Chris Kuzneski - The Hunters

Sarah turned her head and impatiently addressed Garcia. ‘Well, what do you see?’

Garcia sighed in frustration. He pulled a cable from his backpack and plugged it into the side of his tablet. He tossed the other end of the cable over Jasmine’s shoulder.

‘Plug it in. See for yourselves,’ he said.

Jasmine plugged her end of the cable into the auxiliary port on the vehicle’s in-dash display, which mirrored what Garcia saw on his screen. Sarah and Jasmine huddled closer to the monitor in the front seat while McNutt leaned toward Garcia to see for himself.

As the image panned forward, a distinct, bright line appeared on the screen.

‘Is that a crack in the ice?’ Sarah asked.

‘Cracks are jagged,’ Garcia replied. ‘That’s straight. That’s-’

‘Bent track!’ Sarah screamed.

With that, she opened the overhead moonroof to get a better look.

Following Sarah’s lead, Jasmine also stood up in the cab.

The view was magnificent: as if a furry, white rug stretched out to a sparkling green sea, with a ceiling of the bluest skies any of them had ever seen. It was cold. It was windy. But it was worth it.

After only a minute, the biting weather forced them back inside. Their noses were red and their cheeks were chapped, but their smiles were warm and bright.

Jasmine couldn’t hide her excitement. ‘Let’s go see what’s down there!’

When Cobb’s team viewed the contents of the treasure train for the first time, Papineau had given Garcia not one, but two IP addresses that were to receive the feed of the broadcast.

The first IP address — a unique, numerical identifier that allowed computers to find each other across the Internet — belonged to Papineau’s computer, which Garcia traced to Papi’s train outside of Vladivostok. But the second IP address led somewhere strange: to a computer at Quai du Mont-Blanc 13, 1201 Geneva, Switzerland.

The site of the Beau-Rivage hotel.

Garcia’s research had told them that the Beau-Rivage was one of the finest hotels in the world, a five-star, ninety-room, eighteen-suite enclave for those wishing to experience the height of luxury. It was also the international headquarters of Sotheby’s auction house. Cobb wondered if the person on the other end of the video feed had been making arrangements to sell the Romanov treasure to the highest bidder — either through a legitimate auction that would have given the Romanian government a chance to reclaim their treasure, or through off-the-books transactions that would see the treasure sold, piece by piece, to the world’s elite collectors.

Either way, Cobb figured he had little time to waste.

As he took his parking stub from the valet, Cobb felt confident he had come to the right place. He knew that whoever had financed their operation — and it wasn’t Papineau — had more than enough money to burn, and this place reeked of old-world opulence. The building appeared to be constructed of polished stone blocks, with twenty-foot-high, arched windows spaced evenly around the main floor. Everything about the building was warm and inviting. The dusky glow behind the hotel and the recessed lighting under the eaves of the roof gave the hotel an ethereal, heavenly look, which only added to the moment.

Cobb had come for a name.

He wouldn’t leave until he had one.

Sarah used the small plow extension of the Hilux to dig away the frosty surface and reveal a small, metal plate in the ground.

‘They used a dromos,’ Jasmine said enthusiastically. ‘It’s a marked entrance that leads to a passageway. The Egyptians used them to mark the entrances to their tombs.’ She beamed at Sarah. ‘In many countries they’re virtually invisible amid the hillsides-’

‘Jasmine,’ Sarah said, putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘Give it a rest for just a minute, okay? I need to focus.’

‘Sure,’ Jasmine said, wounded. ‘Focus.’

Meanwhile, McNutt pulled a heavy chain from the storage in the bed of the truck. He anchored one end of the chain to the tow rings at the front of the Hilux while Sarah looped the hooked end of the chain behind the metal plate. When she was finished, she used a hand gesture to let McNutt know that things were secure on her end. McNutt nodded and slapped the hood of the truck. Garcia shifted the truck into reverse and floored the accelerator. The metal plate, locked in by decades of frost, held for a breathless moment, then gave in to progress.

It popped off, revealing a small rectangular opening in the tundra.

All four hurriedly grabbed their supplies from the truck and prepared to enter the unknown. Guided by flashlights and glow sticks, they squeezed through the gap they had created and entered a gently sloping hall. Pressing forward, they quickly discovered that the passage widened into a great cavern that sloped down and stopped just a hundred feet ahead.

Against the north wall were three blue and gold Romanov train cars.

The group ran toward them, barely able to contain their excitement. Jasmine jumped up into the first car as the rest of the group raced past her to investigate the others.

‘It’s a passenger car,’ Jasmine announced. ‘Nothing but seats.’

‘Same here!’ Sarah yelled.

‘Seats and crates,’ McNutt shouted. ‘Broken, empty crates.’

‘Garcia?’ Sarah screamed, hoping for good news.

‘Nothing but wood,’ he said as he glanced through several wooden crates that had been discarded near the train cars. ‘They’re empty.’

‘Shit!’ Sarah cursed as she kicked a seat. ‘Shit! Shit! SHIT!’

After a few minutes of searching, the four explorers regrouped beside the train. They sat in the snow, deflated and depressed, trying to come to grips with the fruitless end of their adventure. The light from the glow sticks that had once seemed warm and welcoming now cast an eerie radiance on the train as it lay there, taunting them.

Eventually, McNutt got fed up.

‘Fuck this,’ he growled.

Before anyone could stop him, McNutt opened fire, unloading the entire fifty-round magazine of the submachine gun into the cabin of the nearest car.

When the temporary fog caused by the hot muzzle flare finally melted away, they could see the aftermath of McNutt’s assault: numerous holes had been torn into the side of the car.

Holes that revealed the faintest glint of metal.

Jasmine hustled forward to inspect the damage McNutt had caused — and the metal he had revealed. To the best of her knowledge, seats from Prince Felix’s era were made of wood, covered in soft padding and leather to cushion the ride. But the gunfire had proven that these seats had been shaped from something shiny.

Something that twinkled in the soft light of the cavern.

‘Guys, what would you do if you were a Russian soldier who wanted to keep his treasure safe until the revolution was suppressed?’ Jasmine didn’t wait for the others to answer. ‘You would hide it in plain sight!’

Sarah stepped forward and brought out a switchblade. She quickly cut across the top of the seat nearest them. She pointed her flashlight down and gold reflected back.

‘Holy shit!’ she shrieked in sudden realization.

Then she looked for someone to hug.

She grabbed Jasmine excitedly. The two of them were quickly wrapped up by McNutt in a massive bear hug, a split second before Garcia joined the party. Then the four of them jumped up and down in unison, long before they had a chance to do the math.

Each seat concealed a layer of gold bars — bars that they estimated weighed twenty pounds each. Each layer consisted of three rows of twelve across. That meant thirty-six bars in each seat, with ten seats in each row, and two rows in each of the three cars.