Alex Archer - Library Of Gold

History has a way of hiding its secrets…

He was one of Russia’s most infamous rulers, and he alone held the key to a legendary Byzantine collection of books, given to him in the dowry of Princess Sophia of Constantinople. Ivan Vasilyevich—otherwise known as Ivan the Terrible—owned a library filled with rare and priceless tomes that men would kill for. Would die for. But the czar carried the knowledge of its whereabouts to his grave. And it falls to archaeologist Annja Creed, almost five hundred years later, to discover the secrets of the Library of Gold.

When the opportunity to unravel the mystery of this so-called eighth wonder of the world lands in Annja’s lap, she can’t resist. Armed with a diary of cryptic clues, she embarks on a journey to Russia, where she must somehow find her way into the very heart of the country, beneath the Kremlin.

But Annja soon discovers she’s racing a ruthless KGB agent driven by sinister motives. She finds herself deep beneath the Russian soil in a dangerous game of cat and mouse... Will she be the next to mysteriously disappear from history?

“Colonel! You should take a look at this.”

The guard led them outside St. Basil’s Cathedral and over to one of the trash cans in Red Square. He pointed inside the mouth of the barrel.

Sitting on some discarded trash was a woman’s hand.

Goshenko reached in and pulled it out, which caused the captain of the guard to recoil. But the hand wasn’t flesh and blood. It was stone. The stone hand of the Virgin Mother.

The colonel looked at it for a moment and then held it up so Danislov could see its hollow center. “I want to know what was hidden inside here, Sergeant. I don’t care what you have to do, just get me whatever it was.”

“Understood, sir.”

“The American, Annja Creed, and her companion are staying over at the Marriott on Tverskaya Street.” Colonel Goshenko nodded, satisfied. “I suggest you start there.”

Library of Gold

™

Alex Archer

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Special thanks and acknowledgment to Joe Nassise for his contribution to this work.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

Chapter 43

Chapter 1

Footsteps in the dark.

That’s all Ridolfo di Fioravanti heard at first, the tramp of booted feet somewhere in the distance, but it was enough. Though he couldn’t see them yet, he knew who was marching down the long, dark tunnels toward him and the rest of the men working on the project. He knew that when they were at last revealed in the light of the oil lamps there would be no doubt of their intentions.

He had begun to suspect what was being prepared for them when the guards changed. For weeks the work crews had been accompanied by a squad of soldiers, there, he suspected, to prevent the workers from making off with the tools more than anything else. But within the past week the soldiers had been replaced by men wearing the black uniform and dog’s head insignia of the Oprichniki, the czar’s secret police. This was not a good sign. The Oprichniki were nothing more than sadistic thugs in uniform, brought into being to help the czar quell internal resistance and turned loose to terrorize and torture anyone he saw as a threat.

Ridolfo should have seen it coming. When Czar Ivan had first summoned him to his palace and told him what he wanted to do, Ridolfo had been too caught up in the technicalities of the project to see the danger. He’d let his excitement overcome his good sense and now it seemed he was going to pay for that oversight.

But not before he saw to his family’s welfare.

He crossed the room to where his nephew, Giuseppe, was helping some of the other workers pile debris from an earlier excavation into a cart. Grabbing the boy by the arm, Ridolfo led him off to one side.

“I need you to take a message to your father for me,” he told the boy.

“Now?”

“Yes, now.”

“But I’ll miss the end of the shift!”

The conditions they were working in were arduous, at best, and for a moment Ridolfo didn’t understand why the boy would want to be slaving down here when he could be out in the sunlight above. But then the meaning of the boy’s statement filtered past Ridolfo’s fear enough to make sense. The workers were paid at the end of each work period. If Giuseppe left now, he’d forfeit the effort he’d put in up to this point.

If he doesn’t leave now, he’ll be dead.

“I will collect your wages myself,” Ridolfo told him with a smile on his face. “Have no fear.”

Ridolfo was the chief foreman and designer of the project, which made the lie seem convincing. Thankfully the boy took it at face value.

Ridolfo reached inside his shirt and removed the slim leather journal he kept secreted there. He passed it to Giuseppe.

“Take this to your father and tell him the crows are flying. Understand? The crows are flying.”

Giuseppe frowned but nodded, anyway. “The crows are flying. Yes, sir.”

“Good boy!” Ridolfo kept the smile on his face, but inside he wanted to scream. The sound of booted feet was much closer now and they were all but out of time. If the czar had sent his uniformed lapdogs down the emergency exit, they were already too late.

Only one way to find out…

“Come,” he said with fake cheer, pulling his nephew into the rear section of the vault to where the narrow mouth of the emergency exit was half-hidden in the shadows. He stuck his head inside the tunnel and listened for as long as he dared, but didn’t hear anything. Perhaps the way was still open.

He picked up the emergency lantern that always stood inside the entrance of the tunnel and lit it, illuminating the passageway before him. “This will take you directly to the surface,” he said to the boy. “Better yet, by going this way you won’t have to deal with the guards at the main entrance.”

That last brought a smile to Giuseppe’s face; he hated the dimwitted brutes that passed as guards around here. He took the lantern Ridolfo passed to him and, without a backward glance, scampered up the tunnel with the journal clutched in his other hand.

Ridolfo watched until the lantern’s light disappeared around a bend and then he quickly moved away from the opening, not wanting to give those who were coming any indication that the passageway was in use. He’d worked out the plan with his brother several days ago when he’d first begun to suspect the end that Czar Ivan had in mind for those working on the project. The message was innocuous enough that it wouldn’t raise concerns if the boy was caught and forced to disclose it, but Ridolfo’s brother would understand what it meant. As any peasant knew, the only time the crows gathered was when they had something to feast upon.

Ridolfo stepped back into the main vault at the same time a squad of Oprichniki soldiers marched into the room, their weapons in hand, pointed toward the workers. The sight infuriated Ridolfo—how dare they threaten his men? But the angry shout that rose in his throat was instantly stifled when the tall, dark form of Ivan Vasilyevich IV, Grand Prince of Moscow and Czar of the Russian Empire, also known as Ivan the Terrible, stepped from behind the squad.