Gwen pulled her knees up into her own chair, which had British Airways stenciled across the headrest, and opened the professor’s book. “Assuming you two are still interested, I thought you’d like to know that the giant balas ruby in the Russian crown is a sort of twin to the giant balas ruby in the British crown.”
“An’ how’s that?” asked Raven, sitting back in her chair and giving Jack a little wink.
Gwen shot an extra scowl at the thief. “According to this, the Russian ruby isn’t Russian at all. It first appeared on the stage of history in China, where it imbued the emperors with supernatural knowledge.” She glanced down at the book, reading on. “It was also said to have driven them mad.”
A green marquee on the wall beside them flashed BRUSSELS, and Jack glanced out the windshield in time to see another red light and another terrifying pressure gate approaching. He ducked as the pod went flying through. “So how did the ruby end up in Russia?”
Gwen flipped the page and turned the book around, showing him an illustration of a man in a simple blue robe, surrounded by books and scrolls. “After generations of absolutely barmy rulers and bloody power struggles, the Kangxi Emperor wised up and unloaded the ruby on the Romanovs.” She laid the book on her knees again. “The tsars then suffered a similar pattern of madness, right up to the Bolshevik revolution, when the royal family was murdered, and the crown and ruby were locked away in the Kremlin.”
“Where the Phantom plans to steal it tomorrow night,” said Jack, finishing for her. He shrugged. “But I don’t see how any of that makes it related to the Black Prince’s Ruby.”
“How about this, then?” countered Gwen. “A mineral study of each stone shows that they come from the same mine. Not in China, or Europe, but somewhere in Tajikistan. These rubies are twins, Jack—giant, cursed twins.” Gwen snapped the book closed. “The Phantom is obviously targeting the crowns that hold them, and Tanner was studying them just before he disappeared. That’s a pretty hefty coincidence if you ask me.”
Jack turned around and sank into his barber chair. “The professor can explain it. I know he can. We just have to find him.”
They passed more cities—Hanover, Berlin, Warsaw—until, less than an hour later, a buzzer sounded. Jack dug his fingers into his thighs, having no armrests on his barber chair, as the pod came screaming to a stop in front of a final pressure gate. The marquee on the wall flashed ARRIVAL . . . MOSCOW.
Raven patted his arm. “Faster than the friendly skies, yeah?”
Jack swallowed and nodded, turning to look back at his sister. Sadie had slept through the whole thing.
* * *
A short stair and an iron door brought the four up to a walkway beside a frozen canal recessed below the city streets. Raven gathered up a snowball and hurled it at the opposite wall, where it stuck like a splat of white paint. “Welcome to Moscow, yeah?” She tromped off toward a stairwell leading up to a bridge. “Hope you brought your long johns.”
Raven led them on a freezing two-kilometer march to a Thieves’ Guild safe house north of the city center. And on the way, they passed through the giant plaza known as Red Square. The high brick wall of the Kremlin ran the full length of the western edge, dark, red, and imposing. And to the east stood a whimsical cathedral, with bulbous multicolored spires lit by a dozen spotlights.
“Saint Basil’s,” said Gwen, taking on her Encyclopedia Kincaidia face as they passed the cathedral. “They say Ivan the Terrible had the architect’s eyes gouged out after he finished it, so he couldn’t make another one. But there’s no real proof behind the tale.” She went on, talking about the Byzantines and the Soviets, but an image of block lettering stole Jack’s focus. It flashed here and there among the noise in his head—a phrase he had seen in the professor’s book.
IMPERIAL CROWN.
Jack stomped on a passing flyer. There were hundreds of them blowing around the square. He picked it up and angled it to catch the glow from the cathedral spotlights while the others gathered around.
“What’s that, then?” asked Raven.
“Something to do with the heist. I thought. But the writing is all Russian. Maybe I saw something else.”
“Cyrillic, Jack.” Gwen took the flyer away from him. “The script is Cyrillic. The language is Russian.” She flipped it over and gave it back. There was an English translation on the other side.
Jack read the ad aloud. “ ‘See the Imperial Crown and the Romanov regalia, on display for the first time in more than a century. Join us on twelve December at Vladimir Hall and view Russia’s glittering past. Admission free. One day only.’ ” He lowered the flyer. “The Russians are pulling the crown out of the Kremlin Armory vault on the eleventh so they can show it on the twelfth. That’s why the heist has to go down tomorrow night.”
“You mean tonight.” Raven pulled up her sleeve, exposing an arm laden with watches. She pointed to the fourth one up. “We crossed a couple o’ time zones in the loop. It’s two in the mornin’ here, innit?”
“She’s right,” said Gwen, sounding more than a little disappointed at having to admit it. “It’s already the eleventh of December here. And the heist goes down at midnight. We have less than twenty-two hours to catch the Phantom.”
Chapter Thirty
AFTER SEVERAL MORE BLOCKS of trudging through snow and slush, Raven finally stopped at a decrepit building with a CONDEMNED sign wedged into the crook of a broken window. “This is it,” she said, pushing through a rusted door that hung loose from its hinges.
The interior was no better. Flecks of snow floated down through a huge hole in the ceiling, and the walls were stained with streaks of brown. Jack could practically feel the black mold crawling up his nostrils.
“You call this a safe house?” asked Gwen, gesturing up at the hole. “The whole place could come crashing down on us at any second.”
“You have somethin’ better?” Raven struck a match, tossing it into a rusty fifty-five-gallon drum. Flames leaped up inside. “We need rest, yeah? An’ food.” She pulled a can from a sagging shelf. “Borscht. Nothin’ posh like you crumbs are used to, but I es’pect it’ll do.”
“But the Phantom—” Gwen argued.
“Will come to us, yeah? We know where he’s gonna be and when he’ll be there. Meanwhile, we wait.” She picked up a ratty bedroll and held it out for Gwen to take. “Don’t worry. It’s too cold for fleas in here, innit?”
Gwen looked to Jack for support, but he couldn’t offer any. He was tired and wet, and his stomach was grumbling. Sadie was already snuggled up beside the fire barrel, wrapped in a moth-eaten blanket. He shrugged. “I’m with Raven.”
“Of course you are.” Gwen ripped the bedroll out of Raven’s hand and stormed off to the other side of the room.
Maybe cold and hunger had altered Jack’s standards, but Raven’s borscht might have been the best meal he’d ever eaten. Every spoonful of hot beets and cabbage became a rich, orange steam rising through his senses. With his stomach filled and the fire blazing, Jack had no trouble falling asleep. Of course, his sleep was anything but peaceful.
The flame, Jack. Please.
He bolted upright, gasping for breath and reaching for his sister. But Sadie was still snuggled up, washed in the cold light seeping in through the hole in the ceiling. He must have slept for hours. The dragon had been nothing but a nightmare. Or had it?
Jack felt a press of heat from above. He raised his eyes, half expecting to find the creature salivating there. Instead, he saw tongues of fire hovering over his head, stretching out over the lip of the barrel. There was no breeze in the room, no wind coming down through the hole in the ceiling to bend the flames. Yet there they were, dancing above him, beautiful.
Without thinking, he raised a hand and felt every molecule of the burning vapor like sparking on a gem. He turned a finger in slow circles, and the fire followed, twisting itself into a vortex. He laughed out loud.
“That’s a drago trick, yeah? I thought you was a tra
cker.”
Jack jerked his hand away, like a kid caught reaching for the cookie jar. “I was . . . um.”
But Raven had already rolled over, tugging her blanket up to her shoulders. Her breathing settled into the steady rhythm of sleep. By the time Jack’s gaze returned to the barrel, the flames had retreated. The room was colder, and the light from above was a little brighter. Had it all been a half-waking remnant of the dragon nightmare? Tentatively, he lifted his hand and then pulled it back, snorting at his own foolishness. “Yeah. Like I could really . . . ,” he said, but no one was listening. The other three were sleeping.
Jack lay down again, hoping to do the same—hoping the dragon would leave him alone this time.
Chapter Thirty-One
WHEN JACK NEXT AWOKE, the fire had burned down to coals, and for a few moments, he lay on his back, watching the clouds drift past the makeshift skylight. The daylight had gone out of them, and the significance of that observation took some time to work its way into his brain. “The heist!” he said, sitting up.
“Relax.” A red light shined in his face, and he raised an arm to shield his eyes. Through the glint of the beam, he saw Raven, sitting on her bedroll with the blueprints unrolled on the floor. “The Phantom won’ hit the Kremlin for hours yet. Too many people wanderin’ about.” She shifted the light to a pot suspended over the fire barrel. “Have some borscht, yeah?”
“Yeah,” he said through a yawn. As he got up to get his bowl, he felt Raven’s gaze still tracking him. “What?”
“Nuthin’.” She looked down at her plans. “Strange places make for strange dreams. That’s all.”
Once all four were up and fed, they gathered around the blueprints—all except Gwen, who paced the floor beside them. Using her red light, Raven pointed out a triangle with two dots inside, then a second, and a third, drawn in the Phantom’s invisible ink. “Those’d be guard stations. Two dots is two guards, an’ them four slashes by the first two stations means dogs.”
“Dogs?” asked Gwen, stopping right above Jack.
The thief ignored her, running her beam along the Kremlin wall. “These Xs is cameras, yeah? An’ that blob at the northeast corner is a blind spot.” She circled the light around an arrow running through the blob. “That’d be his entry point.”
“Why should the Phantom worry about entry points?” asked Gwen. “He can zap himself about—go anywhere he pleases. Why not pop in, grab the loot, and be done with it?”
It was a good question. All four looked at one another, and then Sadie shrugged. “Maybe he can’t jump through walls.”
“That’s it,” said Jack, snapping his fingers. “That’s why he didn’t zap himself out of the Ministry of Secrets until we opened the door.”
“An’ that’s why he had to wait for the Russians to move them jewels out o’ the vaults, yeah? Tonight’s heist is a once-in-a-lifetime shot.” Raven shifted her beam to the roof of Vladimir Hall, where the Phantom had drawn a second arrow next to a small blue hexagon. “The crown jewels of the Romanovs—in a room with a skylight.”
“Dogs, armed guards, and who knows what else,” said Gwen. “We can’t go in there.” She knelt beside Jack and tapped the first entry symbol, the one at the cameras’ blind spot. “We have to catch the Phantom here, before he goes over the wall. And that means we need to get going. It’s a long walk to Red Square.”
“Walk?” Raven shook her head and laughed. She stood up, strolled over to a block of floor-to-ceiling cabinets, and swung the whole thing away from the wall, exposing a miniature garage with a pair of rather hefty black scooters. “Who says we have to walk?”
* * *
It only took a few minutes to get to Red Square, with Gwen and Sadie on one scooter and Jack hanging onto Raven on the other, feeling Gwen’s glare boring through his back the whole time. They parked in the shadow of the State Historical Museum, fifty yards from the Phantom’s entry point, which turned out to be a clump of trees beside the Kremlin wall.
While Jack and Gwen settled in to watch for their quarry, leaning against the red bricks of the museum, Raven lifted a backpack from the rear compartment of one of the bikes. “This is the fun part, innit?” she asked, slinging the bag over her shoulder.
Jack and Sadie gave her tenuous smiles.
Gwen gave her no such thing. “What’s in the bag?”
“Tools o’ the trade, yeah? Little bit of everythin’ a cat burglar might need.”
“Put it back. I told you, we’re not going in. Jack and I will take care of the Phantom before he goes over the wall.” Gwen patted Jack’s leather satchel, with its dart gun and electrospheres. “We have what we need to neutralize his device. And then we’ll hand him over to the authorities. End of story.”
“After he tells us what he’s done with the professor,” added Jack.
“Yes. That too. All I’m saying is—”
Sadie touched her brother’s hand. “I know where the professor is,” she said, pointing out at the square. “He’s right over there.”
A hundred yards away, a man in a hoodie and a dark overcoat strolled along the Kremlin wall, pushing a wheelchair. The chair’s occupant was shrouded beneath a heavy coat, head slumped over like he was unconscious, but Jack recognized the blanket across his lap. “She’s right. It’s the professor.”
“And the Phantom.” Gwen reached into Jack’s satchel and drew out an electrosphere. “He’s heading for the blind spot. I’ll go left. Jack, you go right. Raven, you stay here and—”
“Not likely.” Raven slung the backpack over her shoulder and rushed out across the square.
“No,” said Gwen, reaching for her, swiping nothing but air. “You’re going to blow it.”
Gwen was right. Years of neglect and tank parades had made Red Square into a rolling sea of uneven pavers. Twenty yards in, with Jack and Gwen hurrying to catch up—and trying to look nonchalant at the same time—a dislodged stone caught Raven’s toe. She toppled indignantly to the stones, letting out a cry of pain and surprise. The backpack fell at her side with a loud clunk. The Phantom looked right at her.
Jack sailed past Raven, racing to get close enough to use his dart gun without the risk of hitting the professor. There wasn’t time. The Phantom grinned beneath his hood and placed a hand on the professor’s shoulder.
Zzzap.
Jack reeled to a stop. He whipped his head around in time to see the thief, the professor, and the wheelchair all hovering in midair over the Kremlin battlements, right in the blind spot by the trees. Gravity took hold. The Phantom’s overcoat began to spread, and zzzap. All three were gone.
“They’re inside,” said Jack, rushing back to help Raven to her feet.
Gwen was not so kind. “You,” she growled, shoving Raven the moment she was up. “You’re all subtlety and grace and the crownless queen of cat burglars. And now, all of a sudden, you’re tripping over your own two feet?”
“We’re not doing this. Not now.” Jack took both girls by the arms and dragged them toward the wall, while Sadie scurried across the stones to meet them. “The professor needs us,” he said. “So I guess it’s a good thing Raven brought those tools after all.”
They used the same spot where the Phantom had gone over, except the teens could not zap themselves to the top of a thirty-foot wall. They huddled at its base, concealed from the locals and the late-night tourists by the trees, and Raven drew a grappling hook gun from her pack. It made little more than a pop, sending its hook over the battlements while coils of black rope unraveled from the bag.
“You first, yeah?” The thief thrust her chin at Gwen. “Unless you need a klutz like me to show you how it’s done.”
Gwen jerked the rope from Raven’s hand and started up without a word, one foot after the other.
“Me next, please,” said Sadie, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet.
“Um. No.” Jack took his sister by the shoulders and crouched down in front of her. “I . . . need you to stay here and . . . watc
h the scooters. Yes. The scooters. Super important job. Whole plan depends on it. Can you do that for me?”
Sadie crossed her arms and cocked a hip, scrunching her face into her I’m-not-eight-anymore-so-I’m-not-gonna-fall-for-that look.
“Please, Sadie. Mom would kill me if she knew I let you climb a thirty-foot wall and drop into a compound full of attack dogs and armed guards.”
Sadie dropped her arms. “Fine. But you’d better come back out.”
“We will. And if we don’t come out in thirty minutes, find a policeman and tell him your brother climbed over the wall. The rest will take care of itself.”
Raven was already at the top. “You comin’ or what, Jack?”
Jack gave her a hang-on-a-minute wave and watched his sister skip away toward the scooters, all alone in the great big square, green skirt flouncing back and forth above her sparkly lavender shoes. He shook his head and then turned and took hold of the rope.
Chapter Thirty-Two
JACK SWITCHED THE LINE to the inside of the wall, and the three dropped down into a dark corner. There were several old buildings within the compound, separated by brick roads and courtyards. Spotlights cast overlapping gray circles everywhere. “Which one is Vladimir Hall?” he asked, crouching down between the other two.
Raven nodded toward a green roof that rose above the others. “There. The square piece on the east side of the Great Palace.”
“Then that’s where we’ll find the Phantom.” Gwen took a step into the wash of the spotlights. “Let’s get moving.”
Raven jerked her back again. “Easy does it, yeah? You wanna get us nicked?” She raised a finger, checking one of her watches. “Wait for it . . .” Then she pointed at the nearest guard shack, a hundred yards away. “Now.”
Two men stepped out of the shack, both carrying machine guns, one holding the leash of an attack dog. They walked away from the teens, toward a long yellow structure, leaving the path to the first brick alley wide open.
The Fourth Ruby Page 11
