CHAPTER FOURTEEN

 

 

 

Küsendorf, Switzerland

(82 miles southeast of Bern)

 

 

Petr Ulster was a round, cheerful man with a twinkle in his eye and a thick brown beard that covered his multiple chins. In many ways, he resembled a young Santa Claus, which is why he recently had decided to stop wearing the color red. He loved food, and wine, and afternoon naps, but more than any of those, he loved history. There was something about the dead that made him come alive, an irony that made him giggle with delight anytime someone mentioned it.

Despite his jovial personality, Ulster was a serious academic. He loved to spend his days in the solitude of the books and artifacts that he and his employees so lovingly cared for. Whether helping colleagues with their research or solving mysteries of his own, Ulster often disappeared into the recesses of the Ulster Archives—a state-of-the-art compound that housed the finest private collection of documents and antiquities in the world—and transported himself to wherever he wanted to go, whether that be Ancient Rome, Medieval Europe, or Mesopotamia.

All he needed was his reading glasses and his imagination.

When Ulster went on these journeys, he preferred to go alone. That meant no phones or disturbances of any kind. His staff was well trained and fully capable of handling the day-to-day rigors of the world-class facility while he roamed from locked room to locked room, searching for ancient threads that could be spun into new revelations about the past. Few people on earth knew so much about so many things, which is why the world’s brightest minds often turned to him in their times of need.

Because of this demand, Ulster was forced to turn down most requests. It pained him to do so—it truly did, for he was an educator at heart—but he had reached a point in his career where he barely had enough time to do what he needed to do, let alone what everyone hoped he would do. He always tried to soften the blow by asking his staff to help however they could, but their time was limited, too, which forced them to redirect many queries to scholars with less ability.

Of course, there were some exceptions to Ulster’s rules.

People who had access to him at any time.

Whether he was working, or sleeping, or taking a bath.

On this particular day, Ulster was visiting Ancient China in one of his document vaults. While double-checking an inventory list from the recently discovered treasure of Marco Polo—a hoard that he had helped to find by authenticating a manuscript that proved to be a vital clue to an adventurer named Jack Cobb and his mysterious crew of hunters—he heard a single chime over the facility’s intercom system.

It was the staff’s way to get his attention.

Ulster stood from the elaborately carved desk that sat in the middle of the colorfully named Forbidden Room—which housed their vast Chinese collection and took its name from the Forbidden City—and waddled to the touchscreen mounted inside the bulletproof security door.

Like most rooms in the Archives, everything was done to protect the artifacts. The filtered air was kept at an ideal seventy degrees and charged with positive static energy, so that contaminants would be pushed out of the rooms rather than settle inside. The floors were made of fireproof wood (boards that had been coated with an aqueous-based resin) while the walls and ceilings had been treated with a fire-retardant spray. Meanwhile, the objects themselves were kept in massive fireproof vaults that could only be opened by a select few.

Having explicitly told his staff that he didn’t want to be disturbed, Ulster answered their signal with trepidation. Ever since the Archives had been attacked a decade earlier and nearly burnt to the ground, he had nightmares that their compound would be raided again despite his military-trained guards and beefed up security protocols.

Ulster touched the dark screen, and it instantly came to life.

A moment later, he saw the face of his meticulous butler, Winston, who was standing in Ulster’s private office on the main floor of the facility.

“Is everything all right?” Ulster asked, concerned.

“Yes, sir. My deepest apologies. I realize you asked not to be disturbed, but you have a video call on your private line that I thought you may want to take.”

“From whom?”

“Jonathon Payne.”

Ulster grinned. “Of course I want to speak to him. Why didn’t you say so?”

“I believe I did, sir.”

“I meant, sooner!” Ulster said as he pulled the touchscreen from its docking station and carried it to the desk where he had been working. “I always get so worried when I hear that ghastly chime. I assume it’s an emergency or something worse, if that’s even possible. Seriously, Winston. It’s downright Pavlovian. I hear the chime, and I instantly start to fret.”

“Sir?”

“Not to brag, because that is surely not in my nature, but I have successively cracked a code or two during my career—some of which had boggled the world’s most brilliant symbologists. So it stands to reason that we should be able to implement a new auditory code that will give me a clue about future disturbances, something that will foreshadow what is in store for me when I place my hand upon the grisly blank screen. It just sits there on the wall, forever taunting me, knowing what awaits my fate long before I.”

“Sir?”

“It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. I think it would be a waste of your time and mine if this system required an Enigma machine for decryption. Perhaps we can start with something simple. Maybe a buzzer instead of—”

“Sir!”

Ulster blinked and refocused on his butler. “Yes? What is it?”

“The call, sir. Should I put it through?”

Ulster laughed. “Yes, of course. How silly of me. Here I am, going on and on about a new system of communication, when—”

Winston hit a button, and the screen went black.

“And it appears, I am now talking to myself,” Ulster mumbled.

Nearly a minute passed before an image flickered on screen.

During that time, Ulster thought back to the first day he had met Payne and Jones. They had arrived at the Archives, unannounced, looking for information about a Roman general named Paccius, who they thought might have been connected to the mythical Catacombs of Orvieto. Unlike the dull academics who normally called upon him, Payne and Jones had brought a swashbuckling energy that was missing from Ulster’s life. Before he knew it, he had been swept up in a grand adventure that had forced him from the safety of the books and scrolls he loved into a treacherous world where bullet points had a far different meaning.

“Jonathon,” Ulster said when Payne’s face appeared on screen. “Can you hear me?”

“Petr!” Payne shouted into his camera phone while sitting on the deck of Jarkko’s yacht. It was parked at the Grand Harbour Marina in Birgu. “It’s great to see you!”

“And you!” Ulster replied as he noticed the blue water behind Payne. “Where are you calling from? It doesn’t appear to be your office.”

“What office?” Payne said with a laugh. “I signed my paperwork on Saturday. That means I am officially unemployed. I have to admit, it feels great.”

“I am so happy for you. I bet it was a huge relief to finally sign the documents.”

Payne nodded. “Such a relief that DJ and I decided to take a celebratory vacation.”

“How wonderful!”

“Here,” Payne said. He held up his phone so Ulster could see the waterfront. “Take a look at the harbor and try to guess where we are.”

Ulster smiled. He loved a good challenge. “Well, let’s start with the obvious. Based on the position of the sun, I can eliminate half of the world. That means you are most likely somewhere in Western Europe. However, when I look at the style of architecture of the adjacent buildings, I am noting a mix of several cultures, so we are talking about a city or country that has been conquered multiple times. I am also drawn to the color of stone that permeates your surroundings. It is a very distinct color of brown—dare I say, caramel. Speaking of which, have you ever tried caramel cheesecake? My personal chef found a recipe from Greece that is so delightful I will sometimes skip my entrée entirely in order to have an extra piece. Of course, I doubt you’re surprised that the recipe came from Greece since the Ancient Greeks were the ones to invent cheesecake on the isle of Samos, but—”

“Petr!” Payne shouted as he returned the phone to his face. “Stay focused. You were trying to figure out—”

“Malta,” Ulster countered. “You are somewhere in Malta. And if I was forced to pick an exact spot, I would say you are across the harbor from Valletta in the historic town of Birgu.”

“Holy crap,” Payne replied, stunned by Ulster’s accuracy. “You got all of that from my phone? That is, without a doubt, one of the most impressive things I have ever witnessed.”

Ulster grinned. “That was fun! We should do that more often!”

Payne smiled at Ulster’s childlike enthusiasm. He was unlike anyone that Payne had ever met, a pure soul who only put out good into the world. “That sounds like a plan.”

“I bet I know why you’re calling.” Ulster leaned back and tried to put his feet up on the desk, but his belly wouldn’t allow it. “You want to talk about our upcoming show at the Smithsonian.”

“Obviously,” Payne said, just to humor him. The truth was that Payne had signed off on the event but didn’t want to play an active role because the thought of being in the spotlight made his skin crawl. “But before we get to that, there is something more pressing to discuss. Do you remember my old buddy, Jarkko?”

“The fisherman from Finland?”

“That’s him.”

“Of course, I do,” said Ulster, who was brought in as a consultant to help determine the rightful owner of the Greek treasure found on Mount Athos. “If memory serves, he asked for his portion of the settlement to be paid in caviar and strippers. Why do you ask?”

Payne laughed. “As luck should have it, we bumped into him in Birgu. He recently came across a collection of old Russian documents that mentions a large Maltese treasure that doesn’t appear online. We did some basic searches and didn’t see anything matching its description, so we figured we’d give you a call to ask for your thoughts.”

Ulster ran his fingers through his beard. “Believe it or not, there are a number of significant connections between Malta and Russia, particularly in regards to the Order of Saint John. Tell me, my boy, how old are the documents?”

“One of them is a personal letter from Paul the First, written in 1798.”

Ulster leaned forward. “To whom?”

“A man named Hompesch. At least, I think that’s how it’s pronounced. I know it’s not a lot to go on, but we were kind of hoping you could give us some advice on what to do next.”

“My advice?” Ulster blurted as he rose from his chair and began pacing the room. “My advice is that you don’t tell anyone about this letter until I have a chance to read it. And I mean, no one. Do you hear me, Jonathon? Not a single soul!”

Payne sensed his concern. “Why’s that?”

Ulster hurried back to the desk and stared directly into the camera. “Because if it describes what I think it does, your friend Jarkko may have put your life in danger.”