If you’re just joining this story, you may want to start from the beginning.
This story follows the first in Jenn’s Rediscovered series, Last Assault on Oak Island.
Carlos didn't go back to the hotel. He agreed with Lauren's threat of the gray Mercedes behind them and wove deeper into the city to the main post office. He didn't want to rely on their hotel's phone service or the questionable privacy of the hotel's public phones for this call.
At the post office, it took an hour to contact Agnes Breach at the museum and receive her cryptic answer. Carlos then made another call, this one to Lewkowicz, as Lauren watched for the driver of the Mercedes at the building entrance. Then, with a broad smile, he gave the note he had scribbled to Lauren.
"Don't read it aloud."
They exited the post office by a side door and eluded the Mercedes guarding the main entrance.
"Agnes has been watching espionage films again," Carlos said as he hailed a taxi on a secondary street. "We'll call Elden later."
Lauren reread the museum's answer in the taxi. Agnes Breach had satisfied every question. 'Acquire,' it stated promptly. 'Funds of expected amount available immediately. Draft from Krakow branch. Grant, Italy, requests communication from Hamburg, Germany, Hotel Weinstadt. Please verify home. Surface Sárospatak, Hungary, engage Karen. Mirabile visu. Sincerely, Breach, Stends.'
Agnes' dramatics were clear, and the Amber Chamber was indeed Wonderful to Behold.
Lauren looked to Carlos as the taxi took them to Krakow. "It's ours? Lewkowicz accepted the bid?"
He nodded. "We have it." His smile stretched wide. "If only we can get past our bejeweled shadow."
She checked her compact mirror and watched the traffic behind them for a long moment. "He's not with us now," she determined.
"The bank in Krakow is expecting us for the draft. It may be tricky emptying our hotel room," he said with no real concern. "Lewkowicz said he wouldn't give the other party the final answer until noon tomorrow, but I think they will have figured it out sooner."
"One party?"
"That was the impression I got from Lewkowicz."
"So we're ahead of someone, but not the Mercedes." She sighed, smiling.
This time the kite was theirs.
Rybak watched the post office for two hours. The Audi remained immobile and vacant in the lot ahead of him. He waited another thirty minutes, debating the inevitable.
When he went inside, he knew he'd been fooled.
Back on the street, he took the sidewalk around to the second door. His good eye surveyed the cafés and bars across the street. To look into each would make him more conspicuous. To wait would eat up what was left of his nerves. He crossed the street.
It wasn't as if they were unaware of him already.
Lauren stood with Carlos and Lewkowicz as they watched the man with the lift truck load the covered, industrial-load truck. The night air held a whisper of a breeze and the promise of a later chill. The small warehouse outside Tarnow Lewkowicz had directed them to meet him at was non-descript, perfectly belying the treasure within.
Evading the gray Mercedes parked down the street from their hotel had been simple; Carlos used an alley entrance and Lauren climbed the fire escape and settled the bill. Lewkowicz had recommended the truck company Carlos had rented from and the driver met their taxi at the warehouse. Everything had been tied up more easily than Lauren could have hoped.
"Congratulations, Herr Doctor," Lewkowicz said lowly. The only other sound in the late night was the muted whine of the battery-operated lift truck. "I'm pleased this went so smoothly and quickly."
"I also. Your documentation verified immediately." Carlos posed his next question after much thought. "Would you know of any other such partials?"
Lewkowicz shook his head and dismissed the lift truck driver with a wave. "You have a couple of hours' head start, at the most. You will need it."
Carlos looked to the packed car in which the antique dealer had arrived. "You are going on holiday?"
Lewkowicz smiled, but not with pleasure. "I saw a familiar face today," he said gravely. "I should be elsewhere . . . for a while."
Carlos handed him a folded envelope. "The name of an authority on your scroll fragments, when you're ready to part with them. No unnecessary questions. I promise."
Lewkowicz tucked the envelope in his jacket pocket. "I am in your debt."
Carlos and Lauren joined the waiting truck driver in the cab as the darkness thickened with a sparse fog.
"Sárospatak," Carlos told the burly driver. "Hungary."
Lauren spent the long, slow trip trying to stay awake and dodging the driver's elbow as he shifted along the meandering secondary roads into the southern country. Carlos insisted on the door seat, but not once did he nod off to sleep.
Lauren kept an eye on the road behind them for the first hour, but when she spied no Mercedes, gave up the vigil. They drove into and out of a light rain and fog near the border and reached their destination a few hours before dawn.
The truck lumbered into the deserted bauxite mine two miles outside the Sárospatak limits. A railroad nearby cut through the weedy grounds. Carlos had the driver stop, but keep the motor running. They sat weary and numb from the jolting ride, listening to the throaty rattle of the diesel engine.
They sat without speaking and waited.
A chorus of frogs had just begun an hour later when two taxicabs entered the yard and stopped a hundred feet away. The headlights dimmed and William Karen and a younger man stepped out of one. Carlos asked the driver for the keys and the truck ignition was switched off. The engine rumbled to silence.
Carlos and Lauren met Dr. Karen and his assistant Paul by the taxi.
"Carlos, you pirate! This is my department!" Dr. Karen roared in mock irritation. He grasped the curator's hand fiercely when within range.
Lauren nodded to Dr. Karen's assistant, and fellow student, Paul. He wore the same half-giddy near-exhausted look that Dr. Karen did.
"It's all yours again, Bill," Carlos promised.
Dr. Karen gave Lauren a stern look. "You know this makes you an accomplice."
She smiled tiredly. "Guilty."
Dr. Karen sighed, a wistfulness clouding his eyes as he considered the truck. "The Amber Chamber. I couldn't believe it when George told me what we were to pick up here. We were getting ready to leave a certain chateau with a beautiful collection of horn furniture."
"You know this is only part of the chamber," Carlos said. "But we do have a lead to check in Göttingen."
Dr. Karen nodded. "You have no time to reflect now. Agnes gave you the message from the man Grant? Good."
"We're not sure what that's about yet. Hopefully something we can use." Carlos wiped at his eyes with a handkerchief. "No, I'm not sentimental, Bill. The truck is filled with dust. You'll learn that."
Dr. Karen nodded. The sky was lightening at the horizon. "I have two train tickets for Hamburg, and one for Tarnow." He glanced at the driver. "And another bribe."
Lauren didn't say what she thought of the concept. She and Dr. Sheldon had been around that subject a dozen times. She was beginning to see his point.
"It's good to keep the mercenaries quiet," Carlos agreed.
Paul stepped near Lauren. "Boy, are you one up on Beth now." His elbow nudged her side.
She shared his smile as Carlos motioned to the truck driver. "She always handles it so well."
"Have you seen it yet?" Even in the misty night his curiosity was evident.
"Not really," she said. "You'll probably get the best first-look; not me."
"I'll take it from here," Dr. Karen said. He gave Carlos the tickets and an envelope. "Take our cab. Your driver can take the other cab to the border and the train from there back to Tarnow. Stends wants you to contact him in Miskolc before you depart Hungary." He laughed as Carlos gave him the truck keys. "He said something about an explanation."
Carlos shook his head, chuckling. "I'll bet he did."
Without effort—and quite against his will, he was sure—Reuben found himself wondering if Carlos and Lauren had encountered Rybak face to face yet. It was always best to confront one's enemies and calculate their strengths and weak points.
Dr. Sheldon's weak point was all too obvious, something Rybak was unlikely to overlook.
Reuben slid the card through the slot in the Tarnow phone in the café near the edge of town and dialed a number.
Geil answered the phone.
"How did it go with Berlin?" Reuben asked.
Soren Geil snorted. "Dandy. Bloody hell! How do you think it went?"
Reuben ignored the younger man's irritation. "Listen. The delivery will be late."
Geil went into a barrage about what Reuben could do with the next load of amber panels. When the onslaught had passed, Reuben put the phone to his ear again. "Listen carefully. Karl Rybak is on this one, too. You know of him?"
Geil was impressed. "Are you in hospital or jail?"
"No."
"Berlin wants the amber or the money back. If you don't have either, don't come around. There are people looking for you."
Reuben had expected as much. "The Tarnow purchase isn't going to happen. Shut up and listen," he snapped as Geil interrupted. "Stay at the phone. I have a lead to follow in Milan." He didn't say how tenuous this lead was or that he wasn't even sure it would result in a lead at all. "Stall Berlin for three days."
"Three days?" Geil was livid.
"Yes. Promise my head on a pike if you have to, but I need three days." Reuben paused as the café waitress gave him an odd look as she passed him. "I can promise a partial. Maybe more. I'll call tonight."
Reuben hung up. Fredericks' panels were gone, as was the money from his buyer in Berlin that purchased them. Lewkowicz was a failed bid. Sooner or later, Carlos Sheldon would appear at the Chateau de Rappoltsweiler. The question nagging him at the moment was where to find the curator now.
He dialed information for Milan, Italy. It was a blind stab, but all he had. Carlos and Lauren were certainly not at the London paleography conference. Properly persuaded, Grant may be of assistance. And if not he, then Vistoli.
"Ciao. Vistoli House of Porcelain." He told the operator that picked up. He waited. Lauren's profile flashed through his mind. Her lowered head as she read aloud in the Audi, a turn that silhouetted her lips as she spoke to Carlos.
He braced himself, his attention on the call. "Marlon Vistoli."
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