The Crown of Fire

by Tony Abbott

  “You see, British intelligence has its millions of eyes on thousands of locations worldwide—safe houses, possible weapons factories, meeting places of suspected terrorists—any source of strange uses of public or private utilities, energy, chemicals, that sort of thing. Well, it so happens that there is a location in Madrid on the Calle Cava Baja—actually the former dwelling of Señor Carrió, by the way—that uses tremendous amounts of electricity. We’ve never been able to determine why or how, and the Spanish government isn’t being cooperative. But here’s the nub. From Zarzuela we have Madrid. From Cassiopiea we have the composer’s studio near the Plaza Conde de Barajas. From thirty-three we have number thirty-three Calle Cava Baja. In short, Helmut Bern told your friend Becca to visit 33 Calle Cava Baja in Madrid. What for, we don’t quite know.”

  “I do,” said Wade. “It has to be the location of the Copernicus Room. We’ve known for a while it’s in Madrid. Bern used to work there. He must have hidden a clue about the twelfth relic inside.”

  “I’m hereby instructing my colleagues in the Neckermann office to give you whatever help you need,” Simon said. “I must tell you that Galina and Ebner appear to be busy elsewhere, so you may not find much resistance. I’ll send a backup force just in case, but we don’t want to let on and force them to destroy the place, agreed?”

  “Agreed,” said Roald. “And brilliant. We can’t thank you enough, Simon.”

  “Pish-posh, just doing my lot for the future of the world, you know. I’ll sign off by saying, you know where to find me. And I suspect if I want to find you, I can just scoot down to Madrid. Cheerio!”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Madrid

  September 3

  Night

  Madrid’s old city was a charming cluster of winding streets and piazzas, close narrow alleys, and rows of low ornate buildings from the seventeenth century that all reminded Lily of her time in Havana.

  It was raining here, too, the air heavy and hot and the atmosphere claustrophobic. Her head spun. She took a deep breath to calm herself, but Silva’s news about Becca was terrifying. He was a man of few words, and his last few were grim.

  She went under again.

  “We have to keep going,” Darrell whispered to her out of nowhere.

  Or maybe not out of nowhere. Maybe, after all their time together, Darrell was finally able to read her mind.

  “Becca told us that,” he said softly. “If we can’t do anything else, we can do that. Keep going, keep moving forward.”

  Lily just nodded, trying to keep the lump in her throat from choking her.

  “Everything we do now is for her,” Wade added as they wove deeper into the streets, following Roald and Sara. “Whatever we do from now on.”

  “Uh-huh.” Her chest wouldn’t stop hurting. But she had to forget all that personal stuff. Searching for the final relic would have to push her on to the very end, and keep her from falling apart altogether.

  Using a Madrid street map provided by the Neckermann office in Olsztyn, they circled evasively for nearly an hour before arriving at a nondescript building in a maze of narrow alleys off the Plaza Conde de Barajas.

  “Number thirty-three Calle Cava Baja,” Sara said. “It looks so normal. I guess that’s the point.”

  Two men in dark suits threaded along the shadows to them.

  “Our backup,” Darrell said.

  “Simon authorized us to help in any way,” one of the men said in a British accent. “First off, there is very little activity inside. A skeleton crew only, which could mean it’s been abandoned.”

  “But the cameras are likely still filming,” said the other, also British. He nodded at two video cameras with crisscrossing views of the front entrance.

  “The Neckermann office gave us a thing,” Lily said. “A device for that.” She dug in her pack for a small black box with an alphanumeric keypad on the front. First making certain no one was watching, she and Sara sidled up to number 33 and ran two cables from the box to the security keypad mounted outside the door. Pressing several times on the box’s tiny keyboard, Lily intercepted the camera feed. The device would loop the video image so that it would show as an empty street on the monitors inside the Copernicus Room. Once that was accomplished, the device blinked the entry code for the keypad. Sara entered twelve digits—of course—into the pad, and the lock released with a soft click. The others joined Lily and Sara at the door.

  One of the agents pulled on the door, while his partner slipped inside. Moments later, he said, “Clear.” They entered the building’s lobby. It was small, dark.

  “Wait here.” The first agent walked cautiously down a hallway and returned. “A stairway,” he said. “No other way down except the elevator. We’ll take the stairs, you the elevator. We’ll surprise them at the same time, try for a quick coup. No fighting. No bloodshed.”

  No fighting. No bloodshed.

  Right, thought Wade. Let’s hope so. But the way the agents clutched their weapons and the looks on their faces said they were ready for both. They trotted off to the stairs while the rest of them entered the elevator.

  Darrell stood against the back, side by side with Lily; Wade was in front with his parents. He gripped and ungripped both hands, making fists, relaxing, clenching, letting loose. He was as ready as he could ever be.

  Sara punched the Down button. The elevator shuddered on its descent, swinging loosely back and forth on the cables. After what seemed like minutes they thudded to a stop at a subbasement seven floors below street level. The doors parted. Some dozen programmers and researchers looked at the elevator to see who it was, while the two MI6 agents charged into the room from the far side.

  “Hands up!” the agents shouted, taking aim. “Everyone freeze.”

  Wade saw that there were, in fact, very few workers in the room. Most of them were busily dismantling the computer stations. One woman was clearing her desk into a box. The vast array of bookshelves was nearly empty. Coffee cups were strewn everywhere.

  “Like we thought,” said Darrell. “They’re pulling up stakes.”

  “There’s the safe!” Lily said, heading to a bank vault built into the side of the wall. “That’s got to be where Helmut Bern’s clue is.”

  Some of the workers buzzed at the familiar name. “Bern? He is . . . alive?” asked one, setting down what might have been a bomb, dangling with cables.

  “He was,” Wade said. “Until Ebner murdered him. Who knows the combination to the vault? We don’t have time.”

  The workers looked at one another.

  “Who’s the best programmer?” Sara asked. “We’re not here to hurt anyone. We just need to get into the safe.”

  Most of the workers turned to look at a middle-aged woman in a blue dress. She reluctantly raised her hand. “I know the combination, but inside are hundreds of smaller safes, each with its own ten-digit alpha code. No one knows the codes. Just Miss Krause.”

  “Ten digits?” Wade said. “Open the safe door and we’ll take it from there.”

  The woman toddled over and entered the combination. The vault made a series of distant clicking noises, then the door eased out several inches. The walls inside the vault were covered with rows of smaller doors, each one with its own keypad.

  “Now what?” said Darrell.

  Wade had been wondering for some time if Helmut Bern had actually given them more than the street address. When he saw a safe numbered 33, he knew he had to try.

  “Ten digits . . . ,” he said again, and one word came to him. “Cassiopiea.”

  Carefully, he entered the word into the keypad of safe 33. The door gasped and popped open. Inside the safe was a single sheet of stiff paper.

  A drawing.

  It appeared old, and showed a rowboat on a sea of dark water. The boat was crammed with passengers, or rather sketches of passengers barely drawn in.

  “Is this what Bern left in nineteen seventy-five when he and Fernando Salta came here?” Darrell said. “A drawing o
f a rowboat? Is it supposed to be the rowboat he escaped from London in?”

  “Is that by Raphael, too?” Lily asked. “And what would that mean?”

  The woman who had opened the vault peeked over the kids’ shoulders. “Is not Raphael,” she said. “Is maybe Michelangelo?”

  Sara studied the sketch. “Then Isabella would know this. Are any computers still working here? There must be a database that can identify this image.”

  The woman—she said her name was Maria—nodded. “Sí. Yes. My computer is still connected.” She slid a thick pair of microscope lenses down from the top of her head and studied the drawing. “Perhaps . . . here . . . come.”

  She slid between several rows of computers to her station. On the desk stood pictures of an older couple and three preteen girls—her parents and children maybe. She positioned the drawing under a small scanner. A few moments later the image appeared on the computer screen.

  “Don’t send it anywhere,” said Roald.

  “No, no.” She enlarged the screen image, then tapped some keys. “The paper the sketch is on is not of Italian manufacture. Watermark says it is Netherlandish or perhaps Polish. Sixteenth century.” She hit two more keys, and images began to flash across her screen in rapid sequence. Thousands flew by in seconds, until one image stayed on the screen, pulsing. It was a finished painting almost identical in form and content to the sketch, although far more detailed and colored.

  “Ah,” the woman said. “What you have is a first sketch, a kind of study, for Michelangelo’s big fresco called The Last Judgment. Started in fifteen thirty-six, this fresco takes up one wall of the famous Sistine Chapel.”

  “Rome,” Roald said. “Now, Maria, please delete it all and shut down your computer.”

  “Sí, sí,” she said, but she did better than that. She picked up a hammer and smashed the computer terminal to pieces.

  “The dates work,” said Lily. “Michelangelo began the fresco the year after Becca helped Helmut Bern escape London in a rowboat. This could be huge.”

  “I think so, too,” said Wade. “If Isabella has deciphered Michelangelo’s poem, we may finally discover the secret of the twelfth relic! Even the location of the launch site!”

  “It’s coming together,” Darrell said. “Everyone, we’re going to Rome.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  Off the coast of France

  September 4

  Night

  Ebner von Braun stood back several feet from the railing of Galina’s yacht. Turning around, he held out his phone to her.

  “You will likely not remember her. A middle-aged woman with two children.”

  “I remember her,” Galina said. “Maria Costaldo, forty-two, database specialist, level three, Copernicus Room.” She gazed at the screen. “Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. I need this enlarged. The war room below.”

  She twisted away and quickly took the stairs down to the main cabin.

  He followed several steps behind her, thinking.

  She remembers the insignificant trench-worker Maria Costaldo but not where she first saw the elusive griffin, the blue monkey, the green serpent. What will finally jog her memory and allow us to move forward? She is so pale. So thin. And her scar! How it frightens me!

  Galina Krause’s war room was just that, a high-ceilinged cabin, taking up half the length of the port side of the yacht, crowded with computer terminals, bookshelves, maps ancient and modern, satellite communication monitors. It was, in fact, a portable Copernicus Room. A half-dozen programmers and intelligence interpreters clicked and clacked on their keyboards. She went to the main station.

  “Transfer the image here.”

  Ebner tapped his phone.

  “You,” she said to a bearded man huddled over a terminal. “Enlarge this to the maximum degree. Ebner, follow.”

  She pressed a button on her control panel, and the end wall slid up to the ceiling.

  No matter how many times Ebner had seen the Eternity Machine, its size and terrible beauty never failed to take his breath away. The golden device stood in a large bay, half an intricately jeweled complexity, half a frightening mechanical monstrosity, a thing of wonder, undeniable power, and—if one believed such things—magic.

  Behind it stood Kronos III, his and Galina’s own pale imitation. Under her direction, its central section had been rebuilt at Gran Sasso under the turncoat physicist Graham Knox’s supervision, made to mimic the structure of the armature, the big wheel of the Copernicus machine, save that it now sported a unique three-sided base.

  “Why is Kronos here?” Ebner asked. “Why have you brought the crude thing?”

  “The wiring in Kronos has been reconfigured,” she said, “and is as close as I can construct it to the specifications on the diary page Markus Wolff managed to acquire. Both devices can now accept the six relics we have found.”

  Ebner shuddered as he examined the improved Kronos. The enhancements had been done cleverly, he had to admit. “An exercise, surely, but this will never harness the power needed. Only the astrolabe is capable of summoning the aurora, producing the Kardashev event, generating the hole in the sky. We will not need Kronos now. We have six relics, the completed astrolabe. We await only the location of the launch site and the astronomical requirements. We are so close to reaching our goal.”

  “As you say, Ebner, an exercise.”

  A programmer appeared at the portal. “The image is at maximum enlargement.”

  They returned to the war room, the wall slid back down into place. The oversize screen at Galina’s station was filled with faces and bodies and souls in various states of pain and ecstasy. Individual brushstrokes were now visible. She stared at the image, then focused on the bottom right corner until one figure in particular filled the screen.

  It was a man whose body was wrapped by what appeared to be a giant serpent.

  A green serpent . . .

  She shut her eyes and turned her face away from Ebner.

  “Galina? My dear?”

  In her mind that serpent coiled overhead around and around until it went still. All those blue-furred monkeys, leaping lionesses, griffins, and flocks of wide-winged birds fixed themselves; and walls grew up around her: painted walls, famous walls that she had seen but once before, walls redolent of the smell of soil, of earth and vegetation, and of the strong scent of salt air.

  The images were so potent and near, she might reach out and touch them. No longer floating in her mind, they were secured now on the dense reality of stone, figured into the walls of a twelve-sided room, with openings leading . . . to freedom . . . or imprisonment . . . or death. . . .

  She opened her eyes.

  “King Minos,” she said.

  Ebner seemed uncertain. “Yes, my dear?”

  “From the Inferno by the Italian master Dante. He writes: ‘There dreadful Minos stands and growls, judging sinners’ sins upon the step; and having judged, he fixes each as far below as his tail twines.’”

  Ebner frowned. “‘As far below as his tail twines’ . . . ?”

  She felt her skin begin to rise in color. Her cheeks, her lips grew warm, then hot.

  “It is the location of the launch site,” she said so softly he almost didn’t hear.

  “You know the location? But where? Galina, my dear, where is it? What is Minos? Have you finally decrypted the images? The blue griffin, the others?”

  She went to the wall of maps, selected an ancient one, ran her finger across the old dry parchment. It was an original Ptolemy, a hand-drawn chart of the ancient European world. She rested her finger on the spot. “Under the aurora borealis, at the hour of equinox, this is where and when Copernicus launched his Eternity Machine, every autumn for three years. This is where the Magister first flew into the darkness of time!”

  Out of the corner of his eye Ebner studied the ghostly figure of Galina.

  So white, so pale she is!

  Her skin appeared so nearly transparent he almost expected to see the whit
e of her cheekbones beneath it as beneath a piece of gauze.

  “The palace of painted walls, Ebner. The walls of slender-draped women and eyes and birds and . . . one great coiling serpent. This island will be the origin of the fourth and final journey of the Eternity Machine. Tell the colonel to prepare an attack force.”

  “Yes, my dear!”

  “Ready yourself, Ebner. The end is coming!”

  “Yes, my dear!”

  She turned away and hurried back to the upper deck, and Ebner hustled to keep up with her.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  Vatican City, Italy

  September 7

  Morning

  The journey across the Spanish frontier from Madrid, through France, and down the Italian coast to Rome was beautiful. Probably beautiful. Wade didn’t see much of it except as it receded in the minivan’s tinted rear window. He was alone in the back; Darrell and Lily were in the middle. His father was driving, the passenger seat empty. They’d dropped his stepmother off outside Bologna. Sara had made plans to meet Isabella in secret and would drive to the Vatican by another route.

  “Taking no chances,” she had told them.

  “See you soon,” his father said, just before the inevitable parting and the necessary switching of cars.

  Still off the grid, they’d stopped at several Thomas Cook agencies along the way, made sure they weren’t being tracked, got nothing new from Silva or Simon Tingle, then sent a message to Terence. He and Julian would head to Rome to meet them.

  Soon, they would all be together, except for Becca, who Wade couldn’t keep out of his mind. She’d been under since they’d heard from Silva in Olsztyn days ago. Did it mean that the longer Becca was in a coma, the longer she would be in it?