Free Spartan Gold by Clive Cussler Page B

whispered.
    Back on deck, Sam held the line steady to make Remi’s leap back to the bank easier. As he braced his feet, his toe bumped the burlap sack. From inside came the muted tinkle of glass.
    Curious now, they both knelt down on the deck. Remi opened the sack and slid out the box, which was devoid of markings. Gingerly she pried open the brass latch and swung open the lid, revealing a sheaf of what looked like aged oilskin. Remi peeled back a flap.
    For a long ten seconds neither of them spoke, gaping at the object catching the sunlight. Remi murmured, “It can’t be. Can it?”
    It was a bottle, a green glass wine bottle.
    Sam didn’t reply, instead using his right index finger to lift the end a few inches out of the box, revealing the punt.
    “Good Lord . . . ” Remi murmured.
    The symbol etched into the glass was all too familiar:

CHAPTER 10

LA JOLLA, CALIFORNIA
    T hat poor man,” Remi said. “To die like that . . . I can’t imagine.”
    “I don’t want to imagine,” Sam replied.
    They were stretched out on chaise lounges in the solarium surrounded by potted palms and flowing ferns, the midday sun highlighting every tone of the Tuscan flagstone tiles. It was one of their favorite rooms in the house, not an easy choice by any measure.
    Sitting atop the cliffs overlooking Goldfish Point and the indigo waters of the Pacific, the Fargos’ home and base of operations was a four-story, twelve-thousand-square-foot Spanish-style house with vaulted maple-beamed ceilings and enough windows and skylights to keep their maintenance man busy for eight hours every month.
    The upper floor held Sam and Remi’s master suite and below this, one flight down, were four guest suites, a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen/great room that jutted over the cliff. On the second floor a gymnasium containing both aerobic and circuit-training exercise equipment, a steam room, a HydroWorx endless-lap pool, and a thousand feet of hardwood floor space for Remi to practice her fencing and Sam his judo.
    The ground floor sported two thousand square feet of office space for Sam and Remi and an adjoining workspace for Selma, complete with three Mac Pro workstations coupled with thirty-inch cinema displays and a pair of wall-mounted thirty-two-inch LCD televisions. Mounted on the east wall was Selma’s pride and joy, a fourteen-foot, five-hundred-gallon saltwater aquarium.
    Sam told Remi, “We can always hope he went quickly and peacefully.”
    The man in question, the poor soul they’d found sprawled at the bottom of the Molch’s ladder, now had, thanks to the journals they’d found aboard, a name: Manfred Boehm. Korvettenkapitän (Commander) Manfred Boehm. One of the journals had turned out to be the Molch’s log; the other, Boehm’s private diary dating back to the early days of World War II.
    Armed with rough translations courtesy of some software, Sam and Remi had dived headfirst into what quickly began to feel like the last will and testament of both Boehm and his submarine, which they soon learned had a given name: the UM-34 —Underwater Boat, Molch type, thirty-fourth constructed.
    Sam had been concentrating on the UM-34 ’s log, trying to piece together where it had come from and how it had ended up trapped in an inlet on the Pocomoke River, while Remi worked through Boehm’s diary, learning about the man beyond the uniform and rank.
    After packing up the skiff and leaving the Molch behind, they’d thought it wise to avoid Snow Hill and Maxine’s Bait ‘n’ Boat, assuming Scarface and his friends would be lurking about awaiting their return. Instead, they’d motored ten miles downriver and put ashore just south of Willow Grove, where Highway 113 and the Pocomoke ran closest to one another. From there they’d first called for a Pocomoke City taxi, then Maxine’s. Sam kept his explanation vague and short, offering a generous tip for troubling them to come down and collect the skiff. His final call went to the