The Copernicus Legacy: The Forbidden Stone (21 page)

Chapter Forty-One

W
ade stood over his celestial map.

“Vela,” he said slowly, “is this smaller cluster of stars in Argo Navis. It’s kind of a triangle, kind of a rectangle.
Vela
is Latin for ‘sail.’ I remember Dad taught me the parts of the constellations. Vela is the sail of the ship Argo Navis. The address V, Via Rasagnole is code for this part of this constellation.”

“So,” said Becca, “out of the whole sky, we get down to one constellation
.
”

Darrell breathed in a long breath. “Wade, you said you can only see some constellations from certain places. How about this one?”

He shook his head. “We can’t see it so well from Texas. Or even from Rome. It’s best seen south of the equator. The Southern Cross is another one only visible from the southern hemisphere. There are a bunch of them.”

As everyone examined the map, the sunlight fell lazily across the floor, moving slowly, infinitesimally across the tiles.

Becca stood and stared past them at the astrolabes. “Guys, I’m going to make a leap here and say that if each relic is named after a constellation, maybe it’s hidden where the constellation is best seen.”

Darrell wagged his head from side to side. “Okay, but this is a huge world. I mean, look at the globes. Even
if
we say that the relic is somewhere where you can see the constellation of it, we’re still talking millions of square miles, and a lot of it is water.”

“Which is why we have to narrow it down,” said Lily. “If we figure out
who
the Guardian is, maybe it’ll be obvious. We need to learn about his or her life to find out where he or she might have hidden the relic.”

“Good idea,” Wade said. “So . . . back to the diary?”

Becca closed her eyes for a moment, then opened the diary to halfway, then beyond. “It’s got to be after what I already read.”

Minutes went by as she flipped over more pages, both forward and back. From the look on her face, Wade knew the words were giving her trouble.

“Okay,” she said. “The diary says, ‘
la reliquia prima
,’ the first relic, “
è stata presentata ad un
legal man.’ It says that in English, ‘legal man.’”

Wade bit his lip. “Legal man. Seriously. In English.”

“Yeah,” Becca said, still reading.

“I’m writing this down, too.” Wade copied these new words into his father’s notebook. He looked at the list of clues.

The first will circle to the last

The world known and unknown

A hole in the sky

—The first relic will be presented to a man above all men who will raise it as if it were his own child

Darrell set his finger on the list. “Wade, one thing, if it’s not too weird. You said
vela
means ‘sail,’ right? Well, don’t you ‘raise’ a sail when you go
sailing
? The diary talks about a voyage. Maybe Copernicus’s making a pun.”

Becca looked up from the paperback. “I like that, Darrell. It fits, right? Puns, I mean. Plus, the early sixteenth century was the age of discovery, so there were lots of sailors. Vela’s Guardian might be a sailor or a captain of a sailing ship.”

Wade closed his eyes and rubbed them. “Out of the whole sky, one constellation. Out of one constellation, one part. If the first relic is Vela,” he said, “and it’s hidden in the southern hemisphere, which is mostly water, then Darrell, I think you’ve got something. ‘A man above all men who will raise it as if it were his own child.’ It really does point to a sailor.”

“Then what about ‘legal man’?” said Lily. “Why say that in English unless that means something? What does a lawyer have to do with raising sails on boats and oceans and water anyway?”

“Copernicus studied law,” said Darrell. “Dad told us that. Maybe he hung out with lawyers who liked to sail boats, and he gave the relic to one of them.”

Wade wandered away from the rest of them. It was that too-many-heads thing again. But something else, too. With every word he read, or thought of, or heard, he couldn’t help but wonder what other words could be spelled with its letters, and even talking began to seem like code.

He stopped at a large, flat display case. Under the glass was a map of the world in Copernicus’s time.

The world known and unknown
, the diary had said.

Naturally, much of the map was wrong. The shapes of the continents were not the shapes they are now known to be.

It was that thing Wade loved. Looking at charts and maps and notebooks, you could almost see how people figured things out. What were maps but pictures sketched by people trying to understand the world around them? These days, all that understanding was hidden inside computer hard drives or in wireless radio waves. If you hit the right buttons and clicked the keyboard, it all came out for you, all done. You didn’t have to do much at all.

But this stuff. It was human and it was science. It was discovery. It was history that you could touch. Sure, it was brilliance and genius and imagination, but it was people, too.

Nicolaus Copernicus. Hans Novak.

On the map before him, a slender gold line was drawn across the seas, looping from what he knew was Spain, across the Atlantic Ocean to a blobby-looking New World, down the coast of South America, around its tip, and up along the western coast to the Pacific Ocean.

Next to the line across the deep blue of the South Seas were tiny letters handwritten in gold ink.

Magellan.

His brain sparked. Constellations, ships, voyages. Letters began to shift places, combining, separating, recombining . . .
click.

He turned to the others and he spoke the name aloud. “Magellan.”

Darrell narrowed his eyes. “Magellan? The explorer?”

Wade followed the line from Europe to the New World to the Pacific Islands and back to Europe again. “Magellan was the first to sail around the world. Lily, key in ‘Magellan,’ please?”

She clacked away at the keyboard. The results came up quickly. “First circumnavigation of the globe, left Spain in 1519, made it halfway, died in the Philippines in 1521.”

“So he was around at the same time as Copernicus,” Darrell said. “But what makes you think—”

“Lily, I meant type Magellan into the anagram site,” Wade said. ”For English language results.”

She gave him a look, but typed in the name anyway. She scrolled slowly down the list of nonsense words, then gasped. “Wade, you are a total genius.”

Becca leaned over the screen. “Oh man. You so are.”

“Why’s he so great?” said Darrell, trying to squeeze in.

Becca laughed softly. “‘Magellan.’ ‘Legal man.’ Same letters.”

There was a hushed moment. Longer than a moment. The sun bathed the wide wooden floorboards of the museum gallery.

Then Darrell spoke. “If no one else is going to say it, I will. People, let me be the first to announce that Magellan was the first member of the GAC, the twelve Guardians of the Astrolabe of Copernicus!”

Lily sat back from the computer screen. “That’s it,” she said softly. “We’ve figured it out.”

The sun was moving higher in the sky. It would soon be time to meet Dr. Kaplan at the Castel Sant’Angelo.

Wade so wanted to tell his father everything they had discovered, but he also found he didn’t really want to leave the museum. Not yet.

Neither, it seemed, did the others. They had discovered so much there, just the four of them. They’d been lucky, but most of what they deduced was by using their own intelligence and imagination.

Unable to stop herself from continuing to dig into the encyclopedia site, Lily said, “Magellan died in the Philippines, attacked by natives, so he didn’t finish his voyage. It’s pretty well written about. Curious fact. After the attack, his body was never found.”

“Wade, I need your dad’s notebook,” said Becca. “For the cipher.”

Giving it to her, Wade stepped back from the computer, his mind still clicking and swirling with questions about the Guardians of the Astrolabe of Copernicus. “Magellan’s body was never found? So the relic was lost?”

Lily traced the text farther down the page. “Ha! No! There’s a legend that Magellan’s servant, a native by the name of Enrique, spirited the body away.”

“Enrique.” Darrell frowned. “Where did he take it?”

Lily began jumping in her chair. “Oh my gosh, listen to this! Their previous stop? The island they visited just before Magellan was killed in the Philippines?”

“Yes? Where was it?” said Becca.

“Guam,” said Lily.

Wade wasn’t sure what that meant. “So . . . ?”

Lily was still jumping. “Guess what Magellan called Guam and its smaller islands? Guess! Never mind, I’ll tell you.
Islas de las Velas Latinas
.’ Islands of the Lateen
Sails
!”

They hushed once more. Wade’s head went silent, too, then he had to say it. “Guys, Vela is the relic, and it’s in Guam.”

“So we need to go there,” said Darrell. “Right?”

“Um . . .” Becca frowned over the diary. “Wade, I have one of your impossible things here. This passage seems to hint at what the device actually is, but it’s in code like the email. It says ‘Hytcdsy lahjiua.’ I decoded it using the key on the star map, but this time it didn’t decode into English words. They’re in Latin.”

She raised her face to them. “
Machina tempore
.”

Lily wrinkled her nose. “Mechanical tempura?”

“No,” said Wade, his knees shaking suddenly. “
Time machine
.”

Chapter Forty-Two

T
he sound of footsteps on an iron stairway always bothered Ebner von Braun. They were loud and grating and sad. Either they were his footsteps, in which case everyone would know he was approaching, or they were someone else’s and—since he trusted no one—they could mean he was about to die.

Why should he be terrified of footsteps on stairs? That was simple. For the last four years he—a physicist of great esteem even in the tiniest upper circle of the greatest theoretical astrophysicists in the world—had worked exclusively for Galina Krause.

Galina Krause, the mysterious young woman who had appeared on the doorstep of a castle in northern Poland, an urchin in the storm, an orphan to time, a dishrag that had been wrung out once too often, but a dishrag with hypnotic eyes.

And why had Ebner been at the castle that night four years ago? For the same reason that his father and father’s father and great-grandfather’s great-grandfather had been there. A secret meeting of the Knights of the Teutonic Order of ancient Prussia, the vast global society built on old royal power and great wealth.

Little did Ebner know then—little did any of them in that room know—how brilliant this ragged young woman was. How uncannily knowledgeable she was about the Order’s deepest secrets. How thoroughly she understood the most intricate mathematics, temporal physics, and theoretical astronomy. Not to mention where the Order’s legendary treasures lay buried, as if she’d possessed a direct link to its long-lost royal vaults.

And all at such a tender age! How old was she that stormy night four years ago, fifteen? Yet how she mesmerized them all with her brilliance! Later came the silent vote, and Ebner himself was chosen to accompany her to the dark wastes of Russia for her treatment. In the secret years since that night, he had only bowed before her increasing knowledge, the scope and speed of her mind, the wisdom that seemed utterly impossible for one so young.

Impossible?

The Order had lost track of many of the Guardians by the eighteenth century. Yet after four short years, Galina Krause had brought the Knights back from the brink of extinction to within reach of the first relic. Galina was proving daily that the word
impossible
had lost its meaning.

Ebner reached the top of the stairs and paused, breathing a long, slow breath to steady his nerves. He glanced down at the small bronze casket he cradled in his hands. What would she say when she opened it?

“Will you mention that I have brought it personally?” a voice said at the bottom of the stairs below him.

Ebner half turned. “If the moment arrives. Stay outside the door. I will call for you. Perhaps.” He straightened his bow tie in the reflection of the aluminum door and keyed in a seven-digit code.

A whisper of air, the door slid away, and he was standing on the threshold of a penthouse overlooking Milan, Italy, that had the feel of a mountain lair decorated by Versace. Galina was dressed in black, a svelte, catlike silhouette against the glittering window.

“Well,” she said, not bothering to turn.

Ebner’s knees trembled. Another breath. Another straightening of the tie. He stepped forward. “The
Le Monde
story has died. It seems the journalist pressing the murder angle has vanished.” He paused. No reaction. He glanced around the room. No crossbow, either. “In other business, we are monitoring every airport and train depot on the continent. The children must have picked up a new cell phone, or been given one. It appears to be scrambled. Though not for long.”

“They now have the help of the Guardians in Bologna,” Galina breathed. “I do wonder if the children know what this means for them.”

Ebner bowed slightly, apparently to himself. “The fencing school could not be taken in the first attack. By the time our reinforcements arrived, it had been abandoned. Its armory and library were empty.”

“The Guardians will re-form elsewhere. The Protocol demands it . . .”

“The children will not escape our grasp—”

“As they did twice in Berlin?” Galina snapped. “At the Austrian border? And again in Rome?” Her words were icicle sharp.

“You have my word. The Crows have been mobilized once more,” Ebner said, mustering as much calm as his trembling voice could manage.

“And the Spanish Experiment?” Galina asked, finally turning her head, but not far enough to see what he was holding.

The delicate trail of the scar on her neck was more visible than usual, he thought. Did her anger bring it out? He cleared his throat.

“Certain elements of the equation have proved . . . unstable,” he said. “It was our most successful experiment to date. Only . . . not successful enough. In fact, it is still unfolding.”

“There is no way to trace it to our laboratory?”

“Absolutely not. The Spanish authorities are baffled,” Ebner said, adding, “But then, they are often baffled.” He thought this was amusing. Galina’s expression did not change. “What shall we do with the Italian professor? Mercanti?”

“She will be useful to us for a later relic,” Galina said, walking slowly over to the window and looking south.
Toward Rome
, Ebner thought.
We’ll be going there soon, perhaps.

She turned abruptly. “Is there anything else?”

Ebner swallowed hard. “I have saved the best for last, Miss Krause.” Holding the bronze casket against his stomach, he unlatched it and slowly opened its lid.

With the measured steps of a jungle cat, Galina strode slowly toward him, her expression somewhere between ecstasy and rage. She stopped inches away, her eyes riveted on the inside of the box. It was lined with rich black velvet. Lying on the shimmering fabric, coiled around itself three times, was a leather strap. On the strap was a single ruby in the shape of a sea monster. A kraken.

Galina gently removed the strap from the box and stepped back. Ebner grinned. “It was retrieved on the plains of North Prussia, exactly where you said it would be. Professor Wolff brought it to me personally. Professor?”

The door slid aside once more, and a white-haired man in a leather overcoat stood waiting. He nodded slightly at Galina.

Ebner, wondering whether she saw Markus Wolff at all, stepped forward. “Miss Krause, if I may—”

“Leave me. Both of you.” Galina held the strap to her cheek and kissed the ruby kraken over and over.

For a fraction of a second, Ebner wished he were an old red jewel. Still, her intensity was odd. It scared him. Like iron stairs.

Stepping backward to the door, Ebner caught sight of a glassy tear, sliding down Galina’s exquisite cheek to her scar. It originated, he noted, from the damp lashes of her silvery gray eye.