Changeling

by David Wood

  “That was a shot,” Gabrielle said, dismayed. Her reaction was further confirmation that something had gone wrong inside the museum. “They wasn’t supposed to be any shooting. We need her alive.”

  Before Shah could respond, Gabrielle threw open her door and charged up the front steps of the museum.

  “Gabrielle, wait!” Shah fumbled with the door lever, finally succeeded in getting it open, and raced around the front end of the van in pursuit. Some part of him knew this was a mistake. He was not one of them, not a man of violence, not a warrior ready to kill for his faith. Would they heed his exhortation against killing, especially when he had been the one to declare Jade Ihara an enemy?

  He reached the entrance before the doors closed behind Gabrielle and wormed his way through just in time to see her leave the reception lobby to enter the exhibit area. Past her, he could see some of his men shouting and brandishing their guns, but there was no sign of Jade. Gabrielle was crossing in front of the gunmen, waving her hands and shouting for them to put the guns away, but if their wild-eyed looks were any indication, they were having none of it. For the first time, it occurred to Shah that perhaps Jade had been the one doing the shooting.

  He continued forward, still not completely certain what he would do to regain control of the situation, and glimpsed movement, someone disappearing behind a partition. “There!”

  Gabrielle’s eyes followed his pointing finger and then she was moving again, charging through the entrance to the exhibit. Shah saw the rest of the six jihadists moving to follow her, and raced on, rounding the partition just a few steps ahead of them and right behind Gabrielle.

  The temporary walls enclosing the exhibit blocked nearly all outside light, and it took a moment for his eyes to adjust. He saw Gabrielle, momentarily stalled by the darkness, searching the room for some sign of their elusive prey. The room seemed bigger than it was due to the enormous mirrored wall that ran along one side. On the other side, behind a low wall, stood a mock-up of a Roman war galley, replete with armored soldiers posed as if ready for battle. In the low light, the life-sized diorama offered countless places to hide in plain sight, a fact which evidently had not escaped Gabrielle’s notice. She hopped over the low parapet that separated the model from the viewing area and began shoving each of the mannequins in turn, knocking them to the floor and sending helmets and weapons flying. None of them offered the least bit of resistance.

  “Not here,” she growled. “There must be another way out of here.”

  Shah nodded dully and turned around to search the mirrored wall. His eyes had adjusted enough to realize that it was not a single flat mirror, but rather several smaller mirrors, each tilted slightly to form an gently concave surface, curved inward like the inside of a spoon.

  At that instant, a voice resonated through the little room like the voice of the angel speaking to the Prophet, though the speaker did not sound particularly angelic and the words were not Arabic, but rather a familiar Latin phrase.

  “Fiat lux!”

  And then Shah’s world became nothing but light and fire.

  SIXTEEN

  Jade looked away, shutting her eyes tight, but she could not blink faster than the speed of light. The flash as the high-powered spotlight, designed to simulate the sun’s rays, shone from the ceiling of the heat ray exhibit, to be subsequently reflected and focused by the parabolic mirror array, was so bright that, in the instant of the flash, Jade thought she had seen the skeletons of the men pursuing them, visible through their skin. Even the smoked glass window of the observation booth, situated above the mock-up of the Roman war galley, was not dark enough to keep the light, indirect though it was, from being painfully bright.

  “My God,” Kellogg gasped. “You just incinerated them.”

  “No, no,” Paolo said, his expression equally horrified at the prospect. “Is simulation.”

  “I thought you said this thing wasn’t working,” Jade said. Green blobs floated in front of her eyes. “Looks like it worked pretty well to me.”

  Paolo shook his head. “Blinding guests, no good for business.”

  “Good for us though.”

  “Si.” Paolo rose and moved to the door. “But their eyes will recover and they still have guns. We must go. I take you somewhere safe.”

  Jade was having trouble reading the Italian’s face through the retinal fireworks caused by the flash, but his willingness to help set alarm bells ringing in her head.

  “Maybe we should call the police,” Kellogg suggested. Although it had become something of a signature comment for him, in this instance Jade was inclined to agree.

  Paolo seemed to be scrutinizing them. “And will you tell the carabinieri about the Vault of Archimedes?”

  Jade’s internal alarm bells got even louder, but before she could figure out an appropriate response, Paolo waved urgently. “I have the answers you seek, but right now we must go. Quickly.”

  The promise of answers was enough to help Jade overcome her wariness. Paolo was clearly more than just a humble museum guide, but the mere fact that he had a secret life did not automatically make him an enemy. She nodded and followed.

  Paolo led them back down a short flight of stairs and past the hidden door behind the galley model, to a long access corridor. He stopped at the door leading to the fire stairs, opened it a sliver and peeked through. After a moment, he threw it wide open. “Come.”

  He crossed to a door on the opposite side of the stairwell and again checked that the coast was clear before venturing outside. The fire exit let out into a narrow alley between the museum and a neighboring building. Paolo hurried them to the far end, away from the piazza, to a back street crowded with parked cars. He stopped in front of one, a boxy red two-door Fiat hatchback. Jade wasn’t much of a car person, but Jade guessed it was probably as old as she. As Paolo slotted his key into the lock, she realized that this was their escape vehicle.

  “Shotgun!” Both Paolo and Kellogg began looking around in alarm, so she clarified. “Dibs on the front seat.”

  “Si, of course,” Paolo said, opening his door and working the lever to tilt the seat forward. He turned gestured for Kellogg to get in.

  Kellogg turned to Jade. “Maybe we should talk about this first?”

  “What’s there to talk about? Paolo here just saved our bacon. And he can tell us about the vault.” She opened the passenger door and glanced at their new benefactor. “You can tell us about the vault, right Paolo?”

  “Si. But not here. Not where they can find us.”

  She turned back to Kellogg. “See? Let’s go.”

  Her cavalier attitude was a put-on. The age-old wisdom of countless generations of parents—don’t get in cars with strangers—was echoing in her head. Her gut told her that Paolo was harmless, yet there was clearly more to him than met the eye, and that unknown quantity concerned her. But if he did know something about the vault, then it was worth the risk.

  He navigated the back streets with easy familiarity, eventually merging into the chaos of the main thoroughfares. Jade knew she ought to be paying attention to where they were, but her gaze kept drifting to the faces of the people around them, pedestrians at sidewalk cafes, the drivers of the vehicles they passed. Every attack she had survived had come seemingly from out of the blue. Whether they were Muslim extremists or something else, the enemy stalking her seemed to have the ability to blend into the woodwork. Were they, even now, watching her every move? Tracking her somehow?

  The thought sent an electric shock through her. They were tracking her. She would have to do a head-to-toe search for tracking chips…Kellogg, too, but the most obvious way for them to keep tabs on her was by pinging the GPS in her smart phone. She dug the device from her pocket and stared at it as she might a ticking time bomb.

  The phone was her lifeline, her only means of staying in contact with Professor. She could write down his number, but if she threw her phone away, he would have no way of reaching her.

  And what if
I’m wrong?

  If she was wrong, then it wouldn’t matter what she did. They would find her again.

  She tapped out a quick text message to Professor, letting him know that she was about to go dark then shut the phone off. “I need a paper clip. Or a safety pin.”

  Paolo glanced over at her, then pointed to the glove compartment.

  “Why?” Kellogg asked, leaning over the seat.

  “I’m going to pull the SIM card on my phone.” The glove box contained a sheaf of paper held together by a paper clip. She removed it and unbent a section, which she then used to depress the release on the side of her phone. Removing the SIM card would make it impossible for anyone to track the phone remotely but still give her the option of using it again if the need arose. “They might be tracking me that way.”

  Kellogg’s eyes went wide. “Should I do that too?”

  “Might be a good idea.” She handed him the paper clip, and then shoved both her phone and the SIM card into a pocket. She saw Paolo nod in approval. “That should keep them off our backs for a while,” she said, meeting the Italian’s stare. “Now, how about those answers?”

  “I will tell you what I know, but first, tell me please, how did you learn of the vault?”

  Jade cocked her head sideways. “Answering a question with a question. That’s not a great way to start a conversation. Do you actually know something, or are you just stringing us along?”

  “Ah, pardon me. I meant no offense. I am wondering because, you see, I thought that all knowledge of the vault had been lost forever.”

  “Obviously not. You know something about it.”

  “Si, si. But is a very closely guarded secret. Those who know would never share it with…” He smiled. “The uninitiated.”

  Jade stared at him for a moment. “Uninitiated? Oh, wonderful. You’re part of a secret society, aren’t you? I really hate secret societies.”

  Paolo just laughed.

  “Let me guess,” Jade went on. “You are modern descendants of the Society of Syracuse, entrusted with preserving Archimedes’ secrets. I guess it makes sense that you would be the one running the Arkimedeion. Though frankly, I would have expected it to be in a little better shape.”

  “Better shape?” The Italian seemed amused by her assessment. He waved a hand. “Everything in the Arkimedeion works exactly as it was meant to. Some people, they see a broken thing and want to throw it away. Others see the same thing, and want to fix it.”

  “Oh, so it’s a test. To see who’s worthy to join your little club.”

  “A test. A game. It is not so hard to join.” He turned the Fiat off the road and drove down a side street until he found a parking spot.

  “Really? You guys have a website or something? Society of Syracuse dot com?”

  “I do not know this Society of Syracuse you speak of.”

  He gestured through the windshield toward their destination, a modest office building with dark windows and no signage, save for a small brass plaque affixed to the front. The words on the sign were in Italian, but a translation was unnecessary. The symbol at the center of the plaque—a drafting compass and a carpenter’s square, arranged to form what looked almost like six-pointed star—was known universally. It was the same symbol, Jade now realized, that appeared on Paolo’s signet ring.

  “But to join the brotherhood,” Paolo continued, “a man has only to ask.”

  Because he was not standing at the focal point, where the rays of the spotlight were focused by the mirrors into a searing pin-point, Shah’s blindness was only temporary. At first he saw the world as if through a red fog. His companions were indistinct silhouettes. He couldn’t even tell them apart. The loss of vision however was not the worst of it. Shah’s eyes felt like someone had driven shards of broken glass into them.

  Some of the jihadists, who had not been looking directly at the mirror array, recovered even more quickly, though not quickly enough to prevent Jade Ihara from escaping. The blind followed the partly-blind back to the van, and one of the latter drove away from the piazza just as the police sirens became audible in the distance.

  The red fog in Shah’s vision continued to diminish, though the relentless pain in his eyes made him want to claw them out with his fingertips. Gritting his teeth through the agony, he found the dark shape that he thought was Gabrielle. “Are you all right?”

  “I can’t see,” she replied, her voice strangely calm.

  “It will pass,” he said. “My vision is returning. Slowly.”

  “Mine isn’t.”

  “What?” He peered at the place where he knew her face was, as if by sheer willpower he might accelerate the restoration of his sight.

  “I was looking right at it. I’m not sure this is going to go away.”

  Shah turned to the driver. “We need to find a hospital.”

  “No!” Gabrielle said. “No hospital. They may be looking for us now.”

  “If this isn’t treated, you might lose your sight permanently.”

  She shook her head. “That doesn’t matter now. All that matters is stopping Jade Ihara before she finds the vault.”

  “I don’t know how to do that. You were the one who told us where to find her.”

  Gabrielle contemplated this problem silently for several seconds. “It doesn’t matter. I know where she will go next.”

  “How do you know, Gabrielle? Don’t keep secrets from me. How do you know that?”

  Gabrielle reached out a hand and groped for him. “You must believe me when I say that we want the same thing. I cannot tell you more. You will have to trust me.”

  “Look where trusting you has brought us.” A volcano of rage built in Shah’s chest. His arms trembled with the effort of holding back the eruption. Though his vision was still dim, he saw everything clearly now. He had willingly permitted Gabrielle to enslave him with her seductive wiles and her empty promises of love, and she had in turn perverted his faith and twisted his mission to safeguard Islam into some agenda that, even now, she refused to share with him.

  “Keep your secrets then. I no longer care. I will find Jade Ihara and I will kill her. And then, I never want to see you again.”

  As angry as he was, some part of him hoped that she would beg his forgiveness and, at long last, confess her love for him and share her secret, but she did not. Instead, she merely nodded, and then told him their next destination.

  “Freemasons,” Kellogg muttered as they followed Paolo into the Lodge. Jade shushed him, but he paid no heed. “It makes perfect sense when you think about it. They’re the puppet-masters orchestrating everything from behind the scenes.”

  “Right,” Jade said. “And those little cars they drive around at parades are frigging terrifying.”

  Jade’s antipathy toward secret fraternities did not extend to organizations like the Masons. She was merely indifferent toward them. While she did not doubt that the friendships and alliances forged in Masonic Lodges over the centuries had been pivotal in shaping the political landscape—particularly in the United State where, if certain popular authors were to be believed, many of the founding fathers of the country had been senior Masons—Jade suspected this was more a matter of ambitious men also being Masons, and not the other way around. Their reputation for secrecy, more than anything else, had made them a target for persecution by the Church and harassment by conspiracy nuts like Roche, but the truth of the matter was that, despite their reputation as the diabolical architects of the Illuminati’s New World Order, in the modern era, Masons were about as secretive as the Boy Scouts. The members of actual secret societies did not, as a rule, advertise their membership with signet rings and bumper stickers.

  “Mock if you want. Mr. Roche warned about this. The Freemasons are the public face of the Changeling conspiracy.”

  Jade jerked a thumb in Paolo’s direction. “He can hear us, you know. And do I need to remind you that he just saved our lives from the people who were actually trying to kill us?”

&nbs
p; Kellogg gave a dismissive snort.

  “Besides, I didn’t think you actually believed all that stuff Roche wrote.”

  “Not in a literal sense. But he wasn’t wrong about the world being ruled by an invisible power elite.”

  Jade shook her head and followed Paolo through the door and into a lobby that was about as sinister as a doctor’s waiting room. “Please. Make yourselves comfortable. You will be safe here.” He flashed a wry smile at Kellogg. “Our secret plan to rule the world does not include harming the two of you.”

  Kellogg glowered.

  “Did I hear correctly? You are associates of Signore Roche?”

  “Not really,” Jade said, at almost the same instant that Kellogg said: “I’m his publisher.” Jade had to fight the urge to stomp on Kellogg’s toes.

  “His publisher?” Paolo’s smile darkened a little. “Well, signore, I am not a hot-tempered man, though we Sicilians have a reputation for it, eh? But you are publishing lies.” He hissed the last word and Kellogg flinched.

  Jade moved between the men. “Let’s just all take a step back, okay? I’m not fan of Roche either, but someone killed him a few days ago.”

  The news seemed to genuinely surprise Paolo. “Killed?”

  “The same people who attacked us at the museum. Not the Freemasons.” She threw a quick look over her shoulder to Kellogg before going on. “They’re trying to stop us from finding the Archimedes Vault. You said you could help us find it, right?”

  “I said no such thing,” Paolo replied. “But I did promise you answers, and I will tell you what I can, but please, I must know. How did you learn of it?”

  Jade saw no further reason to withhold that information. “Roche wrote about it an unpublished manuscript. He said that it was mentioned in the Archimedes Palimpsest.”

  “Ah, yes. I know of the codex, but it is a book on mathematical philosophy. There is nothing in it about the vault.”

  “But the vault is real?” Jade pressed.

  “Real?” Paolo spread his hands. “Who can say? I know only stories that are passed down in our tradition. Stories that are to be kept secret. That is why I was surprised to hear you speak of it. Is there a real Vault? I do not know. But I can tell you this. If it is real, Archimedes did not build it.”