Cobb had already figured out who Maggie was talking about when she mentioned Kublai Khan, but he could tell that Sarah and McNutt were still in the dark. After several months of studying the members of his team, he could read their behavior. Sarah’s arms were crossed in frustration, and she looked like she was about to start complaining. Meanwhile, McNutt sat quietly and refrained from his usual silliness.
‘So,’ Cobb asked, ‘the brothers brought the scholars back to Beijing?’
‘Yes and no,’ she said. ‘Their mission was complicated by the sede vacante.’
‘I am not familiar with that term,’ Cobb admitted.
‘It was a period of vacancy between Pope Clement IV’s death in 1268 and his successor, Pope Gregory X, taking over three years later. Niccolò and Maffeo — the brothers — managed to bring the oil to the Khan, but the date of their arrival is uncertain. They also tried to bring some Dominican monks with them, but the men were terrified and turned back long before the group reached China. Along with Niccolò’s son, the brothers stayed in China for another seventeen years before they returned to Europe. During that time they amassed an immense fortune, yet when they returned to Italy the riches that they had with them paled in comparison.’
‘In other words,’ Sarah suggested, ‘they hid the bulk of their treasure before they reached home.’
Maggie smiled. ‘Perhaps. There are certainly those who believe that is what happened. The brothers were not stupid. They knew upon their return that the government and the church would seize most of their wealth, and that is precisely what occurred.’
‘So,’ McNutt said, ‘what happened to Nico and Muffy?’
‘Niccolò and Maffeo,’ she corrected gently. ‘Very little is known about what happened to the brothers. Most assume they died shortly after they returned to Italy because the legend no longer focused on them. Instead, it shifted to Niccolò’s son. Now a man, the son went to war in a conflict between Venice and Genoa. He was captured by the Genoese and imprisoned for nearly four years. During that time, he told a fellow prisoner of his adventures.’
Sarah grinned. ‘And the prisoner wrote a book about him.’
Maggie nodded. ‘Yes. You have it.’
McNutt grimaced. ‘Am I the only one who doesn’t know this story? What was the title of the book?’
‘The book has several names,’ Maggie explained. ‘Its author called it Livre des Merveilles du Monde.’
Papineau translated the French. ‘Book of the Wonders of the World.’
‘In Italy, it was called Il Milione — which means “The Million”.’
‘Now we’re talking,’ Sarah said as visions of treasure danced in her head. ‘The Million Dollars? The Million Diamonds?’
‘Nope. The Million Lies.’
‘Ugh. I’m guessing the Italians didn’t believe his story.’
‘Many of them did not,’ Maggie admitted.
McNutt stared at her, waiting for the punchline. ‘And what do we call it in English?’
Maggie smiled. ‘The Travels of Marco Polo.’
7
Special Agent Rudy Callahan stared at his calendar and groaned.
It was a torturous routine that played out every morning when he reached his desk and several times throughout the course of the day. Like a prisoner scratching lines on a wall, he was obsessed with the length of his confinement. Only instead of a cell, Callahan was trapped in a windowless office at the Jacob K. Javits Federal Building.
The previous August he had been doing what he loved most: chasing down leads on the streets of New York. Now he wondered if he would ever see that type of action again. He realized that his last assignment had ended poorly, but he also knew that he wasn’t to blame. Unfortunately, his superiors viewed the episode as a colossal failure and decided to make an example out of him and his partner, Special Agent Jason Koontz.
Seven months later, they were still paying the price.
All because of a single incident in Brooklyn.
While conducting surveillance on the waterfront estate of Vladimir Kozlov — a Russian criminal who ran a local syndicate known as the Brighton Beach Bratva — Callahan had gotten caught in the middle of a firefight. On one side were Kozlov’s guards. On the other, a team of highly skilled thieves who were trying to escape the mansion under a torrent of gunfire and a series of well-placed explosives. The skirmish had left several gunmen dead, even more wounded, and the neighborhood engulfed in flames. Yet, for some reason, the thieves had gone out of their way — even returning for him at one point during their escape — to make sure that Callahan was okay.
It didn’t make sense then, and it didn’t make sense now.
Not that he was complaining.
Though his superiors were thrilled that he had survived, they had been furious to learn that neither he nor his partner, who had been parked outside the mansion in a high-tech surveillance van that was able to detect a mouse fart from over a mile away, had recorded anything but static during the confrontation.
No thieves. No gunmen. No crimes of any kind.
Both men had sworn that the equipment had been functioning perfectly throughout the evening, and each was at a loss to explain what had happened. Their best guess was that someone had scrubbed the signals to cover the incident. Their bosses had laughed at the notion, claiming that it would have taken an elite hacker with inside knowledge of the FBI’s technology to access their surveillance feeds, much less alter them.
Little did they know, that was exactly what had happened.
Hector Garcia had worked his magic and erased everything.
Regardless of the cause, the result was inexcusable. For their efforts, or, more accurately, the lack thereof, Callahan and Koontz had been pulled from the streets for the last seven months. Assigned to a drab office in Federal Plaza, they were forced to watch old recordings of news from around the world, while writing tedious reports that explained how the events might be relevant to the FBI: a government agency that had no authority outside the United States.
It was the Bureau’s version of busy work.
And it was wearing Callahan down.
Even though his shift was just starting, he grabbed a black magic marker from his desk and drew a giant X through the seventeenth day of the month. Then he sat back and admired the string of identical markings that covered the previous blocks in March. ‘Two more months. Just two more months until I’m free.’
‘Talking to yourself again?’ Koontz asked from the office doorway. ‘My grandfather used to do that, too, right before we had him committed.’
Callahan defended himself. ‘I’m not senile. I just want this torture to end. Only two more months, then we can get the hell out of here.’
‘No,’ Koontz said, ‘in two more months we’re eligible to leave here. There’s no guarantee of anything. We might be stuck here for the rest of the year. Besides, there are a million other assignments that they could give us that don’t involve fieldwork. Given their take on things, they might send us back to the academy to teach the cadets how not to do surveillance.’
Callahan couldn’t bear the thought. ‘They wouldn’t do that … would they?’
‘I doubt it. They hate us a lot more than that.’
Callahan groaned and rubbed the back of his neck. His day was just starting, and the stress was already taking root in his shoulders. If he wasn’t careful, he would be incapacitated by a migraine before lunch.