“To what end?”
“To hide something of great value — to the Church, to the world. During the century of the Avignon papacy, a great surge of building occurred here, much of it overseen by the Children of Solomon. They could have easily buried away something of considerable size.”
“But where do we begin looking?” Kat said.
“To the work commissioned by that wayward pope, built by the hands of the Knights, one of the largest masterworks of Gothic architecture.”
Vigor waved forward, where the street emptied into a large square, populated by merrymakers from the festival. Colored lights framed a dancing area, a rock band on a makeshift stage pounded out a riff, and young people writhed, laughed, and yelled. Along the fringes, tables had been set up, crowded with more festival participants. A juggler tossed flaming brands into the night sky. Clapping encouraged him. Beer flowed, along with paper cups of coffee. Cigarette smoke billowed, along with special hand-rolled herbs.
But backdropped against this party rose an immense, dark, and looming structure, framed by square towers, fronted by massive archways of stone, and set off by a pair of conical spires. Its stone face was a sober contrast to the merriment below. History weighed it down…and an ancient secret.
The Palace of the Popes.
“Somewhere within its structure lies some seditious page of stone,” Vigor said, stepping closer to Kat. “I’m sure of it. We must find it and decode it.”
“But where do we begin looking?”
Vigor shook his head. “Whatever had frightened Robert Boyle, whatever terrible secret finally forged an alliance between heretical Knights and the orthodox church, whatever mystery required a Mediterranean-wide treasure hunt to solve…the answer is hidden here.”
Vigor felt a sharp wind blow up from the river. Avignon was named after the constant breezes off the river, but he sensed the true storm to come. Overhead, the stars were gone. Dark clouds lowered.
How much time did they have left?
2:48 A.M.
AVIGNON, FRANCE
"THAT’S HOW we calculated it was Avignon,” Rachel finished. “The French Vatican. That’s the next and last stop.”
She was still on her knees on the linoleum. Her grandmother remained strapped to the table. Rachel had told them everything, leaving out no detail. She had answered every one of Alberto’s questions. She had attempted no prevarication. She could not risk the prefect testing her veracity upon the flesh of her grandmother.
Monk and Rachel were soldiers. Her nonna was not.
Rachel would not let any harm come to the old woman. It was up to Gray now to keep the gold key from the Court. She had turned all hope and trust over to him. She had no other choice.
During her dissertation, Alberto had jotted notes, stepping back into his office to get pen and pad, along with Rachel’s map. He nodded once she was done, obviously convinced.
“Of course,” he said. “So simple, so elegant. I would’ve eventually figured this out, but now my efforts can best be put to unraveling the next mystery…in Avignon.”
Alberto turned to Raoul.
Rachel stiffened. She remembered what had happened last time. Even though she had told them the truth about the gold key, Raoul had still chopped off Monk’s hand.
“Where are Monsignor Verona and the other American now?” Alberto asked.
“Last I heard, they were heading to Marseilles,” Raoul said. “In their private jet. I thought they were following orders. Staying close, but clear of Italy.”
“Marseilles is only twenty minutes from Avignon,” Alberto said with a scowl. “Monsignor Verona must already be en route to work on the mystery. Find out if his plane has landed.”
Raoul nodded and passed the order to one of his men, who ran down the hall.
Rachel slowly gained her feet. “My grandmother…” she said. “Can you let her go now?”
Alberto waved a hand, as if he had forgotten about the old woman. Clearly he had grander things on his mind.
Another of the men stepped forward and ripped free the leather straps that held her grandmother. With tears streaming down her face, Rachel helped her nonna from the table.
Rachel silently sent out a prayer to Gray. Not just for herself and Monk, but now also for her grandmother.
Her nonna shakily gained her feet, leaning one hand on the table for support. She reached out and wiped Rachel’s tears. “There, there, child…enough with the crying. It was not all that awful. I’ve been through worse.”
Rachel almost laughed. Her grandmother was attempting to console her.
Waving Rachel aside, her grandmother stalked toward the prefect. “Alberto, you should be ashamed of yourself,” she scolded, as if speaking to a child.
“Nonna.…no…” Rachel warned, reaching out an arm.
“Not believing my granddaughter was capable of keeping secrets from you.” She hobbled over and gave Alberto a kiss on the cheek. “I told you Rachel was too clever for even you.”
Rachel’s outstretched arm froze. The blood iced in her veins.
“You must trust an old lady sometimes, no?”
“You are right as ever, Camilla.”
Rachel could not breathe.
Her grandmother motioned for Raoul to give her his arm. “And you, young man, maybe now you see why such strong Dragon’s blood is worth protecting.” She reached up and patted the bastard’s cheek. “You and my granddaughter…you two will make bellissimo bambini. Many beautiful babies.”
Raoul turned and weighed Rachel with those cold, dead eyes.
“I will do my best,” he promised.
15
HUNTING
JULY 27, 3:00 A.M.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND
GRAY FOLLOWED Seichan up the pine-studded mountainside. They had abandoned the motorbike at the bottom of a narrow gorge, hiding it among some flowering Alpine rose shrubs. Prior to that, they had ridden the last half-mile in the dark, headlamp off. The extra caution had slowed them down, but it couldn’t be helped.
Seichan led the way now on foot, no lights, climbing up a slope of loose scree toward a sheer rockface. Gray tried to pierce the weave of pine branches. Earlier, he had caught a glimpse of the castle as they rode up out of Lausanne and into the surrounding mountains. The chateau had sat like a hulking granite gargoyle, square faced, eyes glowing with lamplight. Then it had disappeared as they passed under a bridge that spanned far overhead.
Gray stepped up beside Seichan. She held a GPS device before her as she climbed. “Are you sure you can find this back entrance?”
“They had me hooded the first time here. But I had a GPS tracker hidden”—she glanced to Gray—“somewhere private. I recorded the approach’s position and elevation. It should lead us to the entrance.”
They continued to the towering cliff face.
Gray studied Seichan. What was he doing trusting her? In the dark forest, worries mounted. And not just about his choice of teammate. He began to doubt his own judgment. Was this the action of a true leader? He was risking everything in this rescue attempt. Any tactician would have weighed the odds and gone straight to Avignon with the key. He was placing the entire mission in jeopardy.
And if the Dragon Court won…
Gray pictured the dead in Cologne, the tortured priests in Milan. Many more would die if he failed.
And for what?
At least he knew the answer to that.
Gray continued up the hillside, lost in his own thoughts.
Seichan checked her GPS unit, then moved to the left. A crack in the cliff appeared, half hidden by a tilted slab of granite, covered in moss and tiny white snowbell flowers.
She ducked under it and led the way up into a narrow tunnel. She clicked on a penlight. A short way inside, an old grate blocked the way. Seichan quickly picked the lock.
“Any alarms?” Gray asked.
Seichan shrugged and pushed open the gate. “We’ll find out.”
Gray searched th
e walls as they entered. Solid granite. No wires.
Ten yards past the gate, a set of crude stairs led upward. Gray took the lead from here. He checked his watch. The train from Geneva should be pulling into the Lausanne station in another few minutes. His absence would be noted. Time was running out.
He sped faster up the stairs, but he kept a watch for any surveillance or alarm devices. He climbed the equivalent of fifteen stories, tension mounting with each step.
Finally the tunnel dumped into a wider room, a domed cavity in the rock. At the back wall, a natural spring spattered and flowed down into a cut in the rock, flowing toward the roots of the mountain. But in front of the spring stood a large slab of cut stone. An altar. Stars were painted on the ceiling. It was the Roman temple Seichan had described. So far, her intel was spot-on accurate.
Seichan stepped into the room behind him. “The stairs up into the castle are over there,” she said and pointed an arm toward another tunnel leading out.
He took a step toward it when the darkness at the mouth of the tunnel shifted. A large shape stepped into the meager light.
Raoul.
He bore a submachine gun in his hands.
Light flared to his left. Two other gunmen rose from hiding behind the slab. Behind Gray, a steel door slammed shut across the lower passageway.
But worse, he felt the cold barrel of a gun at the base of his skull.
“He’s carrying the gold key around his neck,” Seichan said.
Raoul strode forward. He stopped in front of Gray. “You should be wiser in your choice of companions.”
Before Gray could respond, a meaty fist slammed into his belly.
Gray coughed out his air and fell to his knees.
Raoul reached to his throat and grabbed the chain. He yanked the key free, ripping the pendant from Gray’s neck with a snap. He held it up to the light.
“Thank you for delivering this to us,” Raoul said. “And yourself. We have a few questions for you before we leave for Avignon.”
Gray stared up into Raoul’s face. He could not hide his shock. The Court knew about Avignon. How…?
But he knew.
“Rachel…” he mumbled.
“Oh, don’t worry. She’s alive and well. Catching up with family at the moment.”
Gray didn’t understand.
“Don’t forget about his teammate at the hospital,” Seichan said. “We don’t want to leave any loose ends.”
Raoul nodded. “That’s already being taken care of.”
3:07 A.M.
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND
UNABLE TO sleep, Monk watched television. It was in French. He didn’t speak French, so he was not really paying attention. It was white noise as he thought. The morphine fogged the edges of his mind.
He kept his eyes off his bandaged stump.
Fury kept the pain reliever’s sedation at bay. Not only for his mutilation, but for being the fall guy in this operation. Pulled out of the fight. Used as a goddamn bargaining chip. The others were in danger, and he was locked down in a private room, guarded by hospital security.
Still, he couldn’t deny a hollow pain deep inside him, one that morphine could not touch. He had no right to feel sorry for himself. He lived. He was a soldier. He had seen buddies pulled off the field in far worse condition than him. But the ache persisted. He felt violated, abused, less a man, certainly less a soldier.
Logic would not soothe his heart.
The television droned on.
A commotion outside his door drew his eye. Arguing. Raised voices. He shifted higher in his bed. What was going on?
Then the door burst open.
He stared in shock as a figure strode past the security guards.
A familiar figure.
Monk could not keep the shock from his voice. “Cardinal Spera?”
3:08 A.M.
LAUSANNE, SWITZERLAND
RACHEL HAD been returned to her cell, but she was not alone.
A guard stood outside the bulletproof glass.
Inside, her grandmother sank to the cot with a sigh. “You may not understand now, but you will.”
Rachel shook her head. She stood against the far wall, confused, dazed. “How…how could you?”
Her grandmother stared up at her with those sharp eyes of hers. “I was once like you. Only sixteen when I first came to this castle from Austria, escaping as the war ended.”
Rachel remembered her grandmother’s tales of her family’s flight to Switzerland, then eventually Italy. She and her father were the only members of her family to survive. “You were escaping from the Nazis.”
“No, child, we were Nazis,” her nonna corrected her.
Rachel closed her eyes. Oh God…
Her grandmother continued, “Papa was a party leader in Salzburg, but he also had ties to the Imperial Dragon Court of Austria. A very powerful man. It was through that fraternity that we made our escape, underground through Switzerland, through the generosity of the Baron of Sauvage, Raoul’s grandfather.”
Rachel listened with growing horror, though she wanted to cover her ears and deny it.
“But such safe passage required a payment. My father granted it. My virginity…to the baron. Like you, I resisted, not understanding. My father held me down the first time, for my own good. But it would not be the last. We were hidden here at the castle for four months. The baron bedded me many nights, until I was heavy with his bastard child.”
Rachel found herself sinking down the wall, settling to the cold stone floor.
“But bastard or not, it was a good crossing, mixing a noble Austrian line of Hapsburgs with a Swiss Bernese line. I grew to understand as the child grew in my belly. It was the way of the Court, strengthening pure lines. My father pressed it upon me. I grew to understand that I carried a noble bloodline back to emperors and kings.”
Sitting on the floor, Rachel tried to comprehend the brutality done to the young girl who would become her grandmother. Had her grandmother validated that cruelty and abuse by couching it in a grander scheme? Brainwashed at that fragile age by her father. Rachel sought to find sympathy for the old woman but failed.
“My father took me to Italy, to Castel Gondolfo, the home of the pope’s summer palace. I gave birth to your mother there. A shame. I was beaten for it. A male child had been hoped for.”
Her grandmother shook her head sadly. She continued, relating an alternate history of their family. How she was married off to another member of the Dragon Court, one with ties to the Church in Castel Gondolfo. It was a marriage of convenience and deceit. Their family had been assigned to seed their children and grandchildren into the Church, as unwitting spies for the Court, blind moles. To maintain their secrecy, Rachel’s mother and Uncle Vigor were kept unaware of their blasted heritage.
“But you were meant for so much more,” her grandmother said with hard pride. “You proved your Dragon blood. You were noticed and chosen to be drawn back into the full fold of the Court. Your blood was too valuable to waste. The Imperator chose you personally to cross our family line back upon the ancient Sauvage line. Your children will be kings among kings.”
Her nonna’s eyes shone with the wonder of it. “Molti bellissimo bambini. All kings of the Court.”
Rachel had no strength now to even raise her head. She covered her face with her hands. Every moment of her life flashed past her. What was real? Who was she? She thought back on the number of times she had taken her grandmother’s side over her mother, even her nonna’s advice on her love life. She had revered and emulated the old woman, respecting her hard, no-nonsense edge. But did such solidity come from toughness or psychosis? What did that imply about herself? She shared this blood-line…with the grandmother…dear God, with that bastard Raoul.
Who was she?
Another concern arose. Fear pushed her to speak. “What…what about Uncle Vigor…your son?”
Her grandmother sighed. “He has served his role in the Church. Celibacy ended his bloodlin
e. Now he is no longer needed. Our family’s legacy will carry forth through you, gloriously into the future.”
Rachel heard a trace of pain behind these last words and glanced up. She knew her grandmother loved Vigor…in fact, more than Rachel’s own mother. She wondered if her grandmother had resented that daughter she had given birth to, a child of rape. And was that same trauma carried down to the next generation? Rachel and her own mother had always had a strained relationship, an unspoken pain that neither could surmount, neither understood.
And where would it stop?
A shout drew her attention to the door. Men were coming. Rachel climbed to her feet, as did her grandmother. So alike…
Down the hall, a troop of guards marched past. Rachel stared in despair at the second in line. Gray, hands bound behind his back, trudged past. He glanced into her cell. Spotting her, his eyes widened in surprise. He tripped a step.
“Rachel…”
Gray was shoved forward by Raoul, who leered into the cell and held up something on a chain as he passed.
A gold key.
Despair settled completely over Rachel.
Nothing now stood between the Court and the treasure at Avignon. After centuries of manipulation and machination, the Dragon Court had won.
It was over.
3:12 A.M.
AVIGNON, FRANCE
KAT DID not like any of this. There were too many civilians around. She marched up the steps toward the main entrance to the Pope’s Palace. There was a flow of people into and out of the gateway.
“It’s a tradition to hold the play inside the palace,” Vigor said. “Last year, they did Shakespeare’s The Life and Death of King John. This year it’s a four-hour production of Hamlet. The play and party lasts well into the morning. They hold it in the Courtyard of Honor.” He pointed ahead.
They fought their way through a group of German tourists exiting the palace and crossed through the arched entry. Coming from ahead, voices echoed off the stone wall in a mix of languages.
“It will be hard to conduct a thorough search with all these people,” Kat said with a frown.
Map of Bones sf-2 Page 37