by Roland Smith
The boy looked at him. “As Jonah Wizard would say, word.”
“Word.” Jonah Wizard shoved his cell phone back in his pocket and looked at Hamilton Holt. “That was Amy. They’re borrowing the jet for a trek to Timbuktu. The jewel snatch was a bust, but the hostages are still okay. Some Interpol dude is bouncing in from Deutschland to check out Luna.”
Hamilton stared at his hip-hop mega-platinum-star partner in confusion. He’d been with Jonah 24/7 for several days and he understood the Mumbaiya slang the food vendor was jabbering to them better than he understood his famous cousin.
“Are you saying that they’re using your jet to get to Timbuktu, and they didn’t get the Jubilee Diamond, but Reagan and the other hostages are okay?”
“You need subtitles, brother?”
“I guess.” Hamilton took the banana leaf topped with pav bhaji from the vendor and snapped open his can of Thums Up soda. Across the street a snake charmer was coaxing a king cobra out of a basket with a flute.
“Snakes are deaf,” Jonah said,
“I hear you, man,” Hamilton said.
“No, they really are deaf,” Jonah said. “That cobra can’t hear a note from that flute. See how the charmer bobs and weaves? The snake’s mirroring the dude’s movements, not shuffling to the music.” He crossed the street, dropped some cash in the snake charmer’s money basket, then started bobbing and weaving along with the charmer.
Erasmus had insisted they travel to India completely incognito. No paparazzi. No limos. They were getting around the vast city on motorcycles. Well . . . Erasmus had a motorcycle. He had gotten them a motorcycle rickshaw. One drove, one rode, which was a constant source of bickering.
Also, no five-star hotels. They were staying in a Madrigal safe house, which was more like a shack.
No five-star restaurants, either. Hamilton took another bite of his pav bhaji as he watched his cousin.
No Jonah Wizard.
“There can’t be any sightings of Jonah in the country,” Erasmus had said. “We can’t tail Luna if we’re being tailed.”
They had followed Luna to an airport outside Rome, where she booked a first-class seat to Mumbai. Erasmus booked a trio of coach seats near the back restrooms. It was the first time Jonah had ever flown in coach, and he was not amused by the whole concept of a middle seat.
When the flight landed, Hamilton and Jonah grabbed what little gear they had and hopped up, eager to get off the plane so they didn’t lose Luna in the crowd.
“Sit down,” Erasmus had said. “She has to get her bags and get through passport control and customs. That will take one hour and twelve minutes. It will take us sixteen minutes to be at the curb. We don’t have bags, and I know a guy in passport control.”
Sixteen minutes later they stepped out of the Mumbai airport. It took Erasmus thirty minutes to procure the motorcycle and the rickshaw. Exactly twenty-six minutes later, Luna Amato walked out of the terminal and climbed into the back of a limo.
Their plan was to stake out Luna Amato’s hotel in six-hour shifts. Erasmus had insisted Hamilton and Jonah watch the hotel together so they could keep each other awake. When Jonah asked who was going to keep him awake, Erasmus answered that he didn’t sleep. As far as they could tell, it was the truth.
Hamilton washed his last bite down with a gulp of Thums Up as Jonah came back from his cobra dance.
“We need to relieve Erasmus,” Ham said, looking at his watch.
“We also need to tell him about that Interpol dude,” Jonah said.
“What Interpol dude?” Hamilton asked, following him to the rickshaw.
“Weren’t you listening? Milos Vanek is coming to town. We gotta find out what’s cracking with Lune dawg. My turn to drive.”
They found Erasmus leaning against a wall across the street from Luna’s hotel, in the exact same spot he had been leaning several hours earlier. He wasn’t worried that the hotel had several exits that Luna could slip through. His extended family was a fixture in the hotel/hospitality industry. A single phone call had put dozens of eyes on Luna, monitoring every move she made. If she took a single step out of the hotel, Erasmus would know about it.
“Yo,” Jonah said.
“Hey, Erasmus,” Hamilton said.
Erasmus gave them a nod, then swung onto his motorcycle. “See you in a few hours.”
Jonah and Hamilton watched after him long after he had disappeared into the throng of traffic.
Erasmus did not drive to the safe house. In fact, he hadn’t been inside since he’d arrived with Hamilton and Jonah. Instead he drove to a cyber café. There were hundreds of them in Mumbai, and he never went to the same one twice.
He walked in, paid his fee, and found a terminal away from the windows in the darkest corner. He logged on and opened his encrypted e-mail account. There were over five hundred unread e-mails. Cahills from all over the world were feeding information to Attleboro. In turn, Evan forwarded everything, no matter how trivial, to Erasmus. Somewhere in all of this data, Vesper One had left a trail, a single cyber fingerprint they could use to track him down. The Vespers usually operated in the dark, but by taking the hostages and killing McIntyre, they had scurried briefly into the light. This was the time to find them.
Erasmus pored through all the e-mails, but only two items stood out. Thieves had broken into the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in Toulouse, France, and stolen all of their electromagnets. All of them. It had taken the entire weekend to get the equipment out of the laboratory. Unless the thieves were particle physicists, they would have absolutely no use for their loot.
The other item was a brief mention that a replica of the Antikythera Mechanism had been stolen from the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana. The original device had been recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck by a Greek sponge diver in 1900, but was believed to have been constructed between 150 and 100 B.C. At first, it was thought to be one of the first forms of a mechanized clock. Now it was considered to be world’s oldest-known analog computer. No one knew exactly what the device had been used for, but scientists believed the mechanism could track the Metonic calendar, predict solar eclipses, and calculate the timing of the ancient Olympic Games.
The replica was beautiful, but what interested Erasmus was the photograph of the original Antikythera fragment. It looked familiar to him, though he couldn’t quite recall where he had seen it before.
He memorized every detail of the fragment before dragging it into the Vesper thumb drive. The fragment was just one of thousands of pieces. Eventually, the pieces would all click together to form a prison cell for the Vespers.
His final task was to Google Jonah Wizard. Jonah had been very good about not being the world-famous Jonah Wizard the past few days, but Erasmus knew it couldn’t last. Jonah’s fans were on the lookout, with reports coming in that he’d been spotted in Alice Springs, Australia, rapping with aboriginal people, then in Churchill, Canada, getting down with polar bears. One particularly oddball rumor placed him in Manaus, Brazil, searching for El Dorado. And the next had him in — Mumbai, India. Erasmus hit the link, which led him to a YouTube video of Jonah Wizard dancing with a king cobra.
This is going to complicate things, Erasmus thought.
When the video ended, he put in a second thumb drive, which completely wiped the computer’s hard drive. While it worked, he looked at his watch. He had just enough time to get something to eat and catch a movie. Perhaps a double feature. He loved Hindi-language films, and what better place to watch one than the birthplace of Bollywood?
The computer’s alarm woke Vesper Three, which meant that data was streaming in. Erasmus was online again. It had been so easy to swap out his thumb drive with one Vesper Three had made. While Erasmus thought he was wiping the memory from the computers he used, he was actually transferring every bit of data and every keystroke to Vesper Three.
Like taking candy from a baby. The Cahills have no idea who they’re dealing with.
Vesper Three flashed forward to the shock on Amy’s face when she discovered that one of her own had betrayed her. The Vespers were closer than Amy thought; so close they used her little command clubhouse as a base of their own. The so-called Cahill leader thought her mansion was safe. But the Vespers had eyes — and agents — everywhere.
Vesper Three smiled. It’s about time for Luna Amato to make her move. The rats are all gathered and sniffing the trap.
Vesper Three e-mailed the signal to release the bait.
“This way!”
“No, this way!”
“You’re both wrong. This way!”
“Everybody just shut up!” Ted shouted.
This stopped everyone in their tracks. Ted Starling rarely spoke and never shouted. The hostages had raced through a long, dimly lit tunnel and were now standing in front of three branches that snaked off into three different directions.
“You’re making too much noise,” Ted said. “The two guards we locked in the bunker aren’t the only ones here! I heard five distinct voices. With the two guards locked in the bunker, that means there are at least seven people down here. Probably more.”
Nellie had been holding Ted’s arm, guiding him through the tunnel. “Ted’s right,” she said. “We’re out of the bunker, but we’re still trapped.”
“Maybe we should split up,” Reagan suggested.
“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Fiske said. “The only advantage we have is our number.”
“No, it isn’t,” Reagan said. “We have this.” She pulled the guard’s pistol from her waistband.
“I hope we won’t need that,” Fiske said.
Ted felt the walls. “Tell me what it looks like down here.”
“We’re in a rock tunnel,” Nellie answered. “It might be an old mine. There’s a lightbulb about every thirty feet, covered by a rusty metal sconce. Some of the bulbs are out. We’ve passed a couple of metal doors, but they were rusted closed. In front of us are three identical tunnels, left, right, and straight ahead.”
“Are there markings on the walls that say where we are or what this place is?” Ted asked.
“Nothing.”
“Put me in front of the three tunnels and let me listen for a moment without anybody talking.”
Nellie positioned him, and Ted frowned in concentration.
“There are people walking down the right-hand tunnel. I think they’re a few minutes away, which means that this underground warren is humongous. They’re not running, which means they probably don’t know we’ve escaped. I don’t get anything from the middle tunnel. But there’s definitely fresh air coming out of the tunnel on the left.”
“Then it’s left,” Alistair said.
“Let’s get out of here!” Reagan said, bounding ahead of the others.
Natalie followed with Fiske, Nellie led Ted, and Phoenix and limping Alistair brought up the rear. The guard’s kick had badly damaged Alistair’s knee, and Phoenix’s shoulder was almost the right height for Alistair to lean against.
They hurried on and on, Alistair hobbling as fast as he could. The tunnel seemed endless and each noise or bump had the group whipping their heads around in fear. By Nellie’s calculation, it was almost a half a mile to the end. Reagan had outpaced everyone and was waiting for them with a blank expression when they arrived.
“It’s a dead end,” she said.
“You’re joking,” Nellie said.
“I wish.” Reagan turned and slapped the wall. “It’s solid rock.”
“Shh.” Ted pressed his ear up to the rock. “They’re coming!” he said.
“Stand behind me,” Alistair said to Phoenix.
“There’s fresh air!” Ted had his pale face pointed at the ceiling. “I can feel it! Where’s it coming from?”
They had been so busy looking for breaks in the rock wall in front of them, no one had bothered to check the ceiling. Above them was a narrow shaft with dim light filtering through the opening.
“If I get a good jump I can reach the ladder!” Reagan took a running start and sprang up, just managing to catch the bottom rung with her good arm. She pulled herself through the opening like an Olympic gymnast on a parallel bar, then dropped back to the ground. “There’s a grate. It’s twenty-five feet up, max. Let’s go!”
They boosted Phoenix up first, followed by Alistair, Ted, Natalie, and Fiske.
Reagan cupped her hands to give Nellie a boost to the bottom rung.
“What about you?” Nellie asked.
“I’ll jump,” Reagan said. “But first I’m going to slow our friends down.”
Nellie shook her head. “It’s not safe. Get out of here and let me do the honors. I’m pretty good with a gun.”
“I don’t have to hit anyone,” Reagan insisted. “I’ll fire a few rounds down the tunnel and let the ricochet and noise do the rest. Besides, you can’t jump high enough to reach the bottom rung.”
Reluctantly, Nellie put her foot into Reagan’s cupped hands and grabbed the bottom rung. Her shoulder wound reopened and it felt like someone had splashed it with gasoline and set it on fire. Nellie gritted her teeth and ignored the pain and the warm blood trickling down her side.
Seven deafening gun blasts reverberated through the shaft, followed by a barrage of return fire, almost causing Nellie to lose her grip. “Are you okay?” Nellie shouted down.
“I’m fine,” Reagan replied. “Keep moving.”
Nellie tried to climb higher, but the line above her had come to a complete stop.
“Hurry!” she shouted.
“The grate’s padlocked!” Phoenix shouted back.
Reagan scrambled up behind Nellie like a monkey and handed her the pistol. “There’s one round left. Pass it up and tell Phoenix to make it count and to hurry. The Vespers will be here any second!”
“Have you ever fired a pistol?” Alistair asked Phoenix as he gingerly handed over the gun.
Phoenix gave him a weak smile. “Kind of,” he said. “I was on the film set of Gangsta Kronikles with Jonah. They let me shoot a pistol, but it shot blanks.”
“Hurry it up!” Reagan shouted. “They’re almost here!”
Phoenix pointed the pistol at the lock, turned his head away, and pulled the trigger.
Click.
“Safety!” Reagan shouted. “It’s on the left side by your thumb! Flick it up!”
Phoenix flicked the safety and pulled the trigger again.
Boom!
A piece of shrapnel sliced open Phoenix’s right hand. He instinctively jerked it off the rung, causing him to wobble, and then to start to fall. Alistair’s firm hand smacked into his back, stopping him from falling.
“You’ve got to get the grate open!”
But the grate was heavy, and Phoenix couldn’t lift it. They could all hear the pounding of the guards’ feet now. Natalie gave a frantic look below her, then clambered over the top of Ted to give Phoenix and Alistair a hand. It took several precious seconds before the heavy steel grate finally slapped open. The hostages piled out quickly. As Reagan hoisted herself out of the shaft, bullets whizzed through the opening. She slammed to the ground and rolled away.
“Close,” she said, looking at a smoking rip in her coveralls where a bullet had grazed her.
They were in a small clearing surrounded by giant fir trees. It was sweltering hot, but they didn’t care. For the first time in weeks, they filled their lungs with fresh air.
“Which way?” Natalie asked.
“That way.” Reagan pointed. “Downhill. You’re bound to run into a road or a river.”
“What do you mean by you’re?” Nellie asked, giving Reagan a suspicious look.
“No offense to any of you, but you’re not going to make very good time,” Reagan said. “Someone has to hang here and keep these gophers in their hole. Don’t worry. I’ll catch up with you.”
“You’re out of bullets,” Alistair reminded her.
Reagan picked up a large rock. “Ammo!” She h
urtled the rock down the opening and they heard a satisfying grunt of pain.
“I’m staying with you,” Nellie said, then turned to the others. “Go, hurry!”
Fiske took Ted’s arm. “We’ll see you downhill somewhere,” he said, and the group made for the trees, Alistair limping behind him.
Reagan and Nellie were rolling two rather large boulders toward the opening when the dogs attacked them.
Reagan saw the two pit bulls streaking across the clearing first.
“Don’t move!” she shouted to Nellie.
But Nellie had already thrown a stick at the dog heading toward her. Unfortunately, the only thing the pit bull was interested in fetching was Nellie. It knocked her down and bit viciously into her leg.
Several heavily armed guards wearing balaclavas came running out of the woods. One of the guards called the dog off before turning on Reagan.
“Stay where you are!” Reagan pointed the pistol at them.
The guards only laughed.
“I mean it!” Reagan said.
“I can count,” the guard said. “You’re on empty.” He raised his rifle.
Reagan dropped the pistol and rushed over to Nellie.
“How bad is it?” a shaken Nellie asked.
The dog had bitten her face as well as her leg.
“We need a doctor!” Reagan shouted.
“You’re not going to get one,” the guard said. “Where are the others?”
“They went back down the shaft,” Reagan lied.
He shook his head before turning to his colleagues. “Send the dogs out. They’ll find them.”
The remaining hostages had only gone a mile and a half, most of it downhill, and Alistair was already exhausted.
“I hear water,” Ted said.
“How far?” Fiske asked.
“It’s close.”
“It’s right here!” Natalie said.
They joined her at the edge of a deep precipice. Two hundred feet below was a roaring river.
“It looks as if there’s a trail all the way to the bottom,” Natalie said. “But it’s narrow and slippery. We should wait for Reagan and Nellie before we attempt it.”
