Library of Gold

by Alex Archer

  For just a moment Charles appeared startled, as if the thought had never occurred to him.

  “Is that what you’re concerned about? Rest easy, Miss Creed. If you locate—” he shook his head “—excuse me, when you locate it, the library will be turned over intact to the proper authorities inside the Russian government.”

  It was a reasonable response, but Annja found herself pushing him just a bit further. “Right after you pocket a hefty finder’s fee, right?”

  Charles laughed outright. “Look around you, Annja,” he said, indicating with a sweep of his hands the house, the grounds, his entire business empire by extension, she supposed. “The media claims I have more money than God and you know what? That’s probably the only time I’ve ever agreed with them. I set a record last year for the most consecutive appearances on Forbes magazine’s Top Ten Wealthiest People list. What on earth would I do with more money?”

  It was the response she was looking for. The library was part of the world’s cultural heritage, a glimpse into the beliefs and practices of the past. It belonged to the Russian people and shouldn’t be locked away in some private collector’s vault.

  “Good,” she said, “at least that’s settled. But we’re still faced with the issue of finding the map Fioravanti was talking about in his journal. You said you think you know where it is?”

  Charles looked over at Gianni, who had been sitting patiently listening to their exchange. “Tell her,” he said to the younger man.

  Annja saw the flash of excitement in Gianni’s eyes as he turned to face her. “According to what I’ve been able to discover, Ridolfo’s brother gave the map to Kasmir Nabutov, their cousin by marriage and an Orthodox priest assigned to the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Everything I’ve found on the topic suggests that Nabutov secreted the map inside the Gospel of Gold, though how or exactly where I don’t know.”

  She knew that Ivan the Terrible had gifted the Gospel to the cathedral in 1571, right about the same time the library had gone missing. Legend claimed the Gospel had once been a part of the library and that it contained a clue to the library’s whereabouts, but it had been stored in the cathedral for hundreds of years with restricted access. Nobody had verified if the legend was true.

  Given that they weren’t getting in to see the Gospel, Annja didn’t see how this was going to help them and said as much to the other two.

  “As it turns out,” Charles replied, “I have a colleague on the staff of the cathedral. I’ve made arrangements for the two of you to privately examine the Gospel the day after tomorrow.”

  The chance to see and touch the Gospel of Gold would have been enough to get her to agree to the trip. That she would be doing so as part of an expedition to find the lost library of Ivan the Terrible was icing on the cake.

  Really good icing.

  Now it was her turn to smile.

  “So when do we get started?” she asked.

  Chapter 5

  Gianni was waiting for her, two first-class Aeroflot tickets in his hand, when she arrived at the airport the next afternoon. The flight from JFK in New York to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport was nine and a half hours, which would give them plenty of time to discuss how they intended to approach the Gospel of Gold and the ways Nabutov might have hidden information in its pages. First, however, Annja wanted to get to know her new companion better.

  He, apparently, had the same idea.

  “So,” Gianni said as they settled into their seats, “what do you do when you’re not traveling around the world searching for ancient artifacts and lost civilizations?”

  “Oh, you know, the usual, I guess.”

  The usual? Ri-i-ight.

  Somehow she didn’t think protecting the innocent while bearing a medieval mystical sword that was once carried by Joan of Arc fit into most people’s definition of “the usual.” It wasn’t as if she could tell him the truth, and even if she did, he’d never believe it. Sometimes she almost didn’t believe it herself.

  The day she’d stumbled upon the last remaining fragment of Joan’s shattered sword and, with her new friend Roux’s help, brought it together with the other fragments he had spent hundreds of years collecting was etched indelibly in her mind. It had, quite literally, been a turning point, not just for her but for Roux and Garin Braden, as well. None of their lives had been the same since.

  The sword had chosen her; she knew that now. It had reforged itself right before her very eyes and in doing so had selected her to be its next bearer. The role came with its own unique set of responsibilities, she’d discovered. Her own sense of justice seemed amplified when she carried the sword and several times she’d found herself unable to walk away from a situation as a result. Numbers and odds didn’t matter, only that she acted to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves when the opportunity presented itself.

  Which seemed to be happening more and more frequently.

  Annja didn’t know how it all worked—at least, not yet. But she’d vowed that one day she would, because the mystery of it was like a constant irritation in the back of her logical, scientific brain.

  Gianni, it seemed, wasn’t going to settle for such a trite answer, though.

  “Come on,” he said, “you’ve got to give me more than that. Where’d you grow up?”

  “New Orleans,” she replied, intentionally not mentioning the orphanage she’d lived in or the nuns who’d been the only adult influences in her life throughout her childhood. He didn’t need to know about that.

  “What did you major in at school?”

  “Bachelor’s and master’s degrees in archaeology, with a concentration in the medieval and Renaissance periods.”

  “And now you work for a cable television show. How do you like that?”

  While it was an interesting question, it wasn’t one that necessarily had an easy answer. She didn’t particularly care for the show’s sensationalism, but she appreciated that it allowed her to travel throughout the world investigating ancient civilizations and the legends surrounding them. It was a means to an end and right now one that came in very handy when she considered the sword’s influence on her life.

  She explained how she felt about the show as best she could, then said, “Enough with the twenty questions. What about you?”

  “Me? Not much to tell, really. Born and raised outside of Milan with my two brothers. One became a doctor, the other an architect. The pride of my parents’ eyes.”

  “And you?”

  He grinned. “A painter. Annoyed them even more than I thought it would.”

  Annja laughed, but it was more from a sense that it was the kind of response he was expecting. She’d worked hard and done what the nuns had expected of her so that she could get out of there at the earliest opportunity. Why anyone would intentionally choose a path that wasn’t what they wanted to do just to annoy another person, especially their parents, was beyond her.

  “What do you paint?”

  Gianni shrugged. “This and that. Landscapes, mostly. A few portraits now and then.” He studied her, a mischievous gleam in his eye. “You should let me paint you. You would look beautiful in the light of an Italian sunset.”

  An image flashed through Annja’s mind, the two of them in a Tuscan farmhouse, the orange-red light of the setting sun streaming in through a nearby window, splashing across her supine form, warming her bare skin as Gianni looked on from a painter’s stool a few feet away, close enough to reach out and touch…

  Down, girl. It had been too long since she’d spent any time with the opposite sex.

  Not wanting him to guess at her line of thought, Annja assumed an indignant expression. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked archly. “I need Italian sunlight to bring me up to your standards?”

  For a moment, he just gaped at her. “Wait…that’s not what I meant,” he stammered, trying to recover. “I mean, of course you’re beautiful, but the sunlight—”

  Gianni sat and stared at her. �
��Very funny,” he finally said. Their laughter served to bring them out of that awkward get-to-know-you stage and they spent the rest of the time before dinner chatting comfortably on topics ranging from the art of the Italian Renaissance to the Yankees’ chance at another World Series. Once the flight attendant had cleared the dinner dishes, Annja decided to catch some sleep to help her adjust to the time change once they arrived in Moscow. Wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, she curled up with a pillow against the window and drifted off to sleep with the hum of the engines in her ears.

  * * *

  THE REST OF THE FLIGHT passed without difficulty and the pilot brought them in for a bumpy but otherwise uneventful landing just before midnight local time. Neither of them had checked their bags, so they were able to bypass baggage claim and reached the immigration processing area ahead of most of the other passengers. Annja handed their passports to a blonde woman in the blue uniform of the Federal Migration Service.

  “What is the reason for your visit?” the officer asked, looking up at them as she compared their faces to their photos.

  “Vacation.”

  It wasn’t exactly true, but telling the officer that they were here to hunt for the long-lost library of Ivan the Terrible, one of Mother Russia’s most feared despots, didn’t seem the wisest move.

  The officer scanned Annja’s passport and then waited for her computer to process the information. Once it had, she picked up a rubber entry stamp and raised it over an open page of the passport only to hesitate at the last moment after glancing at what came up on her computer screen.

  She lowered her hand without using the stamp.

  Annja didn’t like that, didn’t like it at all.

  A sense of unease slowly unfurled itself in her gut.

  “You are together, yes?” the officer asked Annja, while inclining her head toward Gianni.

  For a moment Annja thought the other woman was asking if the two of them were a couple. She opened her mouth to say no, but then realized what she was really being asked.

  “That’s right,” she replied. “We are traveling together.” She smiled, hoping to get one in return.

  She didn’t.

  The officer picked up Annja’s passport a second time and gave it closer scrutiny, which only increased Annja’s growing unease.

  “Is there a problem?” she asked.

  The officer ignored her. She dialed a number on her phone, waited for it to be answered and then said a few short phrases in Russian, glancing only once at Annja in the process.

  Annja knew a handful of languages, but unfortunately Russian wasn’t one of them.

  She desperately wanted to know what the officer was saying.

  The officer hung up, got up from behind her desk and disappeared through a door in the back behind her station, all without saying a word to Annja or Gianni.

  “What’s going on?” he asked.

  Annja just shook her head. “I’m not sure.”

  She glanced over the counter, trying to read whatever was on the officer’s computer monitor, but it was angled too far to the left for her to get a clear look. She thought she could see the edge of a photo, a head shot perhaps, maybe even her own, but the reflection of the overhead lights on the screen kept her from being certain. Their passports were no longer on the counter, which could only mean the officer had taken them with her.

  That wasn’t a good sign.

  “You’re not an international fugitive by any chance, are you?”

  She knew Gianni was joking, but the remark sent a shiver down her spine just the same. She’d had more than her fair share of police encounters since taking up the sword. More than once she’d had to employ creative storytelling when it came to explaining away the bodies she’d been forced to leave in her wake. She’d always acted in self-defense, but proper explanations would have required revealing the sword’s existence and that was something she simply hadn’t been prepared to do.

  Had something she’d done in the past finally caught up with her?

  Chapter 6

  The sound of a door closing caught her attention and Annja looked up to see the blond officer walking back toward her, with two other immigration agents in tow. Both were large men, with wide shoulders and several inches on Annja. If they weren’t imposing enough, the sight of the handguns holstered on their belts clearly indicated they meant business.

  The blonde opened the low gate separating the passengers from the immigration officials and waved Annja and Gianni through.

  “This way.”

  It was voiced as a request, but Annja knew they had little choice. Something must have set off a red flag somewhere, leaving them with the option of either following orders or trying to make a break for it. Neither course of action was all that appealing.

  Her instincts were screaming at her to get out of there, but to reach the street, they would have to get past not only the immigration officers but also the customs officials at their stations farther down the corridor, and both groups were armed.

  The immigration officers formed up around them and marched them off down the hall to curious stares from their former fellow passengers. They were led to a small windowless room that contained a table and four chairs, two on either side. Annja had seen her share of interrogation rooms. She glanced around, trying to spot the security cameras, to no avail. She knew they were there, somewhere, and had no doubt that the room was also bugged. She hoped Gianni was smart enough to figure it out for himself, because there was no way of warning him without giving away that they had something to hide.

  Just going to have to play it by ear and hope for the best.

  Their guide asked them to take a seat, said something about getting them water and closed the door behind her on the way out.

  Annja didn’t even try the knob; she knew it would be locked.

  Not that a locked door would have stopped her. She could have called her sword to her at any moment and made short work of both the lock and the door. But that wouldn’t get them to the bottom of what was happening and would only serve to cement their guilt in the minds of their captors.

  They could always use the sword to free themselves if it proved necessary later.

  They sat there, staring at the four walls, for what felt like hours. Twice Gianni tried to engage her in conversation, to get her to discuss their situation and why she thought they might be in here, but she shushed him both times.

  She didn’t want to give them any more ammunition than they already had. Whatever that might be.

  Ten minutes passed, then fifteen, before the door opened and the biggest man Annja had ever seen stepped inside the room. She and Gianni immediately got to their feet. He was so tall that he had to duck to get through the doorway and his wide shoulders filled his jacket near to bursting. His sheer presence was intimidating, never mind his scowling expression. Annja found herself subconsciously shifting her feet into a wider defensive stance, preparing for a confrontation. She needn’t have worried, though, for the man’s bulldog face split into an equally wide grin when he caught sight of her.

  “Rasputin’s ghost!” he exclaimed. “It is you.”

  The man’s reaction was so unexpected that Annja could only stand there and stare.

  The newcomer crossed the room, one enormous paw extended, and took Annja’s hand in his own and shook.

  “Welcome. Welcome to Moscow. I am Yuri Basilovich and, I assure you, I am your biggest fan in all of Russia.”

  “Fan?” Annja asked, still trying to make sense of what was happening.

  “Yes. Yes, of course! I have seen all of your episodes at least twice, sometimes more. If there is anything you need, anything at all, you let me know, da?”

  Annja blinked and finally understood that she was standing in a Russian interrogation room talking to this giant of a man because he was a fan of her show. All the tension and anxiety slipped from her system in a rush, leaving her light-headed. When she found her voice, she said, “I’m very please
d to meet you, Yuri, but I must admit to being confused. My colleague and I have been held here as if we were criminals. Would it have not been easier if you’d simply said hello to us when we were in the immigration line?”

  The big man’s expression went from enthusiasm to abject horror. He turned to the immigration officer behind him, one of the men who had escorted them here in the first place, and fired off a rapid stream of Russian. Annja didn’t speak the language, but judging from his tone, Yuri wasn’t happy. He must not have appreciated the answer he received, either, for it elicited another blast from him.

  After dressing down his subordinate, Yuri turned back to face Annja.

  “I must beg your forgiveness, Miss Creed,” he said, the embarrassment plain on his face. “I had not wanted to miss a chance to meet you in the unlikely event that you came through our facility, so I had placed an alert in the system keyed to your name. When my subordinates saw that, they wrongly assumed you had done something illegal and detained you. Unfortunately, I was not on the premises at the time.”

  Annja was flattered but also annoyed. To think that a man would go to so much trouble on the slim chance that she might one day come through his airport was one thing, but being kept locked in a small room for more than an hour was something else entirely. It was not an auspicious beginning to their trip.

  We’ve wasted enough time, she thought. We need to get out of here and back on schedule.

  Annja smiled at the big Russian. “I understand completely, Yuri. I’m always happy to meet a fan of Chasing History’s Monsters and so I say we chalk this up to an unfortunate miscommunication and leave it at that. What do you say?”

  Yuri’s head bobbed up and down. “I couldn’t agree more, Miss Creed. And if I may, perhaps you’ll let me provide an escort to your hotel to make up for the time that you have lost?”

  “That’s not necessary, Yuri… .”

  “No, I insist,” he replied, and wouldn’t take no for an answer.

  Under Yuri’s direction they were hustled through the airport and out through a special VIP door away from the general traffic. A black Mercedes limousine pulled into view just as they came out of the building.