Everyone climbed into the truck again and the Carabinieri driver started the engine. Two Carabinieri walked ahead of the truck and pushed open the large sliding barn doors. As soon as they did, they found themselves with guns held to their heads.
Sam, Remi, and Boiardi felt the truck stop abruptly. Boiardi opened the back door and they jumped out to see six men rush into the barn. They wore ordinary street clothes—sport coats or windbreakers, jeans or khaki pants—but they were carrying SC70/90 assault weapons, short-barreled submachine guns with folding stocks.
Boiardi stepped in front of Sam and whispered, “Take my gun.”
Sam reached for the small clip-on belt holster at Boiardi’s back and took the Beretta pistol and holster and pocketed them. As soon as Boiardi felt his gun slip away, he shouted in Italian—Sam couldn’t understand all the words but he got the gist—“What are you doing here? We are national police on a mission. Put those guns down instantly.”
The response from one of the men at the door was to fire a short burst from his weapon into the roof. When the two Carabinieri who’d had guns to their heads involuntarily jumped at the sudden noise, the interlopers laughed. They roughly pushed the two men back into the barn and then spread farther apart so that each of them had a better angle of fire at either the group of Carabinieri and Remi or at Sam, Boiardi, Tibor, and his cousins.
The man who had fired into the roof was a big, barrel-chested middle-aged man with a thick black beard. He charged forward, flung open the door of the truck’s cargo bay, climbed in, and tore open a couple of boxes. He dragged one to the back of the truck and tilted it so the others could see the contents. He called out, “È d’oro. È tutto oro antico!”
Sam had no trouble understanding those words. The others exchanged quick glances and seemed to catch the man’s joy like a virus. The leader jumped from the truck and stepped close to Boiardi, who said something quick and angry to him.
The man grinned. “Ci avete seguito.” He moved off toward the place where the two Carabinieri stood and, while his friends aimed their weapons at the police officers, he patted them down. He found one officer had an extra pistol, took it, and brought his rifle across the man’s face.
“Sorry,” Sam said. “Remi and I must have been too visible.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Boiardi whispered back. “He says they didn’t follow you. They followed us. They knew that the only cases our office handles involve finds of antiquities, so they waited until we left Naples and followed us.”
The robbers were busy using the policemen’s handcuffs on them and tying them to the vertical beams of the barn. Then two of them and their leader approached Boiardi and the leader frisked him.
The leader took his eyes off Sam while he was searching Boiardi and Sam noticed. He drove his left fist into the leader’s face like a piston as his right drew Boiardi’s weapon. He grasped the leader’s coat and jerked him upward to act as a shield and held the pistol to his head. Boiardi snatched away the leader’s SC70/90 automatic rifle and held it on the two men who had come over with the leader.
The two men set their rifles on the floor, stepped back, and raised their hands in the air. The two Carabinieri who had not been handcuffed yet knelt to pick up their own sidearms from the barn floor and then picked up the two automatic weapons.
One of the armed thieves saw the meaning of what was happening and decided to stop it. He yelled, “No!” and opened fire. His rifle spat bullets, and his leader collapsed to the floor in front of Sam.
Sacrificing his leader served its purpose. The other thieves, seeing their leader dead, no longer had a reason to give up. They turned and tried to take cover, carrying their weapons. Boiardi’s two police officers fired on them, and one was hit in the leg and sprawled on the floor. No others offered resistance.
The man who had shot the leader was not about to capitulate. He fired a burst in the general direction of Sam and Boiardi, who had taken cover behind the boat trailer. Sam climbed over the railing into the boat and crawled to the bow.
As the man was stalking along the wall looking for an advantage, Sam swung his arm over the gunwale and fired. His bullet hit the man’s upper torso at the collarbone. The man spun around to return fire, but his right arm went limp and he dropped his rifle. Two Carabinieri were on him, handcuffing him and forcing him to sit at the side of the barn with his wounded colleague and the man he had shot. The others quickly lost their weapons and joined him.
Boiardi telephoned the local police to obtain help, an ambulance and police cars to transport the prisoners. While they waited, he asked the prisoners questions. The answers were defiant and resentful. He was about to give up when Remi said, “Can you find out if they were sent by a man named Bako?”
He did, then translated. “Who is Bacco? Is he from Sicily? There are lots of Sicilians in the archaeology business lately.”
“I guess that means no,” Remi said. “Gold just attracts its own trouble.”
In a few minutes they heard sirens, and the police cars began lining up in the barnyard. The ambulance arrived and the team of paramedics took the two wounded men, and a couple of police officers to guard them, and left. The three healthy thieves were transported. And finally a coroner’s van came for the lifeless leader.
When they were back at the harbor and Boiardi was about to drive off to Rome, he stepped to Sam and Remi. “This is a disturbing development. The thieves have finally realized that the easiest way to find ancient treasures is to follow the national police officers who are supposed to verify and register the finds. We could be entering a period when no national antiquities officer will be safe. Anybody who doesn’t retire is a fool.”
“So you’re retiring?” asked Remi.
“Me? No. Not right away. Not after your husband kept me alive. Maybe we’ll talk about all this another day, but right now there’s so much to do. Arrivederci, Fargos. Travel safe.”
VERONA AIRPORT, ITALY
SELMA WONDRASH’S VOICE CAME OVER THE SPEAKER ON Remi’s telephone. “The village of Châlons-en-Champagne has just two hundred twenty-seven people, and the spot Albrecht and I believe is the battlefield is five miles north near the hamlet of Cuperly on D994, La route de Reims.”
“What are we looking for?” asked Sam.
Albrecht took over the phone. “Near the center of the battlefield was a rock shelf, a high outcropping, that rose from the ground at an angle. The Roman army, which also included the Visigoths, the Alans, and the Celts, rushed in, in a forced march, to control the high ground before the Huns arrived. When the Huns swept in on horseback from the east, they were greeted by arrows raining down on them from the rocks. The Huns made a tentative attempt to dislodge the defenders, then fell back to the east on lower, level ground. They fortified their position by circling their wagons around the encampment.”
“How far east from the shelf?” asked Remi.
“They would have retreated beyond arrow range,” said Albrecht.
“How far was arrow range?”
“Well, I suppose you could stand on the top of the rocks and shoot an arrow off at a forty-five-degree angle and see.”
“I just might do that.”
“Or you could estimate. I’d say two hundred fifty yards would probably do it.”
“We’ll take the guess,” Sam said. “Selma, could you send us another magnetometer and a metal detector at the hotel in France?”
“It’s done. They should be there tonight. You’re staying at L’Assiette Champenoise, an old estate with four acres of grounds and modern conveniences in the center of town.”