The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone (11 page)

Chapter Twenty-Three

T
he three SUVs swerved into the lead of a second group of vehicles racing in from another entrance.

Galina’s black hair flew back into Ebner’s face as she lowered the window. “Cut the lights. Stop here.”

The nameless driver did as he was commanded, and Galina slid from the vehicle as silent as a snake. The other vehicles parked nearby. A large dull-gray van pulled up last.

Frail light flickered behind the open door of an old tomb with a Gothic name on it.
I was right. Again.
Herr Vogel was a man of humor, after all. Even in death, he revealed a joke. Kupfermann. Copper man. Copernicus.

“Galina.” Ebner tilted his computer. “The recipient of Vogel’s email.” The screen displayed the photo of a tall man with a close-cut beard, standing in a lecture hall.

“A teacher?”

“Astronomer.”

“Of course.” Thrusting her hand inside her coat, Galina removed a silver pistol. “Send in the Crows.”

Seven men in ski masks emerged from the back of the gray van and converged on the tomb like ghosts, slipping past the bronze door without a sound. Galina tilted her face up and scanned the open sky. It had cleared, and there were stars everywhere, so much more visible over an old graveyard than from the living streets.

Stars and the dead and the past.

Her heart pounding, Galina again saw the snowy Frombork tower in flames. And—as if the two things were connected by more than memory—the scar on her neck began to sting. It burned as it had when she received it, four years ago, a gift of three brilliant doctors in a distant Russian clinic.

Three brilliant doctors who were, alas, now dead. There had been flames in the snow there, too, a tragic fire that destroyed that clinic. Fire was an efficient way to unmake so many things.

“Miss Krause . . .”

She refocused on the heavily armed man trotting toward her.

“The tomb is empty,” he said, pulling off his mask. “There is a crypt beneath the floor and a hidden safe.”

“And?” she said.

“Also empty.”

Galina Krause gripped the slim handle of her pistol, rage trembling through her arm, her hand and fingers. “No,” she said quietly.

“Miss—”

“No. No. No!” And she fired into the trees. One, two, three, four, five times.

Chapter Twenty-Four

W
ade froze as the quiet night exploded in gunfire. Five shots. Then silence. He spun around and stared into the dark.

“Somebody fired at some trees,” Becca whispered, sidling up next to him behind a nameless tomb.

“Kids, wait.” Roald held up his hand and gazed at the Kupfermann mausoleum. Lily and Darrell crouched at the corner of the tomb and peered around. “Is that the man there, the one with the bruise on his face?” Without waiting for an answer, he added, “They killed Heinrich.”

Wade felt dizzy for a second and leaned back on the cold stone. His body was frozen, hollowed out. The echo of gunfire still rang in his ears. And now there was no doubt. Even his father accepted it.

Secret codes. Bizarre clues. An old dagger. Murder.

Protect the Magister’s Legacy.

It was real.

They stood breathless at the edge of the woods and watched a small army of men in dark camouflage uniforms and ski masks pour silently over the ground around the mausoleum. In the midst of them stood the hunched man with the bruise on his head. There was also a beautiful lady with a silver handgun. Younger than a lady. Only a few years older than they were.

“Who
are
those people?” Lily whispered.

“Cemetery security? To keep body snatchers away?” whispered Darrell. “Who would steal bodies anyway?”

“I’ve seen that big silver SUV before,” said Lily. “I think it was the one that drove our cab off the road.”

“Maybe it’s the German FBI,” said Darrell.

Dr. Kaplan shook his head. “Ski masks? I don’t think so.”

“If they’re after us, we are so outnumbered,” Becca added.

“They were either looking for us or for this,” Wade said, holding up the strange dagger.

“I’ll take that,” his father said, studying the dagger briefly before wrapping it in the velvet fabric and slipping it inside his jacket pocket.

A spray of flashlights poured into the tomb, and the young woman with the gun joined the pale man at the door.

Wade’s head swam. Everything collided with everything else. He ran over the weird sequence of events that had brought them from the Painter Hall observatory to the shelter of these trees in a German cemetery. What was Uncle Henry trying to tell them? What led to his murder?

Find the Twelve Relics.

Well, is the dagger one of the relics?

If not, what
is
the Copernicus Legacy?

“I agree with Wade,” said Lily. “If people are after the dagger, and they . . . you know . . . offed Uncle Henry, we could be next. We should definitely go to the police. What do you think, Dr. K?”

He was about to speak when there was a sudden whoop of sirens at the cemetery gates, followed by the roar of black-and-white sedans. Two police cars tore into the grounds.

Darrell pumped his fist. “Yes, bust them good!”

The first sedan stopped near the silver SUV. All four doors opened and three uniformed policemen emerged, along with a short man in a tuxedo who looked like he was on his way to a party. Instead of any confrontation, however, there was a round of quiet talking. Then the policemen bowed to the woman and shook hands with the pale man in spectacles.

“What was
that
?” said Darrell. “The police
bowed
to her.”

Tuxedo Man motioned to another policeman, who retrieved something from the car’s trunk. Wade watched as two cops draped yellow caution tape across the door of the Kupfermann tomb. More talking. A light laugh broke the night air. Was that
her
laugh? Another round of bowing. A few minutes later the policemen returned to their cars and drove back through the battered front gate, pausing to beep twice before entering traffic.

“So maybe we shouldn’t call the police,” said Becca. “If they’re in this together, this is so over our heads.”

Dr. Kaplan tugged Wade and the others through the trees and deeper into the wooded area that led to the road. “We’ll get a cab out of here.”

“To where?” Wade asked. “Dad, what are we going to do? Go back to the hotel? And what are we going to do with the dagger?”

Roald scanned the rain-slicked street in both directions. “I don’t know. I’m still thinking. But . . . come here, all of you.” And he hugged them all tight. Wade felt his father’s chest heave as he spoke.

“This is real, and it’s dangerous. And we absolutely need to do the right thing. But before I even know what that is, we need to stay together. Do you hear me?”

“Yes,” they all said.

He released them. “Okay. First things first. We get as far away from this cemetery as possible.”

Keeping to the shadows, they worked their way from street to street until they spotted an electric tram rumbling toward them.

“We can think while we ride,” said Lily. “Come on.”

They climbed onto the tram, Lily, Darrell, and Dr. Kaplan first, then Wade. He reached out to grab Becca’s hand as the tram started up again. She took it and stepped onto the car.

“Thanks,” she said quietly, her eyes fixed on the street receding behind them. “Wade, I’m scared.”

Wade felt that when Becca pulled her hand away from his, it was the barest instant later than she could have. “Me, too.”

Chapter Twenty-Five

Schwarzsee, Germany

March 10th

11:43 p.m.

I
t was not supposed to be this way, Galina fumed as she strode up the marble steps of her lakeside estate northeast of Berlin.

Her recent unexpected trip to Katha, in north-central Myanmar, had forced her to leave Ebner in charge. Under his bloodless, often sniveling facade, he was a brilliant physicist at the uppermost tier of his profession, a man capable of the most inhuman and ruthless acts. He knew much, perhaps more than anyone alive, about temporal physics, but she alone understood the vastness and daring of the grand plan, and its critical, momentous timing.

Never mind that she had worked her way swiftly, unprecedentedly, through the ranks of the ancient Order—her progress was still not fast enough. Time was running out.

Time.

Running out.

In her mind stood the image of an hourglass, its sand pouring through the glass’s tiny waist, collecting in a mound in the bottom, increasing the time gone by, diminishing the time left. She would no longer be able to turn it over. Not anymore.

This was it. One hundred and ninety-seven days left. Barely more than six months.

She paused. “Tell me their names now.”

“Their names,” Ebner murmured from his position five dutiful steps behind her, “are Dr. Roald Kaplan; his son, Wade; his stepson, Darrell Evans; a niece, Lily Kaplan; and her friend, Rebecca Moore. All from Texas.”

She pushed in the front door of the mansion. “Kaplan is, of course, a former student of Vogel’s?”

“Humboldt University class of 1994, Vogel’s last year. Perhaps the least likely member of Asterias. Until now. An astrophysicist and mathematician. His son, Wade, is following that path, has a talent for mathematics. Vogel sent the boy birthday gifts.”

“Gifts? Yes, of course. Wade Kaplan. Their phones and computers?”

“Being tracked, Miss Krause, as of one hour ago.”

Galina stopped but did not turn. “Is there a Mrs. Kaplan?”

“On business in South America. An archivist.”

She nodded slowly. “And the vault?”

“Our forensic team has collected samples from every inch of the tomb. We will know within the hour exactly what the crypt contained. That is where we must focus our energies if we are to stay on schedule. What would you like me to do right now?”

“See that the jet is fueled and on the runway. We will leave the moment we know where the object leads. If my suspicions are correct, it will be somewhere in Italy. In the meantime, track their every move, and rescind the death order on Bartolo Cassa. Put him on standby. Leave now.”

She heard the physicist’s steps halt abruptly and retreat down the hall behind her as she swung through a set of ornate doors to an inner chamber. She pushed back on the doors and listened to the lock click shut. She bit her lip to keep from screaming. The pain in her neck came and faded and came again, as if someone were plunging an icy blade into her throat. She had not felt such pain since Russia four years before. Her body stiffened to stone. Her veins hardened to ice.

The pain eased finally. Her muscles relaxed. Calming herself, she licked her lips. Blood. It all came down to blood. So, the pain was coming with more frequency. Fine.

One hundred and ninety-seven days.

She strode haltingly across the marble floor, breathing slowly, slowly, until her body moved as before. She loved these cold rooms. Her estate. Her sanctuary. A domain of silence within the silence of stone.

How she missed the long days without sound, absent of voices, devoid of the roar of engines, the chatter of insignificant people. Perhaps that was why the image of the deep night sky drew her as the moon draws the tides. The heavens rolled out above the earth like an inexhaustible sea of sable dusted with silver starlight. Cold sky. Cold earth. Cold stone. Cold silence.

She touched the scar on her neck as if it were the key to what she would need to do next. She stepped across the chamber and through a second set of double doors into a taller, broader hallway.

Down the corridor and to the left, at the bottom of a set of narrow stairs, lay a passage beneath the ballroom to the rear of the building. Along the way, she slowed to take in the images on the oak-paneled walls, then stopped, smiling at the prizes of her collection: seven unknown portraits of the artist Paul Gauguin painted in seven moods, at seven different times of day, by Van Gogh in 1888 in Arles, and an eighth, “Gauguin as Saint John,” rendered by the artist from memory on his deathbed in Auvers-sur-Oise. They were worth, what? Hundreds of millions of dollars? A billion?

And the next sequence—thirteen charcoal sketches on vellum, known among historians as the long-lost winged horses of Michelangelo—what would the art world say if they knew the sketches had survived?

Or the instrument on display at the end of the corridor, a walking staff whose tip concealed a spring-action blade. The so-called rapier-staff crafted by da Vinci himself. Its worth? Too great to conceive.

And yet all these masterworks were nothing next to what she truly wanted. All twelve relics of the Copernicus Legacy.

Galina continued around the corner, down the stairs through two small libraries, across a gallery, and into the innermost room of the house.

Standing in the exact center of the marble floor, she glanced down at the complex mosaic beneath her feet. A legendary sea animal. Even as she pressed her heel into the center stone, she formed the animal’s name on her lips. “Kraken.”

The floor lowered silently beneath her—one, two, three levels—before it came to a hushed stop in a large subbasement.

The armory.

The temperature of the circular room was cool, its atmosphere electronically controlled to preserve the unique and fragile weapons arrayed on its walls. Galina stepped off the platform and it rose back up and fit into the ceiling, a ceiling slightly arched and painted with the night sky fully constellated. The ceiling was designed and painted by the Italian master Raphael in 1512 by order of the last and greatest of the Teutonic Order’s Grand Masters, Albrecht of Hohenzollern—Albrecht the Great.

It was to the wall portraits that Galina went first, her heels clicking slowly across the marble floor.

Albrecht’s massive portrait glared over the room. Galina knew the man’s face as if it breathed, so long had she ruminated over the image, painted in 1516. His long, bulbous nose, the firm jaw, the dashing sideburns, his eyes like fiery coals lodged deep in the twin caves beneath his fierce brow. She could hear his voice as if he spoke then and there and to her alone.

Find the relics!

It is the highest duty of the Order!

It is my command!

Side by side with his portrait hung that of young woman, younger than Galina herself, ill and dying and already Albrecht’s wife. But young women were different in the early sixteenth century. They had to be; life was bitter and short.

Despite her well-documented illness, the girl was exquisite, pale as alabaster, her golden brown hair worn in the fanciful braids so newly exported from the Italian courts, her face sought after by artists across the continent.

Galina gazed at the two portraits, the two souls long separated by death. The Teutonic Order was in her blood as it was in theirs. She had grown up knowing the power of the Knights and her own family’s long and twisted involvement with them. Her great-grandfather’s sacrifice. Her father’s horrifying death. Hundreds of years of violent history that had brought her to this time and place. And of the Magister, too. The astronomer and scholar. The swordsman. Nicolaus Copernicus. His role in her family’s history was no less vital.

Galina’s struggle to concentrate the great power of the modern-day Order was fraught with difficulty, lies, secret pacts, treachery, murder. But the stakes were so very high. As brilliant in her own way as Albrecht’s dying wife was beautiful, she had proved her value to the aging autocrats and listless minions of the Order. For four years, she had built from its decayed remnants a modern global corporation as vast and varied and powerful as it was hidden from view.

Now, having ascended the ranks of the Order nearly to the summit of power, only one thing remained. Her obtaining the twelve relics. The first was nearer than ever before. The first would lead to the second, the second to the third. She knew the verse.
The first will circle to the last.
Soon she would have all twelve. Breaking the organization of protectors and finding Heinrich Vogel was key. But it had taken so long. Four years. And now, a scant six months remained, with the real work just beginning. Already there were new players. These new Guardians. These children.

Galina knew never to underestimate children.

She had been one herself so recently.

On the wall hung the first pistol ever invented, a large wood and iron “hand cannon,” or
pistala
, from twelfth-century Bohemia.

“Lovely, but unreliable. This one instead.”

Still consumed with the beauty of the portraits, a tear formed in her single blue eye, a tear she let trail its way down her cheek as she unbolted from the wall a gas-operated, laser-sighted titanium crossbow.