The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone (17 page)

The door suddenly swung wide at the top of the stairs above them. It was Carlo, with a young girl their age, who was dressed and armed for fencing.

“We’re being attacked,” Carlo said. “The Order has found you again. Take the book. It must be spirited away from here, kept on the move. You cannot escape up these stairs, there is another way—”

“The Order!” Becca said. “So that’s who they are?”

“The Teutonic Order killed Bernard Dufort and your friend.”

“You know about Heinrich?” said Wade.

Carlo pressed a stone on the wall. A hidden door sprang open. “It was Heinrich who told me to expect a visit to the school. His death caused the lockdown and invoked the Frombork Protocol. This way!”

They hurried into a corridor that inclined downward.

“What’s the Frombork—” Darrell started.

“Faster!”

The passage stopped at yet another door. It swung open to reveal an even narrower set of stairs leading down into darkness.

“Do you know anything about my father, Roald Kaplan?” Wade asked. “He was arrested in Berlin by the Order and the police—”

“
Arrested
is not the word,” said Carlo. “And those policemen have other masters. I know little just yet, but I will find out. You must protect yourselves and the book now. Come, hurry!” He hustled them into the next chamber and a passage that sloped upward in a curve.

“You don’t really want us to keep Copernicus’s diary,” said Becca, holding it carefully. “It’s priceless.”

“The dagger was his, too,” said Lily. “I guess you know that.”

“Left,” said Carlo, drawing them quickly into a further narrow passage. “As valuable as both are, the Guardians have taken an oath far more important. An oath to protect their children and their children’s children from the Order’s murderous greed and evil. It has been so for centuries.”

“Are you a Guardian?” Lily asked.

Carlo bowed his head. “I am one of the many who seek to honor Copernicus’s legacy and protect the relics. The road of a Guardian is often one of hiding and sacrifice, and not for everyone. But now, because the Protocol demands the relics be reunited and destroyed, we are all at risk. You included. This way—”

Carlo arrived at a steel door. He paused. “Since 1543 the Frombork Protocol, devised by the Magister himself on his deathbed, has never been invoked. The Order had fallen apart over the centuries after Albrecht’s death, and the relics were safe. Then, four years ago, Heinrich Vogel detected strange new patterns of activity. A new master had emerged. With Vogel’s death, the inner circle of Guardians has been breached. The Frombork Protocol has begun.”

“What can we do now?” Wade asked.

“Go to Rome immediately,” Carlo said. “You will find what you need at
Five,
Via Rasagnole
. Remember it.
Five, Via Rasagnole
. Repeat the name.”

The kids did, one by one.

“
Five, Via Rasagnole
,” Carlo said one last time, and then spelled it out, letter by letter, using the Roman numeral
V
to describe the number, which Becca found odd but helpful.

“Remember this, too. You may not always find the help you seek. Some Guardians will protect their identities to the death. Others do not know their role until events discover it for them. We shall do what we can to hinder the Teutonic Order, and free your father, but your only hope is to stay ahead of them every step of the way.”

“Every step of the way to what?” asked Darrell.

“The end of the journey,” Carlo said. “The one that began five centuries ago—and started again in Berlin with you!”

More cries came from above. An alarm jangled, then there was the smell of smoke.

“Are those guys seriously the Knights of the Teutonic Order of Ancient Prussia?” asked Lily.

Carlo snorted. “Obviously. Now come on!”

Chapter Thirty-Four

T
hey flew through the door and under an arch, and plunged upward into a maze of intricate passages, a stampede of feet closing in behind.

Carlo swung around. “I’ll discover what I can about your father, rescue him if necessary. Through the red door!”

They burst into a long room that smelled of gasoline and car wax. It might have once been the stables of the school, but it now seemed to be where they stored a collection of rare and antique cars.

Standing calmly in front of them was a large woman with a wispy tangle of white hair. She barely looked up as she tugged on a pair of leather racing gloves. Carlo whipped off some words in Italian and handed her a thick brown envelope. The woman nodded slightly. Becca translated. “He told her we need a ride out of here. Fast.”

Wade thought,
Is there anything Becca can’t understand?

The woman unhooked a set of keys from a collection hanging on the wall and, despite her bulk, slipped gingerly into the driver’s seat of a sleek gold coupe.

Darrell gasped. “Holy cow! It’s a mint 1976 Maserati. I love those!”

“Keep the diary safe,” Carlo said, looking directly at Becca. “It must be taken from here now, but I will come for it later. The Order will stop at nothing.”

“How do they always know where we are?” asked Lily.

“Give me your computer and your phone,” Carlo said. “The Order has military-grade tracking technology. Take this instead.” He slipped his hand into a pocket and removed a brand-new smartphone. “It’s encrypted so they won’t be able to track you at first. For emergencies only, understand? All calls under two minutes. Also . . . keep it charged. Here.” He passed Lily a charger.

“Thank you!” said Becca, helping pry Lily’s fingers off her tablet.

With a horrible thump, the red door buckled. One hinge popped off.

“The Order’s here,” said the girl. “Time for our friends to leave.
Studenti, vieni!
”

All at once, a side passage filled with the sound of thundering feet, and a stream of fifty or more fencing students poured into the garage.

“Ready?” Carlo called to them.

“Ready!” they sang in unison.

“Take positions,” said the girl. The students flattened themselves against the walls on either side of the iron door, weapons raised.

“Go!” Carlo yelled to the driver. “
Buona fortuna
, kids. You will see me again!”

They dived into the car just when the door broke open. At least a dozen men in ski masks bounded in, wielding pistols with silencers.

As if they had been waiting their whole lives for this, the armed students descended on the thugs from behind, catching them off guard. The room exploded in a clash of blades and muffled gunfire.

“
Cinture di sicurezza!
” the driver shouted.

Wade didn’t need a translator to tell him to strap on his seatbelt. The Maserati roared to life, drowning for an instant the mayhem in the room. While the students lunged furiously across the floor, keeping the thugs from appraching the car, a wide garage door flipped up into the ceiling. Daylight poured in from the top of a long ramp.

With its driver laughing at the top of her lungs, the vintage Maserati fishtailed up the ramp and bounced wildly onto the busy streets of Bologna.

They had escaped.

Chapter Thirty-Five

Paris, France

March 12th

6:12 p.m.

T
HWACK-K-K!

The noise-canceling headphones flattened Galina’s hair, so she rarely used them. Today, however, it was necessary.

THWACK-K-K!

At 440 feet per second, the sound of a titanium arrow striking its target made the walls of the basement gallery shudder. Removing the headphones, she stared through the crosshairs at the tiny dot of red light centered on the target, flipped the lever alongside the barrel to Silent
,
and fired a third round.

Fhooo-wit!
A bare whisper with only a slight decrease in speed—427 feet per second—and again the arrow pierced the target dead center. Yes. This was the setting she would use.

As usual Ebner was lurking around somewhere. He was rarely far away unless she sent him to fetch something. She heard his shoes scuff the floor behind her.

“The standard handgun bullet travels at eight hundred seventy feet per second,” Ebner said. “Which translates to some six hundred sixty miles per hour. These arrows move at, say, half that speed—”

“The crossbow has a long and illustrious history as a hunting weapon,” Galina said. “These shafts are lightweight, hollow.”

Ebner glanced at the target. Three arrows dead center, stunningly accurate, a tiny teardrop of liquid sliding from each hole. He had heard about the shooting range under the streets of her French office complex, though he had never been allowed inside. She had so many estates and offices and rooms here and there and everywhere, it was a wonder she could keep them straight. But then, Galina was remarkable for that, as in so many other things.

“We are in the city. What can you hunt here?” he asked.

She turned and glared at him, imagining his head balancing an apple on it. “People. What else? The reporter digging into the
Le Monde
murder arrives home every evening after a stroll by the river. Tonight, he will not arrive home.”

She took aim for a fourth time when a phone rang in the vicinity of Ebner’s sunken chest. She glowered at the interruption as he fumbled to answer it.

“Ya?” he said. “No . . . no, no! You incompetent fools!”

Galina lowered the crossbow without removing the arrow. “What is it now?”

“The computer signal has been lost. The school was on alert. We have casualties. The children have escaped Bologna.”

Galina whipped the crossbow up to her shoulder and fired the final arrow downrange without taking aim. It struck the target as the others had, exactly in the center. “Prepare the yacht and my jet. I must be ready to move at any moment.”

“Of course, Miss Krause. My apologies. The next time—”

“There will be no next time for you, Ebner von Braun. Stop the children immediately, or I shall stop you.”

With three swift gestures, she collapsed the crossbow into a fraction of its size and set it in a small case lined with fin-tipped titanium arrows. Slinging it over her shoulder, she stepped into an elevator, saying, “Street level.” Ebner hurried in behind her before the doors closed.

“The Australian Transit is a success,” he said. “Our office in Sydney has received the mice. One day early.”

“Only one day?” she said, a taste of bitterness on her lips.

“Yes, Miss Krause. Baby steps,” he said. “Shall I instruct the laboratory to proceed with the Spanish Experiment?”

She was silent as the elevator rose. One-hundred-and-ninety-seven days away was now one hundred and ninety-five. The doors slid open on a wide hallway filled with mirrors and elaborate Rococo paintings of hunting scenes framed in gold. She strode toward a set of glass doors at the far end of the hall. Ebner followed like a good puppy.

“They promise greater success this time,” he added. “They are much closer to cracking the equations.”

“Tell them to proceed. Inform me when you have results.”

But until then, she thought, the fool children were misplaced in Italy, and she would have to go there, after all. Her mind agonized over the loss of the children, but her bigger concerns were the Order’s forces. They made mistakes. Back in the sixteenth century, Grand Master Albrecht von Hohenzollern would have been appalled at their incompetence and would have dealt with them harshly.

Failure meant beheading.

This was a different era, of course. She would have to make do. Money helped, and she had nearly unlimited funds. What she really needed was time. But sand falls only one way in an hourglass.

She knew a sole genius of particular talents to complement her own, one to help her plan move more swiftly, but, sadly, he was unavailable. Ebner was as close as she had gotten. And she had to put up with his lurking and leering.

Galina opened the glass doors and stepped outside onto a flight of stairs leading down to a grand public square.
Sunset in one hour.

Towering over Paris’s Place de la Concorde was the great Luxor Obelisk. Erected on the spot where the guillotine once enacted its vengeance, this priceless gift from Egypt was now a smog-enveloped inconvenience for motorbikes and cars to whiz around like so many toys. It was a shame that beheadings were no longer popular.

“I will wander by the Louvre before I stroll the riverbank,” Galina said. “I must think.”

Ebner followed her down two steps, a third.

She stopped and turned. “And by that, I mean
alone
.”