CHAPTER FIVE

Nice, France

June 10

Night

As Lily and Darrell searched for a gangster along a narrow alley of dim streetlamps and deep shadows, she felt her chest slowly being crushed. Markus Wolff’s eerie phone call terrified her. Was Becca hurt? Was she even alive? What had Wolff and his assassins done to her best friend in the world? What kind of crazy horror had happened at the airport?

“We’ve never been this alone,” Darrell said.

He slowed at a corner that seemed to mark the end of the residential district and the beginning of a neighborhood of seedy warehouses and derelict garages.

As much as Lily didn’t want to go where they were going—the worse it looked, the more they went there—they really needed help. Assuming, of course, Maurice Maurice didn’t just murder them and put them in an oil drum—or, she supposed, two oil drums—and dump them into the Mediterranean.

“But,” Darrell added, “we’ll find people to ask about Maurice. We’ll find him.”

She suddenly wanted to hug him—or something—for saying such a thing softly and nonironically. Maybe Darrell was human, after all.

“We’ll see people who don’t look too criminally. That street over there looks safe-ish. Let’s take it down to the water.”

And he wasn’t saying things that required a response from her. Which was also good, because if she opened her mouth, she would probably cry. And if she cried, he’d get even more nonironic, and the last thing Lily wanted to do was to get back into that all-too-painful conversation with Darrell about the future. She’d already told him that after Triangulum was safe, she was leaving. Too much danger, violence, and death for her.

But then?

Then the strangest thing had happened.

It was crazy, sure, but when she’d pushed away from the window frame earlier that day and flown in the air across that alley like a bird, landing on the terrace of that other apartment, followed seconds later by Darrell, whose fall she softened by grabbing his shoulders . . . well, that was pretty amazing. It was dangerous, yes. It was insane, sure. But it was dangerous and insane in a fairly spectacularly awesome way.

If there was such a thing.

But I’ve already decided to leave. So now what?

Not knowing what, she followed Darrell past innumerable hangar-like structures, dark warehouses, marine repair shops, dented trucks, random piles of oily chains, puddles of black gunk, stacks of steel beams, as many storage drums as you could count, and almost as many sad-looking stray dogs.

“Hey! You!”

The voice was like a rock grinding another rock.

“Uh-oh,” Darrell whispered. “Keep walking.”

“Stop right zhere!”

“Okay,” said Darrell.

They turned together slowly. A man in grimy overalls leaned against a warehouse door, holding a small paper cup to his lips. “You kids Americains?”

“How did you know?” said Lily.

“Only Americains sink it is safe here. Is not safe.”

“All right then,” said Darrell, “we’ll just leave—”

“We’re looking for Maurice Maurice,” Lily said. “Have you heard of him?”

The man unleaned himself from the door. “So. You’re not interested in safe, after all. Oui, I know him. I take you to him. Come zis way.”

Nice man, thought Lily. Or maybe a killer.

“Be on your guard,” she whispered.

“On it?” he said. “I’m never off it.”

The man with the paper cup strolled down several dark and ever-narrowing alleys in nearly a full circle. Then he turned a corner, turned another at the end of that, and started backtracking. Lily was ready to grab Darrell and bolt when the guy took an abrupt left, cut through an alley, and came out in an inner courtyard. Parked outside a low office building was—and she knew this because Darrell nearly croaked when he told her—a silver-gray Aston Martin DB5 sports car.

“Wait inside,” the man growled.

“The car?” said Darrell.

“You wish. Ze office.” He gestured with his cup to the door, then slipped away.

They entered and sat in two leather chairs in front of a wide desk. The office was small but very rich, with several Chinese vases full of some bushy purple flower Lily’d never seen outside that “jewel in the heart of Austin,” the Zilker Botanical Garden. They reminded her of home, and her nose stung. Do not go there.

A few minutes later, Maurice Maurice appeared from a back room.

The man was absurdly muscular. He was dressed in an exquisite beige suit, navy shirt unbuttoned at the collar, tan loafers, and dark glasses. He lifted the glasses onto his forehead and studied the two children. “But I know you.”

“Um . . . last week,” said Darrell. “Monte Carlo. You gave us a wire to film an auction.”

“I remember!” he said, bending over and hugging them both with a grip like a vise. “Wait! You’re not wearing a wire now, are you?”

“We are so totally unwired it’s not even funny,” Lily said. “No phones or anything.”

Maurice Maurice laughed. “Good. Good. What can I do for you?”

Darrell told Maurice Maurice a half-true, half-sketchy story, but it hit all the right notes and seemed to convince the man. Even before he finished listening, Maurice Maurice sat at his desk and reached for his phone.

“I know exactly what you need. Hello? Is Jacques there? Yes. Good.” He paused a few seconds. “Jacques, I need favor. Friends of Terence and of mine”—he glanced over at them, smiling—“need travel out of Nice. No roads. Yes? Good. Tell me where. Uh-huh. Terminal Seven? Isn’t that where we buried . . . yes. Fine. Friday night? Perfect.”

Lily stole a look at Darrell as if to say, What in the world are we getting into?

His expression replied, I’m too young to die.

Maurice Maurice hung up. “It’s all fixed. We hide you until Friday nighttime. Then we take you to Marseille down the coast. There you board freighter for Gibraltar. From there, you hook up with family. Maybe. Either way, if we are careful, the Order will not find you. Because you are friends with Monsieur Terence, I waive my usual escape fee.”

Lily breathed more easily. “Thank you, Maurice.”

The man rose gracefully from his desk and went to a cabinet against the wall. Opening it, he drew out two small pistols. “You want? You may need. The Order kills.”

“Uh . . . ,” said Darrell, “we’re . . . no. Thank you. We’ll be okay. Right, Lil?”

She nodded over and over. “Absolutely. No firearms.”

“Suit yourself,” the man said, returning the pistols to their case. “But you want a bulletproof backpack for that box you have?”

“Yes. Great!” said Darrell. “And maybe an extra belt?”

“You got it. In the meantime, I’ll try to discover what happened at the airport. I hope your friends and mother aren’t dead.”

Dead.

Lily felt her insides collapsing like an office building they blow up to make room for a bigger office building, though she was pretty sure no one could build anything inside of her.

Becca, are you alive? Please be alive!

Maurice Maurice gave Darrell a belt and a small stiff backpack for Triangulum, then he left the room to organize their transport to Marseille. Darrell’s thoughts reeled from the grim bluntness of the man’s word.

Dead.

No. Not my mom. Not Wade. Or Becca. Or Julian. No. Not them. Never them.

But there wasn’t any real reason to hope, either. There was so much killing in their lives right now, it was no wonder Lily wanted out.

“Maybe we should . . . I don’t know,” he started to say, then he felt water rushing up behind his eyes, stinging them. He had to look away. “Lily, are we up for this? Because maybe I’m not. Going to Gibraltar, not knowing what happened to any of them—”

“Darrell, please stop,” she whispered. “Try to toughen up, will you?” Then a long pause. “Please. I’m trying to be tough, but I’m really shaky here, and we can’t have both of us like that, so we need to take turns or it’s all going to fall apart. It just is. We’ll take turns, but right now, you be the tough one. Just be it.”

She was shaking like a leaf in the wind.

He sucked in, tried to harden himself as if he’d just been given an order. “Sure, sure, I was just saying it’s going to be different for a little while. But we’ll make it, I’m pretty sure. I mean, of course we will.”

So, all right. He would toughen up. Which would probably be easier with Lily than with anyone else, because Lily was so strong and muscular and whatever. What “toughen up” actually meant, he had no idea, but he could probably start by focusing. On the relics. On stopping Galina. On saving Triangulum. On doing what needed to be done. He’d keep focusing on the next thing and the next until . . . well, all the way until that strange thing called the Frombork Protocol.

The Frombork Protocol was the mysterious set of instructions Copernicus supposedly wrote on his deathbed in 1543. It was said to command that all twelve relics be brought together and destroyed. How and where and why, he had no clue, but it wasn’t time for that yet. There were a bunch of relics to find. Darrell would focus on finding them.

“So. First stop, Gibraltar,” he said, trying to sound upbeat.

“Gibraltar,” she said. “Okay. Good.”

The next half hour was a hustle from the office to a safe house to another safe house then another, each seedier than the one before. Several nervous overnights were followed by exhausted days of doing nothing but waiting. He and Lily debated about whether to try to find a safe home for Triangulum, but something told them that even if they could find a secure place, they might not be able to retrace their journey to it. Besides, having a priceless relic might be their only bargaining chip, in case things got hairy.

“It stays with us for now,” she said.

“Agreed.”

Finally, the waiting was over, and the two were rushed into a limo, then a car with tinted windows, then a fuel truck, until they were crouched in the rear half of a moving van filled with barrels and cartons of olives.

“I wouldn’t eat too many of those.”

Darrell looked up from the wooden carton he had opened. “I’m hungry. Aren’t you?”

“Yes. I just wouldn’t eat too many of those.”

Lily’s eyes were fiercely downcast, and she was nodding her head as if having a silent conversation with herself. He could guess what both Lilys were saying—“This is it.” “You said it. I’m so done with crazy.” “Let’s say good-bye to every bit of this.” “Me first.” “Then me.”—and he found himself crawling over to her, glad to have her both there, if only for a little while longer.

She shifted a bit and laid her head on his shoulder.

It must have been three or four slow meandering hours later—daylight no longer seeped through the cracks into the compartment—when the rear doors squeaked open.

The smell of olive oil was quickly replaced by boat fuel and sea salt. They had arrived at the docks of Marseille.

Someone who looked like a sea captain limped over to the truck. “Dis way. You hide below deck. Four, maybe six days. Tiny cabin. You hurry.”

Lily gasped. “Six days! We’re going to be locked up—together!—for six days!”

“Or eight. Can’t tell. You hurry.”

“Oh, man,” Darrell groaned, pretending disgust. Actually, it sounds all right to me.

Keeping Lily as near as possible, he followed the captain across the pier to the giant hulk of a rusted antique freighter. They hurried up the ramp together, then he took a breath. The night air was a blend of salt, fried food, fear, crushing doubt, and the sting of ship fuel. It was a nauseating combination; but it would be four, six, maybe eight days before he breathed real air again, so he drew it in as deeply as he could.