High Stakes Page 8

  The waiter withdrew and closed the door. We were again alone, but George still kept his tone low.

  “What I’m going to tell you is part history, part legend, part folklore, and part guessing at missing pieces. Remember, we’re going back to 1462.”

  “Understood.”

  “Let’s start with the guesswork. First, as far as we know, Dracula never left today’s Romania during the time we’re talking about—in particular, the provinces of Wallachia and Transylvania. Secondly, the treasure most likely represented a large physical bulk. He couldn’t have taken it far without drawing attention to it. Thirdly, no one has yet discovered where he stashed it.”

  “How do you know? It’s been about five centuries.”

  “I think you still underestimate the size and value and artistic extent of this treasure. Believe me, if it had been found, it would have been a major event in history.”

  “Fair enough.”

  “So what do we know? Dracula’s treasure was safe where he had it in his capital, Tirgoviste, until Sultan Mehmed invaded his province of Wallachia in 1462. As I told you, Dracula and some of his faithful fled north toward Transylvania. Mehmet himself gave up the chase in Tirgoviste, but he sent some of his soldiers after Dracula.

  “Dracula made it to what’s now known as Dracula’s Castle on the Wallachian side of the Arges River. The Turkish soldiers caught up with him. They set up a camp around the castle. A Romanian slave of the Turks, one of Dracula’s distant relatives, fired an arrow into a window of the castle with a warning note that the Turks would attack at dawn. Dracula escaped by a narrow stairway carved out of the stone in the middle of the castle. It was just large enough for one man to pass. You can still see it there today. It spiraled down into the mountain to a tunnel that put him beyond the Turkish attackers. The townspeople met him and a few of his men with fast horses for their escape. They had even nailed the horseshoes on backward to leave a false trail.”

  “Did he escape?”

  “Yes and no. He managed to cross the impossible Transylvanian Alps to get to his supposed ally, the Hungarian King Matthias. Matthias was ruling Transylvania at the time. You know the words, ‘the best laid plans of mice and men aft gang aglay.’”

  “John Steinbeck.”

  “Robert Burns, actually. Matthias had a secret alliance with the Turks. He immediately took Dracula prisoner.”

  “Bummer.”

  “Depends on your sympathies. The point is this. It’s inconceivable that Dracula would leave behind nothing but scorched earth for the Turks, and yet leave them his greatest treasure. From the time he fled Tirgoviste, he could have taken it with him as far as his castle. When he fled the castle down that narrow winding staircase and rode for his life, there is no way he could have carried the treasure.”

  “Someone else possibly?”

  “Highly unlikely he would have trusted anyone else with his treasure. Not in his nature.”

  “Are you guessing it’s hidden in the castle?”

  “Also unlikely. Over the past five and a half centuries, every inch of that castle has been searched.”

  “You’re saying he hid it between Tirgoviste and his castle.”

  George raised his hands to say, “What other conclusion is possible?”

  “But where?”

  “That question, my friend, has three very well-armed and determined organizations giving you more attention than you might be enjoying.”

  “And this relates how to that violin?”

  “Ah, that’s another story. From the time—”

  He was cut off in mid-sentence by a few quick raps on the door and the entrance of our driver before George could respond. The driver came at quick-step to George’s side. He whispered in Romanian. It was a bit like wearing a belt and suspenders. He could have been shouting and I’d still have been clueless.

  George rose immediately and turned to me. “Michael, come. I want you to see this.”

  We walked back into the bar area of the restaurant. The tension among the men in the room was at least at level ten. I saw a man I didn’t notice there before being held from behind by a large member of George’s retinue. One of George’s men pointed to a backpack sitting on the floor by the bar. George spoke to the man being held in what sounded like Russian. There was no answer.

  George came over to me. “This man is with that Russian gang that seems attracted to you. He came in and ordered a drink at the bar.”

  “Don’t you serve Russians?”

  “Yes, of course. They even eat here. But not this one. That backpack by the bar. He left it on the floor when he started to leave.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “My guess is enough explosive to blow us all to Bucharest.”

  “This doesn’t make sense, George. If I get blown to pieces with the rest of you, no one will know where that violin is.”

  “Actually, it does make sense. They must have someone outside with the triggering device. Probably in a car. They’ll wait for you and this man to leave. Then they eliminate us. The competition. Probably take you captive.”

  “What do you plan to do?”

  George shrugged. “Let them have their way. Up to a point.”

  George looked at me with a small smile that surprised me. “Are you up for this?”

  With no inkling of what was behind that smile, I matched it and nodded.

  George called one of his men by name. He said something to him in Romanian that sounded like a question. Whatever the man said back sounded like a strong “yes.”

  The man gingerly picked up the backpack and took it back into the kitchen. Within a few minutes, he reappeared in the kitchen doorway and said something that apparently pleased George.

  George came over to me. “I know you have a reputation for steady nerves under fire. My men spotted a car parked down the block with a Russian driver. He’s probably holding the trigger for this device. What would you say if I asked you to go out the front door and walk toward the car? I’ll warn you. He’s probably waiting to take you prisoner.”

  I could feel the gremlins start dancing in my stomach at the thought. “Into the lion’s den.”

  “So to speak. Will you trust me to protect you?”

  “Will it advance the cause?”

  “It might well.”

  Some things you do in life defy logic. I remembered John Wayne saying, “Courage is being scared to death, and saddling up anyway.”

  “Let’s do it.”

  “Bravely spoken. Take this gun. Keep it in your pocket. When I tell you, walk out the door with this Russian in front of you. Keep the gun on him. Turn right and walk slowly toward the black Buick at the end of the block.”

  “And when we reach the Buick?”

  “You’ll know what to do.”

  With the gun in my pocket and the Russian a step in front of me, we walked out of the restaurant and turned right. The Buick was a hundred feet ahead of us. I nudged the Russian and willed my feet to walk behind him.

  At thirty feet, I could make out the features of the man in the car. I could see his eyes dilating as I walked into the spider’s web. He raised his hand with a gadget that looked like my garage door opener. His eyes darted from me to the restaurant behind.

  There was a flash of tension in his face. I could see his grip tighten on the thing in his hand. Instinctively, I hit the ground. I looked back at the restaurant for the blast. It came with a numbing shock to the ears, but not from the restaurant. The blast came from in front of me.

  I looked ahead just in time to see the rear end of the Russian’s car blown off the ground. The gas tank must have ruptured. Flames shot out of the trunk area. The Russian driver’s eyes were the size of his gaping mouth. He threw open the car door and dove for the sidewalk just before the entire car was blanketed in flame.

  The Russian who was a step ahead of me had also hit the ground. He scrambled to his feet and ran to pick up his comrade. I looked back to see George outside of the restau
rant door, apparently enjoying the scene.

  I had the gun out of my pocket. George yelled to me, “Let them go. I want them to report this back to their people.”

  Since I had no alternative plan, I watched the two Russians break Olympic records in a dash for their lives.

  I walked back to the restaurant and gratefully accepted the celebratory glass of tuica that George held out to me with a broad smile.

  “Well done. I had my explosives expert take out enough of the charges to make it effective but not deadly. The Russian driver was concentrating on watching for you and his partner leave the restaurant before he pushed the button. My man was able to sneak up behind and drop the backpack under the rear of his car.”

  George beckoned me to follow him back to the private dining area. “Please sit, Michael. There’s a bit more that you need to know. Then the decisions are yours.”

  We sat at the table close enough to speak in a low tone. “Your last question, before we were interrupted, was how this all relates to that violin. You need to know. Then I have something important to ask of you.”

  That last sentence felt like an unsheathed sword dangling directly overhead. I put it to the back of my mind to better absorb what I hoped would be the first thread of sense I’d heard in over a week.

  “I’ll be brief, but I have to go back centuries. Bear with me.”

  I told him I would.

  He took a deep breath and a deep quaff of tuica while he settled on a point of entry.

  “I told you about the conquest of Wallachia by the Turks. Once Dracula was imprisoned in 1462 by their allies, the Hungarians, the Turks dominated the whole area we’re talking about. I’m sure they searched, but there is no record of their finding the treasure.

  “Jump ahead. Two hundred and twenty years later, 1683. The Muslim Turkish empire had marched all the way to Vienna, the center of the Christian Hapsburg’s Holy Roman Empire. If the Turks took Vienna, Christianity would likely have been wiped out across Europe. In the most momentous battle, perhaps of all time, King John III Sobieski led the Polish Hussars in the largest cavalry charge in history to defeat the Turks at the walls of Vienna. It took sixteen more years, but the Christian armies drove the Turks out of Wallachia and all the way back to the Black Sea.”

  “Interesting. But what does this have to do—”

  “Patience. You’ve heard of the Silk Road?”

  “More or less. It was a trade route.”

  “From Chang An in eastern China all the way west to Italy and back. It carried everything from silk to Buddhism from China, and even the plague at one point. It also brought the culture of the West to the East, including, sometime around 1695—are you listening, Michael—one particular violin made by Antonius Stradivari.”

  He now had me on full alert.

  “Those were violent times. One route of the Silk Road passed just above Wallachia. It was vulnerable to being hijacked by Turkish bandits.”

  George picked up the sheaf of documents he had placed on the table in front of us. “I want you to read this. But first, let me tell you this much. A captain of the Turkish army, Captain Suleman, hijacked a caravan on the Silk Road bound for China. One item he took was a Stradivarius violin.”

  “One I might be familiar with?”

  My question ignored, he continued, “There is reason to believe that around the time the Christian armies were driving the Turks out of Wallachia, this Captain Suleman stumbled onto Dracula’s treasure. You’ll see when you read these papers. Things were moving fast. The Turkish army was retreating. This captain had no time or means to take more than a few small items with him. But here’s the point. One item he took was the Stradivarius violin.”

  “This army captain knew its value?”

  “As a violin? Probably not. That’s not the point. He somehow placed the key to the location of Dracula’s treasure somewhere on or in the violin. Why there? Who knows? Perhaps because it was the least likely place anyone would look. For whatever reason, he did.”

  That, as the saying goes, actually did take my breath away. That hot potato I’d been carrying for a week took on an entirely new dimension.

  George gave me breathing room to pull together the obvious question.

  “There’s a bit of a gap between 1700 and this week. How do you know it’s the same violin? Stradivari must have made …”

  “About a thousand instruments. So you want to know why three gangs all believe this is the one.”

  “A reasonable question, the odds being a thousand to one.”

  “I’m going to leave you here. Read these papers. See if you find the odds reduced.”

  CHAPTER TEN

  GEORGE HANDED THE papers to me as if he were handing over the original Magna Carta.

  “Need I say, Michael, I’m entrusting you with something that is more valuable than anything you can comprehend. Understand also, it holds the potential to release more benefit—or more unmitigated evil—on the people it will affect than you can comprehend.”

  “I understand what you’re saying, but you need to understand that I’m making no commitments—none, until I know a great deal more than I do right now.”

  He bowed slightly. “That’s the trust I’m placing in the depth of your character. God help us all if I’m mistaken.”

  His fingers slowly released the papers into my hand.

  “What you’re holding is a translation of a section of the personal journal of a ship’s doctor from the time he set sail on a Turkish merchant ship trading between Istanbul, Samsun, Constanta, and Odessa on the Black Sea. It was handwritten in Turkish in 1699. The original pages have been tested for authentic dating of both the paper and the ink. With that, I’ll leave you. We’ll speak when you finish.”

  George left the room and closed the door. The papers he left with me read as follows:

  Personal Journal of Dr. Baran Demir:

  Ship’s surgeon, Turkish Merchant Vessel Chabal Bahari

  March 12, 1699

  Our days in the port of Constanta on the east coast of Transylvania were fore-shortened without notice. Instead of the usual trade goods, the cargo we took on under military orders was human to the point of over-loading. In my thirty years of practice as a physician, a-sea and a-shore, I have never seen the human condition reduced to such wretchedness. The soldiers of the Turkish army had been fleeing for their lives in retreat before the forces of the Christian Empire. Exhaustion and near starvation, compounded with disease, required as much treatment as the wounds inflicted in skirmishes even as they retreated.

  I make note of one particular soldier. A captain, Ismael Suleman, by name, one of the very few names I had time to learn. The tendons of his right arm had been all but severed by a Christian blade. The matter of more concern was the advanced state of infection, the wounds having gone untreated during his forced march to the shore.

  My immediate intent was to remove the arm with the greatest haste. I was in the initial stage of applying scalpel and saw, when he rose out of his state of collapse and delirium. I felt the vice-grip of his left hand on my cutting hand. His desperate pleas to save the arm overcame my sounder medical judgment.

  I applied what little I had to combat the infection, so deeply entrenched that I thought my ministrations useless. The pain and fever drove him shortly to a state of protective unconsciousness. I used the time to quickly and temporarily repair damaged portions of the arm to the extent possible.

  Throughout that night, I stole moments from attending the avalanche of other casualties to bathe and treat the infection. That done, I could simply commit him to the mercies of Allah.

  Whether by the work of my humble applications or, more likely, by the power of Allah, at the end of the second day, the fever broke. The pain subsisted, but the delirium had left him. When I saw him that second evening, he grasped my arm with his sound left hand with unexpected strength. His protestations of gratitude brought this hardened physician to tears.

  When I stirred to l
eave him to tend other patients, his grip persisted. He lifted his head and pulled my ear close to his mouth. His rasping words still ring in my memory. “I will repay. I will repay.”

  The effort proved exhausting. He sank back into unconsciousness. I pried his fingers from my arm. I called on one of the ship’s seamen to continue to bathe and re-dress his arm, while I made the rounds of other injured and depleted soldiers.

  Midway through the second watch of the third day, I stole a few precious moments of redemptive sun and sea air on deck above my makeshift hospital. Our course from Constanta to Samsun held to an east-southeast bearing in a moderate wind directly a-port. I linger to recall those precious moments of peace, the first in days, and the last I will likely know for what may remain of my life.

  That peace was shattered by a clear call from aloft. The voice from the crow’s nest stirred us all with that word more dreaded than “storm” or “tempest.” Despite the efforts of the Turkish fleet to rid the Black Sea of that plague, the call from above was “Pirate ship! She flies the black flag! Ten points to Starboard!” And worse yet, “She closes fast!”

  Our captain was quick to pick up the accursed ship in his glass. I could see him scan the horizon for any path of escape. My own scanning found none. The pirate ship was closing rapidly from a distance, by my guess, of no more than half a league. She was under full sail, and could clearly outrun our bulky, over-laden vessel in a chase.

  We all knew the captain’s mind. To flee was impossible. To allow closure and fight, fool-hardy given our vulnerability and the bristle of cannon on the pirate ship’s every side. To simply surrender and offer up our cargo and stores with a plea for the lives of those aboard, doomed. The black flag came with a history of seizure of merchant ships and the bloody slaughter under cutlass of every living trace of humanity aboard.

  I had resigned myself to uttering what would certainly be my last prayer to Allah in this life, when I heard from aloft the ringing call, “A-stern! Warship. She flies the flag of the Turkish fleet!”

  The captain spun his glass to the rear. He shouted the orders. “Come full about! Aloft! Full sail!”