She glanced sidelong at him, as if this were significant.
“What was it?”
“The astrolabe that he used to navigate his journeys.”
Gray stood straighter, picturing what was sketched inside the Greek book. He grew more interested in this tangent. “What was described in that travelogue?”
Anna stared down at the map. “According to Mercator, what you see here—a land of magnetic mountains and whirlpools—what you deem fantastical.”
“But, of course, itis,” he stressed. “Surely Nicolas, that English friar, had too many pints when writing his travelogue.”
“We’ll never know,” Anna said sadly. “By the fifteenth century, all copies of theInventio Fortunatawent missing. We only know of it because of Mercator and a few others who had read and copied sections from it. Like Jacobus Cnoyen, a Brabantian explorer, who read Nicolas’s travelogue and wrote about it in his own book—theItinerarium.”
She gave Gray another impactful glance. “Which subsequently also vanished.”
Gray considered this. “It’s as if someone was purposefully erasing all written records of this friar’s book—and maybe of Hyperborea.”
Anna shrugged. “All we have left are the shadows of it. Like Mercator’s map. And a letter the cartographer wrote to a friend, a royal astronomer, where Mercator mentions the friar’s travelogue.”
Gray frowned. “If only we could get our hands on a copy of that book.”
By now, Father Bailey and Bishop Yelagin had been drawn by the conversation, quietly following their discourse.
It was Bailey who broke the silence and pointed out the obvious, literally by reaching out a finger toward the desk.
“Isn’t it right there?” he asked.
Both Gray and Anna turned from the map and looked at the book resting beside it. Gray had closed that same tome moments before and shifted it off Mercator’s chart. So focused on the strange map, he had failed to note the importance of its paperweight.
Written in dark lettering and embossed into its leather cover were two words.
27
May 12, 10:39A.M. MSK
Moscow, Russian Federation
Tucker struggled to breathe through the cloth bag over his head. His wrists were cuffed behind him. His body jostled and rocked in the back of a van. He heard Valya on a cell phone in the front. Unfortunately, she was speaking in Russian, so he couldn’t tell what she was talking about.
He could glean only one thing.
She’s pissed.
Next to Tucker, the ponytailed woman with a thin scar—Nadira Ali Saeed—pressed a pistol into his side, aiming for his kidney.
Regardless of the threat, Tucker had no intention of struggling. He had heard Dr. Stutt’s name come up as he eavesdropped on Valya.
If they’re hauling me to Elle and Marco, I’ll play the cooperative prisoner.
Still, the question remained:
Where are they taking me?
It had been roughly an hour and a half since he had been ambushed. By his estimate—after being forced at gunpoint from the Mercedes into a van—the vehicle had traveled some twenty or thirty miles. He heard increasing traffic noises: squealing brakes, honking horns, revving engines.
We must have returned to the outskirts of Moscow.
After another few minutes, the van swerved sharply, then jolted over a series of speed bumps. The latter threw him out of his seat. Still, thepistol never moved from his kidneys, which spoke to the deadly efficiency of the woman guarding him.
