Joe smiled at his wife. “You know, you just get more beautiful every year.”
Elise blew him a kiss and then got more serious. “Has the effects of the two wines completely worn off yet?”
“It wore off sometime during the night. I am feeling absolutely no effects.”
“How much of that wine is in the tunnel?”
“It really is more of a multi chambered room than a tunnel, but there are several hundred bottles of different wines and at least 30 barrels. I am really not sure of the count of the different types of wine. There is also a door in the back of the main room that I have not yet been able to open. I have no idea what’s behind it.”
Elise brushed her hair out of her eyes. “Wow, you haven’t shared that with me yet! How many volumes of old books and notes are there?”
Joe suddenly felt guilty and somewhat trapped. He had not shared his explorations at the Wine Witch with Elise. “Lots, none of them in English. There….is something else I haven’t told you.” Joe took a deep breath. “I have figured out some of what is in those notes with some outside help.”
Elise’s jaw dropped. “Is that a wise thing to do? The last thing we need is for someone else to know about the wine tunnel!”
“I lied about where they came from. I told Simone, you know, the owner of the Wine Witch, that they were sent by your cousins in Milan.”
“I have no cousins in Milan. Oh, I see what you were doing. The foreign languages and such.”
“I had to fabricate some kind of cover story. Elise brought in a friend from the university who is an expert in ancient languages of the Mediterranean.”
Elise’s interest was really piqued now. “What did you learn?”
“That some of these documents are from texts more ancient than the Greeks. They could go back to Atlantis. Some of this information is based on some really ancient alchemy. Carlos was a real collector of ancient stuff. We may have a copy of an incredibly rare book on alchemy, something thought to date to ancient times. Carlos’s library may be extremely valuable. Even priceless.”
“All the more reason to carefully keep this secret.” This was all making Elise feel a little queasy.
Joe nodded in agreement. “Not even the kids should know about this.”
DeMario and Pete could feel that they had gotten only a few hours of sleep. They both lay on a roof of one of the taller buildings in Jack London Square looking down into part of the port area. Pete had his spotting scope set up and carefully scanned the tops of the buildings.
“Take a look, see the piles of tarps on that building. I’ll bet that they hide two to three of Shindo’s people.”
DeMario took a look. “That would make 25 of his people so far. Where are the rest?”
Pete took the opportunity to make careful notes on the satellite photo of the area. “We are on the south side of the port, so at this point I would guess that they are in the middle or northern portion adjoining the Fairchild Group docks.”
“They sure seem to be lying low today. I’ll bet some of them are getting rest and being held in reserve somewhere nearby.”
“That would be a prudent thing to do. Maybe we could get one of the FBI sniper teams that we’ve been allowed to retain to take up a position here.”
“Good idea. Lets see if Derek will ask Sandra. I think that we need to move to one of the other buildings further north and do some further checking.”
Over the rooftops they could see a container ship preparing to tie up to the Fairchild Group Dock. Pete turned his spotting scope onto it. “It is the Samoa. I don’t see anything suspicious going on. I don’t think it is the one carrying the drugs.”
DeMario took his turn at the scope. “One down and three more to go. I guess our FBI friends didn’t try plan B with this ship.”
Continued ...
