Spartan Gold

“The glass is fairly remarkable as well—very high quality and quite thick, almost an inch, actually. Though I’m not inclined to test the theory, I’m fairly certain it could stand up to a fair amount of abuse.”

“The label on the bottle: hand-tooled leather, glued to the glass as well as bound at the top and bottom by hemp twine. As you can see, the markings on the label were etched direcly into the leather, then filled in with ink—a very rare ink, in fact. It’s a mixture of Aeonium arboreum ‘Schwartzkopf’—”

“English, please,” Remi said.

“It’s a type of black rose. The ink is a mixture of its petals and crushed beetle—a spitting beetle native only to the islands in the Ligurian Sea. As for the details on the label itself . . .” Selma pulled the bottle closer, waited for Sam and Remi to come over, then turned on an overhead halogen task lamp. “You see this phrase . . . mesures usuelles—it’s French for ‘customary measurements.’ It’s a system that hasn’t been used for a hundred fifty years or so. And this word here . . . demis—it means ‘halves,’ roughly the equivalent of an English pint. Sixteen ounces.”

“Not much fluid for a bottle that size,” Remi said. “Has to be the thickness of the glass.”

Selma nodded. “Now, let’s look at the ink itself: as you can see it’s faded in places, so it’ll take time to re-create the image, but do you see the two letters in the upper right- and left-hand corners, and the two numbers in the lower right and left?”

The Fargos nodded.

“The numbers represent a year. One and nine. Nineteen.”

“Nineteen nineteen?” Remi said.

Selma shook her head. “Eighteen nineteen. As for the letters—H and A—they’re initials.”

“Belonging to . . . ?” Sam prompted.

Selma leaned back and paused. “Now, bear in mind, I’m not certain of this. I need to do some more research to make sure—”

“We understand.”

“I think the initials belong to Henri Archambault.”

Sam and Remi absorbed the name, then looked at one another, then back to Selma, who offered a sheepish grin and a shrug.

Remi said, “Okay, just so we’re on the same page: We’re talking about the Henri Archambault, correct?”

“The one and only,” Selma replied. “Henri Emile Archambault—Napoleon Bonaparte’s chief enologist. Unless I miss my guess, you’ve found a bottle from Napoleon’s Lost Cellar.”

CHAPTER 11

SEVASTOPOL

The ring-necked pheasant burst from the undergrowth and streaked across the sky, wings beating wildly in the sharp morning air. Hadeon Bondaruk waited, letting the bird get a good lead, then tucked the shotgun to his shoulder and fired. The pheasant jerked in the air, went limp, and started tumbling to the earth.

“Good shot,” Grigoriy Arkhipov said, standing a few feet away.

“Go!” Bondaruk barked in Farsi.

The two Labrador retrievers who’d been sitting patiently at Bondaruk’s feet leaped up and charged after the fallen bird. The ground around Bondaruk’s feet was littered with no less than a dozen pheasant corpses, all of them having been torn to shreds by the dogs.

“I hate the taste of the things,” Bondaruk explained to Arkhipov, using the toe of his boot to kick one away. “But the dogs love the exercise. What about you, Kholkov, do you enjoy the hunt?”

Standing a few feet behind Arkhipov, Vladimir Kholkov dipped his head to one side, considering. “Depends on the quarry.”

“Good answer.”

Kholkov and Arkhipov had served most of their time together in the Spetsnaz, Arkhipov the commander, Kholkov the loyal executive officer, a relationship that had continued into their civilian life as highest-bidder mercenaries. For the past four years Hadeon Bondaruk had been the undisputed highest bidder, making Arkhipov a wealthy man in the process.

After reporting to Bondaruk their failure to find the Fargos, Kholkov and Arkhipov had been summoned here, to their boss’s vacation home in the foothills along the Crimean Peninsula. Though he’d arrived the afternoon before, Bondaruk had yet to mention the incident.

Arkhipov was afraid of no man—that much Kholkov had seen proven on the battlefield dozens of times—but they both knew a dangerous man when they saw one, and Bondaruk was as treacherous as they came. Though he’d never personally witnessed it, he had no doubt of Bondaruk’s capacity for violence. It wasn’t fear that put them on edge when they were around Bondaruk, but a hard-won and healthy caution. Bondaruk was unpredictable, like a shark. Placidly swimming along, paying attention to nothing and everything, ready to attack in the blink of an eye. Even now, as they talked, Kholkov knew his boss was keeping a soldier’s eye trained on Bondaruk’s shotgun, watching the movement of the barrel as though it were the mouth of a Great White.

Kholkov knew a little about Bondaruk’s youth in Turkmenistan. The fact that his current boss had likely killed many dozens of his own countrymen—perhaps even men he knew—during the conflict along the Iranian border mattered very little to him. War was war. The best soldiers, the ones that excelled and survived, usually went about the work of killing the enemy with dispassion.

“It’s easy to be a good shot with a good gun,” Bondaruk said, cracking the breech and extracting the shell. “Custom-made by Ham brusch Jagdwaffen in Austria. Care to guess how old it is, Grigoriy?”

“I have no idea,” Arkhipov replied.

“One hundred eighty years. It belonged to Otto von Bismarck himself.”

“You don’t say.”

“It’s a piece of living history,” Bondaruk replied as though Arkhipov hadn’t spoken. “Look down there.” Bondaruk pointed southeast toward the lowlands along the coast. “You see that series of low hills?”

“Yes.”

“In 1854, during the Crimean War, that’s where the Battle of Balaclava was fought. You’ve heard of the poem by Te

Arkhipov shrugged. “I think we read it in elementary school.”

“The actual battle has been overshadowed by the poem—enough that the average person today has no idea about the story. Seven hundred British soldiers—cavalrymen from the 4th and 13th Light Dragoons, 17th Lancers, and the 8th and 11th Hussars—charged a Russian position fortified by ca

“It’s hard to know what was in the mind of the commanders.”

“Another example of living history,” Bondaruk said. “History is about people and legacies. Great deeds and great ambition. And great failures, of course. Come, both of you, walk with me.”

Shotgun cradled in the crook of his arm, Bondaruk strolled through the high grass, casually blasting the occasional pheasant that popped up.

“I don’t blame you for losing them,” Bondaruk said. “I’ve read about the Fargos. They’ve got a taste for adventure. For danger.”

“We’ll find them.”

Bondaruk waved his hand dismissively. “Do you know why these bottles are so important to me?”

“No.”

“The truth is, the bottles, the wine inside, and where they came from aren’t important. Once they’ve served their purpose you can smash them to pieces for all I care.”

“Then why? Why do you want them so badly?”

“It’s about where they can take us. It’s what they’ve been hiding for two hundred years—and for two mille

“Some.”

“Napoleon was a shrewd tactician, a ruthless general, and a master strategist—all of the history books agree on that, but as far as I’m concerned his greatest trait was foresight. He was always looking ten steps ahead. When he commissioned Henri Archambault to create that wine and the bottles that held it, Napoleon was thinking about the future, beyond battles and politics. He was thinking of his legacy. Unfortunately, history caught up to him.” Bondaruk shrugged and smiled. “I guess one man’s misfortune is another man’s good luck.”