“You think Vesper One lied about it, just to have an excuse to shoot a hostage?” Hamilton suggested.
“He never needed an excuse,” Dan pointed out. “If all he wanted was blood, he could have murdered everybody on day one.”
“Then there’s only one explanation,” Amy concluded. “If we handed over a fake, it’s because that’s what the Uffizi had hanging on their wall!”
“Yo, man, no fair!” Jonah complained. “They told us what to jack, and we went and jacked it! If it’s the wrong thing, that’s on them!”
Amy sighed. “Even if we could make Vesper One believe that, we have no way to get in touch with the guy.”
“That’s his problem!” Hamilton shot back. “We didn’t ask for a one-way phone!”
“There’s no such thing as his problem, only our problem,” Amy explained wearily. “He holds our people, and he’s just shown that he doesn’t mind shooting hostages. If the ‘Medusa’ is a fake, we have to track down the real one.”
“Are you serious, Amy?” Dan exploded. “That painting’s hundreds of years old! It could be anywhere by now! For all we know, it burned in a fire or sank to the bottom of the ocean!”
Amy set her jaw. “In the clue hunt, we found things on mountaintops and in underwater cities. Why would you doubt we can find this?”
Hamilton was wide-eyed. “Yeah, but where would you even start to look?”
“This is a famous cultural treasure,” Amy replied. “From the moment the paint dried, people were talking about it, writing about it, cataloging it.” She stood up. “We start looking in the library.”
CHAPTER 12
Nellie lay on her bunk in the Vesper holding cell, propped up by pillows donated by the other six hostages.
Young Phoenix had not left her side since the attack. He was pale. “What does it feel like to get shot?”
“I don’t recommend it,” said Nellie in a controlled voice. “Chocolate is definitely better.” She managed a wink.
“Swiss,” Natalie added longingly. Her trips to Harrods always ended in the Imported Confectionery department.
“Could you feel the bullet going in?” Ted asked from a chair in the corner.
“It was more like being hit by a bus,” Nellie replied. “The sensation was all over, not just one spot. The wound itself didn’t start hurting until later.”
“They’re going to send a doctor to take the bullet out, right?” Reagan asked impatiently.
“One would assume so,” put in Alistair, looking worried. “If our captors’ intention was murder, we would all be dead already.”
Nellie shifted her position on the mattress, wincing in pain. “Well, I hope they hurry up about it,” she complained. “If I wanted to be tortured, I’d go to the opera.”
Fiske spoke sharply to the four walls. “We need medical attention immediately. We have a gunshot wound that requires treatment.”
“You’re not going to get through to them by talking like an English professor,” scoffed Reagan. “Hey!” she bawled. “Get a doctor down here! She’s in pain, thanks to you! What are you going to do about it?”
There was a moment of silence as Reagan’s echo reverberated around the cell. Then they heard the rattle and hum of the dumbwaiter system.
Everyone but Nellie and Ted rushed into the main room. Reagan threw open the small door, and they looked inside.
There sat a glass of water and two Tylenol tablets.
Alistair’s cane hand shook with agitated disbelief. “They can’t be serious!”
“I’m afraid they are,” said Fiske in a low voice. “They’re serious about wanting young Nellie to suffer.”
“Ow!”
“Hold still,” Sinead ordered. “And don’t be such a baby.” She dabbed at the angry red mark behind Ian’s ear. “Cat scratches are prone to infection, you know.”
“And that’s my fault?” Ian raged. “Why don’t you lock that animal in the cellar? Or, better still, send him to a violin string factory! Ow! What is this stuff—acid?”
“My own concoction,” she replied cheerfully. “Amy and I use it on our blisters when we do marathon training. Soothing, right?”
“They practice this kind of soothing in the Lucian stronghold — during interrogations.”
The phone rang in the comm. center. Ian consulted the monitor. “It’s Dan.” He pressed a button. “Kabra here.”
Dan’s voice crackled through the attic. “Don’t say it like that,” he complained. “Your name still gives me heartburn. I got your message. What’s the big news?”
“Dan, it’s me,” Sinead spoke up. “Ian and I have been analyzing the footage of the attack on Nellie. We think we’ve found something.”
“Can you put it through to my phone?” Dan requested.
“Already done. Watch.” She began the video feed. “You can’t see the guards’ faces through their masks. But when I freeze it here —” The image isolated the man with the crossbow, zooming in on the back of his neck. Sinead brought it into focus, and, four thousand miles away, Dan watched the magnified picture sharpen — the tag on the inside collar of the jailer’s jacket.
“A label?” he questioned.
“If it’s a small regional outerwear manufacturer, we might be able to narrow down where the hostages are being held.”
“I guess it’s something to go on,” said Dan, not sounding terribly convinced.
“Where’s Amy?” Ian put in. “Will you please get her to call that Evan character? He rings here twenty times a day. He’s either the most mule-headed person who ever lived, or he really likes your sister. She has to have mercy on him — on all of us!”
“Amy’s pretty busy,” Dan told him. “She’s at the library, trying to figure out when the real ‘Medusa’ might have been stolen from the Uffizi and replaced with that copy.”
“If anybody can do it, Amy can,” said Sinead. “She’s a whiz at research.”
Dan was not so sure. “One of the guards told me the Uffizi has never been robbed in living memory — until we did it, I mean. If somebody boosted a painting, it sure isn’t going to be in any library book.”
“What are you three guys doing?” asked Sinead.
“Jonah’s with the mayor of Florence, getting the key to the city. Hamilton’s helping Amy. I’m” — the voice faltered — “I’m just picking up a few things we need.”
Dan ended the call and pocketed his phone. Picking up a few things, he had told Sinead and Ian. Like thirty-nine.
Amy would blow a gasket if she found out. But just watching the video clip of the shooting was all the confirmation Dan needed that what he was doing was absolutely necessary. Sure, Nellie was alive. Sure, Vesper One had just been making a statement. This time. Sooner or later, the guy was going to feel the need for a stronger statement. And people were going to wind up dead.
Amy was wrong about one thing: Vesper One did not hold all the cards in this lethal game. He had the hostages, sure. Yet only Dan’s photographic memory had the recipe for Gideon Cahill’s master serum.
Dan knew the myriad reasons against it. It was too dangerous; no one should have that much power. The mere fact that such a formula existed, and was therefore up for grabs, might reignite the treachery and feuding of the Clue hunt.
Those arguments made sense — or at least they had yesterday. Nellie’s shooting changed everything. Now the stakes were even higher. Sky high.
Another difference: He was finding it hard to care anymore.
If enough bad stuff happens, the bad becomes normal. Risks aren’t risks when the consequences are no worse than your regular life.
Dan had been only four when his parents died. He’d been so young that now he couldn’t even be certain if he remembered the actual pain of their loss or the pain he’d felt hearing about it as he grew older. But for about thirty terrible seconds yesterday, Amy and Dan had believed Nellie was dead. There was no confusion over how that had felt — a toxic cocktail of grief and rage.
&nb
sp; He had watched the video of the attack over and over again — even after he’d learned that the shooting had not been fatal. Amy said he’d become obsessed with it, that it was clouding his mind. But for Dan, the footage made everything crystal clear.
He would re-create Gideon’s serum, and he would use the power it gave him to destroy the Vespers’ plan and free the hostages.
That’s what he was doing south of the Arno, in an old district dotted with odd shops and studios. He had already found iron solute and a solution containing ions of tungsten from a tiny machine shop, and myrrh from a Chinese herbalist. He knew it was going to take time to collect some of the rare ingredients, like the raw liquid silk of a Bombyx mori caterpillar, native only to Asia. But if Gideon Cahill could make it happen five hundred years ago, then Dan Cahill could get the job done in the twenty-first century, with the aid of a cell phone and Internet access.
Next on the list — amber.
A jewelry shop …
CHAPTER 13
Cahills — did you enjoy our little movie? I trust you didn’t overdo it on the popcorn.
If we do not receive the real “Medusa” in 96 hours, you will be watching the sequel. This one will not have such a happy ending.
Vesper One
Amy sat at the ancient wooden table in the research section of the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, the largest library in Italy. Piles of books surrounded her, and an assortment of printed photocopied documents lay scattered among them — police files on art thieves, and known buyers and sellers of stolen paintings.
Somewhere in all this reading material was the answer that could lead her to the real “Medusa.” Thousands of pages to be examined, more than half not even in English, and all she could do was stare at the tiny screen of the Vesper phone.
Ninety-six hours — four days. It wasn’t much time when lives hung in the balance, and Vesper One had already proved that his terrible threats were one hundred percent legitimate.
She choked up for an instant, thinking of Nellie’s face, twisted in agony.
What if we can’t do it?
McIntyre had acted as if Amy and Dan taking the lead in this crisis was the most natural thing in the world. Yet learning kung fu and turning the attic into a comm. center didn’t magically transform you into a leader. She was barely managing to keep her relationship with Evan from falling apart. How could she be expected to carry the weight of seven lives on her shoulders? If seven lives were all that was at stake! Amy had a sinking feeling that kidnapping was just a tool to the Vespers. They had bigger plans, awful plans.
But plans for what?
It was terrifying not to know what she was up against — like a chess game where the board or any one of the pieces might turn out to be a bomb.
Where was Dan? He was supposed to meet her here. She could certainly use another pair of eyes to help her go through all this material. Right now it was just Amy and Hamilton. Hamilton was loyal, and a tireless worker. But around a library, he was about as useful as silk gloves to a snake.
He teetered into the room, a tower of large ancient tomes in his arms. “Here’s the stuff you asked for from the rare books department.” He set the load heavily down on a free space on the table, kicking up a huge dust cloud.
Amy watched, amused, as the whitish puff swirled around him like a halo. “You look like a dust angel.”
Hamilton laughed on a sneeze. “Yeah, kind of like those Mud Angel guys —” He noted the blank expression on her face. “You know — from that book on the Uffizi. They had this huge flood, and all these paintings got soaked. So the Mud Angels fixed them up.”
Amy pounced on the thick volume Hamilton was pointing to and speed-read her way through the 1966 flood. Hamilton was right! With millions of artworks and rare books in danger from the worst flooding since the sixteenth century, the Angeli del Fango — Mud Angels — moved the entire collection to dry havens in a series of churches and public buildings around Florence. Thanks to their heroic efforts, many of the affected works were saved.
“Hamilton, you’re a genius!” Amy exclaimed.
Hamilton looked vaguely pleased. “Told you.”
“The 1966 flood was the only time the ‘Medusa’ was out of the gallery,” Amy reasoned. “Even if it never got wet, it still would have been removed with all the rest! Then, while it was sitting in a church, someone swapped it with a forgery!”
Hamilton nodded, impressed. “How do we find where it is now? That was almost fifty years ago.”
“At least we’ve got a place to start—the Mud Angels.”
“Yeah, but all we know is what they did,” Hamilton reasoned. “We don’t know their names and addresses or anything like that.”
Amy smiled. “These guys put together the biggest mass rescue in the history of art. I’ll bet the Janus know exactly who they are.” She took out her phone. “Let’s call Jonah.”
The key to the city of Florence was about two feet long, and painted a garish gold.
Hamilton was fascinated by it. “Wow! How big is the lock?”
Jonah laughed. “There is no lock, cuz. It’s an honorary gig. Back in my crib in LA, I’ve got a whole shed full of keys from different cities. Want to know the kicker? I can’t get at them. The gardener lost the key to the shed.”
They were in Jonah’s limo, en route to Peretola Airport, where Jonah’s plane was parked. The star’s Janus connections had come through once again. The secure fax machine aboard the G6 had already received a hundred and twenty-seven pages of highly classified information — the complete Janus file on the Mud Angels.
Jonah tapped on the glass partition that separated the chauffeur from the passenger area. “Just take us right out onto the tarmac,” he instructed. “We called ahead, so the airport cops are down with it.”
The car was admitted through a security gate into the private airfield. They tooled around the small terminal building, where an appalling sight met their eyes.
Jonah’s jet was surrounded by a mass of humanity, hundreds strong, swarming the craft from nose to tail.
“Back up!” Jonah ordered sharply.
The driver threw the limo into reverse, and they retreated into the cover of the building.
Hamilton was bug-eyed. “Who are those people?”
Jonah held his head. “Man, I should have known it was a mistake to say I’d be leaving town soon! Why do fans have to be so literal?”
“Are they going to let us go get the faxes?” Hamilton asked.
Jonah stared at him. “You’re kidding, right?”
“What do we do?”
“First,” Jonah said thoughtfully, “we get a do-rag on that blond hair of yours.…”
When the limo drove out onto the tarmac toward Jonah’s plane, the crowd reaction was a stampede. “Jonah! Ti amo!”
“Stay in Firenze!”
“Gangsta mio!”
“Jonah!”
There was no response from the limo. All the fans saw of their idol was a tiny sliver of red bandanna through a two-inch gap of open window.
As the surging throng drew closer, the driver stepped on the gas. The big car pulled away from the jet, circled it, and headed back around the terminal building. The mass oozed after it like a giant amoeba.
On the other side of the concourse, a lone figure stepped out of the janitors’ exit and looked around furtively. He wore track pants and a matching warm-up jacket, both at least three sizes too large.
Jonah watched as the limo drew the crowd away and then made a run out to his plane. Just before he ducked inside, he caught a glimpse of the car, stalled now, completely besieged by screaming fans. He could just make out the sight of Hamilton, squeezed into Jonah’s jeans, being drawn out through the window feetfirst.
Oh, well, Hamilton was Tomas, and they were known to be strong and resilient. And, Jonah hoped, fast runners.
CHAPTER 14
127 pages of Janus documents on the Mud Angels.
68 pages of polic
e records on art thieves and known buyers and sellers of stolen art.
1 large table.
4 Cahill cousins.
“Okay,” said Amy, “we read these files, and nobody gets up from this table — not even to go to the bathroom — until we’ve figured out who took the ‘Medusa,’ who has it now, and where we have to go to get it back.”
“I can’t read,” Hamilton complained. “My eyes are swollen shut.”
“Sometimes you have to take one for the team, yo,” Jonah told him.
“I didn’t take one for the team,” said Hamilton through clenched teeth. “I took one for you. And if it gets back to my old man that a Holt was kicked around by a bunch of ten-year-old girls, I’ll have to find another family!”
“Cut it out,” Dan snapped, his face pinched. “Bad stuff happens to all of us because of the family we were born into.” The serum was very much on his mind — seven ingredients collected, thirty-two to go. “Let’s just do this. Think of your sister, Hamilton. Or Phoenix. Or Nellie.”
The four dove into the dossiers, and silence fell in the hotel suite. Their world became a blizzard of data — names, addresses, dates of birth, career highlights, prison records. Every random fact and mundane footnote had to be given full concentration. There was no way of knowing which casual detail would turn out to be the one that would lead them to the “Medusa.” Would it come soon, or take hours — even days? Would it come at all?
After the first hour, all four had splitting headaches. By the third, Amy’s ban on bathroom breaks had to be lifted.
Dan was returning from one of these when he caught a glimpse of a profile Jonah had just tossed onto the growing discard pile.
“Hey, that guy’s in here twice.”
It got Amy’s attention. “There’s another file with his name?”
Dan shook his head. “Not the name; the face.”
“The pictures are faxed,” Hamilton noted. “You can’t see much.”
“If Dan recognizes that guy, then it’s the real thing.” Amy picked up the discards. “Let’s find him.”
The Medusa Plot Page 8