Chapter thirty-eight

"What time does Elizabeth's flight come in?"

"I don't know, it was meant to land an hour ago, but she hasn't even left DC yet due to flight delays."

"You don't think Frost..."

"Not unless he can control the weather."

"There's a scary thought."

"Severe thunderstorms are keeping the planes grounded, nothing more."

"That flight only takes an hour so we'd better get started here in case her flight gets clearance soon. I assume you're going to the airport to pick her up."

"You assume correct."

"Then we should get started."

The sun was just starting to set outside and a deep gold light poured in through the patio windows gilding squares of light on the hardwood floor. Neal had packed everything up and hidden it the night before so now he had to gather it all back up. Along with copies of the glowing photos, and the inner page of the book, Neal had a stack of books on Russian art and history to help with deciphering the code, as well as scrap paper where he'd started sketching out possible line combinations and other thoughts. Opening the laptop he pulled up the images of the lines that he'd cleaned up the previous night overlaid on the Diamond Fund page.

"I've looked into the possibilities that the lines equate to a code, or a set of coordinates." Neal said. "At first I thought maybe something to do with azimuth."

"For any azimuth coordinates to work you'd need a starting point, as well as distances to keep on the bearing."

"Which is way too much information to be hidden here so I gave up on that." Neal said as he pointed to some scratched out circles with degrees scribbled on them. "I tried equating degrees to letters in the Russian alphabet, but just got gibberish. I've tried laying them over the front page of the Diamond Exchange and turning them, but the lines don't seem to match up in any meaningful way even if I expand them out to the edge of the page."

Peter watched the screen as Neal rotated the sets of lines in an attempt to organize them. He had centered the circle of each around the icon on the page that matched the decoration on the egg they had come from. The circles were not equally spread out across the page, but no matter which direction they were rotated in the lines spreading out from the circles appeared to be random.

"This all seems like way too much work to hide few pieces of jewelry." Peter noted.

"Yeah, I've had that same thought and I have a theory about it. I think that this leads to far more than just the four pieces, they just happened to get left in the catalog by mistake when the treasure was divided. Whoever worked on this original catalog would have had access to everything and decided to hide a portion of it. No one really knows how vast the Romanov treasure was, there could be a whole vault of artifacts and art important to the Romanovs and Russian history laying in wait. At her prime Russia was literally dripping in gold and jewels."

"Dripping in gold?" Peter repeated doubtfully.

"No one built opulent palaces like Russia. Catherine's Palace had over two hundred pounds of gold that decorated the stucco and statues, and that's just on the outside of the palace. Inside every inch was covered in art, frescoes, semiprecious stones, and gold. Including of course the famous Amber Room, 13,000 pounds of amber in over three hundred colors carved into a work of art unlike any other in the world."

"That's where the music box came from."

"That's right, it was in the original Amber Room." Neal nodded. "Actually the original Amber Room was constructed in Germany in the Berlin City Palace. The King's son presented the room to Peter the Great as a gift in the early 1700s."

"One hell of a gift, I hope he asked his father first."

"It wasn't just out of the kindness of his heart, it was to help secure a Russo-Prussian alliance. Ironically enough during World War II the Germans seized the room back, it was moved to Koenigsberg and...well no one really knows what happened to it. Some say it was moved again and remains hidden, others say it was destroyed when the city was fire bombed. The music box may be one of the only surviving pieces of the original room."

"You keep saying 'original room'."

"Russia decided back in 1979 to reconstruct the room. It took over twenty years, but the Amber Room lives again at Catherine's palace, largely due to a large cash donation from a Germany company. It really is a must see."

"I'll keep that in mind if I ever find myself in Russia." Peter replied as he picked up one of the photos of the glowing lines. "You know you can't just flatten out an image on a sphere without distorting it. It's why there are so many different types of map projection of the Earth, every map has a different way of compensating for the curved shape."

"I don't think it really matters in this case since they are just lines radiating off a circle, the distortion of the angles is very minimal."

"True." Peter studied the image before comparing it to the ones Neal had done in the computer. "In each egg there is line that is slightly longer than the others."

"I noticed that, not sure what it means."

"How about 'North'?"

"A 'this end up' line, that could work." Neal nodded. "See? You're good at this."

Peter rolled his eyes at Neal's pointless use of flattery. Neal rotated all of the circles over the image of the book so that the longest lines all pointed straight up. No discernible pattern revealed itself. Neal tried expanding out all the lines to see what they crossed, thinking that it might be the fact that they eliminated other images on the page that gave the clue. There were twenty two Russian icon images sprinkled across the highly ornate page, but the lines only crossed out a few of them.

"Maybe I'm too used to thinking outside the box." Neal muttered to himself. "Perhaps we need to think inside the circle..."

"What?"

"If I draw the lines inward instead..." Neal used the line tool on the program to draw the lines running through each circle. "They all meet exactly at one point inside each circle."

"So each of the four circles has a point, four points make a square."

"No...a cross." Neal smiled. "Orthodox Christianity is a big part of Russian history."

Neal connected the top most and bottom points with a line and then did the same with the points that were across from one another. The result was a lopsided cross the arms of which met over the image of an elderly white bearded bishop wearing a omophorion holding a Gospel Book with a halo surrounding his head.

"Who is that?" Peter asked.

"That's Saint Nicholas."

"Saint Nicholas?" Peter repeated doubtfully. "As in 'Santa'?"

"Yup. He was originally known as Nikolaos of Myra or Nikolaos the Wonderworker. He had a reputation of secret gift-giving and thus was the model of the modern Santa Claus, which comes from the Dutch 'Sinterklass' which is a corrupted transliteration of Saint Nicholas. He is a very popular saint of Eastern Orthodox icons."

"What does that have to do with hiding Romanov treasure?"

"...I have absolutely no idea." Neal admitted.

Neal sat back and dragged his hands through his hair as he stared at the screen. He glanced outside and noticed that night had fallen. Neal reached out and pulled a book on Russian icon art closer and started to leaf through it. Peter continued to study the newly formed cross on the Diamond Fund page. Each of the four segments of the cross passed through an ornate symbol, other similar symbols were scattered randomly about the complicated page.

"Since we are assuming this is all supposed to be leading to a location on a map I wonder if laying it over one will help." Peter suggested.

"The four circles are clustered oddly," Neal agreed "maybe they represent iconic places and the intersection is key rather than the picture of Nikolaos."

"But what is the starting point?"

"Well as much as I'd like to use New York landmarks not every lost treasure in the world is likely to be found here." Neal admitted. "If I had to guess for a 'North' I'd have to say the Alexander Palace which was the Romanov's favourite residence in Tsarskoye Selo near St. Petersburg. The top most symbol is out of the Alexander III Commemorative egg after all."

"Worth a shot."

Neal got online and downloaded a map of Tsarskoye Selo and slipped it under the lines. Centering the top circle around the Alexander Palace he adjusted the scale of the map until the three others lined up with landmarks. Mount Parnuss, Catherine Palace lined up perfectly to the South and West, the East circle didn't seem to line up as well, but the map Neal was using was modern and the code on the eggs was close to a hundred years old. More importantly setting up the three landmarks placed the center of the cross over something very specific that fit the icon.

"That's it, Peter." Neal beamed. "We found it."

"Maybe you did, I still don't see the significance."

"Look at how nicely this lines up." Neal reached out and touched the screen. "That is the Our Lady of the Sign Church, it was frequented by the Romanovs and inside the church is a large icon of St. Nicholas that was a favorite of Alexandra's."

"You think it's in the Church?"

"I do, most likely under it, it was common for early churches to have catacombs. Also see how the lines go through the middle of these four symbols, I bet if we were standing in the Church these four symbols would reveal themselves and point the way to an entrance. We coul..."

"No."

"Peter..."

"No." Peter replied more firmly. "We are not going to Russia. End of discussion."

"You are no fun."

"I realize and accept that."

Neal chuckled. He thought about trying to argue the point further, but he knew there was no point. Peter was not going to hop on a plane for Russia for any amount of lost treasure and art. Peter sat back in his chair and stared thoughtfully at the computer screen for a moment. Eventually he sighed.

"I suppose you should tell Frost. I'm sure he can arrange to check it out."

"He's probably already on it."

"Of course, he must be tapped into your computer."

"I'd be very surprised if he wasn't. Plus I'm fairly certain he's listening."

"Listening? We tore this place apart."

Neal didn't explain further. He just picked up a piece of chalk out of the small box of various writing utensils on the table. Taking a piece of paper he rubbed the chalk against it to create a small pile of powder. Neal got up and took the paper carefully over towards the patio doors. Curious Peter got up and followed him. Once outside Neal took a deep breath and blew the chalk dust off the page. The chalk formed a cloud that revealed a red infrared beam from a glass strike listening device that was probably set on one of the buildings across the street.

"Frost has some fun toys." Neal smiled.

"That you can't wait to play with."

"Admit it, you're just as excited as I am to find out what's next."

"I'm not admitting to anything, particularly not when Frost is listening."

"Fair enough." Neal looked out over the lights of the city. "I suppose there is nothing to do now but wait for Frost's next move."

"I'm sure we'll hear from him soon."

Peter jumped slightly when his cell phone suddenly buzzed at him. He pulled it out of his pocket and read the text. Sighing quietly Peter returned the text before putting the phone away. Neal gave Peter a concerned look.

"Elizabeth's flight has been delayed until tomorrow."

"Air travel, never on time always."

"Sounds about right." Peter nodded. "I'm going home to get some sleep, and I'd better not wake up in Russia."

"No promises."