The Crown of Fire

by Tony Abbott

  Then came two more shots, one winging him in the leg. He still had to put himself between Wolff and the kids. The flaming chopper was like a beacon, showering the blank frozen darkness with light. The flames rose higher. The chopper slid over onto its side now. The blazing metal had weakened the ice, sending shock waves under the surface. It sank.

  “No time,” he said to himself. “This cup won’t pass away!” He drew a tiny object from his coat and threw it hard toward the children. He saw it land near Wade.

  Then he inserted two fresh clips into his weapons and spun around. Wolff crouched at the edge of the crevice. His eyes were cold with the rage of a true assassin.

  Wolff fired and missed. Then Carlo ran at him, blasting away.

  Unable to move, Wade watched the blazing chopper sink into the sea. To the right and left the ice had split, breached, and separated. Now it drifted away from the mass of the shelf. Ten feet, twenty. The gap of black water grew and grew.

  The battle between Carlo and Wolff became distant, muffled by the howling wind, until he couldn’t tell the two men apart. A thunderous surge of water burst up from beneath the floating fragment. Massive chunks of ice rose and crashed. Jagged shards of ice dived into the black sea. Then, almost in slow motion, almost in silence, both Wolff and Carlo vanished into the dark water. A great swirl of snow wound about where they had been. There was a final flurry of splashing, followed by utter silence as the giant weight of the glacier settled beneath the surface, bobbed up, sank, then rose and drifted away, wiped clean of life, both men lost.

  “Carlo!” Lily cried.

  The ice cracked toward them like a black snake slithering across the ground, but none of them could make their legs move.

  “Carlo!” she yelled again.

  But the black water didn’t splash. It went as still as concrete.

  Wade watched Darrell drag Lily back from the splitting ground. She hit him uselessly. He didn’t object. Wade turned to his father, who was clutching the iron chest. His father’s face was gray, blank.

  Even as they watched, Carlo had perished. Like so many Guardians had perished over the last weeks and months—and over the decades and centuries since Nicolaus and Hans built the astrolabe and the Order declared war on them. And here again, goodness and wonder and humanity were gone in an instant, vanished under the cold black sea.

  CHAPTER FORTY-THREE

  “We have Corona,” Lily heard someone say. The voice was husky and forced. “We have it, and we have to go.” It was Darrell. He was wiping tears from his eyes.

  “So? So what?” Lily screamed at him, or thought she had. Maybe it was just a rough breath of air, a whisper. “What does it even matter? So many have died for this horrible thing!” She might have cursed then, but maybe she didn’t. She wasn’t sure. She was on her feet now, Wade and Roald holding her up.

  It was then that she saw it. On the ice some fifty feet off, through the swirling snow. A blue light. She tore herself away and cautiously approached, Darrell with her. The glow came from the crest of a small ring. They were all with her now. She picked the ring up. There was a seal on it, a dancing god crowned with leaves.

  “That’s the Greek god Dionysus,” Roald said.

  Lily felt dizzy. “No. What? Is this . . . is this Andreas’s ring? His seal? Is this the ring Nicolaus wrote about in the Protocol? The one he gave to Hans after Andreas died? How could it be? Carlo threw it to us. How did he get it? How . . . there’s something under the seal. Paper . . .”

  The words were in English.

  So.

  I have tried to turn it away, avert the flood from me. You can rewrite the future, yes, and I have tried. But in this, at least for me, I have failed.

  Turn back the flood, children.

  It’s up to you.

  You are the last.

  Make this never be!

  Wade’s hands trembled. “Guys . . . this is . . . we know this handwriting. It’s Hans Novak’s handwriting. It can’t be. Copernicus lost him in the storm. We read it in his own words. This can’t be Hans’s writing. But it is.”

  “There’s more on the other side,” Darrell said.

  You will know now what I have hidden for so long.

  After being thrown from the Eternity Machine, I found myself in your present and still a young man, my mind clouded by travel in time, but clear enough to remember some things. Thanks to the descendants of the Guardians, I obtained the diary that the astronomer and I wrote so long ago. I hid it in a special chamber beneath the fencing school in Bologna until you came along. I waited there, remembering more and preparing young Guardians for a battle I will not survive. You’ll know that I was Hoppas and Hoffnung, the others, the boy who spoke to Quirita in Havana. I have been many things in my strange story, among them the caretaker of this future. Now you are the last.

  Go.

  The end of it all is near.

  At the very bottom of the document, Wade saw the same string of characters as on the Protocol.

  Beneath the marks were what he realized was a translation that gave precise instructions on how to launch and control the astrolabe.

  Great lever, halfway down, leftmost lever one-quarter, rightmost three-quarters, setting dials 1–6 to year, month, day, hour, minute, second of destination, activate main engine, cycles 2, 4, 6 . . .

  “Carlo was . . . Hans Novak,” said Lily. “I . . . How could we not know . . . how . . . ?”

  Wade stared at the place where the ice floe had been. “Because we couldn’t know. Not until now. Knowing anything would have changed what we did, and we’d never have gotten to this point. Butterfly wings, remember?”

  The walkie-talkie crackled. His father answered. “We’re . . . all right. . . .”

  It was the base commander. “Not why I’m calling. Bad news.” His voice was thin, far away. “Return to the base. Someone’s coming for you in a snow wagon.” The walkie-talkie cut off with a sharp snap and was soon replaced by the distant roar of the wagon.

  Wade thought: What could be worse than Carlo’s death?

  Several minutes later, the snow wagon appeared. After three men jumped off to check on the crewman and the dogs, the Kaplans hurried on board. The driver knew nothing but the urgency of his mission. The base soon loomed ahead, and the wagon slowed and curved its skis toward the main structure. The commander was waiting in the doorway, his coat half on, half off, wind flying through his hair as he rushed toward them.

  “It’s about your friend Becca Moore,” he said.

  Wade’s knees nearly gave way. “Is she—”

  “I don’t know. There’s a call on the base hotline. From Switzerland. Hurry.”

  Lily rushed inside. The others let her take the phone. She put it on speaker. Julian was speaking. “. . . don’t know how but . . .” There was a crackling pause, then he came on again. “. . . Dr. Cranach can’t save Becca. He called me and I came back. The cancer, the radiation poisoning, has spread to her liver and lungs.” Julian didn’t even sound like himself as the line crackled. “. . . expect her to p . . . pass in the next . . . hours . . .”

  Lily’s eyes streamed hot tears. She tried to wipe them away, but there were too many, coming too quickly, and she just sobbed. Becca. Becca! She slumped into the nearest chair, covering her face.

  “Are Maggie and her family there?” Wade asked.

  “They are, but aren’t allowed to see her. No one is. The cancer ward’s been sealed in quarantine because of the radiation. I’m here with my dad, and we haven’t seen her, either. Dr. Cranach said they’re keeping her comfortable with painkillers, but no more meds, no food. They’re going to have to”—he couldn’t seem to say the word that was in his mind to say—“they’re going to”—he still couldn’t say it.

  “Just tell us!” Roald snapped. “Julian, what?”

  The line grew statically, then clear. “Cremate . . . her . . . ,” he said.

  Lily felt her head float away then her throat filled, and she threw up on the floor
of the hut. Everyone was suddenly yelling, crying, pounding things, while Darrell held her hair at the back of her neck, and she threw up everything until there wasn’t any more.

  Wade was suddenly there with a towel, shaking and shaking. She wiped her mouth, spat into the towel, then stooped to wipe the floor; but someone was doing that, too.

  “We have to go,” Wade said, patting her arm gently. “We have to go to her.”

  Wade tried to stop his tears. It was useless. Becca was too special. She couldn’t leave the world this way.

  No.

  And she wouldn’t.

  Something had to be done. Becca needed to live, and he would find a way for her to live. Wasn’t it impossible? Yes, impossible. But so much else had seemed impossible six months ago. He would find a way.

  A way?

  What way?

  Scientiam temporis. That’s what Carlo—Hans—told them. You can change time. That’s what scientiam temporis meant. That’s what the butterfly effect meant, and multiple universes. Threads of what he knew and suspected and had no knowledge of wove into and around and about one another, and something was born in his mind.

  “A chopper will take you to the yacht,” said the commander. “From there you can be in Tierra del Fuego—”

  “Not fast enough,” said Wade. “What else do we have?”

  The commander searched charts and the computer terminal on his desk. “Chinese aircraft carrier seventy miles offshore. The Liaoning, part of the Chinese presence here. Supposed to be a couple of civilian jets aboard. I’ll contact them?”

  “We can pay,” Terence said from the phone, taking over the line now. “Whatever they ask. I have friends in the Chinese government.”

  And it was done. They would be helicoptered to the ship within the hour.

  In the meantime Terence arranged two flights from the Chinese ship back to Europe.

  “Two?” said Roald. “Why two flights?”

  “Vela, Triangulum, Corvus, Lyra, and Sagitta are in Crete,” Terence said. “Roald, we need Corona and your scientific brain there, too. And we need them right now. I’ll meet you on the island.”

  “But I’m going to Davos with the children—”

  “No,” said Terence. “No time. Julian will meet them at the clinic. We need you back in Crete.”

  Roald looked at the children, took a breath. “If it has to be that way, then fine.”

  And that was the long and short of it. The stakes were too high and the time too short. A pair of jets from the carrier were arranged to take Roald to Crete and the children to Switzerland. When they arrived on the Chinese carrier, it was all set.

  “See you in Crete,” Wade’s father said. “All of you. As soon as possible.”

  All of you. Wade’s heart skipped at the words. He heard everything in reference to Becca. Each thing was twined with her. Every action he took, every thought he had.

  “Board now,” said the pilot of the Davos plane. “Now.”

  The jet had a stark, uncomfortable interior that looked far more like a fighter than a private jet. Wade didn’t care.

  Just get us to Becca.

  “The hours will pass quickly,” the pilot said with a nod of his head.

  Pass.

  It was the word Julian had used. Wade thought of the idea growing inside of him. Scientiam temporis.

  He would find a way to change time.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR

  Davos, Switzerland

  September 18

  Evening

  When Julian’s car turned the corner and sped up the long curving driveway, Wade saw the clinic come into view and how the late sun burned orange on its white facade, and he went numb. It was the sunset that Becca might have seen but would not.

  “They’re never going to let us do this,” Lily said.

  “To say nothing of Phase Two,” Darrell said. “But I guess one thing at a time, right?”

  Wade knew what his father would say to their plan. “I forbid it. It’s a theory, a mental construct. You can’t play with people’s lives using chaos theory!”

  Except that Wade wasn’t playing.

  “Silva is totally on board,” said Julian. “He said, ‘A soldier doesn’t watch a fellow soldier die, not without a fight. Count me in.’ I don’t know if you know Silva’s story. He had a brother, both in Afghanistan together. Silva was wounded, trapped, under fire. Against the orders of their commanding officer, his brother came for him, saved Silva, but lost his life doing it. It’s what drives Silva now, saving others. He’ll never leave anyone behind.”

  Lily wiped her eyes. “I love him,” she said. “He’s one of the best.”

  “He is,” Wade said. Turning to Lily and Darrell, he put his hands on their hands. “If there’s any chance, we have to take it. There are no options. No choice.”

  Darrell drilled him with his eyes. “Bro, the risk—”

  “I know!” he said. “I know it’s crazy. I keep hearing my dad in my head. I get it. It’s impossible. It has to be impossible. There are a trillion reasons not to do it, and only one reason to do it. Hope. It’s the only hope of saving her. It’s the only thing we have left. Or there’s been no point to any of this: the Legacy, our search, or anything else.”

  There was no more arguing.

  “I really hope Silva has a rock-solid plan,” Darrell said as Julian turned off the engine and sat quietly. “You just don’t steal a patient.”

  “We have to expect . . . ,” Lily said softly, “we have to . . . what she looks like . . .” Her voice cracked. She didn’t say any more.

  The car stood cooling while the sun slid slowly behind the trees. The clinic’s alabaster facade turned gray. Julian had told them that Becca’s family were at a hotel down the mountain and would be arriving soon, but not yet, and because of the quarantine, no cars came, no cars went. Wade felt his insides turn to lead, his blood to ice. Becca was dying inside that building. Maybe she would be gone mere hours from now. No one knew for certain. The gray stone exterior quite suddenly reminded him of a funeral home.

  “Is it dark enough yet?” Darrell whispered, the first one to speak for an hour.

  Julian nodded. “I think so. I’ll text Silva.” His fingers trembling, he tapped a brief message to Silva’s phone.

  We’re here.

  A reply shot back.

  Julian to the front desk. Distract. Others to the gray van.

  Wade looked over. A dark-gray paneled van stood at the far end of the lot, nose out.

  “I’ll go to the desk with you,” Darrell said. “I can distract for as long as it takes.”

  “Yeah, you can,” Lily said. “Wade, you and me.”

  Darrell cracked open the car door, closed it behind him, adjusted his shirt, pulled his sleeves down, and entered the building with Julian. The doors rang when they opened and again when they closed. Wade and Lily left the car and scurried over to the gray van.

  Not more than twenty seconds passed before Silva could be seen hurrying along the side of the clinic. He cradled what appeared to be a rolled-up blanket. It was Becca.

  Lily opened the van doors as quietly as possible.

  Silva shifted Becca in his arms. “Wade, take her shoulders.”

  He slid his hands under her shoulders. She weighed nothing, was barely there. He crouched backward into the van and pulled her in, catching a glimpse of her face. Eyes shut, cheekbones as sharp and hard as stone, lips parted, teeth apart. His knees gave out as he set her down on a low cot that was secured to the floor of the van.

  “Lily, in the front,” Silva said, lifting Becca’s legs onto the cot with the effort of moving a washcloth. He strapped her in. “Wade, get Darrell and Julian now. We have twenty seconds before— Go!”

  Wade rushed to the clinic’s front entrance, pushed his way to the desk. He brusquely cut into Darrell’s monologue about surf punk guitar solos to an uncomprehending staff.

  “We have to go,” he said.

  “But they’re interested
—”

  “We have to go,” Wade said. “Bye, everyone, and thanks.”

  As soon as they were outside—boomph!—a great green halo appeared over the clinic. At the same time the van roared up to the front doors.

  “Fireworks?” said Darrell as he leaped into the van. “They’ll go crazy in there.”

  “Not our problem now,” said Silva. “And not appropriate, I know, but workable. They’ll go from quarantine into full immediate lockdown before they”—boomph!—“realize it’s just loud and showy. Belt up!” He slammed his foot to the floor, and the van shot away down the hill.

  The journey to a private airport west of Zurich was agonizingly slow. Because the authorities were searching for a young woman who had disappeared from a private medical facility, Silva had to slip cleverly past several police checkpoints. What might normally have been a two-hour trip took them until nearly dawn. Then, by the time a small team of discreet medical personnel—courtesy of the Ackroyd Foundation—could be assembled, and a jet chartered and flight plans filed, it was evening of the next day.

  They lifted off at last a full day after the kidnapping—Becca strapped to a gurney and attended by two doctors—and began the first leg of a many-legged journey from country to country, airstrip to airstrip, on their way to the ancient and mysterious island of Crete.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  Crete

  September 21

  Night

  Galina glared at Ebner fidgeting as usual. His thin fingers flew over the keyboard of his military laptop with increasing frenzy punctuated by the irritated tapping of the Delete key. Clack-clack.

  “Calm yourself,” Galina said. “We are so close to our goal.”

  They were on a ridge—one of many ranges and hills that undulate the small island of Crete—less than two kilometers from the ruins of Knossos, King Minos’s ancient palace. Knossos had been the capital of the vast Minoan empire and hid the infamous—and yet undiscovered—labyrinth of the fabled man-bull, the Minotaur.

  Clack-clack-clack.