The Bone Hunters by Robert J. Mrazek Read Free Book Online Page A

expanded the opening to a hole about three feet in diameter using an iron bar. Beyond the opening, there was only blackness.
    â€œI’m going in,” said Lexy, turning on a high-intensity flashlight and positioning herself to climb through.
    Crawling inside, she tipped the flashlight upward to confirm there was enough space for her to stand up and then played the beam in a midlevel arc. The cache looked to be the size of a railroad car. It resembled her grandmother’s basement, cluttered, chaotic, and smelling of mold and mildew.
    One reason for it was only a few feet away. What at first appeared to be a small herd of woolly animals lying dead on the floor turned out to be a pile of fur coats, seemingly thrown in at the last minute before the cache was sealed.
    Beyond the furs were stacks of unframed canvases piled on crates of labeled medical supplies. She turned over one of the canvases and bathed it in light. It was an oil painting, a mother and child standing in a sun-splashed garden. She gently scraped away the light patina of dust in the bottom corner, revealing the painter’s signature. A. Renoir.
    She slowly worked her way through a six-foot-high corridor of hastily piled wooden crates that were labeled DEUTSCHE BANK . One of them had split open, revealing what looked like a bar of gold.
    There was no way for her to know yet if the Norse documents stolen from the Trondheim Museum were part of the treasure lode that had been hastily secreted in the stone cavern, but she felt confident they were.
    She was unable to escape a feeling of failure, a letdown she couldn’t explain at first. It was a feeling that she had uncovered a place of plunder, that she had exposed something morally corrupt, a reminder of the evil that wasNazism, and perhaps something that should have remained buried.
    Crawling back through the hole, she regained her place on the freight bed.
    â€œAs soon as we are back on top, please call Dieter in the German Department of Interior,” she said. “It’s a looter’s paradise in there.”
    Exhausted, she made her way back to the Eva Braun Room. Closing the door, she began to remove her soiled clothes, desperate for a long, hot bath and a full glass of Calvados.
    â€œI vership you, Alexandra,” came Jurgen’s voice from the shadows near the closet.
    He came up behind her, making a low noise like a barking seal. His hands began groping her breasts as he shoved her forward, using his strength to force her over the edge of Eva Braun’s dressing table.
    â€œGet off me,” she demanded.
    His face craned around to kiss her, his eyes looking crazed.
    She raised her right leg and stomped down on his instep with her boot heel. He let out a yelp of pain and released his grip.
    â€œDu Schlampe,”
he hissed in German.
    â€œYes, she’s a bitch,” came a deep, resonant voice behind them.
“And du bist gefeuert.”
    Lexy turned to see the massive figure filling the doorway. He was smiling at her in a paternal way.
    â€œBarnaby,” she said.

FOUR
    11 May
    Qiao Jia Bao Village
    Sichuan Basin, China
    Yu Wei watched from the kitchen window of her cottage as a lone mallard circled twice over the lake and slowly descended to the shallow, fetid water at the edge of the bank. As soon as it landed, the bird tried to clean itself from the polluted lake water before attempting to climb up to the grassy shoreline. That was when she saw it could not stand up on both legs.
    Seeing the bird was in distress, she slowly approached it, noticing immediately that one of its legs was either broken or badly sprained. Kneeling next to it, she began to sing the first verse to the Buddhist chant her mother had taught her as a little girl. Somehow it seemed to ease the bird’s fear and agitation. When it was completely relaxed, she picked it up and carried it back to her cottage.
    After creating a splint by shaving two small wooden stems from a block of