The Demon Crown: A Sigma Force Novel Read online

  Kat cast Monk a scathing look for distracting the pair and tried to get the conversation back on track. “Director Bosko, I’m assuming you must have solicited Dr. Slaski’s help.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s right. If you are seeking sources of old amber, deposits hundreds of millions of years, then my good friend, Damian, is our best resource.”

  Bosko clapped Slaski on the shoulder; he simply sighed in response. The pair made an odd couple. One short, the other tall. One round, the other thin. But it was their personalities that were the true polar opposites. The ebullient Bosko seemed incapable of forming a frown, whereas Slaski’s lips seemed perpetually frozen in one.

  Still, Elena sensed a true friendship between the two men, something more than just a professional relationship.

  “Damian oversees the Amber Laboratory at his museum,” Bosko extolled. “His lab has Krakow’s only spectrometer for analyzing the authenticity of amber artifacts. His expertise is in dating amber. There is no one better.”

  Bosko grinned at his colleague, who only shrugged, as if acknowledging the authenticity of the compliment but taking no pleasure in it.

  “Krakow is not far from Poland’s southern border,” Bosko explained. “That’s where you’ll find very old layers of blue earth, those strata of salty marine sandstone left behind as the Tethys Ocean receded. And that’s where, in rare cases, deposits of ancient amber have been found.”

  “How rare?” Kat asked.

  Elena knew the importance of her question. If such deposits were few and far between, it would help narrow their search.

  Dr. Slaski answered, “I have most of those discoveries—past and present—compiled on my office computer. The project was only possible because of a history museum outside of Krakow, which houses an extensive cartography collection. I spent many months searching their collection. Several of the maps, some dating back to the fourteenth century, mark the sites of old amber deposits.”

  “If you could share what you learned,” Kat said, “it could greatly assist us in pinpointing where James Smithson obtained his artifact.”

  “Or at least limit the scope of our search,” Elena added.

  “I’m not sure that would help,” Slaski said. “I’ve mapped over three hundred sites across southern Poland.”

  Kat winced, but refused to let this lead go. “Maybe if we narrowed the search parameter down to the time frame of Smithson’s travels along the Amber Road, we might be able to—”

  The dour doctor shook his head. “There is no need to go to that trouble. I was rushing over here because I believe I know where Mr. Smithson could have discovered his sample of ancient amber.”

  Kat blinked at this claim. “How?”

  Bosko simply clapped his palms together. “Did I not tell you that Damian is your man?”

  4:32 P.M.

  “What am I looking at?” Kat asked.

  She struggled to understand how this had anything to do with Slaski’s claim from a moment before. The group was gathered around a laptop that the doctor had removed from his leather bag and set up on the table. The image on the screen looked like a very old map.

  “This is from the museum’s cartography collection. The map was drawn by Willem Hondius back in 1645, though it is believed he based his map from the previous work done by cartographer Marcin German.”

  “Yes,” Kat pressed him, sensing each passing minute, “but what’s its significance?”

  “It’s one of the maps I used in building my compilation. There are two amber sites noted here. But that’s not why I wanted to show you this.” Slaski stared hard at her. “You have to understand that amber sites in southern Poland are rare, relatively small, and scattered wildly. So no mines were established to solely dig for amber. The discoveries were haphazard and by sheer chance.”

  Monk straightened from his hunch over the laptop. “You’re saying these deposits were stumbled upon during other mining operations.”

  “Which matches Archibald MacLeish’s account in his journal,” Kat added. “Smithson had claimed over drinks with a geologist that some miners accidentally broke into a rich vein of amber.”

  She restrained from sharing the rest of the tale, how something was unleashed in that mine. A horrible disease carried by stinging insects.

  Born right out of the bones of the rock, Smithson had asserted.

  Kat suspected what had truly happened was that those miners cracked through prehistoric bones trapped in the amber, bones full of the Odokuro’s cryptobiotic cysts. Once aerosolized, those spores were inhaled or ingested by the workers. After that, they’d be dead men walking, with the hatched larvae eating them from the inside out, until finally adult wasps came bursting forth from their corpses.

  No wonder they firebombed the tunnels with the workers still down there, then sealed it all up.

  Slaski, of course, knew none of this, but he came to a conclusion on his own. “I had already assumed the amber deposit must have been an accidental discovery at an already established mine. During Mr. Smithson’s time, there were many active mines across Poland. Digging for copper, sulfur, silver. But in southern Poland, the largest operations were all salt mines.”

  He pointed to the map on the screen. “Like this one Hondius drew. He even included etched vignettes of those operations along the bottom of his map, showing the huge scope of the operations at this particular mine.”

  “What mine is it?” Elena asked, as she peered at the drawings along the bottom through her reading glasses.

  “It’s one of Poland’s most famous sites. The Wieliczka Salt Mine. It was established in the thirteenth century and continued operations until 2007, after which it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site.”

  Monk frowned. “Why was an old mine chosen for that honor?”

  Bosko chimed in, his voice bright with excitement. “Oh, you must visit it. It is quite wondrous. Over the centuries, generations of miners had taken to carving and sculpting the subterranean chambers with elaborate decorations, most of them religious in scope, as the miners sought the good graces of God to keep them safe.”

  “For ages, the sights have drawn countless visitors to Wieliczka,” Slaski said, a rare edge of pride in his voice. “The famous astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus toured the place in the sixteenth century. The Polish composer Frédéric Chopin did the same in the nineteenth. More recently, a few U.S. presidents have visited the site, as did the current pope.”

  Kat got an inkling as to the origin of Slaski’s earlier claim. “Such a reputation would have certainly reached a geologist traveling along the nearby Amber Road.”

  “How could he resist?” Slaski said, with the faintest ghost of a smile. “That is why I went and called the mine and had them check the visitors roster from the window of time when your Mr. Smithson was in the vicinity.”

  “And you found his name?” Monk asked.

  Slaski nodded.

  Kat stared at the map glowing on the laptop’s screen. “And according to this old account, amber had been found there in the past.”

  “Correct. It is in such strata of salt where you’ll often find amber deposits.”

  Kat felt they were drawing close.

  Sam cleared his throat. As an entomologist, he likely didn’t have much to offer to this historical trail, but from his crinkled brow, he must have a concern.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  “It was something I remember from reviewing Professor Matsui’s research notes concerning the . . .” His voice trailed off as he glanced at the two Polish men, plainly reluctant to speak too openly.

  Kat wanted to dismiss such precautions with time running out, but she drew him aside and kept her voice low. “What?”

  “Professor Matsui attributed the amazing death-defying properties of the wasps’ life cycle to genetic properties they borrowed from other insects and possibly what he described as the dark matter of life, those Lazarus microbes that seemingly could lie dormant for hundreds of millions of years
yet come back to life.”

  Kat vaguely remembered those speculations. “What about them?”

  “Professor Matsui made a list of those Lazarus microbes in his notes. Natronobacterium, Virgibacillus, Halorubacterium, Oceanobacillus. All of them were discovered encrusted in crystal formations. And not just any formations. They were all found in the same type of crystals.”

  Though Kat could not recall the details, she could guess. She glanced back to the map on the laptop. “Salt.”

  Sam nodded. “Perhaps it was the wasps’ proximity to those salt-loving buggers that allowed the insects to be infected by them. And over time, some of the microbes’ genetic code was incorporated into the wasps’ genome, gifting them with the power of cryptobiosis.”

  Or life after death.

  “If you’re right, that would further support that we’re on the right track.” She checked her watch. “Only one way to find out.”

  As she gathered everyone up, Slaski stepped forward. “I was going to return to Krakow today. Perhaps I should accompany you.”

  She wanted to refuse, remembering the blood seeping through her fingers as she struggled to keep Director Tamm alive.

  Slaski was persistent. “I’m both familiar with the mine and its operators. I’m sure I can convince them to cooperate with your search.”

  With time running short, how can I refuse this offer?

  She glanced to Monk. He looked worried, mirroring her own trepidation, but he ultimately shrugged, coming to the same conclusion as her.

  “Thank you, Dr. Slaski. We’d appreciate your help.”

  After also thanking Director Bosko, the group was soon out of the museum and traveling down Dluga Street again, passing jewelry boutiques and tiny cafes. The congested foot traffic forced them to wend between throngs of tourists and locals.

  Kat came to another conclusion, sharing it with her husband. “I guess I owe Aiko Higashi an apology.”

  “It seems you do,” Monk acknowledged.

  Before leaving Tallinn earlier in the day, Kat had asked Painter to lay a false trail, to tell Japanese intelligence services that their group was headed next to St. Petersburg. The strategy of hopping to the northern end of the Amber Road made logical sense and should have been convincing. If there had been a leak out of Japan, the enemy should’ve been looking for them in northern Russia.

  That wasn’t the case.

  “How many?” she asked.

  “I count five.”

  They were being followed.

  Kat kept going, primed to act if the enemy made any move, but from the pattern of the tail, that seemed unlikely. Whoever had targeted them must have learned from their failure in Tallinn and now sought simply to draft behind them, to try to learn what they knew.

  She weighed whether to lose the tail or simply let the others believe they were undetected. Either tactic had its advantages and disadvantages.

  For now, a greater worry nagged at her.

  How did they know we were in Gdansk?

  She came to one final conclusion.

  Whether back in D.C. or out here . . .

  We have a traitor in our midst.

  25

  May 8, 3:33 A.M. SST

  Ikikauō Atoll

  Powerless, Gray watched the black tide encircle the three trapped men. His jaw ached from clenching his teeth in frustration. There was nothing he could do to stop what was about to happen.

  Professor Matsui’s descriptive name for this variation of the wasp drone—a wingless carnivore he called harvesters—foretold the fate of the three trapped men.

  Inside the sealed chamber, one intrepid scavenger broke away from the mass and shot toward Kowalski’s toes. With his arms pinioned to the side by chains, he could only stamp a foot at the threat. The man ground his heel atop the insect, his face scowling in disgust. His lips moved in a curse silenced by the room’s insulation.

  Kowalski lifted his foot to inspect the damage. There was none. The wasp’s tanklike body had withstood the assault. The harvester sprang upward, landing on his broad foot, then skittered to his hairy ankle.

  It latched there.

  Kowalski tried to rub it away with his other foot, but he couldn’t budge it.

  Then his grimace turned into a shocked, silent gasp.

  Gray imagined razor-sharp mandibles biting deep.

  Blood dribbled down the edge of the big man’s foot.

  Palu’s cousins—Makaio and Tua—noted the damage. They were trussed to the right of Kowalski. They drew away from the horde slowly closing down from all sides, pulling their chains taut. The three men bunched in the room’s center.

  “Please don’t do this,” Ken begged. The professor was held at gunpoint at the window next to Gray. Another trio of armed men stood guard behind their group.

  “Then tell me what I want to know.” Valya lifted a palm to a large green button, likely an emergency switch to subdue the threat. “And I can stop the torment to come.”

  Ken glanced to Gray.

  He shook his head, telling the professor to keep quiet.

  Valya swung her cold gaze to Aiko. “Any of you may speak.”

  Aiko’s face was slightly turned away from the window. It looked like she wanted to squeeze her eyes closed, but she fought not to. Perhaps out of some obligation to the beleaguered men: if they must suffer, so will I.

  To answer Valya, Aiko returned to fully facing the window.

  Valya lowered her arm. “So be it.”

  Masahiro stood at her side with his arms crossed, his expression disdainful—not out of disgust at Valya’s tactics, but because he clearly believed it was in vain. “The woman may very well not be here.”

  “She’s not,” Gray growled. “She’s back on Maui, like I told you from the start. You’re torturing these men for no reason.”

  Masahiro cast a withering glance at Valya, as if to say I told you so, then checked his watch. “We should already be evacuating the island.” He waved an arm dismissively at the window. “My grandfather has no interest in these three, so leave them here. But we should take the others and go now.”

  Valya turned her back on him. “Not without Seichan.”

  Masahiro scowled and mumbled a curse under his breath. “Baka mesu . . .”

  She ignored him, plainly content to play this out.

  It didn’t take long.

  Inside the room, the tide finally broke, likely drawn by the dribble of Kowalski’s blood. The harvester horde descended on the three men chained inside.

  Tua rose on his toes, as if to escape the rising threat. His brother, Makaio, even lifted both feet off the floor, but it was to no avail. As he hung from his wrists, the cuffs cut deeply into his flesh. He was forced to drop a leg back down. His foot vanished into the leading edge of the black mass. At his side, Tua danced in his chains as harvesters reached him, too, and climbed both legs in black streams.

  Kowalski used his big feet like a pair of brooms, attempting to sweep the floor clear around him. But the wasps’ numbers were too great. He lost the battle as the horde fully converged on their group.

  In a matter of seconds, the men were covered from the waist down in a thick mat of biting wasps. The three contorted in their chains—not in a vain attempt to shake their attackers loose, but in clear agony.

  Mouths were open in silent screams.

  Gray knew it would only get worse from here.

  More and more harvesters pushed upward. So far, they seemed to be sticking to the men’s legs and midsections. As Kowalski tried to kick them off, blood spattered outward, striking the window.

  Aiko finally broke, turning her head away and closing her eyes.

  Gray refused, knowing he owed these men that much.

  But how long will this last?

  As if hearing his question, Professor Matsui offered an answer. “Harvesters are like the parasitizing larvae. They’ll spare the vital organs.” He spoke dully, likely trying to use a researcher’s clinical detachment to shield
him from the horror. “They’ll keep their food source alive for as long as possible. Eating their way from the periphery to the core—from outside to in.”

  Gray stared at the tortured men, wishing Ken had remained mute.

  But the professor wasn’t done. “Harvesters carry a paralytic venom in their bites. In these great numbers, it will subdue most prey.”

  Aiko had listened with her eyes still closed. “Will the paralyzing stop the pain?”

  “No,” Ken said, the word coming out like a moan. “Though unable to move, they’ll feel every bite as they’re eaten alive.”

  Past the blood-spattered glass, the three men still fought, still writhed. But if the professor was correct, their struggles would soon end.

  But not the pain.

  Valya spoke with a dreadful calmness as she stared at Gray. “I warned you that I’d give you three chances to tell me the location of Seichan. This is that third chance.”

  She again lifted her palm to the green button.

  Gray remained silent, but the muscles between his shoulder blades tremored. By now, he could discern faint cries from inside, loud enough to pierce the room’s insulation.

  She let him stand there for another long breath—then she reached her other hand and flipped a switch beside the window. Hidden speakers suddenly burst forth with screams, transmitting the men’s agony in full volume.

  Gray swore he could hear blood in those cries.

  Inside, the horde had crested over the men’s waists. They streamed up their flanks and along their chained arms, consuming their meal as Ken had described.

  From outside to in.

  Gray could take it no longer. “She’s here,” he gasped out loud.

  Valya cocked her head, while flicking a glance at Masahiro. “What was that?”

  Fury burned through him, giving him the strength to face Valya. “Seichan’s sick. Parasitized, like I told you. But she’s on the island.”

  “Where?”

  “I don’t know.” He scowled. “I lost sight of her in the lake. She may have been too compromised to make the crossing.”

  Valya narrowed her gaze on him.

  “It’s . . . it’s the truth,” Ken said.