The Crown of Fire Read online

  “I can’t wait to tell Dad everything about our find,” Wade said, scanning the arrivals board, knowing it would be mere minutes now before they were reunited.

  “Not the dangerous details, please,” Sara said. “Or how many times we nearly died.”

  Wade laughed. “I guess not.”

  Not being able to actually see his father for almost a week had alarmed and frustrated him. There were so many times he wanted just to talk. Darrell was great, so was Sara, and the girls, of course. But talking with your dad, that was something different, and he missed it.

  Now the long wait was over. His father’s last text was upbeat and simple.

  Explain all soon! Love you all!

  So after the days of grinding worry, his father was safe. Terence was safe, too. Everything had turned out all right. In less than an hour, the family would be resting together in the luxurious Ackroyd apartment, overlooking Nice’s Palais de Justice.

  Sara’s phone buzzed loudly. She smiled. “It’s from Paul Ferrere.”

  After being wounded in Russia during the search for the Serpens relic, the detective’s latest assignment was to serve as backup at Gran Sasso in case Wade’s father and Terence needed him.

  “Hello?” Sara said.

  In a fraction of a second, Sara’s face changed. Her smile dropped away, her eyes flashed with alertness. “What? But no. Roald sent us a message!” She spun her head around, scanning the vast waiting room. “Guys, it’s a trap. Your father didn’t send that text. He and Terence are prisoners at the lab. Becca, Julian, it’s a trap—”

  Before Wade could react, he heard someone shouting in English. “Hey, buddy, watch what you’re doing!” Other voices called out alarmingly in French. There was a sudden loud crack, then tumbling, like luggage being kicked. Now he saw several men pushing through the crowd. At their head was a tall white-haired man in a long coat of black leather.

  “Markus Wolff!” Becca shouted. “Somebody stop him! He’s got a gun!”

  Sara swept Becca with her and ran to the end of the baggage claim area. Three men in dark suits suddenly appeared from nowhere and blocked that exit.

  Julian jerked around. “The luggage carousel! Go!”

  Sara tore off her flip-flops and scrambled barefoot onto the nearest moving conveyor, Becca with her, her shoulder bag flying. They made their way to the chute where the luggage tumbled down to the conveyor. Clutching the sides, they crawled up. Wade followed Julian after them, but a heavy carton flew down at him. He tumbled backward.

  Why doesn’t the alarm sound? Why isn’t everything shutting down?

  Markus Wolff and his men were being held up by a gathering of passengers, maybe because Becca had shouted that he was armed. Everyone was yelling now. Wade crawled up the chute into a large room. A team of luggage handlers shouted angrily at them, but Becca argued back until one of the men pointed to the far end of the room.

  “Merci!” she said. “Wade, come on! Julian!”

  They rushed across the floor and out a half-open door. Bags were rolling up a belt from the back of a truck parked below. The four of them slid down the belt to the truck and then to the ground. Breathless, they ran along the building past several heavy vehicles loaded with paneling and sheets of brushed aluminum.

  “Ask the workers for help?” Wade said.

  Julian shook his head. “No. We can’t trust them.”

  Wade wondered why Sara and Becca were getting so far ahead of them. Why was he running like an old man? Then he realized his right leg burned below the knee. He must have sprained something when he fell down the chute.

  “There, an open door,” Sara said. They followed her into a tented area. It smelled of hot metal and grease and whined with high-pitched motors. Hurrying to the end, they pushed through a thick rubber dust curtain and were inside a half-built terminal.

  The giant room that should have been filled with witnesses was as empty as a tomb.

  “This is exactly what Wolff wants,” Wade said. “To get us alone.”

  The pain in his leg had spread to his thigh, his hips, his groin and stomach.

  Seriously? I can’t run! Shut up. Keep moving.

  Julian ripped off a scroll of safety tape that was draped across a set of doors. They plowed into a warren of back rooms, conveyors, stairways, baggage elevators, storage areas, all stark empty and awaiting the junk of travel.

  “Hey!” someone yelled. “Qu’est ce que vu faites là? C’est une zone interdite! Is forbidden!”

  Suddenly, the doors swung wide behind them and a shot rang out. Becca faltered.

  “No!” Wade screamed, running to her as if dragging a boulder.

  She picked herself up, shook her head. “I’m not hit. Keep going.”

  Wade stayed with her anyway, his heart thundering. The room had no visible exit. And there were at least six armed men, their weapons aimed to kill. There was nowhere to turn. He noticed then that Julian wasn’t with them anymore. Where has he gone?

  Markus Wolff was a statue of unmoving calm in the midst of this chaos. He spoke.

  “Give it to me.”

  “We don’t have the relic,” Wade said breathlessly.

  “I know,” Wolff said. “That is being dealt with.”

  “Don’t you touch Lily!” Becca screamed.

  Sara took her by the arm and backed up as far as they could go. It wasn’t far.

  As the armed agents—tall, muscular, clad entirely in black—crowded them together, Wolff strode calmly across the shiny floor tiles. A giant poster behind him proclaimed Bienvenue à la Côte d’Azur. Beneath the letters was blue sea, sandy beaches, palm trees, red umbrellas, sailboats in the sunshine. Wolff’s usual dead, icy eyes and his stony, chiseled features seemed to quicken when he set his eyes on Becca. He slipped his hands from his long leather coat. In his right hand was a semiautomatic pistol.

  “You are the reason once again, Rebecca Moore. Please. The diary.”

  Wade felt a shudder go through him. “She doesn’t have it,” he lied. “It’s in London.”

  The pain had dulled, but now it coursed through him, a heaviness that made him dizzy. He dug his hand into his pocket, gripped the alarm Sara had gotten for him at Westminster Abbey. He pressed it. It made a tinny sound that went nowhere in the big space. Then he clamped it tight, letting its sharp-edged medallion cut into his palm.

  Don’t faint. Don’t fall. Be here!

  “Miss Moore, the diary, please.” Wolff didn’t take his eyes from Becca as he raised his pistol . . . to Wade’s head. The giant room was so quiet, all Wade heard was the pounding of blood in his ears.

  “Don’t you dare hurt a hair on his head!” Sara shouted, her face on fire.

  The agents lined the others carefully against a wall of shiny lockers as the white-haired killer stared into Becca’s face. He focused his black eyes like lasers, deeper, farther inside her, until, like a hypnotist, he discovered what he was looking for. Lowering his weapon, he stepped over to her.

  “As you know, Miss Moore, I only do what I am told. No more. No less.”

  Becca trembled as Wolff, without removing the heavy bag from her shoulder, slipped a long-fingered hand inside it and removed the battle-worn diary of Nicolaus Copernicus. It was an oddly intimate move. Wade wanted to punch Wolff in the face for it.

  “Thank you, my dear. It is all because of Joan Aleyn, the orphan girl whose life you saved in the waters of the Thames in London. You must already know this, yes?”

  Pocketing his pistol, Wolff opened the diary and slowly turned its pages as if flaunting his power. That, too, was creepily intimate.

  “You showed such compassion to Joan,” Wolff went on. “But you help everyone, don’t you, Miss Moore? Helmut Bern? You tried to save him, too. You are so . . . human.”

  From Wolff’s lips, it sounded like a dirty word.

  “What are you talking about?” Becca said shakily. “What do the relics and the diary have to do with the girl? What?”

  Wolff didn
’t respond, just stepped away and motioned to his men . . . to do something . . . when Julian appeared.

  Wade saw him crouched on the unfinished upper level looking down through the scrollwork of a half-built railing. He had a handgun. Where he got it, Wade couldn’t begin to guess. Julian didn’t make a sound as he slid around directly behind Wolff. He didn’t make a sound as he motioned with his free hand to stand away. He didn’t make a sound as he aimed the pistol, either.

  There was no sound at all, as if every atom of air had been sucked out of the cavernous room, until the whole place exploded with the crack of his pistol.

  At the very same time, three things happened.

  The agents spun around and returned fire at Julian.

  Becca rushed at Wolff and tore the diary out of his hands.

  And the empty room rang with a shriek that seemed to come directly from the antique book.

  CHAPTER THREE

  On the Road to San Pietro, Italy

  June 10

  Evening

  A lioness, leaping.

  “Now, as I say, Miss Krause . . .”

  The thin man cleared his throat as the silver Mercedes sport-utility vehicle twisted through the turns on the mountain highway. “It is happening across the globe.”

  A monkey as blue as the summer sky.

  “Not merely in Nice,” he went on, “but in Budapest, Kiev, San Francisco, Tokyo, Edinburgh, everywhere Guardians exist. Your agents are taking them out.”

  Black-tressed women, wild blossoms, a serpent coiling overhead.

  “I can show you the video streams. Would you like to see the video streams?”

  Galina looked out the tinted window, took a breath. It burned her lungs. There was a rawness in her throat, an ache in the center of her chest, a sting behind the eyes that would not be blinked away. Gray hillsides rose up on either side of the winding road.

  The strange and colorful images had come to her recently. Memories? Waking nightmares? Hallucinations caused by her pain? They meant something, she was sure. But what?

  A griffin, rearing in front of a . . . a . . . what?

  “Soon the ruse of a nuclear leak at Gran Sasso will be discovered,” she said. “We require a real contamination. Have the colonel arrange for a toxic spill outside the main entrance to the mountain. Issue a report under the director’s name. Only a few more days are needed before the astrolabe is complete.”

  “Yes, Miss Krause,” the man said, quickly sending a message, then returning to his computer. “Now, as I say. Osaka, three. Damascus, two. Montreal, six. Pretoria, five. São Paulo. Helsinki. Delhi.” He tapped the screen. “May I show you the video streams?”

  Come back, Galina. Leave the lioness, the monkey, the blossoms, the serpent.

  “Show me.”

  The thin man nestled closer to her. Four separate video streams divided his computer screen into equal parts. “These are the best. Look.”

  Budapest at twilight. A woman, mostly shawls and scarves and wrinkles, shudders on the doorstep of 62 Nagymezö Street. Her arms flail when she drops lifeless. It is many moments before a passerby notices and runs to her.

  San Francisco. The night sky lit up by a houseboat in flames. A dozen medical and fire personnel work frantically on the bloodied body of a bearded man.

  Miami. An elderly woman is seen from above. She is watering flowers. She looks up, she reels back on her front lawn as water dribbles from the watering can.

  “A drone, Miss Krause. Armed, of course. This next is a longtime minor Guardian named Pytr Slovatny, in Warsaw.”

  A man is propped against a wall like a prisoner. He shudders once and falls limp.

  Turning to the window as they motored up an unpaved road, Galina said, “And the one named Carlo Nuovenuto? Have you found him?”

  “Alas, Miss Krause, not yet. We continue our search. He has gone into hiding. He is the most elusive of Guardians.”

  “He must be found. And removed.”

  “Yes, Miss Krause.”

  At the end of the drive stood a low stone farmhouse. Galina breathed out slowly.

  “Driver, stop here.”

  The silver Mercedes was still moving when Galina threw open the rear door and stormed inside the farmhouse. She pushed into the back room, now a makeshift holding cell. A man sat in a chair and was guarded by three armed men in black jumpsuits. He was strapped in, every limb immobilized. A helmet covered the top of his head, and a device on his face kept his eyes from closing. In addition to all this, his body was covered with dozens of cables that were attached to a black box on the floor. His eyes were directed toward a large computer terminal on the floor in front of him. The room smelled of moldy cheese.

  “Where am I?” said the man. His face was narrow. He had not shaved for days.

  “You are Jean-Luc Renard? Interior minister of France?”

  “You know I am! Release me this instant! Now!”

  Galina walked around, looked at the dark terminal. “You are married?”

  “My wife is dead. You must know that, too. You ordered her killed because she wouldn’t talk. And what is all this? Do you plan to electrocute me?”

  Galina knelt in front of him. “Your wife told you something before she died.”

  His eyes narrowed to pinpoints. “So, that’s what this is about. I will never tell you a word of what came from her sainted lips. I will die first!”

  “You will die,” Galina said, standing. “But not first.”

  She flicked the computer on. The screen burst into color with a swift series of images, hundreds per second—faces, maps, buildings, automobiles—in short, a visual catalog of the entire world at superspeed. His eyes shone. He screamed for the rapid display to stop but could not look away from the images. Ten minutes. Twenty minutes. At twenty-two minutes, fourteen seconds, the screen froze on the image of an elegant woman in sumptuous Renaissance finery. A caption read Eleanor of Austria.

  “Ah, good. An original Guardian,” Galina said. “Let us continue.”

  The images began flashing again. Another nineteen minutes passed, during which the minister raged and cried. Then, a total of forty-one and a half minutes into the program, the computer screen froze a second time.

  Galina stared at it. “Your eyes have reacted once more, Monsieur Renard. This time, to an island among a string of islands. Happily, I recognize it. Indonesia. The island of Bali.”

  “No!” Renard shouted. “No. You beast!”

  “I will send Gerrenhausen,” she said. “And now you will die, Interior Minister.”

  “No, no, you devil—”

  The ceiling lights flickered, and the room smelled no longer of old cheese.

  A shade less than fourteen hundred kilometers northwest of the farmhouse—in one of several never-spoken-of cells in the never-spoken-of basement below the classical structure known as Thames House in Millbank, London SW1—a wiry man of bent back and poor eyesight paced from wall to wall.

  It was a frustratingly short distance.

  But Ebner von Braun was possessed.

  By now, almost one full day after his arrest in connection with the theft of the Crux relic from a vault in the British Museum, Ebner had gotten over the details of his capture.

  “Inconsequential,” he breathed to the walls. “No, no. This—this!—is vital!”

  In that lonely cell, free of Galina’s severe gravitational pull, Ebner had found his mind fresh and clear and his thoughts bursting with creativity, allowing him to work out equation after equation in his mind—to a singularly stunning result.

  He had just proved without a doubt that the first launch of Copernicus’s Eternity Machine in the autumn of 1514 created a tremendous explosion of energy. This was due to the twelve relics working in concert to disrupt the atomic weave of the atmosphere and leading to the famous “hole in the sky” that the astronomer spoke of.

  If, however, one did not possess all twelve relics, was it still possible to fly the astrolabe in time? With only
a little more than three months to the launch deadline, and the Kaplan family in possession of two relics and likely to find more, the question was: Could one fly the time machine with, say, ten relics? Or eight?

  And the answer—after hours of anguishingly complex mental calculations—was, yes. Yes! If one had the completed machine, which Galina did in the lab at Gran Sasso, one could propel it into time with a mere six relics. Six relics!

  Six relics wired properly could indeed produce the hole in the sky similar to that first flight! The conclusion astonished him, even to breathlessness.

  “You see,” he said aloud, knowing that hearing his own words would help him remember his formulation, “based on the standard Kardashev Scale, which categorizes the amounts of energy needed to enable certain events, a Type III ability can harness the power of a supermassive black hole to a specific task—say, the creation of a traversable wormhole.”

  He knew he was becoming frantic, but who would not?

  “But, if we couple Type V energy, which masters not only the inherent energy of one’s own universe, but of entire collections of universes, with Type Omega-Minus, which isolates energy capable of manipulating the basic structure of time—we shall be able to fly the machine into the depths of time with only six of the twelve relics! Galina, I have done it! Only six relics are required! We already have three—Serpens, Scorpio, and now Crux. After we find a mere three more, we may kill those horrid children—”

  “Hold on there, mate, but that’s where I draw the line.”

  Ebner’s previously silent cell mate rolled over on his cot and sat up. “Course, I don’t know nuffin’ about no relics or Kardashevs, but we don’t kill kids. They’re the future of our world, ain’t they?”

  Having had his spectacles confiscated, Ebner squinted at the fellow. “My dear cell mate, you may be curious to know that, if my calculations are wrong, our world will not have a future.”

  “That may be, except we just don’t kill kids. That’s all.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Madrid, Spain

  November 1975