CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

Wade and the others tried their best to answer Clive Porter’s questions as the car bounded over the rough roads, but finally they were all stunned by the ferocity of the attack. In a matter of seconds both Rafe and his grandfather, along with at least two thugs, had been shot, maybe killed.

But Wade knew that Galina didn’t care how many victims piled up. She only cared about the relics. Just the relics. Why she needed them, what she actually planned to do with the astrolabe, well, they’d barely had time to think about that. Was she going for the mysterious cargo they’d learned about? He couldn’t tell yet.

But the deadline was a little over a month away. They would know by then.

“Galina wanted this painting,” Becca said softly. “Is that the reason she didn’t shoot me when she had the chance, because she didn’t want to damage the painting? Or is it, like Markus Wolff said, because of Joan Aleyn, the young woman I saved in London? I don’t know. But this painting has got to be important. It’s the one Nicolaus showed me. I’m thinking maybe we should take it to the Morgan Museum in New York. Our friend Rosemary Billingham could examine it for clues.”

“Good idea,” said Lily. “In the meantime, I wish we could look it up.”

“Oh, here,” said Clive, slipping his hand into his jacket pocket. “Service is spotty this far outside the city, but you can use my phone. It’s not been used. Same precautions as always. Once only, for a few minutes.”

The moment they came in range of Montevideo, Lily began tapping in searches. They quickly paid off. “Guys, this painting is famous. It’s called Portrait of a Young Man. Raphael painted it, then supposedly repainted it. It was lost during World War Two. Stolen by the Nazis. Now we find it in the jungle.”

“I say, good show, people!” Clive said. “The world will thank you!”

The sun was going down, and when the road was in shadow, the air was cooler.

Wade squirmed over the seat and into the back with Becca, where they studied the small, oil-on-wood work together. “The fur he’s wearing over his shoulder. It’s an animal. A brown bear, maybe?” Wade said. “It could be the constellation Ursus.”

Becca nodded. “He’s kind of looking at us, but also from the corner of his eye at the scene outside the window. Do you think that means something?”

“Maybe it’s a clue to where the Guardian took a relic,” Darrell said. “Maybe the Guardian was Raphael himself. . . .”

“Nicolaus said ‘hope’ when he showed you this picture,” said Lily. “That’s got to mean something, too. Maybe he hopes we figure it out.”

“Everything means something; we know that,” Becca said softly.

The view outside the window in the painting was mostly of a medium-blue sky above a mountain range inclining from left to right, and a castle, perhaps shimmering in the sun, perhaps made of white stone, surmounted by a tall pinnacle of a tower.

As they studied the picture, Becca poked into her bag, took out two pairs of reading glasses, and slid them on, one over the other. “The surrounding land is forested, and there’s a body of water in the foreground.”

Clive zigzagged through a final series of muddy turns and bounced back onto the road toward Montevideo. There were cars, trucks, and buses, but Galina’s SUVs were nowhere in sight.

“I wouldn’t be surprised if the landscape is a clue to where the relic was hidden,” Sara said from the front seat. “The terrain is obviously European. Roald might know. If Carlo is still with him, so much the better.”

“I wish we had an actual art book,” Becca said. “We might find out even more.”

Clive slowed the car. “Airport in fifteen, twenty minutes. Your new passports will get you safely out of Uruguay, but I suggest you stop at a Thomas Cook office first chance you get.”

“Thank you, Clive,” said Sara. “We will.”

“In the meantime, it might be best if I drop you at a decoy terminal, say Egypt Air?”

“Good idea,” said Darrell. “We can probably find a computer station—a real true public open one this time—and send a high-res image of the portrait to Terence.”

“I think Becca’s right,” Sara said. “We should take the painting to the Morgan.”

Becca nodded. “Yes, good. We need as much information on this as we can get. And I think I’ll feel so much better in New York. It’s really too hot here. I’m not getting used to the food. Once I’m on solid ground again, nothing will stop me.”

It sounded good, Wade thought, but he feared it was nothing more than wishful thinking. He watched Becca grab the car’s armrest and press her fingers into it.

“What can I do?” he whispered.

“Sorry. I’m all right.”

“You’re not,” he whispered. “Are you sure it’ll pass?”

Becca nodded.

Pass?

It was so much worse than Becca let on, even to Wade.

She was so cold inside, yet her head was a furnace, and her skin was on fire. She felt her heart beat dizzyingly fast. She knew Wade suspected something more than the others, but not how close she was to passing out right there in the car. She leaned her face against the cool door frame and breathed in the moving air, hot as it was, and hoped she wouldn’t faint.

Twenty minutes later, they were hurrying into the terminal, Darrell and Lily first, Wade next, then herself, and finally Sara. Breathing in was like sucking molten iron into her lungs. She felt Wade’s arm around her shoulder. It felt good there.

She suddenly stopped. “Wade,” she whispered. “I think I’m going to . . . to . . .”

“No. No. Becca, look at me. We’ll be in New York soon.” He was so close, she could smell him. She would normally have swatted him away if he got that near to her, but not this time. He was still there when she closed her eyes and the darkness inside her eyelids folded over her like deep water. She felt she was swimming in acid.

But Wade didn’t go away. His arm was tight around her shoulders as they made their way through a dense crowd of travelers to a counter where he bought her a bottle of icy water. They rested for a few minutes, then exited through a side door and along a walkway to the next terminal and the next, where Sara was already at the ticket counter.

“Five seats for the next flight to New York,” she told the ticket agent.

That sounds so good, Becca thought. So good. New York. Somewhere familiar. She closed her eyes again and felt Wade’s arm around her shoulders. Also familiar. Good.