Dante narrowed his eyes at her. “You’re joking, right?”
“No, I’m not.”
“The good news is that you can change your own fate,” I said. “If you take a different path, you may be able to release yourself from whatever danger lies in wait for you. You won’t die and the aura will disappear. I’ve seen it happen, many times.”
That part, at least, was true.
Dante looked at Claire. “You believe all this rubbish? This spazzatura?”
She nodded. “Absolutely.” She shrugged. “But I see ghosts, so I’m more tuned in than most to other-worldly manifestations.”
“Ghosts!” Dante scoffed. “Good God.”
“Remember that time I took you for a walk along the Vasari Corridor one evening when everyone else had gone? You told me you felt cold, even though the air was warm. I knew why you were shivering. A gentleman from the fifteenth century was walking beside us. He seemed to find you quite fascinating.”
Dante’s expression would have been funny under any other circumstances. “Do you think I’m an idiot?” he demanded. “Let’s go. We’ve wasted enough time.”
“Time that you don’t have,” I said. “But it’s your choice. Just think about what you’re planning to do, and do something completely different. Chances are you’ll be alive at the end of today after all.”
“Ridiculous,” he muttered, turning towards the door. “Follow me.”
He stopped suddenly, as though remembering something, and swung around to look at Ethan. “To be clear,” he said. “If Claire or Kate do anything to impede me, I will kill you. Equally, if you try anything at all, I will kill them.”
Claire ran back to hug Ethan, while I gave him a little wave. My throat closed up and my eyes burned. He was my friend. We had to find some way to save him, whatever happened.
We filed out into the corridor and waited while Rocco locked the door behind us. Then we passed through the cozy living room and descended the stairs towards the gallery on the ground floor. We paused for a minute while Rocco went into the office to collect something. It was a satchel, which he slung over his shoulder. Then he led us along the landing to a staircase that descended into a well of darkness. Musty air, full of damp and decay, percolated upwards. As Rocco took the narrow steps downward, he switched on lights to illuminate the stone treads. The walls on each side of the staircase were built of bare brick, cold to the touch.
The stairs terminated in a corridor lined with electrical conduits and lit with bulbs that hung from brown wires. When Claire reached out and grabbed my hand, hers was as cold as a dead man’s. We walked in silence for some distance until we came to a closed door. When Rocco unlocked it, I recognized where we were. The lift in front of us led down to Dante’s warehouse. We’d used it this morning. So, his gallery and the warehouse were connected by this underground tunnel. But I’d thought we were heading to the vault. I raised my eyebrows at Claire, who shook her head, looking as confused as I felt.
Silently, we gathered in the lift cage for the descent to the basement, as we’d done earlier in the day. This time we didn’t loiter to admire works of art. Rocco strode ahead, with Dante bringing up the rear. We covered the length of the warehouse at a fast pace and came to the end, to an old rust-colored brick wall that I’d seen on our last visit.
What I hadn’t noticed before was a door, painted the same shade as the bricks and so well camouflaged that it was barely noticeable. Rocco unlocked it and shepherded us into another narrow passage, this one carved through the rock and angling downwards. When my feet slipped on the stone floor, I grabbed hold of a rope handrail looped between iron pegs driven into the walls.
“We are very close to the foundation of the cathedral.” Dante’s voice echoed in the tight space. “This tunnel runs parallel to the wall of Santa Reparata.”
Santa Reparata was the original cathedral of Florence, constructed in the fifth century, as I recalled from many visits to the cathedral museum. By the thirteenth century, it had become dilapidated and unable to serve the growing Florentine community, so the new cathedral was constructed on top of it. The dome, a true marvel of engineering, was its crowning glory.
I remembered reading that excavation work in the 1960s had uncovered what remained of the old church, together with ruins of the old Roman city of Florentia. Later, in the ’70s, the tomb of the great Brunelleschi, architect of the dome, was discovered down here.
The Prologue to Alberti’s Della Pittura was dedicated to Brunelleschi. So the choice of that particular book as the hiding place for the Custodians’ key and the code was perfect. A subtle clue that their vault was located very close to the cathedral.
Preoccupied, I bumped into Rocco when he stopped at a second door. He took out another key and swung the door open, reached inside and picked up an old-fashioned glass and bronze lantern. With a silver lighter from his satchel he lit the wick. As the lamp flickered into life, I saw a cavern with a low ceiling and rock walls on three sides. On the fourth side rose a wall of stone blocks, looking exactly like the diagram that had been stored in the old book. This was it. This was the vault.
29
Dante pointed to a place against the rock. “Stand there,” he said. I grabbed Claire’s arm, and we pressed ourselves against the wall, out of the circle of light cast by the lamp that Rocco had placed on the ground. I felt the chill of the ancient stone against my back.
“Now, Kate, why don’t you tell me the exact instructions that you deciphered from the code in the book?”
When I hesitated, Dante motioned to Rocco, who extracted his gun from inside his jacket. He pointed it at Claire.
“I didn’t tell you the whole truth back there in Ethan’s room,” Dante said. “I told you that I’d kill Ethan if you don’t cooperate. The fact is that I will kill Claire first and then Ethan. So, Kate, just say the words.”
The text that Leo had sent me had said “Cinquegiùnovedasinistra,” typed in haste without any spaces. The instruction indicated ‘five down and nine from the left.’ But should I lie, come up with a different set of numbers? I was sure we were going to be alive only for as long as it took Dante and Santini to open the vault. Once they’d succeeded, there would be no reason I could think of for Dante not to kill us.
“Seven down, ten from the right,” I said.
Claire squeezed my hand. I knew we were just playing for minutes. But even a minute is attractive if it’s about to be your last one.
“Good,” Dante said, moving towards the wall. It stood about four meters high, I thought, and six across. The block faces were smoother than I’d expected, but were very irregular in size, varying in length and height, some of them cracked, or stained black with algae growth. Each stone was bonded to its neighbor with dark grey mortar.
Dante counted blocks down from the ceiling, moving his hand in time with his counting. He did the same from the left and placed his hand on the block he’d pinpointed. Then he turned to look at us. “Come here,” he ordered.
When we were closer, he jabbed his finger at the block. “This is it,” he said. A hole in the center of the block could be the keyhole, although I knew it wasn’t. Now I could see the wall in more detail, I realized how deliberately confusing the design was. There were holes drilled into many of the larger stone blocks, although not all. I couldn’t detect a pattern. Without the decoded instructions, it would be impossible to locate the correct place to insert the key. It was a happy coincidence that the numbers I’d given him landed on a block with a hole in it. That gave us a little more time to delay the inevitable.
“I’m relieved, Kate, that you decided to cooperate…”
A burst of noise in the tunnel interrupted Dante. Rocco swung his gun towards the door and lowered it when Santini made an appearance, accompanied by our old friend Aldo.
“Signorine,” Santini said. “What a pleasure to see you again.”
His aura circled wildly around his head. I felt my knees wobble. There were going to be dea
ths and very soon, probably in this stone chamber deep underground. Santini and Claire, for sure. And me? Almost certainly.
“Do you have the key?” Dante asked, holding his hand out.
Santini withdrew it from his suit pocket but kept it in his hand. “My privilege, I think,” he said. “As I’m the oldest. Show me the place.”
I recalled what Dante had told us earlier about the booby trap built into the vault by Buontalenti. If Santini inserted the key in the wrong place, the vault would fill with water. Did I want to be responsible for destroying an untold number of priceless masterpieces? More to the point, I thought now that the brothers might feel more kindly towards us if they succeeded in opening the vault. If they failed, we were sure to be the first target of their disappointment.
I looked at Claire and she nodded her head. “Tell them,” she said.
“I made a mistake,” I said. “The count should be…”
Dante’s hand shot out and grabbed me by the neck. “Do you think you can play games with me?” He shouted so loudly that his voice ricocheted around the chamber.
Santini pulled Dante’s arm away from me. “Patience, Dante, patience.” He nodded towards Aldo, who pointed a gun at me.
“Now,” Santini said. “Let us talk calmly. Kate, as you seem to be the one causing problems here, I want you to keep your mouth shut. Claire, please tell us the correct numbers. Any tricks and your friend will die.”
Claire took a deep breath. “It’s five down and nine from the left,” she said. “I swear, that’s the code that Kate’s brother sent us.”
“Good girl,” Santini said. He stepped up to the wall, counted quickly, and pressed his hand against a block. He ran his hand over it.
“There’s no hole in this block.” His voice was low and menacing. He turned to look at Dante. “What’s going on?”
The unnatural light pointing up from the ground made Dante’s chiseled face appear skeletal, his eyes sunk deep into black sockets. “I don’t know any more than you do,” he said. “And I’ve had enough of these women playing their stupid tricks.”
I’d been staring at the wall, not really seeing it, a little dazed by all the aura activity. Pulling my brain back to attention, my eyes focused again.
“I know what it is,” I said.
Santini turned his head to look at me. “I told you to shut up.”
He nodded at Aldo, who rushed at me. He seized me, his forearm across my neck, the gun pressed to my head. I started shaking so violently I could hardly think straight but I knew that, in their rush to open the vault, the brothers had forgotten about the diagram, the vital third component.
The wall in front of me consisted of roughly twenty-four blocks from floor to ceiling and thirty or so from one side to the other. The diagram showed only ten blocks down and twelve across, which meant it didn’t represent the whole wall, just a portion of it. The decoded instructions intended the user to find the block five down from the top of the diagram, not from the top of the real wall. It added a level of security, ensuring that whoever held the key also had the diagram.
“Look at the diagram,” I said as loudly as I could with my throat constricted. The words came out in a hoarse whisper.
Dante’s eyes widened. He must have understood what I meant. “Wait, Santini,” he said. He reached into his jacket and withdrew the original diagram that he’d brought back from the warehouse.
Santini nodded towards Aldo, who released his death grip on my throat. I stepped away to lean against a wall, massaging my neck. My head hurt as the blood started to circulate freely again. Claire came to stand next to me, sliding her arm through mine. “Are you all right?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I whispered back. “We have to get out of here.”
The two brothers perused the diagram together, glancing up at the wall and then staring at the paper again.
“I think I’ve got it,” Dante said.
Santini shook his head. “Show it to Claire. I want another opinion.”
I felt a little flush of annoyance at being ignored, but looked over Claire’s shoulder when Dante came to stand next to us and held the diagram out where we could see it.
“The pattern of blocks from here down and across matches the ones in the wall,” Claire said, outlining the area she meant with her forefinger.
She was right. The diagram was like a snapshot of the lower left quadrant of the real wall.
“Good, we try again.” Dante went back to the wall and began counting, while I held my breath. I wanted it to work. Santini stood to one side, cradling the key in his hands.
“This one.” Dante bent over to look at the stone block, and then straightened up. “And there’s a hole in it, right in the middle.”
For a couple of seconds, the two brothers gazed at each other, each wearing a self-satisfied smile.
“Our ancestors would be proud of us,” Santini said, wiping away a tear. Who’d have thought the cardinal harbored any emotions under that silvery, icy exterior?
I heard something in the tunnel. Aldo must have heard it too because he turned to face the doorway, gun raised and ready. Footsteps echoed against the walls. One or two people? I couldn’t be sure. Probably more security or maybe some muscle men who’d come to help empty the vault.
A figure appeared in the doorway. I gasped out loud as Detective Falcone, still wearing his long black coat, stepped into the cavern. The light from the lantern on the floor cast a huge vulture-like shadow on the wall behind him.
“Cardinal Santini, it is an honor to see you again,” he said.
Dante glanced at Santini in evident confusion. “Who is this? Did you invite him here?”
“Of course I didn’t. What the hell are you doing here, Falcone?”
The three men faced off, their shadows shifting on the walls like predatory beasts measuring up their adversaries.
Claire squeezed my hand as we both stared at Falcone. He didn’t acknowledge us. His eyes were on Santini. So he was here to help the cardinal. What would they do to Dante? I didn’t plan to stay long enough to find out. Falcone’s arrival had upset the status quo enough that it was a good time to run. I straightened up, preparing to move.
“You’re not going anywhere,” Dante said. When Rocco pointed his gun at us, I eased back against the wall, grasping Claire’s arm. So much for that plan.
“How did you get down here?” Dante asked Falcone.
“Tell him, Santini,” Falcone answered.
The cardinal looked calm and poised. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Falcone laughed, a dry, grating sound that conveyed no humor. “My feelings are hurt, Eminence. I thought we were better friends than that.”
He turned to look at Dante, whose eyes were darting between his brother and Falcone.
“I am a detective with the Carabinieri in Rome,” he said to Dante. “Your brother and I have been collaborating on some business dealings over the last few years. I’m disappointed that he now denies our partnership.”
Falcone was disappointed? I was devastated. I’d guessed Falcone was crooked ever since Santini kidnapped us, but the revelation still turned my stomach.
“You lied to us,” I said to him. I watched his beaked nose turn in my direction.
“Ah, Kate,” he said, as if noticing me for the first time. “If you had been listening properly when we talked in Venice, you would have heard the truth.”
What the heck was that supposed to mean? Obviously everything he’d told us had been fabricated, apart from the fact of his being a policeman and maybe even that wasn’t true.
“What kind of business dealings?” Dante demanded. “What’s he talking about? And why is he here?”
Santini raised his hands palms up. “None of that is important now. We’ll deal with him later.”
A distinctive clicking noise made me jump. It was the sound of a safety catch being released. Rocco pointed his gun at Santini, who raised his hands in the air.
Aldo, lurking in the shadows, now stepped forward into the circle of light and aimed a gun at Dante.
“Enough of this,” Falcone said. “Who has the key?”
“I do,” said Santini. “And I suggest we use it. Dante, have your man stand down and I’ll do the same.”
Even with a gun pointed at him, Santini’s voice stayed steady and strong, the tone of someone accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. After a long pause, Dante told Rocco to lower his gun, which he did. Aldo followed suit.
“Excellent,” Falcone said. “Now shall we proceed?”
Santini held up the key and took a step closer to the wall. Claire dug her fingers into my arm. In spite of the testosterone-laden theatrics and the danger, a perverse piece of me was still curious to see what the vault contained.
But Dante suddenly pulled a gun from his jacket pocket and aimed it at Santini. Rocco pivoted on his heel with the grace of a ballerina and pointed his gun at Falcone. It felt as though all the air in the cavern had been sucked out. I was having trouble getting oxygen into my lungs.
Santini swore colorfully, a string of words I didn’t think a cardinal would know. He raised his hands in the air again. “You have to trust me, Dante. Shoot Falcone, I don’t care.”
I looked back at Falcone. His aura gyrated over his head so fast it made me feel faint. Everything else seemed to be happening in ultra-slow motion.
“Claire, move six feet along the wall,” I said. That would put her behind Dante, who didn’t have an aura. There was a chance, I thought, that there would be a bullet-free zone around him, the safest place for Claire to be. Without question, she sidled along the wall and stood absolutely still. I had no time to think but, for some reason, my instinct drove me to side with Falcone. We already knew that Dante and Santini had no interest in keeping us alive. I didn’t know what Falcone’s intentions were, but maybe he wouldn’t kill us.
When Rocco’s finger tensed on his gun, I covered the space between me and Falcone in a single stride, grabbed his arm and pulled him off balance so that he stumbled towards me.
The Complete Kate Benedict Cozy British Mysteries Page 79