The Forbidden Stone. Tony Abbott

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СКАЧАТЬ you knew to look for the letters near the intersection of 48 Across and Down.

      Tonight, there was no call. The encoded crossword did not appear.

      Vogel could only assume that the delicately constructed system of communication had been compromised. The inner circle had been breached.

      As he hit Send on his computer, he wondered whether his colleague at Le Monde had fled his post. Or worse. That he had not fled his post but had perished in defense of their secret.

      “In either case, I must leave Berlin,” he said to himself, standing and scanning the room. “Flee now and hope my American friend will understand my message … and remember the old days.”

      He checked his watch. Two a.m., give or take. It was six hours earlier in Texas, after office hours. His friend would see the email in the morning. The clues were there. If only Roald would connect and follow them.

      “I have kept you out of it until the last. Now, I have no choice. And young Wade. I dread this even more for him. The terrible responsibility …”

      He lifted the phone from its cradle and pressed a number into it, waited for the connection, and spoke four words.

      “Carlo, expect a visit.”

      He set down the receiver, knowing that the number dialed and each word spoken were twisted and garbled in a way that could be unscrambled only at the receiving end. Technology had its uses, after all.

      Checking his vest pocket for the fifth time in as many minutes, he fingered the train ticket. Then he placed his computer on the floor and stomped on it until its shell cracked. He removed the hard drive, bent it nearly in half, and threw it into the fire.

      “What else?” He spied the starfish paperweight on his desk. It was no more than a cheap beachside souvenir. A sea star—Asterias, its Latin term—molded in glass.

      Asterias. The name he’d called his hand-picked group of students so long ago. All that was over now. He gave the paperweight a pat, then took up a framed photograph. It was of himself two decades before, with three young men and two women standing under the blue glow of a café’s sign. They were all smiling. Professor and students. Asterias.

      “My friend,” Vogel whispered to one of the faces. “It is all in your hands now. If only you will take the challenge—”

      Something snapped sharply on the street below the apartment. Vogel’s heart thumped with dread. A door creaked and footsteps thudded up the stairs. “No, no. It is too soon—”

      He threw the photograph in the fire and the door burst open. Three thick men in dark suits pushed their way in. They were followed by a shrunken man with wire glasses and flat hair and a woman young enough to be a student herself.

      “Who are you?” Vogel cried, dragging the glass paperweight off the desk and clutching it tightly. He knew too well who they were. The enemies of man.

      The first thug knocked him down. Vogel stumbled hard to his knees, then to the floor. “Murderers! Thieves!” he screamed, while the other two men fanned out into the small apartment, turning over everything in sight. The woman stood by the door as calm and silent as a coiled snake. What was wrong with her expression? She was beautiful. Like an angel, even.

      And yet … those eyes.

      Was she the one?

      The men tore the books from the shelves. Tables crashed to the floor. Upholstered chairs, his bed, his pillows, all sliced open. His priceless collection of musical instruments tossed aside as if they were worthless toys.

      “Brutes!” the old man cried out. “There is nothing here!”

      The bent man with pasty skin and spectacles perched on his nose like a second set of eyes leaned over him.

      “Your associate in Paris gave you up,” he snarled at Vogel. “You have the key to the relics. Give it to us.”

      Adrenaline spiking his old veins, Vogel gripped the starfish paperweight and slammed it hard against the temple of the pale man. “There is the key. There, on your head!”

      The pale man pawed his bleeding temple. “What have you done to my face, you fool?”

      “Improved it!” Vogel snapped.

      One of the thick men knelt and wrapped his massive hand around the old man’s neck. He grinned as he brought his fingers together.

      “Breathe your last, old fool!” shrieked the pale man.

      Vogel burst out with a cold laugh. “No. Not last …”

      The woman glared at Vogel, then at the hearth. “He has told someone! There is something in the fire—get it!”

      Without thinking, the pale man thrust his hand into the flames, screaming as he dragged the smoldering hard drive onto the floor. The photograph was already ash.

      “Discover who he has told,” the woman said coldly. “I should have known. The key was never here. Finish him. Drop his body in the streets. Leave no clues—”

      Choking, Vogel flailed frantically. He knocked over a music stand, hoping to grip its shaft. Instead, all that came to his hand was a battered silver pitch pipe.

      As life ebbed swiftly from the old man, Galina Krause stared at him from two different-hued eyes. One blue. One silvery gray.

      “Go ahead, Vogel. Play for us. Play your swan song …”

      

      Austin, Texas

      March 9th

      8:03 a.m.

      Wade and Darrell took turns yanking on the door of the observatory at the University of Texas.

      It wouldn’t budge.

      “And that’s why Dad gave you the key,” Wade said.

      “Which I gave to you.”

      “No, you didn’t.”

      “I’m pretty sure I did,” said Darrell.

      “When?”

      “Before.”

      “Before when?”

      “Before you lost it.”

      Wade grumbled. “I didn’t lose the key. I couldn’t lose the key. I couldn’t lose it because I saw Dad give it to you. In his office. When he dropped us off to run Sara to the airport.”

      “Sara. You mean the lady I call Mom?”

      “Sara lets me call her Sara,” СКАЧАТЬ