The Copernicus Archives #2 (8 page)

S
omeone—Wade or Darrell, I couldn't tell whose voice it was—called sharply from the living room. I heard the slap of bare feet on the hardwood. Sara was suddenly in my room, tugging me from the window. “Don't let them see you.”

“How do they know?” I said. “Our phones are good; Julian said they were.”

“I don't know.” Her hand was insistent. “Just move from the window.”

I couldn't. Both rear doors of the car opened at the same time, spreading like raven wings. I expected the men we'd seen earlier. Instead three men in black jumpsuits and body armor climbed out. One reached back into the rear seat and pulled out something. An
automatic rifle. He handed it to the other man and took one for himself; then both pulled ski masks over their faces.

Roald was running down the hall, his hand clasped around his phone, the screen bright. “Time to use the rear exit. Bring only what you need. Out. Now!”

I grabbed my bag, and we hurried down the back stairs into the walled courtyard behind the building. Sara moved slowly, coughing into her hand, stifling the noise as much as she could. From the street in front came a sharp crack. The front-door alarm rang for a few seconds, then stopped.

“They've broken in!” Lily whispered.

I clamped my bag tight under my arm. Nicolaus's diary was more important than ever. It was his way of communicating directly to us. Directly to me.

“We need to get out of London,” Roald said, punching the screen of his phone as he hurried through the alley, holding it to his ear. “I'm trying Terence—”

“Come on, Bec.” Wade ran with me. I felt like a shadow, half there, half with Thomas More and Copernicus, with Holbein . . .

Sun broke through and shone down the passage behind Gower Street. It was a little after two now, and warming up, but I shivered. My armpits were grossly wet. My vision narrowed, squeezing everything into a
tunnel. I couldn't breathe.

“Sir Felix wasn't able to do anything,” Darrell grumbled. “Some help he is—”

“Darrell, he's only one man,” his mother said, leaning on him.

We squirreled through the passage. Darrell helped his mother, but the moment he took his hand from her, she stumbled. Lily caught her. I wondered how long it would take the men to realize we'd gone out the back. Sara was on the move again, holding herself together, steadier now. Roald, Lily, and Wade were first to reach the end of the passage. Wade squirmed ahead like the leader. He put his hand up for us to shush, peeked out, looked back at us, didn't move.

“Is someone out there?” Lily whispered.

Wade shook his head. “Becca, are you all right? Have you been crying?”

I was leaning against the wall, the last of us, even behind Sara. My face must have been deathly. “I went back again. This time, Nicolaus showed me a puzzle. Holbein made it, he said. It had German characters and symbols.” My head pounded. I checked my nose. Dry for now. “Let's just get out of here!”

Still on the phone, Roald slipped by Wade and looked out. A window broke behind us, a harsh sound in the quiet of the alley. “Someone call Julian.”

“I will. I'll tell him about the Holbein puzzle, too.” Wade pushed his hand into his pocket, tugged out his phone, and hit the screen with his thumb. As he did, I hurriedly explained my theory about the algorism stone.

“I think it could be a code for the relic box,” I said. “Thomas had it with him in the Tower of London, then gave it to his family—”

Another crash of glass behind us, then clipped shouting.

“Now.” Roald slid out onto Gower Street. We followed one by one, me last.

Darrell scanned the traffic. “We can't use main streets—”

Julian's calm voice crackled through the speaker on Wade's phone. “I'm working on the car, but no luck yet. I just rechecked; your phones are good. Where are you now?”

“Top of Gower Street,” Darrell said, still looking out between the buildings. “It's busy. I don't see anyone on this side of the flat, though. Not yet.”

“Becca saw a puzzle,” Wade said into his phone. “By Hans Holbein—”

“My dad needs to know that,” Julian said.

Suddenly Terence was on Roald's phone, also on speaker. “Your Umbrella Man—Archie Doyle—is one slippery agent. He's already killed eight people for the
Order, including your friend Boris. He's lurking around, so be careful. In the meantime, run across the street and back to the university. There's no car access on that part of campus. Then go north—”

“North?” said Lily. “We're from Texas. Everything's north!”

“From Chenies Mews to Gower is east,” Julian added from Wade's phone. It was a weird multiway conversation. “Go north to Euston Station. Listen, Dad, they found a German puzzle.” We heard a door slam in the background.

“German puzzle, let me work on that,” said Terence. “But look, you people want Euston train station, not the Underground. I suggest splitting up, at least for now. Sara, go to the third cashier and ask for ‘five tickets for the next train to Bishops Stortford via the London Midland line.' Say it exactly that way. Roald, meet me at Autonoleggio Nazionale in forty minutes. Just you alone. I have information. Too much for the phone. Roald, forty minutes. Hurry!”

“I should know about the black car soon,” said Julian. “Talk to you later.”

They both signed off, and Roald's phone went silent.

“What Terence said sounded like Italian,” said Darrell. “Is there a new code?”

“He's trying it out in his new novel,” Roald said.
“Different languages mean different things. Italian means cut any numbers in half. He'll meet me in twenty minutes. Also, Bishops Stortford is where his mother was born. The third cashier will give you the proper destination.”

“
Autonoleggio nazionale
means something like ‘national rental car,'” I said.

After a few seconds on her tablet, Lily said, “There's National Car Hire on Pentonville Road. A twenty-minute walk. You'll just have time.” She showed him the screen.

“Got it. Kids, Sara,” said Roald, gathering us to him, “I'll draw them away. You help one another to the station. I'll join you after I meet with Terence.”

“Wait!” Sara said fiercely, grasping his sleeve. “They're killers working with Markus Wolff. You don't know what they'll do. I mean, you
do
know what they'll do. I don't want to split up. We shouldn't—”

Roald nodded, holding her to him. “Doyle I don't know about, but Wolff seems like the senior man here. He'll wait until he gets a clear run at us—”

“All the more reason to stay with us, Uncle Roald,” Lily said.

“All the more reason to throw them off,” Roald said. “Look, I know what I'm doing. Julian and Terence will run interference. You have a lead. Follow it.”
Roald kissed Sara quickly, then pushed for the last time through the narrow cut-through and was out on Gower Street, running south, which Lily said was exactly the wrong direction from Pentonville Road. I couldn't tell whether the BMW was in the crush of traffic, but if it was, it must have seen him. He zigzagged along the sidewalk, waving his arms, stopping, stepping out into the road, stepping back. It was quite a show. Sara groaned under her breath.

“All right,” said Wade, taking the lead again. “We can do this.”

We waited for a lull in the traffic, checked and rechecked both ways before crossing, then sprinted across Gower and into the busy university.

Students rushed across the lawns to get to classes; groups of faculty chatted, smoked. Mothers with strollers, joggers, young people tossing Frisbees, everyone going on with their normal lives.

We hurried diagonally across the yards, keeping ourselves as inconspicuous as possible. I kept my eyes open for Archie Doyle, but my mind was swimming with Thomas More's algorism stone and Copernicus's strange warning.

I'd have to tell everyone that, too. And soon.

Finally, we came out to the broad, frantic Euston Road. The pedestrian path across it to the train station
was a zigzag over one lane, a median, and another lane. The instant the lights turned in our favor, we moved through the mass of bodies pouring out of the terminal and entered the station at last.

L
ike all the train stations we'd been in since the relic hunt started, Euston Station boomed with people and announcements and a million sights and smells and other distractions. On top of that, every face looked sinister.

“Mom, remember,” Darrell said. “You ask the third cashier for ‘five tickets for the next train to Bishops Stortford via the London Midland line.'”

“I remember, thanks. Go to that newsstand, all of you”—Sara pointed like Roald would do—“pick up a tourist guidebook, and stay put. Do. Not. Move. I'll be right back.” She gave us a stern look, then headed off to the ticket line. She seemed small and frail in the crowd, but she moved quickly across the floor.

My head was spinning. I had to get the puzzle on paper before I forgot it. The room was so loud that I couldn't concentrate. Maybe I'd already forgotten it, the strange lines and symbols. Then, on the way to the newsstand, I froze.

Lily tugged at my bad arm. I winced, but I wouldn't budge.

“Wait,” she said. “Are you seeing Henry the Eighth in your mind? Is he as fat as they say?”

“No,” I said. “I mean, he might be; that's not it. Someone's here in the station.”

“Wolff?” said Darrell, scanning the huge room. “Or Archie Doyle?”

“I don't know,” I said. I sensed a presence. “If we're not being tracked electronically, then we're being followed on foot.”

“Which makes it even creepier,” said Lily. “Can you narrow it down?”

I could. My neck tingled when I saw a man near a coffee kiosk, stirring a paper cup over and over. People rushed past him, but he seemed planted. I realized that from where he stood, he could see the whole big room. He wore a rumpled green jacket, baggy jeans, sneakers. The outfit was so normal, it seemed a kind of camouflage. But it was his doughy, dull face that gave him away. You don't nearly get killed by someone and not
carry his face with you forever.

“It's Doyle.”

Lily followed my gaze and shuddered. “Oh, my gosh. It's him! Darrell, Wade, don't look now, but look over there, but don't make it seem like you're looking over there, so don't actually look, but look who it is.”

Wade stepped forward and picked up a thick guidebook from the nearest rack. He pretended to read it but glanced over and groaned. “He looks so . . . regular.”

Every few seconds Doyle would stop stirring his drink to check his watch.

“Julian said our phones are good,” said Lily. “If he's right, and he usually is, how does Doyle know we're here?”

“Does it matter right now?” Wade said. “He knows.”

“Should we run?” said Darrell. “Or attack him? Or call the police? Or just attack him? I kind of vote to attack him.”

“Which goes against absolutely
everything
Roald and Sara told us,” said Lily. “Still . . .”

“We have to throw him off somehow,” I said. “We may have lost the black-car goons, but this creep is slippery, like Terence said. He pops up like a gopher.”

“That's why they hired him.” Darrell glanced at the ticket line. “Mom's next at booth three. We'll find out soon where we're going.”

Wade paid for the guidebook. “Uh-oh, he's coming this way.”

“I have a plan,” said Lily. “Well, I think I have a plan.” She looked around and settled on a handful of teenagers on the other side of the newsstand. Then she plucked two London souvenir caps from a nearby rack and turned to the clerk. “These two, please.” She paid for them, then slapped one on my head and the other on Wade's. She laughed like a crazy girl as she switched the caps back and forth. “Good, he sees us.”

“Yeah, real good, Lily,” said Darrell. “Now we have to attack him—”

“Keep those caps on and come with me.” She pushed us all over to a group of boys and girls at the back of the newsstand, just out of Doyle's line of sight. She said something to them. They nodded with a laugh. Then she slid our hats off our heads and sat them on one of the boys and a girl with a ponytail. Clever. They didn't look like us, but were about the same height. The kids turned and walked away, switching caps, then switching them back, laughing loudly.

“What is all this—” Darrell started.

“Shh.” Lily kept us behind the newsstand, then peeked out. “It worked. I told them to laugh to attract attention. It worked. Look!”

You could almost see Doyle jump with joy when he
spotted our decoys pass under an arch and enter the platform area. Looking both ways, he dumped his coffee cup in a receptacle and skulked quickly after the kids. When they entered an open train car, he paused a few seconds, bowed his head, then did the same.

“Yes!” I said. “Lily, you are awesome!”

“Simple, but effective,” she said. We moved up outside the platform arch. “I hope Doyle doesn't mess with those nice kids. Maybe they could take him.”

The doors whisked closed on the train. Then, just as it began its roll out of the station, the girl with the decoy cap turned in her seat. I watched Doyle. He saw her and spun around in a rage, and started moving back through the carriage.

“He knows and he's mad!” I said. The train soon picked up speed and was out of the station, too far for me to see any more.

Wade checked his watch. “He'll get out at the next stop and come back, but we'll be gone. He'll have to track us all over again. Nice work, Lily.”

Darrell breathed out. “I second that. And I think the kids will be all right. The muscly one playing me looked like he could take Doyle. Here's Mom—”

Sara had a strange look on her face when she hurried over. “I was like a spy, saying the words Terence
told me to say. The woman at the counter blinked, then said, ‘The London Midland line doesn't go to Bishops Stortford. You want to go here.' And she pulled out an envelope with tickets from under the counter.”

“So cool!” said Darrell. “Terence has people everywhere.”

“He must,” Sara said. “The cashier said that because of Becca's German puzzle, Terrence suggests we to go to a place called Bletchley Park and ask for someone named Renji. Our train leaves in nine minutes.”

When we told her about Archie Doyle, Sara went red with anger—for Doyle and for us—then pulled us into a tight group. I expected her to rip up the tickets and say we were going to forget about the relics. She didn't.

“We have to take care of ourselves. Of one another. If we do, they can't stop us. We
can't
be stopped. . . . I love you all so much, you know. Now come on.”

That was it. She was done.

With only a few minutes before our train was to leave, we headed onto it and took our seats. They were comfortable, clean, bright green, and new. We settled right in, breathless and rattled, but safe. Wade was the first to speak.

“Renji is a mysterious name,” he said. “Sounds African or Japanese, maybe?”

Lily waved her tablet. “Renji Abarai is the name of a Japanese manga character. But he's fictional, so it's probably not him.”

“Probably,” said Darrell. “But Becca might see him in a trance.”

“Her trances are not fictional!” Lily protested. “They're not, right?”

“Right,” I said with a laugh. After the Doyle thing at the station, it was strange how quickly we got to talking and joking as if we were regular kids. It amazed me that we could bounce back so quickly, but I found myself wanting to put
the horror
away. And the warning. And the blackouts.

“Bletchley Park”—Sara said, scanning the guidebook Wade bought at the station—“was the top secret setting for British code-breaking activities during the Second World War. That's why Terence is sending us there. The men and women who worked there broke German codes and ended the war years sooner than it would have ended otherwise. That's not at all fictional.”

A series of beeps sounded, then the doors on our car closed with a breath. The train began to roll smoothly out of the station, as if it rode on rubber wheels.

I breathed in and out slowly, and my pulse eased its rapid drumming. Archie Doyle and the Order weren't an immediate threat. My nose was dry. I felt better.

After all the running, we were in a comfortable train on our way to a place called Bletchley Park in the English countryside to meet a mystery person by the unlikely name of Renji.