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“You’re right,” he said, motioning that they should leave. “There seems to be only one way to find out if we have something.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Cotton checked his watch.
8:20 P.M.
He’d been inside the chifforobe almost three and a half hours, catching a little bit of rest, but staying alert in case there was any movement outside. So far, he’d heard nothing. All quiet. He could wait until later in the night, or the early-morning hours of tomorrow, but if his hunch proved correct the time of his visit would not matter.
His intel had noted that the castle was cleaned three nights a week, and this wasn’t one of those nights. So there would be no janitorial staff about.
Was Sonia expecting him?
Probably.
And if she was here, what outcome did she want? Him to take the spear? Most likely. Why else play along with Fox and Bunch? Best guess? Their alliance with the Russians was tenuous at best. Sure, neither Russia nor Poland wanted missiles. But Poland would want the information being offered destroyed, while Russia would love to have it. For the future. Just in case. He realized that the Poles could not just give the spear to him. It was a national treasure. Too many questions would be raised. Ones with difficult answers. All of the other relics had been stolen. Their thefts suppressed. But the fact that something had happened where they were kept had made it to the media, and all of those relics were no longer on display. The same had to happen here, with a verified “incident,” minus the actual theft, to report.
Time to get this party going.
He pushed open the chifforobe’s door and climbed out. The exterior windows in the vestibule were darkened, signaling that night had begun to arrive. Only a few lights burned inside, illuminating the staircase that angled its way up to the next floors. Stephanie had thought ahead and left him two lock picks in the manila envelope he’d pocketed earlier. For a long time he used to carry them in his wallet, but he’d dropped the habit a while back. After all, his primary profession was now bookseller, and nothing in that job involved illegal breaking and entering.
He checked the corridors one last time. Empty. Before heading up the stairs he noticed a large 3-D model of the castle grounds that filled one side of the vestibule. He took a moment and examined the exterior layout, particularly the east façade, where the intel had said the spear was being stored in a top-floor outer room. He noticed the same columned loggia he’d spotted before entering the castle and the buttresses that helped keep the wall upright. A solitary exterior window, adjacent to the loggia, had to open into the room he sought.
He climbed the stone risers and approached the closed wooden door at the landing. A small metal plate read 122. He assumed with so many doors the only way to distinguish among them was to assign numbers. Before opening the lock he worked the braided wire that formed a seal on the door back and forth enough that heat snapped it. Then he picked the lock and freed the tumblers, turning the handle.
He stepped inside and quickly reclosed the door.
Before him stretched a dimly lit exhibit area, the space filled with glass cases displaying some fine Persian carpets, many stitched with blooming trees and fairy-tale animals. Others had lions, bears, gazelles, pheasants, and unicorns. He hustled toward the open portal in the far wall and entered another room displaying battle flags, swords, and saddles, all Turkish, surely acquired during the many invasions. He turned left, following the floor plan ingrained in his memory, seeing it as if it hung before his eyes. Through three more chambers he came to another stairway, which he bypassed, entering what was identified as the Senators’ Hall, the walls decorated with figural tapestries, all with biblical themes.
And the first with a camera.
It hung in the corner to his right with a diagonal view of the checkerboard floor. Hard to know for sure how wide a lens it sported, but the intel recommended staying close to the south wall, the tricky part at the end, where another open doorway awaited.
He hustled forward, hugging the wall, moving sideways, staying as flat as possible. Ten feet from the end he sucked a breath and rushed through the doorway, disappearing on the other side to the left, using the wall for protection. If he was going to be spotted, this was the moment.
He hesitated and listened.
Footsteps were approaching from ahead. A steady click of leather heels on stone. He spotted a tall chair and sought refuge behind it, but the footsteps stopped before reaching him.
A door opened, then closed.
The footsteps faded.
Had to be a guard making rounds.
He held steady for a moment, then kept going, moving through the Eagle Room, the Bird Room, and ending up in the Battle of Orsha Room, each festooned with coats of arms, crossed swords, and dark-aged beams. An ethereal glow came from amber night-lights. Several had walls of cordovan and were decorated with period paintings, portraits, wall friezes, floral motifs, glazed ceramic stoves, sculptures, and heavy period furniture. Coffered ceilings stretched overhead with carved and gilt rosettes.
In the Orsha Room he spotted the double pedimented doors in the east wall that he’d been told were there. They should be unlocked, and he quickly discovered that was true. They led to a small anteroom atop what was known as the Danish Tower. The space was lined with faux-painted walls, the coffered ceiling gilded. There were a few inlaid chairs, a desk, a chest, and a large copper mirror. Two side tables were draped with a green wool cloth. Once it had surely been a small study that opened out to the columned loggia. A perfect place for a king to relax and enjoy some fresh air. A closed door led outside. Paintings dotted the walls, more stacked upright on the floor, five and six deep. Three heavy oak tables were covered with vases, clocks, statues, and busts. The room seemed to be doubling now as a storage chamber. He turned to the right and tried another door, one that he knew led to an even smaller space.
His destination.
Locked.
Damn.
That was not anticipated.
And the lock was not one he could pick. Old style, accepting only a skeleton key. The door itself was solid and opened inward, the hinges on the other side. No way to break it down.
Damn. Sonia was making him work for it.
He remembered the castle model.
He’d come this far. Finish it.
He opened the outer door that led onto the loggia and stepped into the night. Kraków stretched below, beyond the castle wall, people moving about on the sidewalks, cars in the street. The long side of the columned terrace was open air with pillared arches, its two ends closed. The night deepened by the minute, hopefully heading toward enough darkness to shield him for a few minutes. He climbed the railing and tested the small stone ledge that extended outward. Solid. He levered himself over and held on to the short wall, adjusting his balance and peering around the loggia’s short side.
The window was there, just as on the model.
He glanced down. Maybe seventy-five to eighty feet to the ground. That fall would leave a mark, if not kill him. No way in hell Cassiopeia would ever be out here. She hated heights as much as he hated enclosed spaces.
He pressed against the ledge, hands high, searching for fingertip grips in the stone, and turned the corner. Thankfully the old castle was full of footholds, and he used the shallow ledge to move along, finally stopping at the window. Double-paneled, sixteen-paned, opening in the middle, to the inside. Not good. He pushed on the panels and felt a tiny give. He kept one arm on the sill, toes tucked into a crevice above the ledge, and pushed harder with the flat of his hand, hoping the panels might release.
No luck.
He spied the catch through the glass. He could not stay dangled out here much longer before someone on the street spotted him. Luckily, this side of the castle was not lit to the outside, all of the lighting confined to the picturesque north and west sides that faced the river.
He balled his fist and popped one of the panes hard, quickly withdrawing his hand. It crack
ed, but did not break. Two more blows and it shattered. Carefully, he reached in and freed the latch, swinging the sash inward, then he climbed in over the sill.
Wooden crates filled the small space wall-to-wall, each labeled in Polish and English. GILDED BOWL AND JUG. MONSTRANCE. CROSIER OF ADAM. CORONATION MANTLE. Precious artifacts from the cathedral museum, stored for safekeeping. Exactly as the intel stated. The fact that there were also English labels made him smile. Sonia knew he did not speak Polish. She’d thought ahead, as always. On another oak table sat several smaller wood boxes, each also labeled. FUNERARY OBJECTS OF BISHOP MAURUS. SARACEN-SICILIAN CASE. ZUCCHETTO AND SASH OF JOHN PAUL II.
Then, the jackpot.
SPEAR OF ST. MAURICE.
He lifted the pine box. About two feet long and six inches wide. Secured with screws. No way to open it and make sure it contained what he’d come for. But it was heavy.
Another good sign.
That it was here, right where the intel indicated, a better sign.
He cradled the box and hustled back the way he’d tried to come, through the locked door, which opened from his side, and back into the larger Battle of Orsha Room. An impressive frieze depicting the Polish victory over the Muscovites wrapped the room. Some tall portraits of important people dotted the walls. To the right was the route back to where he’d started. To the left was an open portal into the next room, another doorway farther down, then another, through all the rooms in succession, the doorways connected in an uninterrupted enfilade. A perfect line of sight from one end of the east wing to the other, nearly two hundred feet long. About halfway down he saw a black figure moving his way. One of the guards? In a flash of light, as the shadow moved from one room to another, he caught a face.
Sonia.
With a gun.
Up and level.
Aimed his way.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
Jonty did not like the look of the wooden staircase leading down into blackness. Konrad had led them off the main tourist routes of Level III to an elevator used exclusively by the miners, where they’d descended to Level IX. Not the same area they’d visited last night. That was nearly a kilometer away. But the tunnels here were similar. They then wound a path through them, following Konrad into one of the offshoots where they found the old staircase.
“It doesn’t appear it can handle our weight,” Jonty said.
“Stay to the outside on the rungs and we should be fine. I’ll go first.”
Konrad began to descend. Slow and deliberate, hugging the interior side where supports helped hold the load. Eli went next, Jonty followed, with Vic assuming the rear. The wooden rungs were battered, the saw marks still evident at their ends, many of the nailheads corroded away, causing the risers to rattle loose. The only light came from their helmets, the beams herky-jerky with their slow, cautious descent.
The staircase seemed to go forever at right angles down. It took a few minutes to make it back to solid ground. Level X was a mess, the tunnel ahead littered with salt blocks, the walls and ceiling crystallized with dripstones, more precipitated salt icing the walls and timbers.
“I told you this was dangerous,” Konrad said. “If it’s any comfort, we haven’t had a cave-in anywhere in decades.”
That wasn’t much solace. Added to the problem was the fact that no one above knew they were even here.
“Salt makes for a really good support,” Konrad said as he found the map and studied it again. “This tunnel goes for about half a kilometer. There are several offshoots. We’re going to have to explore them to see if there’s a chamber named Warsaw.”
Vic noticed something in the floor and bent down to examine it. “A rail line?”
