Shatterproof (10 page)

“Snakes are deaf,” Jonah said,

“I hear you, man,” Hamilton said.

“No, they really are deaf,” Jonah said. “That cobra can’t hear a note from that flute. See how the charmer bobs and weaves? The snake’s mirroring the dude’s movements, not shuffling to the music.” He crossed the street, dropped some cash in the snake charmer’s money basket, then started bobbing and weaving along with the charmer.

Erasmus had insisted they travel to India completely incognito. No paparazzi. No limos. They were getting around the vast city on motorcycles. Well . . . Erasmus had a motorcycle. He had gotten them a motorcycle rickshaw. One drove, one rode, which was a constant source of bickering.

Also, no five-star hotels. They were staying in a Madrigal safe house, which was more like a shack.

No five-star restaurants, either. Hamilton took another bite of his
pav bhaji
as he watched his cousin.

No Jonah Wizard.

“There can’t be any sightings of Jonah in the country,” Erasmus had said. “We can’t tail Luna if we’re being tailed.”

They had followed Luna to an airport outside Rome, where she booked a first-class seat to Mumbai. Erasmus booked a trio of coach seats near the back restrooms. It was the first time Jonah had ever flown in coach, and he was not amused by the whole concept of a middle seat.

When the flight landed, Hamilton and Jonah grabbed what little gear they had and hopped up, eager to get off the plane so they didn’t lose Luna in the crowd.

“Sit down,” Erasmus had said. “She has to get her bags and get through passport control and customs. That will take one hour and twelve minutes. It will take us sixteen minutes to be at the curb. We don’t have bags, and I know a guy in passport control.”

Sixteen minutes later they stepped out of the Mumbai airport. It took Erasmus thirty minutes to procure the motorcycle and the rickshaw. Exactly twenty-six minutes later, Luna Amato walked out of the terminal and climbed into the back of a limo.

Their plan was to stake out Luna Amato’s hotel in six-hour shifts. Erasmus had insisted Hamilton and Jonah watch the hotel together so they could keep each other awake. When Jonah asked who was going to keep
him
awake, Erasmus answered that he didn’t sleep. As far as they could tell, it was the truth.

Hamilton washed his last bite down with a gulp of Thums Up as Jonah came back from his cobra dance.

“We need to relieve Erasmus,” Ham said, looking at his watch.

“We also need to tell him about that Interpol dude,” Jonah said.

“What Interpol dude?” Hamilton asked, following him to the rickshaw.

“Weren’t you listening? Milos Vanek is coming to town. We gotta find out what’s cracking with Lune dawg. My turn to drive.”

They found Erasmus leaning against a wall across the street from Luna’s hotel, in the exact same spot he had been leaning several hours earlier. He wasn’t worried that the hotel had several exits that Luna could slip through. His extended family was a fixture in the hotel/hospitality industry. A single phone call had put dozens of eyes on Luna, monitoring every move she made. If she took a single step out of the hotel, Erasmus would know about it.

“Yo,” Jonah said.

“Hey, Erasmus,” Hamilton said.

Erasmus gave them a nod, then swung onto his motorcycle. “See you in a few hours.”

Jonah and Hamilton watched after him long after he had disappeared into the throng of traffic.

Erasmus did not drive to the safe house. In fact, he hadn’t been inside since he’d arrived with Hamilton and Jonah. Instead he drove to a cyber café. There were hundreds of them in Mumbai, and he never went to the same one twice.

He walked in, paid his fee, and found a terminal away from the windows in the darkest corner. He logged on and opened his encrypted e-mail account. There were over five hundred unread e-mails. Cahills from all over the world were feeding information to Attleboro. In turn, Evan forwarded everything, no matter how trivial, to Erasmus. Somewhere in all of this data, Vesper One had left a trail, a single cyber fingerprint they could use to track him down. The Vespers usually operated in the dark, but by taking the hostages and killing McIntyre, they had scurried briefly into the light. This was the time to find them.

Erasmus pored through all the e-mails, but only two items stood out. Thieves had broken into the Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses in
Toulouse
, France, and stolen all of their electromagnets. All of them. It had taken the entire weekend to get the equipment out of the laboratory. Unless the thieves were particle physicists, they would have absolutely no use for their loot.

The other item was a brief mention that a replica of the Antikythera Mechanism had been stolen from the American Computer Museum in Bozeman, Montana. The original device had been recovered from a Mediterranean shipwreck by a Greek sponge diver in 1900, but was believed to have been constructed between 150 and 100
B.C.
At first, it was thought to be one of the first forms of a mechanized clock. Now it was considered to be world’s oldest-known analog computer. No one knew exactly what the device had been used for, but scientists believed the mechanism could track the Metonic calendar, predict solar eclipses, and calculate the timing of the ancient Olympic Games.

The replica was beautiful, but what interested Erasmus was the photograph of the original Antikythera fragment. It looked familiar to him, though he couldn’t quite recall where he had seen it before.

He memorized every detail of the fragment before dragging it into the Vesper thumb drive. The fragment was just one of thousands of pieces. Eventually, the pieces would all click together to form a prison cell for the Vespers.

His final task was to Google Jonah Wizard. Jonah had been very good about not being the world-famous Jonah Wizard the past few days, but Erasmus knew it couldn’t last. Jonah’s fans were on the lookout, with reports coming in that he’d been spotted in Alice Springs, Australia, rapping with aboriginal people, then in Churchill, Canada, getting down with polar bears. One particularly oddball rumor placed him in Manaus, Brazil, searching for El Dorado. And the next had him in — Mumbai, India. Erasmus hit the link, which led him to a YouTube video of Jonah Wizard dancing with a king cobra.

This is going to complicate things
, Erasmus thought.

When the video ended, he put in a second thumb drive, which completely wiped the computer’s hard drive. While it worked, he looked at his watch. He had just enough time to get something to eat and catch a movie. Perhaps a double feature. He loved Hindi-language films, and what better place to watch one than the birthplace of Bollywood?

The computer’s alarm woke Vesper Three, which meant that data was streaming in. Erasmus was online again. It had been so easy to swap out his thumb drive with one Vesper Three had made. While Erasmus thought he was wiping the memory from the computers he used, he was actually transferring every bit of data and every keystroke to Vesper Three.

Like taking candy from a baby. The Cahills have no idea who they’re dealing with.

Vesper Three flashed forward to the shock on Amy’s face when she discovered that one of her own had betrayed her. The Vespers were closer than Amy thought; so close they used her little command clubhouse as a base of their own. The so-called Cahill leader thought her mansion was safe. But the Vespers had eyes — and agents — everywhere.

Vesper Three smiled.
It’s about time for Luna Amato to make her move. The rats are all gathered and sniffing the trap.

Vesper Three e-mailed the signal to release the bait.

“This way!”

“No, this way!”

“You’re both wrong. This way!”

“Everybody just shut up!” Ted shouted.

This stopped everyone in their tracks. Ted Starling rarely spoke and never shouted. The hostages had raced through a long, dimly lit tunnel and were now standing in front of three branches that snaked off into three different directions.

“You’re making too much noise,” Ted said. “The two guards we locked in the bunker aren’t the only ones here! I heard five distinct voices. With the two guards locked in the bunker, that means there are at least seven people down here. Probably more.”

Nellie had been holding Ted’s arm, guiding him through the tunnel. “Ted’s right,” she said. “We’re out of the bunker, but we’re still trapped.”

“Maybe we should split up,” Reagan suggested.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Fiske said. “The only advantage we have is our number.”

“No, it isn’t,” Reagan said. “We have this.” She pulled the guard’s pistol from her waistband.

“I hope we won’t need that,” Fiske said.

Ted felt the walls. “Tell me what it looks like down here.”

“We’re in a rock tunnel,” Nellie answered. “It might be an old mine. There’s a lightbulb about every thirty feet, covered by a rusty metal sconce. Some of the bulbs are out. We’ve passed a couple of metal doors, but they were rusted closed. In front of us are three identical tunnels, left, right, and straight ahead.”

“Are there markings on the walls that say where we are or what this place is?” Ted asked.

“Nothing.”

“Put me in front of the three tunnels and let me listen for a moment without anybody talking.”

Nellie positioned him, and Ted frowned in concentration.

“There are people walking down the right-hand tunnel. I think they’re a few minutes away, which means that this underground warren is humongous. They’re not running, which means they probably don’t know we’ve escaped. I don’t get anything from the middle tunnel. But there’s definitely fresh air coming out of the tunnel on the left.”

“Then it’s left,” Alistair said.

“Let’s get out of here!” Reagan said, bounding ahead of the others.

Natalie followed with Fiske, Nellie led Ted, and Phoenix and limping Alistair brought up the rear. The guard’s kick had badly damaged Alistair’s knee, and Phoenix’s shoulder was almost the right height for Alistair to lean against.

They hurried on and on, Alistair hobbling as fast as he could. The tunnel seemed endless and each noise or bump had the group whipping their heads around in fear. By Nellie’s calculation, it was almost a half a mile to the end. Reagan had outpaced everyone and was waiting for them with a blank expression when they arrived.