“Hands up and walk out slowly!” ordered the team leader.

  Connor warily walked out with Kim right behind him.

  “Over to the van.”

  Connor glanced over at a battered Volkswagen van with its side door wide open.

  “Nice trick with the elevator,” said Connor, playing for time.

  “It was quite easy to do. Now shut up and get in the van.”

  Connor and Kim climbed into the back of the vehicle and sat down. “Now what?” asked Connor.

  “This,” said the man, holding a pair of dark hoods.

  “No way!” objected Connor. “This wasn’t part of the deal.”

  The man shrugged. “Suit yourself. No mask, no Katarina. Those are the rules.”

  “Let’s do as he says,” urged Kim. “I mean, after all, we’ve come this far. So, why turn back now?”

  “How do you know we can trust them?”

  “If we had wanted you dead, your bodies would be on the floor of the elevator, Mister North,” said the leader.

  Connor hesitated. The thought of wearing a bag over his head like a hostage went against all of his training and instincts.

  “Please,” said Kim, reaching for one of the hoods.

  Connor let out his breath through his teeth and reluctantly took one. He was far from claustrophobic but didn’t enjoy not being able to see. He heard the vehicle start and then begin to move. Connor pressed his back against the side of the van and wondered where their contacts were taking them. He felt Kim move beside him and was surprised when she took his right hand in hers. Maybe she wasn’t as tough as she pretended to be. He squeezed her hand and prayed that they hadn’t just made the worst decision of their lives.

  Connor had no way to be sure, but it seemed they had been driving for an hour when the van stopped, and the driver switched off the engine. The side door slid open, and fresh air wafted inside the vehicle.

  “Please let me help you out,” said a woman, offering a hand to help Kim and Connor get out of the van and onto their feet. “Ms. Swiftwater, please hold my hand, and I will guide you. Mister North, place your hand on your partner’s shoulder, and you won’t get lost.”

  Connor gently reached out, touched Kim’s shoulder, and rested his hand.

  “Let’s go,” ordered the woman.

  As infuriating as it was, Connor kept his mouth shut and trailed behind Kim. He heard a meal door swinging open and suspected they were going underground.

  A split second later, their guide said, “We’re approaching a staircase. We will go slowly; please be careful.”

  It didn’t take long for them to reach the landing. They walked for about a minute more before stopping. There was the sound of another heavy door opening.

  “Please step inside,” said the woman.

  They took a few more paces and stopped. Behind them, the door swung closed with a metallic clang. The guards yanked off their hoods and tossed them to one side.

  Connor blinked to adjust his eyes to the bright surroundings. They were inside a vast, concrete room packed with dozens of computers and television screens. Four black-clad young people sat behind computers; the rest seemed to be running automatically.

  A chair swung around, and a slim woman in her late thirties with short, curly, blonde hair, silver-rimmed glasses, and a black-leather outfit smiled at Kim and Connor. “Good morning, Ms. Swiftwater and Mister North. Please let me introduce myself. My name is Katarina Shulman, but you can call me Kat. What do you think of my fortress of solitude?”

  “It’s something else, that’s for sure,” said Kim.

  Connor raised an eyebrow at their host’s obvious theatrics.

  Kat got to her feet and unhurriedly walked toward her guests. “Professor Keeley, through Patrick Moran, told me you’re seeking information. Is this correct?”

  “Yes,” said Connor, with an abrupt nod.

  “And what kind of information might that be?”

  “Our situation is quite complicated,” explained Kim.

  “That’s all right. I like complicated.”

  “Okay, here goes. We’re seeking information on four copper scrolls allegedly found under the Temple Mount during the First Crusade. We believe they may have been moved out of the Holy Land for safekeeping sometime after the founding of the Templar Knights but have never been seen again.”

  Instead of offering her hands in greeting, Kat steepled them. “That’s almost word for word what Professor Keeley said you would say. So, I must ask you this: why do you seek this information? Is it for glory, riches, or some other pursuit?”

  Kim held her head up high. “For the truth. We’re searching for the truth.”

  “The truth. How noble of you. Now, Ms. Swiftwater, what would you and your partner do if the scrolls were real?”

  Kim looked over at Connor and then back at Kat. “I don’t know. I haven’t really thought that far ahead yet.”

  Kat laughed. “The precious few people I have allowed in here have all tried to BS their way past me, and all of them left without getting any information whatsoever. But you, you’re different, Ms. Swiftwater. I admire your honesty.”

  “Kim, please call me Kim.”

  “As for you, Mister North, I would appreciate it if you gave one of my colleagues the weapon you have hidden under the sleeve of your right arm. I dislike violence.”

  Connor slowly withdrew a small Taser. “Sorry, you never can be too cautious.”

  “I agree.”

  Connor handed the Taser to the closest black-clad person and faced this host. “What sharp eyes you have, Kat.”

  “Not at all. I watched you on our CCTVs, noticed you fidgeting, and deduced you had a concealed weapon.”

  “Good for you, Sherlock,” Connor muttered.

  “Oh, by the way, please say hello to Patrick Moran.”

  The young man holding Connor’s Taser waved. “Guten tag,” said the man with a German accent.

  Connor narrowed his gaze. “You’re not Irish, are you?”

  The man laughed. “Not one bit. Professor Keeley knew that when we met. But I needed an airtight story to explain why I was at his house, so we concocted Patrick Moran, a student from the University of Galway. It worked so well that I became Karl Gustav in Sweden and Keanu Williams in California.”

  “So, Keeley’s one of you?” Kim asked Kat.

  “Not really,” said Kat. “He’s more like an ally.”

  “It seems there’s more to the eye about Professor Keeley than I had imagined,” said Connor. “Then again. I’ve yet to meet someone who’s told me the whole truth since I left Africa.”

  Kat smiled. “Welcome to my world, Mister North.”

  “Secrets and lies,” said Connor, glancing back at the dozens of screens and shaking his head. “I should have anticipated a person like you would surround himself with the latest surveillance technology.”

  Kat raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean when you say a person like me?”

  Connor was about to call Kat paranoid when Kim slid in front of him. “Connor didn’t mean anything. It was just a slip of the tongue. My friend’s tired from all the traveling we’ve been doing.”

  Kat shrugged. “Whatever. You, I like. Him not so much.”

  Kim shot Connor a disapproving look and turned to face their host. “Kat, can you help us?”

  Kat tapped her right foot on the floor for a few seconds and then snapped her fingers. “Heike, be a dear and show our guests what you have found about the Templars and the four copper scrolls.”

  A young woman sitting behind a computer screen with a dozen earrings in each ear gave Kat a thumbs-up and started typing on her keyboard.

  “Kat, while we wait for an answer, would you mind if I asked you a personal question?” Kim asked.

  “That depends on the question.”

  “What are you doing down here, and why all the secrecy?”

  Kat grinned. “Aside from researching esoteric material for a fee, my fellow cyberwarriors and I try to level an increasingly unlevel playing field. You may think I’m mentally unbalanced, maybe even a little psychotic, but the world isn’t truly run by governments these days. Anonymous actors and corporations using the Dark Web have made it hard for people who genuinely care for their people to succeed anymore. Take the recent invasion of Georgia, for example. The people there did nothing to provoke an attack, but the recent discovery of billions of dollars of natural gas stirred their neighbor into action. So, my friends and I ensured the attacking force’s computers and communications gear failed on the second day of the war and were spectacularly defeated. This is what we do, Kim.”

  Kim shook her head. “That’s amazing.”

  “And that is why secrecy must be maintained at all times. If word ever got out where we were, a kill team would descend upon this site and murder every last one of us.”

  “Kat, you mentioned a fee. I don’t remember Professor Keeley saying we’d have to pay for information.”

  “An operation like ours needs money, a lot of money, to survive. A question like yours usually costs upwards of one hundred thousand Euros, but because Keeley practically begged me to help you, I’ll waive the fees. This time.”

  “You’re far too kind,” Connor said dryly. “Forgive me, Kat, but your team’s goth persona is slightly clichéd. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Kat shrugged. “The university students I take into my confidence decide how we look. Like most things, fads and clothing styles change. Over the years, we’ve worn punk, cyberpunk, cosplay, you name it. I don’t care. It keeps my people happy. And a happy workforce is a productive workforce.”

  “Kat, I’ve retrieved the information they’re looking for,” announced Heike.

  “On the main screen, please. Heike has been working diligently on this little mystery of yours for the past two days, so I’ll let her show you what she’s uncovered.”

  A crudely drawn map showing what looked like the coastline of Baffin Island, Newfoundland, and the eastern coast of the United States from Maine to the bottom tip of Florida appeared.

  “My friends, this is the only known reproduction of the so-called Green map, drawn by Captain William Moore on his deathbed,” explained Heike. “According to Captain Moore, an English sea captain hired to discover the fabled northwest passage in 1510, his expedition ventured too far north. It became trapped in the ice, and they were forced to spend the winter huddled inside their ship. One day, a hunting party brought back a young Inuit boy and his elderly grandmother. The young boy explained that they were all that was left of their family, and what Moore found truly amazing was that they could speak understandable French. When he questioned them, he said his name was Phillip Grenier, and his ancestors had fled France two centuries earlier to avoid persecution, only to be shipwrecked. Phillip claimed that their ship, crushed by the ice, was damaged beyond repair, so the survivors tried to make the best of things. They found an abandoned settlement and used the wood from their boat to build a place to live. Unfortunately, the first winter nearly wiped out the original crew. Nearly starving to death, they met some local Inuit who saved their lives. Over time, they married into the local Inuit community, eventually becoming one.”

  “The thirteen hundreds,” mused Kim. “That’s before Columbus, but after the Vikings. Right?”

  “Bingo,” said Kat.

  Heike continued. “At first, Moore was skeptical and surmised that a French ship had beaten them to the New World and taught a pair of locals to speak French. However, when the boy produced a cloth map which he claimed had been in his family for generations, along with several ancient gold coins, the likes of which Moore had never seen before, he became very interested. According to the boy’s family’s oral history, he claimed that a vast fortune in gold was buried on a nearby island, but he wasn’t sure which one it was.”

  “What happened to the boy and his grandmother?” Kim asked.

  “The old woman died a week later in her sleep. When spring came, and the ice broke up, Moore scoured the area for this mysterious island but found nothing. So, he eventually gave up and sailed for home. Unfortunately, the boy died from a fever on the return trip to England and was buried at sea. When his ship arrived in Plymouth, Moore’s story about meeting French-speaking Inuit and hidden treasure was ridiculed. Because he had failed to find the Northwest Passage, Moore’s creditors thought him a poor sailor and never gave him command of another ship. He died a penniless drunk in London five years later.”

  “Did Moore’s journal say what happened to the map?” asked Connor.

  “Unfortunately, no,” replied Heike. “But I may have found evidence to corroborate the young boy’s story.”

  “Please, go on,” said Kim, genuinely interested.

  “I found a small entry in a diary written by a French knight in 1309. In it, Robert Junot, a former Templar Knight, describes the night the King of France dispatched him and dozens more like him to rid the country of the Templars. He, however, arrived too late to stop an old friend, Marc Grenier, and his family from fleeing by boat. Junot had known Grenier for decades, and with a heavy heart, he had pledged allegiance to the king and turned his sword on his old order. He suspected that Grenier had been hiding a small fortune in gold in his old home, and part of the treasure allegedly included four copper scrolls taken from the Holy Land.”

  “Wait a second,” said Kim. “Grenier and Green, what are the odds they’re the same last name?”

  “Pretty good,” responded Connor. “Knowing the English, Moore’s sailors probably anglicized the boy’s name, and Grenier became Green.”

  “Just as it was getting good, we seemed to have hit a brick wall,” said Kim. “I’d love to know what happened to that map.”

  “I may have a couple of leads I can look into for you if you have a few minutes to wait?” announced Heike.

  “We’re not going anywhere,” replied Kim. “This is amazing. I’m getting goosebumps just thinking about the copper scrolls buried somewhere waiting to be found.”

  “Don’t get ahead of yourself, my dear,” cautioned Kat. “The coastline of North America is enormous, and just because we have found two entries in a pair of centuries-old books that seem to support one another doesn’t mean they are true. For example, suppose Heike was to spend a few days more looking for references on four copper scrolls. In that case, there’s a good chance we’d find people claiming they were buried somewhere in Brazil, France, Italy, or even hidden away in a safe in the Titanic at the bottom of the ocean.”

  “But if we could find the map, it would go a long way to verifying Moore’s and Junot’s stories.”

  “That’s a big if.”

  “If you can stop a war, you should be able to find a little old map,” murmured Connor.

  “An opponent’s computer systems are easy to hack, Mister North,” Kat shot back. “Finding a map that hasn’t been seen in over five centuries is something else altogether.”

  “Kat, I think I may have something,” said Heike.

  “What is it?”

  “Just before Moore’s death, a man called James Reynolds heard about the missing treasure and claimed to have bought the map from Moore. That spring, he hired a ship and went in search of the fabled treasure. Unfortunately, like Moore, he became trapped in the ice for a long and miserably cold winter. The next spring, his crew had had enough and mutinied. They set Reynolds and four loyal officers adrift with enough provisions to last them a month. They, regrettably, were never seen or heard from again. The mutineers then sailed South to the Caribbean to try their hand as pirates.”

  “And then what happened?” asked Kim, excited to hear more.

  “Apparently, they weren’t very good at being outlaws because their ship, Electra, was captured by a passing Spanish warship. The crew was taken to Havana, where they all died in prison from disease. The Spanish man-o’-war’s captain, Luis Carrero Blanco, took whatever he wanted from the Electra and sailed home to Spain. Amazingly, Blanco’s ship’s manifest included a threadbare cloth map of the New World. Since Spain already knew about the Americas, the map was considered a novelty, so it was locked away in Blanco’s family home in Coruna. And that’s the last reference I’ve found regarding the map.”

  “Thank you, Heike,” said Kat. “As always, you’ve surpassed my expectations.”

  “Heike, are there any living descendants of Captain Blanco?” asked Kim.

  Heike’s fingers danced across the keyboard. A minute later, the image of an older woman flashed up on the screen. “This is a picture of Sofia Meyer, the only living relative of Captain Blanco. She is eighty-one years old, unmarried, and lives in Neuchatel, Switzerland.”

  Kim looked at Connor and smiled. “Fancy a trip to the Alps?”

  “I wouldn’t pack your hiking boots if I were you, at least not yet,” said Heike.

  “Why, what’s wrong?” asked Connor.

  “I’m sorry, but I’ve found a more up-to-date newspaper article that says she died in her sleep five days ago.”

  “Damn,” uttered Kim, dropping her shoulders.

  “Her estate, does it say what happened to her belongings?” asked Connor.

  Heike scanned several other papers and shook her head. “Yes. Since she has no living heirs, her estate will be auctioned off at the Gerhardt Auction House in Neuchatel three days from now.”

  “That gives us plenty of time to get there,” said Kim.

  “Whoa, let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” said Connor. “We have no idea if the map still exists or if Ms. Meyer still owned it at the time of her passing.”

  “I know it’s slim, but it’s our only lead, and I say it’s worth following.”

  Connor shook his head. “I don’t know.”

  Kim hit Connor on the arm. “Come on. Where’s your spirit of adventure? There’s no turning back, now.”

  “A second ago, you looked like someone had stolen your favorite stuffed animal. And now you’re ready to take on the whole world?”