The Last Second (A Brit in the FBI #6)(32)
A quick search for The Griffon turned up an entirely new aspect of Jean-Pierre Broussard. This was the playboy she knew about from People. There were endless photos from various ports of call, such as the Venice Film Festival, where The Griffon had docked for two weeks while the world’s finest actors and filmmakers came aboard and partied into the wee hours. But there was an interesting story about how the yacht had recently been retrofitted with a massive crane for yet another treasure-hunting expedition Broussard didn’t talk about.
She read more, absorbing the two sides to the man’s personality—treasure hunter, space explorer. After two hours, she emerged with a better understanding of the man and his missions, but she knew absolutely nothing about his private life. If he’d ever had a wife, children, for example. He was considered a playboy, changing out new lovers on a regular basis.
Mike stretched, fetched herself a cup of coffee from the galley, and went to Nicholas’s chair. He and Poppy had long since finished their briefing and now he had a series of spreadsheets open with coding gibberish on them.
“Do you think Jean-Pierre Broussard really found the Holy Grail? Do you think it’s a cup? Or something else? I remember reading somewhere many believed it to be a stone. You know, like the Sorcerer’s stone in Harry Potter.”
Nicholas didn’t stop typing. “Parzival.”
“Gesundheit.”
He laughed, looked up at her. “Parzival, the Grail knight. He features prominently in the Arthurian Grail legends. The Grail as a stone predates the modern Christian version of the Grail as the cup from Christ’s crucifixion. They called it the Stone from Heaven. The legends are swashbuckling, romantic tales of adventure and true selfless heroism. My dad read me the stories at bedtime.”
She shook her head. “How do you remember this stuff? You were just a kid.”
He tapped his earbuds. “I downloaded a series of workshops led by the mythologist Joseph Campbell explaining Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval poem. I’ve been listening for the past hour. It’s actually quite saucy in parts.”
“Please read me the saucy bits later. Now, what else do I need to know?”
“The Grail stone is claimed to have healing powers, rewarding fidelity and true love. And there’s also the promise of immortality.”
“Immortality. Now, that would be an excellent reason to go hunting for it.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
T-MINUS 52 HOURS
They were two hours out of Kuala Lumpur when Adam called back. Nicholas was running data sets on The Griffon’s last known location, extrapolating a possible search area. He tossed his phone to Mike to answer.
She got Poppy’s attention, then put it on speaker, said to Adam, “Tell us you found something.”
“I found something. I have a general set of coordinates. Looking for the fitness tracker was a great idea, Mike. Sending them to Nicholas’s phone right now.” A text came in with the coordinates. She read them off to Nicholas, who plugged them into his grid. A large red dot showed up. It was on the farthest edge of the area he’d marked.
Nicholas said, “Bloody good job, Adam. We have him. Is this coordinate live?”
“Before you get too excited, no, not exactly. This is the last known of Grant’s Ziost tracker. It was uploaded last night. As of five minutes ago, the tracker was still in this position, but the regularly scheduled upload didn’t happen. Ziost has two ways to do GPS tracking—uploading GPS data manually when the user tells it to track a run or a walk, or sensing when the user has started a workout and tracking it automatically. Luckily, it also updates itself in the system every eight hours, so there are new coordinates three times a day. Since I know what the signal is now, I can keep trying to track it myself instead of waiting for their system to refresh and upload again. Assuming I can locate it on my own GPS system. When I do, I’ll have to track it by hand and will send you updates if it changes.”
Mike said, “Adam, is there any way to tell if this tracker is above the water or below?”
“No, but my vote is above. The Ziost is water resistant to one hundred feet, not meant to be a dive companion or anything, more like you can shower with it or get it wet, but it isn’t designed to be immersed for extended periods. But this signal was pretty strong. I’d think if it was underwater, it wouldn’t have the same strength. I could be wrong, though.”
“Good to know. Thanks, Adam. Keep on the lookout.”
“I am. Also, on your nuke, I’m forwarding all the info I was able to find on the Idaho Research Facility. You’ll find this interesting, for sure. There’s a dead scientist from around the same time the plutonium went missing—2015. His name was Edward Linton. Murder-suicide; he evidently shot his wife, Janie, then himself. The disappeared plutonium was in his research section, and he was the one in charge. Suspicious timing, don’t you think?”
Mike shook her head. “I can’t believe this is only coming out now. When he and his wife died, why didn’t the facility do a thorough check of all the materiel? Make sure it was all there?”
“No clue, but it would have been the smart thing to do, for sure. I’m already running a—ahem—program to take a look at their internals and see what’s what.”
Nicholas said, “Ah, excellent initiative. Thank you, Adam. We’ll be on the ground in a couple of hours. Will loop you in as soon as we have more.”