Death Mask

by Alex Archer

  But looking at them, their pretend-knight posturing, left Roux wondering how many of the guards were able to use their weapons. He could probably have taken out half of them from the gallery before they’d even brought their guns to bear, but that wouldn’t necessarily be a good thing. Not until he knew where Garin was.

  Roux weighed the odds.

  If he’d had any backup he wouldn’t have hesitated. He pulled out his gun as he made his decision, picked out which of the men down there was marked for death, imagining the collapses and working out what would happen as they fell, like dominos, trying to foresee all the possible consequences.

  The chanting stopped. The room fell eerily silent as a curtain at the back parted. Two men joined the congregation, dragging a third man between them. There was a hood over his head.

  It had to be Garin.

  Fish in a barrel.

  Roux took aim, drawing a deep, steadying breath, ready to fire, only to hear the telltale sound of a gun’s mechanism ratchet a heartbeat before he felt the cold steel of its barrel press against the back of his head.

  “Give me an excuse to pull the trigger,” the voice said.

  19

  09:35—En route to Granada

  Annja took the chance to shower and change into clean clothes, ditching the leathers. Roux’s plane was more like a flying hotel than a cramped economy shuttle, with every convenience imaginable and a bunch that weren’t. She emerged refreshed and awake, more alive. The first few minutes in the plane’s air-conditioning were bliss. The call from Roux came, telling her he had a helicopter waiting for her at the airport. The old man was always one step ahead of the game. But then, he’d been playing it for a very long time. She was still new to this, really, despite the incredible things she’d seen and done since her hand first closed around the sword in the otherwhere. That felt like so long ago now.

  The pilot didn’t emerge once from the cabin or waste his time with small talk over the intercom. He just did his job moving her from point A to point B at Roux’s request.

  She sat back in the supple leather armchair and pulled the mask out of her backpack. She wanted to see what she could decipher, if anything, before they landed. She was searching for an edge. If she could work out what this was all about, she’d be a step ahead of all of them, and a step closer to getting Garin out of the mess he’d gotten himself into. And she had no doubts that Garin had walked into this with his eyes wide open. Knowing something was a bad idea had never stopped him before. She was going to need help, though. The plane was equipped with a satellite phone, meaning she was still hooked up to everything that made the world tick. Annja made a couple of calls, getting a referral from an old associate in Bonn to a colleague in Bern who just happened to know exactly who she should be talking to: a history professor in Rome, an expert in the field, having spent more than twenty years researching the fate of the Moors during the Inquisition.

  A couple of minutes after making the first call, she had him on the phone.

  “Miss Creed,” the man said in a soft voice.

  “Professor Zanetti,” she said. “Thank you so much for this. I can’t begin to tell you how much I appreciate it.”

  “Nonsense,” the man said. She could hear the smile in his voice. “I am always happy to talk about things that captivate me. I understand that you are interested in discussing the Moriscos?”

  “Actually, I want to talk about their treasure.”

  “Ah.” There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone as the professor reassessed the conversation. His tone shifted slightly. “Are you a treasure hunter, Miss Creed? I was led to believe you were a serious student of archaeology, no?”

  She took a deep breath. “Today, technically, I’m a treasure hunter, I guess. But every other day of my life I’m a serious student of history and archaeology. And yes, I can well imagine that a lot of people would be interested in finding the Morisco treasure if they knew it existed, but honestly, I’m not one of them.”

  “Then what are you trying to accomplish here, Miss Creed?”

  “I’m purely helping out a friend.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you this much—advice, if you like, so take it or leave it as you will. Even if this treasure still exists, no matter that it would make the finder as rich as Croesus, rich beyond the dreams of avarice, it’s not a road you want to be following. And you are the second person I have said the same to in as many months.”

  “The second?”

  “Yes. Perhaps it was someone else associated with your television program? I must admit, I suddenly feel like one of the cool kids. I don’t think I’ve been this popular since I was in high school.”

  “I’ll check with my producer,” she said, wondering who Zanetti had been talking to. She could already hear Roux’s voice in her ear banging on about there being no coincidences. “Can I ask you, Professor Zanetti, do you have a personal theory on what happened to the confiscated wealth?”

  “I do indeed. Of course, a lot depends on the nature of this wealth. The Moors held a tremendous amount of riches, and while those who fled the country often retained theirs—or at least what they could carry with them—as did the Moors who converted to the Christian faith, some treasures were confiscated by the Church. These weren’t obvious treasures. Many wouldn’t even see value in them. They seized thousands of books—of course, many of them had jeweled bindings that were of value in themselves—but of even greater value was the information inside them. Many of them were religious tracts, but perhaps surprisingly, others contained a vast amount of scientific knowledge. We are talking about a tremendous wealth of learning, destroyed and denied to scholars. Certain books on medicine were retained, though others likewise were considered to be heresy and destroyed. You could draw parallels with today, when even some enlightened people believe that the words in the Bible carry more weight than the discoveries of generations of scientists. If it doesn’t come from the mouth of some God via a burning bush, they don’t want to know.”

  “No actual money, then? No jewels? These were wealthy people, weren’t they? What happened to their belongings once they were executed?”

  “Ah, now we are back into the world of the treasure hunter, Miss Creed. And there we are confronted on all sides by supposition, presumption and, to be honest, make-believe. Yes, material wealth was certainly lost, particularly when the Moors abandoned the Alhambra. But was there ever enough to make up a great horde like something out of Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves? Would it have been gathered, or would light-fingered enforcers have made off with it? Lots of variables we have no answers for. Tell me, have you heard of the Moor’s Last Sigh?”

  “The book?”

  “No, though Rushdie’s novel is in some small part inspired by the events of the time. When Muhammad XII, the last sultan of Granada, led his people from the Alhambra and through the Puerto del Suspiro del Moro—the Pass of the Moor’s Sigh—he was supposed to have looked back at what he was leaving behind and wept. It is my belief they abandoned far more than books. But is that your missing treasure? I do not claim to know.”

  “Can you remember the name of the man who contacted you?”

  “Not off the top of my head, I’m afraid. Something Hispanic. Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the subject matter. He had an American accent, though, I think. Hernandez?”

  Annja felt the chill certainty that she was following in the Brotherhood’s footsteps. “Martínez? Enrique Martínez?”

  “It could well have been. Like I said, it was a couple months ago, and names aren’t really my thing.”

  “Do you remember what you talked about?”

  “The same as you. The treasure. He was most interested in the Alhambra itself, but—and I found this interesting, given that its existence isn’t well-known—he asked a lot of questions about the Mask of Torquemada.”

&
nbsp; The words sent a shiver up her spine.

  The Brotherhood already knew she had the mask. Likewise, they knew she was on her way to Granada. She had a choice to make. And not long to make it. This professor could be one of them, testing her. She decided to play a game of you-show-me-yours-and-I’ll-show-you-mine.

  “Professor, I know this might be one of the strangest requests you’ve ever had, but would you mind showing me the backs of your hands?”

  “On the telephone?”

  “Take a photograph of your hands, with your face in the shot, then send it to my email. I’ll wait for it to arrive, then we’ll talk.”

  “How very mysterious, Miss Creed. Very well, I’ll play along.”

  A moment later, she was looking at a photograph of his face and his hands, sleeves pulled back to reveal his forearms. There was no sign of the telltale tattoo Roux had warned her about. She decided to trust him.

  “Would you mind telling me what that was all about?” he asked. “Worried that I might have something up my sleeve?”

  “Not at all,” she said. “I’d like to show you something, and I just needed to know I could trust you. Let’s take this conversation over to video chat.”

  “You really are quite...different...Miss Creed. Again, I’ll humor you, mainly because I’m curious now.”

  It took a couple of minutes for them to connect over video, but they were face-to-pixelated-face soon enough.

  “I want to show you something, Professor, but this stays between us, understand?”

  “Pinky swear,” the Italian said, smiling. He saw just how serious Annja’s expression was and added, “You have my word.”

  She said nothing. She reached for the mask and held it up in front of her face.

  She watched the professor’s expression through Torquemada’s eyes.

  He gasped. “Is that...? Are you telling me...? Is that thing...genuine?”

  “Very much so.”

  “Where on earth did you find it? How...? Do you have any idea what this means?” The questions came tumbling out in an avalanche of words.

  “I’d rather not say just yet,” she said. “I intend to get it tested properly so we know exactly what we’re dealing with before we make it public, but basically, from what you can see here, do you think it could be the real thing?”

  “Impossible to say without examining it properly, but look at it... You can’t rule it out, can you? The likeness—even though it’s clearly been damaged over the years—is remarkable.”

  She turned the mask around to reveal the inside, the swirls and signs engraved in the discolored silver. “And my second question.” She moved it closer to the webcam. “Do you have any idea what this might be?”

  The professor made a face as he inclined his head. He licked his lips, then chewed on the bottom one, but didn’t say anything for the longest time. So protracted was the silence that Annja thought for a moment the video chat had frozen. Eventually, he said, “Could you send me pictures of this?”

  “Does it mean anything to you?”

  “Possibly. Part of it looks like it could be Mozarabic.”

  “Mozarabic?”

  “A dead language. It was spoken among Muslims until the fourteenth century.”

  “But if this is the Mask of Torquemada, surely the language would already have been dead for a century by the time of its manufacture?”

  “It wouldn’t have been in common usage, I agree, but that doesn’t mean that it was lost completely at that point in time. Indeed, it could even have become a way for like-minded people to pass messages without the Church interpreting them. Send the pictures to me as soon as you can, and assuming the script is Mozarabic, I’ll get them translated for you.”

  He ended the call, leaving Annja staring at the screen.

  This changed things.

  Not everything, but enough.

  She had thought that the treasure had been taken and hidden by the Inquisition, but what if she’d been coming at this from the wrong angle? What if the Moors had been hiding their secrets from the Church before the Inquisition could lay their hands on them?

  She was still lost in her thoughts when she heard the warning sound and saw the fasten-seat-belts light come on.

  “We’ll be starting to descend in a moment,” the pilot said over the intercom. “Landing in ten minutes.”

  She felt the plane start to bank and turn, losing altitude slowly.

  She stashed everything away, ready to move on to the next leg of her journey.

  She tried to reach Roux, but his phone went straight to voice mail. Maybe he was already in that dead zone. She left a message, telling him she was touching down, then settled in for the landing.

  Fifteen minutes later, she disembarked. The afternoon heat hit her, almost making it impossible to breathe after the cool comfort of the plane. There was a large plane sitting on the tarmac along with a cluster of smaller private jets, including one not unlike Roux’s. She’d flown on his Gulfstream often enough to recognize the shape of it. That was one expensive toy some billionaire playboy had parked up by the hangars.

  Across the hardstand she saw the helicopter waiting for her. It was a fair distance away, nestled on the far side of the solitary terminal building. She started walking toward it when her phone rang.

  She answered it without even looking at the screen.

  “Annja.”

  20

  09:15—The Alhambra

  Roux knelt with his hands held up in surrender.

  The man kicked his pistol out of reach as Roux interlaced his fingers behind his head. There was nothing he could do but go along with it. Even if, by some freakish gymnastic feat, he could have thrown himself out of the window, he would have been cut down before he reached the ground. So he surrendered. He was where he’d wanted to be, in the belly of the beast. Assuming they didn’t kill him straightaway, he’d just have to wait and seize whatever opportunity presented itself. They hadn’t killed Garin, after all, so the odds were on his side. It would be too much to hope they didn’t know who he was, though. The Brotherhood was organized. They’d done their due diligence. And he knew that because they’d tried to take him out once before. They wanted Annja, though. Not him. Their interest in him started and ended with not letting him help her. She was the one they’d sent on the treasure hunt. They’d put Garin’s life in her hands, not his.

  “On your feet.”

  Roux reached for the edge of the balcony, no sudden moves, and started to pull himself up, rubbing his knee with his free hand as he rose. He winced, playing up the old-bones angle without making it obvious that he was faking it. He had just scaled a scaffold and climbed through a window, so he could hardly be a frail pensioner. But maybe the man with the gun would underestimate an old man.

  “Move it,” the gunman said, prodding him in the base of the spine with his weapon. The gunman bent down to retrieve Roux’s gun. The moment the cold steel wavered, Roux struck.

  He swiveled and kicked out at the man’s hand, knocking the gun from it. The semiautomatic clattered toward the window. Even before his foot had landed, Roux whipped his other leg out, taking his assailant’s legs out from under him. The man sprawled backward, flailing out at Roux. Roux drove the heel of his hand into the man’s nose, then rolled him over the gallery railing. The gunman fell. All element of surprise was gone by the time he hit the ground, dead. That put the cat amid the pigeons.

  They were coming for Roux, but he was ready.

  Heavy footsteps sounded on the stairs.

  Roux snatched up his gun and, in the silence between heartbeats, took in his surroundings. That was all the time he needed. A door burst open along the balcony. A heavily armed man filled the opening. The gunman saw him and swung around to take aim: shoot first and ask questions later—or never.
Hesitation killed better men than him. Roux didn’t hesitate. He fired a single shot at the man in the doorway, taking him square in the chest. The impact of the bullet slammed him back into the men coming behind him.

  It bought Roux a moment.

  He sprung onto the top of the balcony railing, a sitting target for those below, and took three sure-footed steps before they could gather their wits and send the first volley of gunfire toward him. Bullets strafed through the air, embedding themselves in the wall behind him, the ancient stone spitting dust. Those same walls had survived five hundred years of conflict unscathed. They didn’t withstand more than a few minutes of the old Frenchman. He didn’t smile. He ran along the gallery with perfect balance, oblivious to the danger of the drop.

  He needed to cut down on the number of guns trained on him.

  There were eight bullets left in his weapon.

  There were more than eight men who wanted him dead.

  He needed to improvise.

  A chandelier hung below the level of the balcony.

  It was an inviting means of evading at least the closest of the gunmen.

  He leaped from the rail like a gymnast, arcing his body and grasping the chain that supported the gilt construction. The metal links strained and stretched under the sudden pull of his weight, threatening to send him crashing to the ground. A shower of plaster fell, raining down on his head. Below him, two of the men dragged Garin out of the room while another offered covering fire. His aim was poor. Two rapid shots from Roux saw him crumple to the ground, a pool of blood slowly spreading out around him.

  Six bullets.

  Another shooter appeared on a lower balcony, directly in Roux’s path as he swung.

  That was unlucky for him.

  Roux fired again, still one-handed, swinging on the huge chandelier. This time his shot took the man low in the gut. His screams as he crumpled up and fell were brutal. His weapon tumbled over the balcony rail, going off as it hit the floor.

  There was no respite. More bullets whizzed by, too close for comfort, coming from above. One struck the chain supporting the chandelier. The link opened where the bullet clipped it, and Roux felt the change in the chain’s integrity. The only way was down. And he wasn’t in control of his descent.