Charlie Thorne and the Last Equation

by Stuart Gibbs

  Rats didn’t seem concerned by Charlie’s belief that something was wrong. Instead, he said, “Dante wants you now.”

  “There’s a guy casing the library on the bench over there,” Charlie said. “If you make a scene, you’re going to spook him.”

  Rats was a good enough spy to not immediately turn and stare, which might have given them away. Instead, he kept his focus on Charlie and said, “Which bench?”

  “The one in the shade. Can I borrow your phone? I want to use the camera.”

  Rats didn’t want to make a fuss and draw attention, so he handed the phone to her.

  Charlie acted like she was taking a photo of the fountain. Instead, she used the zoom on the camera to focus on the guy on the bench. He didn’t seem to notice her. He was fixated on the library, and besides, Charlie looked like just another teenager with a phone, rather than a CIA agent. The phone’s camera wasn’t as good as a pair of binoculars, but it worked. The image was grainy, but still better than what she could see with her naked eyes.

  The guy was wearing the same kind of clothes the CIA agents had: khakis and a button-down shirt, the kind of clothes you wore to blend in. He had a beanie cap pulled down low on his forehead and sunglasses, but with the camera, Charlie could make out the features of his face well enough to confirm her worst suspicions.

  She knew this man. She had committed his photographs to memory only a few hours before.

  “That’s Alexei Kolyenko,” she said. “The Furies are here.”

  At that moment, the alarms in the archives started ringing.

  SEVENTEEN

  Fate had played right into Marko’s hands.

  Marko was the youngest of the Furies, the same age as most of the students at this university, but while the students all had the luxury of taking four years to study for high-paying jobs in medicine and law and engineering, Marko had been scrounging for menial work ever since he was fourteen and his mother had died. He hadn’t even known his father, who had abandoned his mother before he was born, never contributing a cent to his son’s life.

  The Furies had arrived in Haifa by ferry that morning, direct from Limassol. It had taken a long time to funnel through customs and rent a van, and then they had come right here to the library.

  They hadn’t parked at the university, because there were security booths at all the parking lot entrances, with armed guards and cameras that recorded license plate numbers. So they had parked at a movie theater a few blocks away and walked over, scoping out routes of escape as they crossed the campus.

  Marko had been disgusted by everyone he saw, not because they could afford college when he couldn’t, but because he hated everyone from this part of the world. The Jews and the Muslims had all come from the Middle East to his country and ruined it, just as they had ruined this country.

  The Furies had split up upon reaching the library, as a group of foreign men was far more noticeable than several individuals on their own. Marko, Hans, Fez, and Vladimir had entered the building at separate times, a few minutes apart, while Alexei sat outside, keeping watch over everything. Since there were metal detectors, they had left their weapons behind. But beyond the detectors, it was easy to get in; no one even asked for ID. The library was open to everyone.

  Marko had milled about in the library for a few minutes, acting like a student as he wandered deeper into the stacks, and then slipped through a door into the staff area of the building. Not only was there no security on the door, but the staff didn’t seem even remotely concerned with security themselves. No one looked at him suspiciously. One staffer noticed that he seemed lost, but then naively offered to help him find his way around. The idiot had even pointed the way to the vault when he’d asked.

  From what Marko knew, the vault wouldn’t be easy to get inside. It would most likely require force, which he could still exert, even without his gun. There were many ways to cause someone pain.

  The idea was to wait near the vault until some of his fellow Furies joined him, then force their way in and get the book. But when Marko arrived, fate had a surprise in store for him.

  The vault wasn’t what he had expected. There was a large steel door, behind which precious items like Einstein’s books and other artifacts were protected—but before you reached that, there was a room with a wide window along the hallway. The room was brightly lit and filled with several tables. A few archivists were already seated at some of the tables, carefully examining books and documents. Obviously, the room was a regulated space to examine things from the vault. It appeared to be climate-controlled to protect the documents, and there was a sign in multiple languages on the hallway door explaining that artifacts could not leave the examination room without permission.

  The examination room had more security than the rest of the library; the door had a coded-entry keypad and the window was thick and reinforced with thin steel wires. But Marko could easily see inside through the glass. And there, sitting on one of the tables by the door, was the very book he was looking for. He was sure of it.

  It was an aged Sherlock Holmes anthology, so old the spine was coming apart and the pages had turned brown. A young male archivist stood beside the table, shifting from one foot to the other nervously, like he was waiting for someone important.

  Marko immediately assessed the situation. It appeared that someone at the archives must have realized the importance of the book. Given the behavior of the young archivist inside, Marko guessed that he had retrieved the book for someone else and was expecting them soon. Which meant that Marko had to act fast.

  There was no time to wait for any of the other Furies to help him. He had been lucky, arriving here at such an opportune moment, but his window of opportunity was probably going to be very narrow. Whoever was coming—the CIA, most likely, but for all he knew it could be MI6 or KGB or Mossad—was going to be here soon.

  Another archivist was entering the room at that very moment, typing her access code into the security keypad. Marko stepped behind her as she pulled the door open. The woman paused in the doorway, sensing something was wrong, and turned to him with a stern look. “I’m sorry. This room is restricted. . . .”

  That was as far as she got. Marko backhanded her with a powerful swipe of his arm, sending her stumbling into the wall.

  The other people in the room turned to him, startled.

  Marko was already on the move. He ran to where the book lay on the table. The young archivist instinctively moved to protect it. Like a lot of Israelis, he knew how to fight, but so did Marko, and Marko had the element of surprise. He punched the archivist in the face, then drilled a fist into his stomach as he reeled backward. The archivist went down, whacking his head on a table, and by that point Marko had grabbed the book and was running for the door.

  By the time someone tripped the alarm, Marko was already racing down the hall, holding Einstein’s book in his hand.

  • • •

  The moment Dante heard the alarms, he suspected the worst. He, Milana, and Bendavid were still in the stairwell with Golda Solomon, heading back to the library entrance to meet Charlie. Until that point, Dante had been doing his best to act the part of a visiting professor, explaining why the analyst he was bringing in looked young but was actually much older than she seemed and hoping Golda would buy it. But now there was no longer any time to pretend. He wheeled on Golda and demanded, “Get us to the archives! Now!”

  “But the alarms . . . ,” Golda protested. “It might be an attack.”

  In Jerusalem, a terrorist attack was probably far more likely than someone stealing a book from the archives, but Dante presumed that wasn’t the case right now. He grabbed Golda’s arm with a firm hand and said, “It’s not an attack. Someone’s after the book!”

  There was a forcefulness in his voice that Golda didn’t question. She broke into a run, leading him down the stairs and into the basement hallway. “That way!” she exclaimed, pointing to the glassed-in examination room ahead.

  Dante ra
ced there, Milana and Bendavid on his heels, but as he reached the room, he knew it was too late. He saw the two archivists who had been overpowered, other people having already come to their aid, while the door to the room hung open.

  He raced on down the hallway. Whoever had come for the book must have been going that way, because otherwise he’d have run into them. He reached a T junction into another hall, but it was empty in both directions.

  Whoever had grabbed Einstein’s book had a big head start on him.

  Pandora was gone.

  EIGHTEEN

  Up in the plaza in front of the library, everyone froze in fear when the alarm rang. This surprised Charlie. Back in America, if an alarm had gone off on campus, people would have ignored it and kept going about their day. Because almost every time a campus alarm went off, it turned out to be false. The Americans might have looked around to see where the noise was coming from, but they wouldn’t have been worried. Here in Israel, things were different. Everyone stopped in their tracks to determine if the alarm was the warning signal for an incoming missile attack. When they realized that wasn’t the case, they were slow to return to what they had just been doing, because the alarm had reminded them that when you lived in the Middle East, you couldn’t afford to be complacent.

  Alexei was the only exception. Charlie had turned toward the library when she heard the alarm go off—as had Rats—and when they looked back toward Alexei, he was no longer on the bench. His newspaper lay crumpled on the ground and he was racing across the main lawn, away from the library.

  Rats swore in Hebrew, spun toward Charlie, and ordered her, “Stay here! Leave this to me!” Then he ran after the terrorist.

  Charlie let them go. She had no intention of following Alexei. Pandora was what was important right now. She returned her attention to the library.

  Since the library was built into a hill, half of the basement level was exposed. The only doors on that level appeared to be emergency exits, but Charlie figured that if she had stolen the book, she wouldn’t be coming back out the main entrance. Not if she had triggered the alarm. To Charlie’s left, a long ramp led down from the plaza, skirting the edge of the basement level, heading to another campus lawn.

  As Charlie watched, an emergency door flew open alongside the ramp and a young man raced out, clutching a thick book in his hands.

  Charlie recognized him. Marko. The youngest of the Furies.

  Which meant the book in his hands was probably Einstein’s Holmes anthology.

  Charlie’s immediate response was excitement—she had been right about the book being here—but that was quickly replaced by concern. She had expected to see Dante and Milana emerge closely behind Marko, but they didn’t. Which meant they didn’t know where Marko was. Only she did. And since Dante had confiscated her phone, she had no way to contact him. Charlie was hesitant to go after Marko, knowing it could be dangerous, but she had no choice. If she didn’t do something, Marko was going to get away, and then the Furies would have Pandora.

  Beside Charlie, one of the skateboarders was still listening to the alarm, cautiously watching the skies for any sign of an attack. His board lay on the ground at his feet.

  Charlie snatched it and ran toward the ramp. “I just need to borrow this for a few minutes!” she yelled back to him.

  “Hey!” the boarder yelled after her. “Not cool!”

  “I’ll bring it back!” Charlie shouted. “I promise!” As she reached the ramp, she dropped the board in front of her and leapt onto it in one fluid motion, using her momentum to give her an extra burst of speed. She sped down the ramp, keeping her eyes locked on Marko.

  The lower lawn beyond the library was narrower and less crowded than the central upper lawn. A few students were lounging on it, but mostly people were just crossing it to get from one building to another. In the midst of it stood a statue of Einstein himself. The statue was positioned so that Einstein was walking away from the library, but even so Charlie could recognize the man’s iconic mop of hair.

  Marko sprinted past the statue, running like his life depended on it.

  Charlie surfed down the ramp on the skateboard, moving fast enough to make her hair fly in the breeze; she had to brush it from her eyes as she rode. A concrete path meandered across the lawn, forcing her to weave back and forth to stay on it, dodging all the people as well. She shot through a game of Smashball and sliced between two professors in the midst of a heated discussion. She was closing the gap on Marko when he veered onto a staircase that angled downward between two buildings.

  Charlie took a hard look at the railing and saw the numbers.

  As she reached the top of the stairs, she performed a huge ollie, springing herself and the board into the air and landing the deck across the railing. Then she rode down quickly, grinding along the rail, bearing down on Marko.

  At the base of the stairs was another parking lot. Charlie pounced off the railing, hitting Marko with the full force of her body. The two of them tumbled across the asphalt. The book went flying.

  Charlie handled the fall better, as she had been prepared for it. She had taken enough spills on her skateboard over the years to know how to protect herself. She curled into a ball, arms covering her face, rolled, and snapped back up into a standing position next to the board.

  Marko snapped to his feet as well—and immediately charged Charlie.

  The suddenness of the attack caught Charlie by surprise. Before she even had time to shift into her fighting stance, Marko had lowered his shoulder and rammed into her. The young Fury was far more powerful and agile than Charlie had expected. He knocked the wind out of her while sending her reeling backward into the trunk of a parked car. The trunk caught her in the small of her back, sending a lightning bolt of pain up her spine. And then Marko’s fist was sailing toward her face.

  Charlie dodged to the side as fast as she could, although it wasn’t quite fast enough. She avoided a direct blow to her nose, but Marko still clipped her chin, slamming her teeth together and making her reel.

  Charlie used that momentum and spun away from the next blow, but her head was ringing.

  She realized she was out of her league.

  The instructors in her self-defense classes had been going easy on her. She was only a beginner, able to take down an uncoordinated lummox like the pool guy back in Snowmass—but she was in serious danger now that she was facing a brutal, talented fighter like Marko.

  The Fury was powerful and angry. If he landed another blow to her head, he could certainly knock her out, if not kill her.

  Charlie knew she should run—but she also knew she couldn’t. Because if she did, then she’d be leaving Pandora to the enemy.

  So she ducked away from Marko as he attacked again, dodging another fist by a fraction of an inch, wondering how on earth she could defeat this guy.

  She certainly wasn’t going to overpower him. And she was too tired and banged up to keep dodging his attacks. She was already hurting so badly she thought she might throw up.

  Marco paused, sizing her up, taking a moment to focus before he assaulted her again.

  Charlie saw the numbers.

  She ran past Marko, catching him by surprise, although he recovered quickly and spun around after her. That still took him a few moments, however, and in that brief space, Charlie kicked the skateboard back toward him, hoping she had timed things just right.

  She had. The skateboard rolled directly under Marko’s foot, and he slipped on it. The skateboard shot out from beneath him and he flew forward, the rage on his face now giving way to surprise—and then fear as he saw what was coming.

  Marko plowed headfirst into a lamppost, hitting it so hard that the sound rang across the parking lot. He fell to his knees, seeing stars, and tried to stand again, but before he could, Charlie was right behind him. She grabbed a handful of his hair, and with a surge of adrenaline and rage she’d never known she had, she slammed his head back into the lamppost again.

  Marko collapse
d facedown in the landscaping.

  Charlie bent over and threw up.

  She felt dizzy and wiped out and in more pain than she could ever remember. She just wanted to sit down and cry.

  But she couldn’t.

  She threw up once more, then wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, swept the hair back from her face, and started to search for the book.

  It was lying at the end of a row of cars, close to the rear bumper of one. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Einstein’s book. The cover had torn off in the fall, but overall the book was still intact.

  Charlie staggered over to it.

  When she bent to pick it up, a wave of exhaustion swept over her and she sank to her knees. As she did, something whistled over her head, moving so fast she could feel it searing the air, and then the rear windshield of one of the cars shattered.

  Someone was shooting at her.

  NINETEEN

  There was no time to grab the book. Instead, Charlie dove between the two cars closest by, hitting the ground so hard that it jarred her already battered body. The impact stung, although not as much as getting shot in the head would have.

  Another window shattered, glass raining down on her, but for the moment she was protected from the shooter.

  Despite this, Charlie found herself gripped by a fear unlike any she had ever felt. She realized she had made a big mistake and let her guard down. Of course Marko would have backup. There were six of these guys.

  She had never been shot at before. No one had ever wanted her dead. She was only twelve, for Pete’s sake. She should never have been in this position. Where was Dante now that she needed him?

  Charlie knew she was on the edge of a full-blown panic attack. Her heart was racing. She was hyperventilating. Her thoughts were scattered. She had to pee—for real this time. She wanted to cry.