The Serpent's Curse (13 page)

I
n the silence that followed, even through her own misty vision Lily couldn't help staring across the table into the Russian's jiggling left pupil. Not that she wanted to.

Look away!
she told herself.
You really have to be more accepting of other people's different little things.

Boris vacuumed in a long breath. “Russia is a grave, you see? Not only of fathers, not only of brothers. But of the past. But perhaps
you
tell Boris now what
you
know?”

Um, sure,
Lily said in her head.
We found out from the coded ribbon in the Magellan dagger that Copernicus wanted to give Serpens to a monk named Maxim Grek, who was invited to Russia, then thrown in jail. Serpens is maybe a two-part serpent-shaped relic representing the northern constellation of the same name. It fits into the big wheel of Copernicus's astrolabe.

Lily didn't say any of those words. Boris Volkov—which he said was not even his real name!—could simply be trying to trick them into telling what they knew.

I'll try to be okay with the eye, but I'm not going to spill the beans to any old person. Or young person. Or anybody.

“We'll let Uncle Roald tell you what we know,” Becca finally said.

“Ah? Yes, of course. Caution. This is wise.”

Lily surprised herself that she'd become as wary of others as Wade and Darrell had. Generally, she liked people, even if she made fun of some of them, like Darrell and Wade, but that was so easy to do, and anyway it was friendly, and sometimes they didn't even get it until she explained it to them. This was new to her, meeting these kinds of people she'd never met before except in a movie or a book, but those were fake and this was real. Except maybe for one of his eyes.

“Well, thanks for the story,” she said, and Becca nodded with her.

“Is but story. A tale of long time past. Four years ago, sixty years ago, five hundred years ago, all same. The clock ticks many hours. The journey to the end of the sea is long, yes? Copernicus himself wrote these words. But what do
we
know? Who can say what is true, yes?”

You're right about that,
Lily thought. There were so many names and dates in his story that she wished she'd recorded it.
The journey to the end of the sea is long?
It sure is.
Wade's jotting things down, but somebody should be taping the whole thing. Wearing a wire. Like a real spy.

Roald finally wove his way back through the tables, off the phone now. “The dagger is secure, out of the country, but I think we can make some sort of deal, once we get into—and safely out of—Russia.”

Lily tried to read her uncle's face. He was fibbing, right? She hoped he was. They should
never
give up the Copernicus dagger.
Ever.

“Yes!” Volkov lifted his teacup as if it were a beer mug, chugged it down, then “cheered” the cup into the air. “To our journey, then. I shall close up my flat, then to Russia we go—”

He sucked in an enormous groan and lurched to his feet, like a sea monster rising from the deep. Silverware clattered to the floor because he had stuffed the tablecloth into his belt. His teacup hung out in the air, his sausage-like fingers dwarfing its tiny size, when it fell from his hand and crashed on the table.

“Kkkk—kkk!” Boris's face twisted and bulged as if he were turning into a werewolf.

“Doctor!” Roald yelled. “Is there a doctor—”

The man's cheeks went deep purple. He pawed his leg mercilessly. Roald struggled to wrap his arms around Boris from behind to give him the Heimlich maneuver while both Darrell and Wade held him up, but the Russian was too big, and now his arms were flapping straight out. Suddenly, his eyes ballooned, and he clutched his neck with both hands, gasping for air that wouldn't come.

Customers at other tables were jumping to their feet, some rushing over to help. A waiter dropped his tray and raced back to the desk for the phone.

Boris spat out breaths, trying to form a word, but nothing would come. Roald held him up. “Boris, do you have any medication with you? Someone you want us to call? Anything I can get you?”

The huge man stared down at Lily. Right at her!
Why?
He suddenly blurted “Bird!” right into her face.

“Excuse me? What?” she said, backing up.

“Cage!” He seemed to want to fall on top of her. She stepped back again, saw a bloodstain on his pant leg where he had been rubbing it. She frantically scanned the chaotic room for someone who might be a doctor. On the far side of the restaurant, a calm-looking middle-aged man in a dark blue suit rose from his table. She beelined between the tables to him. “Are you a doctor?” she said. “Sir, can you help him?”

Boris bellowed, then slammed facedown on the table like a whale free-falling from the top of a building. The whole table went over, everything splattered, and Boris slumped to the floor, clutching at Wade for a moment, then slid away, motionless.

Lily screamed, grabbing the sleeve of the man in the dark suit. “Help him!”

“Alas, child,” the man said, gently removing her hand, then patting her arm. “I am not a doctor.” Tipping his bowler, he swung his umbrella toward the lobby and wove through the tables to the sound of sirens howling up the street.

Madrid

G
alina Krause watched two men in overalls roll a shiny brown coffin across the floor of her private hangar at the Madrid-Barajas Airport. Her mind ticked with a hundred possible scenarios for what might happen over the next hours and days.

Ebner leaned toward her. “We will be in Berlin in three hours' time,” he said. “We can take the coffin to Station Two, if you are still intent on sending the woman, which I would not—”

“Yes, Berlin,” Galina said.

But is Berlin the best destination after all?
she wondered. She didn't like that the Copernicus Room had come up with nothing useful so far except, perhaps, the astronomer's supposed 1517 voyage south from Cádiz, a coastal city less than an hour's flight away. The Kaplans were in London now, but what if they suddenly jetted off to Spain or other parts south? Berlin would put her that much farther away.

“¿Señorita? ¿A dónde?”
one of the men ferrying the coffin questioned. He pointed from one to the other of two small jets in the hangar.

“En el avión negro, por favor,”
she replied.

They pushed the coffin to her dark, gunmetal-gray Mystère-Falcon and up a short ramp into its cargo hold. They collapsed the legs of the coffin stand like one would with a hospital gurney, secured the coffin in place, and left the hangar.

Ebner paced annoyingly. “Is
he
to be with us the entire time?”

Galina turned to see Bartolo Cassa stride into the hangar from the sunny tarmac. “You object? Do you think he cannot be trusted? He brought the cargo undamaged from South America. He removed three . . . obstacles to bring the coffin to us. Can he not be trusted?”

Ebner seemed to be debating his answer to that question when the breast pocket of his coat sounded with the tinkling scale of a frantic marimba. He reached for his phone, slid his thumb across the screen, and held it to his ear. “Speak.”

Hitching a long, box-shaped canvas bag over his shoulder, Cassa strode easily to the Falcon, walked up its stairs, vanished for a moment, then reappeared in the cockpit.

Galina fixed her eyes on Ebner. “Who is it?”

“Mr. Doyle with his report.” Ebner flicked his phone to speaker.

“. . . early this morning,” Mr. Doyle was saying in a clipped British accent. “The Kaplan family, all of them, met a gentleman, a native Russian known currently as Boris Volkov, for breakfast at the Dorchester Hotel. Papers were passed between them. As directed, I have not interfered with the family, but per protocol, Volkov has been removed. He suffered a leg wound laced with ricin.”

“Volkov? You mean the dissident scholar?” asked Ebner.

“Indeed,” chirped the Londoner, “although Volkov is not his real name. Up until he was expelled from Russia, he was known as Rubashov. Boris Rubashov.”

Galina breathed in suddenly, her eyes flashing. “Rubashov?” Her limbs stiffened for what seemed like an eternity before she said, “They are going to Russia.”

“Ah, that explains the papers,” said Mr. Doyle from the phone. “They had the look of tourist visas. In a rather curious turn, the smaller girl came up to me, thinking I was a doctor. The bowler, perhaps. I am tracking them, in case he gave them something I didn't see. I am also monitoring the stages of poor Boris's demise. Group Six has an agent in the hospital system.”

Ebner seemed to want Galina to speak, but she could not find the words. “Very efficient, Doyle,” he said. “This bodes well for your promotion in Group Six. Keep close to the family. Request backup if you need it.”

“I shall. Cheerio!”

The fingers of Galina's right hand rose to the three-inch scar on her neck, then fell to her side. “The Kaplans,” she said, “have met this Russian for one reason only. Ebner—”

“Galina.” Ebner shuddered as if freezing. “Galina, the name Rubashov could simply be a coincidence.”

“—the Kaplans are going after the Serpens relic.”

Silver, diamonds, and hinges of sparkling wire swam in her vision.

“But surely they know nothing of the full story of Serpens,” Ebner said softly. “They could not. The two parts, where they may have ended up—and why. I am certain it is but a stab in the dark, consistent with all of their . . . advances in the quest.” He took a breath. “Still, I will inform the Copernicus Room to direct all their research on it now. But any more than that would be premature—”

“Alert the Red Brotherhood to follow the Kaplans wherever they go.”

Ebner now appeared to swallow with difficulty. “Galina, the Red Brotherhood are hooligans, gangsters, thugs. They cannot
follow
. They maim; they kill. That's all they know. Let me bring in the Austrians.”

“There is no time. Alert the Brotherhood. Naturally, you and I must fly directly . . . there.”

“Not the castle—” The word escaped Ebner's lips before he could unsay it.

“Have the Italian brought to the castle, too. And Helmut Bern, as well.”

“Tell me you do not mean . . .”

She turned her eyes on him. “I had hoped to wait, but there is no waiting. Ebner, we return to Greywolf immediately.”

Greywolf—the Order's Station One—was an estate three hundred kilometers east of Saint Petersburg. It was a huge property: fifty square kilometers of steep, forest-thickened hills, at the summit of which stood a sixteenth-century fortress that the Order had abandoned to a destructive fire four years before.

“Galina, no. I beg you, another place. Kronos One lies in ruins after all this time. Lord knows if the main tower even exists any longer. If you are set on experimenting with Sara Kaplan, I beg you let me send for a newer device.”

She laid her hand gently on his and then began to squeeze it under her iron fist. “Greywolf. Kronos One. We go now.”

“All because of Rubashov,” Ebner muttered, sulking away to the jet.

At the mention of the poisoned Russian's true name, and at the memory of Greywolf, the aircraft hangar around Galina began to vanish, and she soon saw herself laid out, comatose, on a vast slab of undifferentiated white, a wasteland of permafrost and tundra. She had hoped and prayed—bled, even—never to return to the monster country, and certainly not to the fortress. Serpens was in that bleak wilderness somewhere, or half of it, at least. But she was hoping to avoid ever entering that poisoned land to dig for it.

As she climbed the stairs to the Falcon, Galina realized that this flight to Russia was very nearly superfluous. In her mind, ticking like a geared clockwork, like a sequence of tumblers in a combination lock, she had never left.

Wherever she was, there would always be Russia.