by Tony Abbott
“You’re all that’s left now,” she said, taking the diary and her notebook from her bag. “Wade, remember what the Guardians said. ‘Upon my life I will.’ You have to keep going. You have to k—”
Her eyes flickered suddenly toward the ceiling of the concourse, and she collapsed. Wade caught her before she fell to the floor. “Becca!”
“Oh my gosh!” cried Sara. “Becca? Someone call a doctor!”
Wade brushed Becca’s hair away from her face. She had started to shake and breathe in huge gasps as if she couldn’t take any air into her lungs.
“Do something!” he shouted. At who, he didn’t know. “Becca!”
She convulsed in his arms, shaking from head to toe. People rushed across the concourse to help.
“Becca!” he said. “Becca!”
She just shook all over, and shook and shook and kept on shaking.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Private jet en route to Switzerland
August 20
Midday
“It’s my fault. It’s all my fault,” Wade said from his seat opposite Lily as the jet began its descent into Switzerland.
“No, it’s not,” said Lily. “We all saw her. She fooled us. You, too.”
“But you didn’t promise her, did you?” he said.
“Promise her?” Lily said. She narrowed her eyes at him, saw something there, and said, “I would have, if she’d asked me. She’s a big girl. She decided she needed to be with us. We should respect that. We needed her, too.”
Becca’s face was as white as the sheet that was pulled to her chin—but no farther!—her hair matted, soaked with perspiration, her limp body strapped down with restraints to guard against the turbulence of the flight, tubes in both arms and in her neck, their needles taped down—all these things forced him to understand everything he felt for her and everything he had never found a way to say.
“But she could just . . .”
“No she can’t,” Lily said. “She won’t leave us. She won’t do that.”
Even before Becca had left the Paris airport’s clinic for the nearest emergency room, where she was stabilized, Julian had chartered a jet to Switzerland. “There’s a clinic in Davos,” he’d told them. “My father’s endowed a wing. They’ll take her right away.”
The mention of Julian’s father made Wade think of his own father, and how he wished he were here to talk to. Sara was great, had taken as good care of Becca as Becca allowed anyone to, but things were different now. He missed his father.
Wade reached over and held one hand. Lily held the other. Becca was sleeping. She had been sleeping since her release from the ER.
“Guys, it’ll be all right,” Julian said. “This clinic is the best in the world.”
“I hope so,” said Lily, her eyes moist.
Wade nodded. Outside of “it’s my fault,” he really hadn’t said much. His stepmother was angry with him, but nowhere near as angry as he was with himself. No one said much of anything during the entire flight. At one point he managed to mumble something to Sara, but his words were close to nonsense. “Mom . . . have you ever seen . . . will Becca be . . . what can we . . .”
“We’re doing everything,” Sara had said. “The doctors have done everything they can so far. Becca’s parents have been contacted. Breathe now and hold tight. We’ll be at the clinic soon.”
Breathe now.
Hold tight.
Impossible.
They’d been in the air less than an hour before the pressure of their descent came.
“We’ll be landing in a few minutes,” Julian said. “A car will be waiting to take us to the clinic. She’ll be in the top physician’s care within two hours, I promise. But seriously, did you guys sleep? You should sleep, you know.”
Wade remembered her last words. Upon my life I will. Well, she’s giving her life, all of it. You have to keep going. She said that, pushing the diary and her notebook at him.
He opened his backpack and removed her red notebook and started reading her translation of the Copernicus diary from the beginning. He then opened his own notebook side by side with it, and read over every riddle and quote and puzzle and encrypted message they’d confronted and solved since the search began.
In Austin, there was Uncle Henry’s coded email to his father. There was the description of how they’d learned of his death. In Berlin, a sketch of the dagger they’d discovered at Henry’s tomb, and the crypts marked 1794. From Bologna were his notes about Nicolaus’s diary, what Carlo had told them about the Frombork Protocol, their discovery of the Guardians, everything. Every moment of the search for the twelve relics and most of the diary’s contents were recorded in the pages of the two notebooks.
And all the while he and Becca were writing them, they’d traveled across the world.
England, France, Italy, Guam, Russia, Morocco, Tunisia, Hungary, Turkey, Malta. He added to that their recent episodes in Cuba, Paris, Uruguay, and where else? Switzerland now. They possessed five of the twelve relics, the same number as Galina. They knew now she needed only one more. So did they. Then what? The search for the twelfth and final relic would soon begin.
And what after that?
The Frombork Protocol, the mysterious document that supposedly would give instructions on how to destroy the notorious time-traveling astrolabe, the magnificent and terrible Eternity Machine and its twelve relics, the Copernicus Legacy itself.
Wade pored over the pages of both notebooks, hoping to find a clue they might have overlooked. One more clue . . .
Softly he began to cry.
Not counting the thousand times he and the others had been in scrapes where one of them could have died, the closest he’d been to the real undeniable death of someone close to him was when his beloved uncle Henry was murdered.
But right here and right now, while the jet descended and everyone tried to be positive, he felt death nearing their inner core in a way he’d been oblivious to before. Death, the dark angel, was flying toward Becca, and Wade was terrified.
There, he’d said it. Or, not actually said it, but in his mind he did, and on an empty page of his own notebook. I’m more scared now than I’ve ever been.
“Strap up, we’re landing soon.” Sara patted his shoulder. Her warm hand. He felt another surge of tears coming because of how much he loved his stepmom, too. And his father and Darrell, Lily, Julian, all of them. Turning his face to the window, he closed the notebooks, clicked his belt on, wiped his cheeks, and pretended to look out.
An interminable two hours later, they arrived at the clinic, a vast white stone manor house buried among winding roads halfway up a mountainside. Even in the summertime heat, it felt cold, sterile, inhuman.
The instant their car stopped in the gravel circle outside, an army of doctors, nurses, attendants, and administrators raced over. Wade could barely keep up with the dizzying rush to the critical care ward. The physician in charge of the team—at least seven people—was a tall, bearded man named Dr. Lorenz Cranach, who spoke as they wheeled Becca to the emergency center.
“I have just spoken with her parents,” he said. “They will be here in the morning. Please be assured that we will take care of Miss Moore. She will receive the finest treatment possible by today’s methods.”
By today’s methods.
It was a common enough phrase, but it suddenly struck Wade as oddly cautionary. As limiting. As if it was far from certain whether Becca would ever recover.
More rushing, more physicians, and in the bustle of preparing Becca for examination, it was soon clear that Wade and the others could do no more there.
“We have to keep going,” Lily said. “Becca told us to, and we have to. There’s nothing for us to do if we stay here. Nothing but cry.”
Becca was then taken away, and they were cut off from what was happening. Reluctantly, they stepped outside the emergency area, then down the hallway, then outside the clinic. The sky overhead was bright and blue, and the air was warm. Stari
ng back at the white stone clinic, Wade felt hollow, fragile, and alone.
He felt cold.
I’m buried inside a dark green room. Inside a locked dark green room, I’m buried deep away from everyone I know.
I try to open my eyes, but they don’t work.
I try to move my fingers, my arms, my legs; but nothing works.
“Wade!” I cry. But that doesn’t work, either. Wade isn’t here.
My future is rolling up toward me like a road being unmade. The landscape of my life is coiling back up to the seven feet of my sickbed.
My deathbed.
I scream to the doctor, “I’m going to die!” He doesn’t react because I make no sound. “Maggie!” I cry. “I’m going to die! I need you!”
The room light dims.
I fall into the dark.
Darrell glanced at the road down the mountainside. He could barely look at the others. Lily was leaning on his mother, her face buried in her shoulder, crying softly. Wade had practically collapsed into himself.
As horrible as leaving Becca in the clinic was, Darrell knew things were moving swiftly in the background. Days became nights became days again, and there were still two relics to keep out of Galina’s hands. The woman was inhuman, appearing four years ago out of nowhere, caring nothing for human life, wanting to tear their world apart. She needed to be stopped. They had to be tough, all of them. They had to get the job done.
“Mom, everybody, we have to get to Königsberg,” he said, testing his words carefully. “Galina only needs one more relic. If everybody thinks there’s one in Königsberg, we can’t just let her get it. We have to beat her to it.”
“Soon,” Julian said. “Your dad will wait for you. We’re not leaving Becca until . . .”
A high-pitched engine shifted gears somewhere on the road below them.
Sara tensed. “Julian—”
A bright-red sports car, low and long, wheeled into the drive, spraying gravel as it came around the circle and stopped.
“Right on time,” Julian said.
The driver’s door opened, and a man emerged. It was Silva. They hadn’t seen him since Nice, months before. His right forearm was in a cast, but he smiled gruffly at them. “I came as soon as I could. Driving a shift with one usable hand is a trick.”
“I’ll pay any traffic tickets and then some,” Julian said, giving the man a gentle hug. “Thanks for watching over Becca.”
“Soldiers watch out for each other. Go. Do what you need to do. I’ll keep you all in touch by the hour.” Silva was brief, but it was easy to see he felt the pain of what they were going through. “I have a crew joining me soon. Becca will be safe. Really. It’s okay to press on.”
And that was that. They would continue the journey without Becca. They wouldn’t slow their work. Their Guardian duty. They’d meet Carlo and Roald and go to Königsberg and keep going wherever they needed to be.
Darrell watched his stepbrother stare at the facade of the clinic before slipping into Julian’s car. Lily and his mother went in the back with him, while Darrell himself settled in the front seat next to Julian. They all took a final glance backward as they rounded the drive and the clinic disappeared from view.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Kaliningrad, Russia
August 22
Evening
After saying good-bye to Julian, who was on his way to Rome with Vela, Wade and his family waited only two hours before their own flight took off for Warsaw, where his father and Carlo were waiting for them near the baggage claim.
“Dad!” Wade shouted, jumping down the escalator. His father was suddenly running to him, to all of them, Carlo no more than two steps behind. “Holy cow, Dad! I can’t believe it’s finally you!”
They embraced for a long time, and for another long time with Sara—who practically threw people out of the way to get to Roald—and finally with everyone together. Wade couldn’t stop the flow of tears, half for his father—thinner and more unkempt than he’d ever seen him—and half for Becca, whose deathly pale face he kept seeing whenever he closed his eyes. After so many long, crazy, dangerous weeks apart, their meeting in Warsaw was ridiculously short and heartfelt, seesawing between relief and worry.
Wade started to tell his father—“Dad, about Becca”—when he suddenly realized that the first time the team was reunited, they were still missing one person, and he broke down.
Lily was as much of a mess as he was, so it was up to Sara and Darrell to find the words to tell his father and Carlo about what had happened in Paris and about their sudden trip to the Swiss clinic, and finally Becca’s diagnosis. His father shook his head silently, hugging Sara, then Wade all the tighter, and Lily, too.
“I’m so sorry. Her parents?”
“On their way,” Darrell said. “Or already there.”
Over everything, it was Carlo’s darkening expression when he heard about Becca that scared the life out of Wade. “Do you know something we don’t?” he asked.
Carlo glanced at Wade’s father. “No. But I’ve suspected since I heard she was wounded in Guam. Galina is . . .” He trailed off. “The cost of this war is far too high.”
“Radiation poisoning is very serious,” Wade’s father said. “But Becca’s young. . . .”
It didn’t sound like much at all, but Wade nodded anyway. Keep going, she had said. “So, what about the astrolabe?”
“We were close to it in Berlin,” Carlo said, “but it was already on the move when we got there. Maybe to Croatia. Terence will track it down. Julian will help when they meet up.”
It took another forty-eight hours to obtain visas to travel to Russian Kaliningrad, delivered finally to the hotel they were staying at in the Polish border town of Braniewo by an aging Guardian Carlo knew only as Mrs. Slovatny.
She didn’t speak a word until Wade’s father thanked her for the documents.
“You thank me? For the death of my husband? My husband of fifty years? Galina had him killed like a mad dog in the street.”
“No, I—” his father said.
“We’re so sorry,” Sara added. “Galina Krause’s purge of the Guardians has taken so many good soldiers from us.”
The woman held up her hand sharply. “Don’t be sorry. You children are the Novizhny? Thank me by ending Galina. I ended the day he was murdered.”
Mrs. Slovatny then turned on her heels and, without waiting for a reply, left the room.
The pain in the woman’s words terrified Wade. Deaths were mounting and closing in faster each day, closing around them, and he still didn’t know how it would end.
Wade’s father and Carlo shared the driving of a creaking secondhand van Carlo had arranged for them, and it was evening by the time they’d been cleared through a total of four border checkpoints and were motoring into the outskirts of Kaliningrad, a bleak seaport city and center of an odd Russian exclave pinched between Poland and Lithuania.
“Galina needs only one more relic. Let’s not make it this one,” Carlo said over his shoulder to the back compartment, which was lined with two steel benches. “If both of the Stangls are dead, she may not have discovered the clue in the painting. However, Markus Wolff has been a hunting dog on our tail, on my tail, I believe. I’ve tried many times to throw him off, but he wants to kill me, and he may.”
Carlo seemed almost to smile at that. “We shall see how that plays out.”
Lily said, “We heard a lot about Königsberg from Boris Rubashov in London and his brother, Aleksandr, in Russia. What else do we know?”
“After most of the castle was destroyed in nineteen forty-four,” Carlo said, “this area of East Prussia became part of the Soviet Union. The Soviets put up a giant concrete government building on the ruins of Albrecht’s old castle. Technically it’s known as the House of Soviets, but you’ll soon see why everybody calls it ‘the Monster.’”
Wade watched his father dip his hand into his jacket pocket and pull out a small pistol.
“Roald
!” Sara said.
“Just in case. I don’t have to tell you all that this is dangerous business. I won’t use it except for protection.”
Carlo tipped open the glove compartment. There were two more pistols sitting inside. “Sara?”
“No. Thank you,” she said.
Twenty quiet minutes later, they drove past the site, slowed, turned, parked two blocks away, and Darrell checked out the building from the car.
“Monster is pretty much the perfect name for it,” he whispered. “Have you ever seen anything so . . . blocky?”
The House of Soviets was constructed of hideous concrete modules mounted around a dark central core. It looked like a pair of enormous gray cereal boxes perforated with innumerable black windows.
Lily nodded. “Not recently.”
“The Monster was never used,” Carlo told them. “Right after they finished the exterior they discovered the whole thing was sinking into the swamp. The place is surrounded by water. The interior is barely even half done. Lots of gaps in the floors, empty elevator shafts, no power.”
“Sounds like a scary place,” said Lily.
“The usual place for us to find a relic,” Darrell said.
“The Order doesn’t seem to be here,” Roald said. “But there’s no point in attracting attention. We’ll wait a couple of hours, until we know no one’s lurking around.”
They decided finally that ninety minutes was long enough. They slid out of the van onto the sidewalk. They all seemed to freeze for a moment, then Carlo gave a short nod. Roald and Darrell’s mother herded the children between them and followed Carlo toward the Monster. The area surrounding the building was abandoned and overgrown. Half-built sidewalks and haphazard piles of unlaid paving stones littered the approach, but the barbed wire fencing surrounding the block had been trampled in several places, making it fairly easy to slip inside.
“There’s likely to be a tunnel,” Carlo whispered. “Treasure seekers and vandals have been known to visit from time to time. We can use one of their entry points.”
A single spotlight shone on the building. It looked as if it had been left on by mistake. They chose a spot just outside the glare. It would be the darkest area of the facade, something they’d learned when they broke into the Panthéon.