The Trojan Icon (Ethan Gage Adventures Book 8) (6 page)

By the dueling pistols of Aaron Burr, my scheme had worked.

I waited for cries of alarm.

Nothing. The weather was foul, the morning still dark, and every sensible man, from prisoner to commander, was snugged inside.

I cut the line, letting it fall against the back of the bell tower where it was unlikely to be noticed until full daylight. In the other direction I heard a soft thump as balloon and grappling hook lost tension and fell onto a drift.

My own boot steps were muffled as I scrambled across the roof to the last dome in line, as Astiza had instructed. I scraped the snowy coverlet from the keystone at the dome’s peak.

The blocks in a dome get their solidity from falling against each other as gravity squeezes them tight. But should the uppermost keystone be removed, the rigidity begins to weaken.

From my pack I took another flask, this one filled with hydrochloric acid for the mortar joints. I poured and watched them bubble as chemistry went to work, a trick I’d used before. Hammer and chisel cracked the weakened bond and I pried the brick out. There was another layer beneath. I boiled and cracked more joints, prying out bricks to excavate a hasty hole in the dome’s peak about a foot in diameter.

A cannonball might bounce off. A patient thief did not. I soon had chipped bricks scattered all around me.

The day kept lightening. Time, time! My burrowing had been as quiet as it had been swift. I dared not pause to look at my watch. Would Harry wait?

The slim hole revealed only blackness in the unlit chamber below. Out came the magnet, tied to another cord. I lowered it like a fishing line.

There was a metallic clang. I pulled. A sword came up, its point glued to the massive magnet by nature’s mysterious force. The weapon was tarnished and looked quite ordinary to me, except for a gilded hilt and a small insignia of the White Eagle of Poland on the blade. I pried it loose and lowered the magnet again. Nothing. The other sword must have slid sideways as I fished out the first. I carefully rotated the line, giving the magnet a slow orbit. Precious seconds ticked by. Finally—clang! I hauled up the second Grunwald trophy, congratulating myself on my genius.

I slid down the dome to rest a moment and then tie the swords to my back. It’s hell-fired difficult for the lowborn to become a prince, I reflected, and yet a night’s perilous work might just have made me one.

“And if not a noble, at least rich from Polish reward,” I reflected. I stood. Dawn was near, but no alarm had been raised. Nobody had looked up. With luck, my theft wouldn’t be discovered for hours.

“A pity no one saw my daring.”

And then a shot rang out, kicking up a feather of snow. I heard a shout in German, and then in French that Russian officers might understand.

“C’est l’ ingérence américaine. Tuez-le!”

“It’s the meddling American! Kill him!”

CHAPTER 7

I
leaped from the roof to a drift and rolled, the sounds of shots, alarm, bells, and bugle momentarily muffled. Then up, white as a snowman, the fortress a disturbed anthill. Soldiers were boiling out of the treasury and nearby barracks, guardhouse, and prison. Priests were running like stampeded cattle. Prussian rogues were in a cluster near the river gate, their muskets smoking. Their guns slammed butt down and ramrods plunged and lifted like Fulton’s pistons as the Germans reloaded.

With those shots, my ambitions were dashed. What were the Prussians doing in Peter and Paul Fortress a day earlier than planned? And how did they recognize me as the “meddling American” from one hundred yards through falling snow? I’d been betrayed, and if betrayed then news of my role would reach the tsar. I’d go from
dvorianstuo
to bandit and spy, with no title, no estates, and no friends. I was once again ruined and likely to be executed if my emergency escape didn’t work.

Yet what use is frustration? Napoleon taught that no plan survives the first gunshots, and that a good general plans for every eventuality. I’d test his maxim.

Fortunately, the light was still dim and flakes were still falling, so obscurity was an ally. Guards collided, or slipped on ice. Shots went wild. I gallumped through snow to the perimeter fortress wall and bounded up icy steps, hearing more cries as I was spotted again. Bullets pinged off stonework. Tufts of snow erupted. Then I was up on the parapet and dashing toward the Neva side of the fortress like a shadowy target on a shooting range. The Winter Palace on the far shore was a blur. The frozen ships in the Neva loomed like offshore rocks. Shots whizzed and hummed with hot trajectories that left flakes dancing in their wake.

The outer wall sloped slightly to lend stability against bombardment. Even as a line of Russian soldiers scrambled up the interior fortress stairs to intercept me, I vaulted the parapet lip and skidded down the outside wall to another drift. The tumble at the bottom twisted my ankle, but the pain was clarifying. Harry!

I squatted on the ice of the frozen river edge and unfurled Astiza’s other handiwork, a small chute of silk.

“There he is!” Shouts above. The bang of more muskets. A chip flayed my cheek and irritation intruded. Why can’t I have a career more suitable to my talents, like paramour to a bored princess, or court jester, or perhaps ambassador to an obscure nation where nothing ever happens?

The wind snapped the silk taut and jerked me forward, my boots skidding across river ice. I sailed out onto the Neva on heels and rump, teeth gritted against the sore ankle and my chute dancing madly in the wind.

Now the Prussians were running back out of the Nevsky gate, leaping onto the river ice to chase me. Several slipped and fell. It would be a comedy if not so perilous.

I clung desperately to my chute, skidding before the wind and kicking up a rooster-tail of snow. As I picked up speed I allowed myself to hope that the most disagreeable part of my mission might be unnecessary. Perhaps I could just slide away into the fog of early morning.

But then I heard the clatter of horseshoes on ice.

I looked back. Several mounted men had bounded from pier onto the frozen river, their horses slipping and then finding purchase on the brittle surface. The animals neighed in consternation and excitement.

Meanwhile the wind began to drag me awry, sending me up the river instead of across to the frozen ships and St. Petersburg. Our invention had gained me precious minutes, but I had to rendezvous with my son.

I let it go.

The chute whirled away like a leaf. I coasted to a regretful halt and stood, wincing. Damnation! I didn’t relish the last part of my plan, but choice was shrinking as the horsemen spurred.

I set off at a limping trot, too pained and unsure of my icy footing to run flat out. Behind, the sound of pursuit was like knives rapping on marble.

“There he is! Halt, rogue, or we cut you down!”

I panted, struggling painfully to the place I’d carefully sawn the night before we crossed the river with the casket. Despite recent snow, my disturbance had left a slight depression in the snow.

My pursuers were closing. I had to give the Prussians pause.

I un-shouldered my rifle, turned, took quick aim at the lead horseman, and fired. He jerked and pitched backward, his horse sprawling hard. Other animals swerved and tumbled, skidding across the ice. Germans cursed and howled. Now the empty gun was an anchor, but I
had
gained a few seconds.

Of dread.

If the river ice had refrozen too firmly where I’d sawn before joining Gregor and the coffin, I’d either be sabered or spend my last days in the fortress prison. But if it was still sufficiently fragile …

The remaining cavalry circled, the animals kicking up a surf of snow. Saber blades made a whooshing sound as excited Prussians and Russians slashed back and forth in the air, treating the chase like sport.

A hobbling run. Just yards away.

“Lance him!” A spear point came down and leveled.

“No, I’ll finish him.” It was Von Bonin’s voice and I glanced back to see the Prussian taking aim with the appendage on the stump of his arm. His sleeve was up, exposing the flint mechanism, and the muzzle hole was aimed square at my back.

I grimaced, leaped headfirst for the spot I’d prepared with my rifle as spear, and took a huge breath.

The arm’s gun went off.

As I crashed through the ice, a bullet seared my scalp.

The cold water was a shock. First the pain of falling through brittle blocks, and then the bite of the bitter Neva. The river jolted like electricity. I plummeted, the swords on my back another anchor, and for a moment I feared they’d carry me straight to the bottom.

But my clothes had trapped some air, neutralizing my descent. The devil’s luck, again. I let go of my pretty rifle, steadied, kicked, and looked up. I could just make out faint cracks of light against the morning sky where I’d sawn to weaken the ice. There was a longer line I’d cut to point out my necessary direction. Swim that way! Doing so in winter clothing with two old swords was as ridiculous as dancing in a grain sack, but terror works miracles. I stroked for my life.

The river’s current sucked at me, and I had to take care it didn’t pull me too far downstream.

I’d already imagined the scene above. A pathetic fugitive, about to be spitted or sliced, has an even more ignominious end when he falls through a weak spot in the frozen river. Horses skid to a halt, their riders fearful of plunging themselves. The posse gingerly dismounts and surrounds the icy hole, waiting on the unlikely chance that their quarry might resurface through broken floes. And when ten minutes pass with no sign, the obvious is concluded. Ethan Gage’s thievery carried him straight to the Neva mud, and he will not surface until the spring thaw, if then. Salvage sailors might eventually drag in hopes of snagging the old swords, but would eventually conclude I’d been washed out to the Baltic, the military relics washed with me.

I would sink out of history and pursuit. Or so was my plan.

It was a lung-busting thirty yards to my goal. The cold clamped like a vise and burned like fire.

The already dim water darkened even further as I passed under the hull of my target ship. I kicked upward, feeling its slippery keel. There was a curve as it arched to the bow, meaning the current had carried me several yards downstream of where I’d aimed. I desperately breasted back toward the stern, just moments from drowning. My lungs clenched in protest. My vision narrowed. The chill was rusting my muscles.

But there, at last, was the black opening in the bottom of the hull.

The ship we’d chosen was a harbor maintenance vessel fitted with what sailors call a moon pool, a wooden well in its hold from which underwater obstacles could be winched, anchored, or driven, out of reach of bad weather and loose ice. The sides of the box were higher than the waterline, and a hatch kept the sloshing waves out when the ship was underway. Being beneath the main deck, the moon pool was shielded from view above.

I burst the thin ice of the river surface inside the dark lidded enclosure, almost shrieking from pain and cold. I was close to passing out.

My survival depended on Harry.

If my young son hadn’t become frightened from waiting too long as the day lightened, he should lift the lid we’d kept closed so as not to alert the night watchman.

But my escapade had taken longer than I’d hoped. Had Horus already run home? If I couldn’t get out of the moon pool in moments, I’d freeze and sink. Had he heard the shots and waited? Or fled in fear?

So I pounded on the wooden well’s sides, the signal to hoist the lid and lower a knotted rope to Papa.

No answer.

Mother Mary, I was frozen. I pounded again. “Harry!”

Nothing.

I was shaking uncontrollably now, teeth chattering, and every second of entrapment seemed a desperate hour. I’d surfaced from the river in the one place no one could see me, but it did little good if I was helpless as a crab in a trap.

I pounded once more, weakly this time. It was Czartoryski who’d first scouted the ship, using arrogance and a stolen hat to pose as a marine inspector. He reported back on the moon pool, its hatch, its watchman who made predictable rounds, the rope and pulley to raise it, and the feasibility of exiting the river that way. It would be my last resort, if chased.

But when we returned to make preparations, a guard had been posted on the ship’s top deck by a captain hostile to any regulation. Only my boy had been small enough to crawl down a mooring line and squeeze through the hawsehole that bound the ship to the pier, invading like an enterprising mouse. He was tiny enough to hide should any watchman come searching. He seemed, if not the best helper, the only one possible.

Unless he’d gone home as I’d told him. “If Papa doesn’t come when its full morning, you must crawl out sly as a fox and hurry back to Mama. We cannot have you caught.”

“When is it morning, Papa?”

“When the day gets bright.”

“But I’ll be inside.” The lad was as sharp as a tack.

“Watch the light through the hawsehole.”

I’d been more worried about him than me. But now I knew I should have entrusted the job to a bribed adult. Corrupt the watchman, say, or hire a desperate rogue who could somehow bully his way aboard. I’d hesitated to spend the money and would die a miser.

A final exhausted rap. My hair was crusted with ice. My boots were lead weights. The swords dragged to drown me. “Harry.” It was a croak.

And then, in a miracle equal to that of the light that fell on Saul over the road to Damascus, the hatch opened and a small head peered over.

“You’re late, Papa.”

“Harry,” I chattered, “the rope!”

He pitched it in. My last strength was spent dragging myself out of the pool, my boy helping as best he could. Water poured off, and bits of ice rattled on deck when I collapsed.

Harry pulled the swords free to lighten me. “They’re heavy!” The weapons clanked as they fell to the planks.

“Not too loud, son.” I gasped like a fish, water draining, my hands plucking chunks from my hair. I was shivering uncontrollably.

My five-year-old regarded me with concern. “Do you want a blanket? I found a sail.”

“Yes, thankee.” I shook like an epileptic. “I feared you gone.”

“No, I found a kitty. Do you want to pet it?”

A ship’s cat, for rats.

Fingers numb, I began to unbutton my wet coat, ice water still sluicing out. “The sail first. And then we’ll hide under it until any outside search is given up. Hide until nightfall if we have to. The days aren’t long.”

“You said go home by morning.”

“This is a new game.”

I could hear shouts outside as soldiers ran along the quay, studying the ice of the Neva on the unlikely chance I’d surface near shore.

I rolled myself in the tarp with the precious swords, wincing as thorns of warmth returned, the pump of blood as painful as shards of glass. Harry sat next to me with his hat and coat, but then took his mittens off and beckoned.

“Here, kitty,” he whispered.