The Seventh Stone (17 page)

“
The one with the sparkly hair?” Lucia asked. She did not wipe the tear from her cheek. “The Princess Holiday Barbie?”

“
The very one,” Baltasar said. “Now finish up that ice cream.”

Lucia nodded, but let the chocolate ice cream melt over her fingers.

CHAPTER
20

Christa’s tires slewed through the fallen leaves as she pulled in behind the black Rolls Royce Phantom in front of the Whitscomb Street playground. There she was! Lucia was on the swing, safe, unharmed, but not singing like usual. Her face looked grim and cold. She was the only child here. The older kids were still in school, the other parents too sensible to take their toddlers out on this blustery day and risk catching a cold before the holidays. These were the dangers they worried about. Not some crazy nut calling himself the Prophet. She had to get Lucia away from him.

He sat at the picnic table. He wore a tan overcoat that looked like expensive cashmere even from a distance. What the hell was he doing? Setting up chess pieces on a board? One of the thugs from the desert was here, too, dressed in a black suit, arms crossed, oblivious to the chill. He was not the one who invaded Percy’s house this morning.

She hovered her finger over her cell phone again. Three numbers, 911. It shouldn’t be that hard. But the Prophet had given her three minutes, just enough time to make it to the playground and no more. He had planned this precisely. He knew things about Mom and about Lucia’s school. He’d know if she called the cops.

She got out of the car.

“
Aunt Christa!” Lucia called. She smiled broadly. “It isn’t it fun to fly up to the sky,” she sang. Christa had taught her that song, like Mom had taught her.
Mom, if you’re out there, help me. Help Lucia.
It was a prayer of desperation. A nonbeliever’s prayer.

Christa crossed to the picnic table. The Prophet gestured for her to sit opposite him. She could leap across the table, grab the perfectly fringed ends of his Burberry scarf and choke him, buying a few minutes for Lucia to run away. Too risky. Lucia might run towards her or be too terrified to act at all.

She sat down, her eyes glued to the black and white squares of the chess board. She couldn’t let him see her fear. His fat, gloved fingers played over the pieces waiting deployment from the molded foam hollows in the box. It was an unusual set. One side was conquistadors, in white Breastplates and gold pointed helmets. Their opposing pieces were Aztecs, with pale blue tunics and bright, feathered headdresses. Macaws served as the Aztec’s knights, with tall stepped pyramids for their rooks. The chess board was bordered in geometric Aztec patterns of orange, red, blue and white.

“
Does this disturb you?” the Prophet asked, without looking up. “My playing a strategy game in which, historically speaking, one culture decimated another?”

“
On the contrary,” Christa said, fighting to keep her voice steady, “this chess game could be the only victory a Mesoamerican culture could win over the Spaniards.” The real Spaniards had allied themselves with Montezuma’s enemies. That’s what brought them victory. She needed an ally. Braydon Fox came to mind. “You’ve got me where you want me. Let Lucia go.”

He had selected four chess pieces to place on the board, the two “kings,” a white Conquistador pawn, and an Aztec rook. He straightened his ring, a gold band embedded with a pear cut diamond, which he wore over his gloves. The movement was contrived. He wanted her to notice the ring. “Are you familiar with the Saavedra endgame, Professor Devlin?”

“
I don’t like playing games.”

“
But you do,” he said. “You’re an A-level fencer. Fencing and chess, they’re very much alike. You must assess your opponent, create a strategy, and adjust, constantly fine-tune, to win the bout.”

If only she had a weapon in her hand right now. Maybe a feint would knock him off-balance. “I know who you are, Prophet. You’re Baltasar Contreras, head of NewWorld Pharmaceuticals. Gabriella’s boss. Her husband knows, too. You can’t get away with this.”

“
The Saavedra is a classic problem” he said. “After many moves, white against black, these final pieces remain on the board on these particular squares. Pawns have been sacrificed. Rooks, knights and bishops have attacked with corresponding strategies, all with one purpose in mind, to topple the enemy king. Now it is the endgame, with only one acceptable solution out of dozens of possible moves. At first, it was seen to be no more than a draw. But with cunning, strategy and prudence, white can move and win.”

So he was Baltasar Contreras. At least he hadn’t denied it. “You kidnapped my niece. Witnesses saw you pick her up from school.” She leaned forward. “End this, before it’s too late.”

He swiveled his face up to her. His lips, as thin as his jowls were fat, bent into a tight grin. His eyes were sharp and as dark as a rat’s. A whiff of expensive aftershave wafted from the folds of his scarf. “The key to victory in the Saavedra endgame is underpromotion. When a pawn reaches the end of the board, its player would normally trade for a queen, the most powerful piece in chess. Saavedra, he was a priest no less, realized he had to underpromote his white pawn, trading it for a rook, not a queen. Then white would attain checkmate.”

“
Got it. Underpromotion. Now let me take Lucia home.”

His grin managed to creep into an outright smile. It looked uncomfortable on his face. “You, Christa Devlin, are my rook.”

“
I am not your anything,” she said.

He pointed his finger like a gun. “That’s where you’re wrong,” he said, his eyes no more than a slit. “This isn’t about a little girl. She is merely a pawn. It’s the Breastplate of Aaron I’m after. You’re going to help me restore the Breastplate to its Divine mission. We will write a new ending to this story.”

She stood, paced away from him and returned, both repulsed and drawn in. Who was this bastard? Her father’s evil twin? How was he in on what had been history’s deepest secret? “The only ending I want is to get Lucia home safe.”

His gaze dropped to the chess board. He slid the white king one square closer to the black king cowering in the corner. “For that to happen, I need three things from you, beginning with the Turquoise.”

She felt Lucia’s life being torn from her grasp. “I don’t have it,” she said. “I didn’t find the Turquoise.”

He moved the black rook, tracking the white king for check. “You have the Spaniard’s armillary sphere. It must be a clue to its location. You’ll figure it out, retrieve the stone, and bring it to me.”

How did he know about the sphere? Had he learned about it that night? Maybe his sniper saw it through his scope. “I wouldn’t even know where to start,” she said.

“
You’re a historian. Start in the past.” He studied the board, as if still strategizing his next move. “Second, you need to bring me the seventh stone, the Tear of the Moon Emerald.”

The words clenched her gut. “Impossible. That Emerald is at the bottom of the Atlantic. If you believed in all this crap, then you’d know that it was irretrievable. That’s why the Breastplate of Aaron could never be restored, even if it did exist. That’s why they call the Emerald, the Seventh Stone.”

“
I have reason to believe that the Emerald will soon come into your possession,” he said. “This is the endgame, Professor Devlin, but you need not lose. Many pieces will fall, pawns, knights, bishops, even heads of state.” He picked up the black king and tumbled it deftly through his pudgy, gloved fingers. “I am offering you and your loved ones a reprieve.”

“
A reprieve? You tried to kill me in the desert.”

“
I don’t try,” he said. “I do.” He pointed the black king at her. “And you are alive.”

“
You kidnapped Lucia.”

“
I simply treated her to her favorite ice cream. I needed you to see your position clearly.” Contreras raised his eyes to hers. “I am doing this for the good of the world,” he said. “You have known the keen loss of a loved one by those who claim to want to change the world. I will create a world in which that will not happen again.”

If this prophet didn’t see the illogic in that, she wasn’t about to point it out to him. “So you will not hurt Lucia.”

“
That’s where your third task comes in.” He slid the white pawn to the last row, removed it from the board and placed a rook in its square. “It’s simple, really. Bring me your sister’s journal. Once I have that, you’ll realize that I am the only one who can use the power of the Emerald and Turquoise to save thousands of lives.”

“
Gabriella’s journal? Her research notes?” But the thug this morning had tried to steal Dad’s journal, not Gabby’s.

Contreras slammed his fist on the table. The chess pieces jumped. “I paid for that research. My company sent her to Colombia last summer to find new botanicals for potential cures. Hiding her results is nothing less than theft.”

What was he talking about? Yes, Gabriella had gone to the Colombia rainforest last summer to talk to the Muisca shamans and retrieve plants as potential medicines. She was the only one who could speak the local dialect. Dad had taught it to her. It was one of the far flung places he had explored searching for clues to the Breastplate. “So why did you send her down there again?”

“
Down there?” He pursed his lips, and smiled. “Of course, she’s returned to Colombia,” he said. “She thinks she can find the specimens. She thinks she can stop me.”

That bad feeling in Christa’s gut burned with a vengeance. Contreras hadn’t sent Gabriella to Colombia this time. He’d been hunting for her. And Christa had just pointed him in her direction. “Gabriella has no connection to the Breastplate,” she said. Or so she had believed.

“
Strange what people fear,” he said. “Airlines force passengers to remove their shoes, in a lame attempt to appease unfounded paranoia, when what people should fear is something simple, something they depend on every day, something that is in every home around the world. Every one of us is connected by it, right here in Princeton, for example, or even all the souls in the city of New York.” Contreras slipped his hand into his coat pocket, removed a brass flask. He unscrewed the cap that also served as a shot cup and poured a finger of the flask’s contents into it. “Drink this,” he said. the l’eau de vie.”

She stepped back. “No way.”

“
If you do not drink this, you will be of no use to me, and neither will your niece,” he said. “It’s for your own protection.” He nodded to the bodyguard on the right, who wrapped his fingers around the butt of his gun.

The guard made a move to yank the gun from its holster. Lucia could get hurt. Christa snatched the cap from Contreras and drank. It tasted like plain water, with a sweet aftertaste lingering on her tongue. She handed the cap back and waited for an effect, but her mind was reeling so fast she could have drunk pure opium and not felt it.

“
The poison intensifies the most primal emotions hidden deep in the human brain, violence, paranoia, delusions. It causes death in seven days,” he said. “If the world was created in that time, then surely it can be saved in that time.”

“
Was that poison?” She felt sick.

“
I’m here to save you, Christa.” Contreras screwed the cap onto the flask, let it drop into his pocket. “Lucia will stay with me for the afternoon. I will call you at six tonight. Give me what I want, and your niece will be home in time for dinner.” He beckoned to Lucia.

Lucia skipped over to the table. She stopped to pick up a knight that had fallen on the cold, hard ground. She searched for its spot in the wooden box and placed it in, turning it sideways to fit properly. She looked up at Christa. “Can you take me home now? I’m cold.” She hugged herself and shivered in an exaggerated way that would have been comical in other circumstances.

Contreras bent down, leaning his hand on his thighs, his face close to the child’s. It was sickening. “But I promised to buy you that special Barbie doll,” he said. “Don’t you want to come with me?”

Lucia pouted thoughtfully, look up at Christa. “Can I, Aunt Christa?”

Grab her and run. This might be her best, her only, chance. The thug slipped his hand pointedly inside his jacket. She knelt on one knee and hugged her, tight. Lucia’s soft curls brushed her cheek. “I love you, Lucia.”

“
Love you, too, Aunt Christa. Can I get the Barbie now?”

Contreras reached for Lucia’s tiny fingers with his gloved hand. He coaxed her from Christa’s embrace. He stood and walked towards the Rolls Royce, Lucia skipping beside him. He helped her into the back seat, then followed and drew the door closed with a sickening thud. The thug got in the passenger seat. The Rolls Royce crawled off, crushing the dead leaves beneath its tires. Lucia’s empty swing teetered in the chilling gust.