk. He turned around and came back to his seat. He looked at me for a minute, then at Madame Flora. He got up again and went to the window.

Madame Flora cleared her throat, but I shushed her.

After a few minutes he came back and sat down. He stared at Madame Flora. “Your story is preposterous,” he said. Then he turned to me. “Scott, you have fingered the wrong person. There is no way Flora could have stolen the gold.”

Madame Flora sighed. “I knew this wasn’t going to be easy,” she said to me.

“You don’t think she did it?” I asked Archie.

He shook his head. “We had too much security, Scott. We used double passwords. And I personally checked the identity of the depositary team leader before I turned over the gold.” He turned to Madame Flora. “Are you protecting the real thief with your false confession?”

“I most certainly am not!” she said. Her arms were crossed and her eyes were smoldering. “I tricked you, plain and simple. I smothered James, then I pulled him onto the floor so you’d have to leave. I guessed your secret password, and I signed your name. Then I watched you hand Goering’s gold to my men.”

Archie’s shoulders sagged. “Why would you do this?” he asked.

“To stop you,” she said. “You knew it was wrong!”

They both went silent. I bit my tongue and waited.

Finally Archie spoke. He was looking at the floor. “What you did was just as wrong, Flora.” His eyes flicked up at hers, then back down. “You deliberately sabotaged a Soul Identity mission. You violated its integrity.”

“I did what I had to do,” she said. She pursed her lips. “And the sooner you agree with me, the sooner we can go get that gold.”

He raised his eyes and met hers. “To return it to the depositary?”

“No, you silly old goat. To return it to the families of the victims.”

Another few minutes of silence. Then Archie turned to me. “How did you figure it all out?”

Madame Flora threw me a sharp glance.

Val had asked her to tell the whole story, including that he was a daddy, but only once we recovered the gold. I wasn’t going to spoil it for her. Besides, watching them handle this old dispute was painful enough without throwing lost love opportunities into the mix.

“A few lucky guesses,” I said to Archie. “Plus, she was acting pretty weird in the meetings yesterday when she saw the journal.”

He seemed to buy my lame explanation. He turned back to Madame Flora. “I want the full story.”

She shook her head. “Only after we get the gold,” she said. “Are you going to help?”

More silence. They glared at each other.

Time to help break this log jam. “Archie,” I said, “you admitted yesterday that you were wrong, and that you hated yourself for doing business with Goering.” I pointed at Madame Flora. “She’s right—it’s time to finish the job. It’s time for Soul Identity to step up to the plate.”

He kept his eyes on her as he nodded. “Where did you hide it?” he asked her.

“Not until you commit,” she said.

“I am committed,” he said. “And so are Soul Identity’s resources.” He held up his hand. “But I am coming with you.”

Madame Flora smiled. “You’re more than welcome to come, Archibald. You are part of this.” She clapped her hands twice. “We’ll start our journey in Nuremberg.”

“You hid the gold in the city?” I asked.

She shook her head. “It’s a long way from there,” she said. “I’ll work with George and Sue to handle the logistics. Rose and Marie will come too. They need to learn more about their heritage.” She pointed at me. “You and Val need to spend a week in training.”

“Training?” I asked.

“Diving,” she said. “The gold is buried underwater.”

Great.

“When do you want to leave, Flora?” Archie asked.

“Soon,” she said. “It’s already October—if we don’t hurry, the mountains will be snowed in till spring.”

thirty-six

Present Day

Chesapeake Bay, Maryland

I tried to kick my way up to the surface. I couldn’t get enough air in my lungs, no matter how hard I sucked on the regulator. Frantic shouts came over the intercom, but I ignored them. I had only one thing on my mind—I had to get out of the water.

I broke through the surface into the moonlight and ripped the mask off my face and the regulator out of my mouth. I gulped the air and tried to think of happy thoughts.

Christian Nielsen, our dive master, popped up a moment later and tore off his own mask. He slapped his palm hard against the water and sent up a great splash. Then he swam to the boat and clambered onto the dive platform.

Christian’s eight-year-old son Julian walked back to the stern. “Dad, give the man a break,” he said.

“He could get us all killed by acting like that,” Christian said. He pointed at me. “Do that next week, and you’ll both end up in a compression chamber.”

At that moment, I didn’t really care. “There’s not going to be a next week,” I gasped.

Val surfaced next to me. She turned to the instructor. “I think Scott was better this time.”

“Bullshit,” Christian said. “He panicked again. We’re done here—this isn’t gonna work.”

“I think he can do it,” Julian said. He gave me a smile. “I know he can.”

Christian faced his son. “What makes you so sure, Julian?”

“Sometimes I just know,” he said. “You know I’m right, Dad.”

Our dive instructor frowned. “My son is usually a better judge of talent than I am,” he said to Val and me. Then he turned back to Julian. “But this time I think you’re wrong.”

The boy shook his head. “No, I’m not. Mr. Waverly can do it.” He looked at Val. “When I was little, my mom sang me lullabies after I had nightmares. Do you know any lullabies?”

Val smiled. “I do, Julian. That’s a good idea.”

“It’s a stupid idea,” Christian said. “Start the engines, son. We’re heading back.”

“Wait,” I said. I gritted my teeth. “Let’s try it again.”

The dive master shrugged. Then he twisted his wrist to read his dive computer. “You’ve got time for only one more shot,” he said. “It’s now or never.”

I threw a grimace at Val and then put on my mask. I bit down on the mouthpiece and dove under the waves.

I never would have thought I’d get a panic attack. But there it was: a big gnarly monster living inside of me. And it would mess up our trip if I couldn’t figure out how to dive in dark places without becoming a danger to everybody else.

I’d been in plenty of tight spaces before. Last year, when Val and I hid in the trunk of Bob’s limo, I didn’t panic. And I stayed calm when Andre Feret tossed us into an airless closet in Venice—along with the body of the assistant he had shot.

But diving in the dark was different. Maybe it was the cold water squeezing my wetsuit. Maybe it was how my wrist-attached flashlight only pierced a few feet of the murk in front of me. Whatever it was, the panic overwhelmed me, and I wanted nothing but to push myself off the bottom of the Chesapeake Bay, leap out of the water, rip off my wetsuit, and gulp fresh air—not the recycled stuff the rebreather pumped into my lungs.

Fortunately, we were diving in only twenty feet, and we didn’t have to worry about decompression. An old culvert lay on the bottom, and our instructor was having us retrieve a stainless steel toolbox he had buried at the deep end. Val had done it the first time without a hitch, but this was my third and final attempt.

“Ready?” Val asked. The rebreather’s regulators garbled our voices, but we could understand each other.

“As much as I’ll ever be.” I kicked forward and glided up to the culvert. The entrance was lit by my and Val’s lights. One last glance back at Val and the dive master, and I swam into the opening.

And my panic monster came hurtling back to join me in that tiny space in the middle of all the murk. My body screamed for me to return to land. My heart raced, and I let loose a strangled cry. My flippers thrashed in the water.

I heard somebody on the intercom, barely audible over the din of my own heartbeats. What were they saying? I scrunched my eyes shut and balled my fists and tried to hear.

It was Val, singing softly in Russian. It was a tune I had never heard before, and I couldn’t understand the garbled words, but listening to her voice calmed me down just enough to stop my thrashing.

I pictured the waves of Val’s singing carrying me gently up the culvert. I kept my eyes closed, and I gave gentle kicks to propel myself along. And after a few minutes, my head bumped into something. I opened my eyes, and the toolbox gleamed in the beam of my flashlight. I had made it, with Julian’s idea and Val’s help. We’d be able to do this in Europe next week.

That night, as we lay in our bed before the morning’s trip to Germany, I closed my eyes and could still feel the gentle rocking of the waves. I opened them to the moonlight and rolled onto my side. “What was that lullaby you sang in the water?” I asked Val.

She smiled. “It’s not quite a lullaby. It’s a love song that tells of a beautiful girl dreaming for her prince.”

I made a face. “You stopped my panic attack with a love song?”

“It worked.” She kissed the tip of my nose. “You were in such bad shape.”

I rolled onto my back, bringing her on top of me. “Can you sing it again?”

She snuggled into my arms, her lips close to my ear. “I’ll sing you the first few verses.”

I closed my eyes and listened to her beautiful, calming voice. “Tell me the lyrics,” I said when she stopped.

She propped herself up on her elbows and smiled. “The golden rays of the sun are caressing the shore. The waves are washing up, and somewhere far away, a beautiful ship is floating, its scarlet sail blooming.”

I raised my head up off the pillow and gave her a long kiss. “You saved me, my beautiful girl,” I murmured. “What shall be your reward?”

“I’ll get it myself,” she said, her hand sliding down my side and across my hip.

thirty-seven

Present Day

Nuremberg, Germany

George and Sue met Val and me as we came through the Nuremberg customs early in the afternoon. Val and I had arrived three days after everybody else, giving the others time to explore the city while we spent extra time diving. The others had come on Soul Identity’s jet. We had flown commercial.

George wore lederhosen, a white shirt, and thick gray socks. He hooked his thumbs under the suspender straps and smiled. “Welcome to Bavaria,” he said.

“Where’s the hat and hiking stick?” I asked.

“Back in the hotel where they belong,” Sue said. “Next to the new dirndl you won’t ever see me wear.”

George smiled. “She looks fabulous in it,” he said. “It’s one of the made-for-tourists dirndls, so it shows lots of cleavage.”

Sue shook her head, but she was smiling. “Let’s get you out of the airport and checked into the hotel.”

Once we closed the door of our hotel room, Val burst out laughing. “George gets so excited when he travels. Remember how he was in Venice?”

I put my arms around her. “I’ve been imagining how you’d look in one of those dirndls.”

She gave me a kiss. “Just keep imagining,” she said. “Sue said we’re having dinner at the Bratwurstglocklein, and I hear their waitresses wear some revealing ones.”