The Bone Chamber (26 page)

If it was so damned 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 Passegiata 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 hell 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, washing 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 shirt, 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?”

“Assuming 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 massive walls that lined the road, shielding 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
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
. 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
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
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 document the
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
.” 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. Finishing 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
, 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 passage.

It took several seconds for Sydney’s eyes to adjust
to the interior of what turned out to be a long corridor, and she stood there a few moments, afraid to venture farther until she could see.

Francesca turned on a large flashlight, its beam wavering off the stuccoed ceilings. “I certainly hope you brought a sketchbook,” she said to Sydney. “Signore DeAngelis will ask to see the sketches when I return the key—and I may need to return here someday.”

Griffin nodded to Sydney, and she pulled out her sketchbook as well as a pencil. “How many do you want?”

“Three or four should add some legitimacy,” Francesca replied, then aimed her light at the ground, indicating they should follow. “Do be careful. The floor is uneven, and the staircase is narrow and steep—about forty feet straight down. There’s an iron railing, but it’s not very sturdy.”

Although Sydney had no idea what to expect, she was unprepared for the immensity of the chamber as they descended. It looked nothing like the catacombs that she’d seen in pictures. The professor’s flashlight revealed neatly stuc
coed walls with row upon row of half-moon niches, about two feet in height and width, each of which had two terra cotta lids set into its base. Below each niche was a marble plaque with what Sydney supposed were the names of the deceased.

As they moved into the chamber, a soft light began to filter down from light wells that had been cut at one end of a vaulted ceiling. Fronds of maidenhair fern growing from the cracks in the ancient wall swayed as the air stirred around them, sending up sparkling dust motes into the shafts of light. Sydney looked around in awe. “It’s beautiful.”

“If you like mausoleums,” Griffin said.

Sydney, ignoring him, opened her sketchbook and started drawing. “How old is this place?”

“First century
A.D
.,” Francesca said. “The columbaria were burial clubs where slaves and freed slaves gathered socially to commemorate and inter the ashes of their club members who had preceded them in death.”

“And the lids in each niche?”

“The one thing besides the frescoes on the wall and the mosaics on the floor that the treasure hunters didn’t bother to remove. Each niche contains two large terra cotta jars, out of sight, behind the walls.” Francesca lifted the lid of one. “Cremated bones in each pot,” she said, replacing the lid. “Bones are still here, but most of the decorations—freestanding urns or anything of value—were stripped during the eighteenth century and added to the pope’s coffers,” she said, glancing at Griffin as though he might be inclined to pass on that information to Dumas.

His response was to ask, “Exactly what are you looking for that couldn’t wait?”

“A hidden chamber. Something that hasn’t yet been discovered that has a connection to another ossuary chamber.” She gave Griffin a patronizing smile. “That means bones.”

“I’m so glad you clarified.”

Sydney threw Griffin a dark look, turned the page in her sketchbook to start a new drawing. “You were saying?” she asked the professor.

“The purpose of my…grant is to prove the location of the final resting place of Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero.”

“And why would this be important?” Griffin asked.

“For history’s sake. He is not buried in his own crypt, and there are some historians who believe that he is instead resting in a chamber elsewhere. And if you wonder at the historical significance of this, then you might also wonder at why the Vatican was interested in di Sangro’s final resting place. They questioned a friar who helped di Sangro make his final arrangements and learned that he hid three…clues you might say, each one hidden in other burial chambers, which would eventually allow entry to his final burial chamber. The friar revealed only the location of this first key or clue, but so far it has eluded even the most ardent historians as well as the Vatican, and to this day remains unsolved.”

“And yet,” Griffin said, “you say you are looking for proof of the burial site, as if you have an idea of where it is?”

“A very good idea. Unfortunately, without the hidden clues, death will surely fall on those who search within.”

“Another curse?”

“A reality. Trust me,” she said, leading them deeper into the chamber. “According to the records I found at the Vatican, what I’m searching for is located ‘past the great pyramids of the Nile, graffito behind the wall beyond the tomb of the harpists.’”

“Graffito?” Sydney asked.

“Graffiti,” she replied. “Markings on the wall added by someone
after
this place was built. This particular chamber has already been searched because of that clue, by the Vatican in the late 1700s. Nothing was found, which is why we thought that the friar had to have been talking about the true pyramids of the Nile, and why Alessandra organized the search of the Egyptian tomb. Of course, we know now that her search there was fruitless, which leads us back here. It’s the only place that fits. I’ve been here before, but I can assure you that I have never found anything remotely close to a clue.”

“They’re paying you
money
to research this?” Griffin asked, his voice filled with skepticism.

“Not to worry. It’s a private grant, as opposed to the government paying you money to follow me around. But do feel free to save the taxpayers some hard-earned cash and leave.”

Sydney wanted to strangle Griffin. If they were going to find out anything, it was not going to come about by antagonizing the professor any more than they already had. “Well, I for one am interested in what you’re doing,” she said as they followed Francesca to what looked like the end of the chamber, only to discover that it opened into another equally huge chamber branching to the right. Niches had also been set into its walls for several stories from top to bottom, an impressive sight. “How big is this place?”

“About three times the size of the chamber we are standing in. This particular columbarium is roughly in the shape of the letter E,” she said, leading them toward the farthest branch of the E. “And the door that I’m searching for is at the end of the last chamber. When this columbarium was searched and stripped in the late 1700s by the Vatican after the questioning of the friar, the entrance to the lower chamber was never discovered. Someone had taken great pains to disguise it,” she said, pausing at the entrance. “That is one more reason I think this is the right location.”

“How was it found?”

“The present owner, Signore DeAngelis, was having repairs to his water pipes, and you can imagine his surprise when his plumbers broke into a huge chamber, complete with painted ceilings and frescoes. Thankfully he had the presence of mind to bring in the
soprintendenza archeologica
and various scholars to study it, which was how this particular entrance was found. Once they determined that the entrance had been sealed off sometime in the late 1700s, they decided to excavate it, and to restore it to its original state. Their consensus was that the chamber had been hidden to prevent further looting, perhaps the very looting for which the Vatican was responsible. The curious thing is that after the tomb was stripped, and before it was sealed, someone
went to the pains to lay a new mosaic floor in a lower chamber at the end of this branch. No one really knows why.”

“Hard to imagine why anyone cares,” Griffin mumbled.

“You might not,” Sydney replied. “But
I
find it fascinating.”

“Well,” Francesca continued, eyeing Sydney’s sketch of the wall of niches, “the next century, the 1800s, was the era of the great fakes. Charlatans, like the notorious Marchese Campana, palmed off”—she wiggled her fingers in quotation marks—‘“newly discovered’ antiquities, which they sold to greedy collectors and museums. Even the British Museum got stung. My theory is that the fakery started half a century earlier, which would explain why the mosaic floor was relaid—to lend an aura of authenticity to fake urns and frescoes that went on sale to credulous buyers. They very well may have paraded them down here, using the place as a showroom. What I can’t explain is why they sealed off the chamber after having gone to the trouble of putting in the new floor. Unless, perhaps, they were caught selling fakes and trying to hide the evidence.”

Francesca led them through the door at the end of the chamber, where they descended another set of steps, not so steep as the last. At the bottom, Sydney saw the floor Francesca spoke of, an expanse of finely made multicolored mosaic tiles set in what seemed to be a random circular pattern. Aiming the beam of her light, Sydney took in her surroundings and was struck by the beauty of the place. The ceilings were still intact in all their original bright colors, and the walls between the niches had been frescoed with joyous paintings—crocodiles, ibises, hippopotamuses, and lotus leaves.

Flashlight tucked beneath her arm, Sydney sketched away. Francesca had other ideas besides standing there and soaking in the history of the place. She began lifting lids in each niche, those that she could reach, then shining her light carefully on those she couldn’t, clearly looking for something.

Sydney and Griffin watched her for several moments, until she finally seemed to remember their presence. “Since you’re here, you might as well help. I need every loculus
checked, every lid of every olla lifted, at least of those you can reach.”

“There are hundreds in here,” Griffin said. “It’ll take forever.”

“Isn’t it convenient that there are three of us?”

“And what is it we’re looking for?”

“Something scratched on the wall or perhaps written on the inside of one of the lids. Something that tells me where this other hidden chamber is.”

Tunisia
0805 Hours

The delivery truck turned into the drive, then stopped at the barricade. The guard stepped out of his hut, walked up to the driver’s door. Marc, dressed in coveralls matching the logo on the truck, handed a clipboard with an invoice attached. “Delivery.”

The guard took it, looked at papers clipped to the board. “Oil?”

“Motor oil. High grade.”

“Wait here.” He returned into his office, then exited a few moments later with the schedule of deliveries in hand. “You’re a day early. You’ll have to come back tomorrow.”

According to the schedule Marc had photographed, other than the oil that wasn’t due for delivery until tomorrow, there wasn’t anything scheduled until later in the week. It was the best they could do, and Marc pointed to his forged invoice. “Our paperwork says today. Tomorrow we have a full delivery schedule, and we won’t be able to make it back here until next week.” He waited.

The guard eyed him, and then Rafiq, who sat in the passenger side, twenty years added to his looks with gray hair and a mustache, thanks to Lisette’s makeup skills. The guard turned his attention back to the paperwork, finally saying, “Open up the truck.”

Marc exited, walked to the back of the truck followed closely by the guard, and slid open the rear door, revealing
case after case of motor oil. The guard signaled for Marc to lower the lift, so that he could get up and inspect the cargo. He took a knife from his belt, slit open one of the cases, pulled out a can of oil, then punched the top of the can with his knife. He removed the knife, touched his finger to the tip, rubbing the oil, then smelling it, as he walked between the stacks of cases toward the front of the bed, where he was about to do the same to another case. There was a damned good chance that he was about to drive his knife into either a case containing the explosives or the combustible fluid needed to incinerate the bioweapons. The former was bound to raise his suspicions when his knife didn’t come out covered in oil. The latter was a different problem. The slightest spark and they were toast.

The guard shoved the tip of his knife into the top of the case to open it, and Marc called out, “You want a case of the oil to take home?”

The guard hesitated, looked over at him. “Two cases.”

“Two cases,” Marc said, patting the two toward the front. He hopped up on the lift, then removed two cases. “Where do you want them?”

The guard walked over to Marc. “Bring them into there,” he said, pointing to the guard shack. Marc followed him in, glancing at the monitors as he placed the cases on the floor before them.

“Not there,” the guard said, pointing toward the desk. “There.”

Marc lifted the cases and moved them behind the desk, where they would no doubt stay until the guard was off duty. In about forty minutes, the oil would be the last thing the guard would be thinking about, and Marc walked out, again trying to get a glimpse of the monitor of the warehouse. No sign of Tex. He wasn’t sure if that was good news or bad.

The guard called for an escort, who drove up a few minutes later in a jeep old enough to probably use half the oil in the truck at any given time. The escort was also uniformed in the same security coveralls, armed with a semiauto. He stood about five inches shorter than Marc, and when he removed his cap from his head, he swiped at his forehead with
his sleeve as he looked over the paperwork. “Why are you a day early?”

Marc gave a casual shrug. “I only know I was supposed to deliver it today.”

The second guard returned the invoice to Marc. “Follow me. If I am not with you, you will be shot.”

Finally. Marc climbed into the truck, started it, and followed the jeep into the compound. The compound was like a mini military base, with a handful of bunkhouses, perhaps where the guards and laborers slept, and a number of Quonset huts. The Quonset they needed was closer to the airstrip, which bordered the open desert. Fortunately, the oil was destined for the same locale, and guard number two stopped his jeep in front of the tan Quonset, got out, and unlocked the door.

“Ready?” Marc asked Rafiq.

“Ready.”

Rafiq got out and opened the back of the truck, while Marc took the clipboard in one hand, and a pair of leather work gloves in his other, and walked into the hut after the guard. He glanced around, noticing that the cameras were pointed toward the large doors of the interior, and the office area, where a second guard stood sentry. That, he figured, was the entrance to the actual lab, or where Tex was hidden, otherwise why have a man guarding an empty office? In the meantime, Marc wanted their escort guard out of sight of the camera. “We need to have this signed before we make the delivery,” he said, stepping outside the door near the back of the open truck.