The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2013 by Brett King
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
ISBN-13: 9781477833445
ISBN-10: 1477833447
Cover design by Inkd
For my cherished parents, Dee and Don King, who have inspired me with lessons of love and laughter, along with the value of hard work, patience, and perseverance.
Contents
PROLOGUE
The Return
The Recovery
The Quest
PART I
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
PART II
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
The Keeper’s Tale
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
PART III
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
PROLOGUE
The more hidden the venom, the more dangerous it is.
—Marguerite de Valois, Queen of France
The Return
Nearly five years ago
Washington, DC
New Year’s Eve
Edgar Wurm had spent his entire life in shadows, escaping the notice of the world. For decades as a cryptanalyst, he had solved classified puzzles for the United States government, helping it track threats to national security.
Now the government was hunting him.
Wurm had never liked cemeteries—he had seen enough reminders of death in his day—but this was the first time he had visited a grave yard at night. First and last time, he told himself.
Taking a ragged breath, he brought the service pistol in close to his body. He had stolen the weapon, a Kimber 1911, from the people who had detained him. He was thankful to have it now. Flicking off the thumb safety, he pulled back the slide far enough to confirm that the chamber was loaded. After making the press check, he hurried toward the private mausoleum. Cut from white granite, it resembled a small Greek temple with twin Doric pillars flanking the doorway. Before entering, he glanced back. Anxiety tightened his throat as he scanned the moonlit cemetery. Were they out there? Had they followed him?
Wurm had crawled out of hiding on this raw winter night. It was a risk, but he had to know the truth. He had to find out before they tracked him here.
Going back two generations, the Wurm family had paid top dollar to place their dead in Mount Olivet Cemetery. Some were reduced to ash and stuffed inside urns while others rotted in caskets housed inside marble crypts. Except for two children, he would be the last of his kind to be entombed here. Emblazoned with the Wurm coat of arms, a stained-glass window offered the only symbol of light and beauty inside the gloomy mausoleum. In one measured step after another, he crept over to examine a freestanding crypt in the center of the room. It was a big chunk of polished Belgian marble topped with a stone lid.
He brought out a small flashlight and studied the cover. His name was sandblasted onto the flat surface, right above his birth and death dates. Wurm stared at the lid, unblinking, like he was hypnotized. It was a curious and terrible thing to see your name engraved with a death date on a crypt. The experience unnerved him more than he had imagined.
A cryptanalyst puzzled by his crypt. Stupid humor, to be sure, but it brought an unexpected belch of gallows mirth.
He holstered the pistol then suspended his hand above the lid. Dropping his fingers, he scraped his nails along the black marble shell. They had the birth year right, but the second date was part of an orchestrated cover-up. A ruse designed to trick the handful of mourners who attended his funeral earlier in the day. They had gathered at this cemetery, all thinking that he would never return. He was content to let the world believe that lie.
At age fifty-five, Wurm had been declared dead almost a week ago, right after Christmas. Officers from the Central Intelligence Agency had arrived shortly after it had happened. They had flown his body back to the United States. Big surprise when he had revived. He had overpowered two guards before escaping from the low-security facility where they were holding his body for examination. Still, they had held to the story that he was dead. The cover-up worked for Wurm. A faked death was the best way to stay alive in the shadows.
Maybe he should have died last week in Europe. Turns out, the Radix had other plans for his body.
He drummed his fingers on the lid. He wanted a look at the casket inside this crypt. The CIA had taken steps to entomb someone in his place. Who was inside his casket?
Wurm had to know.
Weighted with anticipation, he pressed his palms flat against the lid’s edge. Bunching his muscles, he pushed on it. His face, gray and weathered, brightened to a sweat-drenched scarlet. Cords bulged in his neck as the grinding sound of stone against stone told of his progress. The crypt wasn’t easy to open, even for a man of his size. Teeth gritted, he gave a final heave and quietly eased the lid to the stone floor.
He brushed stringy hair from his face. Shining the flashlight into the crypt, he found a bronze casket inside the dead black space. In the suffocating hush of the mausoleum, he raised the hinged lid. The quilted velvet lining was as white as bleached bones and surrounded a matching pillow and mattress.
Wurm blinked.
The casket was empty.
He hadn’t expected that.
Glancing down, he discovered a funeral program inside the casket. The folded card showed a flower-choked meadow on the cover, a tranquil scene no one in his or her right mind would associate with him. The inside featured a quotation from Machiavelli—he liked that—along with a dreadful picture of Wurm after the madness came. His black eyebrows and mustache contrasted
with his slate-gray hair and beard. Along with craggy wrinkles, it all gave him the look of a Civil War veteran. Since escaping the CIA compound, he had trimmed the beard and cut his hair. Beneath the picture, the program announced in flowing script:
In Loving Celebration of
Edgar Wurm
A man who shared of himself
Without thought for himself
He snorted.
What perfect rubbish.
Eighteen months ago, Wurm had been diagnosed with mild schizophrenia. He never regarded himself as crazy, just a slave to obsession. A parade of doctors had pretended to understand his paranoia and eccentricities, but all had failed. He might have been lost in his mind for a time, but he was lucid now. He was sure of it, not like the old days when obsession took him hostage and ruined his career. Because he knew secrets that the United States government feared would leak out with his mental condition, arrangements had been made for his psychiatric care. The government had sequestered him in a secret ward of a hospital. He had spent the time conquering his illness and reading and painting.
And thinking.
Wurm was always thinking.
He looked again at the funeral program. Turning it over, he found a handwritten note on the back. Someone had scrawled four words in black ink.
You can’t hide forever
A chill tickled his neck. It was a warning. A threat. They knew he would come here. He had walked right into their trap.
A sound echoed off the granite wall.
Wurm squinted, looking outside the mausoleum’s doorway. Cursing under his breath, he stuffed the flashlight and the program inside his wrinkled coat. He reached for his shoulder holster and brought out the Kimber.
He slipped outside the mausoleum, fresh air streaming into his nostrils. No sign of anyone out here. The moon appeared as a watery circle in iron-gray clouds. In the distance, the Washington Monument glowed like a phantom obelisk. New Year’s Eve had arrived along the East Coast, and fireworks painted the far night sky with explosions of color.
That sound again.
A woman in her early twenties darted past a darkened tree. It was a relief when he recognized Cori Cassidy, a little thing with short blonde hair and more than her share of spunk and brilliance. A woman doomed, at times, with a terrible curiosity. She had traveled to Europe with him the night before his alleged death.
Wurm lingered behind an oak tree. Why in the world was she in this graveyard at midnight?
He spied a second figure on the cemetery grass. A CIA officer? Wurm’s stomach muscles clenched. The man pointed a handgun at the woman.
“Stop right there,” the man barked.
Cori screamed as she stumbled back against a tree. Wurm aimed the Kimber at the stranger. He relaxed his guard when the dark-haired man holstered the weapon.
“John,” she choked, “why are you here?”
Wurm recognized the man. In another era, John Brynstone would have made an unflinching gunslinger with his lean rugged looks, onyx-black hair, and mesmerizing ice-blue eyes. Thirty years old, he stood a robust six feet two inches, only a little shorter than Wurm. He worked for the Special Collection Service, the elite intelligence organization that combined stealthy CIA operations with National Security Agency technology. Brynstone was their star agent.
Wurm wasn’t a man who craved friendship. But right now, Cori Cassidy and John Brynstone were the closest people he had to friends in the world. On impulse, he decided to reveal himself. He hungered to see looks of surprise brighten their faces.
He took a step forward, his size-fourteen shoe smashing fresh snow under leather. Then he stopped, his breath visible in the frosty air. Brynstone was a hard man to figure. How would he deal with news of Wurm’s return?
He debated it for a moment.
Wurm decided against showing himself. He walked off into the night, leaving footprints that curled past the oak tree and disappeared at the wet road.
Now was not the time.
The Recovery
Three years ago
London, England
Alone in a Mercedes sedan, Edgar Wurm brought binoculars to his eyes. In the middle of a brisk September night, Metropolitan police constables drove a Vauxhall Astra SUV along a lonely road not far from Victoria Street. Wurm spied two members of the police service inside the black vehicle, each wearing fluorescent yellow jackets, riot gloves, and navy-blue custodian helmets. Their mission? To transport an ancient relic from New Scotland Yard headquarters to a high-tech storage facility on the outskirts of London. The Met provided serious protection for the Scintilla, a little patch of vellum that dated from two thousand years ago.
The Scintilla was priceless. Scotland Yard knew it.
Their London Stolen Arts Database listed more than fifty thousand items of stolen property including paintings, gold textiles, furniture, coins, and manuscripts. Some were invaluable. Others were insignificant. Their database of art, antiquities, and cultural property made no mention of the Scintilla. In fact, the Art and Antiques Unit at Scotland Yard denied its existence among their vast holdings. Wurm knew the truth, thanks to an inside source. After two years under secure protection, the Scintilla was on the move.
The mysterious vellum contained a formula that could unlock the power of the Radix, a legendary root rumored to hold the power to either heal or destroy. When combined with ingredients listed on the Scintilla, the Radix could create the White Chrism, a consecrated ointment so powerful that it was called the “perfect medicine.”
That wasn’t all.
According to legend, the Scintilla also contained a more menacing secret. A second formula scrawled on the vellum was said to unleash the root’s darker power. Known as the Black Chrism, it offered the threat of an unholy death.
The Radix, when joined with the secrets of the Scintilla, could deliver good or evil. But tragically, the vellum had been torn in half centuries before and remained hidden for ages. Two years ago, Wurm had discovered the Scintilla, but only the top half. The Art and Antiques Unit at New Scotland Yard had confiscated it after his alleged death.
Now was the time to correct that injustice.
His team was in place. He leaned forward, his arms braced on top of the steering wheel as the police vehicle rolled past his Mercedes. The explosive was positioned near the SUV’s wheelbase. The charge was set. No more waiting.
Wurm touched his throat mic. “Do it now.”
His men put the plan into action. A blinding light cut into the night as the blast erupted from beneath the vehicle, flipping it. In a screeching chorus of metal scraping concrete, the SUV rocketed onto the pavement.
“Go,” Wurm ordered over the mic. “Make it fast.”
Two Audi SUVs squealed onto the scene from opposite directions. Climbing out, Wurm’s men scrambled to the overturned Astra and dragged the bewildered and bloodied Metropolitan police constables onto the street. Like their fellow officers in the United Kingdom, they did not carry firearms. Three of Wurm’s security operators restrained the men and marched them at gunpoint behind the gray Audi, taking the constables out of view—a good move, since Wurm couldn’t afford to be seen. He ordered four additional operatives to search the Astra and a few minutes later, a burly Samoan named Tupa reemerged from the overturned vehicle.
Wurm pulled his shoulder-length hair into a ponytail, then slid on gloves. He lowered the driver-side window.
Dressed in black, Tupa hurried across the street carrying a small metal box. Coming up beside the car, the big man handed it through the window.
“This it, sir?”
Wurm opened the box, then inspected an innocent scrap of calfskin. A thin smile crossed his lips. He had craved this moment for two years. The Scintilla—or at least one half of it—was back in the hands of its rightful
owner. He closed the lid.
“Took you long enough,” Wurm grumbled to Tupa. “Now, clear the scene.”
Wurm brimmed with giddy excitement as he stole another look inside the box. “You have no idea what I’ve gone through to possess you,” he told the aged vellum. “Once again, your secrets belong to me. Now I must find your missing brother.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, their abrasive cries drawing closer. Wurm and his men sped away in separate vehicles, escaping into the night.
The Quest
Five months ago
New York City
You can’t hide forever, read the note someone had scrawled on Edgar Wurm’s funeral program.
But he had. Wurm had spent much of the last four and a half years hiding in Asia and Europe—always on the move, always looking over his shoulder. Now he was back in the States. Another risk, but a necessary one.
A record-breaking late-February storm had dumped more than a foot of snow on Manhattan overnight. A pristine white blanket draped Central Park, drawing people in bundled clothing to celebrate a reprieve from work and school. No one had noticed an isolated figure scaling a snow-draped boulder along the park’s southwest corner. Wurm wanted it that way.
Beneath his walking hat, his long gray hair reached to the shoulders of his wool twill coat. Fresh from his climb, he loosened his scarf and surveyed the view from Umpire Rock. It conjured fond memories of a winter long ago when he had lived in the city.
At the time, Wurm had been obsessed with a mysterious medieval document known as the Voynich manuscript. Known as the world’s most mysterious book, it was written in a bizarre and undeciphered script. After three decades of painstaking work, he had succeeded in breaking one section of Voynich code. It had offered clues and insights about the Radix, the great prize of alchemy.
Wurm needed to understand how the Radix had changed him. To find answers, he needed help.
He cast his gaze down at the Heckscher Ballfields, where John Brynstone and his small daughter rolled a ball of snow across center field. Beside them, Brynstone’s black cat peered from a crimson sled and poked an apprehensive paw in the snow. Testing it, she jumped high in the air then landed, disappearing in a spray of white, then scrambled back onto the sled. The sound of laughter from the man and the little girl in the pink coat drifted up to Umpire Rock.