Page 119 of Once a Hero

Everyone froze.

Beatrice nodded to her dad. Benjamin helped the white-haired man to stand up. His hands shook as he pulled the door handle.

As soon as the door opened, a whoosh of dust came out, and the fans blew it all around the room. Everyone coughed and covered their noses and eyes.

Jake heard a soft trickle of what sounded like water.

The floor in the room was wet.

There, among statues, sculptures, gargoyles, and work tools from the nineteenth century, were crates. Five, six, seven or more of them.

In shackles and handcuffs, Molyneux and her handler shuffled to see, but she didn’t get first dibs. Representatives from the Russian Consulate, holding their phones while live-streaming the event to the Catherine Palace curators in Russia, were the first to enter the space.

Jake knew there was a reward for finding the Amber Room, and it seemed that this discovery would go a long way toward helping Chisolm stay out of long-term prison. A thief he might be, but he was no murderer like Molyneux.

“Open a crate already,” Chisolm said, waiting at the door.

“This could have been ours,” Molyneux said to him.

“It belongs to the Russian people,” Chisolm replied.

“And that might be why Philomena never told you about it.”

Chisolm didn’t say a word to her.

Jake found himself standing next to Beatrice. She had tears in her eyes. Jake leaned toward her and whispered in her ear. “It’s going to be okay.”

Beatrice reached for his hand. “My birth mother died for this.”

“Who?” Jake asked. “I thought you didn’t know who your birth mother was.”

“Dad told me.”

Slowly, the realization hit Jake. “Philomena?”

Molyneux had killed Philomena. And everything Molyneux had done in the last four or five years was for the express purpose of getting to the Amber Room.

It would have made her at least half a billion dollars richer if she had sold pieces of it on the black market.

“A very small part of the Amber Room,” Chisolm said. “Open up, people. I waited decades years for this.”

Using one of Molyneux’s crowbars, the Russians opened the first crate.

There were panel after panel of eighteenth century art carved into amber. Stacks and stacks of them.

Pieced together, they would form parts of the Amber Room. Jake didn’t know what percentage of the room would be covered.

“Someday we’ll go to Russia and see the Amber Room with these real panels in it,” Jake said to Beatrice.

She nodded. And squeezed his hand gently.

Chapter Forty-Eight

Reinstated as an FBI Special Agent, Jake Kessler spent the next six months at a temporary position at the cybersecurity arm of the FBI overseeing hackers and going undercover to keep an eye on them. He felt like he was on a stage, acting in a play.

It was less dirty work than when he had been in deep undercover at Molyneux’s lair. Jake felt relieved to see her on trial for war crimes. However, it wasn’t over yet.

Meanwhile, he had a new job to do.

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