Chapter 10

10

May 11, 8:44 P . M . MSK

Moscow, Russian Federation

Tucker hurried across Vadkovsky Lane with Kane at his side. Kowalski followed with Marco, while Yuri kept close to Dr. Elle Stutt. They headed toward an ornate century-old building at the corner. It rose in three stories of pinkish-orange stucco, decorated in a frilly Art Nouveau styling, with wrought-iron balconies and butterfly ornamentation.

It was their destination, the Holy See's Apostolic Nunciature.

"Why are we going to the Vatican embassy?" Elle asked.

For the sake of security, she had only been told their destination once the train had reached the station. Earlier, she had changed out of her work clothes and was dressed casually in a light blue windbreaker and jeans. They were all outfitted with similar streetwear. Even Kane and Marco had shed their Kevlar vests and wore simple collars and leashes.

Tucker glanced back at her, at all of them.

Just a group out for a stroll, walking their dogs on this spring night.

"The friends I told you about," Tucker explained. "This is where we were told to meet them."

She opened her mouth as if to ask a question, then closed it again.

Tucker led his party around the side of the building and over to a pair of black iron gates. It led into a parking lot behind the embassy. On the other side, a seventeen-story apartment complex loomed over the space.

He lifted a hand to ring a buzzer, but the gates opened on their own.

"About time you got here," Monk said and waved them all through. "Everyone's gathered inside. There's much we need to discuss and a short time to do it in."

"Why the hurry?"

"We're leaving at midnight."

Kowalski looked none too pleased. "We just hauled our asses here."

Tucker backed a step. "Hey, I'm only dropping everyone off. I've done all that Director Crowe has asked me to do. Me and the boys are headed home."

Monk frowned. "Your choice. But there's something you might want to hear first."

Tucker sighed, then shrugged. "If you've got hot coffee and something to eat, I might listen."

"We got dog treats, too." Monk glanced back at him. "Just saying."

Tucker cursed under his breath and headed across the parking lot.

Dr. Stutt shifted closer to him, brushing his arm with her fingertips. Her eyes were glassy with worry. "I don't know these people," she whispered.

Though she didn't say it out loud, she clearly did not want Tucker to leave.

"Let's hear what they have to tell us," he said in a noncommittal tone.

Monk led them to the embassy's rear door and herded them into a lobby. He pointed to a stairwell on the left. "Everyone's downstairs."

As they headed below, Tucker noted that the building's upper floors were dark and appeared to be mostly deserted at this late hour. He caught sight of a wobbling beam of light on the main floor, likely from a night watchman on patrol.

Once downstairs, Monk took them over to a conference room off to one side. A long mahogany table ran down its center. The walls were paneled in the same rich wood. A small fireplace smoldered against the back wall. Above the hearth, the papal symbol—a crown and two crossed keys, one gold and one silver—hung on the wall. The tabletop bore the same insignia, depicted in inlays of precious metal.

Contrasting with the regality of the ambassadorial space, a row of flat-panel monitors hung along one wall. They displayed silent newsfeeds from various stations, all broadcasting chaotic footage of burning brick buildings surrounded by high walls.

Tucker could guess the source of that mayhem.

Commander Gray Pierce sat in a leather chair with a leg up on a neighboring seat. Tucker winced at the state of his condition. A bag of ice rested on his ankle. His face was darkly bruised, with Steri-Strips sealing dozens of cuts and wounds. It looked like the man had fallen through a plate-glass window—several times.

On one of the monitors, the fiery wreckage of a downed military helicopter smoldered.

Kowalski noted it, too. "Looks like you all were busy."

Gray motioned to the table. "Take a seat. We have a tight agenda."

Tucker signaled for Kane and Marco to retire to spots by the fireplace. The two shepherds loped over and settled there, though both kept their ears tall, wary of all the strangers.

Can't blame them.

Tucker drew a chair for Elle, then took the next seat. He eyed the trio of religious figures sharing the table. The one with the Roman collar had to be Father Bailey. Tucker had never met the man, but Kowalski had filled him in on the priest's past ties with Sigma. The other pair—an older, gray-bearded man and a slim young woman—wore robes of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Tucker struggled to understand their presence here.

Gray made introductions and then nodded to Elle. "Thank you, Dr. Stutt, for agreeing to come here."

"I don't think I had much choice," she said. "And I have many questions."

"Understandably so. Hopefully, we'll be able to clear up a few details. But right now, the situation remains... fluid."

"More like jacked up," Kowalski commented. The big man stood to the side, eyeballing the monitors, looking more disappointed than fazed, clearly frustrated not to have been in the thick of that firefight.

Gray pointed at Kowalski and motioned to the door. "Seichan is upstairs, coordinating with embassy security. The more eyes we have up there, watching our sixes, all the better."

Kowalski shrugged, likely happy to avoid a long talk, and headed toward the door.

Gray's gaze turned to Yuri—Bogdan's head of security—who still stood to the side. "Mister Severin, would you be willing to assist upstairs?"

Yuri's jaw muscles tightened, hardening his darkly stubbled face. He was clearly reluctant to leave, and not just because he would be abandoning the botanist, a woman who Bogdan had sent him to protect. Tucker suspected Yuri's boss, ever an opportunist, had assigned his employee to gather whatever intel he could about this whole situation.

Gray kept a firm stare on Yuri, but it was Kowalski who broke the standoff.

The big man grabbed the security chief by the elbow and drew him away. "C'mon. There's got to be food around here somewhere—and if we're lucky, maybe a bottle of vodka."

After the two left, Monk closed the door behind them, ensuring their privacy. Tucker knew most embassies had sophisticated jamming equipment to protect their premises, and undoubtedly the same was true here. Plus, he noted the black boxes with red LED lights affixed to the walls. They looked recently placed, probably by Gray's team, meant to augment the building's security with DARPA's latest tradecraft.

But why take all these precautions? What is really going on?

Gray waited for Monk to take a seat. "First, let's catch you up on what has happened and what we've learned... at some cost." He shifted the ice bag on his ankle and set about relating all that had transpired at the ruins of an old monastery—including who had been involved.

"So this Valya Mikhailov is behind all of this." Tucker was unable to keep the bitterness from his words. "Both that ambush at the monastery and the attempted kidnapping."

Elle stared from him over to Gray. Her face had paled, even her lips, as she took in his injuries, likely getting a better appreciation of the danger she faced. "This woman? What does she want from me?"

"It's not just her," Gray said. "We believe she was hired by someone who works for the Russian Orthodox Church."

Tucker began to understand why two representatives of the Moscow Patriarchate might be in attendance. Still, throughout his account, Gray's eyes would slightly narrow whenever his gaze swept their way.

He needs these others but doesn't fully trust them.

Tucker had little patience for such subterfuge. "What's this all about?"

Father Bailey answered, his focus still on the spread of photos before him. "It concerns a lost continent called Hyperborea." He looked up from the table. "And I believe someone found it."

9:12 P . M .

Always get the crap end of the stick.

Kowalski patrolled the rear wing on the third floor. Seichan had assigned him this lonely, dark section. While he would've preferred to keep watch somewhere closer to a kitchen, he hadn't argued with her, not after noting her injuries and the hard glint to her eyes.

She had taken over command of the embassy's security office, with its bank of CCTV monitors that showed every angle outside the place. The Italian guardsman had balked at this intrusion, but Father Bailey had arrived with a papal-sealed order granting them full control of the building.

When Kowalski had arrived at the security office, Seichan had immediately sent him off on patrol, likely to get him out of her way. She had been in no mood for anyone to second guess her. Not that he blamed her. She had been right about Valya luring Sigma to Russia and laying a trap for them, one that had nearly gotten her and Gray killed. Even that bastard Radi? had been a rabbit that Valya had let loose for him and Tucker to chase.

He shook his head.

That tricky little witch...

Valya clearly was done underestimating Sigma.

And we'd better do the same with her.

Kowalski continued across the wing to check its far side. A penlight illuminated his way, but it only made the walls and ceilings draw closer—and the halls were already plenty tight in this old building. He had been forced by Gray to read up on the embassy, to memorize its layout, to know its history. The building was built more than a hundred years ago, when people must've been much smaller.

Definitely tinier than me.

He heard echoes of other men, embassy security, all speaking Italian. Their whispers carried eerily through the old structure, like disembodied ghosts. The floorboards creaked under his weight. This section of the embassy appeared little used. The offices were empty. The hallways had drapes of cobwebs that made his flesh crawl whenever he passed through them.

As with all embassies, these grounds were considered the territory of its home country—in this case, Vatican City. It was why Gray had agreed to make this their local safehouse. It served as the perfect shelter against any Russian incursion.

Though, right now, this place seemed less a sanctuary and more like a haunted house.

And I hate haunted houses.

He always had, even as a kid. The dark hallways, the cramped passages, the jump scares. It might've been because he had sprouted to his full six-foot-seven frame when he was only thirteen. He had been a gangly kid who didn't know what to do with his limbs, so narrow spaces had always challenged him. Add in costumed assholes who always seemed to target the tall, goofy kid, and it was a true horror show.

He did not expect any such surprises here, but he found himself moving slower, trying not to creak the old floorboards. As he turned a corner, moonlight shone down the next hall. He had reached the windows on this side of the wing. The vantage would allow him to spy across the expanse of the parking lot to the neighboring buildings.

Relieved to abandon the dark, tight spaces, he headed toward the light.

Once near the end of the hallway, he heard someone speaking Russian, sounding furtive, but also perturbed.

Kowalski stopped at the corner and took a fast glance down the hall that paralleled the row of windows. At the far end, Yuri Severin stood near a stairwell, bathed in moonlight. The man clutched a cell phone to his ear.

Kowalski eavesdropped. Unfortunately, he knew only a few words of Russian, most of them curses. Still, Gray had been adamant about them all going dark, forbidding any unauthorized communication.

Clearly, Yuri had chosen to ignore this order.

What's this guy doing?

Kowalski waited. He heard Tucker's name mentioned—and from Yuri's tone, it sounded like a curse word. Then again, so did most of the Russian language. Still, Kowalski stiffened when he heard the names Marco and Kane .

He remembered who had shown such exceptional interest in that furry pair.

Yuri's gotta be talking to his boss.

Bogdan must have given his head of security an order to regularly check in.

Yuri finished his call, lowered the phone, and spat out a few words that Kowalski did know. " Yob tvoyu mat... "

Kowalski grimaced at the rudeness of the curse.

Yuri ducked away and headed downstairs.

Kowalski pushed out of hiding and stared toward the stairwell. This was going to be a problem—but one that could wait for now. He would alert Gray and leave it to the commander to address.

Not about to wade into that shitstorm.

Besides, he had his own assignment. He returned his attention to the windows and used a set of binoculars to scan the apartment building on the far side of the parking lot. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. He spied on people preparing a late dinner, others lounging in front of televisions, and one naked gentleman who was staring intently at a laptop across his knees.

Nope... enough of that.

He shifted his binoculars down to the parking lot.

He caught sight of a shadowy shape rushing low, heading toward that same apartment building. The figure vanished over the high embassy wall, as if it were a waist-high hurdle.

Kowalski frowned, having recognized the woman.

What is Seichan doing out there?