The Serpent's Curse (24 page)

“This is . . . I thought we were going to the police station,” Roald said.

Becca read the sign: ЛЕНИНГРАДСКИЙ ВОКЗАЛ. “What is this place?”

“Leningradskiy train station,” the man said in English. “You leave on next train.”

“Dad, what is this?” Darrell cried.

“No talking now,” the officer said. He pulled the cruiser to the front of the building and, without looking at them, electronically unlocked the doors. “Inside. Officer will find you. Go. Now!”

They stumbled out into a tumult of circling cars and still heavier snow.

T
he bag over his head had been the worst. Wade could barely stomach the smell of someone else's face and hair and breath so close to his own.

Even now he spat out a greasy thread. “Gross . . .”

The room was tiny, a small box, four feet by nine feet—he'd paced it out—with only a padded bench in it. It was a cell smaller than Maxim's. They'd thrust him inside and slammed the door behind him. He'd torn off the bag immediately and thrown it on the floor. That was—what—two hours ago? Longer? Was it the middle of the night?

The stained bag sat on the floorboards, a lump of gray canvas. Floorboards. Not a concrete floor. In the dim light of the hanging bulb he studied the narrow oak boards set in an angled pattern, one next to another, like the weave of a fancy overcoat.

His breath left him.

Parquet.

“I'm in Lubyanka prison.”

His heart sank, then squeezed tight, and something wrenched up his throat. He wanted to cry. He pounded on the door with his fists. “Let me out. I'm an American! You hear me? You can't do this! I'm an American citizen!”

No answer. But the mustached man knew who Wade was anyway. Of course he did. He and a handful of large, hard men had cornered him, bagged him, and pulled him into a car. Boris's words came back to him.
Car take you to Lubyanka.

He remembered Lily telling them how Saint Dominic was the patron saint of those who were falsely accused. Like Sara? Yes, like Sara. Thinking that actually gave him hope. He was locked up, but alive. And Sara was, too. She had to be.

Wiping his face, Wade paced the cell front to back, door to bench, three and a half steps, turn, then three and a half steps back. He tried to find a place of calm inside him. If there was silence, if he was alone, he could make use of it.

So far, they had nothing. They didn't have a relic yet. They had nothing but words. But it wasn't just a mess of unrelated words. It wasn't random. It was a kind of history, where things from here and there were connected and made a picture.

It was like . . . what?

A constellation, his astronomical brain told him.

Isolate the things I see. Put them in order. Make the connections. Bring all the stories down to points of light.

He stooped to the floor and ran his fingers along the floorboards where they met the wall, looking for a nail or something sharp. Nothing. Then he remembered. The tooth. He slipped his hand into his pocket and pulled it out. Black, chipped, dead. The tooth of a martyred Guardian, perhaps. A victim of Galina Krause. It was the perfect thing to use against her.

With the tooth pinched between his fingers, Wade scratched a letter into the wall.

C

That was for Copernicus. In 1517 he gave the body of Serpens to Maxim—
M
—who at his death, in 1556, gave it to Rheticus—
R
—who died in 1574. But the other thing that happened in 1517 was that the nephews of Albrecht—
A
—stole the head of Serpens. Albrecht himself died in 1568, a generation after Copernicus's own death in 1543.

So what did that look like? It looked like this:

Strangely, reducing the confusion of his thoughts to a clear drawing calmed him. It really did look like a constellation, the shorthand for a long story. A story reduced to glowing points of light, which then became the story again.

His breath slowed. His panic ebbed. Moving from there to there to there was progress. It gave him a direction.

“So now we have two questions,” Wade said to himself, pocketing the tooth. “Where did the head go after Albrecht, and where did the body go after Rheticus?”

Keys jangled outside the door. It burst wide, nearly smacking him in the face. Before he could see anyone, he was spun around and his wrists were shackled behind his back. The canvas bag, wet now and smelling of mice, was dropped over his head again.

D
arrell was stone. He refused to move or set foot in the Leningradskiy train station. “We're not leaving without Wade. First Mom, now Wade? We're not leaving.”

“We're not going anywhere,” his stepfather said. “I'm calling the embassy right now. I don't know who Chief Inspector Yazinsky is, but authorities or no, we need help here.”

Before Roald could locate the number, a short older man in a gray overcoat hanging loose over a suit and tie—obviously a policeman or secret service officer—pushed out the station doors into the parking lot. “Please close the phone, sir. The inspector wishes no calls. Not from your phone. We cannot take chances. Please . . .” Roald looked shocked but didn't resist. The man pulled the cell from his hand, swiped it off, removed its battery, and pocketed it. “Follow me, please.” His grip on Roald's arm was apparently strong, as he tugged him forcefully to the door.

“Uncle Roald—” Lily started.

“Do as he says.”

Cursing to himself, Darrell reluctantly followed him into the station.

It was an enormous open room with a lighted arcade running down each of the long sides. Hundreds of people wove across the floor from end to end, even at that time of night. The air was filled with the din of voices and footsteps, the rumbling of wheeled suitcases, and overlapping announcements in Russian, English, and French. The incessant clink and clatter from late-night restaurants and snack bars added its own kind of roar in his ears. Beneath it all rolled the thunder of the rails running from the station out into the countryside beyond Moscow.

“Wait here one minute,” the officer commanded, and strode several feet away.

Becca huddled together with Lily and Darrell. All of them were mumbling, afraid, trying to be logical, but everything they said came down to some crazy version of “What in the world is going on?”

Then Lily's cell phone rang. “Who's calling me?” she answered. “May I help you?”

The voice on the other end was slow and faraway. “I'm calling from the morgue.”

“Ahhhh!” Lily screamed, and dropped the phone.

“What!” Becca cried.

“It's the morgue! Someone's dead!” Lily scrambled for the cell phone, but Darrell tore it from her fingers and punched the speaker button.

“Hello? Hello? Are you there? Is it Wade? Is it my brother? Is he . . . dead?”

“Dea . . . I . . . not . . .” The voice was faint, crackly.

“Can you please speak up,” Roald said into the phone. “Is this the morgue? Are you calling from the morgue?”

“. . . an Library,” said the suddenly familiar voice. “The Morg . . . an Library. In New York City. Is this the Kaplan family?”

Darrell buried his head in his hands, practically sobbing. “Good God.”

Roald said, “Hello, you are Dr. Billingham, I presume? This is Roald Kaplan. We're just . . . never mind. Do you have some news for us?”

“I am a mess . . . ,” Rosemary said, “ . . . enger for Julian Ackroyd. He says his fa . . . ther has business in London, but will arrive in Mos . . . cow on Sun . . . day morning. There is news, he says. Are you under . . . standing me?”

“Thank you,” said Roald. “Thank you so much!”

“That's not . . . all,” Rosemary said. “Last night there was a robbery . . .”

“Oh, my gosh, Vela!” Lily said.

“. . . attempt at the library. Of course, nothing was taken. The police are hunting for a Germ . . .” There was a long few seconds before “. . . an man and three French ass . . . ociates. That's . . . all. Good day.”

The short officer returned and drew them swiftly down the perimeter of the room toward the far inside corner. He scanned the crowd like a hawk, but gave no answer to Darrell's—or anyone else's—urgent questions.

At the same time an unmarked automobile motored swiftly from one snowbound street to the next. The car made constant turns, approaching a yellow-towered public building three times before turning away to begin another series of zigzags and cutbacks.

Chief Inspector Simon Yazinsky sat in the rear seat. He tugged one end of his bushy mustache and turned to the passenger sitting next to him.

“Truly, Wade,” he said in lightly accented English, “my sincerest apologies for the filthy bag. A bit dramatic, I know. Lubyanka, as well. All of it. It was for your own safety that you remained anonymous. You see, in Russia the Teutonic Order and its allies here, the Red Brotherhood, are everywhere and powerful. Your visit to Saint Sergius alerted the Brotherhood. They planned to use the demonstration as a cover to kidnap you. I had to intervene. For your own safety, you must leave the city.”

Wade nodded slowly, desperately trying to take it all in with the fraction of a brain he had left. “So you arrested me because the Brotherhood was after us? The men in black parkas at the demonstration?”

He nodded. “Although I have a distinguished rank in the FSB, even after I scooped you up, I wanted no one to see you. I can trust my friend here behind the wheel, but few others on my staff. I must also inform you that there has just been an attempt on the safety of your family. An attack and explosion in your rooms.”

“Oh, my gosh, are they—”

“They are fine, and waiting nearby.”

The car drove smoothly from street to street.

“You were following us, tracking me from the beginning,” Wade said, feeling more and more brain coming back to him. “How did you know to do that?”

Chief Inspector Yazinsky cleared his throat. “The Circle of Athos has been aware of you since your arrival at Sheremetyevo airport.”

Wade thought back. “The guard who stopped me at the passport control? What was her name . . . I. Lyubov?”

“Cousin Irina,” he said, smiling under his mustache. “Carlo Nuovenuto—you know him—sent encrypted pictures to the Guardians in Europe and elsewhere. The clearest image from the fencing school in Bologna was of you. We have eluded our pursuers, and here we are.”

The building with the tower reappeared once again, and this time Wade saw its blazing letters.

ЛЕНИНГРАДСКИЙ ВОКЗАЛ

The driver pulled up to it. “The train to Saint Petersburg,” Inspector Yazinsky said. “The station is quaintly still named Leningradskiy.” He leaned across the seat to Wade, and his voice went low. “The Circle of Athos comprises a handful only, while the Order is a kraken of great size, a monster. Even with our precautions, we must be careful when we enter.” The inspector reached across Wade and opened his door. It swung out into the cold. Wade stumbled out, then followed the man into the station.