The Book of Spies (24 page)

"Yes."

"What does it mean?"

"I don't know. I didn't even know he had it."

He nodded. "Why do you think he wanted a secret tattoo?"

"I don't know."

"If your head were shaved, would I find one there, too?"

She felt a shiver of fear. "Absolutely not."

"Then you don't mind if I check."

"You can't mean you want me to cut off my hair?"

"No, Magus will do it." The director called over his shoulder to the front of the jet, "I'm ready for you."

The guard picked up his small bag and walked down the aisle.

She peered up at him helplessly.

Magus took shears from his bag, grabbed hair, and cut. Long blond
curls floated to the floor. He grabbed more hair and cut. And more and more. The hair fell around her. Robin felt tears heat her eyes. Furious with herself, she blinked them away.

The only sound in the jet was of the clipping scissors and the distant thrum of the engines. As she used shaky fingers to wipe hair from her face, Magus put away the shears and took out a battery-powered electric razor. The steel was cold as it ran over her scalp. Her skin vibrated and itched. Little hairs flew. Her head was too light. She felt naked, ashamed.

"Do you see anything, Magus?" the director asked. "Any words, numbers, or symbols?"

"No, sir." He turned off the razor and dropped it into his bag. "Go back to your seat." The director fixed his gaze on her. "Did Charles ever talk to you about where the library's located?" His eyes were blue frost.

Looking into them, she suddenly saw her father's eyes, black but just as icy. She remembered the moment she knew she must leave and never return to Scotland. She had walked away from everything, got rid of her accent, and put herself through the Sorbonne, then Cambridge, studying classical art and library science. She had made a life of her own, first working in rare books and manuscripts at the Houghton Library in Boston then at the Bibliotheque Nationale de France in Paris, where she had heard about the Library of Gold and steeped herself in its mythic history. The more she learned, the more she had hungered to know, until the exhilarating moment Angelo Charbonier had recruited her to join the elite staff, where she had met Charles and thought finally, after a decade of wandering, she had found a home.

"Charles never mentioned the library's location," she told him coolly.

"Does Charles's tattoo reveal it?" the director asked.

"I already told you I don't know what the tattoo means."

"Do you know where the Library of Gold is?"

"No. I never asked Charles, but I don't think he knew anyway. I never tried to find out from anyone. It's against the rules."

He nodded again, seeming to like that answer. "Remember the old Latin proverb 'What was sour to endure is sweet to recall.' You've proved your point, and your hair will grow back. Now I have business to conduct. Go to the front of the plane and sit near Magus."

Despite his words, dread filled her. She had a sense she was doomed, and doomed ironically by Charles's tattoo. If the director had been unable
to trust Charles, who had seemed to love the library more than life itself, how could he ever really trust her when she so obviously had been in love with Charles?

She had made a huge error--not loving Charles, but associating with the library at all. Her mouth went dry as she realized what she had to do. She must walk away again, just as she had from her father. When the Learjet landed in Athens, she must find a way to escape.

Rome, Italy

IN THE
dark dirt tunnel, Judd followed Yitzhak, Eva, Roberto, and Bash. Their shoes stuck and sank, slipped and slid on the narrow muddy ledge a foot above the stream. Time passed, and the enclosure grew claustrophobic, the noise of rushing water oppressive. Their flashlights did little to ward off the bleakness.

Commanding everyone to stop and be silent while he listened, Judd checked behind again. It had been a half hour, and there was still no sign of pursuit. They resumed their slow pace. Roberto's breathing was labored.

"How are you doing, Roberto?" he called over the shoulders ahead of him.

"I am trembly but well."

"Let us know when you want to take a break."

Roberto nodded, then asked worriedly, "How deep do you think the water is, Yitzhak?"

"No way to know." The professor paused. "Eva, it's time you explained what's going on."

"If I did, I'd only put you in more danger."

"When we get out of here," Judd assured him, "Bash will take you and Roberto to a private doctor who'll keep his mouth shut. Then when Roberto is treated, he'll find you a place to hide out. Don't go home until you get word from him that it's safe. He has his own work to do, so say nothing about him--or us--to anyone."

The professor thought about it. "Who
are
you, Judd? You and Bash?"

"All you need to know is we're helping Eva. I brought Bash and a couple of other people in to back us up."

Yitzhak's voice toughened. "In the kitchen, Angelo said he might be a 'supporter' of the Library of Gold. In the book club. What does that mean?"

"That's something else you should forget about," Eva told him.

The professor hesitated. "You're asking a lot, but I'll do as you say."

As they continued on, their flashlights revealed ancient Rome embedded in the dirt walls--fragments of pottery, spearheads, pieces of marble tiles, and chunks of brick. They stopped for Roberto to rest, then resumed their treacherous journey.

When they heard the scurrying of rats, Bash said, "Someone told me the rats under Rome were as big as cats." His skateboard was clamped low on his chest, one arm wrapped around it.

Yitzhak chuckled. "You've been drinking with unsavory people."

"I don't like rats," Bash admitted. "Does anyone other than crazy lab people like rats?"

"I'm more concerned about the albino creatures," the professor said, baiting him.

"Albino rats?" Roberto steadied himself by pressing his hand against the wall. Then he stared at his muddy palm.

"Yes, but they're not here--they're in the Cloaca Maxima," Yitzhak said. "In any case, we don't want to go that far. For those of you who don't know, the Cloaca isn't an ordinary sewage conduit--it's a huge, fast-moving river of crap. It was built twenty-five hundred years ago, but Rome is still using it. No one's safe going into it without covering every inch of themselves with boots, gloves, hooded suits, and masks."

"I wish I'd known," Eva said. "I would've brought my wet suit."

"Reminds me of a root canal I once had," Bash said. "Bad outcome."

"The stink is memorable," Yitzhak went on. "A bouquet of mud, diesel, feces, and rotting carcasses.
Rat
carcasses."

Bash groaned.

Judd laughed. "You get an A-plus for tormenting students, Professor."

The professor glanced over his shoulder, his round face grinning.

They fell silent as the underground passage descended steeply, and the air grew cold and clammy. Ghostly stalactites hung from overhead rocks, caused by the seep of calcium-rich groundwater. Then as the tunnel made a sharp bend, the noise of racing water quadrupled--and a stench of rot wafted toward them. Dizzying in its intensity, it carried all the horrific odors Yitzhak had described.

Judd's nose burned. "The Cloaca can't be far ahead."

"We cannot go into the Cloaca," Roberto said nervously. "Let us turn back."

"Not just yet--"

But before he could finish his sentence, the professor screamed. His arms lashed up over his head, and his feet flew out from under him. He twisted, his hands scrambling against the rough dirt wall, seeking purchase as his feet dropped into the water. If the stream were fast and deep enough, it would carry him into the big sewer.

Before Judd could jump in to help, Eva grabbed the professor's arm. "I've got you."

The current caught the professor's legs. He was being pulled away.

"Face the bank, Yitzhak," Judd ordered. He leaned out to peer around Bash and Roberto. "See if your knees can find a slope."

"You can do it!" Eva's hands were white from tension. Her jaw muscles bunched as she held on to him.

Sweat coated Yitzhak's bald head as he turned slowly away from the current until he faced Eva. His free hand grabbed her arm, and he curved his back and hunched his hips.

"Come on. Come on." She was bent nearly double, her profile strained, as she held on to him with both hands.

Yitzhak grunted and lifted one knee out of the water, then the other. As less water dragged at him, she helped him inch upward. Finally he was out. With a shudder, he planted his feet on the narrow shelf, standing between Eva and Roberto.

"You are in one piece, Yitzhak?" Roberto asked, patting his shoulder and back.

He peered down at his trousers, now laminated to his legs. Water streamed out of his shoes.

"Right as rain." He gave a sober smile. "Thank you, Eva."

"What made you slip, Yitzhak?" Judd said. "Check around your feet. What do you see?"

There was a pause. "You're right. Here's the top of a skull. I didn't see it before. It must've been hidden under the mud."

"Are there more skulls?" Eva slid her foot along the ledge, moving the muck away.

"I've found another one," the professor announced.

"So have I," Eva said.

The professor shone his flashlight along the cave wall above them, then ran the beam back and forth, lower and lower until he reached the wall's intersection with the bank.

"Here's a small opening." He crouched and aimed his flashlight into it.

"What's in there?" Eva squatted beside him.

"I can't tell. Help me dig, Eva."

"We'll do it," Judd told them. "Come on, Bash."

The others moved ahead, and Bash sat on his heels in front of the hole. He plowed the nose of his skateboard into the wet dirt, scooping piles of it back onto the ledge, where Judd slid the dirt into the stream. They continued a half hour, taking turns until the hole was three feet in diameter and formed a tunnel two feet deep. A scent of musty age wafted toward them.

Judd beamed his flashlight into the small passageway and crawled through. Standing erect, he inhaled sharply as he shot his light around. He had entered a gray world of the dead. Age-bleached skulls pinioned one on top of another blanketed the walls from the floor to the vault ceiling.

He moved into the center of the large crypt and turned, continuing to shoot his flashlight over the eerie scene. It was like a macabre carnival. Skulls arched around nooks, framing stone walls on which faded crosses and religious symbols had been painted. Full skeletons dressed in tattered brown monk robes reclined on stone benches as if awaiting the call to prayer.

"My God." Eva took a deep breath as she walked up to him. "The only time I've seen an ossuary like this was in a history magazine."

"It's impossible to know what Rome's underground has in store." The professor joined them, supporting Roberto. "Buried passageways, latrines, aqueducts, catacombs, firehouses, access tunnels--and that's just the beginning. It looks to me as if this crypt belonged to the Capuchin order. That means some of the bones could date back five centuries."

"There's got to be thousands of them," Bash decided. "But how in hell do we get out of here?" Beneath his shorts, his bare knees were coated in mud--but then, all of them were muddy now.

"I'm hoping that way." Judd aimed his flashlight at the end of the room, where a tall arch of skulls wreathed worn stone steps leading upward. "Roberto, do you want Bash to carry you up?"

Roberto pushed himself away from Yitzhak. "I will do it myself."

Judd nodded, and he led them past mounds of bones and up a stone stairwell, where more crosses and religious symbols were painted. As they turned the corner of a landing, the wall above their heads displayed pelvic bones arranged like angel's wings.

He stopped, listening to Roberto's panting breath behind. He turned. "Carry him, Bash."

Before Roberto could object, Bash handed his skateboard to Eva and swept the small man up into his arms. "Combat victims get special treatment. Hey, it's a free ride."

Roberto looked up into the muscular young face. "This is not an unpleasant fate. Thank you."

Finally they reached the top, where an ornate iron door blocked their path. Judd peered through the grillwork--there was another stairwell on the far side, this time of modern cement.

"I hear traffic," Eva said, excited.

Judd tried the door. "Locked, of course." They were silent, and he could feel their exhaustion. "I seem to be shooting out a lot of locks these days."

Telling them to stand back, he screwed his sound suppressor onto his Beretta and fired. Metal dust spewed into the still air. The popping noise bounced off the stone walls.

He pushed open the door and gazed up. "Blue sky."