Early the next morning, Sam and Remi dressed in tourist clothes: shorts, T-shirts, and athletic shoes, with their sun visors and sunglasses. In another five minutes they were out on the road, heading for the Mincio River.
An old, level towpath bordered the river and made it a favorite ride for bicyclists. Sam and Remi pedaled along the paved path with dozens of others, admiring the beauty of the city and the equally beautiful Lombardy landscape, the flat fields nearby and low rolling hills in the middle distance, with a row of trees growing along each bank of the river. There were houses that must have dated from the Middle Ages and old vineyards with vines strung on poles and overhead wires. They stopped at a pleasant spot beneath the trees along the river and ate their picnic lunch.
They reached Lago Superiore, the first of the lakes, at one-thirty p.m. and rode along its southern shore into the center of Mantua. They found a sidewalk café where they could rest and have espressos and pastries in view of the second lake, Lago di Mezzo, then rode over the Via Lagnasco bridge to SS 482, the Via Ostiglia.
“Eight more miles,” said Remi. “This is glorious. I don’t feel tired at all.”
“It occurred to me that we’ve been following the river downstream,” said Sam. “Does that suggest anything to you?”
“Yes. That we’ll be pedaling uphill all the way back to Peschiera del Garda,” Remi said. “Or we’ll have to find another way.”
After an hour of easy pedaling, they could see the destination. The Po ran west to east and was wider than the Mincio. On both sides of the Mincio were cultivated vegetable and grain fields as far as they could see, except for the field at its confluence, which had been plowed but not yet planted. The trees were all along the riverbeds.
Sam and Remi dismounted from their bicycles and studied the landscape. “This is a good place not to be noticed,” said Remi. “I can’t even see a building on this side. Albrecht said to stay on the west side of the Mincio, north of the Po. All we need to find now is a fifteen-hundred-year-old campsite.”
“Give me a minute to check the GPS.” After a minute, Sam said, “We’re on it. They would have watered their horses along the riverbed. And if I were a nomadic horseman, I would be sure to take really good care of my horses.” He turned away from the river to face the field. “Fifty to a hundred thousand Hun warriors means something near two hundred thousand horses. It’s hard to imagine what that must have looked like. The line of horses must have stretched along both rivers for a couple of miles.”
Remi wheeled her bike to a nearby tree, leaned the bike against the trunk, stepped on the bike’s lower bar, then the seat, and pulled herself up to the tree’s first large branch. She reached up to the second branch for a handhold and then stood.
“What do you see?” asked Sam.
“From up here, it looks as though the highest part of the field is right over there.” She pointed a hundred yards inland to a section of the field that was slightly elevated.
Sam stepped close and helped her down, then extended the magnetometers’ poles so the sensors extended about three feet in front of the bicycles’ handlebars and the boxes holding the gauges were between the handlebars and easy to read. They walked their bicycles, side by side, into the field and up the slight incline.
It was late afternoon, the sun’s rays falling at a low angle on the field. As they walked they read the magnetometers, watching for disturbances in the magnetic field. There was little fluctuation in the readings until they crossed the highest point in the field, which was almost a dome. Then the needles jumped.
“Did you get that?” Remi asked.
“Got it,” Sam said.
They both stopped. Sam said, “Let’s see how big it is.”
Remi laid her bike down to mark the place where the disturbance began and walked with Sam as he wheeled his bike a few yards. “There,” he said and laid his bike down. They paced the distance together, then replaced the bikes with their sun visors. They rolled the bikes along a perpendicular path. “It’s ten paces by fifteen,” Remi said.
“That’s what I get,” Sam said. “About twenty by thirty feet. Let’s try one of the metal detectors.” Sam assembled the one from Remi’s backpack and began to pass it back and forth over the area they had marked off. It gave off an electronic tone, then a squeal—a loud and unchanging shriek—as he walked the width of the spot.
Remi said, “It’s huge—much bigger than the first chamber. Plan A or Plan B?”
“We’ll have to mark it so we can find it again quickly, then ride back to Peschiera del Garda and get ready to excavate tomorrow night after dark.”
“Where will we find a way to hold a hoard of gold twenty by thirty paces across?”
“We’ve got a navigable river right over there.”
“Aha, Plan A,” she said. “A big boat.”
Sam marked the spot by taking the sensor off his magnetometer and laying the long aluminum pole flat on the ground. Then they rode their bicycles back along the towpath to Peschiera del Garda under the waning sun and then into the darkness.
As soon as they were in their hotel room and had a bath, they called Tibor’s secure cell phone. “Tibor?”
“Yes, Sam.”
“We need the three men we used as crewmen on the boat in the Tisza. They need to be at our hotel in Mantua by tomorrow evening at sundown.”
“You have a boat?” asked Tibor.
“No, but by tomorrow night I will.”
“They’ll be there.”
“Thanks, Tibor.”
“I have to get off now, so I can talk to them. Good-bye, Sam.”
Sam and Remi called the concierge again, and while she got them a reservation for a fine restaurant in Mantua, they drove the twenty-five miles to the city to shop in the best stores and find clothes suitable for an evening out. They began with a gray Armani summer suit for Sam, and, at Folli Follie, Remi bought a simple but striking Fendi jacquard sleeveless dress with a gold accent on the belt. They wore the clothes they had bought, left the clothes they’d worn in the trunk of the car they’d parked at the city walls, and made the ten-minute walk to Ochina Bianca, a restaurant just north of the city’s center.
They ordered risotto alla milanese, redolent with saffron, as their pasta course, osso buco as their entrée, and their wine selection was Felsina Fontalloro 2004 from Tuscany. Remi said, “This is all so wonderful. Let’s flip a coin to see which one of us goes to culinary school so we can have this at home.”
“The cooking part is not my specialty,” he said. “Think of me as your nutritionist and trainer. I’m just helping you build up your strength for tomorrow when the work starts again. In fact, I’m already thinking you might need some dessert. There’s a local delicacy called sabbiosa, which is a plum cake soaked in Guinness. How can that be bad?”
“I have no idea,” said Remi. “Maybe it can’t.”
“In fact, I’ll even have some with you to be sure it’s up to your standards.”
“I’m sure you will.”
After their dinner in Mantua, they walked to the city walls, got into their car, and drove along the country road toward Lake Garda. “I’m glad we did this,” Remi said.
“Are you?”
“Yes. Tomorrow night at this time, if we’re digging a deep hole with shovels, I can remind myself that while the world sometimes brings you dirt and hard labor it also brings perfect risotto.”
“And a perfect date to share it with.”
“You’re getting awfully good at that,” Remi said. “I’m going to have to keep a close eye on you to be sure you’re not practicing compliments on other women.”
“Feel free,” said Sam. “I relish close attention.”
“I know you do,” she said, and leaned close to kiss his cheek as they drove in the starlight back to their hotel in Peschiera del Garda.
CONFLUENCE OF THE PO AND MINCIO RIVERS, ITALY