The Golden Vendetta

by Tony Abbott

  “The clues we must work through to find these relics, no? The technology, the guesswork, the gossamer connections. It’s enough to drive one . . . to give up. Finally, it was this.” She removed from the pocket of her leather jacket the glittering assembly of diamonds and silver they knew was the Serpens relic. “When all the keys were found, it was Serpens who directed me here. And so we have done it, haven’t we, Kaplans? Together we have achieved what no one else could. Enemies, joined in a common goal. My congratulations. And look, all of you are gathered together in a single place. How touching. Ebner, take the relic keys from them.”

  Ebner von Braun, who before this had not been visible, stepped out from behind his mistress and scuttled across the room. He had three nasty scratch marks on his forehead as if he’d been mauled by a cat. He took the three ancient keys and the newly made one.

  “Quite nice,” he murmured over the last one. “Clever, you figuring out that the final key needed to be created. Saving us the trouble.”

  Wade scanned the perimeter of the room. His brain ticked. “What are you doing in the water off Cyprus?” he asked.

  Galina shot him a look, but held her gun steady as she moved around them. “All you need to do is pray.”

  He wanted to do something, knew he had to, but there were at least three guns trained on him and the same or more on each of the others. He felt the search collapsing around them, as if the flood had already started.

  Ebner inserted the first key in its place in the circle. Click.

  “You’re building a nuclear arsenal,” said Sara. “Why?”

  Wade said it under his breath. “The deluge. We know. Copernicus knows.”

  “Knows? Present tense?” Galina stepped up to Wade, drawing in a long breath. “Did the girl tell you? Becca?” Galina smelled sweet, like flowers that had been freshly cut. Flowers and something else.

  Ebner pressed the second key into its place. Click.

  Darrell shifted his feet to test if the guards reacted. They did, pushing him back. He smirked. “You’ve collected nuclear devices in the sunken tanker, and you want to use them as leverage.”

  “Or revenge,” said Lily.

  “We sent the pictures to people,” Wade lied, wishing he’d thought of it. “Lots of people. They identified the devices. They know what you’ve got there.”‘

  “You know nothing,” spat Ebner. “You are bluffing to save yourselves.”

  Sara stared at Galina. “No, I think we have it just right. You’re doing all this to get something. Using those devices would destroy the Mediterranean. Even you couldn’t weather that disaster. No, you want something. And you want it in a hurry. That’s been obvious from the moment you emerged after two months. Two months of what? You’re sick. That’s easy to see—”

  In two strides Galina was in front of Sara and slapped her face. “You know nothing at all!”

  Cursing, Darrell pushed away from one guard, but the two held him back.

  “All hail the ineffectual son!” Ebner sneered. Click. The third key went in.

  “It’s your deadline,” said Becca. “You have a deadline, and you need something before that happens—”

  “Silence!” Galina said as Ebner dropped the final key into its slot on the outermost circle with a resounding click. “Turn them! Turn the keys!”

  Taking two himself, and calling over a soldier to take the other two, Ebner turned the keys counterclockwise three complete turns, until they stopped.

  All at once, the rumble of stone grinding against stone filled the room. It thundered beneath their feet and over their heads. The four rings of the great disc began to turn. They revolved independently of one another, each in the opposite direction from those next to it.

  The inmost circle began to rise up out of the disc to a height of about three feet on a thick post of coiled silver, like a screw reversing itself. It stopped rising but continued to rotate, while a brilliant silver object, an armored arm, rose up out of its center.

  Galina’s eyes were riveted on it.

  It was the arm of Barbarossa One, the gümüş kol, a strange and grisly and exquisitely armored device with blades running down the outside seam, and articulated fingers, each coiled tightly as if holding a sword.

  Wade saw the cables about which Becca had read to them from the diary. They connected the wheels with the base of the pedestal and down into the bedrock below. If someone had attempted to break his or her way into the hidden vault for the silver arm, the cables would have snapped and uncoiled, releasing the ceiling above and crushing not only the hand, but the room and everyone in it.

  One by one, the outer rings stopped moving, from the largest ring to the smallest, their stepped levels creating a staircase to the central stone.

  When the central disc stopped, the silver arm was fully visible, waiting to be freed from its stone pedestal.

  “Ebner, retrieve the arm.”

  Obedient to his mistress, the scrawny physicist stepped up onto the outer ring. The moment he did, there came another sound: stone sliding along the ground around the perimeter of the room. Shapes moved out of the deep shadows, as dark as the shadows themselves.

  “The Mothers!” Becca cried. “The Mothers have come to protect the relic!”

  Galina’s agents swung around, startled to see tall figures, larger than life almost, cloaked in robes of black and silver, wielding the same curved blades the diary had described. In a split second, everything that had happened over the last week compressed to this single moment.

  “Għargħar!” the Mothers cried in unison. The flash of their blades was blindingly swift.

  “Everyone down!” Sara hissed, pulling Lily to the floor with her.

  Galina’s men shot wildly. The lamp exploded, plunging the room into darkness. “Mom?” Darrell cried out. Had anyone been hit? Wade couldn’t tell. One, two automatic rifles clattered to the floor. Men thumped to the ground, shouting out across the room. The Mothers’ blades clashed and clanked. You could hear their swords slide into flesh. The terrible sound of fabric ripping, the sudden moan, the thudding as someone collapsed on the floor.

  Where was Galina? The silver arm? He couldn’t see.

  Wade scrambled across the floor for Becca, something guiding his way in the dark. He crawled with her back to the others, hiding under the lowest disc. Darrell and Lily lay on their stomachs. Sara, too. A new manic burst of gunfire began. He tried to shield Becca lower, when she turned. Her arm was wet, warm. Blood?

  “Becca—”

  But she was moving away from him. He felt her slide away across the stone rings toward the center. Bullets rang out, blasting silvery stone from the surrounding walls. “Becca!”

  At the height of the chaos, Darrell somehow moved with his mother out of the chamber and back into the passages, Lily trailing behind. Wade saw that Sara had one of the knights’ automatic weapons. Then a body crashed into Wade, knocking his head to the floor. Silver light flashed behind his eyelids. He rolled over. It was Becca. The silver arm was in her hands. “We can leave now—”

  Everything buzzed in his head. His body went electric. All at once, Sara yelled, “Galina!” And opened fire.

  He kept in a low crouch with Becca beside him, barely able to move, but the two of them found a way to push forward under Sara’s cover. Instantly, the Mothers formed a wall of slashing swords behind them. He didn’t know how it was possible, but he and Becca were suddenly in the passage, with Darrell and Lily urging them on. Dust filled his eyes, his mouth. Now they were stumbling in the upper tunnels. Now they were crawling into the cellar of the shop, hands and arms dragging them out into the smoky darkness. They were outside. Becca was clutching the silver arm of Barbarossa, the Ottoman pirate.

  Seconds later they were crammed in a stolen Jeep, Julian at the wheel. He tore off like a madman toward the helicopter, while out the back Sara fired round after round at the knights pouring up from the ground.

  They had the relic.

  CHAPTER SIXTY-TW
O

  Nice, France

  June 10

  9:43 a.m.

  Morning. Blue, white, warm. Darrell leaned against the railing on the balcony of the Ackroyds’ apartment. Distant traffic noise and the warble of voices in different languages mingled with the aroma of baked goods and coffee wafting up from the Place du Palais.

  He breathed it all in. Things were good.

  Two hours before, his mother and Julian had nearly simultaneously received the same photo of Terence and Roald, smiling broadly together, taken at Gran Sasso that morning. Both accompanying messages had similar though not identical texts, but with the same basic message.

  So sorry! No phone service, only text. All’s well. Meeting over. Good work done. Here’s us, leaving this morning. Meet us, Alitalia Flight 348, Nice, Tuesday, arr. 10:55 a.m.!

  Incredulous but overjoyed, everyone cheered and jumped around the apartment, but that didn’t stop Sara from jetting off a sharp reply about how terrified they had all been. Roald’s reply to that came swiftly.

  Totally my fault. Explain all soon! Love you all!

  At first, Darrell thought he’d squash himself into the car with everyone else—he just wanted to be there to join in the hoopla—when a second message came from Terence to Julian, sent just before their flight.

  Keep relic in home safe when you come. Do not bring with you.

  Well, yeah. It was so obvious. Though this text was different enough in tone, more serious than the first one, to cause some concern. Madame Cousteau would of course remain to guard the apartment, and Silva was also coming to stay in the apartment on the floor below.

  Still, something told Darrell that the silver arm should not be alone, so he decided to stay at the apartment as a precaution. When he asked who was going, they all said they were, except Lily, which was good, except that the way she said it was weird.

  “The Citroën’s too small for all of us,” she said. “It’ll get too huggy in there.”

  He didn’t know if this was Lily’s way of saying that the five seconds they’d been mashed up in that niche in the tower in Turkey was ten seconds too long, or if she was specifically staying behind to be with him.

  His brain heated up at the thought, so he stopped using it. He simply looked down from the balcony at the colorful bustling square and counted it all good. After all, they’d just located a third relic, and that was beyond awesome.

  Score another one for the Guardians.

  “Dad’s friends in Nice have assured me that the Order has no current footprint in the city,” Julian said from the dining room, where the remains of breakfast were spread on the table. “Still, Silva will be moving into a flat on the floor below with a half dozen of his best men. Just until we move the relic.”

  That was a comfort to everyone. Since they’d brought Triangulum back to Nice, Julian and Wade had worked together and found a way to remove the relic—a dazzlingly bright silver triangle with razor-sharp edges as cold as ice—from the silver arm. Julian had then placed the relic along with the arm in his father’s safe in the computer room.

  As she gathered her things for the trip to the airport, Darrell’s mother said, “If I haven’t said it before, thank you for everything, Julian. We couldn’t have done any of this without you. Really, you’re a prince and a soldier.”

  “Oh, gosh,” he said, popping a fresh fig in his mouth from the fruit bowl. “There are miles to go before this is over. The Morgan in New York has fended off one robbery attempt, but it won’t be the last. Galina will keep trying. And then”—Julian cleared his throat—“there are the international papers.”

  “What?” said Lily, toying with a crust of toast. “Not more tragedies?”

  “That’s just it,” he said. He slid several English editions across the table. “There’s nothing. In fact, none of the press—newspapers, television, internet—says a single word about the tanker off Cyprus. The same thing with Malta. What happened there has been completely ignored.”

  Darrell searched the papers quickly. They all did. There wasn’t a single word about any of it.

  “Makes me wonder what else the world doesn’t know about,” said Becca.

  “My calls to Dad’s pals in British intelligence tell me that London has given a wink to the whole thing, at least publicly,” Julian added. “It’ll come out soon enough, I think, but right now it’s still developing and too important to risk causing panic.”

  “Too important that the Teutonic Order has become a nuclear nation?” said Becca.

  “So we double down,” said Wade. “We don’t trust anyone. The Order has friends in high places? Well, we have friends all over the world.”

  That was true enough, but Darrell was stuck on the words nuclear nation.

  The Order had real power now, a capability beyond imagining. They were a force for evil, and only da Vinci’s apocalyptic visions could do justice to the horror that could happen—and maybe would happen soon.

  The deluge. The horrors. The end of days.

  All that power, along with the world’s silence, was a deadly combination that he—and Wade, Lily, Becca, and their parents and friends—had to fight.

  But not alone. After the last week there were more Guardians than ever.

  Julian grabbed his car keys. “The final bit of bad news is from China.”

  “Not the Scorpion relic?” asked Lily.

  Julian nodded. “Our people at the Ackroyd Foundation in Hong Kong report that your old friend Feng Yi was found with two bullet holes in him. Galina Krause now has the Scorpion relic, the real one.”

  Darrell watched his mother stop and take a breath. “Bad news, yes, but not surprising.” He noticed that she was dressed, for the first time in days, not in body armor or scuba gear or desert camouflage, but in a sundress and flip-flops. “Not surprising at all.”

  Darrell knew that it was a matter of time before all the relics were found, and probability suggested that Galina would find her share of them. But it was disappointing. They were ahead, but only barely. Three relics to two.

  Vela was safe in New York. Crux was secured in the basement vaults of the British Museum. And now Triangulum, disengaged from its silver arm, was waiting to be transported to the Vatican Museum, where the Ackroyds had some close friends, including, Julian hinted, the top man there. Before long, Triangulum would help them discover where to look for the next relic.

  “The silver triangle will give up its clue,” Lily said softly but firmly as she stood next to Darrell at the railing. “There will be a way forward.”

  “The sixth relic, whatever it is, will be ours,” he said. “We’ll get it. It’s going to be ours.” He knew every move their little family made, toward a relic, away from a relic, every step they took, no matter where it was, changed them, aged them, made them less like kids and a lot more like warriors, hunters, soldiers. What he didn’t know was what they would all become by the time they finished the quest for the relics. What was the endgame of the Frombork Protocol?

  Wade stood up. “Just about time to go to the airport,” he said.

  “See you two soon,” Sara said. She smiled at Lily and gave Darrell a peck on his cheek, and that was it. The whole group of them left together in a bunch, leaving Lily and Darrell alone with Madame Cousteau. The silent housekeeper eyed the two of them on the balcony, and stood at grim attention by the door.

  It was 10:14. The sun warmed the cast-iron balcony railing. Darrell leaned against it and watched Lily close her eyes and shiver.

  Three hundred or so miles southeast of Nice, Roald Kaplan took a short step away from the narrow cot in his cell and nearly collapsed. His head felt heavy, sloshing with hot water; his balance was way off; his stomach rolled and rolled; he was seasick. Impossible, since he was over five thousand feet beneath a mountain in the middle of Italy, surrounded by bedrock.

  It’s in my blood, he thought. Something they gave me.

  The cell—an office, really—was small but not uncomfortable. Both hands pre
ssed against the cinder-block wall to steady himself, he blinked hard, to keep himself focused, to keep himself from being sick. What had happened, after all? They’d taken his phone, Terence’s, too. Where was Terence? Where had they taken him? What was Galina planning? The flood? Petrescu was enigmatic, confused, but the crazed woman was clearly behind everything that had happened to Roald and the others imprisoned beneath that mountain for the last . . . how many days? Three? Five? What was the flood, anyway? Petrescu had ranted about a flood, but soon enough the director had been taken away, too.

  “I called Sara,” he said. “I remember that.” He took another step toward the door. It clanged open before he got there. A stony face appeared. A soldier, armed with an automatic weapon. Two others stood behind him.

  “Come,” the man said. English was not his first language. “Is time.”

  Twenty meters away, Galina Krause walked arm in arm with the blank-faced Marin Petrescu, past one security checkpoint after another.

  “The lockdown is complete,” she said.

  “The world will know of this!” he said.

  “But not in time to do anything about it,” she said. “The laboratory is closed. A minor incident involving the accidental escape of liquid argon. Internal damages. Better for everyone that the laboratory is temporarily off-limits.”

  “They will know! They will come!”

  She paused in one of the long hallways. “My dear Petrescu, the world has other problems to deal with. Terrorism. Russia. Climate change—”

  “This is criminal!” he said, his face a ball of red skin. “This is a crime!”

  “I prefer to think of it as science,” she said, resuming the march to the laboratory. “All the physicists you summoned have arrived. We have food and supplies for four months. Those men and women will be my team.”

  Another set of doors whisked aside. She walked him through.

  He was silent.

  “Come now, Doctor. I am of the belief that when one is ill-treated, the only proper response is revenge. This is my revenge, Dr. Petrescu, my vendetta against an ignorant world. And yet you see, by allowing me access to CERN’s laboratories, you have saved the world.”