Ardelean said, “You invaded my home and you killed my brother. However, you have given me what I wanted, so treat this as a warning. Stop. Go home.”
Mike said, as she pressed Nicholas’s handkerchief to her hand, “If we stop, will you stop? Murdering people for their blood, killing Dr. Marin’s fiancé for no reason at all, killing Alexander and Vittorini, Hemmler and Donovan, not to mention sending your drone after us and the train?” Her hand throbbed and burned. The talons had dug deep.
Ardelean said, “Your brains are so . . . limited. You see and understand so very little. Yet again, I have found that true of so many of my fellow human beings. Then there are the corrupt greedy ones, like Barstow. You may leave now, talk to Isabella, ask her why she failed to save my brother.
“Drummond, if you take one more step, Arlington will tear out your eyes and then your throat. She’s hungry. We took down a rabbit earlier, but she’s at her flying weight and fast, and I need to feed her more.” He paused, looking back and forth between Nicholas and Mike. “Will you never learn—”
Nicholas sprang. Ardelean tossed the bird forward, right at Nicholas, but the falcon didn’t go for Nicholas’s face, it veered off.
Ardelean was ready. He slammed Nicholas’s leg with a roundhouse kick, smooth, fast, deadly.
So he was trained in martial arts. But Nicholas was, as well.
Could Mike get her Glock before the falcon attacked her again? She had to try. She grabbed it off a patch of flowers and turned to shoot, but Nicholas had already fought him back into the trees, his hands a blur, his fists hitting Ardelean’s forearm, his leg striking down toward the man’s thigh with such force he almost lost his balance when Ardelean managed to jerk out of his way. He punched Ardelean in the breastbone with his palm, making the man stagger backward, but he was on Nicholas again, his fist in his kidney.
They were well matched. Mike was afraid to move closer—the bird was perched on a limb right above her head. They were too close: she couldn’t take a chance shooting Nicholas.
Mike suddenly had a clear shot. She brought up the Glock, and the bird, screaming, hit her arm as she fired. The shot went low, splitting a branch from the tree. The bird turned on Nicholas.
Ardelean disappeared into the trees. The bird screeched and flew after him.
“There, there!” Mike called to Nicholas, pointing.
Ardelean was in a full-out sprint, heading west, through the gardens, past iron benches, the bird circling back to cover his retreat. They gained on him. Ardelean suddenly turned and shouted out that strange word again—obţine. The falcon whirled into motion in front of them, wings out, attacking with a shriek.
Mike threw up her arms to protect her face and lost sight of Ardelean as she fought off the bird. Nicholas grabbed it by a tail feather, going for its jesses, but its sharp feet were no match for his flesh. The bird dug in, launching herself into the air off Nicholas’s battered hands, wings beating hard as she flew away.
They were suddenly surrounded by silence, the city around them holding its breath. “I don’t know which way he went,” Nicholas said, turning in a full circle, then stopping and listening. Nothing.
Mike was bending over, panting. “I should have shot it, but I just couldn’t make myself do it. I’m an idiot.”
A heartbeat later, a motorcycle roared to life.
“There, he’s on a bike. Go, go.” She started to run, but Nicholas grabbed her arm. “No, Mike, we can’t get him now.” She looked up to see his nose was bleeding, and he had a small cut above his right eye. Mike’s hands were bloody, her arms cut from tree branches and the bird’s talons.
“I should have shot that wretched bird, I should have—”
He lightly touched his finger over her mouth. “It’s all right. Ardelean’s already too far away. We’ll never catch him.”
“Nicholas, what did he mean that this was just a warning because we gave him what he wanted?”
Nicholas felt fear ice his belly. “Listen.”
The unmistakable whir of a drone’s rotors.
Nicholas yelled, “The safe house. He’s going to attack the safe house. He must know about Temora!”
* * *
As Roman sped away, his bruised ribs began to throb. He looked up to see Arlington, flying overhead, always watching him.
“All is well”—and he laughed. He used his headphone to make a call.
“Do it,” he said.
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX
They hurried back to the safe house, eyes to the sky.
Harry opened the door, stared at them in shock. “What happened? Are you all right?”
“Father, Ardelean wants to kill Temora. He’s going to send a drone to bomb the house. We have to get him out now,” and Nicholas bolted for the basement door. Harry sounded a silent alarm that Mike saw start to flash on the wall, a blinking red light. She could feel the house come to life under her, heard shouts as Nicholas reached the cells.
And then she heard the unmistakable sound of a drone and a loud whoosh.
She threw herself toward the basement stairs, pulling Harry with her, the two of them tumbled down the metal staircase, just as the missile burst through the ballistic glass window and exploded in the sitting room.
The concussion made her eardrums pop. She cried out, felt blood start to trickle from an ear. She realized she and Harry were tangled together at the base of the metal stairs. The flashing red light strobed over Harry’s face. His eyes were closed, blood snaked down his face. “Oh no, Harry!” Vaguely, as if she were underwater, she heard Nicholas shouting for her. “I’m okay! I have your dad. He’s hurt.”
He was there in a heartbeat, first gave her a quick once-over, then touched the blood on his father’s head, over his right ear. “Dad, can you please wake up?”
Harry’s eyelids fluttered, and Nicholas let out a shaky breath. “Tell me you know who I am.”
Amazingly, Harry smiled, not much of one, but it meant everything to Nicholas. “Ah, are you the prime minister? Come, Nicholas, I’ll live to fight another day.”
Nicholas gave a laugh. “Good, but we need to get you out of here. I smell smoke coming from upstairs. There’s a back door. Dad, can you stand?”
Harry managed a nod. “There’s a back door.” He was weaving as Nicholas pulled him up. Mike felt wobbly herself. Her ears hurt, and she had the oddest sensation of vertigo every time she looked to the side. It was odd, but her hands didn’t hurt anymore.
“Nicholas, look.”
They saw flames licking the opening to the basement. “Let’s collect everyone and get out of here.”
Temora was in the hallway between the two guards she’d seen earlier, eyes wide, scared to death.
“What do you want us to do with him, sir?”
Harry managed to say, “We’re all going out the back door, Connor. Bring him along. And take care.”
Temora said more to himself than to them, “Why is Roman attacking me, trying to kill me? I helped him. I let him know Barstow was using him. I sent him the bloody video, showed him what Barstow was really like, that old monster. He should be thanking me, not trying to kill me.”
Nicholas paused only a moment. “You said it yourself, Caleb. With Roman, it’s always personal. You betrayed him, and he never forgot it.”
Nicholas led, holding up his father, the guards followed with Temora, and Mike took up the rear, ears ringing, keeping her weapon up. At the end of the hall was a steel door, and, farther down, another. They secured the doors behind them as they went, and within five minutes, they were stepping up a flight of metal stairs into the garden off Farm Street.
Nicholas said, “Connor, take Temora to Thames House, to MI5. Keep him safe. We’ll take Harry to hospital.”
Mike watched the skies for birds or drones, but it was quiet, business as usual, trees ruffling in the night breeze and pigeons cooing.
The car that had brought Harry was back on the corner, waiting. The driver, a seasoned MI5 agent, didn’t
miss a beat as they bundled Harry into the back seat. He said, “Let me tell you it’s good to see you all alive. The house is burning, coppers are all over the scene. Mike, you’re bleeding, too, there’s a kit in the back of the seat. We’re going to get blasted in the news for this one. Where to, Mr. Drummond?”
Harry said, “Take us to Chelsea and Westminster Hospital.”
Mike closed her eyes. Everything hurt, even her eyebrows. She heard Nicholas speaking to his father, assuring himself that he was all right. Then she felt Harry take her hand.
“Thank you, Michaela, for saving my life.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-SEVEN
Chelsea and Westminster Hospital
369 Fulham Road
Chelsea, London
Isabella was drifting off to sleep when a knock sounded on the door.
“No more needles,” she called out.
“How are you, Dr. Marin?”
She opened her eyes to see the female FBI agent who’d come to save her. Her blond hair was in a ratty ponytail, and she wore black-framed glasses. From twelve feet away, Isabella could see dark bruises on her wrists and arms, see how pale she was, the thick white bandage wrapped around her hand.
“What happened?”
Mike knew her voice was too loud because of her eardrums, but who cared? “Well, let’s see. Since I saw you last, a crazy falcon attacked me, Ardelean shot a missile into a house I was in, and I fell down a flight of stairs.” She came forward. “My name’s Michaela Caine, special agent, FBI. But none of this compares to what you’ve been through—may I call you Isabella?”
“Yes, please.”
“I’m Mike. Now, tell me the truth, how are you feeling?”
“I guess I’m okay, really. I keep telling them I’m fine, but they won’t leave me alone. A missile? Like the one they used to shoot down the helicopter?”
“Yes. Don’t worry. No one else was hurt.”
Isabella licked her tongue over her dry lips. “It seems like a nightmare now, like something so horrendous it really couldn’t have happened. But I know Gil is dead—at least in my head—but not here yet.” She touched her heart. “I know Radu is dead, too.” She swallowed tears. “Does Radu’s brother know he’s dead?”
“Yes, he does. And unfortunately, we can’t find him. But we do know he’s a very angry, out-of-control man at what he now sees as absolute betrayal. It doesn’t help he’s probably over the edge on all the LSD he was taking. He’s out for revenge. He blames those in power because they sent a team in a helicopter, namely us, to his home to save you, and Radu died. He blames all of us, really.”
Mike saw Isabella was trembling. She stepped to the hospital bed and touched her shoulder. “All you went through, it was horrible, all of it. I don’t know everything Ardelean did to you, but still, Isabella, you tried to save Radu. No, no, his death wasn’t your fault. You were heroic. But what about the Voynich?”
“It was about a recipe in the Voynich, part of it in the missing pages that I had. And it was about blood and how to combine them. What do you know about the Voynich manuscript?”
“One of my teammates was in art crimes, Agent Ben Houston. He worked the case when the Voynich was stolen from Yale. You met him, I believe. With Melinda St. Germaine?”
“Oh, yes. Was that only a couple of days ago?” She shook her head in wonder. “It seems like a decade. Agent Houston was kind and knowledgeable.”
“I know no one has ever been able to translate it or decode it—so tell me.”
Isabelle nodded. “The Voynich tells the story of the illegitimate line that started with Vlad Dracul’s half brothers. I’ve pieced together what I can and I think one of the twins was ill, an affliction of the blood. They tried to cure him—with herbs, with baths, but they didn’t know how blood worked. And so, when the brother Andrei bled uncontrollably and weakened, they came up with the idea to replace the blood. So Alexandru, the stronger of the two, found him blood to drink. This wasn’t quite that clear in the manuscript, but I believe it’s close enough.
“The Voynich manuscript is a record of their conversations about how the experiments were going. Roman and Radu both read and speak Voynichese. They’ve brought those two long-ago brothers into the present. Radu is—was—a brilliant scientist. Very strange, because of the limitations of his illness, but brilliant. The experiments he was doing were completely out of the box. The equipment—sorry, you already know this. Did Radu want me to give him all my blood? He wanted so much to live, as did Roman. Perhaps I would have survived for a while, depending on how long they would allow me to replenish my blood. Was I the match they’d been searching for? Yes, I believe so. Roman killed so many people, primarily Romanians, searching for a match. I think Roman made Radu into a monster.”
Mike shook her head. “No, he valued himself, his own life, over anyone else’s, including yours. He called you his blood sister, yet, if it came down to it, do you think he would have hesitated to exsanguinate you rather than accept his own death? None of it was right, Isabella. All of it was centuries-old madness.
“Your physician told me they’d drugged you, there were still traces in your blood.”
“Oh yes. After all the initial terror, whatever the drug Roman gave me made me feel wonderful. I wasn’t afraid any longer, even when they wheeled me in and hooked me up. I wasn’t even afraid when I saw my blood flowing through the tube into Radu’s arm.”
Mike said, “Did either of them mention where Roman lived when he wasn’t at the house with Radu?”
“They have some estate up north, where Roman takes his birds.” She shuddered. “He let one of them feed on my stomach. I will have the scars forever.”
Mike couldn’t imagine. “I’m sorry.”
“I’m alive,” Isabella said. “Without you, I’d be dead.”
Mike merely nodded. “Tell me about the missing Voynich pages you found in the British Museum. Isn’t that why Ardelean kidnapped you in the first place? To get those pages, to complete his recipe for Radu?”
Isabella stared at her, then shrugged. “You’re going to think I’m crazy.”
“Try me.”
“Okay. Maybe back as far as the time of Vlad Dracul, pages were ripped out of the manuscript. At some point, the pages were separated from the main manuscript, and moved from place to place. Where, I don’t know, until a young girl saw a man bury the pages under a rowan tree in Eastern Poland, back in 1912, I think. She was part of a large Romany tribe camped close by. She dug the pages up and took them back to the camp and showed them to my great-great-grandmother, Kezia. She was also known as the Old Princess. She could read the pages and prophesied twins of her line would come and they would read them and reunite them with the great manuscript, as she called the Voynich.
“Their stories were passed down to me. My sister and I were the first twins in nearly a hundred years. But my sister died when we were four years old. It was then I told my mother I heard the pages weeping.
“She and my father believed the pages would drive me mad, so they buried them in a lead box so I couldn’t ever hear them again. There’s more, of course, but eventually, after my mother’s death, in her will, she told me where to find the pages.”
Isabella studied Mike’s face. “You might believe me mad, but it’s the truth—even before I unwrapped the pages, I heard them singing to me, talking to me, and yes, crying. And I knew I had to reunite them with the great manuscript.
“But someone had stolen the Voynich from the Beinecke at Yale the year before. If I’d known in time, I would have stolen it myself. Instead, I came up with a plan. I pretended to find the pages and made a big announcement, praying the person who’d stolen the Voynich would come after the pages. I wanted him to come.
“I had a gun. I was ready.” She shuddered. “But it all happened so fast. I accepted Gil’s marriage proposal and this Dr. Laurence Bruce, really Roman Ardelean, showed up at the front door.” She swallowed. “Only he wasn’t the one who stole the Voynich.”<
br />
“No,” Mike said, “he wasn’t. Actually, it was a very bad man named Corinthian Jones who stole it, as leverage, to use on Ardelean. We even know where it is—in his safe.”
Isabella’s eyes flashed. “Do you know where the loose pages are too? I know Roman had them that night.”
“I don’t know, but I will alert everyone still at the house to look for them.”
“Are you going to put me in a straitjacket?”
Mike flashed back to the Koh-i-Noor diamond, its magic, its prophecy, and slowly shook her head. “I’ve seen and heard so many strange things this past year—well, let me say if we’re talking straitjackets, they’ll have to get two, one for each of us.” She leaned down, smoothed a hand across Isabella’s forehead. “Before the Voynich is returned to Yale, you can reunite the pages—yes, I know we’ll find them—with the great manuscript.” She paused, then said, “The Old Princess, that’s a lovely name.
“Now, can you think of anything to help us figure out what Ardelean might do?”
Isabella shook her head, said instead, “Thank you for saving me.”
Mike nodded and walked to the door. Isabella’s voice stopped her.
“Wait—I remember he did say he had plans, big plans. Something to do with a shipment and a man named Barstow. I only heard bits and pieces of the conversation, and something about it was time for this program to come to light. He was going to give the world a show. I don’t know what program he meant.”
Mike said, “I do. Thank you, Isabella.”
CHAPTER SEVENTY-EIGHT
Mike found Nicholas and Harry in a treatment room inside the A&E—accident and emergency—wing. Harry sported a butterfly bandage on his temple and was in a full-blown argument with the doctor, who wanted to admit him for observation overnight.
“No, absolutely not. I passed the concussion protocol, and I have things to do.”
Nicholas said to the harassed doctor, “You aren’t going to change his mind, I’m afraid. I’ll make sure he doesn’t exert himself.”
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