She had waved at Conrad across a crowded room of the Grand Hotel. He waved back realizing he knew the face but he was unable to place it. Jetlag from the constant flying had scrambled that section of his brain which was meant to store people. She squeezed past waiters and guests and reached him before he had a chance to remember who she was.

"For a moment I thought you wouldn't show up," she said.

From her accent, she was clearly a local. She wore a long black cocktail dress and her dark hair was done up in a bun. For all Conrad knew she might have had her hair flowing to her shoulders when they last met. He wished women would realize that when they change their hairstyle, they often end up looking completely different to any unsuspecting male.

"Just about made it. How are you?" Conrad roared above the babble.

"I'm just fine," she replied, taking a glass of champagne from a passing waiter.

"You have no idea who I am, do you?" She looked at him quizzically.

Conrad smiled.

"Adrijana," he said. "How could I ever forget?"

She smiled.

Conrad remembered the name in the nick of time. He had gotten to the Stopicá cave, going in as a tourist to blend in, lingering at the back of the group and keeping a sharp eye out for anything that might be his clue.

The beauty of the Bigren tubs had distracted him for a while, but the loose slab along one of the cave walls had caught his eye immediately. A good portion of his job description was looking for things that seemed out of place, and in a natural place like that, someone had definitely tampered with something. The pictograph of a bird on the slab further cemented his belief that it could have been what he was looking for.

Removal of the slab had revealed a small square-shaped hole, a perfect place to hide something, but it was empty. Dirt on the floor directly below the hole told him whoever had taken what was inside had been there recently. After pushing it back into place he glanced around the caves in the hopes of catching any sign of who it could be. Had Amanda already hired someone else before him? No, that didn't make sense for her to do. She seemed like a methodical person, and all she would do was jeopardize the task.

It was the soft tap on his shoulder from the tour guide that had snapped him back to the present. The group was moving on, and he was being left behind. Seeing no purpose in continuing with them, Conrad had made an excuse about not feeling well, to which she had agreed, her gorgeous face neutral, but with a hint of disappointment in her eyes.

He had walked over to a cafe nearby, and ordered a latte and a sandwich, feeling a growing heaviness and discomfort in his stomach. If someone else was chasing the same thing and had beaten him to it, he had a good idea of what would befall him. When he had taken a bite of his sandwich, he found he could hardly swallow it and pushed his plate aside. It was only when he reached into his jacket pocket to pay that he noticed something else there. A piece of paper, one he had definitely not put there. The map Amanda had given him was safely tucked away inside the sole of his boot.

I might know who has what you are looking for.

Grand Hotel restaurant.

Friday, one o'clock. Leave the booking to me, I'm known there.

The choice of venue being one of the most exclusive restaurants in town meant Conrad had to acquire a respectable suit, and upon entering the restaurant he had observed too many waiters and plush seats for his liking. Amanda had only given him so much cash, and he did not feel like calling to explain why he needed more.

Conrad joined Adrijana at a table, and a few minutes later a waiter came by and presented them with large embossed menus. Throughout the meal, Adrijana talked about the caves and her experiences there as a tour guide, but still made no reference to the slab in the cave wall. Moments later a man in a green uniform appeared carrying a silver tray with a piece of paper on it, undoubtedly the bill. As Conrad reached into his pockets for the crisp notes he had exchanged for earlier, Adrijana shook her head, taking the paper and sliding it towards him. It was a plane ticket, or rather a copy of one made for one Fiona Grenville-Temple. A direct flight from Belgrade to Stockholm.

"I believe she has what you want," Adrijana told him. "I was not sure if I'd seen right until you came along and pulled the same slab."

"And why would you help me?" Conrad asked as he tucked the paper away.

"I'd heard rumors but never considered them true." Adrijana shrugged as she got up. "If people have come looking then it's probably true about the bird. You could say I'm taking a gamble that one of you two will do the right thing if you find it."

Conrad just sat there, slightly dazed.

"Goodbye, darling," she said. "Thank you for such a lovely lunch."

Fiona couldn't sleep. Inside the box, she had found a little statue, no more than six inches in height, a miniature version of the treasure she was searching for. The statue's only blemish was that the ivory base had chipped, but in the eyes of Fiona, nothing could detract from its overall beauty. It was on the underside of this base that she had found engraved tiny words, almost too small to see.

Hedestad, Sweden, the-

The rest of the words were lost to the missing chip in the statue's base. As soon as she reached Stockholm, Fiona asked around and was told it wasn't a long journey by train to the small town of Hedestad. It seemed like there had been a big snowstorm, but the skies had now cleared and the air was ice-cold when Fiona alighted. She realized at once that she wasn't wearing enough clothes for the winter. The thermometer on the wall of the station said -10°C. Back home, temperatures like this were never heard of. She assumed there was a bus to Hedestad, but she did not feel like staying any longer out in the cold and crossed the square to the taxi stand.

The taxi driver was wrapped up in a heavy fur coat, thick boots, and a cap with earflaps. Fiona was in jeans and a thin woolen jacket.

"If you're going to stay up here, you need to learn to dress more warmly for this time of the year." He told her.

The taxi driver, whose name, according to his ID posted on the window, was Ali, nodded when Fiona asked him to get her to the closest lodgings.

The town began on the mainland and spilled across a bridge to a hilly island. On the mainland side of the bridge stood a small, white stone church, and across the street glowed an old-fashioned neon sign for a cafe. Fiona kept an eye out for anything that might be where her clue leads to, in particular a bird, but nothing stood out as of yet.

The room wasn't very large, with a narrow double bed, a bedside table, and a wardrobe. In one corner was a smaller table that could be used as a desk. The bedroom had a door where a storeroom had been converted into a bathroom with a shower. The landlord had mentioned that there would be a problem with the water in case the pipes froze and that she would get water from the main house if she had to.

Fiona spent an hour settling herself into what could be her home for the coming few days. She had no idea how long it would take to find what she was looking for.

She awoke in panic at the incredible din that filled the room the next morning, and it took her a few seconds to get her bearings and realize that it was the church bells summoning people to morning service. All the traveling had distorted her sense of time, and she had forgotten it was Sunday. She checked her phone. Nkosi had not called. She tried calling him, but only got his voicemail.

By ten Fiona had showered and eaten breakfast. She then headed outside to the cafe she had seen and found it brimming with customers, so she took a walk instead. She spent an hour familiarizing herself with the town, and the only place that could have held something was the church. Along the water and to the south were mostly single-family homes and apartment buildings.

When Fiona returned to the bridge, the assault on the cafe had ended, but the barista was still clearing dishes from the tables. A few people were still at some of them, and a sudden movement in the corner caught her eye, someone bundled up in a leather jacket, only the tips of their red hair showing. It looked somewhat comical to her, the fact that there was someone else in the same boat as she was, here unprepared for the weather.

___

She wasn't coming. Conrad leaned his forehead against the bleached wood of the back church door as if its warmth could still the chills inside him. He was cold and his belly ached for a proper meal. Coffee and sandwiches weren't a good choice for lunch apparently. The barista was not coming.

The moment he had set foot in Hedestad Conrad had stopped by the cafe, knowing it was the best place to get information since a lot of people came through. When he met her eyes, the barista smiled. He had returned later that morning just after the church rush, and to his surprise, he had recognized the woman heading towards the cafe from the flight to Zurich he had been on before.

Earlier on, he had figured she would want to get to the destination as soon as possible, so she would have taken a taxi rather than wait for a bus, and with a few well-worded questions and pretending to be a friend, he had found the driver that had taken someone with the characteristics he had in mind. From a distance, hands tucked inside her pockets of a jacket too thin, hair rustling in the breeze and obviously struggling with the coldness, it had to be her. She was a long way from home than even he was, but he could not understand why she was chasing the bird. Had she also been approached by someone who had offered her a job to retrieve it? He could only guess. It was only until she was walking through the door that Conrad realized he had been staring and that if she saw him it would have aroused the utmost suspicion. With no other option, he had pulled the collar of his jacket over his head just as she had looked his way.

At that moment, he was waiting for the barista, who had told him about what was inside the church. He kicked angrily at the door, rattling it on its ancient hinges.

Finally, she was here.

"Did you get it?" He asked.

She nodded and held out her hand. Across her palm lay the heavy iron key to the back door of the church. Conrad snatched it from her. "Did they believe you? That you wanted to help by cleaning up the church for them?"

The woman nodded. Conrad reached into his pocket and pressed a wad of cash into her palm, which she quickly concealed, and then she disappeared round the corner.

Conrad darted from one likely spot of the church to the other, exploring it, eager to find a hiding place that would perhaps hold the bird itself, or at least a clue. The fact that it had not been in Serbia had prepared him for the reality that there may be more than one clue. His fingers wormed into cracks and scrabbled under benches seeking hidden compartments, but nothing yielded to his touch. He felt like an intruder there as he pulled a strip of plasterwork in the shape of an angel's wing and it came away in his hand, but nothing lay behind it.

He squatted down and trailed a finger along the edge of a floorboard.

His finger snagged.

He lifted a filthy piece of string attached to one of the planks and pulled. A section of the floorboard flipped up, dropping Conrad on his bottom. Surely this was the place to hide something valuable. He didn't quite know what it was he was searching for, except that it probably was in a box based on the hole in the caves back in Serbia.

He reached into the darkness below and his fingers closed around something, wet and slimy. He pulled it up into the light. It was a miniature version of the bird he was looking for, so he knew at least that it was his clue. Half of its base was missing, but the words inscribed on the available half were enough for him to know where he had to go. He reached back into the gap but found nothing else. Knowing he couldn't risk getting caught, he dropped the statue into the gap and slammed the plank back into place. After glancing up and down the street for anyone that could have been watching him but finding none, he locked the church door and left.