31 |

Marseilles, France

 

“Hey, Alexie, something interesting is going on.”

Alexie Tankov glanced up from his tablet at his second-in-command, Arseny Utkin. “What?”

Utkin sat beside him, the pool of their villa on the French Riviera filled with a bevy of beauties in all shapes and colors, the rest of the team either playing a game of volleyball with them, or in various states of coitus around the deck.

It was a good life.

Far better than the Spetsnaz days.

“Looks like some guy is claiming he knows where the Ark of the Covenant is.”

Tankov tore his eyes away from a particularly voluptuous Nubian girl who had no boundaries whatsoever. “Really? He actually said that?”

“Well, no, but he claims to know how to find what Menelik took from Solomon.”

Tankov sat up, spinning his legs off the lounger. “An interesting way to put it.”

“I paid the buy-in for the bid. Just ten thousand. The guy’s obviously an idiot and hasn’t got a clue what he’s doing. People would pay ten times that just for a shot at getting their hands on the Ark.”

“Or he’s a genius who just bilked dozens out of ten grand each, and he’ll disappear into the ether by morning.”

Utkin frowned. “So, what do you want me to do?”

“I’ll make some calls. I don’t want to waste our money bidding on dust, but if there’s any chance of this being for real, it could be worth hundreds of millions.”

Utkin eyed him. “The Sheikh? He’s not very happy with us right now, not since we tipped off the Americans and he lost most of his collection.”

“Yeah, but he doesn’t know it was us.”

“He probably suspects it though.”

“True, but something like this could make us square with him again, and he was our best buyer.”

Utkin nodded. “Only if it’s real.”

“Agreed.” Tankov grabbed his phone. “Start monitoring the usual haunts, and pull together anything you can find on this Menelik/Solomon link to the Ark.”

“You got it.” Utkin rose and headed back inside as Tankov dialed his favorite customer that currently hated him.

“Sheik Khalid, I’m pleased to hear your voice. I was concerned you may have fallen out of favor in your kingdom.”

He was greeted with a growl. “You have a lot of nerve calling me.”

“You aren’t still sore about losing the Amber Room, are you?”

“If I ever find out it was you, you’ll rue the day you met me.”

Tankov smiled. “Trust me, if what I might have found for you is real, you’d forgive me even if I had defiled all your wives.”

“What have you found?”

The eagerness and greed were obvious to anyone, and Tankov’s smile spread.

All is forgiven.