The Black Madonna (23 page)

Ahmed murmured, “You know this?”

“Never driven one,” Harry whispered. “But I've blown up my share.”

Emma slipped up beside him. “What is it?”

“Iraqi armored troop carrier,” Harry replied. “Russian make. First Gulf War vintage.”

“We take it in exchange for saving driver and men.” Ahmed shook his head. “Until now, I am thinking we make very bad bargain.”

Quietly Wadi opened the driver's door, then he cursed softly. “No keys.”

“Step aside.” Harry slipped into the driver's seat, grunted as he eased himself over. And grunted again as he tugged out the wires beneath the steering column.

Ahmed grinned at Emma. “Now I am understanding why you save this man.”

“Harry has a degree from the university of serious trouble,” Emma replied.

“Everybody who's leaving on the Aqaba bus better climb on board.” Harry cleared the sheathing off the wires with his teeth, then said, “I'll take a couple of those Advils now.”

AS SOON AS HARRY FIRED
the engine, the cavern was filled with the sound of angry men.

He slammed the gearshift into first and eased off the clutch. “Flight attendants, please cross-check doors.” The vehicle lurched forward. “Hands and feet and personal items out of the aisles.”

The first guard jerked into view, trying to wave them to a halt and bring his gun around at the same time. Harry replied by aiming the truck at the man.

A bullet whanged off the roof of the truck and another off the side window. His passengers flinched away in fear. But Harry knew from experience just how well the Russians built these suckers.

A dozen or so shouting men formed up by the cave entrance. The problem was, if enough bullets were fired at the same point in the glass, there was a risk that the windshield might eventually give. Then he had an idea and shifted his aim to the right.

Harry lined up behind the Suzuki pickup and hammered the rear bumper. “My sincere apologies.”

In response, Ahmed laughed and shouted something that required no translation.

The vehicle ahead of Harry jerked and shuddered against its own parking gear, sliding over the sand until it struck the second Suzuki. The half-track's engine bellowed from the strain and kept on moving, pushing the two vehicles directly at the men who were frantically trying to take aim around the newly formed train.

Harry decided the moment deserved a song. The only thing that came to mind was, “O Lord, Won't You Buy Me a Mercedes-Benz.”

Bullets whanged and punched the metal and the glass. But as far as Harry could see in the scattered firelight and the manufactured mayhem, no fractures were developing.

Ahmed showed Harry a smuggler's grin. “Janis Joplin, yes? Very good tune. But you, my friend, cannot sing.”

The Suzukis crawled sideways, herding the guards like metal sheepdogs. The first vehicle struck the cave's entrance and began to accordion on top of the second. A spark must have caught the gas tank, or perhaps it was just the pressure of being compressed from behind. Whatever the reason, the pickup gave off a soft whuff and the cave mouth was a balloon of flame.

Harry kept straight on, through the wall of flame and out into a hail of gunfire. He shouted, “Which way?”

“Left! Left!”

As the second Suzuki tumbled away, Harry shifted to a higher gear and aimed straight for the campfire. Ahmed gave another thoroughly Arabic yell as they cleared all four wheels over the fire circle, scattering people and blazing logs. Sparks showered the vehicle as Harry took aim for the night. As they climbed the long, sloping trail they had entered by, the half-track was clipped by a few parting shots. Someone wailed a furious farewell.

Harry put the headlights on bright. Emma found the controls for the side-mounted searchlight and aimed it at the nonexistent road. Harry took the descent at a gut-wrenching crawl. He did not breathe again until the road leveled off.

Then it was just the stars and the silver sand.

A
NTONIN TARKA'S JET WAS READY
and waiting when they arrived back at the Kraków airport. Storm would have liked to hang around for a few days. Kraków was the ancient capital of the Polish kingdom, and its medieval center had survived both the Nazis and the Soviets largely intact. But Tanya and the two men carried the single-minded focus of pros on the clock. Storm kept her desires to herself and boarded the jet.

Once they were airborne, Storm said, “Back to my earlier question. Why would the Russians want to steal an icon and replace it with a copy that cost a fortune to produce? There needs to be a concrete reason for them to have gone to all that trouble.”

“If it was the Russians at all,” Father Gregor added.

“Do they have any special connection to this icon?” Storm asked.

“They do not need one,” Antonin Tarka replied. “When I was ten years old, I watched Stalin's soldiers murder my entire family. We lived in what is now the western Ukraine. I was on the run for six months, traveling only at night, stealing what food I could from farms, until I made it across the Czech border. I speak from brutal experience when I say the Russian mentality is unique. They live with a perpetual sense of being under threat from all
sides. Their enemies surround them. Their inbred attitude is to strike first, to dominate, to oppress. In their twisted form of logic, they see this as their one true hope of survival.”

“And the icon?”

“The Black Madonna represents the heart of a people they have oppressed for centuries. But now our nation is on the rise. We have the largest economy in Eastern Europe. We are also one of the West's strongest allies. The Black Madonna is a lever. Their hope is to draw us back into the fold.”

Storm sensed that Father Gregor did not agree. But the priest frowned at his hands upon the tabletop and said merely, “We still have no concrete evidence that the Russian buyers are somehow connected to the icon's disappearance.”

“And yet I am certain it is so.”

“For all our sakes,” the priest said, “I hope you are right. Time is fast running out.”

Tarka nodded grave acceptance and said to Storm, “Beyond the West's safe borders, beyond this generation's comfort zone, there exists a different world. A world where many people do not have the luxury of schooling. One where words come with difficulty and reading is impossible. One where they hold to a faith, even though their leaders are quite willing to torture and maim and murder to extinguish religion. The people of this other world use something they can see and touch as a means to look
beyond.
Understand this, and you may fathom what a vital role the Black Madonna has played for my country.”

Storm waited while Tanya laid out plates of sandwiches, then said, “There's something else we need to discuss. The Amethyst Clock.”

Father Gregor said, “It is a fable. A lie.”

“Even so, the people we're up against think it is real. And they're hunting it.”

Antonin Tarka said, “You have heard the story of Catherine the Great, yes? Her rule was one of Poland's darkest hours, a Russian czarina who saw our land as too rich and our army as
too threatening. So she gathered her cousins, the emperor from Vienna and the Kaiser from Berlin, and over a very fine meal they carved our nation into three segments and swallowed it whole.” Tarka looked at his friend. “During that harsh era, legends sprang from soil watered by the blood of patriots. Fables of impossible powers. Hope from mythical realms.”

Father Gregor said, “There is a difference between faith grounded in God and fables fed by human misery.”

Tarka said, “But that does not change what Ms. Syrrell has correctly pointed out. Someone has a reason to believe the clock exists and has the power to stop time.”

Storm corrected him, “Someone wants to believe this so badly, they are willing to suspend disbelief.”

Both men were watching her now. “What are you saying?”

“Does that sound like the Russians to you?”

DAYLIGHT HAD DIMMED TO A
slate-gray smudge on the western horizon by the time they landed at City Airport in London. The day had taken its toll on Antonin Tarka. The man's features had turned cavernous, and the jet's narrow metal stairs were hard going for him. Father Gregor helped him as much as he could, and Tanya hovered one step down, there to catch him if he fell. Antonin Tarka fussily tried to shoo both of them away, but they took no notice.

Once in the taxi, Tarka said, “I would urge you to remain at the Ognisko, Ms. Syrrell. We will be better able to ensure your safety.”

The prospect of returning to her drafty room in the club was utterly unappealing. But so was the threat of being abducted. “Are you sure I can't tell my friends what is happening?”

“The more people who know, the greater our risk,” Antonin Tarka replied.

“Particularly this Raphael Danton,” Father Gregor said. “We must ask that you tell him nothing.”

“Why?”

“Danton was once a soldier of fortune in Africa, yes?”

“He had personal reasons for joining the fight.”

“But he was paid for combat. A mercenary.” Tarka's face was a graven image in the passing streetlights. “If he will offer his life for coin, what would he do with our secret?”

“On this matter, we must insist,” Father Gregor said in agreement. “Do not trust Danton with anything.”

H
ARRY DITCHED THE TROOP CARRIER
in a highway truck stop outside Aqaba. Ahmed bought caps, sweatshirts, long drawstring pants, sunglasses, and a disposable phone from the shop. Emma did not wait for his explanation that the Western woman needed to disappear. She smudged her face with road dust, tucked her hair into the cap, slipped on the shades, and pulled the bulky sweatshirt over her head.

They bribed a trucker to carry them through Aqaba and farther south. The road to Haql and the Saudi border paralleled the silent gulf. They descended from the truck just as the eastern sky showed the first faint hint of dawn.

Their destination was a cluster of fishing dhows. Nets dried on makeshift lean-tos. The rocky beach stunk of fish. Ahmed led them to a wooden vessel perhaps twenty-five feet in length. As they flipped the dhow, two scruffy teens scrambled from one of the lean-tos, holding vintage Enfields at the ready. When they saw who it was, they waved a sleepy greeting and retreated. A smuggler departing with the night's final shadows was clearly nothing new.

As Ahmed and Wadi prepared the dhow for departure, Emma used the cell phone to coordinate with the U.S. embassy
in Amman. Harry listened to Emma obtain bargaining power over Wadi Haddad and arrange their extraction from the Gulf. Every time she glanced his way, he smiled encouragement and did his best to hide his growing discomfort. It felt to him like something important inside his chest had decided now was a good time to call it quits.

The two Arabs pulled the vessel out through blood-warm water. Emma went back to shore for a pair of oars while Ahmed stepped the mast and lashed it into place with hemp rope. Emma and Wadi began rowing while Harry played like ballast. A light breeze pushed away the morning mist and revealed an Egyptian borderland of desert sands and ochre cliffs, while the Saudi coast diminished to a yellow smear on the eastern horizon.

A cluster of other boats eventually joined them. Fishermen cast quiet greetings with their nets. The last sight Harry had before falling asleep was of Ahmed raising the dhow's single parchment-colored sail.

He awoke to find Emma's hair flickering across his face. She had fitted herself onto the same bench, head to head with him. Wadi sat on the stern platform beside Ahmed, the two Arabs searching the horizon and talking softly. Emma's hair brushed Harry's face with feather strokes. Despite the gathering heat, his body was racked with chills. He eased himself up to a sitting position, cupped a hand, and dipped it over the side. Harry scrubbed his face, then slipped to the stern. Ahmed offered him a bottled water and an energy bar and observed, “You don't look so good.”