Okay Annja, it’s now or never, she told herself.

She picked up her tools and headed across the open field at a light jog. Despite her desire to cross the open space as quickly as possible, she avoided picking up speed. The high grass could hide any number of hazards and she didn’t want to end up turning an ankle in an unseen rabbit hole that might require medical assistance just to get out of the park. The jog would get her there quickly without endangering her mission.

It only took her a few minutes to reach the top of the hill, but to Annja it felt like hours. She kept waiting for a light to snap on in the darkness, pinning her in place, to hear a guard yelling at her to stop what she was doing or he’d be forced to fire. But none of that happened.

A lone tree stood on the summit and Annja used the shadows at its base to conceal herself as she looked down into the cemetery spread out below.

In the days after the Battle of Gettysburg, the dead had been buried in hastily dug graves across the battlefield itself. Later, with the support of the governor of Pennsylvania, the dead were moved to a more permanent cemetery close to Cemetery Hill. How Parker had discovered that there was a Union soldier with the same name as himself buried there, Annja had no idea. Perhaps no one was buried there at all and the grave had just been dug to support Parker’s machinations behind the scenes. She couldn’t know for sure, though she had her suspicions given the very different appearance of the headstone.

You’ll find out soon enough, she told herself.

She stepped out into the open, making her way down the slope with the help of the red-lensed flashlight that she’d picked up earlier that day at an Army-Navy surplus store. The colored light would be difficult for an observer to see at night but provided enough illumination for her to locate the grave she was looking for. The unique shape of the gravestone allowed her to find it easily.

Parker’s instructions echoed in her mind.

“Disturb him in his slumber, wake him from his rest.”

She set the flashlight down on the top of the gravestone, illuminating the well-manicured grass that covered the grave site.

Here goes nothing, she thought as she took a deep breath.

Laying the pick aside, she used the edge of the shovel to mark a rectangular shape in the grass along the direction that she thought the coffin would have been placed. She carefully cut the turf free in large pieces and then moved them to one side, doing what she could to preserve the sod intact. If she had the time, she intended to replace the grass before leaving, which might help keep the evidence of her activity from being discovered right away.

Once she had cleared the sod from her target area, she began rotating back and forth between the two tools, using the pick to break up the earth and then scooping the loose dirt out with the shovel. The work was made harder by her effort to keep the noise down and the fact that she stopped regularly to listen to avoid having anyone sneak up on her in the darkness.

Annja had been working for about an hour and had uniformly gone down about three feet across the entire surface of the grave, when her shovel hit something solid. The sound of metal striking metal was partially muted by the earth, but to her it sounded unnaturally loud. She winced and held the shovel still, listening.

All was quiet for a moment and Annja was about to breathe a sigh of relief when a horse whinnied somewhere off to her left.

She reached for the flashlight and shut it off as quickly as she dared.

The only horses in the park that she knew of were those ridden by the park rangers like the one she’d run into earlier that afternoon. Unless they let them out to roam the grounds at night, something she thought unlikely, there had to be a mounted patrol headed in her direction.

The question was how far away were they?

Her mind was racing. Was it already too late? Were they even now calling in backup? Could she possibly escape?

She didn’t know what to do and that worried her more than if sirens and flashing lights had suddenly split the night air in response.

A minute passed, then two, as Annja strained her eyes to see who might be out there in the darkness. Finally the gleam of a cigarette caught her eye, flaring red in the darkness for a moment and then dimming again. It was down the hill and off to her left, a few hundred yards away. She couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the light was moving toward her.

She had a decision to make.

If she left now, the open grave would most likely be discovered. If that happened, she’d never get another chance at it; they’d probably post armed guards around the grave site and she’d lose access to whatever it was that Parker had hidden there.

And she’d lose her shot at finding the treasure and using it, in turn, to rescue Garin.

If she stayed and finished the work, she risked getting caught in the act and charged with several different crimes. Criminal trespass. Desecration of a grave. Destruction of federal property. And who knew what else.

Clearly there was only one logical choice.

With her heart beating faster over the possibility of discovery, Annja picked up the flashlight and put it in the bottom of the hole she was digging before turning it back on, knowing the high walls of the grave would keep it from being seen right away. If she worked quickly, she might be able to get out of there before the rider got close enough to know she was even there.

She went back to work with the shovel, breaking up the dirt around the metal object and scooping as much of it out of the way as possible. After a moment a small, rectangular-shaped object became visible in the red light.

The horse neighed again and this time she clearly heard a male voice saying something in response to the animal. They were too far away for her to make out the specifics of what was said, but there was no doubt that they were headed her way.

She was running out of time.

Annja got down on her hands and knees, shielding the light with her body. Clearing the last of the dirt away from the top of the object with her hands, she revealed a small metal chest about the size of a bread box.

But when she tried to tug it free, she found that the earth didn’t want to let go of its prize so easily.

She was going to have to keep digging.

She raised her head slightly so she could see over the lip of the hole where she crouched and was just in time to see the beam of a flashlight arc out over the gravestones at the base of the hill.

Hell! she thought.

Now she was in trouble.

As the rider swept the light around, she could see that it was the park ranger she’d encountered earlier that afternoon, astride the same dark-colored mount, no doubt in the midst of his occasional nightly rounds. He was looking around a bit too earnestly for it to be just a coincidence that he was in this area; he must have heard her.

There was nothing she could do about it.

Now it was a race to see if she could finish unearthing the chest before he discovered where she was hiding.

Annja ducked back down and began scraping furiously at the dirt alongside the edges of the chest, no longer caring if she was making noise. If she didn’t get the chest free in time, all her efforts would be for naught.

“Hello?” the ranger called. “Anyone out there?”

No one but us ghosts, Annja thought, remembering his earlier remark, and she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing at the insanity of it all.

She cleared one side of the chest and moved on to the other, her fingers scratching at the earth, shoving it aside as quickly as she loosened it.

She stole another glance over the edge of the grave.

As she watched, the ranger dismounted and took a few steps forward, his hand on the butt of his holstered revolver. “I can hear you out there,” he called. “Identify yourself!”