David Golemon - Primeval

"Nice touch, Punchy," Jack said, looking away from the two L.A. policemen.

Alexander cleared his throat. "I hate to burst your bubble about my being a sneaky bastard, but they were like that when I arrived."

Their eyes met and Jack raised his brows. "Is that right?"

"Trussed up pretty as a picture, just like you see them now," Punchy said and then quickly saw the look on Jack's face. "Don't worry; I checked the rest of the house. Whoever cuffed them isn't here."

"Punchy, why in the hell are you here?" Collins asked.

"You know why: It's not only my job, but I happen to like Lynn, almost as much as you."

"What in the hell happened out there, Punchy?" Collins asked as he slowly stepped from the living room into the kitchen.

"It was a setup. Lynn was anonymously contacted and she showed up in my yard. Evidently, only her direct boss knew she was coming to Canada. I guess they wanted to make a mark by bagging Sagli and Deonovich on their own. You know how kids are, they just don't know how to play the game," he said looking at Ryan and Mendenhall. "No offense."

Ryan looked at Will and they both just shrugged.

"Do you think Lynn is still alive?"

"You know me, Jack, forever an optimist. That's why I'm here and willing to breach my orders."

"Thanks, Punchy."

"Look, those two coppers in there are going to be relieved soon. If the LAPD overlooked anything here, we better get to looking for it." Alexander watched Collins closely, wondering if he was still as sharp as he once was. "If not, I have to get back to Montreal."

Jack nodded and silently pointed at Will and Everett, then used his thumb to point toward the basement. He silently ordered Sarah and Ryan to take the kitchen and living room. Then he nodded toward the wooden staircase for him and Punchy Alexander to check out.

On the way up the stairs, Jack slowly pulled the nine-millimeter from his waistband and knew Alexander was doing the same three steps behind him.

"You got the report on the man that Sagli and Deonovich murdered in Seattle?" Punchy asked as he gained the landing outside of a long hallway. He pointed his weapon left as Jack was doing the same to the right.

"The Russian-American, Serta?"

"Yeah, we don't know the reasoning for it yet, just a bunch of rumors." Alexander eased the bathroom door open and easily flipped on the light switch. The shiny tile and wood was clean but he could see where the police had tossed the closet as towels and washrags were strewn about on the floor and even in the bathtub.

"Rumors such as…?" Jack asked as he eased the first bedroom door open with his right foot and then quickly stepped inside. He moved the handgun from side to side. He relaxed when he saw the mattress to the king-size bed had been thrown free of the box spring and had even been cut into. Pretty thorough, he thought.

"Some fantastic tale that this old man in Seattle inherited one of the Twins of Peter the Great."

Jack looked back into the hallway just as Alexander eased the second bedroom door open.

"Twins?" Jack asked, now feeling that they were on a wasted mission to the Chavez house. He pushed the last bedroom door open and peered inside the already tossed and torn-apart room.

"Diamonds. Legend has it that Peter the Great had made a gift of twin diamonds the size of — hell, I don't know, lemons or something. Well, this lumber magnate supposedly was in possession of one of them."

"I've never heard of anything like that," Collins said as he dejectedly placed the handgun back into his pants. He also wondered why nothing was mentioned in Europa's investigation about these diamonds.

"Well, they supposedly disappeared around the time of the Russian revolution, along with everything else of value, including the tzar and tzarina."

"Well, we know where they went, don't we?" Jack said.

Alexander watched as Collins shook his head and started down the stairs. When he joined him at the bottom, they saw Sarah and Ryan throwing a few of the items still remaining in the coat closet out into the hallway. Sarah straightened and then looked at Jack, and shook her head.

"This is going nowhere fast. What in the hell was I thinking, that this asshole would leave a note behind telling us who his employer was?"

Sarah took his arm and squeezed it. Ryan was also aware the colonel was just grasping at straws, trying out anything for a single lead.

Punchy Alexander slapped Jack on the back and then walked passed. "Don't worry, Jack, we'll turn a rock over soon enough and find out where she's at."

They heard footsteps running up the stairs from the basement. Will Mendenhall soon opened the door and then with his breathing coming in short gasps, said, "Colonel, Captain Everett says you've got to take a look at this."

Jack immediately went to the door and followed Will down the long flight of two different stairs. When they reached the bottom, he saw Everett standing in the middle of a dirt floor with his hands on his hips and staring at one of the outer walls. Collins felt the others behind him as they stopped; he held up a hand when he saw that Carl was thinking something out.

"Number one, the percentage of basements in Southern California is so low I don't even want to think about it," Everett said without turning away from the far wall. "I lived here, in a house just like this in Oxnard. Pre-World War II, stone, just like a million others. Hell, that was the bulk of cheap building material back then, no brick, just rocks."

Jack moved his eyes from Everett's back where he was just staring at the walls, to the open and broken bits of crates, old cardboard boxes, broken furniture, and moldy old clothes. He felt Ryan stir behind him, getting ready to ask the captain a question, but again, Collins held his hand up, wanting Carl to think through what he was tossing about in his head.

"How many tons of rock went into building this house — fifteen or twenty, maybe even thirty?"

"Captain, I don't see one rock down here."

Everett finally turned and looked at Ryan. "That's the point, flyboy, the basement isn't constructed of the same material as the house, which means it was—"

"Recently added," Collins finished for him.

Carl smiled. "Not only that, Jack, look over here." Everett moved forward and pointed at the dirt that made up the floor of the giant basement.

Where most of the dirt was rough, full of footprints from the police investigation, there was a spot about the width of the entire rear wall that was perfectly smooth, as if the entire width had been artificially dragged smooth.

"Remember our antiquities thief in New York, Westchester County, and his remarkable basement?"

Jack smiled at Everett and then walked quickly to the far wall and started looking. Everett, Sarah, Ryan, and Mendenhall did the same, remembering the amazing basement that another antiquities thief had built using a false floor and winding stairway.

"Without sounding downright stupid, may I ask what it is you are looking for?" Alexander asked, placing his hands on his hips as the others started feeling around the walls.

"A switch, or a release of some kind," Sarah said as she went to her knees and started feeling around the bottom of the drywall.

Suddenly, the room grew quiet as they all felt it at the same time, Jack, Punchy, and Everett just a split second before the others. They all three turned as fast as they could and then stopped dead in their tracks when they saw the three men with automatic weapons aimed directly at them. The men were Caucasian and were all very well dressed. Their suits were expensive and their weapons, Israeli Uzi submachine guns, were even more so. The man in the middle of the three shook his head negative and with his eyes, ordered their weapons to be removed without uttering a single word.