Clive Cussler - The Tombs

When two and a half hours had passed, several cops came in who had different uniforms—outdoor uniforms. The fabric, boots, belts, and hats were black. These men were also more heavily armed than the airport police.

When Sam had first come in, officers had smiled at him. “Don’t worry. This is the most important Russian airport. It’s like a bank vault. Nobody can steal a woman from here.” Later on, another had said, “This place is more heavily guarded than anything in your country. Even if a woman were kidnapped, they’d never get her out of the building.” Still later, it became, “They could never get her past the airport gates.”

When it was time for the Fargos’ plane for Kazakhstan to board, Sam and two of the new police officers went to the gate and scanned the waiting area, showed the airline personnel pictures of Remi but were greeted with head shaking and pursed lips. They stayed until the door to the jetway was locked, the jetway was retracted from the plane, and the plane was pushed out onto the tarmac.

Sam looked in every direction, hoping to see the slender, graceful form of a woman far off in the distance, running to catch the plane. He just saw thousands of busy, preoccupied passengers, trying to keep track of their belongings and their children, as they made their way toward other boarding gates.

NIZHNY NOVGOROD, RUSSIA

REMI FARGO WAS HALF AWARE, NOT AWAKE BUT STRUGGLING toward consciousness, as a free diver struggles upward toward the light, striving to burst through the surface to gasp that first breath of air.

She was in a dark place that was so soft that she couldn’t feel her muscles push against anything solid, and she seemed to have sunk into it. After a huge mental effort, she realized that she was inside a big cardboard barrel, on top of some rags or cloths, and that more had been dumped on top of her and then the barrel closed. There must be airholes, she thought, but she saw none, and her few minutes of effort made her lose consciousness again.

An unknowable number of hours passed before Remi approached consciousness again. This time when she tried to open her eyes, they opened. She now knew she was in the big barrel of hand towels the woman had been handing out at the airport restroom. She righted herself with gravity so she was kneeling on a layer of towels, pushed up with her hands, and felt the top of the barrel give a little, but it wouldn’t budge at the rim. She ran her hands along the rim and pushed, but the top was tightly secured.

“Hello?” she called out.

There was no response.

“Hello? You out there. Open up.” She thought about what had happened to her. She had been kidnapped from a ladies’ room in the Moscow airport. The audacity of that was breathtaking, but her mind had no interest in the details. The two big women had drugged her and put her in this barrel, taken the barrel out of the airport, loaded it into what was likely a linen supply truck, and driven off with her.

She had probably been on the road before Sam had started wondering about her. Poor Sam. He must be absolutely insane with worry by now. She could picture him pacing in that waiting area, watching people boarding their plane for Kazakhstan, wondering what had happened to her. He would be driving the authorities mad by now too, and that was a good thing. He wouldn’t let them forget about her—some unknown foreign woman who had gotten herself into trouble and had no powerful connections to make their lives really uncomfortable.

Remi considered calling out again but decided to wait. The time to yell would be when she heard people or felt them moving the barrel. There would be some chance of making an outsider hear her if they were in some kind of depot. An hour later, the truck turned off the smooth surface it had been on and bounced a little as it went over another surface, this one still smooth but feeling like something with a rougher texture, maybe gravel or dirt.

As she sat in the dark, she began to face the possibilities. Most likely, someone had seen her and Sam showing American passports and decided an American hostage was a good thing to have.

The truck stopped. She heard a set of double doors squeak open. Her mind took a second to follow several paths to their ends. She was much more athletic than they would suspect, and a highly ranked fencer and pistol shot. She might be able to pop out and—what?—get them to shoot her? She could pretend to be unconscious, listening to what they said in a language she didn’t understand. She decided to be rational, open, and try to appear unafraid. Appearing unafraid might be difficult, but not beyond her acting ability.

She heard a clasp being undone and then an aluminum hoop being sprung open and lifted off the lip of her barrel. Hands popped the top off and then lifted the layer of loose towels on top of her. Remi stood up.

She recognized the two large women from the airport. They both wore coveralls now instead of the loose work dresses and their hair was pulled back and knotted. Behind them were two men. They might have been the ones driving the getaway truck and possibly helped lift the barrel on and off vehicles. But now one of them held a short, nasty-looking Stechkin APS machine pistol like those made for Spetsnaz units of the old Soviet army. She knew they were still used by police because they fired cheap, readily available ammunition and had low recoil. She could see these two were fitted with silencers. They hadn’t been manufactured with tournament accuracy, but, at six hundred rounds a minute, they could certainly hit a girl in a cardboard barrel.

There were two other men in blue jeans and windbreakers. They both carried short-barreled Czech Škorpion machine pistols. A few feet beyond all of these men was another man, this one wearing a light gray tailored suit that fit him perfectly. He was clearly the man to watch. He nodded and smiled at the four people in coveralls, then said something in Russian to the whole group. They moved quickly, first to help Remi out of the barrel and off the truck, then to put a pair of plastic restraints around her wrists to bind her hands behind her.

The man in the suit maintained a cheerful smile through these proceedings and an easy manner that belied the military obedience and discipline of his underlings. He looked to Remi like a prerevolutionary aristocratic gentleman spending the summer on his country estate. He wore a crisp white shirt and a blue silk tie, and, while she watched, he lit a cigarette and turned his attention to her. “You looked like Botticelli’s Birth of Venus being lifted out of your scallop shell, Mrs. Fargo.”

He waited a moment, then said, “You’re not speaking to me?”

“I don’t want to prompt you to say anything that will make you think you have to kill me.”

He nodded. “Very wise, in general. But kidnapping in Russia is about the same as it is in the United States—if I’m caught, I’m dead. I’ll tell you what you need to know. You will be treated well and respectfully, but locked in your room. Every day someone will come, have you hold up that day’s newspaper, and take your picture. We will be in touch with your husband. When he meets my demands, you will be freed.”

“What are your demands?”

“Ah,” he said. “So you are interested.”

“Of course I am.”

“I know about the search for Attila the Hun’s five treasures. You and your husband found the one near Mantua, Italy. You stole the one at Châlons-en-Champagne, France. You got Arpad Bako arrested for finding Bleda’s tomb goods. You stole the treasure buried along the Danube. You were on your way to find the final treasure when I stopped you.” He watched her. “Aren’t you going to deny any of this?”