Library of Gold

by Alex Archer

  Annja wasn’t yet ready to give up.

  What if she divided each number in the combination by the number of the “clue” she was currently trying to solve? The number set of 2-6-8 would stay the same, since it was the first clue and therefore would be divided by one. But 6-8-14 would become 3-4-7 when it was divided by two and 8-14-22 would become 3-5-8 if she rounded up to the next nearest divisible number.

  Using this system, the first three combinations gave them three words.

  The key to…

  “Keep going,” Gianni whispered urgently.

  She kept at it until she ran out of numbers that would fit into the makeshift equation given the limitations of the lines on the page and the number of pages in the text. When she was done, she arranged the words she’d jotted down into lines that seemed to make sense.

  The key to Grozny’s treasure

  Lies in the hand of the Lady

  Who stands in the center

  Of the rising flames.

  Goose bumps rose along Annja’s arms as she stared at the words in front of her.

  The Lady who stands in the center of the rising flames…

  Given her own personal history with a particular woman who had done just that, Annja was momentarily at a loss. Gianni must have noticed something was wrong. He reached out and put a hand on her lower arm.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  She nodded, then shook herself.

  Just a coincidence.

  Coincidence, or a sign that she was on the right path.

  “Grozny. That’s Russian for fearsome, right?” Gianni asked, studying the four lines as if the meaning of life itself could be found in their depths.

  Annja nodded. “Fearsome or terrible usually, yeah.”

  “So it’s clearly referencing Ivan the Terrible.”

  The coded message was the first actual evidence they had that Gianni’s research had been right. That his ancestor Fioravanti had entrusted the information about the map to his relative, Nabutov.

  “That’s how I would read it.”

  “What about the next part, then? Who is the Lady? And what are the flames she is standing in? That doesn’t make a lot of sense… .”

  But it did to Annja, thanks to all the research she had done about the Kremlin and its surroundings. Never mind a few choice memories from having been raised in a Catholic orphanage.

  She pointed to the word Lady at the end of the second line. “The Lady is the Most Holy Lady Theotokos, otherwise known as the Virgin Mary. To Russian Orthodox believers, as with Catholics, she is venerated, a very important figure.”

  Gianni nodded. “Right. The main chapel of Saint Basil’s Cathedral right here in Red Square is dedicated to her.”

  “And it’s also the center referred to in the third line.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because the cathedral stands in the geometric center of the Garden Ring, the circular avenue that runs around the heart of Moscow on the very spot where the first protective rampart and wall were built by Feodor I back in 1591.”

  “And the flames…?”

  “Legend has it that the cathedral was designed to resemble a bonfire burning into the Russian night.”

  A grin spread across Gianni’s face. “So the map is hidden in the statue of the Virgin Mary—”

  “—which stands in the middle of Saint Basil’s Cathedral a few hundred yards away from here,” Annja finished for him.

  Chapter 9

  In the wake of their discovery, Annja called down to Dr. Petrescu’s office and let him know they had finished with the Gospel of Gold. It seemed to take forever for him to arrive in the examination room and even longer for him to pack the Gospel back into its protective case. Annja kept up a running commentary on the impressiveness of the Gospel’s illuminations and how they compared to other books of the same time period. When Petrescu finally had the Gospel secured in its carrying case, he led them back to the security desk where she thanked him and they said their goodbyes.

  Once outside Annja had to restrain Gianni from rushing across the square to Saint Basil’s. It was midafternoon and the square was filled with hundreds of people, most of them tourists. She felt the same urge to see if the map remained where it had been secreted all those years ago, but a couple of foreigners rushing across Red Square as if their lives were in danger would certainly capture the attention of the authorities. Particularly in this age of suicide bombers and terrorist attacks. The last thing they needed was to be dragged into another windowless room for a round of aggressive questioning.

  “Slow down,” she told him. “We need to think about this.”

  “What’s to think about?” Gianni asked impatiently. “We find the statue, grab the map and get out of there.”

  “In front of all these people?” She waved her hand at the crowds around them. “I don’t think so.”

  “Well, what do you suggest, then?”

  “There’s no sense blindly rushing into this,” she told him. “The map has been there for several hundred years. Another hour or two won’t make a difference. Let’s go inside, take a look around and work out a plan.”

  Reluctantly he conceded the point and they began to thread their way through the crowd, headed for the colorful domes of Saint Basil’s. Impulsively Annja slipped her arm through Gianni’s and received a wide smile in return. The day was warm and clear and Annja was suddenly feeling very good about the work they’d accomplished so far.

  Saint Basil’s Cathedral’s real name, she knew, was the Cathedral of the Protection of Most Holy Theotokos on the Moat, which made her thankful for its more common nickname. Its proper name came from the alleged appearance of the apparition of the Virgin above the city of Constantinople when it was being threatened by a large Slavic fleet. Ivan had ordered the cathedral built in 1555 to commemorate the capture of Kazan and Astrakhan, which marked the final battle of the Russo-Kazan wars. The original building had consisted of eight smaller, side churches surrounding a ninth, central one. A tenth was added thirty years later over the grave of a local saint and that’s where its popular name had come from. The church’s design was unlike any other building in Russia and the many-colored hues and pigments that decorated its exterior caused it to stand out in Red Square.

  There was a line waiting to go in and the two of them joined it, doing their best to look like any other pair of tourists. As they moved inside, Annja was surprised by how narrow it was. Each chapel was smaller than she expected and the oddly turning corridors that connected them made it hard to see from one into the next. They pushed through the earlier chapels, until they reached the main one in the center.

  The statue of the Virgin Mother stood on a raised platform set by itself inside a niche in the wall at the back of the room. Around it were more of the iconographic paintings, like those that decorated the rest of the cathedral’s interior. The statue appeared to have been carved from a single piece of white marble and the artist had depicted her in her usual cloak and veil, with one arm above her head and her face raised lovingly toward heaven. The statue was surrounded by a marble railing that reached midthigh, allowing tourists to see the Holy Mother clearly but prevented them from touching her.

  Annja stood at the edge of the rail, trying to get a better look at the statue’s hands, but it was too far away to see the kind of detail she was looking for. She glanced around and then approached a middle-age tourist who was standing admiring the statue, as well. A digital camera with a long telephoto lens hung around about his neck.

  “Excuse me, sir?”

  He turned to her. “Oui?”

  She switched to French. “I’m sorry to bother you, but I’m trying to get a closer look at the features of the Holy Mother’s face. Would you mind if I used your camera?”

  A smile had spread across his face at the sound of his mother tongue. “Of course,” he replied, “my pleasure.”

  They moved back over to the railing, where he handed her the came
ra and showed her how to focus it. She didn’t need the instruction, but suffered through it quietly. When he was finished, she brought the camera to her eye and focused in on the statue’s left hand, the one hanging by Mary’s side. Even with the aid of the telephoto lens Annja couldn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The hand, and the arm it was attached to, both seemed to be made from the same piece of marble as the rest of the statue. The same held true for the other hand, the one raised toward the ceiling.

  If it had been easy to find, someone would have discovered it years ago.

  She handed the camera back to the Frenchman, thanked him and then let Gianni know what she’d discovered.

  “So now what?” he asked, eyeing the statue the way an addict might his latest fix.

  “I’m not sure.”

  Moments later, the two of them found themselves alone in the small chapel. Despite all the time she’d spent cautioning her companion against rushing in and calling attention to themselves, Annja was gripped by a sudden sense of urgency. Before she knew it she found herself climbing over the railing surrounding the statue.

  “Watch the door,” she whispered to Gianni as he stared in astonishment at what she was doing. Her words had the desired effect, breaking him out of his surprise and sending him hustling across the room.

  This is a bad idea, she told herself but didn’t stop as she clambered up on the pedestal.

  Her body blocked some of the light, sending shadows into the niche in which the statue stood, and so she pulled out her BlackBerry and used the flashlight app.

  It was immediately clear that the statue had been carved from one large block of stone. The right hand flowed onto the lower arm and no matter what she did to it—pushed, pulled, tugged, twisted—she couldn’t get it to move.

  Very conscious of the seconds ticking away, Annja turned her attention to the left hand, the one that was raised over the statue’s head.

  It was still too high above the floor for her.

  Cursing under her breath, she climbed onto the base of the platform, using the statue to steady herself. If anyone came in now they were in deep trouble.

  She reached up, grabbed hold of the statue’s right hand and began to apply some pressure.

  To her surprise, the hand moved slightly.

  “Got something,” she whispered across the emptiness of the chapel without taking her eyes off what she was doing.

  “Better hurry up,” Gianni called in a stage whisper. “There’s a group of tourists getting closer.”

  Annja pushed and pulled at the hand, her heart pounding.

  It refused to move.

  “You stupid son of a…” she muttered beneath her breath.

  “They’re getting closer!” Gianni called.

  It was time for something drastic.

  Holding her right arm out away from the statue, she reached into the otherwhere and drew forth her sword. Without hesitation she reached up and whacked the statue’s hand once sharply with the flat of the blade.

  The sound of the blade striking the stone rang out through the space around her, but by the time Gianni figured out where the sound was coming from and looked in her direction, the sword was gone. She’d released it back into the otherwhere.

  This time, when she grabbed the statue’s hand, it came free so suddenly that she nearly dropped it on the floor.

  She immediately saw that it wasn’t a solid piece of marble at all, but a hollowed-out shell.

  Something was stuffed inside it.

  “Annja!” This time there was no mistaking the panic in Gianni’s voice.

  She turned and leaped from the base of the statue to the top of the railing and had just stepped down onto the floor of the chapel when tourists came into the room, chatting noisily in a variety of languages. One of them glanced sharply in her direction and for a moment she thought the young man might have seen her up on the railing, but then he shook his head and looked away. No doubt he’d convinced himself it was absurd to even think someone had been where they were not supposed to be.

  Annja turned her back on the group and shoved two fingers into the opening in the base of the hand, trying to fish out whatever was inside there. The tips of her fingers brushed against it, but on the third try she managed to snag it and slowly pull it out.

  They had found the map.

  Chapter 10

  Colonel Viktor Goshenko stared out the window of his office at Red Square and considered how little things had changed in his country since the rise of Gorbachev and his ridiculous notions of glasnost and perestroika. The names were different—prime minister rather than secretary general, the Federal Security Service instead of the Soviet Committee of State Security, otherwise known as the KGB—but not much else. The rich were still rich, the poor were still poor, and those without power craved it while those who had it used it mercilessly toward their own ends.

  Goshenko was very happy to be one of the latter.

  The intercom on his desk buzzed.

  He stepped over to it and pressed the button with his thick finger. “Yes, Pavel?”

  “There is a Semyon Pyotr on line one for you, Colonel.”

  For a moment, the name meant nothing to him. He stood there, frowning, his finger on the intercom. He was about to tell Pavel to get rid of whoever it was, when he finally made the connection.

  Simon Peter. The first of the Apostles.

  Of course.

  The fool was trying to use code, to disguise his real identity. Except he was using his own first name in the process.

  Idiot.

  He picked up the phone.

  “What do you have for me?” he asked, not bothering with introductions.

  The caller, unfazed by Goshenko’s rudeness, said, “A man and a woman were granted access to the archives today. They spent the majority of their time examining the Gospel of Gold, though for what I do not know. They kept their voices low and were guarded in what they said, but at one point the man grew excited and made a reference to the library.”

  There was only one library this particular informant could be referring to, and Goshenko felt his heart rate increase. He’d dreamed of the library only two nights ago and had awoken filled with a sense that his long quest was coming to an end. That soon the library and the riches it contained would be within his grasp.

  And now this.

  It seemed almost too good to be true.

  “Did you recognize them?” Goshenko asked.

  “Not the man, no. The woman, though, was familiar. She is the host of an American television show about ancient artifacts and legends. Her name is Annja Creed.”

  Goshenko reached for a pad of paper lying on his desktop, intending to make a note of the woman’s name, but then thought better of it. The paranoia that had kept him alive through the purges of the past several years controlled his actions. He could remember the name easily enough; why create a paper trail that someone else could follow?

  “Photos?”

  “Yes, though they are not the best quality, as they were taken with a cell phone. Still, they should serve their purpose.”

  They would, indeed.

  “Email them to this account immediately.” Goshenko rattled off the address of a throwaway account he’d created, one of many, for just such a purpose.

  There was a moment of silence on the other end of the line and then the caller came back on. “Done. I have also included the name and address of their hotel.”

  Goshenko frowned. “You followed them?”

  “No, no, of course not,” the other man said quickly, responding to the iciness that had slipped into Goshenko’s tone. “They requested that translations of the Gospel be sent over to them at their hotel.”

  “That’s good,” Goshenko said, mollified. “After such excellent work, it would have been a shame to kill you.”

  He hung up before the other man could say anything else. Fear was always a good motivator and Goshenko never missed an opportunity to make use of it, to remi
nd those beneath him of their respective positions. But even he had to admit the informant had made excellent use of an opportunity.

  He turned to stare out the window at the tourists in Red Square. He wasn’t seeing the weather, however, but rather the ancient scrolls and texts of Ivan the Terrible’s long-lost library laid out before him. Proof that his decades-long search had not been in vain. With a sense of victory humming through his body, he considered his next move.

  He needed to know more about this Creed woman.

  He returned to his desk, woke up his computer and scoured the databases for any mention of her.

  What he saw both encouraged and concerned him.

  She appeared to be quite gifted in locating historic artifacts and puzzling the truth out of legends, if the consumer media was to be believed. Her list of accomplishments, particularly in the past few years, seemed as long as his arm. Time and again she had succeeded where others had failed, locating ancient cities and lost civilizations.

  It was her very success rate that set Goshenko’s thoughts whirring inside his head. His first inclination was to send a team to snatch her off the street. He had no doubt she’d break under questioning and tell him everything she knew about the library and its whereabouts because, in time, everyone broke.

  But perhaps there was a better way… .

  He picked up his phone and dialed a number. “Send Sergeant Danislov to my office,” he said, and then hung up.

  He turned and stared out the window once more, not seeing anything beyond the glass, his thoughts on the Creed woman as he waited for his subordinate to arrive.

  It didn’t take long.

  Goshenko was always on the lookout for men with a particular set of talents, and Sergeant Danislov had come to his attention several years before after he’d been involved in a series of raids against terror cells in the highlands of Afghanistan. The raids had achieved their objectives, but had been sullied by rumors that the sergeant in charge, one Arkady Danislov, had gone above and beyond the rules of engagement.