This is a new set of hero’s in my reading of Cussler. He gives us a man and wife team. He is an engineer and she is an archaeologist. They are wealthy and share the convictions that those with wealth have a responsibility to share with those who do not. They are very smart and witty and we discover that they are also very lucky as they deal with ruthless evil characters in this story.
As in other tales Cussler starts us out hundreds of years in the past. This time we travel over the Pennine Alps with Napoleon Bonaparte and his Grand Army. In the snow and ice at the top of the mountain pass Napoleon and his trusted aid stumble upon a vast treasure of gold in a huge cavern. Of course they cannot carry the riches away so Napoleon creates a map. But it is no ordinary map. Napoleon trusts no one. In his overconfident way he presumes that only his own blood relation will be able to decipher the complicated and misleading symbols that will lead to the treasure. This map is created on the skin wrappings hidden in sub-layers around 12 bottles of wine created from Napoleon’s favorite vineyards just prior to his destroying those vineyards and all the grape seeds that might have been used to grow those grapes again. When Napoleon dies in exile the bottles of wine disappear and the treasure is lost. The legend of Napoleon’s lost Cellar of Wine persists to this day though.
When the story brings us back to the present we are with Sam and his wife Remi Fargo when they discover a German one man submarine stuck on the bottom of an inlet to the Pocomoke River Swamp in Delaware. Inside they find the captain of the sub well preserved due to the lack of oxygen in his tomb and along with him they discover a bottle of wine. After some research they find that it is one of the bottles of the wine from Napoleon’s lost cellar. This is just the sort of enigmatic adventure these two thrive on.
They set out to find the rest of the bottles. But they do not know that there is another rich adventurer who is also determined to obtain these bottles and he knows of the treasure at the end of the quest. It happens that his is also the head of a Russian Mafia organization. Prior to confronting Sam and Remi we get ample evidence of his insensitivity to others. He kills his top man for his lack of success in getting the bottle from Sam and Remi by using his shotgun to shoot off both hands and feet, leaving him to suffer pain and bleed to death.
Sam and Remi manage to get out of some very tight situations each of which appear to be almost certain ends for them. Once they understand the man they are up against they manage to stay a couple of steps ahead of him. This husband and wife adventure team read each other well, especially in dangerous situations requiring split second timing to avoid disaster. The story gets better and better as you read up to the exciting conclusion. In that respect it is consistent with all other Cussler tales. It is also another great one.
