“The map, of course. Or did you think a simple substitution code was going to trip me up?”
He laughed aloud, delighted, it seemed, with both her ability to figure out the code and her attitude. He turned to Gianni and said, “Decoding that message took us, what? Seventy-two hours?”
“Seventy-four and a half,” the younger man replied, his gaze intent on her.
Annja pretended not to notice. “Since I obviously passed your test with flying colors, let’s get down to brass tacks. What exactly am I here for?”
“I should think that would be obvious by now,” Charles replied. “I want you to lead an expedition to find the lost library.”
Annja wasn’t surprised. From the moment he’d mentioned the ancient library she knew that was where he was headed. But she also knew there was much more to an expedition than just deciding to conduct one.
“While I certainly appreciate the confidence you’ve shown in me…” she began, but got no further.
Davies held his hand up. “Now just hang on a minute,” he told her. “Hear me out before you go telling me how crazy this is.”
She hadn’t been thinking quite that negatively, but waved to him to continue nonetheless.
“There have been more than eighteen well-funded attempts to find the library in the past fifty years, including two by Soviet leaders Joseph Stalin and Nikita Khrushchev. All of them have ultimately failed,” Charles said. “I have no intention of having my expedition join that long and illustrious list.
“That’s why I want to hire you, Annja. You have far more experience than any of the other expedition leaders I would be forced to consider if you turn me down. Though I’m confident you won’t,” he hastened to add.
Don’t be so sure of that.
“Money is no object, so you will have the best gear and whatever equipment you need to retrieve the library once you have confirmed its location. I will also call on my contacts in Russia to provide you whatever access and assistance you need to be successful.”
She had no doubt that his connections would be invaluable, as half the trouble on expeditions like this was securing the right to go where they wanted to go and search where they wanted to search. But she still wasn’t confident about his motives.
“What is it you expect to do with the library once we find it?” she asked.
For just a moment Charles appeared startled, as if the thought had never occurred to him.
“Is that what you’re concerned about? Rest easy, Miss Creed. If you locate—” he shook his head “—excuse me, when you locate it, the library will be turned over intact to the proper authorities inside the Russian government.”
It was a reasonable response, but Annja found herself pushing him just a bit further. “Right after you pocket a hefty finder’s fee, right?”
Charles laughed outright. “Look around you, Annja,” he said, indicating with a sweep of his hands the house, the grounds, his entire business empire by extension, she supposed. “The media claims I have more money than God and you know what? That’s probably the only time I’ve ever agreed with them. I set a record last year for the most consecutive appearances on Forbes magazine’s Top Ten Wealthiest People list. What on earth would I do with more money?”
It was the response she was looking for. The library was part of the world’s cultural heritage, a glimpse into the beliefs and practices of the past. It belonged to the Russian people and shouldn’t be locked away in some private collector’s vault.
“Good,” she said, “at least that’s settled. But we’re still faced with the issue of finding the map Fioravanti was talking about in his journal. You said you think you know where it is?”
Charles looked over at Gianni, who had been sitting patiently listening to their exchange. “Tell her,” he said to the younger man.
Annja saw the flash of excitement in Gianni’s eyes as he turned to face her. “According to what I’ve been able to discover, Ridolfo’s brother gave the map to Kasmir Nabutov, their cousin by marriage and an Orthodox priest assigned to the Cathedral of the Annunciation. Everything I’ve found on the topic suggests that Nabutov secreted the map inside the Gospel of Gold, though how or exactly where I don’t know.”
She knew that Ivan the Terrible had gifted the Gospel to the cathedral in 1571, right about the same time the library had gone missing. Legend claimed the Gospel had once been a part of the library and that it contained a clue to the library’s whereabouts, but it had been stored in the cathedral for hundreds of years with restricted access. Nobody had verified if the legend was true.
Given that they weren’t getting in to see the Gospel, Annja didn’t see how this was going to help them and said as much to the other two.
“As it turns out,” Charles replied, “I have a colleague on the staff of the cathedral. I’ve made arrangements for the two of you to privately examine the Gospel the day after tomorrow.”
The chance to see and touch the Gospel of Gold would have been enough to get her to agree to the trip. That she would be doing so as part of an expedition to find the lost library of Ivan the Terrible was icing on the cake.
Really good icing.
Now it was her turn to smile.
“So when do we get started?” she asked.
Chapter 5
Gianni was waiting for her, two first-class Aeroflot tickets in his hand, when she arrived at the airport the next afternoon. The flight from JFK in New York to Moscow’s Sheremetyevo International Airport was nine and a half hours, which would give them plenty of time to discuss how they intended to approach the Gospel of Gold and the ways Nabutov might have hidden information in its pages. First, however, Annja wanted to get to know her new companion better.
He, apparently, had the same idea.
“So,” Gianni said as they settled into their seats, “what do you do when you’re not traveling around the world searching for ancient artifacts and lost civilizations?”
“Oh, you know, the usual, I guess.”
The usual? Ri-i-ight.
Somehow she didn’t think protecting the innocent while bearing a medieval mystical sword that was once carried by Joan of Arc fit into most people’s definition of “the usual.” It wasn’t as if she could tell him the truth, and even if she did, he’d never believe it. Sometimes she almost didn’t believe it herself.
The day she’d stumbled upon the last remaining fragment of Joan’s shattered sword and, with her new friend Roux’s help, brought it together with the other fragments he had spent hundreds of years collecting was etched indelibly in her mind. It had, quite literally, been a turning point, not just for her but for Roux and Garin Braden, as well. None of their lives had been the same since.
The sword had chosen her; she knew that now. It had reforged itself right before her very eyes and in doing so had selected her to be its next bearer. The role came with its own unique set of responsibilities, she’d discovered. Her own sense of justice seemed amplified when she carried the sword and several times she’d found herself unable to walk away from a situation as a result. Numbers and odds didn’t matter, only that she acted to defend those who couldn’t defend themselves when the opportunity presented itself.
Which seemed to be happening more and more frequently.
Annja didn’t know how it all worked—at least, not yet. But she’d vowed that one day she would, because the mystery of it was like a constant irritation in the back of her logical, scientific brain.
Gianni, it seemed, wasn’t going to settle for such a trite answer, though.
“Come