Текст книги "The Judas Strain"

Автор книги: James Rollins

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Текущая страница: 10 (всего у книги 30 страниц)

Lindholm slumped and fell to his chest on the carpeted floor. Blood soaked into the plush weave and overspilled into a growing pool. One hand twitched on the carpet, then stopped.

“Motherfucker…” Ryder growled, his face stony, turning away.

Devesh stepped back to Lisa.

“Wh-why?” she managed to force out, heartsick and cold.

“Like I said, nothing escapes our notice, Dr. Cummings. Including Dr. Lindholm’s skill. Or rather lackthereof when it comes to research and fieldwork. He served his purpose in keeping the WHO off our backs with his call, but beyond that, he is more a liability than an asset. His death at least served one last function. A demonstration. Not only to show the cost of insubordination.” Devesh fixed her with a hard stare. “Can I assume you’ve learned that cost, Dr. Cummings?”

She slowly nodded, staring at the pool of blood.

“Very good.” He faced the others. “The death also demonstrates a lesson to everyone. Of the seriousness of our venture here. Your lives depend upon your usefulness. It is that simple. Perform or die. I encourage you to pass on this lesson to your other colleagues before further demonstrations prove necessary.”

Devesh clapped his hands together. “Now, with that little bit of unpleasantness over, we can begin our work.” He motioned to the Maori leader. “Rakao, please guide everyone to their respective posts. I’ll escort Dr. Cummings personally to her patient.”

Holstering his pistol, Rakao dispersed his men. Devesh led Lisa down the hall, away from everyone else. She passed the line of children. Shell-shocked, they were being gathered for a return to the ship’s day care.

Surina, trailing Lisa and Devesh, paused by the little brother and sister. She bent to the girl, still cowering under her brother’s arm. Surina held out an empty palm; then with a flicker of fingers, a small wrapped sweet appeared in her hand, as if out of the air. She offered it to the terrified girl, but the child only pulled tighter against her older sibling. Her brother, more practical, reached out and snatched the candy from Surina’s palm, as if grabbing it out of a baited mousetrap.

Surina straightened in a smooth flow of embroidered silk, lightly brushing her fingers along the girl’s cheek as she rose. Her fingertips came away damp with the child’s tears. Lisa wondered if it was the same hand that had slashed Lindholm’s throat. The woman’s face remained perfectly still.

Lisa turned away, following Devesh.

He took her down to the very last cabin on this level and keyed his way inside. Another suite. A massive amount of equipment was being assembled in the outer room. Ignoring it all, Devesh crossed to the adjoining bedroom.

Lisa kept near him.

As Devesh passed inside, Lisa spotted a familiar figure sprawled atop the room’s bed, draped in an isolation tent: a woman, tangled amid monitoring equipment, her blond hair a match to Lisa’s own, but shaved to a close crop. Lisa had spotted the gurney used to transport the patient here out in the main room. It was the woman taken off the helicopter. Her features were still obscured behind an oxygen mask that covered her full face.

Two men, the same orderlies who had transported the patient down here, were busy hooking and securing the final leads and lines that ran from the woman to a neighboring bank of monitoring equipment. Lisa took it all in with a glance: electroencephalogram, EKG, Doppler blood pressure monitor. A central lead was already established in the patient’s chest, tied to an intravenous drip. One of the men straightened the drape of a urinary catheter.

Devesh lifted a hand toward the figure in the bed. “May I introduce you to Dr. Susan Tunis, a marine biologist out of Queensland. One of the first people to encounter the toxic bloom of cyanobacteria. I believe you have met another of her party already. The John Doe down in the isolation ward.”

Lisa remained near the door, unsure why she was brought here, still numb from the casual slaughter of Dr. Lindholm. Even if this was one of the first victims, what did it have to do with her? She was not a virologist or a bacteriologist.

“I don’t understand,” she said, voicing her confusion. “There are more qualified medical doctors aboard the ship.”

Devesh waved away her statement. “We have technicians to meet her medical needs.”

Lisa frowned. “Then why—?”

“Dr. Cummings, you’re a proficient physiologist. With significant field research experience. But more importantly, you’ve proven yourself quite resourceful in your service to Sigma in the past. We’ll need that innovation and experience here. To assist me personally. With this one case.”

“Why her? Why this case?”

“Because this one patient holds the key to everything.” Devesh stared down at the woman. His eyes narrowed with worry for the first time. “She holds a riddle, one that extends deep into the historical past, back to Marco Polo and his trips through these waters…and into a larger mystery.”

“Marco Polo? The explorer?”

Devesh waved a hand. “Like I said earlier, that’s a trail we are leaving to another arm of the Guild.” He nodded to the woman. “All our efforts here, all the research aboard the ship, all the sacrifices to come, center on this one woman.”

“I still don’t understand. What’s so important about her?”

Devesh’s voice lowered. “This woman…she’s changing. Like the bacteria. The Judas Strain is growing inside her.”

“But I thought you said the virus doesn’t infect human cells.”

“It doesn’t. It’s doing something else inside her.”

“What?”

Devesh faced Lisa. “It’s incubating.”

INCUBATION

7
Of a Journey Untold

JULY 6, 6:41 A.M.

Istanbul

In less than a day Gray had escaped halfway around the globe – and landed in another world. From the minarets of Istanbul’s countless mosques, muezzin called the Islamic faithful to morning prayer. Sunrise cast long shadows and ignited the city’s domes and spires.

Gray had a bird’s-eye view from the rooftop restaurant where he waited with Seichan and Kowalski. No one looked happy. They were jet-lagged and on edge. But the dull ache behind Gray’s eyes had more to do with his own concerns. Pursued by assassins, hunted by his own government, he had begun to doubt the wisdom of this current partnership.

And now this strange summons to Istanbul. Why? It made no sense. But at least for once, Seichan seemed equally baffled. She dripped honey into a tiny gold-rimmed cup of Turkish tea. The tea waiter, dressed in a traditional blue-and-gold embroidered vest, offered a refill to Gray.

He shook his head, already buzzing from the caffeine.

The waiter did not bother with Kowalski. The large man – dressed in a pair of jeans, black T-shirt, and long gray duster – had skipped the tea and gone straight for dessert. He nursed a chilled glass of grape brandy, called raki. “Tastes like licorice and asphalt,” he had commented with a curl of his lip, but it did not keep him from consuming two glasses. He had also discovered the buffet table, buttering up a pile of bread, stacking on olives, cucumbers, cheese, and a half-dozen hard-boiled eggs.

Gray had no appetite. He was too full of worries, too full of questions.

He stood up and crossed to the half wall that encircled the rooftop terrace, careful to stay in the shadow of a table’s umbrella. Istanbul, a terrorist hot spot, was under constant satellite surveillance. Gray wondered if his features were already being run through a facial-recognition program in some intelligence agency.

Was Sigma or the Guild closing in even now?

Seichan joined him, resting her teacup on the tiled ledge. She had slept the entire flight here, reclined in first class. With the rest, her color had much improved, though she still walked with a limp, favoring her wounded side. Aboard the jet, she had changed into a looser outfit, donning khaki pants and a billowing midnight-blue blouse, but she’d kept her black Versace motorcycle boots.

“Why do you think Monsignor Verona called us all the way here?” she asked. “To Istanbul.”

Turning, Gray leaned a hip on the wall. “What? So we’re talking now?”

Her eyes rolled ever so slightly, exasperated. Since they had left the doctor’s office back in Georgetown, Seichan had refused any further explanations. Not that they’d had much time. On the run, Seichan had stopped only long enough to make one call. To the Vatican. Gray had listened in on the conversation. It seemed Vigor had been expecting her call and was not at all surprised to find Gray with her.

“Word has spread,” the monsignor had explained. “Interpol, Europol, everyone is searching for you. I assume it was you, Seichan, who left me that little message in the Tower of Winds.”

“You found the inscription.”

“I did.”

“You recognized the writing.”

“Of course.”

Seichan had sounded relieved. “Then we don’t have much time. Many lives are in jeopardy. If you could gather your resources, figure out what—”

“I know what the inscription means, Seichan,” Vigor had scolded, cutting her off. “And I know what it implies. If you want to know more, you’ll both meet me at Hotel Ararat in Istanbul. I’ll be there seven in the morning. At the rooftop restaurant.”

After the call, Seichan had hurriedly arranged false papers and coordinated their transportation. She had assured him the Guild knew nothing of her contacts. “Just favors owed,” she had explained.

Seichan twisted with a wince to face him, drawing him back to the present. Her elbow bumped her cup of tea. Gray caught it before it went tumbling to the street below. She stared at the jostled cup with the slightest pinch of concern at the corner of her eyes. Gray suspected such carelessness was rare for this woman, someone always in control.

Just as quickly, her expression hardened again.

“I know I’ve kept you in the dark,” she said. “Once Monsignor Verona arrives, I will explain everything.” She nodded toward him. “But what about you? Did you make any headway with the obelisk’s writing?”

He merely shrugged, letting her think he knew something.

She stared – then sighed. “Fine.”

She returned to their table.

Seichan had supplied Gray with photographs and a printed copy of the angelic script. En route here, he had attempted to break whatever code was locked within the script, but there were too many variables. He needed more information. And besides, Gray suspected he already knew the message of the code: break open the obelisk and find the treasure inside.

They’d already done that.

Gray wore the silver crucifix on a cord around his neck. He had already examined it. It was definitely old, well worn. Even under a magnifying lens, he could discern no writing, no clues of any significance that would confirm Seichan’s wild claim that the cross once belonged to the confessor of Marco Polo, the world traveler and explorer.

Alone at the railing, Gray studied the city, already bustling in the early morning. Below, buses competed with cars and pedestrians. The bleat of horns attempted to drown out the sharper cries of hawkers and the continual babble of early-morning tourists.

He searched the immediate vicinity, watching for any sign of threat or suspicious approach. Had they shaken Nasser? Having put half the world between them, Seichan seemed confident. But Gray refused to let his guard down. Below, in the hotel’s courtyard, a pair of men rose from beaded blankets, finished with their morning prayers, and vanished back into the hotel. Alone now, a child splashed absently in the lobby fountain.

Satisfied, Gray allowed his gaze to shift momentarily higher. Hotel Ararat stood in the heart of Istanbul’s oldest district, the Sultanahmet. All the way to the sea, ancient structures rose like islands from the muddle of the lower streets. Right across from the hotel, the lofty domes of the Blue Mosque climbed into the sky. Farther down the street, a massive Byzantine church stood half swallowed by black scaffolding, as if the ironwork sought to clutch the structure to the earth’s bosom. And beyond the scaffolding, the Topkapi Palace sprawled amid courtyards and gardens.

Gray felt the weight of ages in these grand architectural masterpieces, stone monuments of history. His fingers absently fingered the cross around his neck. Here was another piece of antiquity, its provenance ripe with historical significance. But what did it have to do with Seichan’s global threat? A cross that once belonged to Marco Polo’s priest?

“Hey, Ali Baba,” Kowalski called out behind him. “One more of these licorice drinks.”

Gray bit back a groan.

“It is called raki,” a new voice corrected, full of professorial authority.

Gray turned. A familiar and welcome figure stepped from the shadowed stairway onto the rooftop terrace. Monsignor Vigor Verona spoke in Turkish to the tea waiter, polite, apologetic. “Bir sise raki lütfen.”

The waiter nodded with a smile and stepped away.

Vigor approached their table. Gray noted the lack of Roman collar around the man’s neck. Plainly the monsignor was traveling incognito. Free of the collar, Vigor appeared a decade younger than his sixty years. Or maybe it was the casual manner of his dress: blue denim jeans, hiking boots, and a black shirt with the sleeves rolled up. He also carried a weathered backpack over one shoulder. He looked ready to scale the mountain for which Hotel Ararat was named, off on a search for Noah’s Ark.

And perhaps once upon a time, the monsignor had made that very trek.

Before rising to prefect of the Vatican’s archives, Vigor had served the Holy See as a biblical archaeologist. Such a position had also allowed him to serve the Vatican in one other manner. As spy. Vigor’s cover as an archaeologist had permitted him to travel broadly and deeply, perfect for filtering intelligence and information back to the Holy See.

Vigor had also helped Sigma in the past.

And it seemed his expertise was needed once again.

Vigor settled to the seat with a long sigh. The tea waiter returned and settled a steaming cup of tea in front of their new arrival.

“Teşekkürler,”Vigor said, thanking the man.

Kowalski shifted straighter as the waiter departed, staring between his empty glass and the back of the man’s embroidered vest. He slumped, swearing softly under his breath about the poor service.

“Commander Pierce. Seichan,” Vigor began. “Thank you for honoring my request. And Seaman Joe Kowalski. Wonderful to make your acquaintance.”

A few other pleasantries were passed around. Vigor haltingly mentioned his niece Rachel. It was an awkward subject. Rachel and Gray’s breakup had been a mutual understanding, but Vigor was still very protective of his niece. Not that she needed it. It seemed Rachel was faring well as a lieutenant with the Italian carabinieri, even gaining a pay grade.

Still, Gray was happy when Seichan interrupted. “Monsignor Verona, why did you summon us all the way to Istanbul?”

Vigor silenced her with a raised palm, sipped from his tea, then lowered his cup precisely to the tabletop. “Yes, we’ll get to that. But before that, I want two things settled at the start. First, wherever this leads, I’m coming with you.” He pinned Gray with a firm, unwavering stare – then swung his sights on Seichan. “Second, but no less important, I want to know what all this has to do with our illustrious Venetian explorer Marco Polo.”

Seichan started. “How did you…I never mentioned anything about Marco Polo?”

Before Vigor could respond, the waiter returned. Kowalski glanced up, hope in his eyes. Those same eyes widened further when the waiter produced a full bottle of rakiand propped it in front of the former seaman.

“I ordered you a half liter,” Vigor explained.

Kowalski reached over and squeezed Vigor’s arm. “Padre, you’re all right in my book.”

Gray turned his attention to Seichan. “So what does all this have to do with Marco Polo?”

MIDNIGHT

Washington, D.C.

The black BMW sedan turned off Dupont Circle and glided through the darker streets. Its xenon headlights carved a bluish path down the elm-lined avenue. Rows of apartment buildings framed the street, creating an urban canyon.

It was nothing like the canyons of Nasser’s own land, where only goats roamed and caves and tunnels served as homesteads for the wandering Afghani tribes. Yet even that land was not truly his home. His father had left Cairo when Nasser was eight years old, off to Afghanistan after its liberation from Russian forces, to join those who sought a purer Islam. Nasser’s younger brother and sister had been dragged there, too. They’d had no choice. On the eve of their departure, his father had strangled his mother, using Nasser’s own school scarf. His mother had not wanted to leave Egypt, to vanish forever beneath a burka. She had talked, complained in the wrong ears.

The children had been forced to watch, kneeling in obeisance, as their mother’s eyes bulged, tongue swollen, punished by their father’s hand.

It was a lesson Nasser learned well.

To be cold. In all ways.

The xenon lamps swept around a corner. From the passenger seat, Nasser motioned to the middle of the block. “Stop there.”

The driver, his broken nose bandaged after the failed kidnapping, slid the sedan to the curb. Nasser twisted around to face the rear seat. Two figures huddled close together.

Annishen, dressed all in shades of black, almost faded into the leather furniture. She even wore a hood over her shaved scalp, giving her a monkish appearance. Her eyes shone brightly out of the darkness. She had one arm around her companion, leaning close, intimate.

He still mewled around the gag. Blood blackened one side of his face and throat. In his bound hands, clutched between his knees, he still held his own right ear. Nasser had discovered the man’s name in a Rolodex.

A doctor.

“Is this the place?” Nasser asked.

The man nodded vigorously, squeezing his eyes shut after verifying the address.

Nasser studied the building’s lobby. A night watchman was stationed behind a desk inside. A security camera protruded above the bulletproof glass doors. Full security. Nasser rubbed his thumb along the edge of the electronic key in his hand, a gift courtesy of their passenger.

After a full day, Nasser was finally back on the trail of the American and the Guild traitor. Last night, he had searched the small home in the Takoma Park neighborhood. He had discovered Seichan’s damaged motorcycle in its garage, but little else. There had been no sign of the obelisk, except for a broken fragment of Egyptian marble in the driveway.

But inside the house, Allah had smiled upon him.

Nasser had discovered a Rolodex.

With several doctors’ names.

It had taken the rest of the day to find the right one.

He turned around again.

“Thank you, Dr. Corrin. You’ve provided the leverage I’ll need.”

Nasser had no need to nod to Annishen. Her blade slipped between the man’s ribs and opened his heart. It was a Mossad technique that Nasser had taught Annishen. He had employed it himself only once before.

As his father knelt in prayer.

Not a child’s vengeance. Only justice.

Nasser shoved open the door to the sedan. He owed his father – if only for the lesson taught to an eight-year-old boy, kneeling before his strangled mother.

Such a lesson would serve him again this night.

To be cold. In all ways.

Exiting the car, Nasser crossed and opened the rear door. Annishen unfolded out of the backseat, rising with a rustle of black leather, resplendent in an Italian-designed calfskin jacket and a dark suede outfit, a match to his Armani suit. There was not a drop of blood on her, proving again the artistry of her craft. He slipped his arm around her and closed the door.

She leaned against him. “The night is just beginning,” she whispered with a contented sigh.

He pulled her closer. Just two lovers returning from a late dinner.

The summer night was still muggy, but the apartment lobby was air-conditioned. The doors sighed open to greet them with a swipe of Dr. Corrin’s key card. The guard glanced up from his desk.

Nasser nodded to him, striding toward the neighboring elevator bank. Annishen offered a tinkling giggle, purring up against Nasser’s side, plainly anxious to get to their apartment. Her hand sidled to the holstered Glock at his waist.

Just in case…

But the guard merely nodded back, mumbled a “good evening,” and returned his attention to the magazine he was reading.

Nasser shook his head as he reached the elevator bank. Typical. What passed for security here in America was more show than substance.

He called the elevator with a press of a button.

Shortly thereafter, Nasser and Annishen stood before apartment 512. He swiped the same key card across the door lock. The indicator light changed from red to green.

He glanced to Annishen. He read the dance in her eyes, stirred from the earlier bloodshed.

“We need at least one of them alive,” he warned.

She feigned a pout and drew her weapon.

Using one finger, Nasser pushed the door handle down. He edged the way open on well-oiled hinges. Not even a creak. He entered first, slipping into the marble foyer. A light flowed from a bedroom in back.

Nasser paused just inside the door.

One eye narrowed.

There was something too still about the air. Too quiet. He needed to go no farther. He held his breath. He knew the apartment was empty.

Still, he waved Annishen to one side. He took the other. In moments, they swept the apartment’s rooms, checking even closets.

No one was here.

Annishen stood in the master bedroom. The bed was made and looked untouched. “The doctor lied to us,” she said with clear irritation and a moderate note of respect. “They’re not here.”

Nasser was in the master bathroom. Down on one knee. He had spotted something on the floor, rolled under the edge of the bathroom’s cherry vanity.

He picked it up.

A red prescription bottle. Empty.

He read the label. The patient. Jackson Pierce.

“They were here,” he muttered hard, and straightened up.

Dr. Corrin had not lied. He had told them the truth – or at least, what he thought was the truth.

“They’ve moved on,” Nasser said, and strode back to the bedroom.

He clenched the empty pill bottle in his fist, swallowing his fury. Commander Pierce had tricked him yet again. First with the obelisk, now with this shuffle of his parents.

“What now?” Annishen asked.

He lifted the pill bottle.

One last chance.

7:30 A.M.

Istanbul

“To begin, Seichan said, “what do you know about Marco Polo?”

She had donned a set of blue-tinted sunglasses. The sun had risen enough that the rooftop restaurant was a mix of shadows and glaring brightness. They had moved to a secluded corner table, sheltered under an umbrella.

Gray heard the clear hesitation in her voice – and maybe a trace of relief. Her will teetered between a wary desire to control the flow of knowledge and a compulsion to release the burden of its weight.

“Polo was a thirteenth-century explorer,” Gray answered. He had read up a bit on the man on the journey here. “Along with his father and uncle, Marco spent two decades in China as honored guests of the Mongol emperor Kublai Khan. And after returning to Italy in 1295, Marco narrated his travels to a French writer named Rustichello, who wrote it all down.”

Marco’s book, The Description of the World,became an instant hit in Europe, sweeping the continent with its fantastic tales: of vast and lonely deserts in Persia, of China’s teeming cities, of far-off lands populated by naked idolaters and sorcerers, of islands fraught with cannibals and strange beasts. The book ignited the imagination of Europe. Even Christopher Columbus carried a copy on his voyage to the New World.

“But what does any of this have to do with what’s going on today?” Gray finished.

“Everything,” Seichan answered, glancing around the table.

Vigor sipped his tea. Kowalski leaned his ear on a fist propped up by an elbow. While the man looked bored, Gray noted how his eyes clocked around, studying them all, tracking the interplay. Gray suspected there were depths to the man as yet unplumbed. Kowalski absently fed crumbs of tea cakes to scrabbling sparrows.

Seichan continued, “Marco Polo’s tales were not as clear-cut as most people believe. No original text exists of Marco Polo’s book, only copies of copies. And in any such translations and reeditions, marked differences have cropped up.”

“Yes, I read about that,” Gray said, trying to hurry her along. “So many disparities that some now wonder if Marco Polo ever really existed. Or if he was merely a fabrication of the French writer.”

“He existed,” Seichan insisted.

Vigor nodded his head in agreement. “I’ve heard the case against Marco Polo. Of the significant gaps in his descriptions of China.” The monsignor lifted his cup. “Like the Far East’s passion for drinking tea. A concoction unknown to Europeans at the time. Or the practice of foot binding or the use of chopsticks. Marco fails to even mention the Great Wall. Plainly these are glaring and suspicious omissions. Yet Marco also got many things right: the peculiar manufacture of porcelain, the burning of coal, even the first use of paper money.”

Gray heard the certainty in the monsignor’s voice. Maybe it was just Vigor’s Italian pride, but Gray sensed a deeper confidence.

“Either way,” Gray finally conceded, “what does this have to do with us?”

“Because there was another serious omission in all the editions of Polo’s book,” Seichan said. “It concerns Marco’s return trip to Italy. Kublai Khan conscripted the Polos to escort a Mongol princess named Kokejin to her betrothed in Persia. For such a grand undertaking, the Khan supplied the group with fourteen giant galleys and over six hundred men. Yet when they reached port in Persia, only twoships had survived the journey and only eighteenmen.”

“What happened to the rest?” Kowalski mumbled.

“Marco Polo never told. The French writer Rustichello hints at something in the preface to the famous book, a tragedy among the islands of Southeast Asia. But it was never written. Even on his deathbed, Marco Polo refused to tell of what happened.”

“And this is true?” Gray asked.

“It is a mystery that was never solved,” Vigor answered. “Most historians guessed disease or piracy beset the fleet. All that is known for certain is that Marco’s ships drifted among the Indonesian islands for five months, only escaping with a fraction of the Khan’s fleet intact.”

“So,” Seichan asked, pressing the significance, “why would such a dramatic part of his journey be left out of Marco’s book? Why did he take it to his grave?”

Gray had no answer. But the mystery stirred a nagging worry. He sat a bit straighter. In his head, he began to get an inkling of where this might be leading.

Vigor’s countenance had also grown more shadowed. “You know what happened among those islands, don’t you?”

She dipped her head in acknowledgment. “The first edition of Marco Polo’s book was written in French. But there was a movement during Marco’s lifetime: to reproduce books in the Italian dialect. It was driven by a famous contemporary of Marco Polo.”

“Dante Alighieri,” Vigor said.

Gray glanced to the monsignor.

Vigor explained, “Dante’s Divine Comedy,including the famous Inferno,were the first books written in Italian. Even the French came to nickname the Italian language la langue de Dante.”

Seichan nodded. “And such a revolution did not pass by Marco. According to historical records, he translated a French copy of his book into his native language. For his countrymen to appreciate. But in the process, he made one secret copy for himself. In that one book, he finally related what befell the Khan’s fleet. Wrote that last story.”

“Impossible,” Vigor mumbled. “How would such a book have remained hidden for so long? Where has it been?”

“At first, at the Polos’ family estate. Then eventually in a place more secure.” Seichan stared at Vigor.

“You can’t mean—”

“The Polos were sent abroad by order of Pope Gregory. There are some who claim that Marco’s father and uncle were the first Vatican spies, sent as double agents into China to scout the strength of the Mongol forces. The veritable founders of the agency you once served, Monsignor Verona.”

Vigor sank back into his seat, retreating into his own thoughts. “The secret diary was hidden in the archives,” he mumbled.

“Buried away, unregistered. Just another edition of Marco’s book to all outside eyes. It would take a thorough reading to realize that there was an extra chapter woven near the end of the book.”

“And the Guild got ahold of this edition?” Gray asked. “Learned something important.”

Seichan nodded.

Gray frowned. “But how did the Guild get their hands on this secret text in the first place?”

Taking off her sunglasses, Seichan stared him full in the face, accusing, angry.

“You gave it to them, Gray.”

7:18 A.M.

Vigor read the shock in the commander’s face.

“What the hell are you talking about?” Gray asked.

Vigor also noted the steel flash of satisfaction in the emerald eyes of the Guild assassin. She seemed to gain a measure of enjoyment in taunting them. Still, he also noted the thinness of her face, the bit of pallor to her cheeks. She was scared.

“We’re all to blame,” Seichan said, nodding also to Vigor.

Vigor kept his reaction placid, not playing this game. He was too old for his blood to be so easily stirred. Besides, he already understood.

“The Dragon Court’s symbol,” Vigor said. “You painted it on the floor. I thought it was meant as a warning to me, a call to investigate the angelic inscription.”

Seichan nodded, leaning back. She read the understanding in his eyes.

“But it was more,” he continued. He remembered the man who formerly filled his seat at the Vatican Archives: Dr. Alberto Menardi, a traitor who secretly worked for the Royal Dragon Court. The man had pilfered many key texts from the archives during his tenure, stole them away to a private library in a castle in Switzerland. Gray, Seichan, and Vigor had been instrumental in exposing the man, destroying the sect of the Dragon Court. The castle ended up being bequeathed to the Verona household, a cursed estate with a long bloody history.

“Alberto’s library,” Vigor said. “At the castle. After all the bloodshed and horror, once the police allowed us on-site, we discovered the entire library gone. Vanished away.”