The Forbidden Stone. Tony Abbott

laughed. “It’s okay. I’m a pro now.”

      Hardly. Her lungs felt squashed during the long climb to cruising altitude, and her brain pounded like hammers on an anvil.

      “Breathe,” Lily said. “You’ll stay alive better.”

      “Thanks.” They finally leveled out. “Maybe I’m not such a pro.”

      “Guys, listen to this,” Darrell said, a London paper in his lap. “The oil tanker in the Mediterranean near Turkey that we heard about? They know now that it had seventeen people on board. That’s pretty tragic.”

      Then Wade folded his newspaper over and showed it to them. “Is this anything? There was an accident between a truck and a stretch limo outside of Miami. So, the truck driver disappears from the scene but they find him wandering a hundred miles away at almost exactly the same time as the accident.”

      “It probably wasn’t even him driving the truck,” said Lily.

      Wade shook his head. “There were witnesses at the accident who identified him. Plus, he had the truck keys with him.”

      “Okay, that’s a little freaky,” said Lily.

      Dr. Kaplan took Wade’s newspaper and read the article. “Heinrich was a dear friend, but he retired some years ago. He kept to himself. I hate to say it, but maybe his email might just have been him getting old. You know, it happens. And he passed away, and there’s no link between these things at all.”

      Becca found herself stuck on the words “passed away.” They sounded so peaceful and so unlike the coded message. Devours. Tragedies. Protect. Find. Besides that, they didn’t really know how he died, did they? His housekeeper hadn’t said a word about that.

      She was about to close Le Monde when a short news item caught her eye. “It’s not huge, but there was a death at the newspaper’s office in Paris. A person from the night staff accidentally fell down an open elevator shaft. He was killed.”

      “Wade, remember this,” said Darrell. “I do not want to go like that. No way.”

      “I’ll try to make sure you don’t,” Wade said.

      Roald turned. “One of the five in our little group from twenty years ago works at Le Monde. I wonder if he knew the man who died. I haven’t talked to him in ages. His name was Bernard Something—”

      “Bernard Dufort?” Becca asked.

      “Yes! We called him Bernie. Is he quoted—”

      Her blood went cold. “Bernard Dufort was the man who fell down the elevator shaft. Police are calling it an accident, but the investigation is continuing.”

      Something happened to Dr. Kaplan then, Becca thought, and it was different from the other weird news about truck accidents and building collapses. His face grew instantly dark and he seemed to fall inside himself. Was it because the bad news was starting to connect? Strangely connect? The email. The death of Heinrich Vogel. The newspaper stories. And now Bernard Dufort.

      Darrell leaned to him. “Was Bernie a good friend of yours?”

      Roald closed his eyes for a second. “Not really. I mean, a bit. He was just one of us in Heinrich’s little Asterias group, you know?”

      “Do you think that’s what he was talking about?” Wade asked. “‘The kraken devours us. You are the last.’ Maybe this is what he meant. The last of Asterias. Are you in danger?”

      “No, Wade, no,” his father said firmly. “Of course not.”

      “But do you keep up with the other people in the group?” asked Darrell. “How do we find out—”

      Roald raised a finger, and they all went quiet.

      “These newspaper things, I can’t really say. Uncle Henry and Bernard, that’s a different story. Once we’re on the ground there, we’ll probably learn what really happened. In the meantime, we’ll be fine if we stay together.”

      “We won’t be any trouble, honest,” Lily said, glancing at the rest of them with a quick nod of her head.

      “Heinrich was a good man,” Roald said firmly. “A good human being. Let’s pay our respects. And then we’ll see what we see. You’re right about not being any trouble, Lily. You four are not leaving my sight. Not for a second.”

      He breathed calmly, smiled at each of them, then slid his student journal from his jacket pocket, pulled his glasses up, and started reading.

      The food carts began rattling down the aisle, and Becca leaned back to read Moby-Dick. She stopped pages later when the ship’s crew neared the environs of the great white whale.

       With greedy ears I learned the history of that murderous monster against whom I and all the others had taken our oaths of violence and revenge.

      Monster. Moby Dick was a giant whale, a sea monster. As she read the words over, she wondered once again what Uncle Henry meant in his message when he said kraken.

      

      For as long as he could stand it, Ebner von Braun was immersing the thin burned fingers of his left hand in a bowl of ice water that he carried with him.

      Ceramic. Venetian. Thirteenth century.

      Four very odd years with Galina Krause had taught him something of the arts of ages past. “Use this,” she had said, a baffling act of compassion, he’d thought, until she added, “and stop whining about your disgusting fingers.”

      The elevator stopped. Subbasement Three.

      The door slid aside and, as usual, the dull white ceiling lights of the laboratory made him oddly nauseated. The lab smelled of temperature control, clean-room disinfectant, and fear.

      Not to mention the infernal buzzing, a white noise that Ebner wasn’t certain came from the lab or from him. His ears had begun to ring nearly four years earlier, after one of the Order’s experiments. It was now like a continuous waterfall of ball bearings from a great height into the center of his head. The sound was always there. An evil companion. A familiar spirit, as the old stories of Doctor Faustus termed it.

      Like seven similar installations across the globe, this control room was large and white and completely devoid of personality. Unless you counted the artfully unshaven young scientist sitting at a long bank of computers.

      Ebner had chosen Helmut Bern from the most brilliant of recent graduates, but while he was certain of Bern’s uncommon talent for digital surveillance and electronic decryption, Ebner was still unsure about the darkness of the young man’s soul. He watched the slender hands move over the keyboard. Swift, yes. Accurate, undoubtedly. But how dedicated?

      “Sir?” Helmut said, twisting his chair around.

      “Is the computer ready?”

      “It is, sir.” The young scientist tapped a slim silver briefcase on the counter next to him. “It contains everything you requested. Battery life is essentially infinite. No blind spots anywhere across the globe. I’m curious, why did you have me construct such a thing at this particular time?”

      Ebner glared. “You’re curious? I’m curious. Have you reconstructed Vogel’s hard drive?”

      Seeming disappointed, the scientist glanced at the ceramic bowl Ebner cradled in the crook of his arm. “Very soon. Sir.”

      On the neighboring monitor was a live-camera feed of the former Edificio Petrobras in Rio de Janeiro. Construction crews and crime scene investigators swarmed the crumbled gray stone