The Medusa Plot

  “There is no other way out!” Dan croaked.

  They ran the full length of the gallery, hoping against hope that an alternate staircase would magically appear. At last, they were in front of the picture window. Both looked down. At the base of the cliff, far below, a speedboat bobbed in the gleaming blue water — Jonah and Hamilton in the getaway craft. Between the two pairs of Cahills lay eighty vertical feet of steep, craggy terrain.

  There was only one way to bring the four together.

  “How’s your rock climbing?” Amy asked in a shaky voice.

  In answer, Dan began to kick at the glass. The window rattled but didn’t break.

  The two security men reached the top of the stairs.

  “Stop them!” Tobin roared.

  The Cahills made a double run in an attempt to breach the window. They bounced off painfully.

  “We need something heavier!” Dan gasped.

  Hearts sinking, they surveyed their surroundings. The gallery was filled with art, not bricks! What could they use to get themselves through the window?

  At the same instant, two sets of eyes fell on the Roman chariot.

  CHAPTER 17

  Neither said a word. There wasn’t time. The decision flashed between them as if by radar. Amy and Dan got behind the gilt chariot and braced themselves to push.

  Would two-thousand-year-old wheels even move? They were going to find out.

  Tobin had stopped yelling and was running toward them now, the two security men right behind him.

  Amy and Dan heaved with all their might. With a groan, the ancient wheels began to turn.

  “Faster, Dan!” Amy wheezed. They could feel pounding footsteps approaching on the marble floor.

  The chariot was heavy and gained speed agonizingly slowly. But once it began to freewheel, there was no stopping it.

  Crash!

  The picture window disintegrated into a million shards of glittering glass that fell like a sun shower. The chariot rumbled out onto the slope, toppled on its side, and got hung up against an outcropping of rock. Another few inches, and it would have plunged over the edge and taken out Jonah, Hamilton, and their boat.

  Amy and Dan jumped past the windowsill and began to work their way down the rough terrain of the cliff, using rocks and bushes as handholds, relying on anything that looked like it might support their weight.

  They had not descended very far when Amy saw a leg swing over the lip of the bluff. A security guard. The second man followed quickly.

  She peered over her shoulder and immediately regretted it. Lake Como was still sixty feet below. A slip from here, and she would be a grease spot on the deck of their getaway boat, annihilating the “Medusa” in her backpack and destroying seven more lives besides her own.

  Dan was faster than her, scrambling down like a monkey. She felt a twinge of resentment along with her terror. The dweeb’s advantage was that he was too mindless to think about what would happen if he fell.

  “Hurry up, Amy! I thought Sinead was teaching you to climb!”

  “I said she was teaching me!” Amy shot back. “I never said I learned!”

  With alarming suddenness, the scrub pine trunk under her right foot gave way, and she was sliding, picking up speed, clawing at the rocks and weeds as they moved past. She heard her own scream as if it were coming from someone else.

  When the exposed root trapped her ankle, at first she thought gravity would flip her over and dangle her upside down. She put every ounce of strength into her fingertips and dug them into exposed earth on the cliff.

  She lurched to a halt alive but still a good twenty-five feet above the getaway craft. She looked down again and saw Dan being helped aboard by Jonah and Hamilton. And then, a more alarming sight — Gregor Tobin appeared on his dock and climbed over the gunwale of a gleaming powerboat.

  The lead guard was just a few feet above her now. His flailing boot passed within inches of her windblown hair.

  Dan’s voice reached her. “Amy — jump!”

  “I’m too high!”

  “I’ll catch you!” Hamilton shouted. “I promise!”

  Amy was never quite sure why she believed him so completely. Maybe it was a Cahill thing. That wasn’t goofy, irresponsible Hamilton Holt down there: It was the full might and muscle of the Tomas branch.

  She heard a grunt from her pursuer—very close. In another second, he’d be upon her.

  She let go. The free fall was like a carnival ride. It lasted longer than she expected, long enough for her to wonder if she’d missed the target. She opened her eyes and saw the rocks hurtling to meet her.

  Panic-stricken, she braced for impact.

  And then Hamilton caught her, just as he had said he would. Her weight knocked him over. The two of them wound up flat on their backs on the deck.

  Her stammered gratitude was drowned out by the roar of the outboard engine as they plowed away from the shore, prow rising, kicking up a spray.

  “Hang on, homeys!” Jonah bellowed from behind the wheel.

  A sleek white shape fell in behind them, keeping pace. It was Tobin’s speedboat, the collector himself at the controls.

  They watched as he hefted a long, dark object and rested it on the windscreen, pointed in their direction.

  “He’s got a rifle!” Dan gasped.

  Crack!

  The bullet whined past Jonah’s elbow, shattering his Perrier, which drained onto the console. “Man, the Wiz will not get whacked by some clown who couldn’t even score a screen test!”

  “Behind me, everyone!” Amy unzipped her backpack and pulled out the “Medusa.” She held it up in front of all of them. “He won’t risk shooting the painting!”

  The rifle disappeared, but Tobin did not break off his pursuit.

  “How are we going to get away from that guy?” Hamilton cried. “We’ll never be able to dock with him on our tail!”

  Dan moved forward and replaced Jonah at the helm. “I’ve got a plan!”

  “That’s my man!” The famous grin disappeared as Jonah took in the grim determination in Dan’s features. The expression was as flat and emotionless as a naked skull.

  Dan steered the hurtling boat directly toward the rocky shore. “Amy, hang on to the painting!”

  “That’s not a plan!” Jonah shouted. “That’s suicide!” He tried to retake the wheel, but his cousin shoved him roughly away.

  The throttle at maximum, Dan pointed the bow at a flat area between two large boulders. The speedboat threaded the needle and rocketed out of the water up a grassy embankment. Briefly, they were aloft, crushing small saplings as they came down. The fiberglass hull cracked open like an egg, sending them flying. The contents of Amy’s open pack scattered in all directions. Passports landed in the mud. Hamilton caught the Vesper phone in midair just as it was about to hit a tree.

  Amy landed flat on her back in a bed of moss, holding the “Medusa” high and away from harm.

  On the water, Tobin veered sharply off, scarcely able to believe his eyes. Those four young people were surely dead. And the Caravaggio would be in similar condition. No one and nothing could survive such a crash.

  It was a terrible loss for the art world.

  CHAPTER 18

  Hamilton dabbed a tissue at the cut under his eye. “Except for the time I met the Great Khali, that was the coolest thing I’ve ever done!”

  The foursome, only slightly the worse for wear, stood on the tarmac of the small airfield outside Milan, transferring their luggage from the limo to Jonah’s jet for the flight back to Florence.

  “You didn’t do anything, yo,” Jonah seethed. “It was done to all of us by the freak show with the nerve to complain that the family branches are too violent!”

  “We made it, didn’t we?” Dan said quietly.

  Amy patted her battered backpack, where the “Medusa” was concealed once more. “The important thing is we got what we came for. That’s all that matters.”

  She peered past Hamilton’s b
ulk at her brother. Dan was staring straight ahead, his eyes almost snakelike, focused on infinity. He had uttered barely a word during the hour-long limo ride.

  He’s receded into himself again, scuba diving in the depths of his own mind.

  His heroics on Lake Como had secured their escape but could just as easily have gotten them all killed. Would the old Dan have dared to try something so reckless and self destructive?

  Amy doubted it. His newfound dark side was in charge again.

  She kept seeing his face as he’d steered for the ramp rock. His expression was not one of calculating risk. It was the breakneck abandon of someone who felt he had nothing to lose.

  The chime of the Vesper phone jolted her back to reality. She took it out and examined the latest text from their enemy.

  72 hours. Tick … tick … tick …

  Don’t give me the pleasure of punishing another Cahill. I’ve been trying to cut down.

  Vesper One

  Hamilton read over her shoulder. “Man, that guy’s creepy.”

  Amy shook her head. “He’d need years of charm school to work his way up to creepy.”

  The phone emitted a chirp, and a new message appeared on the screen.

  BATTERY LOW

  20% of power remaining

  “You guys have a charger, right?” Jonah asked.

  Amy felt a stirring of unease. The smartphone had come with a power cable. She’d brought it to Italy. She’d been careful to pack it when they’d departed Florence. And this morning, when they’d left their Lake Como hotel, it had been safe in her knapsack.

  Yet a search of the bag revealed no charger.

  “Where is it?” Dan demanded.

  The scene replayed itself in her head: the wreckage of the rented boat, the four Cahills replacing the strewn contents of her backpack. She remembered the wallet, the notebook, the cell phone, the airline tickets, the passports, the flashlight key chain.

  She did not remember the charger.

  “We must have lost it when the boat crashed.”

  Hamilton frowned. “If Vesper One sends instructions for the drop-off, but we never get them because the phone’s dead …”

  “We need that cable!” Dan exclaimed urgently.

  “Chill, cuz,” Jonah soothed. “They’ve got cell phone stores in Italy, too. We’ll buy a new charger. My treat.”

  That was when fear began rising — when store after store after store along Milan’s Via Vitruvio informed them that they had no power cable that would match the Vesper phone’s unusual connection interface.

  Hamilton called in. He’d taken the limo back to Lake Como to search the remains of the speedboat. There was no sign of the missing charger.

  “It’s probably at the bottom of the lake,” he reported mournfully.

  “When that phone runs out of power, we won’t be able to follow Vesper One’s orders anymore!” Dan raved. “If he thinks we’re ignoring him, the next time he shoots one of our people, it’ll be right between the eyes!”

  “We’re not done yet,” Amy said determinedly.

  “You’re out of your mind, yo!” Jonah was beside himself. “We can’t find the original, and we can’t buy a new one. What’s left?”

  “We can invent our own,” she told him.

  Dan was pop-eyed. “Invent our own?”

  “Well, not us,” Amy amended. “But Sinead is an Ekat. Maybe she can whip something up.”

  “I’ll never understand the American obsession with driving oneself,” Ian observed. “As if it makes you a better person to risk life and property behind the wheel of a two-ton mechanical monster.”

  “This isn’t London,” chuckled McIntyre in the driver’s seat of his Lincoln. “If you’d called a taxi, you’d still be waiting. And the problem we are attempting to solve is quite urgent. Have you got the list of equipment Sinead requires?”

  “Right here in my hand,” Ian said irritably. He did not relish the idea of being an errand boy for an Ekaterina. There was a time when the Kabras had servants to handle such mundane matters as this. But, of course, he was poor now.

  He felt a twinge of guilt for complaining when his little sister was in a much worse predicament. His heart turned over in his chest.

  The lawyer dropped him off at Attleboro Circuits, a sewer of a place with fly-specked windows. The last electronics shop Ian had patronized displayed a crest over the door proclaiming it to be SUPPLIER OF SMALL ELECTRONICS BY APPOINTMENT TO HIS ROYAL HIGHNESS THE PRINCE OF WALES.

  This one bore a tattered cardboard sign that read NO SHIRT, NO SHOES, NO SERVICE.

  It was no place for a Kabra, not even a poor one living in exile with a psychopathic cat.

  He approached the counter and rang the bell with authority. The clerk turned around.

  Evan Tolliver.

  “You’re Amy’s cousin!”

  “Yes, I am,” Ian confirmed. “I have here a list of items —”

  “Have you heard from her?” Evan interrupted. “Is she okay?”

  “Her health is excellent.”

  “No, I mean —”

  Ian sighed. “Why should you care? She promises to phone you, and she doesn’t. You were nearly arrested, thanks to her. There’s a message in there somewhere, don’t you agree?”

  Evan nodded sadly. “I kind of think so, too. But we were awesome together. She’s smart, fun to be with, and not immature like most of the girls in our school. It’s as if she has an automatic switch for when it’s time to be serious — she can almost be old beyond her years at times. Where do you learn something like that?”

  “I have no earthly idea,” Ian lied. He slid the list across the counter. “Now then …”

  Evan made no move to take it. His eyes were on the other paper, the one still in Ian’s hand. It was a photograph of the Vesper phone and its unique interface.

  “Hey, where’d you get a picture of a DeOssie smartphone?”

  Ian frowned. “A what?”

  Evan indicated the picture that Amy had sent from Lake Como. “DeOssie. They make ultra-secure phones, mostly for groups like the CIA and other government agencies. Regular people can’t buy them.” His eyes narrowed. “Does this have anything to do with Amy?”

  Ian’s mind raced. No ordinary person could acquire a DeOssie phone. Yet Vesper One had managed it. How? The answer to that question might very well lead them to Vesper One himself. And once they had Vesper One, they could force him to release Natalie and the others.

  Evan was the key. He’d recognized the DeOssie phone when even Sinead, an Ekaterina, hadn’t. His knowledge of technology and computers could prove very useful.

  “Take the rest of the day off,” Ian invited. “I have a story to tell you. A long one.”

  Evan shook his head. “My shift just started.”

  “Get someone to cover,” said Ian. “Amy needs you.”

  CHAPTER 19

  A private jet wasn’t the worst place to kill a few hours, but the four Cahill cousins barely noticed their sumptuous surroundings. As they waited for the thunderstorms that had closed Peretola Airport to move off, Amy barely tore her eyes from the power indicator on the Vesper phone. It was as if she believed she could prevent the bars from dwindling by the sheer force of her mind. Jonah buried himself in a pile of scripts he was reading to choose his next movie project, yet he spent most of his time on his iPad, staring forlornly at a picture of his cousin Phoenix. Hamilton pumped and curled a set of dumbbells with such wild abandon that he dented the bulkhead of the plane in three places.

  Dan passed the time examining the latest — and, they hoped, genuine — “Medusa.” It seemed identical to the forgery from the Uffizi — the same ugly, horrified face, snake hair, and spurting blood. You could almost hear the scream.

  “If this is the real McCoy,” he wondered, “then how did Vesper One know the other one was a fake? They’re exactly the same.”

  “Maybe he’s an art connoisseur,” Amy replied. “Just because you think video games are
the highest form of human expression —”

  She was teasing, trying to get a rise out of him, but the old Dan was increasingly hard to reach these days.

  “You know I remember stuff.” He cut her off in a wounded tone. “The Janus copies were a little different because they were made so fast. But this is a perfect match for the one we handed over. I’d bet all my collections on it.”

  “There are other ways to tell if a work is genuine,” she mused. “X-rays and lab tests to determine the age and chemical makeup of the paint — that kind of thing.”

  “Yeah, but tests take time,” Dan persisted. “The Vespers knew right away. I mean, we made the drop-off, and before we got halfway through lunch —” His voice cracked as he thought of the video — the way Nellie’s body flinched as the bullet slammed into her. More ingredients to find, a formula to recreate. The real “Medusa” doesn’t change that.…

  “There must be something that tipped the Vespers off.” When the answer came to Amy, it seemed so obvious that she couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to her before.

  She flipped the shield over in Dan’s lap, and the two of them examined the backing. It was black, and where the arm strap would have been was a rectangular expanse of raw wood, jagged at both ends. The studs that had once held the strip in place were all there, attesting to the sixteenth-century workmanship.

  At first, they saw nothing worthy of note. But as their eyes focused on the wood and grew accustomed to its shading, it became apparent that some kind of message had been etched there. The characters were faint, many even worn away.

  Amy reached for a pencil and a piece of scrap paper. Placing the page over the wood, she began to rub with the soft side of the lead, hoping to re-create what was written there. She and Dan watched, fascinated, as the letters began to appear.

  “This is what the Vespers are looking for!” Amy exclaimed. Her triumph ebbed a little. “What does it mean?”

  “Is it Italian?” asked Dan.

  “Maybe,” his sister replied. “It could be Latin, too. We can’t be sure unless we have all of it.”