The False Door

by Brett King

  Raja slurped blood between her lip and tooth. That made her angry. Someone hits you?

  Hit back harder.

  Concentrating all her strength in one motion, Raja slammed the woman’s nose. The impact rocked her head. The redhead slumped to the ground, her upper body collapsed against the building.

  Raja sensed movement behind her and braced for another attack as she spun around. Surprise jolted her to a stop when she saw Math McHardy.

  “Brilliant work,” he said, staring at the fallen woman. He bent down to pick up the helmet fragment.

  She looked over at Brynstone. He was fighting the other stranger not far away. Deciding to check on him, Raja stepped over the woman’s legs and brushed past the professor. Behind her, she overheard the redhead speak with an Irish accent.

  “Do they know we’re working together, Math?”

  Shocked, Raja turned her attention from Brynstone. Did she hear that right? She looked back in time to see McHardy strike the woman in the face. Aggression didn’t suit him, but he punched her with an animal rage.

  The woman’s eyes closed.

  He looked at Raja as if the whole thing hadn’t happened. He straightened his tie.

  Police sirens squealed in the distance.

  Brynstone finished with the man and came over. “Where’s the helmet piece?”

  “I have it,” McHardy answered.

  “Who’s the woman?” Raja asked.

  “Name’s Nessa Griffin.”

  “Who is she?”

  “An unfriendly competitor,” Brynstone answered. “Let’s get out of here.”

  Chapter 25

  Prague

  5:35 a.m.

  Wurm’s Disease.

  It was a running joke at the National Security Agency. Brynstone had heard about it back when Wurm was a cryptanalyst there. Nearly everyone in the intelligence community had a flicker of paranoia, but NSA analysts took it to new heights. In response, the agency retained the service of two full-time psychiatrists to treat analysts diagnosed with paranoid personality disorder. The good side was that PPD patients demonstrated intelligence and were exceptional observers. The bad side? They were guarded and overly sensitive with an extreme distrust and suspicion of others. Despite competition from colleagues, no one could touch Edgar Wurm when it came to the disorder. In tribute, his fellow code breakers had renamed PPD “Wurm’s Disease.”

  Brynstone checked to see that he was alone. He was making a call from inside an isolated hangar at Václav Havel Airport, located at the northwest edge of Prague.

  Wurm hated phone conversations because he worried someone would listen in. The call Brynstone was making now would make the man uncomfortable, but it had to be done.

  Wurm answered after the third ring.

  “You still in Europe?” Brynstone asked.

  “Is this call necessary?”

  “I think so.”

  “You’ve taken protective measures?”

  “It’s a secure line. Where are you?”

  A sigh. “Barcelona. You?”

  “Airport in Prague.” Brynstone updated him on finding the facemask, the right cheek guard, and the right skull piece. He gave an account of his encounter with Nessa Griffin, but didn’t offer specifics.

  “You’ve been busy,” Wurm said.

  “I’ve had help.”

  There was a halting silence on the other end of the line. He could tell Wurm didn’t like the sound of that.

  “Let me guess. You brought in Cori Cassidy.”

  “Actually, no. We haven’t talked in a long time.”

  “That surprises me.”

  For years, Brynstone didn’t allow himself to think about Cori. She was tied to bitter memories from that night long ago. More and more, though, he found he couldn’t get her out of his mind.

  “I turned Cori’s life upside down once. Won’t put her through that again.”

  Wurm snorted. “I think she rather enjoyed having you in her life. I saw how she hugged you at the airport that morning when we parted ways. One time in Europe, she slapped my face when I disparaged you.”

  “You disparaged me?”

  “I disparage everyone,” Wurm answered. “So who else are you working with?”

  “Woman named Rashmi Raja.”

  “Never heard of her.”

  “And Math McHardy.”

  “Oh, God. Are you quite serious, John?”

  “He’s not as bad as you said.”

  “He’s worse. The man is insufferable. Not an idiot by any stretch of the imagination, but he’s a disaster. I’ve never seen such a bloated sense of self-importance.”

  “He broke code on the helmet pieces. He knows how to decipher Linear A.”

  “Because I taught him,” Wurm blurted. “Everything the damned fool knows about that code he learned from me.”

  “Thought you and McHardy didn’t talk.”

  “At one time, we did. That helmet artifact you mentioned, the right skull piece? I showed it to him. We met during a Prague conference. I had seen the helmet on display at Charles University and realized it was critical in the search for the chrism formula. I told McHardy about it over drinks.” Wurm coughed. “The next day we skipped out on conference presentations to see the helmet artifact. Unfortunately, we got into an animated brawl and museum security kicked us out, so we weren’t allowed access after that. Anyway, I’m glad to hear you have it.”

  “McHardy’s deciphering it now.”

  “Urge him to be quick about it. We’re racing against the Shadow Chapter. They want it almost as badly as we do.”

  “Speaking of the Chapter, do you know if Nessa Griffin works for them?”

  “Oh, there’s no telling. Everything’s a secret with the Chapter.”

  “What did you learn about their guy? The one with connections to Erich Metzger.”

  “His name is Viktor Nebola. He served fifteen years in prison for manslaughter. After his release, he met a colonel in the Russian army and they started up a private arms-trafficking operation. After their fourth successful sale, Nebola had an outside source assassinate the colonel.”

  Wurm explained that even though Nebola didn’t kill the colonel, he masterminded the execution, and contract killers followed his orders to the letter. No evidence was discovered regarding the disappearance of the Russian army official. After hearing about the “clean kill,” executives at the Shadow Chapter approached Nebola about joining their organization.

  Brynstone trusted the information. For more than two decades, Wurm had been one of the best analysts at the National Security Agency. The men and women of the NSA worked in silence, but important people knew that Wurm’s code breaking had saved lives. He had connections all over the world. He was owed and he knew how to collect on favors.

  “Nebola is a leader within the Chapter. I’ll send a picture.” Wurm sounded grim. “They believe the Black Chrism can be engineered to create another pandemic on the order of the Black Death. Let me assure you, John, the Chapter has big plans for the missing half of the Scintilla.”

  Cori Cassidy awakened, eyes batting open, and stared up with a look of horror. The white ceiling seemed to curve in a dizzy elastic band. Stretching around her, it started to descend. Like a casket lid closing, the curved ceiling shut out light as it lowered, locking her inside a suffocating vacuum.

  She wiped her eyes, taking another look. A hallucination. Her mind seemed thick and watery.

  She sensed something cold climbing her skin. She rolled her aching head and found a thin translucent serpent coiling around her bare forearm. With a yelp, she slapped at it. With another look, she realized she had swatted an IV tube. It connected to a drip chamber suspended beside her stretcher.

  Raising both hands to her forehead, she cradled her throbbing skull. Her vision cleared and s
he had a better look at her surroundings, a cramped place with the feel of a white and stifling cocoon. A small barrier of monitors and medical equipment surrounded her, recording her vitals in a blipping language that brought the comfort of knowing she was alive.

  She remembered escaping with Shay to a hotel room Jared had reserved for them. She remembered waiting for him to return, but fearing he wouldn’t. She remembered cuddling with Shay on a bed before CIA agents stormed into their hotel room. A man called Angelilli had taken her into a vehicle. She had a hazy memory about an accident. Shay was sitting…

  Shay.

  Where was Shayna Brynstone?

  Cori slapped both hands against the mattress and looked around, as if expecting to find the child. She shuffled on the uncomfortable stretcher, attempting to rise. Every movement heightened the thunder inside her head, but she was determined to find Shay.

  Swinging her legs over the edge, she stared down. The floor seemed to drop twenty feet beneath her toes. Not trusting her eyes, she braced against the stretcher, willing herself to leave it. As she lowered both feet onto the cold floor, both of her knees buckled and nausea crawled inside her gut. Her legs were wobbly and her face blazed with a sudden heat. Without warning, Cori found herself collapsing on the floor, the snakelike IV tube clinging to her arm.

  Disoriented, she looked up. A man in a white coat rushed toward her. Behind him, a middle-aged nurse scuttled around to crouch beside Cori. The doc slid his arms around her back and waist. He had dark friendly eyes and a brush of black hair. The nurse clutched Cori’s legs and they lifted her. She didn’t have the energy to protest, the nausea still thick inside her, sapping her strength.

  She was back on the stretcher now, propped against the pillow.

  “Did you climb out or fall out?” the nurse asked.

  “Shayna,” Cori mumbled.

  “What?” the doctor asked. He looked concerned.

  “The little girl,” she answered, her tongue feeling as thick as concrete.

  The doctor and nurse glanced at each other. Neither answered.

  “It’s important you get your rest,” the nurse assured her, brushing a strand of hair from Cori’s forehead.

  “Want to see Shayna.”

  “A driver found you inside your vehicle,” the doctor said. “You sustained extensive injuries from the accident.”

  “Thank God they got to you in time,” the nurse chirped. “You’ll need more surgery, but you’ll be fine.”

  “You need your rest, young lady,” the doctor warned in a stern voice. “We just rolled you out of recovery.”

  He inserted a syringe into her IV.

  “I want…” Her words trailed off.

  “What’s that, dear?”

  Cori swallowed the longest swallow imaginable. Closing her eyes, she knew she wanted to finish the sentence, but found she couldn’t remember what she wanted to say.

  Chapter 26

  Prague

  6:12 a.m.

  Slipping out of the hangar at the Prague airport, Brynstone ended his private call with Wurm. He took steps, two at a time, up the ramp leading into Math McHardy’s jet. The professor had serious resources. As an only child, McHardy had collected an inheritance from a family tree with rich branches, including a founder of Saffery Champness—a prestigious accounting firm—as well as a former president of the Royal Bank of Scotland.

  Moving inside the Bombardier aircraft, Brynstone saw that Raja was napping on the divan near the galley. Her forearm had been sliced during her confrontation with Nessa Griffin, but Raja seemed more troubled about the jagged tear in her leather glove. Brynstone had stitched up her arm. He didn’t worry about the glove.

  Passing through the doorway into the midcabin, he glanced at the table with the assorted pieces of the Roman helmet spread across the surface. Right now, they had collected the facemask, a right cheek guard, and the right skull piece. Wurm had the neck guard, presumably from the same helmet. Brynstone hadn’t mentioned it to McHardy—there was no need to foster more bad blood between them.

  He found the professor enjoying a whisky in his private stateroom at the rear of the jet. He seemed unusually quiet after their encounter with Griffin.

  “John, come in. Close the door.”

  “Why?”

  “We don’t want our conversation to wake Sleeping Beauty,” he purred, “now do we?”

  Brynstone didn’t buy the reason, but he closed the door anyway.

  “I’m still working on the Prague helmet piece,” McHardy reported as he rubbed his temples. “This thing frustrates the hell out of me.”

  “Any breakthroughs?”

  “Remember when I mentioned Josephus?”

  “The son of Joseph of Arimathea.”

  McHardy nodded. “Josephus made a mistake of some sort that angered his father. As the Keeper, Joseph of Arimathea took the vellum that contained the formulae to create the Black and the White Chrisms—”

  “The Scintilla.”

  “And he ripped it in half two thousand years ago.”

  “Wonder what Josephus did. Must have been bad to make his father tear up the Scintilla.”

  “There’s more, John.” McHardy studied the whisky, then took a sip, swirling it around his mouth before swallowing. “According to this, the Black Chrism was administered to several people in ancient times.”

  “Like a drug?”

  “The man who wrote the message on the helmet makes an interesting claim. He tells us that the Black Chrism caused them all to develop some ‘terrible gift.’”

  “Meaning what, exactly?”

  “I have no idea.” He sighed. “Plus, there’s another thing. I feel confident in saying that Josephus was not the person who inscribed the code inside the helmet.”

  “Let me guess. Joseph of Arimathea?”

  “I’m afraid not. The author came from Roman heritage, but lived in Britannia. He was about the same age as Josephus and knew him. The two met around 64 CE in Glastonbury.”

  “The Roman Empire occupied England at that time,” Brynstone said. “Maybe the Roman you’re talking about was a soldier.”

  McHardy’s eyes twinkled. “You’re suggesting a soldier inscribed stories in the Linear A code inside his own helmet?”

  “It’s a guess.”

  “I’ll keep it in mind.” He stretched. “One final thing. This is perhaps the most tantalizing discovery. The helmet code mentions a hiding place for one half of the chrism formula.”

  “The formula for the Black Chrism. Does it say where it’s hidden?”

  “Egypt.” He smiled. “We need to find it, John. I think it might be in Cairo. Of course, I still need to figure out where. Once I do, though, the facemask will lead us to the hiding spot. Even if we don’t know the precise location, we can search for it.”

  “I’ll tell Rashmi,” Brynstone said, opening the door.

  “Fine. I’ll instruct the pilot to prepare a flight plan to Cairo.”

  Brynstone checked the time on his phone as he passed through the midcabin. He headed toward the front of the private jet, but stopped in surprise when he reached the divan. She was gone.

  “Rashmi?” he called.

  No answer.

  Brynstone looked around the galley and checked the lavatory. He headed back to the midcabin. McHardy was standing over the table. The professor looked over.

  “I’m afraid we have a problem, John. The facemask you found beneath the Paris cemetery? It’s missing.”

  He scowled. “So is Rashmi. You have the other helmet artifacts?”

  “Everything except the facemask.”

  Brynstone grabbed his backpack. “If I’m not back before takeoff, I’ll meet you in Cairo.”

  Cori could hear the sound of her own breathing, deep and unhurried, as her eyes blinked open. Her vision was
hazy at first as she realized she was flat on her back, staring at the ceiling. It felt as if someone had gently pulled a gossamer veil over the contours of her face. The ceiling wasn’t curving anymore. She remembered talking to a doctor, but she was someplace different now. But where?

  Before she had dozed off, a nurse had mentioned something about surgery and about rolling Cori out of recovery. So much had been a blank. What had they said about the car wreck? She recalled the doctor mentioning it briefly, but nothing about details.

  Rising, she looked around. Her petite body was draped in a thin cotton hospital gown. She was in a different hospital bed now in a different room. She looked around, but there was no phone or TV. There wasn’t even a window, so she couldn’t tell if it was day or night.

  She glanced at the hospital bracelet around her wrist. Dusky gaps in her memory made it difficult to remember the accident. Cori bristled with anxiety when she thought about losing Shay. Where was she? Who was taking care of her? She had to find the child.

  Her headache wasn’t as bad as before, although her head was still sore. Shifting her body to the edge of the mattress, she landed on steadier feet this time. Groaning, she shuffled toward the door and opened it.

  Moving into the hallway, she saw two nurses behind a blue counter, talking to a doctor. Dizziness came at her now, a fast rush of blood inside her head. She reached for a nearby wheelchair, trying to steady her body.

  “Ms. Cassidy,” a nurse called, “we can’t have you out here.”

  In contrast with her cheery floral-print scrubs, the woman had a cold look. Still, she took Cori’s arm gently as she directed her back inside the room. The Mount Sinai Hospital badge on the nurse’s beaded lanyard identified her as Susan Rubin.

  “Wanna see Shayna. She’s—”

  “There’s plenty of time for visitors later. You’ve had major surgery. It’s not a good idea for you to be walking around. We need to get you back in bed.”

  “I was with a little girl. About six years old. Blonde hair.”

  “Your daughter?”

  “A friend. Is she okay? Is she in the hospital?”