The Serpent's Curse (4 page)

“And why are you helping us exactly?” Darrell broke in. “I mean, sorry, but you don't really know us, and we've learned we can't trust new people.”

“Whoa, Darrell,” Lily said. “That's rude.”

“No, no. Fair question,” Terence said. “It's simple. The moment I received Sara's things, I knew something was off, you see. Something was dreadfully wrong. Since I'm a mystery writer, my antennae shot up. More than that, I've just started, well, a foundation for causes that are actively fighting injustice here and around the globe. The Teutonic Order is far more powerful than you. More powerful, actually, than any international organization I've come across. And they've become that mainly in the last four years. I've asked myself, what exactly is going on here?”

“War,” said Darrell gloomily. “That's what's going on. Galina Krause and the Teutonic Order have declared war on us.”

“I completely agree,” Terence said. “And on the world, too, which is why my foundation and I want to help you however we can . . . but there will be time later for that. Here's Sara's suitcase.”

The moment Julian entered the room with Sara's main bag and set it down on the coffee table, Becca watched Uncle Roald and Darrell. Roald practically leaped on the suitcase. But his fingers shook, and she saw the blood drain visibly from his cheeks. Darrell hovered over the suitcase next to his stepfather, his fingers poised but apparently unable to touch anything. Becca wanted to help, but stupidly couldn't think of how. It took Roald a full minute to open the clasp and unzip the case, and by the time he lifted the top, he had to wipe away tears.

Sara's clothes, toiletries, books, shoes—everything was stowed neatly in its place, just as Sara must have packed it for the return flight from South America, the flight she never made. A lump forced its way into Becca's throat, and she teared up, too. On the table in front of them was the clearest evidence so far that Sara was lost, and that no one knew where.

Darrell put both hands over his eyes. “Oh, Mom . . . Mom . . .”

Becca looked at the floor. Her heart thundered as loudly as it had when she'd thought of Lily and Maggie on the bridge.

“I
hasten to say that I have every reason to believe that right now your mother is safe,” Terence said earnestly to Darrell. “Step by step, here's what we think. . . .”

The voice blurred in Darrell's ears, then faded away.

Something had cracked inside him when his mother's suitcase was opened, and it was still cracking. Seeing her clothes like that was like looking at stuff belonging to somebody who was dead. His throat tightened. He threw himself back on the sofa to be able to breathe, but just as quickly bent over the suitcase again. His ears were hot, like something was screaming into them. His stepfather was on his feet now, looking away.

When Lily patted him awkwardly on the arm, Darrell realized that the room was quiet and everyone was waiting for him. To do what? He glanced up to see them all staring at him; then he brushed his hand over his face.
Oh, right. To stop crying.
He wiped his cheeks. “Sorry. Go on, Mr. Ackroyd.”

“No need to be sorry,” the man said, glancing searchingly at Julian.

Uh-huh, and what was that look?

“To continue, when I realized that Sara's luggage had arrived here without her, I immediately examined it, without actually
moving
too much. All of her belongings, including her phone and wallet, everything seemed to be here and intact.”

“As my dad told you on the phone in Guam, we didn't contact the police because of what else we found,” Julian said. He was now sitting in a chair across the room, alternately looking down from behind the curtain, as if he was surveilling the street, and tapping the keys on a laptop.

“Exactly,” said Terence. “We've discovered two things. The first is what I take to be a warning, hidden cleverly in the inner lining.” Terence carefully peeled back a portion of the patterned lining. It had been pried open and reclosed with a safety pin. Tucked into the space behind the lining was a charm bracelet.

Roald lifted it out. “I know this bracelet. Sara's had it for a long time, but . . .”

One of its charms was wrapped inside a self-adhesive Forever postage stamp depicting the American flag.

“May I?” Carefully unpeeling the stamp, Terence revealed the charm inside. It was a silver skull.

“I don't like the way this looks,” Darrell said. “Dad, a skull? Mom's not a skull kind of person. And I don't remember this charm. When did she get it?”

Terence was about to speak when Roald said, “I think she got it last year at a conference in Mexico. It's a standard icon there. ‘Day of the Dead' and all that.”

“But wrapped inside a picture of the American flag,” said Lily. “Is that like something against our country?”

“No, no.” Terence shook his head vigorously. “Not at all. I attended that same conference. It was, in fact, where I met Sara for the first time and decided to donate my manuscripts to her archive in Austin. I believe this part of the clue was actually meant for me. It is a direct reference to a silly thing I wrote about in my first novel—”

“
The Zanzibar Cryptex
,” Julian said from across the room. “Not one of your best, Dad. The ending on the ocean liner?”

Terence smirked. “Everyone's a critic. But seriously, in that book there was a similar clue, an item wrapped in a stamp. And it meant something very specific, which Sara well knew. You see, the skull represents, well, death, or at the very least danger. The flag quite simply means the authorities. The message in the novel—and here—is plain: contacting the authorities will put Sara in more danger. At least she thought so. She must have been threatened or somehow understood that bringing the police in—”

“Or the CIA or FBI,” Julian added.

“—would not help,” Terence said. “For the moment, then, finding her should remain a private matter. But not without resources.”

“Sara's in danger but she's sending us codes and clues?” Lily said. “What a mom.”

“You better believe it,” Wade whispered.

The elevator chime rang behind them, and Terence hopped up. “Ah, Becca. Your doctor.” A middle-aged woman entered, smiling, and Becca went with her to the dining-room table, where they chatted softly, so Becca could also listen.

Roald stood anxiously. “All right, so Sara is telling us to be cautious. Terence, you said you found two things.”

“That's my cue,” Julian said, leaving his chair by the window after one last look at the street and setting his laptop on the coffee table. “Three hours ago we received a heavily encrypted video from our investigators in Brazil. I've just been decoding it and cleaning up some of the images.” He adjusted the screen, and hit the Play button.

A fuzzy nighttime video image appeared, showing an old station wagon creeping slowly along what appeared to be a utility road behind a large building. There were words on the side of the building:
Reparação Hangar 4
.

“Hmm. An airline-repair hangar,” Terence whispered, shooting a glance at his son. “In Rio de Janeiro.”

In the video the car stopped abruptly. Behind it, a set of double doors slid aside on the hangar, and two shapes emerged from it. The driver and a passenger climbed from the car, opened the back of the station wagon, and began to tug something out, while the two men from the hangar assisted. It was a coffin. The four men carried it like pallbearers into the hangar. A few minutes later, the two from the station wagon reappeared, closed the rear door, and drove off. The video ended.

Darrell stared at his stepfather, not wanting to believe what he saw, but his lips formed the words. “Mom is dead?”

“No, no,” said Terence, rising and putting his hand on Darrell's shoulder. “What we have just witnessed means precisely the opposite. The shipment of coffins is a well-known but poorly policed method of moving people from country to country without documents. The time stamp tells us that this occurred at two twenty-seven a.m. last night, Rio time. Precisely thirty-six minutes later, two small private jets took off, both heading east on different routes, possibly to Europe or Africa. By tomorrow, we will know where each landed. If your mother is indeed in that coffin, it means that the Order is flying her somewhere,
smuggling
her to another country. Excuse me for being blunt, but if Sara were . . . dead, the Order would not go to such lengths. This video not only means that she is alive, but that precautions are being taken to ensure her safety.”

It didn't sound right to Darrell, but Terence's face—and Julian's—betrayed no sense of hiding the truth. “She's alive? You're sure?”

“I quite believe so,” Terence said, nodding heartily. “It is a matter now of tracking down both jets to see where they may be moving her.”

“We had heard something about Madrid,” said Becca from the dining room. “In San Francisco, we discovered that the Order has some servers, big computers, there, and Galina might have been there, too.”

“Good. I'll alert my people. This may be a solid lead.”

“We've been tricked before,” said Lily.

“I understand your disappointment in San Francisco,” Terence said. “But my network is largest in Europe. I've taken the liberty of arranging a meeting between Dr. Kaplan and myself and Paul Ferrere, the head of my Paris bureau, tomorrow morning, here in the city. Ferrere is ex–Foreign Legion and has a team of detectives spread across the length and breadth of Europe. We have hopes of finding Sara Kaplan before very long.”

“Hopes?” Darrell grunted.

Roald patted him on the arm. “Not false hopes. Never again. But we can inch ahead. Keep moving forward.”

Darrell wanted to believe him. “Okay . . .”

His stepfather took one more look at the paused video on Julian's laptop and began to pace the living room. “Here's the way I see it. Galina Krause may be waiting for us to lead her somewhere, and we'll be in danger the moment we make a move. I get that, but while we're waiting for a solid lead about Sara, we have to continue our search for the second relic, the one Vela is supposed to lead us to. Wade, you have my notebook; Becca, you have the diary. Lily, you're the electronic brains. Darrell, you cracked some riddles in San Francisco that baffled the rest of us. Together, we
will
find the second relic, and we
will
find Sara.”

Darrell got it. He understood. It made sense, and having Terence and his detectives on the case gave them a way forward. His lungs were gasping for a deep breath, and his heart pounded like pistons in his chest, but being scattered or afraid wouldn't help them or his mother. He wiped his cheeks. “Okay. Good.”

The doctor left, with a silent smile and thumbs-up to the family, and Becca rejoined them, a clean bandage on her arm.

“All set,” she said. “It feels great. Thank you, Mr. Ackroyd . . . Terence.”

“Not at all,” he said.

“And now . . . Vela,” said Roald.

Still worrying about his mother, Darrell watched his stepfather move his hand inside the breast pocket of his jacket. When he drew it out, he was holding the brilliant blue stone.

“I
'm Sara Kaplan,” she told herself for the thousandth time. “I'm an American. I've been kidnapped. I don't know by whom, and I don't know why. I had no time—almost no time—to alert anyone. It happened too fast.”

She had rehearsed these words over and over so she could tell the first person she saw in as short a time as possible. But she hadn't seen anyone at all since . . . since when? Since the hotel on the morning of her flight from La Paz, Bolivia, to meet Terence Ackroyd in New York City. She'd rehearsed
that
scene over and over, too.

A bright tap on the hotel room door.