Clive Cussler: The Solomon Curse

Lazlo stared at him in amazement and shook his head. “Must be all the vodka.”

“My body is temple,” Leonid declared, exaggerating his Russian accent.

“Yes, well, mine too, albeit heavily supplemented by the fermented grape until recently.”

The Mitsubishi rolled to a stop near a forensic van, and a stern-faced island cop stared them down as they climbed out of the SUV. A dozen journalists sat in the shade, their vans nearby, watching the police watch them.

“Is Chief Fleming around?” Sam asked. “He invited us out.”

“Up that way. Who should I tell him is here?” the officer asked, holding his radio.

“The Fargos.”

The officer’s face changed. “Oh. Of course. One moment.” He mumbled into the radio and was greeted by a burst of static followed by a terse instruction. He eyed the journalists briefly and then pointed the way to the first cave. “You know how to get there?”

“I think we can find it,” Sam said. Remi had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing.

Fleming was standing at the cave entry when they arrived, talking to two other officers with dour expressions. When Fleming spotted the Fargos, he broke off his discussion and moved down to greet them.

“Thanks for coming,” he said.

“You’re welcome. How’s it going?” Sam said.

“Slow but steady. Forensics should be done soon enough.” He scowled up at the cave. “We’ve compiled a list of all missing children and we’ve begun matching them to skeletons.”

“No doubt you’ve seen that some were bound with zip ties.”

Fleming nodded. “Yes.” The distaste on his face conveyed more than words could.

“Has she talked?” Remi asked.

“I can’t discuss an ongoing investigation, but let’s just say that she denied everything, and then changed her story three times, before admitting that she might have been an unwitting pawn in several foreign drug companies’ schemes.”

“Unbelievable,” Sam said.

“Oh, you don’t know the half of it. She’s quite a piece of work.”

“How many on your list?” Lazlo asked.

Fleming looked away. “Thirty-eight. Spanning six years.” His eyes darted to the side before settling on Remi. “Off the record, she admitted that sometimes the drugs she was experimenting with caused unexpected complications, but she insists that she was just trying to save lives.”

“Of course. By killing some of her patients with medicine she hadn’t told them was experimental and then hiding the evidence,” Remi fired back.

“Don’t forget the grief she caused by covering up their disappearances,” Sam reminded. “Imagine how the parents felt when their sick children just vanished.”

“Yes… Actually, that’s one of the prosecutor’s big fears — retribution by relatives. It’s a very real danger that she’ll be lynched.”

“Ironic that you’ll wind up having to protect her,” Lazlo said.

Fleming gave him a dark look. “The islanders who were working for her all tested positive for stimulants. She was supplying them with speed, keeping them dependent on her for their fixes, which we believe was part of how she was controlling them. They were addicts, and dangerous ones — it explains why they were willing to live out here and risk everything to torture their fellow man.”

“She probably also promised them that they’d be rich. She was bragging about how she’d be worth billions, when she held us captive,” Sam said.

“Any progress on matching the bones in the cave with the list?” Remi asked.

“We started with the largest skeletons, figuring they’d be easiest to identify. The one that’s not completely decomposed was named Aldo Cosgrove. A teenager who disappeared a couple of weeks ago after undergoing treatment for malaria by the good doctor.” Fleming shook his head. “The abuse he was subjected to…” His voice trailed off and he rubbed a hand across his face, his eyes bleak. “Lilly’s fortunate you got to her when you did. She wasn’t far behind him.”

“We believe that the older skeletons in the pit were victims from the war,” Remi said. “Our researcher discovered that Dr. Vanya’s grandfather was helping the Japanese with medical experiments on islanders.” She told the chief about Selma’s findings.

“It just gets worse, doesn’t it?” Fleming said, staring at the cave opening.

“Do you know if the grandfather’s still alive?” Sam asked.

“I don’t think so — he’d have to be ancient — but I’ll check. I remember her saying something about all her relatives being dead.”

“We think the grandfather might have shown Carol his old stomping ground, probably bragging. That’s the likeliest explanation for how she found the cave used for the experiments.”

“It’s funny,” Fleming said. “I grew up here and heard plenty of stories about monsters in the caves. I never suspected that the monsters were walking among us every day.” He paused, thinking. “We’re going to be getting help from Australia. They’re sending a team to work the pit with us and try to make sense out of the skeletons. But it sounds like that will be a long process, trying to match bones to POWs or islanders killed during the war.”

They moved to the second cave where the medical experiments had been conducted and paused at the entry. Down the hill, a diesel generator rumbled, providing power to the spotlights strung through the caverns. Sam saw Remi shiver as they drew near the opening and he took her hand.

“Do you need any more for the police reports?” Sam asked. They’d given their statements the prior day, explaining the obvious self-defense in the rebel killings.

“No. Nobody doubts what happened here. I just wanted to hear from your own lips how it all went down as we walk the site.”

“I’ll just as soon stay out here, if you don’t mind,” Lazlo said, fidgeting with his cell phone as he peered into the cave.

“No problem,” Fleming said. “How about you?” he asked Leonid.

The Russian shrugged. “All the same to me.”

The caves looked smaller in the wash of light from the work lights. The corpses of the gunmen were gone, replaced by chalk outlines and crime scene tape. They moved through the area slowly, noting the number of beds and the age of the equipment, before entering the cell where they’d been imprisoned only a day earlier, rust-colored smudges on one of the walls evidence of Sam’s head wound.

When they had finished with the nightmare scene an hour later, Lazlo was pacing excitedly outside, his face flushed as much from agitation as the sun. The Fargos could see that he was waiting for them to detach themselves from the police so he could talk to them in private and they wrapped up their time with Fleming before joining Lazlo on the trail leading to the logging road.

“I’m a fool. A blind fool,” he blurted as they made their way through the brush.

“What are you talking about?”

“The diary. Something’s been eating at me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. But now I have.”

Remi eyed him. “And?”

“The translation of the encoded message. I botched one of the words. As it turns out, a critical word.”

“Botched?” Sam said, eyebrows raised.

“Yes. Botched. The key to the whole riddle.”

“Out with it, Lazlo,” Remi said.

“It wasn’t ‘beyond’ at all. ‘Beyond the fall,’ remember?”

“Yes, Lazlo. Very well,” Sam said impatiently. “What was the word?”

Lazlo paused and slowed to a stop. “It was an easy mistake to make. I was going too fast. Too sure of myself.”

“Spit it out, Lazlo,” Sam urged.

“‘Behind.’”

“‘Behind’?” Remi repeated, puzzled.

“Behind the fall,” Lazlo said solemnly. “ Behind it, not beyond it.”