“Yes. If you’ll give me a number where you can be reached, I’ll ask them to call you as soon as I can get them above the surface.”
“I’m in Berlin. The number here is . . .”
As Selma wrote down the number, she was already thinking she would put the McCullough book aside. Albrecht Fischer was a professor of classical archaeology at Heidelberg. It wouldn’t hurt to spend some time this evening reviewing a few of his recent academic publications just to see what might be next. “Thank you, Albrecht. I’ll get Sam and Remi’s attention as soon as I can.”
Late in the evening, after their romantic dinner of shrimp etouffee, softshell crab, and bread pudding at the Grand Jatte and a moonlit walk home along the Gulf, Sam and Remi had just gotten into bed when his cell phone rang.
As Sam dropped his feet to the floor to get his phone from the top of the dresser, Remi raised her head and leaned on her elbow. “Mine has an off switch.”
“Sorry,” he said. “I forgot it was on.” He flipped his thumb across the screen. “Hello?”
“Sam?”
“Selma.” He looked at Remi. She turned away and pulled the covers up to her chin.
“I hope I’m not calling too late.”
“Of course not.” He smiled at Remi. “What’s up?”
“Albrecht Fisher called. He’s made a discovery he wants to discuss with you and Remi.”
“Is he at his university office in Heidelberg?”
“No, he’s in Berlin. He gave me his number.”
“Yes.”
She read him the number, and he used the pen he’d left on the dresser to write it on a slip of paper in his wallet. “Thanks, Selma. How’s everything at home?”
“Everything proceeds with the utmost serenity at the manor whether the lord and lady are in residence or not.”
“You wouldn’t call a man up in the middle of the night just to make fun of him.”
“Never,” said Selma. “Sleep tight.” She hung up.
Sam went out to the kitchen and began to close the door, but Remi was already out of bed and put her hand on the door to keep it from closing. “I’m already awake. We may as well both be tired tomorrow.”
“What time is it in Berlin?”
“Seven hours ahead of Louisiana.”
“So it’s eight a.m.”
Sam tapped in the number and waited while the connection was established, then switched his phone to speaker. They listened to it ring.
“’Allo, Sam. Wie geht es Ihnen?”
“Fine, Albrecht. Selma said you had something to tell us, so we’re both listening.”
“I do,” he said. “It’s a find that I made only a week ago. I brought a few things here for testing and the results have come in.”
“What is it?”
“My friends, I think I’ve found something incredible, and it has to be kept absolutely secret for now. It’s so big, I can’t excavate it alone. I can’t even do a preliminary survey alone. Full summer will begin in a month, and again the need for secrecy in this situation doesn’t even bear describing.”
“We understand the secrecy, but can’t you even tell us what it is?” asked Remi.
“I think . . . I believe that what I’ve found is an ancient battlefield. It seems to be intact, undisturbed.”
Sam wrote on his slip of paper, “What do you think?” Remi took the pen and wrote: “Yes.”
Sam said, “We’ll come to you.”
“Thank you, Sam. I’m in Berlin now, buying some things and borrowing others. Send me your flight information, and I’ll meet you at the airport.”
“Remi and I will be on a plane sometime in the morning, but the flight will probably add a whole day. See you soon.” He hung up and looked at Remi.
“We should have asked what kind of battlefield,” she said.
“All he said was ancient. So I guess we don’t have to worry about unexploded ordnance.”
“If it’s in Europe, we may.”
“He’s in Berlin, but it sounded as though that was where he was doing tests, not where the site is.”
“We’d better get packed.”
In the morning, as they made the fifty-four-mile drive to New Orleans, Sam called Ray Holbert and said, “I’m sorry, but a friend called last night and needs some emergency help on a project, so we’ve got to go. I apologize for leaving in such a hurry.”
Holbert said, “Don’t think anything of it. You gave us a great month’s work and we’ll miss you. We don’t have many volunteers who pay all their own expenses and plenty of ours too. But we’ll keep in touch and let you know what else we discover.”
“Thanks, Ray.”
“Oh, and Sam? If someone were to go look for those people who rented that black-and-gray boat, where would you suggest they start?”
“I can’t say for sure. Somewhere in the bayous inland from Lake Vermilion and Mud Lake, would be my best guess.”
Selma had their itinerary waiting at the airport. Sam and Remi flew Royal Dutch Airlines from Louis Armstrong Airport in New Orleans to Atlanta and then on to Amsterdam. Sam and Remi slept on the transatlantic flight and then woke in time for arrival in Amsterdam. The final flight into Berlin was much shorter, and when they arrived at Tegel Airport in Berlin at 11:20 the next morning, there was Albrecht Fischer.
Fischer was tall and thin, with blond hair that was slowly lightening to white and once fair skin that had been tanned by the sun so many times that it had stayed that way, making his blue eyes stand out. He wore a gray sport coat that looked weather-beaten, with a dark blue silk scarf hanging loose from his neck. He shook Sam’s hand and kissed Remi on both cheeks. It wasn’t until they were walking toward the exit from the terminal that Albrecht Fischer spoke about his find.
“I’m sorry for telling you so little on the telephone. I think you’ll understand when you see what I’ve brought to Germany.”
“This isn’t where it came from?” asked Remi.
“No,” he said. “At the site, I sensed I was being watched. I needed to do lab work and examinations, but I didn’t dare do them there. So I came back here. There are colleagues at Humboldt and at the Free University who have let me use their labs. I’ve been sleeping in the office of a colleague who is on leave and using the shower in his chemistry lab.”
“Why not just go back to your own lab at Heidelberg?”
“A bit of a ruse to throw off anyone who might be interested in what I’m doing. I had some odd feelings while I was at work, and I’ve found that when you think you’re being watched, you usually are.”
Fischer took them outside the terminal, where he hailed a cab that took them to the Hotel Adlon Kempinski. While Sam checked them in, Remi took in the beauty of the hotel—the ornate carpets, fine furniture, vaulted ceiling—but she also noticed that Albrecht Fischer’s eyes were moving constantly, scanning the steady stream of people coming and going through the lobby. He was agitated, impatient, and, at the same time, there was something else. He seemed to be afraid. Sam sent the bellman up to their room with the luggage, then rejoined Remi and Fischer. “Shall we go up?”
Remi shook her head. “I think we’d better go see what the good professor has been working on.”
Albrecht brightened. “Yes, please do. I know you’re probably tired from all the travel, but I’ve been keeping myself quiet about this until I’m half mad. And the lab isn’t far.”
Sam and Remi exchanged a glance, and Sam said, “Then of course. Let’s go.” They stepped outside, and the doorman signaled a cab and opened the door for them. Albrecht waited until the door was closed to say, “Humboldt University, please.” The cab let them off only a few blocks away at the statue of Frederick the Great in front of the main building of the university on Unter den Linden.
They walked quickly into a building that seemed to be all science laboratories—doors with smoked-glass windows with numbers on them. The ones that were open had young people inside, wearing lab coats and wandering among black boxes with screens, stands that held chemistry apparatus, and counters with centrifuges and spectrometers. As they passed, Sam kept looking into each lab. Remi took Sam’s arm. “I know you’re reliving the high points of your college years.”