The Bone Labyrinth (37 page)

“In the rare stacks of this library, there are still scores of the reverend father’s collected works, most dating back to when the Museum Kircherianum closed its doors here at the university. It included a vast collection of his correspondence: notes, letters, replies, even early drafts of his work, some of which were never published. Most of it was forgotten for centuries and never cataloged. Until the project was undertaken by one man.”

“Let me guess,” Gray said. “Father Carlos Crespi.”

“He helped organize a majority of it, along with restoring and preserving most of those old letters. Including many from Nicolas Steno.”

“So you’re thinking that Crespi gleaned something from those letters that led him to Ecuador.”

“I can’t imagine he grasped the true breadth of all of this. But he must have believed there was something important worth investigating.”

“So he set up that mission in Cuenca?” Lena asked. “As a cover?”

Roland winced slightly. “No. I believe he saw an opportunity to pursue this line of interest while also following a true calling to help the natives of that region. In the end, he was deeply loved by those he served.”

“And what of his quest concerning Kircher?” Gray asked. “Did it ever lead anywhere?”

Roland smiled enigmatically. “It led to a mystery that has baffled archaeologists for decades, one that would eventually end with a British expedition into the Ecuadorian Andes, involving over a hundred soldiers and scientists, all led by a famous American hero.”

An American hero?

“Who
are
you talking about?” Gray asked.

Roland hefted the sphere of rock from the tabletop, balancing the sculpture in his palm, showing its perfect rendering of the lunar landscape across half its surface.

“The expedition was led by Neil Armstrong,” he answered with a broad smile. “The first man to walk on the moon.”

Before Gray could respond to this news, a sharp, angry shout rose behind him.

“That bitch!”

Gray turned to see Seichan spinning from the window and waving them all away.

“Run!” she shouted, her eyes panicked.

6:22
P
.
M
.

Seichan vaulted over the corner of the desk.

A breath ago, she had spotted a clutch of nuns in dark habits exiting through the main entrance of the Vatican’s university building. She had barely given them a second glance until one broke away, stepping with a slight limp toward a parked motorcycle. The oddity was enough to draw her attention. At the curb, the nun suddenly turned, parted her robe, and pulled free a compact assault rifle.

As the woman spun and pointed the barrel toward the window, Seichan caught a glimpse of the face hidden under the habit’s wimple. It was the Chinese assassin. Apparently the woman had shed her disguise as a tour guide and had assumed the role of a nun, stealing a page out of Seichan’s earlier playbook.

As Seichan skidded over the desktop, the windowpane shattered behind her. A dark object shot high overhead and ricocheted off a rafter.

Grenade
.

Ahead of her, Gray was already in motion. He grabbed Lena around the waist with one arm and snatched Kircher’s book from the table. He barreled into Roland and drove the priest toward the office door.

Seichan would not make it.

Once past the desk, she hit the floor, skidded low on her back, and slid under the library table. She spun and kicked the table’s edge, sending it toppling over on its side, a shield between her and the grenade as it struck the floor to the far side of the desk.

The explosion rocked the room, the concussion pounding her head and popping her ears. The force of the blast shoved her and the table toward the door, amid a rain of wooden splinters and a cloud of choking smoke.

Gray had made it out to the hall, sheltering beyond the threshold. He grabbed her ankle and dragged her free of the office.

She rolled into a low crouch, scanning both directions for any other threat. She spotted no one. This section of the university building was secured with a passcode-locked system—but after such a commotion, Seichan knew any safeguards could be easily circumvented during the chaos to come.

Which was likely the intent.

Someone wanted them smoked out into the open.

Gray came to the same conclusion. “We need a way out of here!” he shouted above the ringing in her ears. “But not any of the usual exits.”

“The basement!” Roland pointed down the hall. “There’s a service tunnel, part of an old Roman aqueduct. It leads to an exit several streets over.”

“Show us,” Gray said, setting them in motion.

Seichan followed, but something nagged at her. She glanced back at the dark cloud rolling out the office door. She remembered the flying debris of the blasted desk, but the explosion had been mostly smoke and noise.

No shrapnel
.

Gray noted her starting to lag. “What’s wrong?”

She turned back around, unsure, and waved him forward, certain of only one thing. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”

7:31
P
.
M
.

First Lieutenant Shu Wei sat on the idling motorcycle at the rendezvous point near Piazza Navona. With the sun sitting low on the horizon, shadows filled the square ahead. Tourists and locals idled and chattered, drifting toward open-air restaurants for dinner.

No one paid her any attention.

Over the past hour, she had shed her disguise and disposed of her rifle, all the while maintaining contact with the three men assigned to her in Rome. She now listened to the phone at her ear as a secure connection was made to Beijing.

A stern voice answered. “Report.”

She recognized the brusque tone of Major General Lau and stiffened her back as if her aunt stood before her. “The targets are on the run. Unfortunately the men posted at the exits report no sign of them leaving the building.”

“That is indeed unfortunate.”

Shu bristled at the anger she heard in the other’s voice. After events up in the mountains, she had barely had any time to set up a proper ambush. Still, it was only through her resourcefulness and quick thinking that they had gained even this advantage.

Before escaping the mountain and stealing the motorbike, she had planted a tracker in the wheel well of the lone car still in the lot. It had allowed her to shadow her targets and close in on them once they reached the congestion of Rome. She had caught up in time to see the foursome entering the university building.

Afterward, it had been easy to incapacitate a nun in an empty hall, hide her body in a closet, and don the stolen habit. It took little effort from there to inquire about the arrival of such a battered and unusual group, to discern where they had gone. Then she had caught sight of the Croatian priest heading down to the library. Taking advantage of the opportunity to eliminate one target immediately, she had followed him, but before she could slip a dagger between his ribs, the priest had entered a section of the library where she couldn’t follow.

Still, she had gleaned enough from his inquiries at the front desk to tell he was investigating something quite diligently. She remembered that the nun who had attacked her back in the courtyard of the Sanctuary of Mentorella had told her this group had been inquiring about a seventeenth-century priest.

Apparently that investigation was ongoing.

While Shu had waited for the priest to return from the stacks, she had called Major General Lau and reported on what was happening. As ever, her aunt was not one to dismiss the variables in any equation. Lau had ordered her to discover what the others were searching for here, clearly fearful of being blindsided by whatever information this group sought to uncover.

So Shu bided her time in the main library. After nearly an hour, the Croatian priest finally reappeared and headed up to the secure section of the university that housed the professors’ private offices. Shu had wanted to eavesdrop on the group, but entry to that area required an access code. And without a laser microphone, she had no way of listening at the window from the streets below.

Major General Lau had suggested Shu flush the targets out into the open, to set them running, to follow them wherever that path might lead. The smoke grenade had accomplished the first half, but her targets proved to be resourceful, vanishing unseen into the shadows before she could reach the office.

“If you’ve lost them,” Lau warned over the phone now, “there will be repercussions, even for a niece I hold so dear.”

“It is no matter,” Shu said.

“Why is that?”

Shu looked down at her other hand, at the object she had recovered from the office during the bedlam that followed the explosion of her smoke bomb. She flicked the switch, and the iPad glowed to life. The device belonged to the priest, left behind in the group’s haste to escape.

Shu stared down at the last image viewed by the others, still frozen on the screen, and smiled as she answered her aunt.

“Because I know where they’re headed.”

THIRD

THE LOST CITY

Σ

17

May 1, 8:04
A
.
M
. CST

Beijing, China

Whatever you do, don’t move
.

Kowalski lay perfectly still in his bedroll. He had awakened a few moments ago to find his arm pinned under the bulk of the gorilla. Baako snored gently, curled into a ball with his head nestled in the crook of Kowalski’s arm. Maria slept on Baako’s other side, spooning the little guy from within her sleeping bag. One of her arms was draped over the gorilla’s shoulders with her fingertips resting on Kowalski’s cheek.

He feared waking them, knowing the horrible day that awaited them both. Though he didn’t know the time, he suspected it was early morning. According to Major General Lau’s timetable, someone would soon be collecting Baako for his operation. Kowalski pictured the tortured chimpanzee, trussed up with its brain exposed and wired to monitoring devices.

Fuckin’ bastards . . .

He stared at the small face on his arm, noting the tiny twitches of Baako’s eyes as he dreamed. Past the gorilla’s shoulders, Maria breathed evenly and deeply, her lips slightly parted. Slumber relaxed her features, making her appear even younger. He found himself fixated on the length of her eyelashes.

His heart ached to keep them safe, but all he could do for now was let them sleep, to have this final moment of peace together . . . if only for a little longer.

He extended his gaze beyond the cage to the row of cameras positioned along the ceiling. He followed them back to the large steel doors at the other end of the cellblock. A crimson sign glowed from the shadows back there. He squinted at those letters.

Though he didn’t read Chinese, he was certain they were the same characters he’d seen back at the vivisection lab, hanging above the curve of windows that overlooked the habitat of the gorilla hybrids. Yesterday, as he had eyed those lumbering beasts, he had spotted a steel door at the ground level of their pen, sealed off by a cage of thick bars.

That’s gotta be the same door
.

He studied the pens that made up this cellblock. He now understood the heavy gouges in the concrete, the thick manacles hanging from the walls.

They must do tests on those creatures here.

He remembered the tallest of the bunch, the gorilla with a broad back of silver fur, how easily it had tossed that bloody arm up at them, fury glowing in those eyes and reverberating from its howl. The beasts might be naturally savage, genetically prone to hostility and aggression, but Kowalski was certain of one other detail about them.

They’re damned pissed at their makers.

And probably for a good reason.

As if sensing his thoughts, an exceptionally loud roar burst from back there, ululating up into a piercing scream.

Maria’s body jerked at the noise, her eyelids popping open, her face wrenching with fear as her brain fought to catch up. Baako responded in kind, balling tighter for a clenched moment, then exploding to his feet in a low, wary crouch. He chuffed his anxiety, his gaze sweeping everywhere at once.

“It’s all right,” Kowalski told them both.

Yeah, it was a lie, but what the hell else was he going to say?

Maria took several shaky breaths, then sat up and placed a hand on Baako’s hip. “Calm down,” she cooed to him. “I’m here.”

Baako hooted once, then lowered to his haunches. With his large brown eyes fixed on the steel door, he hugged one arm nervously around his hairy knees and reached back for Maria.

She took his hand and pulled him closer.

Kowalski used this moment to wiggle out of his bedroll and slowly climbed to his feet, stretching kinks out of every muscle in his body.