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The Invisible City (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 3)
The Invisible City (A Tom Wagner Adventure Book 3) Read online
Roberts & Maclay
Thriller
Copyright © 2021 by Roberts & Maclay (Roberts & Maclay Publishing). All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the authors, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Translator: Edwin Miles / Copyeditor: Philip Yaeger
Imprint: Independently published / ISBN: 9798715477293
Cover Art by reinhardfenzl.com
Cover Art was created with photos from: depositphotos.com Nevakalina, sdecoret, orlaimagen, jag_cz, stevebonk, Dimedrol68, iLexx / shutterstock.com DR pics / and neo-stock.com
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
www.robertsmaclay.com
[email protected]
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
—The End—
About the Authors
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“Only when there is nothing to hide can one maintain the greatest secrecy.”
Chinese proverb
1
Vienna and Berlin, 1976
The shrill scream of the telephone startled Arthur Julius Prey from sleep. He leaped out of bed and ran to the tiny office he kept in his Vienna apartment fast enough to stop it from ringing a second time. No need to wake his wife or daughter at this ungodly hour. As a freelance reporter, getting a call in the middle of the night did not necessarily mean the end of the world, but it usually didn’t bode well. More often than not, a call like this would entail a long journey abroad and, to the chagrin of Wilhelmine and Maria, his wife and daughter, often to a crisis region steeped in danger.
He picked up the receiver and heard a young woman’s voice say, “This is the long-distance operator in Berlin. You have a call from East Berlin. Please stay on the line.”
East Berlin? He did not know anybody in Berlin, East or West. There was a buzz on the line, then a clicking sound.
“Arthur? Is that you?”
Arthur’s eyes widened as he recognized his old friend’s voice.
“Artjom! What is it? What are you doing in East Berlin?”
“Arthur, I need your help,” the man said in his heavy Russian accent.
As he listened to what his friend had to say, a few framed photographs standing on the bookshelf beside his desk caught Arthur’s eye. One showed himself and Artjom together. It had been taken on the most dangerous and terrifying mission of his career. With youthful exuberance, driven by a moral compass molded in the 1960s and inspired by Eddie Adams’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the summary execution of a Vietcong prisoner by a South Vietnamese police chief in February 1968, Arthur had joined the Associated Press—and just six months later found himself smack in the middle of the Vietnam War.
After slogging through weeks of hardship and misery, Arthur had witnessed a bombing raid while on a day’s R&R in Saigon. He had gone to the aid of a young girl hurt in a blast but had been taken by surprise by another explosion and was injured himself. Father Lazarev had given him first aid and saved the lives of both Arthur and the young girl. He had not moved from their bedsides in the hospital. An experience like that forges a bond, and they had been close friends ever since.
A year earlier, Arthur had finally found the time to visit the man who had saved his life. Through contacts, he had managed to travel to the Soviet Union and, more importantly, to get out again safely. While there, he had spent a few weeks in a small village east of Moscow. There, in a crumbling wooden church beside a small lake, the second photo that held a place of honor on Arthur’s bookshelf had been taken.
Twenty-four hours after the call from his friend, Arthur found himself walking along Friedrichstrasse in Berlin. He stopped to look at the Berlin Wall and the famous square in front of it, with its white wooden hut: Checkpoint Charlie. Just behind the hut began the narrow no-man’s-land that separated East and West. Since 1961, gray cement, barbed wire and armored vehicles had tainted the day-to-day views confronting Berlin’s inhabitants. The windows of the buildings that stood alongside the wall were all bricked up, but graffiti added a little color to the bleakness, at least on the western side. Many refugees seeking freedom beyond the walls had died in that bordering strip of land. Those who tried to flee from East to West were shot without mercy.
Arthur looked at the time, turned away and went down the next narrow side street. He had to be at the meeting point on time.
It was late, and the streets around the border crossing were deserted. Arthur strode quickly down the alley before turning again. They had arranged to meet at the next intersection. Eleven p.m. on the dot, not one minute later, his friend had said. He looked at his watch: 10:54. He was alone. The air was cold and damp, and he felt a chill creeping into his bones. An uneasy feeling slowly grew in his belly. On the opposite side of the dimly lit street, a drunk staggered out of a bar and swayed along the sidewalk. Arthur paced anxiously. The few minutes felt like an eternity. Then an old VW T1 microbus turned slowly around a corner and rolled toward him. Arthur looked in from the passenger side when the van rolled to a stop.
“Get in the back. Come on, quick,” hissed the man at the wheel, looking around nervously.
Arthur hesitated, but did as he was told. He looked around, opened the rear door and climbed into the windowless microbus. Hardly ha
d he sat down when the man turned around and held out a black cloth sack.
“Put this on,” the man said. Surprised, Arthur took the sack. What have I gotten myself into here? he wondered as he pulled the sack over his head. The driver hit the gas.
2
Church of Our Lady of Kazan, Lake Svetloyar, near Nizhny Novgorod, Russia. Present day.
Two men scouted the grounds around the church, before finally approaching it from different directions. They took up posts at the entrance of the church, in the pale light of the moon.
Lake Svetloyar looked small, but it was far deeper than one would expect from its size. The moon shone brightly, reflected in the calm surface of the lake. The church, built entirely of wood, had stood on the shore of the lake for almost a century, and in the silvery glow of the moonlight it looked almost unnaturally mystical.
The two guards seemed bored, but they were professional enough to take their jobs seriously. The clothes they wore seemed inherently unsuited to their surroundings: they were dressed in suits, specially tailored to conceal the contours that pistols and shoulder holsters usually made. Only one paved road led to and from the church, connecting it to the Voskresensky district. Reaching the church meant crossing an old, ramshackle-looking bridge. A third guard had been posted there.
As he did every evening, the priest knelt before the altar of the small church and thanked God for choosing him. He thought of the many guardians before him who had dedicated their lives to preserving the secret—a secret that indeed meant little to most of the world outside, but meant everything to the people there. Only a few knew the legend, and even fewer knew about the treasures, both material and spiritual, that he had dedicated his life to protecting—as many before him had done.
The breeze whistled lightly through the cracks in the wooden walls of the church. There was never a moment of absolute silence here. Something was always creaking or cracking or squeaking somewhere, so the priest did not look up when he heard noises from outside, in front of the entrance. It was probably one of the brown bears that frequented the area and which he saw almost daily, he thought. But he knew that he was safe inside the church. The guards had been hired on the advice of his son.
The priest was starting to think that his time was growing short. He was approaching his eighty-fifth birthday, and God alone knew how much longer he would be among the living. He felt healthy and energetic, but he knew that could change very quickly at his age. He would make the preparations he needed to make. A successor needed to be found as soon as possible.
Outside, four men in camouflage appeared, as if from nowhere. Equipped with night vision equipment and with MP5 submachine guns at the ready, they crept quietly toward the church, doing their best to conceal themselves in the shadows cast by the bright moon. One of the guards saw them instantly, but was too slow. He had no time either to shoot or sound an alarm. A bullet between the eyes and he was dead before his body hit the ground.
As the other guard turned to see what had happened, he too was eliminated.
The coast was clear.
3
Headquarters of Blue Shield Task Force, UNO City, Vienna
Tom, Hellen and Cloutard flipped open the files that the woman now in charge of Blue Shield had just handed them. Almost simultaneously, their eyes widened and their jaws dropped. Absolute silence fell for several seconds.
Tom was the first to recover. “Is this what I think it is?”
Theresia de Mey, Hellen’s mother and the new head of Blue Shield, nodded, unable to suppress a smile.
“Mon Dieu, so it is not just a myth. It truly exists?” Cloutard asked.
Hellen’s mother nodded again.
“And we get to go find it?” Tom asked. Impressed, he turned down the corners of his mouth and narrowed his eyes in his best Robert de Niro imitation. “No dime-a-dozen artifacts for us.”
Hellen had not yet said a word. She went on studying the file, poring over the attached maps and analyzing the photographs in the appendix. She had to press one hand over her mouth to physically stop herself from letting out a joyful whoop. She looked up at Tom and Cloutard.
“You know what this means? People have been hunting for this for centuries. It’s one of the greatest legends of human history.”
“And we finally have conclusive evidence of exactly where it is,” said Theresia de Mey proudly. “Now all you need to do is find it for Blue Shield.”
Tom rubbed his hands together enthusiastically. “I’m ready to go any time. On the hunt for—”
The ringing of Tom’s cell phone interrupted his euphoria, and his expression instantly cycled from astonishment, through doubt, to concern.
“The Vatican,” he said, and took the call.
Hellen and Cloutard looked on expectantly, but Hellen’s mother seemed suddenly peeved. Cloutard saw her pinched lips and quickly tried to placate her: “It is only the Pope. We should be happy that Tom was not in the, uh, men’s room when His Holiness decided to call.”
Hellen’s mother looked at the Frenchman in astonishment. She did not understand what was happening at all. Tom, in the meantime, had hung up and had risen to his feet.
“The Pope needs a favor. He’s expecting the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church very soon for an ecumenical powwow, and they’ve had a series of terror and bomb threats. He wants me to work with the Swiss Guard to guarantee their safety.” He pointed at the file with the Blue Shield job. “That’s going to have to wait for now.”
Hellen drew a sharp breath. “Wait? You want us to wait? Tom, this is one of humanity’s greatest treasures, lost for centuries, and we’re supposed to wait?”
“Do I have to remind you that His Holiness was extremely helpful during our last little escapade? And what about the secret he revealed to you? I owe—no, we owe him for that.”
Theresia de Mey sniffed angrily.
“Mr. Wagner—” she began, but cut herself off because she had not said his name correctly. She had pronounced it as if it were German—“Vahgner”—but now corrected herself and stretched the “a” for emphasis. “Mr. Waaaagner. We don’t want to wait any longer. We cannot. You can’t seriously think it’s a good idea to put THIS job on hold and make me and Blue Shield wait on your first day on the job?”
But Tom didn’t even hear the last half of her speech. He had already left the conference room.
“Ma chère,” said François Cloutard, giving Hellen’s mother with his best big-eyed puppy-dog look. “Ce n’est pas un problème. It has not been found in all this time, hundreds of years. A few days more or less will make no difference.”
The de Meys, both mother and daughter, were speechless.
“Croyez-moi, for myself, as a former grave robber and art smuggler, this is also very hard to accept, but without Tom the mission will simply have to wait.”
He stood up, straightened his tie and put on his hat. Hellen also started gathering her things to leave. Cloutard was right. As much as she hated the thought, they had to wait until Tom returned.
Cloutard stopped in the doorway and turned back to Theresia de Mey once more.
“And would you be so kind as to make sure the coffee is better next time? We are in Vienna, pour l’amour de Dieu.”
4
Church of Our Lady of Kazan, Lake Svetloyar.
The silence was suddenly shattered by a loud crash. The old priest started and looked around in shock. He was no longer young, and it took him a few seconds to get from his knees to his feet. He turned around only to find himself staring down the barrels of three machine pistols with laser sights. Three men in battle gear had just kicked open the door and forced their way into his inner sanctum. Three red beams were trained on him. His breath and heart stood still. One of the three approached while the other two kept their weapons aimed at him.
“I don’t want to spill any more blood. You know something that we need to know. And you will tell us.”
The man spoke Russian with no accent whatsoever
, flawless and polished. He spoke so perfectly, in fact, that he could not possibly be Russian. The priest guessed that he was German, but that was only one of countless thoughts that shot through his mind as the man snapped handcuffs on his wrists. He had opened the visor of his helmet and the priest looked up into cold gray eyes. But he saw something strange, too. The man had neither eyelashes nor eyebrows, and the priest suspected that he didn’t have a hair on his entire body—another thought that, considering his situation, was completely out of place. It was also the last thing that went through his mind before the intruder jabbed a thin needle into the crook of his arm. Seconds later, the priest passed out.
A moment later, a fourth man entered the church. He ignored the two dead guards and the unconscious priest lying on the floor and instead went straight to the altar. He opened the wooden tabernacle that hung on the wall behind it and slid the back wall aside with practiced ease, revealing an ornate and exceptionally valuable cross that lay hidden in a hollow space behind it. The man removed it from the tabernacle and stowed it in a small leather bag.