The Solomon Curse

They moved to the second cave where the medical experiments had been conducted and paused at the entry. Down the hill, a diesel generator rumbled, providing power to the spotlights strung through the caverns. Sam saw Remi shiver as they drew near the opening and he took her hand.

“Do you need any more for the police reports?” Sam asked. They’d given their statements the prior day, explaining the obvious self-defense in the rebel killings.

“No. Nobody doubts what happened here. I just wanted to hear from your own lips how it all went down as we walk the site.”

“I’ll just as soon stay out here, if you don’t mind,” Lazlo said, fidgeting with his cell phone as he peered into the cave.

“No problem,” Fleming said. “How about you?” he asked Leonid.

The Russian shrugged. “All the same to me.”

The caves looked smaller in the wash of light from the work lights. The corpses of the gunmen were gone, replaced by chalk outlines and crime scene tape. They moved through the area slowly, noting the number of beds and the age of the equipment, before entering the cell where they’d been imprisoned only a day earlier, rust-colored smudges on one of the walls evidence of Sam’s head wound.

When they had finished with the nightmare scene an hour later, Lazlo was pacing excitedly outside, his face flushed as much from agitation as the sun. The Fargos could see that he was waiting for them to detach themselves from the police so he could talk to them in private and they wrapped up their time with Fleming before joining Lazlo on the trail leading to the logging road.

“I’m a fool. A blind fool,” he blurted as they made their way through the brush.

“What are you talking about?”

“The diary. Something’s been eating at me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. But now I have.”

Remi eyed him. “And?”

“The translation of the encoded message. I botched one of the words. As it turns out, a critical word.”

“Botched?” Sam said, eyebrows raised.

“Yes. Botched. The key to the whole riddle.”

“Out with it, Lazlo,” Remi said.

“It wasn’t ‘beyond’ at all. ‘Beyond the fall,’ remember?”

“Yes, Lazlo. Very well,” Sam said impatiently. “What was the word?”

Lazlo paused and slowed to a stop. “It was an easy mistake to make. I was going too fast. Too sure of myself.”

“Spit it out, Lazlo,” Sam urged.

“‘Behind.’”

“‘Behind’?” Remi repeated, puzzled.

“Behind the fall,” Lazlo said solemnly. “Behind it, not beyond it.”

CHAPTER 52

Sydney, Australia

Jeffrey Grimes leaned back in his executive chair, a distracted expression in place, as his subordinates gave their reports of ever-worsening financial results. The mood in the conference room was panicked as the assembled executives described a financial empire slowly ru

“With commodity prices slipping and our tankers sitting unused twenty-seven percent of the time, we’re literally bleeding money on our shipping company, as well as the commodity trading entity,” a stern man in his forties said from beside the overhead projector, where a graph that was mostly red glowed accusingly on the screen. “The gold bet was disastrous, and with another nine billion in notional value of related options contracts maturing this month, it looks like at least twenty-eight million dollars net loss.”

That got Grimes’s attention. “Get us out of those contracts early. The trend’s not our friend now. Someone’s selling large amounts of gold into the market every day when trading’s thi

“Could be the Chinese,” the vice president of the commodities trading firm observed. “Net accumulations through Hong Kong are way up. They could be selling paper options contracts to drive the price down for their bullion purchases. Nobody wants to pay top dollar, and they’re sitting on a trillion dollars of currency they want to unload. So they buy bullion, pay the loss on the paper contracts with dollars they don’t want anyway, and bolster their bullion holdings to wind up net even.”

Grimes waved the insight away. “Doesn’t matter. We’re the ant and they’re the elephant. The bet’s run the wrong way. Time to cut our losses and move on.” He eyed the chart. “As for the shipping, we’ll have to temporarily reduce our prices to drive demand.”

“We can’t. We’ll lose money on every shipment.”

“I’d rather lose ten million this quarter with full ships than twenty with them sitting unused.”

The discussion went on, but Grimes was only half listening. He’d been following the events in the Solomons for the last forty-eight hours and, as far as he could tell, something had gone badly wrong. The predicted massive social unrest and resultant regime change had fizzled, and there were troubling local reports that the government had declared the unrest the direct result of a plot to advance a nationalization agenda, which sounded precisely like his mystery partner’s scheme unraveling before his eyes.

The implications for his personal fortune were dire. This had been a wi

The situation in the Solomons was a disaster. And it was unfolding in real time. Something had obviously gone badly wrong and he was fully exposed, his personal fortune at risk.

“Gentlemen, we need to find buyers for the shipping company,” Grimes said. “I want to divest ourselves of that albatross as soon as possible. It was a good bet when oil was high, but with all the volatility lately, it’s dead money and we need to—”

He was interrupted by three stern men in suits throwing the conference room door open.

Grimes’s heart rate increased rapidly as the lead man looked around the room and then settled his stare on him.

This can’t be happening . . .

“Jeffrey Grimes?”

“Who’s asking? And how dare you interrupt a corporate meeting?” Grimes demanded.

“Chief Inspector Collins with the ACC—Australian Crime Commission. You’re under arrest.”

“Arrest?” Grimes demanded. “What are the charges?”

“We’ll get to that soon enough, but we’re starting with money laundering, conspiracy to commit murder, murder, kidnapping, and numerous violations of international law.”

“That’s absurd!”

Collins glanced around the room. “Meeting’s over, gents. Your boss is going away for a long time. Say good-bye, because you won’t be seeing him again.”

“I want my lawyer,” Grimes said.

“Perfect. Now, stand up so I can cuff you.”

“Surely that won’t be necessary,” Grimes objected.

“Mr. Grimes, stand up or I’ll drag you out of here by your hair. Fair warning.” The expression on Collins’s face left little to the imagination.