The Bone Chamber Part 24

"Like the four words of Italian I know are going to do much good?"

"You sure you want to do this?"

"Absolutely."

A little after ten, they drove to the academy, the ENEL electric company logo still on the van, a perfect cover for their plans this evening. Griffin dropped Giustino off around the corner from the entrance, then waited a short way down the street. About five minutes later, every light at the academy went out.

They waited a couple of minutes before Griffin drove up to the electric gate and parked. It was still open, which meant it would remain that way until Griffin called Giustino to restore the power.

"You don't think we should have waited longer?" Sydney asked him.

"Trust me. The utility companies are notoriously slow. He'll be grateful to see us."

And sure enough, as the two of them, small toolboxes in hand, walked up to the open gate, the guard hurried toward them, smiling as he waved them through, saying, "Non ha perso tempo!"

Griffin rattled off something in Italian so fast that Sydney recognized only ENEL. Whatever he said worked. The guard returned to his shack, allowing Griffin and Sydney to enter the premises on their own. Their boots crunched the gravel path that circled the fountain, and just before they left the path, Sydney glanced back to see the guard standing near the open gate.

Flickering candlelight appeared in several windows, the academy residents quickly adjusting to the power outage. Upstairs, just over the main entrance, the windows of Professor Santarella's studio were dark. Griffin and Sydney climbed the marble stairs, walked the short distance down the hall to studio 257. The door was locked. Griffin took a pick from his toolbox, slipped it into the lock, and had the door open in less than a minute. Sydney used a blue LED light for her search, while Griffin stood guard at the window, watching the gate. She wasn't even sure where to begin, there were so many papers and books strewn about, as though someone else had already been there and done a hasty search. She glanced over at the desk, where Francesca had been working on her laptop earlier in the day, thinking there might be something there. The laptop was gone. Which meant the professor had returned.

Or someone else had. No doubt, she thought, realizing that the professor wouldn't need to throw her things around to find them. She'd know where to look. Someone else had definitely been there.

But that didn't mean they'd found whatever they were looking for, and Sydney checked the long table, the desk, the walls. Nothing screamed, Look at me, the answer is here Look at me, the answer is here. More like there were too many answers, and it would take days to search through them.

Griffin stepped back from the window. "We have to go. Now."

"I need more time."

"Now," he whispered. "Someone's out there, distracting the guard from his post."

She gave one last look around, saw the hand-drawn maps on the wall, the weird lines drawn across them. What the h.e.l.l, she thought, and pulled both down, rolled them together. "Ready."

They walked out the door, and Griffin turned the lock, then pulled it shut. When she started toward the stairs they'd come up, he stopped her, listened. Someone was ascending, the quiet of the footfall enough to warn her it was someone who didn't want to be discovered. They hurried to the back stairs down the hall, past the kitchen. Griffin drew his weapon, then signaled for her to start down. They walked through the darkened archways of the cortile, slipped out past the fountain, and toward the guard in his shack. Sydney glanced back toward Francesca's studio, saw a dim light bouncing off the wall as someone searched the room.

Griffin saw it, too. They walked up to the guard, and Griffin waved, told him something in Italian about the power. The guard looked up, nodded as they walked out. "Probably Dumas," he said, when they'd gotten back in the van, as he picked up the phone to tell Giustino to restore the power in a few minutes. He didn't want to do it too soon.

"How do you know it's him and not the guys that came after us at the Pa.s.segiata?"

"Because the guard's still alive. Adami's men have no consciences."

"Good point."

Only when they were well away did he ask, "What was it you took from the wall?"

"A couple maps. Of what, I have no idea."

"Nothing else?"

"Nothing in the time we had."

"She's on too many radars. That doesn't bode well for her."

"I'm more interested in what's on her her radar," Sydney said. radar," Sydney said.

Griffin looked over at her, then back at the road. "You might make a good spy, after all."

"The word spy spy has connotations I don't care for." has connotations I don't care for."

"Secret agent, then."

"Special agent."

"FBI, through and through. Except when you're busy breaking the rules."

"Not rules. Guidelines," she said, unrolling the parchment. Pale yellow moonlight washed the paper, but it was too dark to see.

Sydney turned on the small LED she'd used in the break-in. The light was amazingly bright for such a tiny device, and he glanced over as she studied it. "Sort of looks like a map of the sewer system," he said.

"Why would a professor intent on ancient history have a map of the sewer system, unless it was the aqueduct, which I don't think this is."

Back at the safe house, she unrolled it on the kitchen table. "I'm beginning to think this might be maps of different columbaria," she said, seeing the arrows drawn on it and the notations, trying to decide what it was Francesca found so important that she went to the trouble of mapping it out on her wall. "Her writing's terrible." She squinted, tried to make out the tiny notations scrawled at various locations.

"I'd settle for finding which place she might be heading."

"If I had to guess," Sydney said, pointing, "it would be here."

"Why there?"

Sydney couldn't forget the image of Alessandra's disfigured face. "Because the note she jotted on here looks like it says 'pyramid skull.' Alessandra's killer used that symbol for a reason."

"As d.a.m.ned good a place to start as any. Call your Doc Schermer and see what he can dig up on this."

"When do we leave?"

"In the morning. The professor has to sleep, too."

But the professor wasn't sleeping. She sat at her desk in the dark, even after the power had been restored, not sure if she should cry, scream, or laugh. How stupid to wait for dark to break into her own studio at the academy. Or go to the trouble of calling the guard away, to explain that she needed to enter without being seen, and could he just let her through the gate?

Someone had already been here.

The maps were missing from the wall.

And her laptop.

Neither was good without the other, but someone had them both.

It had taken her months and months to plot out the maps. They were important. But so was the info on her computer, and she seriously questioned her ability to find the final location of the Prince of Sansevero's crypt without it. How had she been so careless as to leave it on her laptop-believing that a lone guard at the gate would keep it safe?

If it was so d.a.m.ned safe, why'd she feel it necessary to sneak in herself?

"Idiot," she whispered. She should have grabbed the computer at the same time she grabbed the package Alessandra had sent. A lot of good that did her friend, getting involved with the government. Killed.

The thought of her own close call on the Pa.s.segiata with the men chasing after them brought her to her feet. Time enough to mourn her friend later. Right now she had to figure out what the h.e.l.l she was going to do next. Her gaze strayed to the desk, where her laptop had been, her sight adjusting to the dark. A shaft of moonlight fell across the floor, was.h.i.+ng the terra cotta tile in a pale blue glow. There beneath her desk, she saw what looked like a long dark shoestring upon the pattern of octagons...

Francesca crossed the room, reached down, picked it up. Not a shoestring, but the lanyard connected to a flash drive. She'd thought she'd left it in the laptop right after the FBI agent had knocked at her door this afternoon...It must have fallen off when whoever it was came in and stole her computer.

Not completely lost after all.

She slipped the lanyard around her neck, tucking the drive beneath her s.h.i.+rt, then grabbed her coat, locked her door, then walked down the hall. If anyone was looking for her, they'd search her studio or her apartment. She doubted anyone would bother looking in the TV room off the kitchen. As good a place to sleep as any, she figured. And then at first light, to the Columbarium of the Nile Frescoes.

There was little traffic in the predawn hours, and Griffin made good time on their drive. After the immense Baths of Caracalla, the long narrow road forked, and Griffin veered to the right. He glanced over at Sydney, who was studying the map. "Well?" he asked, as he drove the van slowly down the Via di Porta San Sebastiano, which was almost pitch dark with its high walls and dense foliage.

"According to Doc Schermer's instructions, the entrance to the Columbarium of the Nile Frescoes is somewhere on the left past the Tomb of the Scipios."

"And according to the map?"

"a.s.suming the professor is talking about the same columbarium, I'd say it puts the entrance just over there," she said, pointing up ahead and to the left. Griffin drove past, caught sight of a staircase between the ma.s.sive walls that lined the road, s.h.i.+elding the mansions and surrounding properties from view. He parked the van farther up the road, just out of sight. Sydney rolled up the map, put it in her travel bag, and then they walked back toward the staircase, where they hoped the entrance to the columbarium would be. The sun had not yet risen, not even a sliver of moonlight illuminated the road, the high walls on either side making it seem darker, more forbidding. They reached the break in the wall, where a Z-shaped staircase led up, and they ascended, waited in the dark just beyond the west bend. As the first light began to penetrate the needles of the umbrella pines beyond the Aurelian Wall, Francesca emerged from the street below and mounted the steps.

Griffin stepped out. "Fancy meeting you here."

Francesca froze in her tracks. She looked from him to Sydney. "I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, considering you stole my computer last night."

"I'm afraid your computer was already gone by the time we got there."

She stared at him for several seconds. "So someone else was there?"

"Let me be frank," Griffin said. "What part of your life is in danger your life is in danger don't you get?" don't you get?"

"The part that tells me this can't be happening."

"It's happening. I don't suppose you want to share with us what is so important that you felt it necessary to avoid your protector and risk your own life as well as ours?"

The sound of someone else coming up the steps caught Griffin by surprise. He looked at Francesca, who didn't seem the least worried, as she said, "That would be Signore DeAngelis, the property owner."

A moment later, a man in his sixties turned the corner, slightly out of breath, his white hair looking a bit windblown, as though he'd been running. "I left it on the table," he said in Italian, holding up a large Byzantine key, before stopping short at the sight of Griffin and Sydney. He turned an accusing stare on Francesca. "You led me to believe you were coming alone, professoressa professoressa. The columbarium is very delicate, and we cannot have people just traipsing around."

"Yes, well-"

"These old columbaria," Griffin said. "They can be notoriously dangerous, and the professoressa professoressa asked us at the last minute to help her with her research." Griffin smiled, pulled a business card from his pocket, handing it to the old man. "As you can imagine, we are very interested in helping her complete her research so that she can get it to the publisher in time." asked us at the last minute to help her with her research." Griffin smiled, pulled a business card from his pocket, handing it to the old man. "As you can imagine, we are very interested in helping her complete her research so that she can get it to the publisher in time."

The man looked at the International Journal International Journal business card. "He is your editor?" he asked Francesca. business card. "He is your editor?" he asked Francesca.

"One of them," she replied, which told Griffin she was desperate to get down there, and hadn't exactly been forthcoming with the property owner about her real purpose-whatever that might be.

"And this is?" the man asked, eyeing Sydney.

Griffin replied, "The artist."

"Artist?"

"My understanding is that flash photography can sometimes harm ancient works of art, and so we have brought a sketch artist to doc.u.ment the professoressa professoressa's research."

The man nodded. "Yes, this is true. We have never allowed cameras in there. You will show me your sketches?"

"She does not speak Italian," Griffin said. "American."

The property owner looked at Sydney, and in clear, precise English, said, "You will show me what you have drawn when you finish?"

"Of course," Sydney said, patting her travel bag. "I think you'll be pleased."

The man smiled, handed the key to Francesca, then said, "Do not forget to lock up the door tight before you leave. I must go, eat my breakfast."

"Thank you, signore signore." The three of them continued up the steps, while the property owner returned from the direction he came. After he was gone, Francesca said in a low voice, "How did you find me if you didn't take my computer?"

"The map on your wall. Special Agent Fitzpatrick has a friend who was able to discern the location of this columbarium based on the notations you had concerning a skull and pyramid. Now, about the real reason why you're here?"

"I explained that to you. Finis.h.i.+ng up research for a grant."

"Then you won't mind if we come along."

"Surely you have something better to do with your time?"

"Your safety is our main concern."

She looked from him to Sydney, then shrugged. "Feel free. But you're wasting your time. Now that I've given you the book, I'm sure whoever you thought was looking for me, will have given up."

Griffin could only hope. "Lead the way, Professor. You have promised some drawings to the signore signore, and we're eager to see what it is you'd be willing to risk your life for."

"Don't underestimate the power of history, Mr. Griffin."

"As long as you don't underestimate the power of a bullet ripping through your flesh."

She led the way up the steps just as the sun started to break over the wall. By the time they followed her down a long path through the trees, the sounds of morning traffic began to drown out the chorus of birds, and exhaust fumes started to mix with the spiced scent of the pines. Eventually they reached an iron gate, and then just beyond it a heavy wooden door. Griffin kept watch behind as she unlocked and pushed open the door, the hinges protesting as she ushered them into a long dark pa.s.sage.

23.