The Serpent's Curse

by Tony Abbott

  The inside of the tomb resembled a modern hotel lobby more than a crypt, except, of course, for the giant coffin.

  There were lights embedded in the ceiling, bare stone walls, marble floors. It wasn’t as frigid as outside by any means, but it wasn’t room temp, either. Tomb temp, Lily thought, then dismissed it. This was a place of reverence, whatever you thought of the man lying there.

  Wade was dumbstruck, barely moving. “Where would you hide a relic here?”

  “The shorter list is where couldn’t you hide one,” she said. “Serpens could be anywhere.” Though not, she hoped, inside the coffin.

  Or sarcophagus, as the websites had called it. It stood on a raised platform in the center of the large square room. The base was framed in marble. Above it was a bronze sculpture of cloth spilling tastefully out from the open casket. Several feet above the casket itself stood a construction of four tiers of marble and wood. In between were walls of thick glass, angled slightly outward from the base to the larger top. Inside the glass, lying in the casket as still as stone, was the embalmed body of Vladimir Lenin.

  She swallowed hard and took a step toward it.

  The dead leader’s head and shoulders were—nice touch—tilted upward on a dark ruby pillow. To make for better viewing by the daily crowds, she guessed. Lenin’s eyes were closed, but the embalming was so good that they looked as if they had just recently shut themselves. His hands were poised individually, not crossing each other at the waist, but separated. They had, if Lily could bring her mind to say it, a kind of personality. The right hand was folded on itself as if holding something. She really hoped it wasn’t a diamond serpent. The left hand rested lightly on the upper left thigh.

  “Okay, let’s get to work,” Wade said.

  She shook her head to focus her thoughts. “Take two walls. Go over every inch of them. But remember that people are here all the time to pay their respects. So maybe the best hiding place will be a place where people don’t go very much.”

  “Good point,” Wade said softly. “I guess we have to be as clever as the Guardian who hid the relic. We have no real information on who he was, but we know the NC trick with the keypad. Maybe there’s something like that going on inside, too.”

  “I just hope it’s as far away as possible from him,” she said. “You know, the third person in the room.” She thought she heard Wade chuckling.

  She hoped it was Wade chuckling.

  For his part, Wade wanted to think logically about their search, but Guardian code makers were among the most sophisticated in the world, so it could be devilishly clever. Or devilishly simple. Or intuitive. Or impossible.

  The four walls were clean, just flat or stepped marble blocks up to the ceiling, with minimal ornaments and light fixtures, none of which looked like it held a relic, and all of which was far too public anyway. So they moved toward the center of the tomb, or rather Lily did, because Wade found he had stopped moving.

  “What’s the matter? Outside the obvious one of breaking into a tomb?”

  “I don’t know.” Wade slipped the strip of paper that Alek had given them from his pocket and stared at the simple cleverness of the solution to the entry code. Then he scanned the four corners of the room and the public entrance on the front wall, an entrance that jutted out into Red Square. That entrance was just like the zero on a keypad. He looked down at the floor, then up at the ceiling.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked. “Because I hope you’re thinking.”

  “I think I am thinking,” he said. “And I’m thinking that the NC thing could be more than just the entry code. I mean, it’s what Aleksandr told us. No matter how many times codes are changed, this will still work. Well, maybe that’s the beauty of it. The simplicity. Because look at the layout of the floor. It juts forward, like the zero on the keypad. What if we trace the same two letters in the room, as if they form the same shape as the letters?”

  Lily visually took in the four corners, the middle of the back wall, the right wall (from Lenin’s perspective), and the entrance. “I don’t know what we’ll see that way that we didn’t see before.”

  “Maybe it isn’t what we see,” he said. “Or what we see.”

  “Fine, be cryptical. I don’t have a better idea.”

  Together, they stood under the ceiling light in the lower left corner. It suddenly flickered out. They walked slowly to the upper left corner, making the first “stroke” of the N. There was another ceiling light there. It too went out when they stood under it. They made their way around the sarcophagus to the lower right, then finally to the upper right, completing the N. There were ceiling lights in both corners, and both went out.

  “That was the N. Now the C,” he said. Starting at the middle of the back wall, where there was also a ceiling light, they went to the middle of the side wall, then down to the entrance—the long journey to the end of the C—where there was a final ceiling light. Those three blinked and died, too.

  “The lights are sensors!” she said.

  All seven lights came on again, and from the center of the room came the sound of something sliding. To Wade, it seemed more mechanical than electronic. The sound continued for another few seconds, then stopped with a click.

  “The sarcophagus,” he whispered. His arms and legs tingled as he walked slowly to the large glass coffin, but Lily focused on the source of the noise first. She scurried over to the foot of the coffin. The marble molding around the base was unbroken except in one spot, where a short length of black marble was protruding two or three inches. As the ceiling light haloed her face and hair, she knelt and pried at the close-fitting molding.

  It slid out another three inches and stopped.

  Wade watched as she pushed her fingers behind the molding, and felt around and around, until her whole body quivered.

  “Lily?”

  From inside she drew a small rectangular item and held it up to the light.

  It was a burnished wooden box, two inches deep and as long and wide as two decks of playing cards set end to end.

  She gasped. “The box is so heavy. Wade? Could this be it? Omigod, what if Darrell and Becca find the head? We’ll have both parts.”

  “We don’t have anything yet,” he said. “Open the box.”

  She let out all her breath. “Okay . . . okay . . .” Holding the bottom of the box in her hand, she undid the simple clasp and tilted the lid.

  Silver light bloomed out of the inside of the box. She glanced away, blinked, then looked back. Her face burned with the glow. “Wade . . . ”

  The body of Serpens was a thing of rods and hinges and wires—coiled and braided into the shape of an angled S. It gleamed of silver, tooled and delicately shaped and studded with diamonds of varying sizes and shapes. It shone like a constellation, its own impossible source of brilliant light.

  “It’s electric, Wade. Or, I don’t know.”

  “It looks like it’s moving,” he whispered, feeling his fingers reaching for it, wanting to touch it.

  “It’s hot, and it’s humming or something,” she said. “And it will move after we connect it to the head,” Lily breathed. “Oh, man, Wade. After all this, after the whole long journey, I can’t believe we actually—”

  There was a sudden dull whump from the square outside, a muffled blast, then yelling. This was followed by a distant spray of machine-gun fire. An engine revved noisily. Then another smaller blast, closer this time. Next came a rapid series of concussions. The floor shook beneath them.

  “What in the world—” Wade started.

  The square outside thundered with explosions and the rumbling of vehicles approaching the tomb swiftly. There was another blast. The walls shook, and a bright spear of light flashed across the room. Alarms sounded as a second entrance at the rear of the tomb swung in and closed quickly with a breath of frigid air.

  Lily clamped down the lid of the box. “Wade, no, no, no—”

  Before he could move, the room was filled with heavily arm
ed soldiers dressed in black parkas and ski masks. The Brotherhood? FSB? He couldn’t tell. They surrounded both of them. One who looked like he might be the leader grabbed the box from Lily and threw her into Wade. She yelled at the man.

  “Shut up,” he growled. “Get up the stairs. Both of you.”

  “Stairs?” Wade hadn’t seen any.

  The other men pushed both kids roughly to the back corner through a narrow hall to a set of marble stairs that led upward. They forced them to climb. Wade felt as if he and Lily were being led to their execution. She shook as she held on to his arm. “Omigod, Wade,” she whispered. “What . . . what are they going to do?”

  There was a door at the top of the steps. One of the men shot at the handle and kicked the door open. Snow swirled in at them. The air quaked to the sound of gunfire and the heavy rolling of military vehicles.

  Wade didn’t move, and he held Lily so tightly she couldn’t, either.

  “Go!” the officer said, and they were suddenly outside on one of the steps of the pyramid. It was a kind of reviewing platform overlooking the square. It had a marble wall about waist high. The square was a battleground. There were at least two military tanks now, several transports, some with military insignia, others unmarked. The army against the Brotherhood.

  All at once, the air was different, full of pressure. Through the gunfire and the roar of the wind came a heavy thwack-thwack that overwhelmed every sound.

  “A helicopter!” Lily cried.

  A small black helicopter thundered out of the storm overhead. Snow flew around them as the chopper hovered a mere two feet from the roof of the top level. Wade clutched Lily to himself, each bracing the other to keep from being blown off, while both were locked in the vise-grip of several Brotherhood troops. They mounted the final steps to the roof itself.

  The blades slowed. The door of the helicopter opened. Galina pounced out and calmly received the box from the officer who had taken it.

  She turned to Wade. With a surprisingly penetrating voice over the sound of the battle below and the helicopter above, she said, “It turns out to be a good thing you two did not die in Vorkuta. You have found Serpens for me. And now that this relic will lead me to the next one, you have outlived your usefulness.”

  Galina slid the box lid off.

  The object inside shone like a full moon on her face, flashing among the whirling snowflakes and beaming into her two-colored eyes like a spotlight, a laser. In that glow, Wade saw, Galina was more beautiful, if that was possible, than at the coal mine. Pale and pure in a strange way. Unless what he thought was beauty was something else. Electricity? A raw obsession? Hunger? As if she had to have the relics? As if she needed the Eternity Machine?

  As if there were another deadline that only she was under?

  A very rare and almost unknown modality of cancer.

  Galina drew in a very long, very slow breath. “The body of Serpens. I have recovered what Rubashov’s father stole from the tomb of my . . . Grand Master . . . Albrecht von Hohenzollern. . . .”

  Wade’s chest was frozen. “How did you even know we were here?”

  She raised her eyes from the relic. “Once I saw that you had survived Vorkuta, I knew that the good doctor had given you a clue. The Brotherhood followed you from the airport, partway, at least. Your friend Terence Ackroyd managed to set a little ruse for us, too. But I deduced the rest.”

  The square echoed with the rapid hammering of machine guns, then two unmarked transports exploded in flames. The lead officer stepped forward. “Miss Krause, the tide is turning against us.”

  Galina drew a gun on Wade and Lily. There was a strange, resigned look on her face. It was the end, Wade thought. They were out of time, unless . . .

  All at once, he pushed Lily with all his might off the edge of the roof. She disappeared over the side, swearing at the top of her lungs. He jumped after her, yelling “Dive-dive-dive!” as bullets flew, ricocheting off the marble walls of the platform below. Lily was on her feet, screaming along the passage, as machine-gun fire thudded the walls above and below them. She tumbled down the passage into the tomb, Wade at her heels. They raced down the stairs all the way to the subbasement just as an explosion thundered against the front wall of the tomb.

  They stole out the same door they had used to enter.

  Amid the chaos of automatic gunfire and vehicles and wailing sirens and whirling snow, Wade watched the helicopter ascend over the tomb, over the square, and move west across the city. “Galina has it! Lily, she has our relic!”

  In the confusion of the final military assault on the Brotherhood, an unmarked car skidded to a stop at the rear corner of the tomb. Chief Inspector Yazinsky was behind the wheel. “In!” he ordered as Terence bolted from the backseat and dragged them both in with steely arms. “We need to leave Moscow right now!”

  “What about the others?” Wade cried as he hit the floor with Lily. “Sara? Becca?”

  “The city’s riot forces are sealing off the square!” the inspector said. “Not even I shall be able to pass!”

  “But what about Sara?” Wade asked.

  “There’s no news!” said Terence. “We have to leave now.”

  The car tore away from the crisscrossing fire, racing past the Kremlin wall.

  “But Sara,” Lily cried. “Tell us!”

  “We know nothing!” the inspector cried. “Nothing!”

  CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

  Greywolf

  Seven minutes to midnight became six minutes to midnight.

  The machine—Kronos—shuddered as if it were alive. Darrell heard its clock ticking unceasingly. It had an open mechanism of fine gears and claws spinning rapidly, and hands of a sort that were turning counterclockwise. The large wheel looked as if it was growing hot, and its barrel . . . was aimed directly at his mother’s chest. The whole thing was counting down.

  “Take my mother out of there!” he screamed at the man fiddling with the machine’s knobs and levers. “Get her out or I swear—”

  “I’m sorry,” said the crazy man, having scooped up Marceline’s gun before they could stop him. “I’ve never hurt anyone. But you see my time is nearly up. I haven’t any left. I had a mother once, too, but I must . . . They want 1517, you know. This is unusual. I hope you see that. A master programmer who shoots people.”

  “He’s crazy,” Becca whispered to Darrell and his stepfather. “We have to get Sara out by ourselves.”

  Darrell edged slowly across the room, step by step with Becca and his stepfather, the pipe swinging in his hand like a pendulum. “I’m going to get her out.”

  “Stop where you are,” squealed a voice behind them.

  Ebner von Braun was standing by the door. He had a pistol in each hand, one aimed at Becca’s forehead, the other at Darrell’s chest just below the neck. He sneered. “Your mother is in the hands of Kronos now.” His voice was hoarse, weary. “You are too late to do anything but watch her leave us.”

  Darrell’s anger stuck like a knife in his throat. He wanted to tear the bent man limb from limb. But the guy was armed. He was well armed.

  The machine went into another mode now. Its wheel began to turn quickly.

  “Five minutes,” Ebner said, his feet firmly planted on the floor. “Isn’t it exciting?”

  Roald was standing directly behind Darrell. Becca glared at Darrell, as if to get his attention. I understand, he thought. The guy is an insane creep, and you’re afraid.

  But that wasn’t it. Becca flicked her glance down to the pocket of her jacket. The relic was there. So close to the German he could probably sniff it, if he wasn’t such a demon-idiot-creep-troll. Then Becca raised three fingers so only Darrell could see them.

  Three fingers! Three fingers mean . . . create a diversion!

  Before he could devise anything, he heard a whimper. “Darrell, I love you.”

  It was his mother. Darrell swung around to see her lift up her pale face.

  “I love you . . . ,” she repeated.


  Her faint voice exploded something inside him, and he knew what the diversion was. He jumped back and jerked the pipe around as far and as fast as he could. Into Helmut Bern’s forehead. The man groaned and fell, dropping his gun. Ebner raised his suddenly, when Becca shrieked at the top of her lungs and Roald rammed him like an offensive tackle.

  Becca then twirled impossibly and jumped with both feet on Ebner’s right arm. His other gun went off. He screamed. His shoe had burst open and was smoking. He’d shot his own foot, the bullet going through and then grazing Marceline in the side. Darrell scrambled for the machine gun. He raised it to the cage lock. “Mom, look away—”

  “Give it to me!” cried his stepfather. Taking it from him, he pressed the barrel to the cage lock. He pulled the trigger. The blast was deafening. The chain blew apart.

  “Stand away from Kronos! Leave your mother inside!” Ebner had wobbled to his feet, his gun in his bleeding hand, and he had it pressed into Becca’s throat. “Move and the girl dies. Then you die. Finish it, Bern. Finish Kronos!”

  Bern staggered to his feet, bloody forehead and all, and resecured Sara in the cage. Darrell and the others were frozen where they stood. Bern jammed a quivering finger on the keyboard. “And the code begins to upload. Only three minutes now.”

  “No!” Darrell cried helplessly. “Please!”

  The sound of the machine changed again, growing to a fever pitch. The giant wheel was spinning faster and faster, the barrel glowing with a white heat, while three jagged-edged brass cones located on the base of the machine began to rotate.

  Becca couldn’t think. As if the oxygen to her brain were shut off. The diversion hadn’t worked. If there was a chance, any chance at all, she alone had it.

  “Here,” she said. “Here, take it.”

  Darrell turned. “Bec, no . . . no . . .”

  Her hands shook. She thrust her fingers into her parka as Ebner stared at her.

  “It? It?” he screamed.

  She removed a small wrapped bundle, held it dangling in front of the bent German’s face. “Take it. The head of Serpens. No more killing!”