by Tony Abbott
“Helmut Bern was murdered by Ebner,” Darrell said. “He gave us Sagitta, but he died.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “Helmut Bern. He helped us in the end. Good man. I’m so sorry. Becca, he was . . . you helped him.”
“And he helped us,” she said. “He told me something, but it doesn’t make any sense. Not yet. He must have left Kronos One in Paris somewhere.”
“I saw parts of Kronos Three at Gran Sasso,” Wade’s father said. “It’s triangular now, different from the circular astrolabe. I don’t know why they still have it.”
“Is Galina planning to use it?” Sara asked.
“I don’t know. No. It can’t work without the relics.”
“We have five relics now,” said Lily. “Plus Lyra is pointing us to Aquila. That’s all we have so far. Just the name.”
“Ah,” Terence broke in. “We might have more. After Galina abandoned the lab and before her computers were wiped out, Carlo’s tech people got in and froze them. Among other things, the words Aquila and Montevideo are mentioned together several times in messages. The details were destroyed before we could recover them, but it has that tingle, you know. It could be the location we’re hoping for.”
“Uruguay? South America?” said Sara. “It’s a long way to go for such a small clue.”
“I get that, but we don’t know anything else yet,” Wade’s father said. “It seems that someone as central as Ebner is flying there or may already be there. Of course, it could be a trap, too. I’d go, but we need to follow the trail of the astrolabe.”
“Uruguay,” Sara said. “If it’s the only lead so far.”
“My contact can meet you at the airport, if you like,” Terence added.
Wade glanced at Becca. He was about to suggest that Becca check into a hospital while they explore what might be no more than a ruse, but she’d probably get mad. Besides, she was already packing.
“Bec?”
She gave him a sharp look. “I know Spanish. We should go right away.”
“I guess that settles it,” said Lily.
I guess it does, Wade thought.
“Now listen, all of you,” Roald said. “The astrolabe is complete, or nearly. Where Galina plans to bring it next we don’t know, but her deadline is in September. I racked my brains to try to understand why, but now I think I know. Galina calls it Project Aurora, which is something about the aurora borealis and how it affects or creates or makes possible the hole in the sky we’ve read about in the diary. It’s a wormhole, traversable in time. The aurora is visible a lot farther south than we think. Jesminda said the ancient Greeks recorded having seen it. Anyway, it isn’t all clear to me, and I could be wrong, but I think Galina’s plan also involves the autumnal equinox, the tilting of the earth on its axis. Maybe the energy created by the relics generates the aurora. I don’t know. But the beginning of autumn is our deadline. I did some calculations, and in fifteen fourteen, the year the astrolabe was first flown, it was September twenty-second. This year it’s September twenty-third. Sorry, Darrell, I know it’s your birthday, and this is no present, but we all need to get cracking.”
Not even Darrell could come up with a birthday joke this time. “It’s already the first week of August,” he said.
“That leaves only a month and a half,” said Wade. “The deadline is soon as that?”
His father cleared his throat into the phone. “As soon as that.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Montenegro
August 5
Night
When the tractor trailer downshifted rapidly and the truck made a sharp left, Galina knew she was on the road to the Order’s secret estate outside Podgorica, the capital of the small Adriatic country of Montenegro.
In the truck’s rear compartment stood the golden astrolabe built by Nicolaus Copernicus in the summer and fall of 1514. Galina sat at the console, hypnotized by the intricacy and power of the many controls. She knew the moment she closed her eyes, she would see the rearing griffin, the wild-stemmed flowers, the serpent weaving overhead.
The truck leveled, slowed, stopped. The rear doors swung wide.
The colonel appeared.
“We arrive, Miss Krause.”
“Transfer the machine to the north laboratory,” she said, jumping down to the ground unaided but in pain. “I will meet you inside.”
Four days before, a small group of guerilla fighters, some quite young, had attacked the facility at Gran Sasso, led by Carlo Nuovenuto and a French detective named Paul Ferrere. It had been a surprise, and Galina had barely escaped with her life, let alone the astrolabe, suffering a wound to her right leg delivered by the thief known as Mistral.
The scientists had been freed, the word of their imprisonment was out, and she’d had to go into hiding until her agents in the upper levels of government and media could divert the attention of the world. No matter. The Order’s vast network of secret sites would more than hide her and the Eternity Machine for as long as she needed.
In the meantime, thanks to Ebner and Doyle, both Helmut Bern and Fernando Salta were dead. Mopping up the mistakes of the past was a good thing. What was not so good was that Markus Wolff had failed in his attempt to steal Lyra from the Kaplans at the Panthéon.
Still, she had four relics. She was determined not to let Aquila slip through her fingers. Neither Aquila, nor the relic it might lead to.
She entered the stone villa. It was small but well equipped and tended, with a computer room connecting the twin laboratories that was quite sufficient for her needs.
She initiated an encrypted call. It rang through. Ebner answered on the second ring.
“Galina!” he said. “Are you safe?”
“I am at Station Nine with the machine. What news?”
“Indications are that Bern may have given the Kaplans a relic. Possibly the arrow.”
“Sagitta.” Galina knew where it fit into the astrolabe’s golden armature. “If true, they would have five. Send Doyle to New York immediately to steal Vela from the Morgan Museum. Ebner, you and I will meet in Uruguay in one week.”
“Uruguay. One week. Good. If Kurt Stangl is alive, we will find him.”
“We had better,” Galina said. “We cannot afford to lose another relic.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Montevideo, Uruguay
August 9
Late afternoon
Finally, Wade couldn’t believe their luck.
Even after it took three days to arrange flights to Uruguay, using a new roundabout and untraceable series of money transfers that Terence had arranged for them, and two more days to confirm Marceline’s safe arrival at the Vatican with Lyra and Sagitta, they had still arrived in Uruguay before Ebner.
Clive Porter, their driver, told them as much when he met them outside the hot sticky terminal building.
“Welcome! Lovely to see you all!” he said, waving both arms from the parking lot.
Clive Porter was a smallish man in matching khaki shirt and shorts, his belt hanging with canteens, and wearing a stiff desert helmet pulled low over his tanned face. “You’ve won the race from Europe. No thugs or goons yet. That is, besides the usual! Hop on in. My car, I’m afraid, is rather cramped, but one certainly doesn’t come to Uruguay in search of comfort!”
Clive knew both Terence Ackroyd and Simon Tingle and, as an ex-agent of MI6, was “spending my happy retirement in Uruguay, while doing the odd job for my old intelligence chums. Not a Guardian, of course. Just a concerned citizen with a love of the old cloak-and-dagger!”
“I’m amazed that we got here first,” Lily said when they piled into his small car. “Galina Krause must be getting more careful since Gran Sasso.”
“She’s wanted by the Italian authorities as well as the French government,” Clive told them, “though she still has lots of friends in high places, and little will come of it.”
“This will slow her down at least,” said Sara.
“W
e can indeed hope so!” Clive said, pulling out into traffic.
During their descent a half hour before, Wade had spied the coastal diamond-shaped city emerge from the thick jungle to the north and doubted whether anything would really happen there. Montevideo looked like the end of the world, and he wondered if the clue his father had found in Galina’s computers would prove a bust.
“What if it was a trick, false data to throw us off?” he asked. “Maybe Galina’s away somewhere else gathering up the last of the relics.”
“Too soon to tell,” Clive said, cranking his window down and sticking out his hand to change lanes. “Things work slowly here in the New World.”
They did work slowly. The next days inched from sunrise to sunset without a peep from the Order, and no clues coming from anywhere else.
On their first day, Sara and Lily had gone shopping for local outfits—big hats, sunglasses, scarves—and Clive drove them back to the airport to see if they could spot any arrivals that smelled of being agents of the Order. At the same time, Wade and Darrell strolled in their disguises—straw hats, hoodies, and shades—through an ever-expanding grid of streets. Citing doctor’s orders, Becca mostly rested. Wade was worried about her, but she was on her second dose of antibiotics, in good spirits, even joking. Maybe he wouldn’t have to cover for her much longer. She actually seemed better.
Funny, he thought, if this sticky wet jungle air was doing her good.
Finally, on their third day on the ground, while he and Darrell were scouting out the street in front of their hotel and Becca was translating more of the diary into her notebook, Lily came tearing around the corner to them.
“What are you doing here?” Darrell asked. “Where’s my mom?”
“We saw him! The weasel!” she said breathlessly, tugging Darrell by the shirtsleeve back inside their hotel. “Ebner von Braun flew in from who knows where. First we spot this sleek black jet landing, and it taxies into a private hangar; and there he is, as bent over as ever, the gnome himself. Well, he hangs around the hangar for a couple of hours and—boom!—another private jet jets in, and guess who’s on it?”
“Ga—” Darrell started.
“—lina!” Lily said. “First of all, like a hundred guys meet them at the hangar. Well, maybe ten or fifteen, and she gives them orders, and they all drive off in trucks. She and Ebner get into some kind of military transport—Darrell, your mom and I are hiding this whole time behind some airport junk—so we follow them in Clive’s car, barely keeping up with them, to a hotel not three blocks from here. Your mom’s spying on it with Clive right now. I’m only here to collect everybody. Clive says we can follow them wherever they go. We’ll follow Galina and Ebner!”
“And the hundred guys?” asked Darrell.
“Doesn’t matter. This is awesome,” said Wade, running up the stairs to their floor. “I’m getting Becca. Let’s do this!”
After she came to from a deep sleep and followed them downstairs, trying to understand what was happening, Becca found she could barely breathe the wool-thick air outside the hotel. It clogged her throat like a mouthful of wet cotton balls. But she was glad to be awake and with her friends, and did feel a little better, not so tired. She even hurried through the streets, keeping up with the others pretty well.
They spotted Sara observing the hotel from an alley across the street, while Clive squinted through a pair of binoculars from the front seat of a narrow brown car. He waved them over. “In the glove box. New passports for you, courtesy of the local Thomas Cook office. Just in case you need to fly out in a hurry. Ah, look. Our people are on the move.”
A sport utility vehicle idled for a moment at the curb. The doors opened from inside, and Galina and Ebner slipped out of the hotel and got in. The doors closed, and the vehicle pushed out into traffic, where it quickly met up with two other transports.
“Their army,” Lily said.
Sara trotted back to the car. “And we begin! Clive, fire up the car.”
“And smush in, one and all!” he added.
He wasn’t kidding. Six people in that car were like too many crayons in too small a box. Becca felt a little claustrophobic, but she took a breath while Porter motored off after the SUVs as if on a mission. His rattletrap was so underpowered, however, that the three vehicles ahead of them nearly disappeared in traffic until they hit the streets in the heart of downtown Montevideo and slowed right down.
“The city’s roads and intersections are ideal for slow cars!” Porter told them.
Montevideo turned out to be about as old-world as the New World got, Becca thought. It seemed a worn-down city of amazing architecture and widespread poverty, built on the very edge of a vast rain forest.
“Bec?” Wade whispered.
“Doing all right,” she said. “The best.” She knew he wouldn’t exactly believe her, but she smiled. “Thanks for asking.”
About an hour into the tail, they found themselves several miles north of the city in what Becca could only assume was a real-life jungle. Soon after, the route became a one-lane dirt road. Clive Porter had so far kept a firm distance from the other vehicles in town, but the rarity of cars now meant there was little chance of following close without being seen, so he hung back farther and farther. Up ahead, the road split in two directions and the SUVs vanished down one of them into a great green mass of trees and vines.
Clive pulled off to the side. “There isn’t much road ahead, either way. But it’s odd. Now that I see where we are, I remember there’s an old industrial outpost of some kind in these parts. Do you suppose that’s where our friends are going?”
“Could be,” said Wade.
Clive frowned. “Since there are two roads, we might be able to swing around and get there before them. May I suggest taking the other way and seeing what we find?”
“Let’s do it,” Sara said.
Porter started up the car again, and they motored as quickly as they could up the other fork. Several miles later, they glimpsed a low gray structure deep in the trees. It was rectangular and stretched perhaps fifty feet from end to end. He pulled over.
“As I thought,” Clive said, “I believe we’re here first.”
“What do you think the building is?” asked Lily.
“Looks a bit like a fortress, doesn’t it?” he said. “Though I must say, there were never any wars here. First time I’ve actually seen it. We should examine it before our friends get here. Let me camouflage the car and we can go.”
Sara shook her head. “It might be better for you to stay with the car, Clive. We’ll need a fast getaway if we have a relic.”
“Good thinking, Mom,” Darrell added. “I feel good about another relic.”
“We’ll signal with our alarms if we need you to come for us,” Lily said. She patted the key chain alarm on her belt.
“Right ho, then,” Clive said. “Be careful, rather!”
Wade’s pulse raced as they moved ahead into the thickness of the trees. Whatever was left of the road quickly disappeared behind them. All he could see ahead was a narrow path, then no path at all. Becca walked next to him. She was being so quiet, and either she was leaning on him to keep from falling or just leaning on him. Logically, those were the only options. Either way, as he thrashed away at the viny undergrowth to make room for both of them, he felt her exhaustion as if it were his own.
“Just a little more,” he whispered. “You’re hot. I mean warm.”
“I know, a little,” she said in a breath, barely making a sound. “But I feel okay.”
Sara, he wanted to say, Becca’s not really okay. We shouldn’t have brought her here!
But he’d promised. And in a backward kind of way, he was protecting her from being sidelined from the quest. Wasn’t that important, too? She seemed better; she really did. He told himself she was better. It was only this muggy jungle. They’d soon be out of here and somewhere else. And all the time, he’d be watching her.
Sara held up her hand. “Stop.”
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They all crouched in the shelter of the trees. Beyond them in a sort of clearing stood a deserted and heavily overgrown compound made of stones and brick.
“No one could possibly live in that place,” Sara whispered. “I’m guessing it’s a factory, maybe for logging? Otherwise, yes. It does look a little like a fort. Either way, it appears abandoned.”
“Except for that,” Darrell said. He pointed to an iron pipe tacked up the side of the structure. A wisp of white smoke drifted from it, as delicate as the smoke from a cigar.
“Good eyes,” Wade whispered.
“Stay here.” Sara moved carefully behind the growth at the edge of the clearing, pausing every few steps to listen. The only sound came from the dense trees, where swarms of insects and birds, large and small, kept up a deafening racket.
Becca sighed. “It looks like the last place on earth.”
“Vhich is ekzackly vhy I chose it!” gasped a wheezy voice directly behind the children. “Hände hoch, bitte. Hands up, please!”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“Durn achrrrowwwnd shlowly.”
Since Darrell had memorized every detail from every spy book and war movie he’d ever read or seen, he knew that the pistol pointing at them—a rusty antique with a needle-nose barrel and a chunky rear mechanism—was a Pistole Parabellum, commonly known as a Luger. It was favored by spies the world over and mass-produced over a century ago but still looked younger than the man holding it.
He was at least two hundred years old, a wobbling stick of a guy.
Wedged in his right eye socket was a single round lens of the sort called a monocle. He wore a crisp khaki shirt with studded buttons and straps and more than a dozen shiny medals. The German military shirt hung loosely on a frame pretty close to being skeletal.
Darrell glanced at Wade, who was staring at the gun and obviously thinking about options. He was, too. But there were too many innocents around. His mother, Lily. And Becca, despite what she told everyone, looked ready to collapse.