The Golden Vendetta (17 page)

Novaya Zemlya, Kara Sea, Russia

June 6

Late morning

B
artolo Cassa, his face and arm bandaged from the attack by the thief in the Hôtel de Paris, exited a jet on the godforsaken island of Novaya Zemlya in the Kara Sea. The place would never be confused, he mused, with Monte Carlo.

“Keep the engines running,” he told the pilot. “This won't take long.”

“I'd have kept them running anyway,” the pilot replied. “They might not start again in this cold.”

Drawing his coat tighter, Cassa walked painfully
from the jet to the shore, where he mounted an ice tractor and started across the frozen sea.

Minutes later, he drew up at the excavation site.

A band of fur-wrapped workers huddled around the drill cap as it was lifted away from the five-foot circle in the ice.

“You are?” Cassa asked the man with the smuggest expression, the one in charge.

“Ivanov,” the man said. “Konradin Ivanov. You are from that girl in Berlin, Galinka?”

Cassa allowed himself a quick smile. “Yes. Show me.”

The walls inside the hole descended some ten or twelve feet to a black object of riveted steel. A number of rivets had been sawed away, and a small portion of the steel panel pried open. Below that was darkness.

A winch sent down a pair of vice claws.

“The concrete casing was broken,” Ivanov said, “but we believe—I believe—we found the item in time, before it was degraded.”

Cassa knew that if the man was wrong, they would be dead from radiation poisoning within weeks. Sooner.

When the claw was in view again, it bore in its grip a blue-gray device the size and shape of a large steel drum. The device was marked with the red Soviet star, a series of Cyrillic letters, a small skull stenciled in black,
and the identifying designation K-27. The warhead of a nuclear missile.

“Load it onto my vehicle,” Cassa said.

Ivanov nodded happily, motioning his gloved hands as his crew did so. When they were finished, he said, “A good payday for us. My men and me. The girl will be pleased with our service, yes? Where is our payment?”

“Right here.” Cassa removed a silenced gun from the pocket of his anorak and shot Ivanov and the excavators once each, for a total of six shots. He removed the clip from his handgun and dropped it into the watery hole, then inserted a second clip.

Back on shore, Cassa supervised the loading of the device into the jet's cargo bay. That was easy—put the big thing into the space. The men were amenable. No one had heard the shots offshore. They were chatting. What he knew of Russian told him it was small talk. Some of them laughed. It didn't take long to secure the warhead in the jet's cargo bay.

“Where is Ivanov?” one man asked.

“He wanted you to be paid now,” Cassa said.

“Ah, the Teutonic Order is as good as its word!”

“Count on it,” Cassa said, and emptied his fresh clip into them, saving one shot for the jet's pilot, who was using the station's rest facilities. When he saw the
bodies, he started to run, but the final bullet stopped that.

After reloading his handgun once more, Cassa boarded the plane and fastened himself into the pilot's seat. He taxied to the runway and left the island, heading for Cyprus.

“‘F
ollow me,' huh?” Darrell murmured.

The second motorcycle had, of course, gotten tripped up on a rooftop, because motorcycles weren't supposed to be up there. Which was just fine. But when he, Lily, and his mother had escaped down into the streets, they'd found Wade trying to get back to Becca. “Follow me!” he'd said, and so they had, right to where—
bam!
—the black cars were waiting for them.

They were caught. Because of Wade.

“So much for ‘follow me'!”

“Give it a rest, Darrell,” said Lily.

Darrell had managed to push his mother—he hoped not too roughly—to safety around a corner, while the
rest of them were thrown into one of Drangheta's cars. The goons all wore the same tattoo as the dead guy on the train. People in the street were staring, but when Lily stuck her head out the window and yelled a couple of French words Becca had taught her, Darrell guessed that they were the wrong couple of words, because everybody just shrugged and went on with their stuff.

Of course they did.
Drangheta's a local boy. These are his peeps.

The next thing they knew, the goons had pulled up to a junky building, dragged them all inside, tied Darrell's hands behind his back—in zip cuffs, no less—and chained him to what seemed to be a water pipe.

They did the same with Wade and Lily.

Then they stomped on their phones until they were dust and stole their passports—the fake ones—which was no problem for Darrell, who was happy for Robin to become a thing of the past. Lily groaned when her tablet was cracked under the thugs' heels. The brutes weren't gentle with the kids, either. Darrell's wrists had been stretched and twisted and mangled before they were cuffed.

Is this what Lily feels like when she types too much?

Random thought. Never mind.

Silva, Becca, and his mother were . . . he didn't know
where. He was pretty sure his mother had slipped away. It was just Silva and Becca he didn't know about. And no way to know anything, because Mr. Follow Me had gotten them caught and their phones crushed atomically.

Wade sat moping on the other side of the filthy room, legs crossed, head down. One of the grunts had elbowed him in the side of the face. His cheek was swollen and red. Lily had been thrown down about ten feet from Darrell. They were all pretty quiet at first, but they hadn't heard any sound outside the door for a while, so they began to whisper.

“What are they waiting for?” said Lily. He saw her wiggling her fingers.

“For Drangheta to come and put a bullet in our heads,” Wade grumbled.

“Would he?” asked Darrell. “I think he'd want us to talk first. They always want you to talk. Tell them who you're working for. Or
verking for.
Which is how bad guys say it.”

“Except that this isn't Germany. It's Morocco,” said Lily.

“Still.”

“Either way, he scares me,” said Lily. She was still wiggling her fingers and now looking up and across the room, as if seeing something no one else did.

Darrell snorted. “He scares you? You think?”

“I
mean,”
she said, “we know about Galina. Mostly. She's deadly enough. But this guy? Okay, he's a killer. But of us?”

“Let's not find out,” said Wade.

“I'm going to state the obvious here,” Darrell said. “I should have led.”

Wade lifted his face painfully. “What makes you think you would have done any better than me? Motorcycles chasing us across the rooftops of a strange city. Bullets whizzing all around us. Really, you leading? You ought to be thanking me that you can still thank me.”

Lily made a face. “That sounds like a Darrellism. What do you mean?”

“That you
can't
thank me if you're dead, which you're
not
—which is thanks to
me
—so I'll thank you to go ahead and thank me, and we'll call it even.”

“Help, I'm in a room with crazies,” she said.

“Why don't we just escape again?” asked Darrell. “That way you could all thank
me,
because instead of Mr. Follow Me, I'm pretty sure I'm the one who'll get us out of here.”

Wade snorted. “Really, Mr. Zip Cuffs? You can get us out of here? Right now? Because we need to get out of here right now. Becca's alone out there, for crying out
loud! To say nothing of your own mother! So can you get us free now?”

“Now?” Darrell twisted his wrists behind him. The zip cuffs were really tight. And strong. “Maybe not now. But eventually.”

“I thought so.”

“Oh, you thought so—”

“Boys!” Lily grumbled under her breath. “I need to think. Honestly, it should be
all
of us thinking, but you can't seem to, so I will. First of all, where are we?”

Darrell snorted again. “North Africa,” he said. “You really need a map.”

“The humor just never stops,” she said with a glare. “I mean what kind of a place is this? We didn't travel far, so we're still in Casablanca. We could still be in the medina, which is the eastern part of the city. I think. Or the western. Or in the center. One of those.”

“You
do
need a map.”

“Darrell, lay off,” said Wade. “It looks like a warehouse.”

It looked like a warehouse to Darrell, too.

It smelled of stale motor oil and scorched metal. One wall was lined with rows of oil drums stacked two high. There were things piled up almost completely around them—barrels, crates, stacks of boards, dozens
of cardboard cartons, buckets—like a little fort. Or a bonfire waiting to be lit.

Through an upper window they heard a car approach, then idle on the street outside.

“Someone's coming,” whispered Lily. “Get ready.”

“To do what? Die?” said Wade. “Because that's what—”

The bolts on the other side of the door slid back. There was a jangle of keys and a scrape near the handle, and the door opened.

Ugo Drangheta stepped—
limped
—into the room. The door closed behind him.

Up close, the dark-suited man was far more imposing than they'd previously realized—even wounded. His shoulders were a yard wide from end to end. His left arm was in a sling, his jacket draped over his bloodied shirt. Still, his chest was massive. His face had the look of a boxer's—battered, scarred, dented, with faraway eyes as deep as tunnels. His voice matched his looks, a gravel of words spilling over them.

“You may be curious to know that I cared little for whatever Galina Krause wanted. I wanted solely to kill her. Now I am not sure. Tell me of these relics.”

They looked from one to another and back again.

“Define
relics,”
Darrell said.

“You are the funny one of the group?” Drangheta said, cracking no smile.

“Just this once,” said Darrell. “Usually it's Wade.”

“You may also like to know that I care nothing about you. After you help me, I will toss you aside like spoiled fruit.”

“Then (
a
) why should we help you,” Wade said, “and (
b
) what do you want?”

Drangheta attempted to smile this time. It looked like he was forcing his face to do something it had never done before. “Where is Dr. Kaplan?”

“My mom? You'll never catch her,” said Darrell.

Drangheta shook his iron head. “Your father.”

The question surprised them.

“I . . . why do you want to know that?” said Wade.

“You are playing a dangerous game,” Drangheta said. “A game of vast wealth and power. Your father is an astronomer, yes? A physicist? Galina is interested, and so am I. Where is he?”

Lily cleared her throat. “We forget.”

Drangheta closed his eyes for a second, then opened them. “I will take down Galina Krause. I will destroy the Order. You? You are merely pawns in this game.”

“Sorry, we don't do that,” said Wade. “We don't pawn.”

Drangheta pushed his face up to Wade's. “You have ten minutes to tell me where Dr. Roald Kaplan is. Galina Krause wants to know this, so I want to know this. Ten minutes!” He stormed from the room. The door was bolted behind him, his car drove off, and they were alone again.

“What was that even about?” asked Darrell. “Why does he want to know about Dad? And why does Galina want to know where Dad is?”

“Good question, for later,” Lily said. “Now we have to get out of here or he'll kill us. You know he will. He doesn't know how valuable I am.”

Wade grunted. “This is so not good.”

Lily wriggled her wrists. It was painful. Zip cuffs, heavy nylon interlocking bands, seemed easy enough to break free of, except that they were as strong as iron and as hard and sharp as aluminum handcuffs. “Darrell, you're the zip-cuff expert. How do we get out of these things?”

He looked at her. “Uh . . . yell? Yell really loud?”

She smirked. “Ha! I knew it. You're the first person I ever heard who actually used the words
zip cuffs,
and you don't know anything about them. Good thing I looked them up when you first said it and before I became tabletless. I discovered that there are three ways
to get out of them. One and two won't work, but three might. I'll free myself first, then help Wade . . .”

Darrell seemed to be waiting for her to finish her statement. She didn't. “What about me? Are you saying you won't let me out?”

Lily grinned. “That depends on whether you agree to let me lead.”

His eyes widened. “You?”

“I'll let you think about that while I free myself. Luckily, these are narrow cuffs, and everyone knows that zip cuffs can't stretch when they're stressed to the maximum. It makes it easier to snap them apart. This is where my former gymnastic wrists come in handy.”

She clamped her wrists as close together as she was able to, then gripped the end of the zip tie with her teeth and pulled hard, tightening them as much as she could bear. “Oh, oh . . .” Then she flung her arms out.

“Ackk!” Nothing happened except that it felt as if she'd cut her hands off. Her wrists were red, bleeding near the bone. But she had to, right? No choice. Just do it. She pressed her wrists close and jerked out harder than before. The plastic tie snapped under the strain and flew across the room in two halves.

“Yes!” cried Wade. “Lily, you did it!”

“Ow, ow, ow, I'm free!” she said. “I did it! Internet
power! Intelligence officer! Me, me, me!”

“And now—” Darrell started.

“Now I lead.” Lily rubbed her wrists while she poked around the room for a knife; she found one, and—
slit-slit
—the boys were free. “Stack some crates under the window. Wade, find me something heavy to throw.” They did as they were told. An engine revved loudly and stopped outside. They heard footsteps.

“Drangheta's back to kill us some more,” whispered Wade, handing her a large monkey wrench.

“Hide behind the barrels,” she said. They were so obedient. She would miss that. She waited until she heard a key in the lock outside the door; then she hurled the wrench at the window, shattering it. The door burst open, and two thick-necked men pushed into the room.

“No!” one shouted, seeing the stacked crates and the broken window. They rushed back out to the car. A few moments later, the kids heard the sound of tires screeching away; then, after waiting another few minutes, they finally crept to the door.

Darrell poked his head out. “All clear,” he said. “Let's beat it.”

They were out into the hot morning streets, running as fast as they could.