The Crown of Fire

  Becca nodded. “He’s kind of looking at us, but also from the corner of his eye at the scene outside the window. Do you think that means something?”

  “Maybe it’s a clue to where the Guardian took a relic,” Darrell said. “Maybe the Guardian was Raphael himself. . . .”

  “Nicolaus said ‘hope’ when he showed you this picture,” said Lily. “That’s got to mean something, too. Maybe he hopes we figure it out.”

  “Everything means something; we know that,” Becca said softly.

  The view outside the window in the painting was mostly of a medium-blue sky above a mountain range inclining from left to right, and a castle, perhaps shimmering in the sun, perhaps made of white stone, surmounted by a tall pinnacle of a tower.

  As they studied the picture, Becca poked into her bag, took out two pairs of reading glasses, and slid them on, one over the other. “The surrounding land is forested, and there’s a body of water in the foreground.”

  Clive zigzagged through a final series of muddy turns and bounced back onto the road toward Montevideo. There were cars, trucks, and buses, but Galina’s SUVs were nowhere in sight.

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if the landscape is a clue to where the relic was hidden,” Sara said from the front seat. “The terrain is obviously European. Roald might know. If Carlo is still with him, so much the better.”

  “I wish we had an actual art book,” Becca said. “We might find out even more.”

  Clive slowed the car. “Airport in fifteen, twenty minutes. Your new passports will get you safely out of Uruguay, but I suggest you stop at a Thomas Cook office first chance you get.”

  “Thank you, Clive,” said Sara. “We will.”

  “In the meantime, it might be best if I drop you at a decoy terminal, say Egypt Air?”

  “Good idea,” said Darrell. “We can probably find a computer station—a real true public open one this time—and send a high-res image of the portrait to Terence.”

  “I think Becca’s right,” Sara said. “We should take the painting to the Morgan.”

  Becca nodded. “Yes, good. We need as much information on this as we can get. And I think I’ll feel so much better in New York. It’s really too hot here. I’m not getting used to the food. Once I’m on solid ground again, nothing will stop me.”

  It sounded good, Wade thought, but he feared it was nothing more than wishful thinking. He watched Becca grab the car’s armrest and press her fingers into it.

  “What can I do?” he whispered.

  “Sorry. I’m all right.”

  “You’re not,” he whispered. “Are you sure it’ll pass?”

  Becca nodded.

  Pass?

  It was so much worse than Becca let on, even to Wade.

  She was so cold inside, yet her head was a furnace, and her skin was on fire. She felt her heart beat dizzyingly fast. She knew Wade suspected something more than the others, but not how close she was to passing out right there in the car. She leaned her face against the cool door frame and breathed in the moving air, hot as it was, and hoped she wouldn’t faint.

  Twenty minutes later, they were hurrying into the terminal, Darrell and Lily first, Wade next, then herself, and finally Sara. Breathing in was like sucking molten iron into her lungs. She felt Wade’s arm around her shoulder. It felt good there.

  She suddenly stopped. “Wade,” she whispered. “I think I’m going to . . . to . . .”

  “No. No. Becca, look at me. We’ll be in New York soon.” He was so close, she could smell him. She would normally have swatted him away if he got that near to her, but not this time. He was still there when she closed her eyes and the darkness inside her eyelids folded over her like deep water. She felt she was swimming in acid.

  But Wade didn’t go away. His arm was tight around her shoulders as they made their way through a dense crowd of travelers to a counter where he bought her a bottle of icy water. They rested for a few minutes, then exited through a side door and along a walkway to the next terminal and the next, where Sara was already at the ticket counter.

  “Five seats for the next flight to New York,” she told the ticket agent.

  That sounds so good, Becca thought. So good. New York. Somewhere familiar. She closed her eyes again and felt Wade’s arm around her shoulders. Also familiar. Good.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  En route to Berlin

  August 14

  9:58 p.m.

  Roald looked out the window of the night train rumbling east across Germany.

  From the files Carlo and his staff had been able to construct from Galina’s computers, it seemed that one possible location of the Eternity Machine was Station Two in the heart of Berlin. They would be there by daybreak. There was no guarantee, of course, but it was worth a shot.

  “It’s odd,” Roald said to Terence and Carlo, who shared the compartment, “chasing someone and being chased at the same time. You look in both directions at once.”

  It had been so long—too long—since Roald had seen his family. The grind from Gran Sasso on the trail of the astrolabe had taken the trio from city to city across Europe. They were aided by Terence’s network of colleagues, and his friends in the British intelligence community, all the while the mass kidnapping at Gran Sasso was unfolding strangely in the media, sending Galina on the run. But events were moving slowly.

  And now the train slowed.

  Frankfurt, Roald thought.

  They were still deep in Germany.

  “Odd, yes,” Terence said from the bench across from him. “But then, most of this is odd, isn’t it?”

  “No . . . just . . . no,” Carlo groaned, hunching over a beefed-up laptop.

  “Carlo, what is it?” Terence asked.

  “Not sure, but I don’t know enough physics. It’s a scribble by Ebner. Roald, can you have a look? I don’t think it’s good.” Carlo slid the computer off his lap and handed it over.

  Roald scanned the file. It was a sequence of equations, many of which he was familiar with, but he had never seen them connected in this particular way. Then he saw the name Kardashev.

  “Oh.”

  He called up another screen and began entering numbers, trying to build a mathematical proof against Ebner’s jottings. He failed. He tried again. And failed again.

  “Share with us?” Terence said.

  “It’s these numbers in one of the encrypted files. Ebner apparently worked out a singular equation. I’m trying to rework the terms to prove him wrong, but he’s not wrong. His calculations, I have to say, are a little bit of genius, really.” Roald looked up. “Galina needs only six relics to fly the astrolabe.”

  “Six?” said Terence. “You’re not serious!”

  Carlo pressed his hands to his forehead. “Could it be true?”

  Roald nodded. “All twelve are ideal, of course, but the energy produced by at least six will generate the aurora and catapult the machine into something called a Kardashev Type Omega-Minus mode . . . it’s technical, but Ebner worked it out. It’s not twelve relics. We have to stop Galina from finding six!”

  “She may have six already,” said Terence. “We know she has Serpens, Scorpio, Crux, and Draco. This makes it all the more important that we find the astrolabe.”

  Terence’s cell phone tinged like a harp.

  He slid his phone from a side pocket. “An incoming text. From Wade. He sent it the day before yesterday from Montevideo. Sorry, the decryption program in my phone is slowing up messages. Being low-tech is a bit of a time waster. Roald, here.”

  Roald took the phone, read the text, then cursed under his breath. “They lost Aquila to Galina. She has five relics!”

  “Altogether, ten of the twelve have surfaced,” Carlo said. “Galina has Serpens, Scorpio, Crux, Draco, and now Aquila. We have Vela, Triangulum, Corvus, Lyra, and Sagitta. Only two remain hidden. With just weeks to go.”

  “The kids retrieved this.” Roald turned the phone to show the image of the painting found in Urugu
ay. “Any thoughts?”

  Carlo studied the image closely, enlarging different sections of it. Then his eyes took on a faraway look. “It’s a lost Raphael. Or, I guess, it’s not lost anymore. The wrap over the man’s shoulder is wolf. It might refer to the constellation Lupus, which could be the eleventh relic.” He sat back on the bench. “And the castle outside the window behind the sitter is Königsberg.”

  “Königsberg?” said Terence. “Albrecht’s castle?”

  Carlo nodded slowly. “I’ve been there. The painting’s terrain isn’t right, but that was probably done to throw off the Order. Königsberg is now in Kaliningrad, a Russian exclave between Poland and Lithuania on the Baltic. Poland lost the territory to Russia during the war. You get there from Warsaw. The relic search continues in Königsberg.”

  “But why there?” asked Terence. “The Guardians wouldn’t have hidden a relic in the Order’s stronghold. Are we saying Albrecht stole it? Does Galina not know that?”

  Carlo shrugged. “We have to plan on her knowing soon. It’s the last relic she needs.”

  Terence turned and looked out the window, but at night saw only the reflection of the three of them sitting there. “Listen, Roald, I have an idea. Why don’t we text an encrypted reply to your family, telling them to meet Julian in Paris. He can tell them in person that the castle in the painting is Königsberg, and they can fly to Warsaw from there.”

  “All right,” Roald said. “And in the meantime?”

  “In the meantime,” Terence said, “they’ll meet you and Carlo in Warsaw. Carlo, you said you know Königsberg. That’ll be handy. Then let’s get a little zigzaggy to throw off the Order. Roald, you’ve been away from your family too long. You join them, while Julian and I meet up to continue the search for the astrolabe. No sense in having the great minds wasted on tracking Galina at this point. What do you say?”

  Roald felt his heart thump faster. He’d been putting his family in the back of his mind, knowing they wouldn’t meet for a while, but this was smart. Very smart.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I am,” said Terence.

  “I think it makes perfect sense,” Carlo added. “At the next stop, Roald and I will get off and head to Warsaw, yes?”

  Roald breathed in slowly. To see his family again after so many weeks!

  “Yes,” he said. “We’ve got to use every resource wisely now. There are so many pieces to bring together, and the clock is ticking faster all the time. Carlo, we go to Warsaw, then to Königsberg.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  New York City

  August 15

  Early evening

  After getting the exciting reply from Roald that they would meet Julian in Paris with new information—and the stunning news that Galina needed only six relics to fly the machine—Lily hoped things would shoot them forward like they were blasted from a cannon. Instead, they stood still, as if they were stuck in a stalled car.

  Their multiple flights from Montevideo to New York were so involved, so indirect, and so much longer than she had expected that after an extensive layover in Lima—where Becca popped into the airport clinic—and another even longer in Caracas—which Becca mostly slept through—they touched down at JFK airport a full two and a half days after they’d left Uruguay.

  What a dragging waste of time!

  She and the others hoped their pop-in at the Morgan in New York would be brief.

  It became anything but brief.

  Their stopover at the Ackroyd apartment at the Gramercy Park Hotel had turned into a lockdown when a suspicious fire broke out in the lobby at the exact moment an explosion at the rear entrance to the Morgan shut down the museum.

  “Vela!” Lily gasped. “Someone’s after Vela!”

  “The relic is safe,” Dennis, the Ackroyds’ driver, reported. “One of Terence’s agents just called. A heavily bandaged man was spotted leaving the area in the company of three men in riot gear. They are being tracked as we speak.”

  “Archie Doyle! It was him and Ebner who killed Bern and Fernando Salta,” Darrell sneered. “Galina keeps trying.”

  “We should collect Vela,” Wade said. “Some of us take it to Rome and hide it with the others. It’s not safe here.”

  “If I may,” said Dennis. “I don’t believe the relic hunt will be served by you splitting yourselves up. I’ll bring Vela to you when the time comes. I, that is, and a troop of my old Marine buddies.”

  “Thank you, Dennis,” said Sara. “That’s much more sensible. We’re not separating again, if we can help it.”

  So they agreed to let Vela stay for the moment. But it would be another day before the museum would open, even for them. In the meantime, Dennis, along with four ex–New York City police detectives, acted as bodyguards.

  The next morning it happened.

  “Good news,” Dennis said. “The bandaged fellow, your nemesis Archie Doyle, was sighted in Brooklyn. The Ackroyds’ private security service has him covered. The Morgan will open its doors for you—only you—the moment you arrive.”

  “Yes!” said Lily. “The ice is finally melting!”

  A half hour later, they were welcomed through the doors of the Morgan’s old Thirty-Sixth Street entrance by Dr. Rosemary Billingham, the ancient curator of ancient artifacts.

  Becca liked her, despite, well, the quirkiness of the woman who had helped them decode a vital clue in their search for the Serpens relic. One of the odd and endearing traits about the curator was her chopped, slow way of speaking.

  The moment she saw them at the entrance to the museum, she said, “Hell—”

  She breathed four or five full breaths before she completed the word. “—o.”

  “Hello,” said Becca. “Good to see you again.”

  Rosemary shut the door behind them. “Well, you’d better come fart—”

  They waited through several more breaths. “—her into the lobby, and tell me ev—erything.”

  “Thank you for seeing us,” Sara said. “I don’t know how much you know, but we have a portrait. We think it’s by Raphael.” She unwrapped the painting.

  “It’s not—” Dr. Billingham said.

  “It’s not by Raphael?” said Wade. “Are you sure?”

  “It’s not—orious in the art world!” the curator said, taking six breaths between syllables. “You must let me fin—”

  They all waited.

  “—ish my sentence! Now get in the elevator, and I will tap the proper butt—”

  Again, they waited.

  “—on for the third f—loor. Follow quickly!”

  Following Rosemary Billingham quickly was not a problem. The elderly woman moved at a snail’s pace. Becca realized it was closer to her own pace now.

  When they entered the restoration lab, Dr. Billingham set the delicate portrait on a small easel and clamped the frame gently in place.

  She positioned the movable arm of a large machine in front of the portrait and pressed a button on the machine. The arm moved slowly across the surface of the painting. After it had done three passes, a high-definition computer screen lit up.

  “So. So. Yes. Wonder—ful. The features of the sitter’s face have been altered. Not recently. But in the late-sixteenth century. It’s ha—rd to tell what the sub—ject looked like to begin with. He may have been an ass—” She breathed several long breaths. “—istant of the painter, perhaps. But that is—n’t all. The castle has been altered. And there are images un—der the finished painting here!” She waggled her fingers at four faint sketches that appeared on the screen.

  They were done in pencil and charcoal, and all four were of a young woman in bed in what seemed to be various states of illness. They were studies, maybe, for a portrait that was never made. The canvas was then reused for the portrait of the young man.

  “This is amazing,” said Sara. “Thank you so—”

  All at once, a shrill alarm sounded.

  “What the devil?” Dr. Billingham cried.

 
The door to the lab blew open, and a man bandaged from head to toe stumbled in, a pistol in one hand and an umbrella in the other. “Bloody ’ell! This time I made it!”

  Dennis and two of the ex–police detective bodyguards barreled in behind and threw him to the floor, while Rosemary snatched up Doyle’s fallen umbrella and began to pummel him.

  “I will con—tact you with anything fur—ther,” Rosemary yelped, shooing them from the lab with her usual motion, a flick of her ancient fingers. “Now gggggg . . . o!”

  After Doyle’s raid on the Morgan, Wade was happy when his stepmother decided to bring Vela with them to Paris to give to Julian as soon as possible.

  Dennis helped them book immediate flights from New York, and they were able to leave that evening, flying in the middle of the night and arriving at Charles de Gaulle Airport by midmorning the next day.

  Their reunion with Julian was the longest they’d had with anyone for weeks. They hadn’t seen him since Markus Wolff’s ambush of them at the Nice airport over two months before. His forehead was bandaged.

  “What happened, man?” Wade asked finally. “Was it Wolff?”

  “One of his henchmen. It slowed me down a little, but while I’ve been mending, I’ve worked behind the scenes with Simon Tingle and Isabella to secure Triangulum, Sagitta, Corvus, and Lyra at the Vatican. Vela will now join them. Look, I’m supposed to tell you that the castle in the painting is Königsberg. You’re taking the next flight to Warsaw, with all new passports, while I take Vela to Rome. In Warsaw, you’ll meet Carlo and, even better, Roald will be there, too—”

  Sara screamed, her eyes instantly tearing. “Roald! Oh my gosh! I can’t wait!”

  Julian smiled. “You won’t have to wait very long. Your flight leaves in two hours.”

  “Just enough time for breakfast,” Lily said. “Bec, come on.”

  They started down the concourse toward the food court, Wade almost but not quite scooping his arm behind Becca when she stumbled to a sudden stop.

  “Becca?” he said. Her face was gray. “Bec—”