The False Door

by Brett King

  As the gunman approached the Audi, his black shoe moved close to Cori’s face, only inches away.

  Without warning, the door burst open, bringing a splash of sunlight into the dark garage. A man walked in from the street.

  Cori bristled with fear. Now there were three.

  “How you doin’?” White Streak asked. His voice sounded strained.

  “Do I know you?”

  The words gave Cori hope. The new guy wasn’t one of them. Still, what could he do to help? He wasn’t a cop. Plus, White Streak was armed.

  Stomach flat on the concrete, Cori twisted her head for a better look. The man from outside walked toward the Audi. He moved toward the driver’s side of the vehicle. She heard keys jangle.

  Oh, God, no.

  They were hiding beneath his car. The man was going to climb in the Audi and drive away, exposing them. The killers would discover her and Shayna on the ground.

  The little girl closed her eyes, waiting with apprehension.

  “Hey, they’re calling us back,” White Streak’s partner shouted across the parking garage. “We need to roll. Now.”

  Ignoring him, White Streak opened the door. He took a quick look outside. At the same time, the driver’s-side door opened. The guy from the street climbed inside the Audi.

  The engine started, making the vehicle’s steel belly rumble above them. The deafening roar caused Shay to cover her ears. The driver shifted and the car lurched ahead.

  Why is this happening?

  Just as quickly, the man slammed on the brakes, jolting the Audi. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Wait. What?

  She saw now. The gunman had walked away from the door. He was standing in front of the Audi. Cori could see the gloss on his shoes. He stopped, it had seemed, for a stare-down match with the driver. The man in the Audi honked his horn. Beneath the chassis, the sound amplified to an earsplitting blast.

  It was too much for Shayna.

  The little girl rolled away, moving between frozen tires and out from under the idling car. Cori grabbed to pull her back, but it was too late. Shayna rolled out of reach.

  White Streak didn’t see her. Bored with the confrontation, he had sprinted to join the other guy.

  The driver released the brake and pulled forward. Cori pressed her body flat against the concrete as the Audi whooshed over her body and turned away from the parking spot, leaving her behind as the car squealed past the two men.

  She made it to her feet and scrambled to catch Shayna in her arms. Cori’s heart lifted with happiness and relief as they hugged. She pulled the girl beside the next closest car, seeking cover until she was certain the men were gone.

  Out on the sidewalk, Cori scanned the face of every person she passed. Her white shirt was blackened from crawling under the car. She looked suspicious and she knew it. Her thinking was jumbled and her emotions were coiled.

  Shayna seemed dazed. She had to be in shock. Cori had seen Kaylyn get hit and she had seen blood, but was the woman still alive? She wished she knew.

  Cori thought about finding a police officer, but wondered how she would explain everything that had happened. She decided to contact John Brynstone first.

  At an intersection, they crossed in front of a dark-colored van. Wearing sunglasses, the driver had his window down and his arm hanging out. He watched them as he waited for the light to change. He was riding with a woman dressed in a green blouse. She was talking on her cell. They didn’t look like the team who had almost kidnapped Shayna. Not a threat, she decided.

  As they reached the sidewalk, Shayna said, “Can you tell me about the bad thing that happened outside my school?”

  “I’m not sure myself. We’ll go somewhere and talk.” Cori knelt, coming eye to eye with the girl. “Shayna, I need to call your dad.”

  She brightened. “Daddy? He’s on a trip. Really far away. I don’t think my mommy likes him anymore. That makes me sad because I love my daddy.”

  “I know your daddy loves you, too. Listen, it’s really important I talk to him. Do you know his number?”

  Shayna recited it for her.

  Years before, Baltimore police had linked Cori to twin homicides. Brynstone had given her good advice at the time. She trusted him and wanted to consult him before calling the police.

  Cori dialed John Brynstone’s number. It rang until voice mail picked up. Anxiety filled her in that moment, but it was a comfort hearing his voice on the outgoing message. She left a hurried message with her number, not wanting to get into details in public and in front of Shayna.

  After making the call, she remembered the phone she had taken from the dead man in the car outside the school, and she relived the sight of his blood-spattered body. It made her break out in a shiver.

  Cori checked the phone, looking for the name of the bald guy. Nothing about him. She remembered he had been talking to someone about her, which gave her an idea. Taking a deep breath, she called the last number the man had dialed, but got only a busy signal. She hung up.

  If they knew her name, then they knew where she lived. Cori decided it made sense right now to hide out at the Resnick home, to go there and think.

  She had to get off the street.

  Chapter 9

  New York City

  3:59 p.m.

  It wasn’t supposed to play out like this. Stephen Angelilli shuffled in his seat as the CIA helicopter buzzed above the Manhattan skyline. As the lead officer on Operation Red Opera, he was sweating the situation with Shayna Brynstone.

  Prior to joining the CIA, Angelilli had spent a decade with the New York Police Department, including five years as a SWAT officer for the Emergency Service Unit. He knew the city well. Glancing out the window, he shouted into his headset mic, “Give me a status update, Midnight.”

  Patrick Langston, code name Midnight, was Angelilli’s man on the ground. He was stationed outside the Brandonstein Center for Gifted Children.

  After Midnight gave a briefing, Angelilli asked, “Is Sparta still in his car?”

  “Affirmative, Scarecrow. He’s been hit.”

  Jason “Sparta” Drakos was a field operations officer who had been recruited into the CIA after graduating from American University with a degree in foreign affairs. Angelilli liked the kid.

  “Details,” he demanded.

  “We have a visual from inside his car, sir.” Midnight paused. “Sparta is dead.”

  Angelilli cringed.

  “What did Sparta report at his last check-in?”

  “He said Cori Cassidy was sighted on the corner. After that, all hell broke loose.”

  “Where is Wonderland?” Angelilli asked, using the operation name for Shayna Brynstone.

  “Wonderland has been abducted, sir. The van I told you about? It pulled outside the Brandonstein school. Three unidentifieds involved. All men. We believe two were injured during a firefight. They were loaded into the van and taken away.”

  “Where are they?”

  “Unknown at this time, sir. This thing caught us off guard.”

  Angelilli fumed. Under his direction, Operation Red Opera ran surveillance on Shayna Brynstone. He had surveilled her every day for the last several years. This operation was a pet project for CIA Director Mark McKibbon. Angelilli knew he better not screw it up.

  “I want answers, Midnight. I need to know who abducted Wonderland.”

  Bedford, Massachusetts

  4:01 p.m.

  Viktor Nebola climbed out of his oxford-blue Arnage, a favorite because it was one of the Final Series models Bentley had manufactured before ceasing production. On the sedan’s opposite side, Erich Metzger stepped out. He walked with Nebola to the private jet waiting at Hanscom Field. Nebola loosened his tie as he hurried up the ramp, a phone pressed to his ear.

  “You still at the school?” he demand
ed.

  “Negative, but we tore up the place,” Markus Tanzer answered. “The little girl ran inside with a woman.”

  “A woman?”

  “We have now identified her as Cori Cassidy.”

  “Not with her mother?”

  “Actually, sir, Kaylyn Brynstone is dead.”

  “That damn well complicates things,” Nebola said with an annoyed breath, “but not as much as losing Shayna Brynstone.”

  “I’m telling you, sir, we searched the place upside down. We’ll find them.”

  Inside the jet, Nebola slid into a leather club chair. Metzger took a seat across from him. The assassin wore a cold grin, like nothing gave him greater pleasure than eavesdropping on this conversation.

  “I’m on my way,” Nebola barked. “Give me an update the minute you hear something.”

  “You’re flying here?” Tanzer sounded surprised.

  “As we speak,” he barked. “If you wanna hang on to your pathetic little ballsack, you better find Shayna Brynstone before I arrive.”

  Nebola ended the call.

  He studied the assassin. The reptilian smirk lingered on Metzger’s face.

  “My situation seems to amuse you.”

  “Ja,” Metzger answered, his flat wintry eyes somehow twinkling. “I warned you. Remember what I said? When you face John Brynstone and his family, you’re in for more than a fight. You’re in for a war.”

  Chapter 10

  Paris

  10:02 p.m.

  The cavern was breathtaking.

  Moving past the blue door, Brynstone and Véronique stared at the natural grandeur before them. The arched ceiling had an unmistakable majesty, giving it the look of a cathedral hewn and shaped by nature’s hand.

  Walking a little farther in, they found something more.

  Centered beneath curving rock, a standing cross was cast in gloomy silhouette. The thing was massive, reaching fifteen feet in height. He admired the effort it must have taken to transport and assemble the cross down in this cave.

  He took a better look.

  Something didn’t seem right.

  Moving nearer, he saw that the crossbeams hadn’t been formed from wood alone. The lines were not smooth or uniform, but bumpy and misshapen. His headlamp beam danced across the irregular contours of the cross. That’s when he made the discovery.

  The cross was made of human bodies.

  Lashed together, the cadavers of more than one hundred men formed the outline of the cross. Thick leather cords gripped each body against the crossbeams. The vacuum-like atmosphere in the chamber had produced a spontaneous mummified state, preserving the corpses. Their tattered uniforms, now dingy white, were emblazoned with a symbol: a green Maltese cross. He recognized it as the Order of Saint Lazarus.

  Coming closer, Brynstone studied the faces of the dead knights. The cross gave the look of a sculpture composed from wasted flesh and pitted skulls, like some kind of surreal and terrible art. The arms of the Lazar brethren were as thin as broomsticks, their skin scored with soft-tissue infection. Their hands and feet looked swollen and ulcerated. Fingers and toes had decayed long ago into eroded stumps.

  Véronique moved alongside him, her shoulder nudging his arm. “What happened? Why are they like that?”

  “Leprosy.”

  During the Crusades of the eleventh century, a small army of Templar and Hospitaller Knights had contracted leprosy. They later banded together to create the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem. Lazar Knights had belonged to an order of chivalry dedicated to the protection of the Christian faith, ranking among the less familiar orders of the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem.

  “Why are they down here?” Véronique asked.

  “Because they were outcasts.”

  As early as the fourth century, Brynstone explained, Europe played host to hospitals designated for the treatment of leprosy. For centuries, it had been a disease on the move, affecting everyone from the emperor Constantine to a legion of crusading knights. Afflicted knights like the ones in this cavern contributed to the spread of leprosy throughout Europe. Often, stereotypes intermingled with paranoia and led to oppression.

  In 1321, lepers had been accused of dipping their poisoned hands into public fountains and wells to better spread their disease across the Kingdom of France. It counted as an early version of biological warfare, but one based more in rumor than fact. Still, the stories inspired panic. In response to the prejudice, the spiritual order of Lazarus had been created to comfort and support leper knights. At times, their mission placed them at odds with the church. In an aggressive move, Pope Innocent VIII had suppressed the Lazar Order a century after the end of the Crusades.

  Like the men in this cave, leper knights were literally driven underground.

  In some cases, insanity followed the disease as lepers were isolated and shunned from society. Housing them in caves seemed justified because it was believed that shelter protected them from the moon. A medieval physician named Paracelsus had believed that the phases of the moon could lead to madness. Insanity became associated with moonstruck behavior. Drawing on inspiration from Luna, the Roman goddess of the moon, the disease of madness later became known as lunacy.

  Leprosy treatments seemed even less enlightened than the ones for lunacy. In lairs such as this one, people tried desperate methods to banish the wasting disease. Some remedies were based on the alleged healing properties of blood. It was an idea dating back to Rome when Constantine the Great attempted to cure his leprosy by bathing in the heart blood of a virgin.

  Brynstone walked around the human cross, considering every gnarled face and disease-ridden limb. The leprosy bacillus had ravaged the victims in this cavern, leaving facial disfigurement and bone lesions. The leper knights had been lashed together to form a towering cross, perhaps not of their own free will.

  Were they hiding part of the Roman helmet? He had to find out. Brynstone opened his knife.

  “What are you doing?” Véronique asked.

  “Ruining a treasure. Sometimes, it’s the only way to find a greater one.”

  “You think this cross is a treasure?”

  “Don’t you?”

  He slashed a leather band, then grabbed it and tugged. Four bodies cascaded to the floor. Stepping over them, he moved around the cross, unwinding the thick band as if unwrapping ribbon from a massive present. More bodies dropped, knight after knight hitting the ground. He kept going, pulling on the band and unraveling diseased cadavers as he circled beneath the cross. Two and three at a time plummeted as they accumulated in a growing mound of Lazar brethren.

  He jerked on another leather band, stripping men from the crossbeams. He pulled on still another to unwind bodies trapped on the high vertical beam. As leper knights dropped from this height, cadavers and skeletons thudded against stone, their brittle bodies cracking apart as they struck the floor. Giving a final yank, he liberated the remaining bodies. The leather band snapped free from the cross.

  “I must tell you,” Véronique confessed, “that is the most disturbing thing I have ever seen.”

  “Spend more time with me,” Brynstone said, “and you won’t be able to say that.”

  Reaching under the arm of one knight, he dragged the corpse away from the cross. The man showed signs of tuberculoid leprosy, leaving him with a clawlike hand. Leprosy had corroded his ear and cheek. Another knight’s long red hair was preserved, along with his thin moustache and forked goatee. Brynstone inspected the body.

  “How can you touch them?” Véronique asked.

  “I’ve touched worse things.” He studied the knight. “I’m not certain this man had leprosy. He might have suffered from porphyria.”

  “A disease?”

  “Group of disorders, actually. Rare and genetic. People with porphyria get a buildup of tissue-destructive chemicals called porphyrins
in their bodies. Due to an enzyme deficiency, porphyrins are not incorporated into hemoglobin, the oxygen-carrying agent in red blood cells. As a result, porphyrins start to accumulate in the tissues. A blood pigment called heme—”

  “You lost me at porphyrins.”

  “Yeah? Well, trust me. It can be a brutal disease.”

  “But it affects skin? Like leprosy?”

  “Not in the same way. Photosensitivity is a problem. Exposure to sunlight can cause blistering, scarring, and discoloration. Even severe disfigurement. You’d want to avoid sunshine.” Brynstone looked around. “If this guy had porphyria, living in a cave would be a pretty good idea.”

  “Can it make you go mad? Would he have been considered a lunatic like the others?”

  “Types of porphyria have been linked to everything from depression and mania to hallucinations and paranoia.” He thought about something and it must have showed on his face.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Some people think porphyria gave rise to legends about vampires. That light sensitivity issue I told you about? It factors in. You know that whole deal about vampires disintegrating in daylight? Obviously that’s not true for people with porphyria, but sunlight doesn’t do them any favors. The rarest type is congenital erythropoietic porphyria. It can cause the gums to recede, making the teeth look larger, especially the maxillary canines. Supposedly, it makes our cuspids look even more like fangs.”

  She glanced at the redheaded knight. “You really think he had porphyria, not leprosy?”

  “Just a guess. Couldn’t be certain without testing.”

  It was a guess, but one he had thought about before coming down here. Brynstone remembered what Wurm had told him before coming to Paris. He had described an entry in the journal from the woman in the fourteenth century. In one section, Jeanneton de Paris mentioned that she had cared for lepers in 1333. She mentioned several by name, including a man named Lost John. Her description of him sounded more like porphyria than leprosy. Was this man Lost John?