The Serpent's Curse

by Tony Abbott

  “Look, Uncle Roald wants us out of here, and Wade’s right,” said Becca. “Boris told us he only walks. So his flat is walking distance from the Dorchester. Lily, maybe we should check maps. Can you?”

  “Maps?” she said, turning to her. “Are you thinking we should find his place? How are you thinking about anything?”

  “I don’t know, but he said his flat is on the fifth floor,” Becca said as they gathered under the hotel awning. “There’s no elevator, remember? Plus, he said he never takes a car or a cab. He walked here. Boris was way out of shape, so it can’t be far away.”

  “His last words were bird and cage,” Darrell added.

  “To me,” Lily said. “He was talking to me.”

  “Plus, he gave me this,” Wade said, digging into his pocket. “I don’t think it’s a clue, though. I think . . . he just wanted us to have it?” He opened his palm. In it lay the blackened tooth of Boris’s brother.

  “Seriously?” said Darrell. “He gave you the tooth? Why did he give you the tooth?”

  Wade shrugged nervously, then said, “I don’t know, to keep us moving? To remind us of what the Order and Galina are capable of?”

  Becca glanced through the doors and saw Roald sitting in the lobby now with one of the policemen, who was writing in a pad. “Your dad always does the dirty work,” she said. “Lily, the maps.”

  “All right, already,” Lily said, finally coming back online. She flipped out her tablet and keyed in several words as she spoke them. “London. Five-floor building. Near Dorchester Hotel. Bird. Cage. No elevator.” After a few moments, she perked up in surprise. “That was easy, even for me. I guess the reason Boris was saying stuff to me was because I’m the tech brain of the family. A real estate site just gave me a couple of addresses on a street called”—she turned her tablet around for them to see the map—“Birdcage Walk. Twenty-four minutes from here on foot.”

  Becca nodded. “Boris was telling us to go to his flat to find another clue. We can swing by his place before we head to our safe flat. Wade?”

  They peeked in as Roald’s face grew exasperated, one more policeman came over, and they all sat at another table. Roald caught the kids watching him and seemed to deliberately raise a single finger. The Order is near—run.

  “Whoa,” Wade said. “We’ll text him later. Let’s beat it!”

  Following Lily’s map, they doglegged quickly to Stanhope Gate, South Audley, Curzon Street, then to the quaintly named Half Moon Street and across a large park that practically connected to another park. Twenty minutes later, they arrived at the short, classy street known as Birdcage Walk.

  Trying to determine which building might hold Boris’s flat, they dismissed those that were offices or complexes that undoubtedly had elevators. That left a brief half block of older buildings. Each had a stately, crisp exterior, and all of them were set deep on bright green lawns closed in by tall wrought-iron fencing. The neighborhood appeared very exclusive. It was hard for Becca to think of rumpled, maybe-dead Boris living there, but then she remembered that he was staying in a flat owned by someone else.

  “You know how I know when we’re being followed?” Darrell said. “It’s a gift, I understand, but someone’s after us now. Whoever Dad warned us against must have followed us.”

  They looked down the street in both directions and across to the park.

  “No one,” said Lily. “Which to you only proves that someone is there.”

  “You bet it does,” Darrell said. “We should definitely hurry this up and get back to the safe flat.”

  “Right. So some of the buildings only have four floors,” Becca said. “That leaves seven houses old enough not to have elevators, and where the fifth floor is the top floor.”

  They were the narrow-fronted row houses of the charming sort she had seen on the way from the airport, though now they were shrouded with the aura of a possible death. She didn’t want to think about it, but Boris’s fall, his great booming crash onto the table, kept playing in her head.

  They spread out across the housefronts and knocked on the doors. What could have been a lengthy process of elimination was made unnecessary by a middle-aged woman who came to the door for Wade, the third door they’d tried. He called them over.

  “The Russian fellow?” the woman said, a tiny dog nestled in her arms. She narrowed her eyes at them. “I don’t know. I mean, I know him, of course. Borrrris. So does Benjy here, don’t you, Benjy? You remember Borrrris.”

  The dog started yapping and didn’t stop for a full minute.

  “Can you tell us where he lives?” asked Lily.

  “Where he lives?” she said, her eyes squinting even more, if that was possible, and stepping back from the door. “Oh, I could tell you, dear. Certainly I could, but why, my dear, that’s the question, why? He’s not there, no, I seen him walk out of his flat just this morning. Cross the park. But I don’t know as I should tell you where he lives, no, because, as I say, why?”

  That stumped them. There was no reason why the woman should volunteer such information to random people who came looking for a neighbor. Until Darrell said the obvious.

  “We know he’s not here,” he said. “We were just with him across the park at the Dorchester Hotel for breakfast. And . . . but . . .”

  He started to falter when Wade jumped in. “He left something behind that we need to return to him.”

  “Oh? And what did Boris leave behind?” she asked, edging even farther back into the hallway.

  “Show the lady,” said Lily, apparently guessing right away and nodding at his pocket.

  Wade held up the black tooth. “This.”

  “Oh, goodness!” the woman screamed, and Benjy growled. “That awful thing. He shows everyone. He’ll be wanting that back for certain. Number Five, two doors over,” she said. “Top floor. Mind you don’t trip on Boris’s bottles!”

  Two minutes after thanking her and petting Benjy to calm him down, they stood in front of Number Five Birdcage Walk. The building door was, happily, unlocked. They entered. The lobby was quiet. They ascended the stairs quickly. The top-floor landing was small, half the size of the others. The flat’s door was closed. Wade tried the knob. That door was, unhappily, locked.

  Wade and Darrell put their ears to the door as if it were a thing brothers normally do.

  “We should just break it open before the cops come and seal it up,” said Darrell. “Cops always do that when there’s a crime. Everywhere becomes a crime scene.” He stepped back and lifted his foot.

  “So we’re sure it’s a crime?” said Lily. “Because I’m not a hundred percent sure. It could be a heart attack.”

  “You should be sure. The restaurant was the scene of the crime,” Darrell said. “Now, stand back. . . .”

  “Stop!” Becca said. “Boris said he carried no money, no wallet, no keys, remember? Well, if the door is locked, but he didn’t have the door key, how did he get in? He must have left the key somewhere—”

  “I can still kick it open,” said Darrell.

  “Will you wait!” Lily snapped. “Becca’s thinking.”

  Becca scanned the landing. The only other door in sight was narrow, as if to a utility closet. She tried it. It was unlocked. Looking all around, she reached to the top of the closet’s door frame and felt along the outside first. Nothing. Then the inside. She stopped. “Yes!” She pulled her hand away. She was holding a key.

  Lily grinned. “Well, aren’t you the genius.”

  “I try.”

  Becca inserted the key in Boris’s door and turned it. The door inched open. It was small and cold inside. And dark. A petite table lamp sat on a desk inside the door. Lily tried the switch several times. There was no power.

  “Maybe there’s a coin box here,” Becca said. “I’ve read about them in novels. If the electricity is coin-operated, you can only use it if you pay for it. Boris was frugal. Or maybe he wasn’t planning to stay very long. Anyone have change?”

  Wade cast a q
uick look around and found a dish of coins sitting on the counter in the kitchenette, near the electric box. He pushed some coins into the slot, and several dim lights turned on.

  The furniture in the three spare rooms was plain. The bed was unmade. The kitchen, such as it was, was a small nook off the living room. There was next to nothing of any personality about the place, except for one whole wall of Russian books.

  “Boris was a scholar, right?” said Darrell. “So maybe one of the books is a clue?”

  Becca found herself drawn to the shelves, even though she couldn’t read any of the titles. “I don’t know any Cyrillic. I should learn. I’ll buy a phrase book before we leave.” She suddenly hoped they had interpreted Roald’s signal correctly. Was the Order near? How did he know? Was he in danger? Should they really be helping him? Did he mean to raise four fingers instead of five? She was finally only certain of one thing: that she felt afraid in Boris’s dark apartment. Boris, who might already be dead.

  “Come on, everybody,” said Wade. “It’s here, and we’re not seeing it. Boris wanted us here. I think we’re all pretty sure of that. So what did he want us to find?”

  “Maybe it’s not here,” said Lily. “Maybe we should get back to your dad. Or the safe flat. Or somewhere else. This place is kind of sad. If Boris is, you know . . .”

  “Dad would call,” said Darrell. “And if he doesn’t call, it means he’s tied up. If he’s tied up, it means we have to move forward. His words. He told us to.”

  “Okay, you’re all witnesses,” Lily said. “Whatever happens, it’s Darrell’s fault.”

  “Fine,” he said. “But if there’s something here Boris wanted to give us, it’ll take us closer to my mom, so yeah, bring it on.”

  Wade and Lily started opening every drawer they could find, while Darrell looked into and under every piece of furniture in all three rooms. For her part, Becca found herself unable to leave the books. She fingered them one after another, as if they would somehow make sense to her the closer she was to them. Rows and rows of old bindings, some with dust jackets with faded colors, others with dented spines, wrinkled boards, and vanished titles. Then she stopped. She tugged a book bound in black cloth from the shelf. She read its title aloud. “The Teeth, in Relation to Beauty, Voice, and Health.”

  “You can read Russian,” said Darrell. “That didn’t take long.”

  “No,” she said. “It’s in English. It’s the only book in English out of all of them.” She turned. “Wade? It’s about teeth. Do you think—”

  He moved next to her, and she handed it to him. He opened the cover, only to find that a rectangular area had been cut out of the pages to a depth of about one and a half inches. Inside the hole was a black plastic box.

  “A videotape,” he said. “Do you think he wanted us to see the tape?”

  “How can we play that?” said Lily. “That’s like 1970 or something, isn’t it?”

  Becca whirled around. There was a low cabinet against the opposite wall. She knelt to it. A small television was inside. On top of the television was a tape player. “Oh, man. This is it. This is what Boris wanted us to find.”

  She turned on the television, popped the tape into the player, and hit Play.

  The screen slowly came alive with gray snow, then went black with a flicker of color, and there was Boris, reaching his hand away from the screen and plopping his bulk down on a couch that was not the same as the couch in the room with them.

  Boris was as large as he had been in the restaurant, but younger, as if the video had been made some years ago and somewhere else.

  “So . . . ,” he began. “Is Boris here. If you find this, you know. My little time here is over. Your time has just begun. Your journey? Miles, miles, and more miles. The clock ticks many hours, and still you may not find what you wish to find. But as last final thing, Boris tell what he knows.”

  He had said some of those words at the restaurant, Becca recalled. It was strange and sad to see his large face staring at them from beyond the television, maybe from beyond the grave. Was Boris dead? They might have resuscitated him in the ambulance, or at the hospital. Maybe . . .

  “We all want to know secret, yes?” Boris went on. “This is why we are here on this earth. Starting with great astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus, then with Guardians, secret is hidden inside secret!” His face, even on the video, grew dark, and the gleam of perspiration was already on his forehead. “Secret is hidden, and is hidden, and is hidden like layers of onion. In the center . . . is relic.”

  “This is meant for the Guardians,” Darrell said. “He’s going to tell us—”

  “Once comes powerful man,” Boris said urgently. He twisted his body this way and that, apparently unable to settle into his surroundings, until his own story took him, and he looked away from the camera. “He is ruler of men. Of nation. Many nation. His name, Albrecht von Hohenzollern. Grand Master of Teutonic Order. He live in castle far away. Today it is in Mother Russia. Not so then. Not so in 1517 . . .”

  And just like at the restaurant, his tortured English dissolved, and, despite themselves, the four of them fell under his heavy spell.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Moonlight falls over the frosted ramparts of a castle on the banks of a black river.

  It is Schloss Königsberg, crowning fortress of the Teutonic Knights.

  The year is 1517, the month February, the day the eighteenth.

  A figure wrapped in long robes stalks the snowy walls silently. It is he, the Grand Master, Albrecht von Hohenzollern. His face is a mask of sorrow, wet with tears he futilely attempts to wipe away. Bitter howling coils up from the rooms below, a tender voice in agony. Albrecht slaps his hands over his frozen ears, yet louder, louder come the shrieks. Then—clack-clack!

  It is the clatter of hobnail boots.

  “What is it?” Albrecht growls.

  Two knights appear: his nephews, sons of his sister. “Grand Master, we have returned from the wastes of Muscovy with words from Duke Vasily—”

  “Words? Only words? What of the astronomer? His machine? I sent thirty knights after one man! Where are the others?”

  “Dead,” says one nephew. “We two alone have returned.”

  “The others were slain by the astronomer’s sword,” says the other. “Their bodies prayed over by a monk. But we managed to steal part of the relic.”

  “Part of it? Part of it! What part?”

  “The head, Grand Master. The double-eyed serpent’s head.”

  Suddenly in Albrecht’s palm sits a jeweled device, glittering in the moonlight. The twin diamond eyes of the serpent are surrounded by a complex fixture of filigreed silver and more diamonds.

  “Duke Vasily sends a hundred knights in pursuit of the astronomer and the traitor monk,” says one nephew.

  “To honor his alliance with you,” says the other.

  Albrecht breathes more calmly, or so his nephews think. “You have accomplished half your mission. Kneel before me.”

  Without a word, they do.

  He draws his sword and swings it once, and the head of one nephew rolls across the stone to his feet, where he kicks it over the wall into the snow.

  To the other, Albrecht says, “I have another task for you. The child below . . . the child must leave here with its nurse. There is a ship departing Königsberg in three days’ time—”

  A deafening shriek freezes his voice, his blood.

  The Grand Master turns away, all too aware that the journey to the end of the sea is long, so very long.

  “Child!” he cries. “Child, cease your cries! Your mother is lost . . . lost . . .”

  Alone once more, Albrecht stalks the walls over and over, night after night, lamenting, pondering, waiting . . .

  And that was all. Boris slumped back into himself and said no more.

  “Boris, where is Serpens now?” Becca asked, staring at the face on the screen as if it could answer her, until the screen went black again.

  Darre
ll switched off the player and the television. “So Albrecht had his goons steal the head of Serpens when Copernicus was in Russia, and after that Albrecht had it. But . . . is Boris also saying that Albrecht had a baby, and that his wife died?”

  “I think so,” Lily said. “At least maybe. But did everyone hear that? He said ‘the journey to the end of the sea is long.’ He said at the restaurant that it’s a quote from Copernicus. What did he mean? What sea? Whose journey? Ours? Albrecht’s? And ‘the clock ticks many hours.’ Boris talks like a fortune-teller.”

  “One thing is sure,” said Wade. “And it’s kind of what I suspected. That Serpens was, and may still be, in two parts. The head that Albrecht stole, and the body that Copernicus still had.”

  As they sat in the cold room, staring at the blank television screen, the fence gate outside squealed on its hinges, the front door down below edged open, and someone stepped inside the building.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Wade rose to his feet. “Don’t anyone move.”

  “You just did,” said Darrell.

  “Shhh!”

  The buzzer on the wall next to the flat door sounded. Wade shot his finger to his lips. The buzzer sounded again. After a few moments of silence, slow footsteps echoed up the staircase.

  “What do we do?” Lily whispered.

  Wade listened. The footsteps were closer, louder, but slow, like those of an elderly person. And . . . what was that? . . . The clacking of a cane up the stairs. “Maybe it’s . . . let’s just be cool.” He went to the door and pulled it open casually as if they had not just entered a possibly dead man’s apartment and weren’t being hunted by international assassins.

  A man with a mop of gray hair and a beard made his last slow steps up to the fifth-floor landing. He wore thick spectacles and a bulky buttoned sweater, and he used a slender umbrella as a cane. He wheezed for breath, adjusted his glasses, and gazed blinkingly at the children. “You . . .” His voice was hoarse. “But you are not Boris Rubashov. Where is my dear friend Boris?”

  Rubashov, Wade thought. Is that Boris’s real last name?