Dejected, they left the museum and headed down the street to a pub only a block away. They turned into it, entering through a black wooden door, and found a table in one of the corners. A pretty waitress with straight black hair brought a few menus for them to look over and wrote down what they wanted to drink.
Sean scanned the pictures he’d taken at the museum, still hoping to find something he may have missed. He stared at the image of the ornately decorated pot with several images of horses running freely and a mountain range in the background. After a few seconds, he swiped the screen and went on to the next picture.
“Is there anything we’re missing here?” Tommy asked, exasperated. “I mean, there are times when we can’t figure things out. I get that. But we’ve come so far on this one. It just sucks to not get any closure to the case.”
“I hear ya,” Sean agreed. “I wonder if there’s anything those guys found on that dig that they didn’t put in the museum.”
“I already checked on that,” Adriana said, entering the conversation. “The woman told me that the men who discovered the stash made sure, according to their agreement, that everything was put on display in the museum, and that all the proceeds would be divided accordingly.”
When she finished her remarks, the three sat in silence for several minutes. The waitress brought them their drinks and took their food orders, and when she disappeared around the corner again, their silence resumed.
“I guess we’ll need to get all these images to the kids and let them break down what they can. Maybe we’ll get lucky, and they’ll find something,” Tommy finally said.
“Yeah,” Sean agreed. “But I’ve got a bad feeling that the stuff in the exhibit is the end of the line for our journey.”
“Do you think it was a hoax?” Adriana asked, sipping on her beverage. She peered over the glass rim with narrow, questioning eyes.
“We’ve certainly seen elaborate hoaxes like that before. But this one seems different. I don’t think someone went to all those lengths just to play a trick on someone several hundred years later.”
The dinner conversation changed from the topic of the legendary missing Viking to the Scottish weather, to food, to travel, and eventually deciding to return to the hotel. The following morning, Tommy checked his email and text messages, and the news wasn’t good.
“The kids said they couldn’t find anything in the images we sent them yesterday,” he informed Sean and Adriana over a breakfast of fried potatoes and eggs.
Sean couldn’t believe it. Granted they’d only been given twelve or so hours, but Tara and Alex rarely disappointed. “Not a single clue? Nothing?”
“It’s blowing my mind too, man. They’ll keep searching, but I need to get back to the U.S.”
Sean was troubled, and he didn’t try to hide it as he stared down at his drink. He hated untidy endings. Closure was something he’d become adept at getting. Now there was none to be had. Dufort had vanished like leaves in an autumn wind. And the relic they’d been chasing was forever lost to antiquity.
Tommy patted his friend on the shoulder. “Hey, don’t worry about it, man. You know how this goes. These things happen sometimes. We get some leads, we search every possible angle, and that’s all we can do. Occasionally, it just doesn’t work out. You worked with me long enough to see that. That’s the nature of it. Heck, grave robbers usually beat us to most of the good stuff anyway. Think about the pyramids and all the stuff that was taken from them.”
“I know,” Sean admitted. Tommy was right. And during the time he’d worked at IAA, Sean had seen his fair share of not getting closure on many expeditions. This one nagged at him, though, probably because Dufort was still out there, and as long as he was, there was a chance that the Frenchman would win.
To Sean, losing was never an option.
He let go of the thoughts and raised his glass with the others. “To Holger Danske,” Sean said with a grim smile. “May he rest in peace, wherever he is.”
Chapter 42
Sean sat on his deep leather couch, staring mindlessly at the flatscreen television. He’d be heading back to Destin the next morning to open up his surf and kayak shop for the spring and summer. His mind was only half into the soccer game playing out on the screen in crystal-clear high definition. The other half of his brain still ran through the perplexing mystery of Holger Danske and the lance he’d stolen from Charlemagne.
Upon returning to the States, he and Tommy spent several days wrapping up a few loose ends, although there were some that seemed would never be completed. Browning Cooper and Charlie Fowler had returned to their respective homes in Knoxville and Chattanooga. Sean was sure to call them both to give the disappointing report.
Charlie had blown off the whole thing saying, in his usual, cynical fashion, that he always thought it was a wild goose chase. Coop had taken it well too.
“Perhaps someday we’ll know the rest of the story,” he’d said after hearing the news.
Sean hated to disappoint him, especially after he’d been shot and hospitalized. But there was nothing else they could do. They’d left no stone unturned.
It was as he’d said to Adriana and Tommy, “You can’t win them all.”
At least he felt good about helping shut down one of the largest human trafficking rings in the world. Dufort was gone, his minions dead, and the lives of dozens of young girls had been spared, not to mention the girls Dufort would have taken in the future. He regretted not killing the Frenchman, but Sean knew that eventually Dufort would get his due.
Emily had relayed the story of their sting operation and how they’d found her missing agent and several other girls hidden in a shipping container stored on the outskirts of Paris.
Beyond the immediate results of the operation Emily had personally overseen, international agencies were able to retrieve contacts for at least eleven of Dufort’s regular customers. It would be impossible to indict all of them. Some would disappear before their locations could be nailed down. Most would face justice though. The world had become a much smaller place over the last fifty years. It was becoming increasingly more difficult to hide.
Sean believed evil people like that always got their comeuppance. Sooner or later, they would get theirs. He felt a twinge in his heart as that thought ran through his mind again.
One of the referees in the game blew his whistle, startling Sean from his thoughts. He’d drifted off into a daydream about the events of the previous weeks. The yellow-uniformed official waved a warning finger at one of the players, letting him know that he would no longer be accepting such behavior.
Sean glanced up at the score in the corner of the screen. The clock just below it told him there were still a few minutes left in the first half. Plenty of time for his team to give up the lead. He hoped that wasn’t the case.
He let himself focus on the game for the next eighty seconds without thinking about human trafficking or evil men or ancient Viking hoards.
The referee blew his whistle again sooner than expected, ending the first half of the game. The two teams walked off, disappearing into a tunnel to regroup. A commercial came on the screen showing a couple walking to the edge of the Grand Canyon. Next, it showed a man water skiing with a huge smile on his face as he cut through a lake in slow motion. The third scene was of several friends on a camping trip, sitting around a fire with tents in the background and a full moon hanging overhead amid a starry night sky.
“Come to Arizona,” the narrator’s voice said as the words appeared on the screen.