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“That’s possible. I guess. But if Charles told Frederick about the lake, why not tell him where to find the stone?” Armand was all but muttering to himself, and again peering around, his thoughtful gaze landing back on Lacoste.

“It doesn’t make sense,” Armand finally said. “Why tell Frederick about the lake but not the stone and what was under it? And how to find whatever he’d hidden. He’d tell him all or nothing, wouldn’t he? Since Frederick knew about the lake, it’s sensible to assume he also knew about the carving.”

“And what he was looking for. So why didn’t he follow the arrow?”

“There is one explanation. He realized, too late, that he was in trouble, and wanted to make sure whoever he was with didn’t find the stone and whatever Charles had hidden.”

“Are you saying that, knowing he was going to be murdered, he led them off in the wrong direction?”

“It’s possible.”

“That would mean when he got in the plane, he didn’t realize his companions were dangerous. But something happened either in the flight or once they’d landed. Someone said or did something to alert him to the danger.”

Armand nodded. “They might not have been Moretti’s soldiers, but someone else. Someone he trusted. Otherwise he’d never have gotten in the plane.”

He looked around, from the sparkling lake to the dark forest. “Whatever Charles hid here must be important.”

“And dangerous, for someone to kill for it. I’m a little afraid that they did find it, despite Frederick trying to fool them. Maybe that’s why we can’t. It’s no longer here.”

“That would be a shame,” he said, in a vast understatement. “They must think by killing Frederick they’ve covered their tracks. They obviously don’t know we have Charles’s map.”

“But what good is it, patron, if whatever he hid here is gone?”

“We don’t know that for sure. Besides, Charles wrote other things on the map.”

“Which we don’t understand.”

“But we will. What we can say with some certainty is that Charles believed that Frederick was on his side, or he’d never have confided in him.”

“And maybe he was. And maybe Frederick thought the people he was with were too.”

The Chief spent a moment staring at the base of the tree, then he turned and walked in the direction that arrow indicated.

After another hour of searching, he shook his head. “We need more people.”

But both senior officers knew they could not risk calling in a team to search since they did not know who to trust. Except themselves.

“We can only hope that if we can’t find it, neither did they,” he said as they walked back to the shore.

“If only we knew who ‘they’ were.”

“That would help,” he agreed.

While they paddled back to the float plane, Armand looked out across the vast expanse of fresh water. Isabelle was right. The map hadn’t yet given up all its secrets. Charles had written a series of numbers and symbols on this lake.

Armand had hoped they could decode it themselves. He hated the idea of letting that information out of their tight circle, but it seemed the time had come.

When they got to the plane, Armand asked the pilot to fly north, so he could see the damage from the recent fires. He’d seen many in his life, from the air and on the ground. He’d fought a few. A brutal, at times terrifying, experience as the winds created by the fire itself whipped around. Making its path impossible to predict. Just hoping and praying he and his team weren’t suddenly surrounded by the flames.

But what he saw now was on a scale he could not imagine. It took his breath away. Mile after mile of devastation, as though some nuclear bomb had been set off. It was an end-of-the-world vision.

He remembered those apocalyptic photos of New York and Chicago and other American cities and towns, almost disappearing into the ash. The sky orange as though the atmosphere itself was on fire. The sun all but blotted out. It was what a nuclear winter would look like. Horrific. Horrifying. A warning.

Please, God, he thought, don’t let it happen again.

Though he knew it almost certainly would. Nothing could stop another wildfire now. He also knew that where they’d just stood was now the front line, next in line to be burned to the ground.

The plane was flying low over the charred remains of what had been an ancient woodland. Armand leaned forward and tapped the pilot’s shoulder.