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Stamm explained how Adams had recorded his observations from the 1854 expedition in a journal, which had disappeared a long time ago.
“We were hoping your family might have it,” Stamm said.
“If they do, no one ever said a word about it, and I never saw it. Why is it important?”
“I truly don’t know. All I was told was that the chancellor wants to locate it. He’ll be disappointed, but we still need your help.” Stamm walked over to the computer and sat at the screen, tapping on the keyboard, calling up images of a brass skeleton key. “This is what was stolen last night. We catalog everything.”
He studied the images that showed both sides and each end of an old brass key. Stamm told him what he knew about it, and how it had become one of the institution’s ceremonial objects.
“Any idea why the guy wanted this so bad?”
“That’s something else we don’t know. But there might be someone who does.”
He was listening.
“There were two men who once worked here. One was Diane Sherwood’s father, Davis Layne. He headed up this museum. He also accumulated much of the restricted archive you read. Unfortunately, he died about fifteen years ago. The other is Frank Breckinridge. He once had my job as Castle curator. He’s the man who found the key in the attic back in the 1950s. He, too, was an expert on the Knights of the Golden Circle. Luckily, he’s still alive.”
“You familiar with him?”
Stamm shook his head. “He was before my time.”
Cotton’s mind raced and he rubbed at the stubble on his chin. “Adams is from my mother’s side of the family. He left the South after the war and moved out west.”
A curtain of time parted in his mind and he began to recall everything his grandfather had told him about Angus Adams.
A cell phone rang, startling him from his thoughts.
Not his.
Stamm’s.
The curator answered, listened for a moment, then ended the call with a perplexed look on his face.
“I had Martin Thomas’ key card flagged. I didn’t find it last night on his body, so I was going to cancel it this morning. But it was just used to gain access inside the natural history museum.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Cassiopeia huddled tight in the earthen crevice, Lea beside her farther inside. The wooden trunks kept raining down, obliterating and filling the shaft. Dust and dirt clouded the air and made breathing hard, but she swallowed the urge to cough or make a sound, not wanting to alert anyone above that they were still alive. She’d whispered to Lea that she should do the same and was pleased that the young girl had stayed silent. Luckily, none of the bullets had found either of them and the men above were most likely more occupied with the retrieval of the gold than worrying about if they were dead.
The crashing stopped, but the air remained fouled. She used her shirttail as a filter and tried to breathe short and shallow. Only a few feeble rays of light penetrated from above.
“Are you okay?” she whispered to Lea.
“I’m fine, but we need to get out of here. It’s hard to breathe.”
She agreed. But there was still the problem of the men. She kept listening, hearing nothing. Were they gone, or just waiting?
Time to find out.
She wiggled free and kicked at the old wood, which gave way to her assault. Luckily, the debris had not packed tight and there were plenty of air pockets. More kicks and she was able to squirm out, feeling her way with outstretched hands. A claustrophobic wave swept through her but, thankfully, unlike Cotton, she was not susceptible to that phobia. High-speed-moving heights were her weakness. Airplanes and helicopters, particularly.
She pushed and prodded, creating enough space that she could rise to her knees, her back against the shaft wall. Her breath continued to congeal in her throat, and she swallowed dust. More chunks of the shattered containers were piled above her, but not tightly. She told herself to be careful of rusted nails.
“Stay where you are,” she whispered to Lea. “I’m going to see if I can get us out of here.”
Hands planted on the debris, she hoisted her body up, shoving more of the dark obstacles out of the way. Her cell phone remained in her pocket and she found the unit. It was useless for calling, considering her location, but it generated enough light for her to study the mess around her.
Not insurmountable.
In fact, only a few meters above her head was nothing but air to the top of the shaft. She replaced the phone and climbed atop the pile, which groaned, then settled from her weight.
“I need you to come out and watch what I do,” she told Lea.
The young girl appeared below.
She estimated it was five meters to the top where a rectangular-shaped slab of weak light waited. Not much leaked below. The shaft was narrow, the sides rough, offering plenty of ridges and crevices for her feet and hands. She could scale it chimney-style, legs braced on the opposite wall.
The climb was tough but not impossible, since her legs and arms were in terrific shape. She came to the top, planted her hands, and pivoted herself up and out of the shaft. Her breathing was harder than she’d like, so she rested a moment, gathering her strength. She was about to help Lea out when a noise caught her attention. To her right. At the doorway leading from the chamber.
A tramp of footsteps.
Approaching.
“We have company,” she told Lea. “Stay there and be quiet.”
The chamber was bare except for two remaining trunks. She’d thought the men had completed their extraction, but apparently that was not the case. How many were returning was unknown and there was no place to hide, so she assumed a position near the doorway, her spine pressed to the rock wall.
One man entered.
Bald, jeans, boots, late twenties.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t take him.
He moved toward the two trunks and began to dismantle them with solid kicks. The old wood easily gave way and the noise he generated provided the perfect distraction. Two quick steps and she was on him. A swift swipe from her boots to his kidneys sent him reeling. She then drove her shoulder into the man’s chest, forcing him against the wall. He seemed to momentarily recover his composure, but a pop to his knee buckled his right leg. She was mad and planned to take out her anger on this idiot, but before she could finish him off a pair of arms wrapped her chest, pinioning her from behind.
Another of the men had returned.
She knew better than to resist.
Instead she allowed her body to go limp, which provided an instant of wiggle room, enough for her to slip from the bear hug, the heel of her right boot snapping the other knee.
&n
bsp; The man shrieked.
She whirled and with caution forgotten threw one punch after another, fists a blur, each one a full swing with every ounce of strength she had behind it. The man dropped to the ground and tumbled onto his back, writhing. One more sweeping kick to the side of his head rendered him still.
“That’s enough,” a male voice said.
She turned.
The other man had recovered enough to now have a revolver aimed at her. He lay on the dirt, his eyes cool and unreadable, the face a mask of rage.
“Sit your ass down on the ground,” he told her.
She decided to comply.
He was hurting, unable to stand from her assault, but not incapacitated enough not to pull a trigger. Two meters lay between them, more than enough distance to provide him with the advantage.
“What now?” she asked, her eyes not leaving his.
He struggled up on his side. She’d apparently broken something in his leg. “We wait.”
That meant others would be returning.
Behind her captor she spotted the shaft from below and saw two hands on one edge. A head slowly appeared, then eyes, as Lea assessed the situation. Cassiopeia wanted to tell her to stay put, but realized that would place her in even more danger.
So she watched as the young girl silently emerged.
It took guts and nerve to deal with a situation like this. She recalled her first few times in battle. She’d always been frightened, but that feeling had never paralyzed her. Instead, fear sharpened her determination. Her initial forays into risky extracurricular activities had come at the request of an old friend, Henrik Thorvaldsen, who’d needed her assistance from time to time. That was how she first met Cotton a few years ago in southern France. Henrik was gone, God rest his soul, but she was still here, right in the thick of things. She’d learned a lot from Henrik, especially how to handle pressure. Lea seemed to have the same innate ability, though her grandfather would not have approved.
The girl was now free of the shaft, on all fours, her face streaked with sweat and grime. Lea was too small to attack the man holding the gun. So Cassiopeia decided to send a message, pointing across the room and saying, “Did you plan on throwing those busted crates down on us, too?”
