CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

 

 

 

Although Marissa had been filled with doubt when Payne and Jones had started to explain their theory about Hompesch’s escape, she had found herself getting caught up in their momentum as they somehow managed to present a creative hypothesis that utilized all of the facts that they had been told about the Order’s last days on Malta. But as a highly trained academic, she knew there was a major difference between imaginative conjecture and substantiated fact, so she felt it was her job as the historian on this adventure to explain the difference to them.

“Guys,” she said. “It’s a great theory, and I really want to believe it, but as far I can tell, it’s just speculation. Don’t get me wrong: I found it highly entertaining, and maybe even plausible, but what do you have that actually supports what you’re thinking?”

Payne took a moment to absorb her comments before he replied. “As the newest member of our team and someone who was kept in the dark on the true nature of our mission until a few minutes ago, it took a lot of guts to express your doubts about our theory. And yet, in the interest of group morale after a highly stressful day, I feel there is only one appropriate response.”

She stared at him, unsure. “What’s that?”

He picked up a scrap of bread and threw it at her. “Boooo!”

Jones and Jarkko quickly joined in. “Boooo!”

She laughed as she swatted the projectiles away like Godzilla. “That’s okay. I’m used to butting my head against popular opinion. I’ve been doing it my entire academic life. It’s the only way you can truly make a difference in scholarly pursuits.”

Jarkko shook his head. “First you break Jarkko’s heart. Then you shatter Jarkko’s dreams. Maybe it’s time for Marissa to swim to shore.”

She playfully stood from the table. “No problem. I’ll leave if you want me to go. But your odds of finding the treasure will go down significantly if you make me walk the plank.”

“Perhaps,” Payne said with a laugh, “but if you want to fit in with this crew of pirates, you’ll learn that we’ve had a lot of success with wild speculation. Why spend your days buried in books when you can just make up an awesome theory as you go along?”

“Because,” she countered, growing annoyed, “the key to proving any hypothesis is through methodical research based on established facts, not wild conjecture. Otherwise, you can’t effectively determine anything. You’ll just waste your time, stumbling in the dark, while the real work is being done by people who happen to enjoy spending time in libraries.”

“And yet,” he argued, as his passion started to rise, “our goal on this particular mission isn’t to write a thesis paper that will be approved by a board of faculty members or published in an academic journal to be admired by their peers. Our goal, in case you forgot, is to find a damn treasure—something we’ve managed to do multiple times without you.”

Marissa winced, completely unprepared for a personal attack. But her shock didn’t last long. She quickly lashed back with a retort of her own. “I’m glad you’re so confident in your abilities. I’m sure your success in Greece and Mexico will come in quite handy when you’re staring at a document written in Maltese or trying to figure out why Grand Master Hompesch was writing letters to the emperor of Russia in the first place. Or did you forget about that part? Even if your speculation about Napoleon is correct, you know absolutely nothing about the next piece of the puzzle, and you sure as shit won’t be getting it from me.”

Marissa punctuated her comment by turning angrily from the table, storming up the center aisle toward the helm, then opening a side door that spilled onto the foredeck seating area at the bow of the yacht. She was tempted to slam the door behind her to voice her fury, but it was thin and made of glass, so she simply left it open in a final act of defiance.

Jones watched the whole thing play out before he offered comment. He turned toward Payne and shook his head. “And that, my friend, is why you’re still single.”

“Screw you,” Payne growled as he picked up another scrap of bread and fired it against the wood-paneled refrigerator in the galley. In a yacht lined with windows, it was the only solid surface in his throwing range that he knew he wouldn’t shatter.

Jones stared at him. “Keep it up, asshole, and you’ll be friendless, too.”

“Uh, oh,” Jarkko said as he stood from the table. “Time to talk feelings. Jarkko doesn’t do that when Jarkko is sober. Besides, Jarkko has to pee. Boner is gone, but bladder is full.”

Payne and Jones nodded, both of them realizing it was for the best.

Neither would open up with Jarkko listening.

 

◊                      ◊                      ◊

 

Ivan Volkov was filled with rage as he stared at the laptop computer on his private plane. His flight to Malta had been completely full of henchmen, but his journey home was mostly empty—all thanks to the Americans on his screen.

During the past few hours, Volkov’s cadre of hackers had dug through surveillance video from Birgu and Valletta and had determined the identities of the smuggler’s bodyguards. Much to Volkov’s surprise, they weren’t bodyguards at all but famous treasure hunters, who had unearthed so many precious artifacts in the past decade that their discoveries were going to be featured at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, D.C.

Volkov took some solace from his defeat at the library when he discovered that Payne and Jones were also two of the finest soldiers that the U.S. military had ever produced. Both of them were rated as special forces-plus, a term that Volkov had never heard of until his hackers had unearthed a heavily redacted file from a joint mission with the CIA that had been leaked by a whistleblower to a dark web message board. Volkov had asked his men to get personnel files on the duo, but they claimed the firewall at the Pentagon was so far above their capabilities that it wasn’t even worth their time to try.

Even Russian hackers refused to mess with Randy Raskin.

Still, the Finn’s involvement with Payne and Jones was intriguing.

Volkov doubted that two famous treasure hunters would be wasting their time with a Finnish fisherman in the National Library of Malta, unless the Finn was contributing something significant to their cause. And Volkov rightly assumed that their meeting in the library had something to do with the documents that he had stolen from the smuggler’s yacht—the documents that the Finn had received as payment from Sergei Bobrinsky.

Despite the failure that Volkov had endured in Malta, he realized that he had actually come out ahead on the ledger sheet. Not only did he recover Bobrinsky’s payment from the Finn, thereby righting the original wrong, but Volkov was now on the trail of a potential fortune—one that seemed to be tied to his homeland, based on the documents that he had read.

If so, Volkov didn’t care how talented the Americans were.

In Russia, he would undoubtedly have the advantage.