The Serpent's Curse

by Tony Abbott

  “Take a roundabout route to Red Square,” Terence told them privately before he was led away. “Switch cabs, zigzag, do what you can to lose any pursuers. I trust you’ll get there eventually. When you do, stay put. Do nothing. I will meet you. Seriously, do nothing until I get there, understood?”

  “Yes,” Wade said, then thought, It’s just us again.

  Out on the street, Wade and Lily hailed a cab, awkwardly made their first destination known to the driver, and quickly crossed the city. Two cars were obviously following them. “Stopsky heresky please,” Lily blurted out at a busy intersection, which the driver surprisingly understood and forgave, even as she apologized. She overpaid him in euros, then they jumped out and raced down one street, cut through to another, and snagged another taxi before their pursuers could spot them. They left that taxi three dark blocks from the enormous Red Square. Strong winds blew snow in tiny cyclones up and down the empty street. The cab drove away. They waited in the shadows of a deep doorway.

  Satisfied that the Brotherhood had not followed them, Wade pulled out the paper Aleksandr had given them, huddled against the wind, and tried to study the drawing. But all he saw in his mind were Sara and Darrell and Becca and his father, and he could only imagine the terror of what was happening at Greywolf. “I hope they’re okay. The others, I mean—”

  “I know who you mean,” Lily said, crouching up against him in the doorway. “I’m thinking about them, too. But we have work here. Come on.”

  He tried to reset his thoughts and focus on the paper again. “Okay, if you’re right, the first clue is Red Square, but what do we do when we get there?”

  “Hey, I deciphered the first clue,” she said. “Now it’s your turn.”

  “Thanks so much.”

  “While you think, let’s keep moving,” she said. “And I mean it. You think.”

  They marched out of the doorway into the wind, crossed two streets, doubled back, and moved forward until the tunneled arches of the famed Resurrection Gate loomed ahead of them. They waited where they had agreed to meet Terence, but he didn’t come and didn’t come.

  Lily shook her head. “We need to go on. Terence may be hours. We don’t have hours. The journey to the end of the sea is long, and we’re nearly there. What does the triangle inside the square mean?”

  Wade had asked himself the same question. “It’s technically an upside down V; the bottom isn’t closed, as in a triangle.”

  Lily gave him a face. “Helpful, Einstein. Alek said his Guardian friend was an Egyptologist. They’re all about pharaohs and pyramids and deserts and mummies—” She stopped, whipped out her tablet, and powered it on. “I’m searching ‘Red Square’ and ‘Egypt’ to see if there’s any kind of clue here. What about the numbers? Come on. Figure out the numbers while we walk.”

  They crept through under the gate’s deep archway and came out alongside the bulky, ornate, redbrick State Historical Museum. Its gold awnings were heavy with new snow. They paused at the corner and looked south across the vast, deserted square. It was already covered by a thickening blanket of white; snow was blowing around in more twisters.

  “The numbers, I don’t get,” he said, slowing under the first streetlight. “Forgetting for a second the upside-down V, I’ve been trying to find a pattern in the numbers, but I don’t see one. Seven, one, nine, three, blank, blank, blank. If there was a pattern, I might be able to figure out the last three. They might be a combination or an entry code. But I can’t find the sequence. Maybe I can use the calculator on the tablet—”

  “Oh.”

  “What?”

  She pointed across the square through the squalling snow. Against the high red wall of the Kremlin fortress stood a stumpy pyramid of red and black stone. “There.”

  “What about it?” he asked.

  “Well, (a) it’s a pyramid. And (b) it’s the Lenin mausoleum. Not John Lennon, but Vladimir Ilyich Lenin, one of the leaders of the Russian Revolution. And (c) maybe your eyes aren’t as good as mine because of all the reading you do, but if you look at the lettering on the front of the tomb, the red lettering against the black, you’ll see what I see. It says Lenin. Of course, it’s in Russian, so the L in Lenin is not a regular L, as in Lily, but an upside-down V. Look at it.”

  He did. Through the whirling flakes he read the letters.

  ∧ Е Н И Н

  He made a sound. “Whoa . . . is that it?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, tugging Alek’s scroll from him, “but if the outside box does mean Red Square, then the upside-down V could mean a building in Red Square. That would make me think that maybe the numbers tell us something about the upside-down-V building. Maybe that’s the way the clue goes. From outside to inside.”

  From outside to inside? Lily was being pretty brilliant.

  Wade studied the tomb. It sat snugly against the Kremlin wall, a squat, five-level pyramid of granite and marble, forty feet tall. It vaguely reminded him of a stepped Aztec temple. In one way it was small, like the foundation of a much taller structure that was never built. In another way, the building was grimly impressive, its multiple levels catching the light of the square in odd and ominous ways.

  Because it was the resting place of a maybe-controversial Russian leader, it was heavily guarded. From that distance, it appeared to have eight, maybe ten fully armed soldiers stationed around it.

  “Okay, but why there?” he asked.

  “Because Lenin is embalmed,” she said, wagging her tablet. “It says here that every year and a half they redo the embalming to keep him looking fresh and natural. I’m guessing that Alek’s Guardian friend was an Egyptologist who knew about embalming, and that he worked on Lenin and hid Serpens in there while he was doing embalming stuff.”

  “Your face turns green whenever you say embalming, you know,” Wade said.

  “I feel it doing that.”

  On either side of the tomb and following the Kremlin wall was a loose row of blue spruce trees. They were impeccably trimmed, of nearly identical size, and now ornamented and sagging with heavy late-season snow.

  “So . . . the Copernicus relic is in Lenin’s tomb?” Wade said.

  “One plus one equals Lenin’s tomb,” she said.

  “Speaking of numbers, what about the numbers?” he asked.

  “That’s so your department, math head,” she said. “Come on.”

  They paused close to the facade of the Historical Museum, then darted over the cobblestones to where the Kremlin wall jutted out. They peeked around the abutment to scout out the mausoleum guards.

  “Two guards on this side of the tomb and six spread across the front,” Lily said. “I don’t see any at all covering the back. There are probably two or more on the far side. You know, maybe the numbers are a Russian phone number.”

  He gave her a look. “I think modern Russian phone numbers have more than seven digits.”

  “Digits, huh?” She counted the guards again. “Maybe it’s an old number.”

  “Right. Maybe it’s Lenin’s home phone number from 1924, but nobody knows the last three digits because how do you phone a dead guy?”

  She looked at him. “You could try a little harder, you know. We’re out of time. We need to do this. Then we need to get out of Russia forever.”

  At the word Russia, Wade’s brain twitched. In their time there, he’d never come to terms with the country. His “map” of Russia was false, based on the insane things they’d done over the last few days, the danger they’d been in, the number of times they’d nearly died, the terror about Sara’s fate. The dread of what was happening at Greywolf weighed on him like lead. He’d seen Lubyanka and Vorkuta, but he’d never really gotten to know Russia. Now, like Lily, all he wanted to do was leave it.

  “Our best bet is to make our way behind the trees,” Lily said. She slid past him, weaving through a stretch of temporary fencing. They flattened together against the Kremlin wall. Wade figured they were a couple hundred yards from the tomb. His
chest ached. This was ridiculous. A movie. What if they were actually spotted? Caught? Fired on?

  And yet, the moment the tomb guards looked off toward the cathedral, he trotted down the narrow space between the trees and the Kremlin wall, toward the back corner of the tomb, with Lily right after him. Ridiculous or not, they were doing it and getting closer to the center of the onion.

  Then Lily went to stone. “Look.”

  There was a narrow set of steps at the back of the structure, leading down several feet from ground level to a steel door at the bottom of the steps.

  “A basement.”

  “Do tombs have basements?” he whispered.

  “Maybe. This is Russia. What do we know?” She leaned out as far as she could and stared at the tomb. “Besides, there’s something on the wall next to the door. I think it’s a keypad. There are your digits for you, math boy.”

  The soldiers shifted slightly, then froze like columns, unmoving, except for their eyes, which were staring forward. The kids waited for some kind of noise distraction, and after a few breathless minutes, it came. A siren blared several blocks away from the square. An ambulance or fire engine, wheeling through the streets, honking and wailing. Then a second one, following the first. Wade and Lily left the cover of the trees and darted the twenty feet to the back corner of the mausoleum and down the narrow steps before the sirens died. The keypad was set at eye level next to the door frame.

  “This is where you shine, number boy,” she said. “Or get us killed. Your choice.”

  His chest tightened. His heart didn’t stop booming. Keypads. Lily was right. A single wrong entry and they were done for. A squad of Russian soldiers were only yards away, and they probably had orders to shoot to kill, no questions asked.

  “Have you figured out the pattern yet?” she asked.

  He shook his head. “There are a thousand combinations. Just let me think.” And he tried to. He nearly did. But the thought of all the possible combinations froze him. Key in the wrong numbers and we’re dead. With one unknown number, he might have had a chance to determine the pattern, but three unknowns? He stared blankly at the keypad as if it would somehow tell him the answer. It didn’t. He looked at the strip of paper for the numbers. He didn’t have to. He had memorized the sequence.

  7, 1, 9, 3, ? ? ?

  He tugged off his glove, then ran his shaking index finger over the keypad, not touching it, but tracing out the first four numbers. Seven. One. Nine. Three. He did it again. A third time. A fourth. Something unfroze in his brain. Something thawed and shifted.

  “Your fingers aren’t touching the pad, you know,” Lily said.

  “I know,” he said. “But look at this.” He repeated the sequence twice for her. “See?”

  “Your finger not touching the pad? I do see that.”

  “No, look again. There’s a shape. What shape does it make when you key in seven, one, nine, and three?” He moved his index finger once again over the keys.

  “Um . . . N,” she said. “So seven, one, nine, three is N, as in . . . Wait, you’re not saying N for Nicolaus? Are you saying the next three numbers form a C for Copernicus?”

  He found himself grinning at her. “Why not? It’s what Brother Semyon did at the monastery, moving the stones in the shape of an M, for Maxim. It’s an old trick, a simple one, but unless you know where and when to do it, you wouldn’t guess it. If this is it, making the shape of a letter with numbers, the three numbers for C would be two, four, and eight. The whole sequence, for N and C is seven, one, nine, three, two, four, eight. I’m going to do it.” He glared at her. “Unless you stop me.”

  She crossed her arms.

  “Okay, then.” He raised his trembling finger and tapped in the numbers.

  Seven . . .

  One . . .

  Nine . . .

  Three . . .

  Two . . .

  Four . . .

  “Wait!” Lily whispered, clutching his hand suddenly. “It’s not eight. It’s zero. The last three numbers aren’t two, four, eight; they’re two, four, zero.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Because of the other clue. The Copernicus quote, remember? ‘The journey to the end of the sea is long’? Everybody’s been telling us this line, but what if sometimes it isn’t sea—as in splash-splash—but C as in Copernicus? The journey to the end of the C is long. And the Egyptologist meant it that way, as a trick or a pun. Guardians have to be tricky. So the leg of the C doesn’t end at eight. It goes as long as it can. All the way down to zero. Do it, do zero now!”

  “Did you say ‘splash-splash’?”

  “Just. Do. It.”

  Wade lifted his right index finger, held it steady with his left hand, and keyed in the final number.

  Zero.

  7, 1, 9, 3, 2, 4, 0. For NC. Nicolaus Copernicus.

  Nothing happened for a full five seconds. Then there came a soft click. It was followed by a slow sequence of sliding bolts and levers behind the door, ending in a dull thud. Wade stared at Lily. She stared at him.

  Breathing deeply, they pushed on the door together. It opened soundlessly. And side by side, they slipped into the tomb of Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

  CHAPTER FIFTY-NINE

  Greywolf

  Wolves howled and guns blasted as Darrell and Becca pushed from hall to room to passage to the center of the fortress. It stank of animals.

  “Becca, trade you, the jewels for the pipe. I’ll break them.”

  “Not likely, but yeah.” She inserted the relic into the inner pocket of her parka, where Darrell knew she kept the diary. Both relic and diary, he suddenly realized, had belonged to Copernicus.

  The man who’d started this quest.

  The man who, in a roundabout way, had led them here to Darrell’s mother.

  “Darrell!” Becca cried. He turned to hear the frantic scampering of paws. Three wolves broke into the room. They were emaciated and gray. They slid across the floorboards, momentarily startled to see the kids. Their growling was like the grinding of gears.

  “The door at the top of the stairs,” Darrell whispered. “Go!” The wolves leaped up after them, but Roald and Marceline were suddenly there, startling the wolves with gunfire. Two of the creatures bared their fangs and growled, but ran out of the room. The third stood its ground for a second, arched up its hind legs, then ran out, too.

  “Go with the children,” Marceline said to Roald. “I’ll stay here. Go on!”

  “Hurry!” Roald snagged their sleeves as he rushed up with them. “She’s got ammo, and she’s a great shot.”

  From the top of the stairs, they turned to a mirrored hallway. Darrell ran down the hall and found a final set of stairs. Now that they had the Serpens head, it was all about finding his mother. They climbed to the landing. Roald shot at the locked door, a double-wide set of doors, and pushed into a large circular room. It was the inside room of the tower.

  “Sara!” Roald cried out.

  Darrell nearly vomited.

  His mother hung, limp and drugged, inside a cage of metal bands at the center of a horrifying engine of gears and wheels and pistons. A haggard young man jerked out from behind the machine. He had an enormous handgun trained on them.

  “You were never supposed to make it this far,” the man said. “You were supposed to die at the hands of the Red Brotherhood. Or at least the wolves!”

  “What have you done to her?” Darrell screamed. “Get my mother out of that thing!”

  The man barely registered the words, but shot wildly. The bullet ricocheted powerfully off the wall behind them. “Stop or die. I must finish Kronos. I must . . .” His eyes widened, then narrowed, as if his brain was completely fried. Keeping his pistol leveled at the three of them, the man moved his free hand. It scrambled with lightning speed over a keyboard attached by a cable to the machine. The machine resembled a kind of gun, its barrel hinged inward at his mother.

  “We’re taking her out of there,” Roald said, moving toward the machine.
The man raised his gun and shot him.

  In the forearm. Becca screamed. Roald reeled back, dropping his pistol, but stayed on his feet. It was a graze, not serious. “I’m fine,” he said.

  Darrell pulled out the Taser. “We’re going to get her—”

  “Please stop, or I will kill you all!” the man screamed, firing his pistol at the floor in front of Darrell, exploding the flagstones at his feet. “Twelve minutes! Twelve min— No! Eleven! Look! See!” He pointed the gun barrel at a clock mechanism mounted next to Sara. “If you move, I will kill her. And then I will kill you. I must do this.”

  Darrell heard footsteps coming toward them in the hallway. Marceline? The shooting had stopped. Had she neutralized the wolves?

  Marceline Dufort leaped up the stairs and burst into the laboratory, her machine gun raised. The man at the device was startled to see her, and her gun. He thrust his pistol at Sara’s head. “Drop your gun. Kick it here. Or she dies right now.” Marceline placed her gun on the floor and followed his order.

  “You see I must do this,” the man said, his pistol still trained on Darrell’s mother. He moved his free hand back to the keyboard and tapped three times in rapid succession.

  The machine made an urgent sound.

  One very large wheel began to turn.

  CHAPTER SIXTY

  Moscow

  Lily quickly pulled the tomb’s utility door closed behind them and held her breath. No alarm. The NC code had worked. With, naturally, her own brilliant correction.

  She and Wade wound through a sequence of basement hallways until they found a cement staircase with a door at the top. They climbed up. The door was locked, but there was another keypad. Assured by Aleksandr that the Guardian code could override any other, they used it again, and the door lock clicked. They opened it and entered the mausoleum.

  “Oh, man,” Wade breathed.

  She totally agreed.