Tony Abbott - Wade and the Scorpion’s Claw

The gate was cramming up even more now. There were so few empty seats that I didn’t think anything when a man in a dark suit sat down in the row directly across from us. He was thin, and he wore thick black glasses and carried a green shoulder bag. His hands were stuck deep in his side pockets. I heard my dad’s voice in my head— Not everyone’s planning something —so I looked away.

Darrell was feeling better, which usually meant he was hungry. “I need a Snickers,” he said. “Let’s all go to the newsstand, me for food and you to search the world papers for tragedies. Okay, Dad?”

“Ten minutes,” he said after checking his watch. “Stay close.”

In one of his last messages to us, Uncle Henry had predicted we’d hear about disasters happening around the world, and that they were connected to the Teutonic Order’s hunt for the relics. Sure enough, we soon read reports of a building collapse in South America, a ship sinking in the Mediterranean, and the disappearance of a school bus that later reappeared, shot up by musket bullets from the nineteenth century.

Yeah. Try to figure that one out.

In the airport bookstore, we searched the papers as we always did, but my attention was instantly snagged by the shelf of Terence Ackroyd thrillers. Last week, I would’ve barely noticed them. The store had quite a few of them— The Umbrian Vespers , The Berlin Manifesto , and his latest hardcover novel, The Mozart Inferno , which was currently at the top of the bestseller list.

“He’s an actual person,” said Becca. “I almost doubted it until now. I should read one. We’re going to see him in New York, after all.” She decided on The Prometheus Riddle , a spy thriller set in Greece.

“A nuclear submarine sank off India’s coast,” Lily said, holding up that morning’s London Times . “Ten crew members are missing. I bet the Order is behind it. They probably love to sink ships.”

Darrell poked my arm. “If I move a fraction of an inch—”

“Your head will fall off?” I said.

“ And … I can see the German dude, hovering outside my field of vision.”

“Leathercoat,” whispered Lily. “Call him Leathercoat.”

Glancing over an issue of Science magazine, I saw the guy standing like a statue, holding a copy of El Mundo but not reading it .

I felt the same strange sensation I’d been experiencing for the last week: my skin tingled and a strange pain pierced my chest. It’s the jab of adrenaline you feel when you’re afraid. I’d felt that in my dream, too.

“I … have to use the bathroom,” I said.

“Because you’re scared,” Darrell told me. “It’s a well-known fact that panic makes you have to go—”

Lily put her hands over her ears. “Darrell, please stop talking!”

I headed to the men’s room. “See you back at the gate.”

“Nuh-uh. Buddy system,” Becca said. “Darrell’ll go with you.”

“What are you, my kindergarten teacher?” Darrell said. “Last time I took a buddy to the bathroom, I was five years old. And while we’re at it, why are we even calling it a bath room? It doesn’t have a bathtub in it. That would be weird.”

“You’re weird,” said Lily.

“Or a rest room,” he went on, “because you don’t go in there to rest.”

“Darrell, please just go!” said Lily.

“That’s it!” he said. “We should call it a go room! I love it.”

She shoved him hard. “If you love it so much, then go to the go room already! Becca and I have our own mission.” She held up her London Times and five dollars. “We’re going to give the diary an old-fashioned makeover, a newspaper book cover!”

We split up, and Darrell tagged along with me. At least until his stomach remembered the Snickers he didn’t get. “My taste buds are requesting multiple Snickers bars for the road. Or the air. Or whatever. Wait for me here.”

“Easy for you to say,” I grumbled.

It was good to see him lightening up a bit. The phone call with the Bolivian detective had done it. We knew nothing about the investigation, but it occurred to me that if a team of detectives found Sara and got her on a plane, she might actually get to New York at the same time we did.

Meanwhile, I waited and waited until I couldn’t wait anymore. I waved at Darrell at the candy counter; then I sprinted off down a long hall to the men’s room. It smelled like disinfectant and hand soap once I got in there. I stood still for a few seconds, listening to gate announcements, until I was sure I was alone. I did what I needed to do, washed up, and was out again when a shape darkened the end of the corridor. “Darrell? It’s about time—”

Not Darrell.

Leathercoat.

He stepped purposely down the narrow hall toward the restroom. I tried to move aside to give him room, but he blocked me.

“I’m sorry—” I started, but he raised his hand, then fixed a pair of lifeless eyes on mine.

Leathercoat stood unmoving, staring right at me.

I could feel my scalp prickling. My forehead throbbed. My good feeling vanished completely. The man’s irises were so dark, they seemed almost black. There was nothing in them but a kind of intense stillness.

“Wade Kaplan,” he said softly, though his words managed to echo in the corridor, “you know whom I work for. You have met her. She injured your friend.”

My hands instinctively balled into fists at the mention of Becca’s wound and the thought of how much it was still hurting her. I remembered her from my dream, motionless on the floor of the cave.

“We knew you were with the Order,” I said. “It was so obvious.”

How many Snickers bars is Darrell buying? Where is everyone?

“Then you know who Galina Krause has taken from you,” Leathercoat said. “Kindly remember this fact the next time we meet, when I ask you for something.”

His words were delivered slowly and with precision. He had just a trace of an accent, and his voice was deep and crisp, like an actor’s.

“Because you have nothing better to do than follow us,” I said.

“Allow me to pick your brain for a moment,” he said. “Who do you imagine has the highest level of computing technology in the world?”

“What is this, a quiz?”

“Pretend it is.”

I eyed the end of the corridor. I couldn’t get to it. “NASA?” I answered.

He smiled thinly. “An appropriate response from an astronomer’s son. NASA is to the Teutonic Order’s Copernicus servers as a doghouse is to … Windsor Castle. Keep this in mind when you think to elude me and other agents of Galina Krause.”

I couldn’t think of anything to say besides “Whatever that means.”

“You see, you and your family have no idea of the cosmic scope of what you have gotten yourselves involved in.”

I stepped backward, bumping against the wall behind me. “You either,” I said, meaninglessly.

“The great machine’s relics? What has a simple family like yours to do with such treasures? Still, your cooperation may serve me well.”

“Yeah, like we’d help you.”

Darrell, come on and get in here! Really, in the whole airport, no one has to go to the go room?

“I could yell for help,” I said.

“Sounding an alarm will do neither of us any good.”

My fingers twitched. I wanted to hurt him somehow, to make him feel the terror that the Order made us feel. My hand dived into my backpack. Because it was shaking so much, it took me a second, but I finally whipped out one of the daggers. It felt wrong to be holding a deadly weapon, but I jabbed its short, wavy blade in the air anyway. It looked silly in my little hand. “Tell Galina to let Sara go.”