Czytaj książkę: «The Moscow Meeting»

CHAPTER 1

Ariadne

As I stand beside Cassandra, watching Boone’s eyes move between my face and that of my twin sister, a single thought keeps running through my mind: He’s going to die.

I’m still shocked at Cassandra’s unexpected arrival in the museum, where Boone and I have been working to extricate the alien weapon that’s been hidden there by Evrard Sauer, the scientist who was studying it after its discovery by the Nazis. Sauer is now dead, entombed in the water-filled chamber 60 meters below our feet. The same chamber from which Boone has recently escaped for the second time.

I look at the metal box Boone is holding in his hands. It’s the whole reason he descended into the room. Part of me is excited to see that he’s gotten it, and to know what’s inside it. Another part wishes he’d never found it, because I know what’s going to happen next. I’d hoped that by throwing the grenade down the shaft and into the underground room, I’d have warned Boone that something was wrong. Maybe he was too excited about finally getting the box. Maybe he thought he could help me. I’m thankful the blast didn’t kill him, which was a very real possibility, but I’m not sure it matters now.

“Put the box on the floor,” Cassandra says.

Even if we weren’t twins, I would have known this was coming. Cassandra might not be our Minoan line’s official Player, but she is a Player nonetheless. Maybe even more than I am. We trained side by side, and although I was the one who was presented with the golden horns at the choosing ceremony and have served our line to the best of my abilities, Cassandra has always longed to wear them. If she had been sent to Berlin instead of me, Boone would already be dead. Now she is toying with him, enjoying the confrontation.

Boone glances at me. I can tell he’s confused. He doesn’t know if I knew about Cassandra being here or not, if I’m working with her or still teamed up with him. I wish I could let him know that my sister’s presence here is a surprise to me too, but I don’t dare risk showing any hint of caring about what happens to him. If I do, Cassandra will make things worse. For both of us. I keep my face blank and stare back at him coldly, trying to still my wildly beating heart.

Boone crouches down, setting the box on the floor. Then he stands up again. Underneath Cassandra’s coat, which barely stretches across his shoulders, he’s wearing only boxer shorts and a thin undershirt, both of which are soaking wet. He’s been swimming around in ice-cold water, and the temperature in the room now is well below freezing. I can see him shaking as his muscles seize up and his body attempts to warm itself. He’s trying to control the trembling, but he can’t. He’s rapidly becoming hypothermic and needs to get warm. Although I want to go to him and wrap my arms around him, I can’t. I have to watch him suffer, and it makes my heart ache.

Cassandra has had her pistol trained on him this whole time. She keeps it leveled at his chest as she says to me, “Go get it.”

I don’t like her ordering me to do anything, but the situation is delicate, and I don’t want to risk upsetting her. I walk toward Boone. I consider placing myself between him and my sister, screaming at him to run and giving him a slim chance of escaping. But it would only put off his death for a short time. Cassandra would never let him get out alive. And she’d probably kill me as well for getting in her way.

When I reach Boone and the box, I kneel down and pick it up. It’s not as heavy as I expected. As I stand and back up, holding it in my hands, I risk a look at Boone. He won’t look at me. He’s staring straight ahead at Cassandra, a furious expression on his face even though his lips are bluish and I can see that he’s clenching his teeth together with enormous effort to keep them from chattering. But he still has enough strength to defiantly shrug off her coat, which puddles around his feet.

I walk back to Cassandra, who glances briefly at the box and says, “How clever of you to trick him into retrieving it for you.” She smirks at Boone. “Just like a pet dog.” She makes a woofing sound, and laughs. “Fetch, boy.”

She’s taunting him, but I know she’s also taunting me, letting me know what she thinks about my not going after the box myself. But I don’t react. Instead I smile and say, “You know I don’t like to get my hair wet if I can help it.” It’s the kind of thing she would say, childish and inappropriate given the situation, so of course she laughs.

Cassandra turns her attention back to Boone. “Unfortunately for you, we no longer need you.”

“Wait,” I say, placing my hand on her arm.

She looks at me, one eyebrow raised in question.

“I’ll do it,” I tell her. I lift my shirt and show her the bandaged wound on my stomach. “There’s a debt that requires repayment.”

Cassandra nods. I know she’s annoyed that I’m depriving her of making the kill herself, but she also recognizes that I have first right. “Do it quickly. We need to be on our way. Would you like to use my gun?”

She says this loudly enough for Boone to hear. She’s enjoying playing with him, and I’m reminded of how during our training sessions she would often let her opponents think they had a chance just before she landed a victory blow. She enjoys offering a bit of hope, then snatching it away. I shake my head as I set the box down, reach into my boot, and pull out the knife tucked inside. “You know I prefer a blade.”

She laughs again as I turn and walk back to Boone. “He’s not a kolios, Ariadne. Make sure you gut him properly.”

Another taunt, a reminder of the time we were four and our grandfather took us fishing and I wouldn’t stick my knife in the flapping, gasping mackerel I hauled out of the ocean on my line. I felt bad for it. Before I could throw it back, Cassandra grabbed it and plunged a knife into its belly, slitting it open and scraping its insides out before it was even dead. At dinner, she’d eaten it fried, with lemon, grinning at me from across the table as our grandfather boasted about how brave she’d been.

I stop in front of Boone. He hasn’t said a word, and I know this is mostly because he can’t. The cold is forcing his body to conserve its resources in an attempt to warm itself. I also know that if he truly thought I was going to kill him, he would find the strength to fight me. I wonder if Cassandra knows he’s a Player. I doubt it. If she did, she would kill him herself, despite my request, so that she could claim him as a trophy. But who does she think he is? And how did she know we were here in the first place? I’ve been wondering that since I turned to find her standing behind me, looking at me as if she’d come into the kitchen and caught me secretly eating one of the melomakarona our mother and aunts make at Christmastime. But there’s been no time for explanations.

Right now I have to concentrate on putting on a show for her. Whatever I do, she has to believe that Boone is really dead. If she doesn’t, she’ll finish him off herself. But how am I going to do that? Unless his body somehow disappears, she’ll be able to check whether or not he’s still breathing.

I look at the entrance to the air shaft, which is just behind Boone, and I get an idea. I don’t know if he can survive another trip into the water. He’s barely able to stand now. But it’s his only chance. Our only chance. Because now there’s no denying it—we’re a team. Who we’re fighting for, I still don’t know. And if he doesn’t survive the next few minutes, it won’t matter. I pray to the gods that he does make it.

I hold the knife up so he can see it. With my eyes, I try to tell him to trust me. I say, “I’ll do you the favor of reuniting you with your brother.” He looks at me, and his brow furrows for a moment. Then he gives the slightest of nods, and I know that he understands what has to happen.

I stab him in the stomach. He bends as if the knife has really gone in, but really I’ve only grazed him. Just enough to make the blood flow. I get some on my fingers and wipe it on the blade. Then I pretend to pull the knife out and I shove Boone toward the shaft. He spins, holding his hands to his stomach, so that his back is to me and Cassandra, and staggers the short distance to the opening. He plunges headfirst into it. There’s a soft splash as he hits the water, then nothing.

It all happens very quickly, and I’m not sure it’s convincing enough. I turn back to my sister, wipe the blade on my pants, and return the knife to my boot. The whole time, I expect Cassandra to express her doubts that Boone is really dead. However, all she does is lower her gun and say, “Who was he?”

“An American,” I answer. “A soldier. Not a very good one.”

“He couldn’t have been completely incompetent,” Cassandra says. “He wounded a Player.”

“A lucky strike,” I say as I retrieve the box. “And now he’s dead, or soon will be.”

“What did you mean about his brother?”

So she did hear. “His brother was also a soldier,” I lie, although this is not entirely untrue. Jackson Boone was a Player, like his brother. “He was killed in the war.”

“It sounds like an interesting story,” Cassandra says. “You can tell it to me on the trip.”

She’s walking up the stairs. I follow her. I hate leaving Boone behind, but I really have no choice. I have to keep pretending that he means nothing to me. Not knowing whether he’s alive or dead is horrible, but for now I have to bury all my emotions as deeply as possible. Not only is Cassandra trained as a Player, but she’s my twin. We have a bond that is beyond the normal sibling relationship. Each of us knows what the other is feeling and thinking without having to ask. Sometimes, this is a gift. Other times, like when we had to fight each other in training, it could go either way. Now it puts me at a disadvantage. If I lie to her and she detects any trace of nervousness, she’ll know. Ironically, after everything I’ve been through in the past 48 hours, the most difficult thing is going to be pretending things are normal between me and my own sister.

Cassandra makes her way through the New Museum as if she’s been here a hundred times. I’m not surprised. She has a photographic memory, and I’m sure she’s memorized every map she could find of the building. I still don’t know, however, how she knew to come here in the first place, or why. What I do know is that she’s dying for me to ask her, so I don’t. We’ve only been in each other’s company for 20 minutes, and already we’ve slipped into our familiar patterns.

“It’s too bad about Europa,” Cassandra says as we exit the museum. “Also about Theron, Cilla, and Misha.” She looks at me, and I know she’s trying to read my expression. “Four Minoans dead. I hope what’s in this box is worth it.”

That she is placing the blame for the deaths of our linesmen on me is obvious, and it makes me furious. She has no idea what I’ve been dealing with since arriving in Berlin, how difficult the past six months have been working inside the MGB. She’s brave, yes, and capable. But while I’ve been here, risking my life every day for our line, she’s been at home in Crete.

“Every war has its casualties,” I say, keeping my voice even.

“And Sauer?” Cassandra asks.

“Dead,” I tell her. “Suicide.”

“Anyone else?”

Again I think about Boone’s brother, whose body is still in the trunk of a car parked nearby. I think too of Lottie and Bernard, Jackson’s wife and son, who are waiting in a borrowed apartment for us to return. If Boone can’t get out of the museum alive, what will become of them? They aren’t my problem now that I have the box containing the weapon, but I find myself worrying about them anyway. I know Boone has given them instructions on what to do in the event we don’t come back, and I hope they’ll be safe.

“No,” I say. “Not from our side, anyway.”

“How many sides are there?” Cassandra asks.

“I’m not certain,” I say, and this is the truth. “Things became complicated.”

“Which is why I’m here,” my sister says. “To uncomplicate them.”

There they are, the words she’s been wanting to say to me all along. I knew she wouldn’t be able to resist forever. This is what she’s been waiting for, the chance to tell me how I’ve failed.

“When we couldn’t reach Theron, Cilla, or Europa, we knew that something had gone wrong,” Cassandra continues. “And then we had word that Misha had been killed.”

So there was someone else inside the MGB spying for them. For us. I’m not surprised. In fact, I assumed there was. I do wonder who it is, though. I don’t ask. I’m not ready to give Cassandra even the smallest bit of satisfaction.

“The council decided it would be best for me to come see if you were in trouble,” she says.

“Of course,” I say. “And since you look like me, it would make it easy for you to assume my role as Player without arousing the suspicions of anyone else who might be involved.”

“The look on the American’s face when he thought he was seeing double was worth the trip,” Cassandra says. “It was almost as if I’d broken his heart.”

Her words are not lost on me. Again, though, I ignore them. We’ve reached the street. Cassandra stops at a car, takes some keys from her pocket, and unlocks the door. She gets inside, and I walk around to the other side. When she pushes the door open, I get in. “Are we driving back to Heraklion?” I ask as she starts the engine.

“Train,” she says as she pulls away from the curb. “It will take a little more than two days, so we’ll have lots of time to catch up. I have a bag for you, so we can go directly to Berlin Friedrichstraße. Unless there’s something else you need to do.”

She looks over at me. I look back at her. “No,” I say. I pat the box I’m holding in my lap. “Sauer is dead. We have the weapon. That’s what I came for.”

Cassandra grins. “Good,” she says. “This will be fun. Just the two of us, with nothing to do but talk. It will be like when we were children.”

That’s what I’m afraid of, I think as I grin back at her and say, “I’m glad you came.”