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Czajkowski had been playing Tom Bunch.
The Poles knew he’d come.
So make it look good.
He ran ahead, heading back through the assortment of rooms on the castle’s north side, refinding the Senators’ Hall, then the two exhibition halls and the wooden door that led into the adjacent building, the one whose lock he’d picked.
He stopped and heard voices.
A quick glance around one of the glassed exhibit cases and he spotted two security guards examining his handiwork at breaking the wire seal. No way he could escape there without some carnage. He decided to backtrack and find another way out. But he had to avoid Sonia. Hopefully all the doors leading from the inner loggia were locked, and her search for a way in would give him time to bypass her.
He hustled through the north wing.
Windows lined both sides of the rooms, all mullioned with watered glass. No way to see through. A blurry shadow moved past them on the outside, from room to room, stalking him from the exterior.
Sonia.
Had to be.
At some point they were going to come face-to-face, probably at a far exit point where she’d come up to this floor. The same exit he would need to leave. Perhaps she knew he was trapped and was simply biding her time, waiting for him to figure things out. He was still toting the heavy wooden box, which made the going a bit awkward.
He reentered the Battle of Orsha Room.
His mind wound through the possibilities, and only one made sense. On his trip through the north wing he’d noticed that the rooms were all roped off, keeping visitors from getting too close to the furnishings. The rope used was sturdy nylon, threaded through iron pedestals. He headed back and retrieved three lengths, obtaining a good hundred feet.
He heard glass shatter.
Apparently Sonia had grown impatient.
He carried the rope and the box back to the small study that jutted off the Orsha Room and locked the door from the inside, engaging an iron latch. He headed back outside onto the loggia, laid the wooden box down, and tied the rope to one of the stone pillars. He tossed the rest over the side and saw that there was enough slack to make it to the grass below. He quickly reeled the rope back up and tied the end to the box, then maneuvered it to the ground.
He heard the door back in the study being forced. Sonia or the guards were trying to make their way in. But the iron latch was holding. He wrapped the rope into a loop and stepped into it.
He heard muted gunfire.
They appeared to be trying to shoot their way past the door. He recalled that its wood was not all that thick, more just an interior door for privacy, not security.
Go. Now.
He hopped over the rail and began his descent, releasing the coil around his waist in short bursts and keeping his feet planted to the castle’s stone. He’d purposefully located the rope so he could use one of the buttresses as a path, avoiding the walls themselves as they were dotted with obstacles. He was also careful with the slack at the bottom, keeping plenty there so as to not jostle the wooden box.
The descent was relatively easy and he was nearing the grass when he looked up and saw Sonia and two guards staring down at him. Her gun came up into view and she nestled the end of the barrel to the rope.
And fired.
His support severed, he fell the remaining twenty feet, pounding into the hard turf. Which hurt his nearly fifty-year-old body. He glanced back up and saw her aim the gun down toward him and fire, stitching the grass to his left with two rounds. He ignored the pain in his legs and snatched the box from the ground, lunging into an open arcade to his left, out of her line of fire. He had to leave the castle grounds, so he ditched the rope wrapped around him and freed the box, running ahead, down another covered arcade that led to a passage opening on the far side of the castle at the inner lawn, near where he’d first entered the administration building.
No one was in sight.
He assumed the guards themselves knew nothing about what was really happening. To them, this was real.
So he had to avoid them.
Exterior lights atop the buildings began to spring to life, dissolving the darkness and making him much more visible. He turned right and bolted back toward the main gate, passing the cathedral and the museum. Beyond the archway he found the same brick-lined passage that led down to street level. Lights burned here and there illuminating the path. At the end of the incline he saw that the heavy wooden gates were now closed. They were also tall, as were the surrounding walls. No way to scale either and no telling what type of lock secured the exit.
He had to find another way out.
And fast.
He could not go back inside the castle grounds. The guards would be on the move. To his left a rough cobbled path ran along the base of the castle’s outer wall. Another smaller wall paralleled the outside, overlooking the river a hundred feet below. This had surely once been a path from which men and artillery could be shifted around the outer walls without risk. He ran down the path, visualizing in his mind the map of the castle’s grounds he’d seen earlier outside the administrative offices.
There was another way down.
A popular spot, too.
The Dragon’s Den.
He knew the story.
King Krak had lived in a castle atop Wawel Hill. A village lay below, beside the river, on fertile lands, and would have been rich and prosperous if not for a fierce fire-breathing dragon that occupied a cavern below the castle. The dragon liked to roam the countryside, eating sheep, cattle, and people. It particularly delighted in the taste of virgin flesh, as what dragon didn’t. The beast devoured virgin after virgin, until only the king’s daughter was left. It was then that King Krak declared that the brave hero who could slay the dragon would receive half the kingdom and his daughter’s hand in marriage. Knight after knight tried to kill the dragon, and all were devoured. Then a poor young cobbler’s apprentice wanted to try his luck. A mere boy. No warrior. No armor or sword.
But he had a brain.
He took a dead sheep and stuffed it with sulfur, then sewed it back together and left it at the mouth of the cave. The dragon swallowed the stuffed animal whole and soon developed a dreadful bellyache. The suffering creature crept down to the River Wisla and began to drink. He drank so much water that he eventually burst into pieces.
End of dragon.
Earlier, back at the main gate, Cotton had noticed the three large bones hanging over the entrance, suspended on chains. For centuries these were believed to be the remains of the dragon. In reality, they belonged to a mammoth, a rhinoceros, and a whale. But the cave under the castle was real and, ahead, through the darkness, he spotted the narrow turret at the top of a brick tower that held a spiral staircase. An iron gate barred access, but when he approached he noticed that it was secured by a modern keyed lock.
He glanced around and saw no one.
He was now on the castle’s far west side, facing the river, which was over the wall to his right and a hundred feet down. He heard people below out walking the riverbank, enjoying the summer night. Lots of them. Just what he needed. He laid the wooden box down and picked the lock, quickly passing through the portal and relocking the gate behind him.
He descended the iron rungs in a tight circle and finally found himself standing in a limestone cave, nothing but blackness ahead, the attraction closed for the night. An electrical box was attached to one wall, and using his phone for light he tripped the breakers. The rocks came alive with back glow, exposing the Dragon’s Den in all its shadowy detail. He hustled through the first chamber and into the next, the walls narrowing and heightening, the ceiling thirty feet high.
He heard a noise from above.
Voices.
Most likely the exterior security cameras had revealed his presence. He kept going and headed into another chamber, this one with a stone vault supported by a set of brick pillars and decorated by rock projections, chimneys, and fissures, the ambience tryin
g to evoke thoughts of the mythical dragon that supposedly once lived here. The two-hundred-foot-long cave attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors each year, a place where superstition had evolved into folklore.
He spotted the exit.
A pointed-arch portal with another iron gate blocking it. Beyond, on the street that faced the river, a sculpture of the dragon stood. People congregated around it. He approached the gate and saw another lock, which was easy to pick. He emerged at the foot of Wawel Hill, the castle towering high above. He dissolved into the crowd, box in hand. A host of stray constellations circled overhead. He recognized the tangled silver chain of the Pleiades.
He kept walking.
And resisted the urge to turn back and glance up at the outer walls, where Sonia Draga was surely watching.
Mission accomplished.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Jonty walked over to Konrad, who was still staring at the salt wall.
“What is it?” he asked.
“There’s something odd here.”
He stared at the wall, too, comprising individual blocks mortared together, rising from the floor up five meters to the ceiling.
“These were built by the miners to block off unused tunnels. It was a safety measure against fires.”
He reached out and stroked the rough gray-green surface.
“They cut the blocks themselves,” Konrad said. “The mortar is salt mixed with water. It makes a good cement. The thicker the mortar lines, the newer the wall. The oldest used little to no mortar. But they were strong. I know of walls that are still standing after four hundred years. This one is different.”
The others walked over.
“How so?” Eli asked.
“The blocks are too perfect, and the mortar is thin.”
