Free The Triumph of Death by Jason Henderson Page A

Inside his goggles, the trees lit up bright white against the dark spaces of the infrared. Alex started the Ninja, and spoke into a mike inside the helmet.
    “Can you hear me?”
    “Yes,” she replied. “You Polidori really are about the technology. Aren’t you going to use headlights?”
    “Just put your arms around my…”
    But she already had, her bony arms folding around him and clasping together at his stomach. Even through the jackets, she felt warm. He throttled the Ninja and took off into the woods.
    With Astrid behind him, Alex threaded the motorcycle through the forest, picking up speed as he went. Unnaturally white trees zipped past on either side.
    He became aware of the vibration in Astrid’s helmet before he heard her erupt in laughter. “You really know these woods!”
    “Believe me, if I were starting from anywhere else but the school I’d need the GPS.” The bike jolted as it went over some fallen branches. “But by now I have this route down. Should be just a few minutes.”
    After a while he saw a clearing of darkness beyond the trees, and then the glowing image of a building.
    They broke through the tree line and the farmhouse came into view, a small, unassuming shack with a battered sheet-metal garage door to the side. The moment they passed into the clearing, as the wheels began to churn over soft earth, Alex saw tiny red lights shining, cameras perched overhead in the trees beyond the clearing, watching their progress.
    Astrid gasped, the sound echoing in his ear as he gunned the engine and headed straight for the sheet-metal door. As he drew within a few yards, it swung up fast, and he zipped inside.
    Track lights came on as they moved on to a concrete drive at a thirty-degree grade, and now more obvious cameras swung toward him.
    They passed wooden beams and swiftly responding gun emplacements that swiveled and idled, vibrating on their struts as the Ninja moved past. Down, down, half a mile, until they emerged into a giant concrete hangar, moving past trucks with helicopters on the backs ofthem and all manner of vehicles.
    “This,” said Alex, “is the farmhouse.”
    He came to a stop next to a bike he recognized as Sangster’s black Triumph Speed Triple with the Polidorium emblem on the back of the seat.
    Astrid looked around as she took off her helmet. For once, she seemed impressed. Alex led her up the metal stairs at the back and through a door. They stepped into the carpeted corridor, past offices of agents working at computer screens and drawing on enormous glass maps. “I had no idea.”
    Alex shrugged and turned the boardroom door handle. “Well, we gotta work somewhere.”
    Inside, Alex found Sangster and Armstrong bent over an enormous table with the Polidorium legend Talia sunt set into the shiny black surface. They were looking at a wall screen, and Sangster invited Alex and Astrid to sit.
    “Minhi was right,” Sangster said. “It is The Triumph of Death .”
    Alex smiled slightly. He had called Sangster about Minhi’s suggestion as soon as he’d had a chance. “Fantastic. She showed us the painting in a book, too.”
    “Okay. Let’s talk about the painter. Pieter Bruegel.” Sangster indicated the screen. Projected on the wall Alexsaw two images: a picture of a painter, bearded with a floppy sort of hood, like a medieval worker might wear, and some key biographical data. The second image was the painting itself.
    “Bruegel was Flemish,” Sangster reported. “He painted The Triumph of Death sometime around 1562. We don’t have an exact date.”
    Alex looked at the individual parts of the painting and focused in on the image of what looked like a satellite dish. He remembered it had sent a message. “And it’s amazing. Could the Queen be using this as a, I don’t know, a screenplay for what she was doing this afternoon?”
    “More like the opposite, but we’ll get to that,” Sangster said.
    Armstrong tapped a key in an invisible keyboard in the tabletop