“You know the Americans are going to start asking questions as soon as that girl fails to report in,” Caron said, doing his best to inform Dufort without sounding condescending. His employer needed the warning though.
“Yes,” Dufort finished the last sip of cognac and set the empty glass on the edge of his desk where the leather writing section met the wood. “They will undoubtedly show up on my doorstep and demand to be shown the grounds.”
“Won’t they need some kind of warrant to do that?”
Dufort rolled his shoulders and eyebrows. “Usually. Although the Americans tend to find ways around red tape.”
“So what should we do?” Caron stared up from the chair, his eyes full of questions.
“We show them around. There is plenty to see in this mansion without showing them everything. Right now our stock is fairly low, is it not?”
“Yes. Including that one,” he motioned to where the American woman had been sitting. “We only have seven right now.”
“Good,” Dufort said. “We can easily hide seven. When the Americans come, put the girls in one of the holding bins until we get rid of the snoopers.”
Caron nodded.
Then the employer changed the subject. “Any word on the situation with Sean Wyatt?”
“They went back to the United States. One of our hackers was able to break through the firewall and access the IAA laboratory computers. As we speak, they are scanning pages of an old manuscript. It appears to be Hamlet.”
Dufort’s face expressed amusement at this last bit of information. “Hamlet? By Shakespeare?”
“Yes,” Caron nodded. “We are not certain, but that book could be the item Petrov missed in the cemetery.”
Dufort walked back over to the window and stared out at the bustling city below. “What would Hamlet have to do with any of this?”
“We aren’t sure. All we can see is the images they scanned into their computers. The reasons are still unknown.”
Dufort paced back and forth, walking to one end of his enormous study to the other. He paused when he got back to the desk and thought for a moment. “Hamlet took place in Denmark.”
Caron was confused.
“The story happened in a castle not far from Copenhagen. That castle must be a part of all this.”
Dufort’s assistant was still not connecting the dots. “I don’t understand. Even if this castle somehow plays a part, surely it is in ruins now.”
“Not at all,” Dufort corrected. “It is in pristine condition and is a tourist hot spot for that area. I have actually been there once myself.”
“Oh,” Caron processed the information for a few seconds. “So the Americans will be heading to this castle?”
“It certainly seems that way. And it makes perfect sense. It is the epicenter of the legend of the man.”
“What would you have me do?”
Dufort considered the question for a moment. He’d put his trust into someone else once before, now he wondered if he could manage things from afar or if he would need to personally oversee the operation from here on out.
“Go to Copenhagen and wait. Take a team with you. I want a unit watching that airport twenty-four hours a day. As soon as Wyatt or one of his companions walks through the doors, you let me know immediately. Understood?”
Caron nodded. “Of course. I’m on it.” The bodyguard stood up and exited through the double doors in the same direction the other two men had taken the American woman a few minutes before.
Dufort was left alone in his expansive study to ponder what would happen next. If things went according to plan, soon he would have one of the most coveted relics on the planet. His status in the collectors’ club would be of small importance once he possessed this item. Presidents would beg to see it, the pope himself would offer unimaginable sums of money for it, and greater than all of that, Dufort could prove his powerful lineage among the most powerful rulers in Earth’s history.
Chapter 25
Tara pulled back a loose strand of blonde hair and tucked it neatly behind her ear. Her eyes never left the object on the laboratory table as the other hand expertly peeled back one of the brittle pages.
“You really should wear a hat when you’re doing something like this,” Alex said. He hovered over her like a fog, watching her every movement.
His brown hair was combed to the side with a part near the left center of his high forehead. His thick black glasses completed the look of a lab researcher. Other than the mask over her face, Tara could have pulled off the librarian or the scientist look.
“I’m fine,” she said just above a whisper. “And I only wear a hat when I’m at a baseball game or at the Kentucky Derby.”
Between the two of them, Tara had the higher passion for sports, while Alex preferred to sit at home and spend his time on a different kind of addiction: various television series.
Tara teased him about it on an almost weekly basis. Thanks to his Netflix subscription, he had an almost unlimited supply of television shows to watch throughout the week. While he spent the majority of his time in the IAA lab, he always cut out an hour or two for good television just before bedtime.
She gently turned another page with a pair of tweezers. Alex scanned the page with the high-resolution camera as he’d done with all the others before.
“I wonder why we haven’t seen any other underlining after those six letters. Got a theory on that?” she asked, turning another page.
“It’s strange. They only underlined the one word. We’ll need to talk to Tommy to get some context.”
“Talk to Tommy about what?” A familiar voice entered the conversation from across the dimly lit room. Most of the light the two were using came from two mechanical lights propped on the table.
Tommy’s question nearly caused Tara to rip the current page out of the book, but she held steady enough to keep from doing any permanent damage.
“I’m working here,” she said with the slightest irritation. “You know, I could have ruined this thing. Shouldn’t sneak up on people when they’re working on potentially priceless artifacts.”
Tommy put up his hands apologetically. “I’m sorry. Couldn’t resist.” He made his way through the labyrinth of tables, chairs, microscopes, and other lab equipment. He was followed closely by Sean and Adriana. “What do you have so far?”
“Not much,” Alex answered, taking an image of the next page. “We’re documenting everything at this point.”
“But we did notice one oddity,” Tara added.
“The thing you needed to talk to me about?”
“Yeah,” Tara confirmed. “There were several letters underlined throughout the book. Seemed weird to us, especially since they were all jumbled up. In order, it didn’t spell out anything. LTACSE.”
“It reminded us of one of those word puzzles where you have to figure out what order the letters need to go in. Not exactly the toughest code to crack except that the underlining was done in invisible ink. We used our radiant heat lamps to make sure we weren’t missing anything.”
“Good thinking,” Sean said, clearly impressed with the thoroughness of the project. “What’s the word?”
“Castle,” Alex answered. “The word castle was what we came up with. Not sure why that was the message the owner of this wanted to get across.”
Tommy scratched the stubble on his face for a second. “Most of the events of Hamlet happened at a castle.”
“The Kronborg Slot,” Adriana corrected.
On the flight back to the United States, the three spent a few hours researching the different aspects of Shakespeare’s tragic tale and brushing up on what’ they knew about the area. The setting for the story took place in a castle Shakespeare had visited during a journey to Denmark. He was so inspired by the design and surroundings of the castle that he made it the main setting for Hamlet.