“It’s not Nicolaus’s handwriting,” Becca said. “This is from Leonardo.”
“I didn’t know he knew English,” said Sara.
“Maybe he didn’t,” said Darrell, pushing his chair back from the table. “It doesn’t make much sense. This leaves me out.”
“Okay,” said Becca, “but Leonardo knew about Malta from the beginning, and this is based on his being here. Even if he didn’t know where Copernicus and Heyredden later hid the keys, he knew where the silver arm was buried.”
Wade moved close over Becca’s notebook and stared at the words. “At least the riddle is short. I mean, it’s clever, but maybe not insoluble. It doesn’t rely on strange wording so much. It’s perfectly understandable from that standpoint.”
“You’re not,” said Darrell.
“And it’s creepy,” Lily said softly.
“It might help to say it in different words,” Sara said. “No rats will see the star eating the bones. Anything?”
“Still creepy,” said Lily.
“Granted,” said Sara. “But rats and star have the same letters. They’re mirror versions of each other. Leonardo was all about mirrors and riddles and backward writing, so what if we reverse those two words. Does it read any differently?” Her phone rang, and she stood to answer it. “Hello?” Listening, she walked away.
“Mom’s right,” said Darrell. “What if it’s actually, ‘No star will see the rats feast on bones’?”
“Slightly less creepy,” said Lily, “and maybe this is the real riddle. It’s like, where do rats feast on bones? Well, a cemetery, right? So we could be looking for a cemetery.”
“But if no star will see them do that . . . ,” said Wade, trying to be involved, but distracted by Sara’s call. Could it be Dad? Or Paul Ferrere? Sara is listening, not speaking. “Then maybe it’s . . . sorry. I lost my thought.”
“Inside a church maybe,” said Julian. “Tombs in a church.”
“They don’t normally have rats inside churches,” said Darrell. “Crypts, like in London?”
“Or catacombs?” said Becca.
“Catacombs. I like it,” said Wade. His stepmother was looking at her phone now, enlarging an image, maybe. He wanted to go over, but didn’t. He felt himself letting the others figure this out. Is it about Dad?
“I’m looking up catacombs,” said Lily, firing up her tablet for the first time in quite a while. It didn’t take her long to find references to a famous series of burial tunnels on Malta called Saint Paul’s Catacombs. “Here’s a map of the graveyard tunnels.”
“It’s kind of a maze,” Darrell groaned over Lily’s shoulder. “And it could go for miles. How are we going to find a tiny relic in all that?”
Becca shot a look at Lily. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
Lily narrowed her eyes. “I’m not thinking anything, so no.”
“The grid,” said Becca. “The grid we found all the way back in Nice. Remember?” She turned the pages gently until she located the original clue they’d found all those days ago.
“Wade, you remember what you said?” said Becca. “That maybe these aren’t letters, at least not all of them? Well, what if they’re actually directions?”
“Directions,” said Lily. “Like directions to the maze inside the catacombs?”
“Yes,” said Becca. “Look, if you take out the letters spelling gümüş kol, we’re left with angles and lines. Maybe they lead to the center of the maze.”
Wade stood up. Sara was sitting at another table now, still just listening. Julian was on his feet, too.
“I don’t know,” said Lily.
“Work with me here,” said Becca. She spun around Lily’s tablet and set the diary next to it. “Look at the first character after the g in gümüş kol and at the map of the tunnels.”
Then she traced her finger over the catacombs map on the screen. “If you look at the extreme left-hand part of the map—sol, right?—you can see that the shape of the tunnels is the same shape as the first character on the grid. If you superimpose the shape of the character on the map, it takes you right inside.”
“Then what?” said Julian. “The next character gives you the next direction?”
“It could work that way,” Darrell said. “I like that. Disguising directions as letters. Typical Leonardo.”
The more they studied the pictogram, the more it seemed that if the end of each character was joined to the beginning of the following character, they actually would describe a route through the catacombs.
“It’s brilliant,” said Julian. “Leonardo has given the Guardians—us—a pathway to the location of the relic. The second-to-last character of the last row is the end of the maze. It could show the way to the final room, where we find Triangulum, which is the very last symbol on the grid.”
“Can we get a street map of Rabat?” asked Darrell. Lily took the tablet back and quickly found one.
Wade, still on his feet, unable to sit or interrupt his mother, watched Becca study the map. “The only problem,” she said finally, “is that the entrance that lines up with the grid isn’t one of the public entrances. Either that or I’m not reading it right.”
“You’re reading it right,” Wade found himself saying. He shifted the tablet closer and on the street map ran his finger along an arc in the direction of the street. “A neighborhood was built over the place where they entered the catacombs five hundred years ago.”
Sara came back to the table and sat. “That was Paul Ferrere. No news. He still can’t get in, but he sent a grainy photo. But it may not be your father or Terence or anyone we know. Sorry, boys.” She shared the picture with Wade and Julian; it looked like nothing to Wade: shadows, two figures. “Boys, I’m sorry. Paul has two teams scanning the area. Apparently nothing looks wrong.”
“Except that it is wrong,” said Darrell. “Dad’s unreachable, and a flood is coming.”
“Then let’s do what Copernicus told us to do,” said Sara. “Find the relic and keep it away from Galina.”
Julian nodded, his face hard, trying not to express his worry. “We think we may know where to start looking.” He showed Sara the map on the tablet. “The catacombs under the streets.”
As Wade listened he thought about his father. What did the photo show? Why send it at all? Was there seriously nothing more anyone could say?
“The most obvious entrance to the maze of tunnels,” Lily said, enlarging the street map, “is on the east side of Katakombi Street, just north of where it splits like a wishbone.”
“I’m going to go out and find some tools. A sledgehammer, maybe. Some flashlights,” said Julian. “I’ll meet you there. No time to lose. Let’s move.”
CHAPTER SIXTY
The streets of Rabat were darker than dark, but because there was almost no light in the streets now, the stars were brilliantly visible overhead. Very much as they might have been five hundred years ago.
Becca glanced back at Wade moving behind her. “You okay?”
Shrugging, he double-stepped up to her. “No, but this is all we can do now.”
Minutes later, Lily stopped, consulted the map, turned completely around twice, and raised her finger and pointed. “That building. I’m pretty sure. The passages to Triangulum are under it.”
Not more than a minute after that, Julian arrived with a sledgehammer, a walkie-talkie, a large flashlight, and a handful of mini flashlights, which he passed around to each of them. “These things weren’t exactly lying around, but I left enough euros that the owner could buy a dozen hammers.”
“A whole set of them?” said Darrell.
“In different colors,” Julian added. “I thought about digging up a pistol or two, but that’s partly what got me thrown out of Morocco.”
“No guns is just fine,” said Sara.
Luckily, the entrance to the catacombs appeared to be not under a house, but under a shop, which at that time of night was closed and empty. Julian jokingly raised the sledgehamm
er to the back door, but Sara and Darrell quickly chiseled the door open a crack without destroying the lock.
Darrell squeezed ahead, and they followed him inside. Becca and Sara pushed through three different rooms of shelving—it was something like a general store—before they found a door to the cellar. That was unlocked. Taking a hint from Julian, Sara left a pile of euros on the counter with a note apologizing for any damage they might cause. They climbed down the stairs. Julian switched on the large flashlight. After all the darkness, the blast of white was intense.
When her eyes had adjusted to the change, Becca saw that the cellar was hewed from rock, unfinished, no more than a storage area. Crates, cartons of stock, sacks, and cans were stacked along the walls on the floor or on metal shelving.
“It reminds me of the warehouse in the medina in Casablanca,” said Darrell. “Which, like everything else lately, seems from another lifetime.”
Sara aimed her light around the room. The floor was uneven, slanting down away from the stairs. “Look for a blocked-up—”
“There. To your left. Sol,” said Lily.
The wall included a patch bricked up with stones, but the stones were different from the others in the wall, and the patch was roughly door-shaped.
“That’s the west wall,” said Becca. “It works with the map.”
“They walled off the entrance,” Wade said. “I bet some people don’t even know they’re living with catacombs underneath them.”
Darrell helped Becca and Lily clear the area, moving the crates away and setting up the light to shine directly on the wall. Julian took up the hammer and swung it underhand at the patched wall. Stone dust flew back at them, but little else. He overhanded the hammer five or six times before Wade took over. With just a few discrete blows, the stones began to collapse inward, tumbling into the darkness. A breath of dry air fluttered through the opening. Wade shone his flashlight into the hole.
“A passage. I see it. It goes straight, then turns.”
A few more blows of the hammer, and the opening was wide enough for them to crawl through. There came a sound of vehicles roaring along the roads above them. They shot looks at one another.
“Galina?” said Becca. “Already?”
“Let’s assume it is,” Sara said. “We need a first line of defense. Julian, sorry to ask you to do this, but would you stay up here?”
He looked back at the stairs leading up. “Are you sure? You don’t know what’s down there.”
“It’ll be more dangerous up here,” said Lily.
Julian cracked a grin. “I don’t mind that. Here.” He handed one of the walkie-talkie units to Sara and the hammer to Darrell. “Galina will find us. She finds everything. You hurry. I’ll hold the fort.”
Nodding somberly, Sara took the lead, aiming the light ahead. Becca eased behind her, consulting the Leonardo grid under her own flashlight. “Straight through,” she said. “Then right, another right. Straight ahead. Now left.”
They burrowed from one narrow passage to another. In each one, their lights made wavy shadows on the walls. At first, they passed through simple tunnels, but soon the path led downward and began to take on a strange quality of . . . habitation, Becca thought. As if someone was down there, alive and watching them. She remembered the Mother in Tampa, and Leonardo’s description.
Twelve women in death-black robes edged with silver, hooded to hide their faces from the light.
Soon they came upon rough-hewn cutouts or niches in the walls. Some of them were empty; others held wooden or ceramic boxes; in still others were piles of loose bones. And yet, nothing about the place was frightening or scary to her. It was more like walking through a church, which they had done so many times since the relic hunt began.
No, Becca thought, the fear would come when the Order discovered them.
“If the silver arm of Barbarossa One is actually buried in these catacombs,” Darrell whispered, “it’s kind of incredible, isn’t it? In the middle of Malta. The Ottomans never conquered it. But buried here is the mechanical hand of an Ottoman pirate.”
“These catacombs were known for that,” Sara said. “Maybe they never expected Ottomans to be buried here, but I read that Romans and Christians and Jews are all resting in these passages. It’s unique about this place. And fitting, don’t you think?”
“This whole search has been about that,” said Lily. “Different people from different countries than the ones we know.”
Borrowing the system of angles penned onto the grid, Wade now threaded under the low ceilings, right, left, straight, and so on, traveling another fifteen or twenty feet below the surface from where they began. Then Wade stopped. He shone his light left, then right.
“Problem?” whispered Sara.
“Yeah, I should lead,” said Darrell. “Or Lily should.”
“The last squiggly isn’t possible,” Wade said. “There’s one more direction on the grid, but the path ends here. It shouldn’t end. Becca—”
“On the floor, look,” she said, sliding up next to him. She directed her light down. “The path goes on, but the opening’s been sealed over like the first one.”
She and Wade both moved their hands along the wall. “This is rough, like stone,” he said, “but it’s not stone. It’s like mortar or something. Leonardo and the guys must have walled it over. Darrell, it’s hammer time.”
Darrell shooed everyone behind him, then he swung the hammer underhand at the false wall, as Julian had done upstairs. The blow chipped a section out. Another. Another, and there was a hole.
Becca moved up close to him and held her light to the opening, as air rushed out from the chamber beyond.
“Do you see anything?” Darrell asked, close to her.
She felt herself tremble. “The walls inside. There’s something on them.”
A harsh crackle on Sara’s walkie-talkie shattered the moment. It was Julian, rasping the warning they all dreaded. “Heavy vehicles . . . circling the shop. German voices shouting. They know.”
Sara barked back at him. “Julian, get out of there before they arrive. We need a free man on the outside.” A responding crackle sounded like “Roger that.”
The Teutonic Order, and Galina, were coming.
“Mom,” said Darrell, “maybe we should wait, hide, or maybe—”
“It’s too late to stop now,” Sara said. “They’ll find us. She’ll find us. Even if we hide the keys, Galina will force her way into the tomb. We can’t risk her destroying the relic. We’re Guardians. Let’s hurry it up.”
As quickly as they could, Darrell, then Becca, then the others pushed in the remainder of the false wall and climbed over the debris. When they shone their lights around the room, they were stunned. The room was perfectly round.
In the center of the roundness, like the axle point of a wheel, sat a vast stone table that Becca had read was called an agape table. It was the stone circle used for meals and ceremonies by the families of the dead, although it was clear that the stone had been altered. The disc had been divided into four concentric rings, and four notches had been incised into the surface—the holes for the four keys—one notch on each of four rings.
They were not aligned, though Becca didn’t doubt that when the keys were inserted, something would happen to align them.
But the stone disc was not the strangest thing in the room.
The walls of the round room contained a vast panoramic drawing from the floor up and all the way across the ceiling. It was a mural of a flood, and it was obviously by Leonardo da Vinci.
Becca trembled. “It’s the Deluge!” she said barely audibly. “And it’s huge. Oh my gosh, do you know what this is? Leonardo’s doodles? This is an unknown painting by the greatest artist who ever lived. It could even be the last work he ever created!”
The storm, with its scrolling waves and dizzying chaos, whirled and whorled around and across itself and completely around them, and the largeness of it was terrifying, as if the room itself were fl
ooding right then.
“This is what the Mother was telling us,” Lily said to Becca, almost whispering. “She knew this picture. She’d seen it. It’s what Copernicus told Leo was going to happen—is going to happen—if Galina gets the relics. He’s telling us that the relics are the only thing protecting the world from this . . . catastrophe.”
If the room went suddenly and deeply silent, it also seemed to Becca to grow in sound. It was as though the walls exuded a kind of terrible song, like the atoms of stone joined together in a choir of stony voices, overlapping one another, droning and moving, breathing in and out, a jarring discord that emerged from the silence of the underground and went back into it, only to roll out and sweep over them in heavier, angrier waves. She shivered and shuddered and could barely stand.
“Quickly, the keys,” said Sara.
Lily, Darrell, Becca, and Wade each brought out a key. One by one, they moved into place to insert them.
“On my word, enter them in the locks and turn them,” said Sara.
But Sara never gave the word. The hush in the room was broken by the sudden thunder of stomping boots. It got louder, louder, until two dozen armed mercenaries poured into the round room, filling it. Their automatic weapons were out and aimed. One man brought a huge lamp. It made the room glow with silver light.
No one in the chamber moved for one minute, two minutes; then Becca heard a single set of footsteps in the final passage outside the room.
CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE
Galina Krause appeared like something from beyond the grave.
Wade almost ached for her, evil or not. The way she looked struck him. She was deeply ill, her face a thing of shadows, her eyes, one blue, one silver-gray, flashing in the darkness, but her skin so sunken as to seem transparent, a thinness stretched over bone.
A death mask.
Whatever Galina was suffering from, it didn’t stop her from menacing them. Her gun was drawn, as usual, as she walked slowly around the vast stone circle. In the white of her face, her eyes burned darkly with—what? Rage, need, fever? Maybe all three.