The Bone Chamber Part 22

"Don't try to blame this on me," she said, as they walked over the cobbled street toward the dark green door of the apartment house. "If I had to guess, they saw Father Dumas enter the amba.s.sador's residence, then saw him head to the academy and followed us from there. There were sentinels posted, maybe even the same ones who followed you to my hotel."

"The outcome doesn't excuse the fact you should have been on that plane."

"Had I been, you wouldn't have rushed h.e.l.l-bent to find me, thereby saving the day. You got to play hero." She glanced over at him, saw him clench his jaw as he rang the bell for Giustino to unlock the door. He jabbed the bell a second time, then held it far too long, clearly annoyed with her, and she realized he was right in some respects. "Look, I'm sorry. But Tasha was my friend, and just as you're not about to let Tex's murder go by without a fight, I wasn't about to let Tasha's go."

"You have no idea what you're talking about."

"Then by all means, clue me in."

He looked over at her as though contemplating just what it was he was going to tell her. But then suddenly looked away, and under his breath, said, "I could have you ordered back with one call."

"Yeah, you could," she said as the lock clicked and Griffin pushed open the door, revealing a whitewashed stairwell, with flagstone steps that wound upward in a square around the broken lift cage. At the moment she was thinking he should make that call. Somehow in the midst of all this, she'd forgotten just why it was that she'd gone off to Quantico. She'd lost her edge on that last case she'd worked, not trusting herself that she could do her job without endangering others. And now, because of her headstrong foolishness, she'd been shot at more times in the last week than in all her years of law enforcement service. And what bothered her the most was that a simple operation up at Adami's villa had resulted in the loss of one of Griffin's friends, and she couldn't absolve herself of that blame, either.

Griffin held the door for her, and she moved past him, then up the stairs, a number of emotions was.h.i.+ng over her. Halfway up the first flight, she stopped, turned, looked him right in the eye. "Fine. Send me home. I'll go. You're right. I mean, maybe I shouldn't have jumped the gun on this, but I needed to do something and-" She stopped, unable to keep her train of thought under the intensity of his stare. She was no longer sure of herself. h.e.l.l, she wasn't sure she'd ever been sure of herself. And now, the way he watched her..."G.o.dd.a.m.n it, was there something wrong with me last night? I haven't slept with a guy in close to a year, and I'd like to know if it's just me or-" Too late she clamped her mouth shut, then looked away, her face turning hot, unable to believe those words had even slipped from her mouth. Idiot Idiot.

The resulting silence made her feel an even bigger fool, and she wanted to get as far from him as she could. But when she tried to head back up the steps, he grabbed her arm, held her there, his expression unreadable.

It was everything she could do to gather her thoughts. "Can we pretend like I never brought up the subject? Just put me on a plane, send me home?"

In answer, he pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open, pressed a b.u.t.ton, and she figured this was it, he was making that call to have her sent back to the States.

"It's Griffin," he said into the phone. "Turn off the camera in the stairwell."

A camera in the stairwell? Great. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she wished she could melt into the walls or slither down past him and never come back. Great. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she wished she could melt into the walls or slither down past him and never come back.

He closed the phone, returned it to his belt, saying nothing, his grip on her arm firm, unyielding. Several seconds pa.s.sed by before he said anything, then, "I do not like racing through the streets, feeling helpless because someone is walking into danger. Not in this country, not in our own. And I especially don't like the feeling I get when it's you you walking into that danger." walking into that danger."

She tried to smile, felt her lips tremble. "Does sorry work?"

"You're a distraction, and I don't like distractions." He stepped so close, his face was mere inches from hers, and she didn't dare move. Couldn't move. He glanced at her mouth, and just when she thought, knew knew he was going to kiss her, he pulled away, looked her in the eye. "I barely know you. I don't want to, Sydney. I can't be worried about you. You were supposed to be a rule follower..." he was going to kiss her, he pulled away, looked her in the eye. "I barely know you. I don't want to, Sydney. I can't be worried about you. You were supposed to be a rule follower..."

He took a step back, then down, and she tried to make light of the situation. "I've changed."

"I can't afford distractions."

"You mentioned that." She stepped away from him, brushed her hands over her clothes, surprised to feel her pulse racing. She wanted him. He didn't want the distraction. She was tempted to quip something about not worrying, because she d.a.m.ned well would be staying out of his bed from this point on. After all, they'd be separated by an entire ocean, never mind that her ego wasn't that fragile, no matter what stupid things she might utter about her nonexistent s.e.x life.

Without another word, he indicated she should precede him up the stairs, and just like that the matter was dropped. As it should be, she figured. She had a life of her own, and it did not involve Zachary Griffin.

Professor Francesca Santarella tried to get past the horrific details of how she'd come under such tight security. As if Alessandra's murder hadn't been bad enough, and never mind the attempt on their lives, Dumas had told her that the anthropologist whom Alessandra had chosen for her dig was also dead, apparently from a hit-and-run back in the States.

All twists of fate? Francesca didn't believe it for an instant, and in her mind the weak link in all this was Father Dumas. No one had shot at her until he'd showed up on her doorstep. He had also been involved with Alessandra, and apparently the dead anthropologist, Dr. Natasha Gilbert.

Perhaps it was some chance alignment of the stars that Dumas wasn't currently standing over her shoulder at the moment while she read the centuries-old doc.u.ments before her. Somehow she doubted that Dumas would have let her near them if he'd known that the very subject of her research had been imprisoned under orders of the pope for his involvement with Freemasonry, then held until he gave up the names of every member in his lodge. The church was and always had been anti-Masonic, but she knew for a fact the arrest over Freemasonry had been but a pretext. The church wanted what her subject had hidden, the third key. But perhaps Dumas was not up on church history from the 1700s. He had looked at the time period she'd requested and gave his approval to the priest a.s.signed to a.s.sist in finding the doc.u.ments. The silver lining, if one could call it that, was that she was sitting here in the Vatican, reading transcripts from the secret archives, and was given more freedom than most in that she had no time constraints.

The only thing that hindered her was that Father Dumas had insisted on being her guide while she was here. She gathered that his activities with Mr. Griffin were known to none but a select few, and that set her to contemplate just what it was they did. Some sort of governmental agency, which made her wonder how it was that Alessandra had become involved. And why? Somehow it had never occurred to her that Alessandra might have had her own agenda.

Then again, no one had checked with Francesca to determine what her agenda might be, and that was something she had no desire to reveal. She was quite certain that if Dumas even suspected what it was, she would never have been allowed in here.

She glanced around, saw Father Dumas sitting in a chair not too far away, and decided that he was probably more guard than guide. He smiled when he noticed her look up, and she smiled back, then forced her gaze back to the transcripts in front of her. Her mind kept wandering to the message Alessandra had sent, what she'd tried to convey. The proof, she figured, was probably buried in these transcripts, and she scanned the text, hoping she was right. And if she was right, her next step needed some careful contemplation. Slipping out of the Vatican was one thing. Escaping the notice of Dumas, not quite the mild-mannered priest he portrayed, was quite another.

"Sir?"

Giustino's voice cut into Griffin's thoughts about the latest turn of events on this case, and it took him a moment to realize he was being spoken to. He drew his attention from the security screen that covered one wall of the safe house, and looked over to see what it was Giustino wanted.

"Marc just called in on the secure line. He says it's urgent."

Griffin slid his chair over, took the phone. He hadn't even heard it ring, he'd been so wrapped up in getting Sydney home, and trying to figure out what the h.e.l.l he was missing in this case. "Marc. Talk to me."

"I believe Tex is alive."

Griffin froze. The image of the faceless man at the morgue, his throat cut-He'd seen the ring, Tex's ring...If not Tex, then who? "Alive? Where? How?"

Marc told him what he'd learned.

"Why would they take him to Tunisia?"

"Perhaps for you not to follow, should you think he's alive?"

Griffin's first thought was to fly out to Tunisia, to look for Tex himself, but he knew that Marc could handle the matter as well if not better. "Do what you have to do to bring him home."

"A problem with that. The warehouse I saw him in? It's the one that we're going to take out. HQ wants us to proceed. I did not want to until I called you."

Griffin's pulse thudded at the realization of what Marc was saying. Tex had been considered collateral damage from the moment he was taken in Adami's villa. HQ wasn't about to stop the operation now for one man who was already considered dead. Should the bioweapons make it out of that warehouse, too many lives could be lost. And now Marc was looking for further direction, something outside the standing orders, direction he couldn't give-at least not explicitly. "Do just just as I would. As ordered." as I would. As ordered."

The slightest of hesitations, then, "Yes, sir."

"Marc?"

"Griff?"

"Let me know the moment you find anything further." Griffin hung up, not sure what to think.

Alive.

He clung to that small hope. Tex was alive.

Or was it a trap? Meant to lead them astray? The body in the morgue, no prints or identifiable features. Much like Alessandra's body. It took a week to get her identified. Here in the chaos of Rome...

"Marc thinks Tex may be alive," he told Giustino. "He thinks he saw him in the warehouse they have to take out."

"He will go in for him?"

"He's going to try."

Sydney walked into the room at that moment, just as Giustino said, "This I cannot believe. Tex? Alive?"

She turned to Griffin. "Did I hear right?"

"Yes."

"Then who is at the morgue?" she asked.

"I have no idea. But if what he is saying is true, they killed someone else who matched Tex's physical description to make us believe he is dead."

"Why would they want you to think he was dead?" Sydney asked.

"Who searches for a dead man?" He stared out the window, barely seeing the sunset gilding the scalloped cupola of Sant'Andrea della Valle. He didn't want to think what his friend had been going through since that night at the villa. "a.s.suming the information is correct, of course. It has yet to be verified."

"I will check the databases on missing persons," Giustino said, his expression somber. He sat at his desk, picked up the phone to call his carabinieri carabinieri contact. contact.

Sydney watched him a moment, as though trying to decipher the man's rapid-fire Italian as he spoke on the phone. "They had to think Tex had something they wanted. Information, maybe."

"Undoubtedly," Griffin replied.

"The Tunisia operation Marc is working on?" Sydney asked. "Maybe they know. Maybe they're trying to keep Tex there to protect it somehow."

"But Tex didn't know. We found out that information afterward."

She looked at the radio that Giustino had been manning. "Clearly they didn't know of the bug..."

"Not at first, but we haven't heard a word since we learned of the bio arms s.h.i.+pment."

"Which means they very well may have learned of the bug by now...From Tex..."

She'd only said what he'd been thinking. And it could be true. What Adami couldn't have known was what his team intended to do with that information, because that was something they'd only decided on after the fact.

After about a half hour, Giustino finally dropped the phone onto the cradle. "One of our investigators, he is searching for someone missing, who looks much like the victim in the morgue. This he discounts, because the pathologist, he tells him this victim, he is already identified. They are going to look more."

Griffin paced the room. "If it's not Tex, they killed this man and put Tex's ring on his hand, because he fit the general description. I need a positive identification. Now."

"You forget. This man's fingertips they are removed with his face, and the backlog for DNA is worse than in your country."

Griffin stopped, looked right at Sydney. "What about doing a forensic sketch, like you did for Alessandra?"

"That's a possibility," she said, "but before you go that route, it might help to look at the missing person's report. Maybe there's something in it-something no one noticed, because they weren't thinking it was anything beyond the routine."

"Have them fax you a copy," Griffin told Giustino.

Giustino made the call. A few minutes later, the fax purred to life. The moment the missing person's report dropped into the tray, Griffin picked it up. He spoke fluent Italian, but his grasp of the written language wasn't as good, and after looking it over, he gave it to Giustino to translate.

"The victim, Enzo Vitale, he goes for a walk with his dog that evening. He never returns. I see nothing else. He and Tex, they are very close in size, but there is no more to identify. Niente Niente."

To which Fitzpatrick said, "Something I didn't take into consideration. How many overworked officers bother to ask for minute details on a standard missing person's report? Especially when nine times out of ten, the victims turn up safe and sound?"

Griffin stopped at that. "Good point. Giustino? Call the family. See if there's some detail, some identifying detail they might have forgotten to tell the officer...And do it gently, in case it is this Enzo Vitale."

Giustino nodded, took the report, and made the call. When he hung up, he looked hopeful. "The wife of Enzo Vitale, she describes a heart-shaped mole about four centimeters below his navel."

Something only a wife would know. "Call the morgue."

Giustino dialed, related the information to the investigator on duty, then waited. Time stilled. No one moved, no one said a thing while Giustino sat there, the phone pressed to his ear. From the open windows, they could hear bits of conversation drifting up several stories from the piazza below, as diners arrived at Arnaldo's ristorante. Almost eight o'clock, and the three of them had yet to eat. After several minutes, Giustino sat up, said, "Certo. Grazie, Commissario."

He hung up the phone, closed his eyes, seeming to sink in his seat, and Griffin had no idea if it was good news or bad, until Giustino said, "It is him. Enzo Vitale. They found the mole."

University of Virginia "Professor Denise Woods?" Carillo held out his s.h.i.+eld and credentials for the pet.i.te woman to see.

"You're here about my missing student? Please tell me you've found him and he's okay?"

"Actually," Carillo said. "I'm here on a somewhat related matter. My partner saw you earlier in the week? Special Agent Fitzpatrick?"

"Yes. She's the one I gave the papers on conspiracy theory to. I've had so many people here asking about my students lately, I can't keep it straight."

"You've spoken to other agents?" he asked. Fitzpatrick had indicated there was more to this case than met the eye. "From which agency?"

"Come to think of it, they didn't really say."

"And what'd they ask you?"

"Same thing as your partner. Sort of. They were interested in my a.s.sistant. Wanted to know when was the last time I saw Alessandra, if she'd discussed anything out of the ordinary with me."

"And did she?"

"No. That was the gist of it, and they left."

"Anything else you can tell me?"

"About Alessandra? No."

"What about the other student?"

"Xavier, the young man Alessandra had befriended. Normally I don't encourage my a.s.sistants to become so closely involved in the projects of my students, but Alessandra had said she'd seen something in his work, something she'd like to explore further."

"What sort of something?"

"Two things, actually, the first being the conspiracy report I gave to your partner. What Alessandra saw in it besides the usual rubbish found on the Internet, I'm not sure."

"And what was the other?"

"An odd thing on genealogy he's working on with another professor who is away on sabbatical. It was, in fact, the reason that Alessandra befriended him."