Rostoni continued to regard her in stony silence, his nostrils quivering with barely suppressed rage as he continued to toy with his pectoral cross.
“And by the way,” she spat out impulsively, “your two goons are dead, and Professore Recanati is on his way to the press to make sure that your filthy little secret is revealed, once and for all. I’m sure he’ll be here quite soon with a group of reporters.”
“How interesting,” he finally replied, a satanic expression on his face. “How very interesting, indeed.
“But, my dear Professoressa Page,” he said with a dramatic flourish, “the Museum of Dead Nations that I’ve so carefully guarded all these years is nothing. Nothing at all. The greatest cache of all is here, right within the walls of the Holy See, just waiting to be reunited with other relics of the Jewish race.”
“What are you talking about?” she prodded, though she was sure she knew exactly what he was referring to. “What special cache?”
“Why, the ancient treasures from the destroyed Temple in Jerusalem, of course. What else would it be?”
She stared at him quietly, as he now confirmed the suspicions she and Bruno had harbored ever since their discovery of the amphora in the crypt.
“And don’t think that the Third Reich is dead,” he went on. “Surely you can’t be that naive. There are others out there, many others, just waiting to continue the work that Hitler left unfinished. Someday they'll be joined by the elite of the Nazi hierarchy that I've rescued from death. And when they’ve accomplished their goals, the Temple treasures—the most glorious prize of all—will join the other exhibits in the most magnificent museum ever known to mankind.”
“You’ll never get away with this,” she challenged him. “Your secret museum is about to be exposed, and your hoard of purloined goods will be returned to their lawful owners. Including the Temple artifacts. And by the way, your collection of frozen cadavers has been compromised. The coffins have cracked and the fluid has leaked out. All gone. Bye-bye,” she added sarcastically.
Rostoni glared at her venomously. “I knew we should never have engaged you or that Jew. A woman,” he scoffed, “and a Jew. What a combination! An archaeological match made in heaven.”
“You hideous anti-Semite!” she threw back at him, finally losing all semblance of control. “Tell me, Your Eminence,” she said with acerbity, deliberately enunciating every syllable of his title, “did you ever happen to know a certain Elena Conti? Or perhaps a Niccolò Rossi? Do these names sound familiar? Do they jog your memory?”
Rostoni turned pale with rage. “Who told you about these people? How do you know Elena Conti?” he demanded imperiously.
“My grandmother told me all about you,” she retorted. “Her name is Elena Conti, the same Elena Conti you tried to blackmail into sexual favors so many years ago. The same Elena Conti whose life you tried to destroy. I know how you were responsible for the death of my grandfather and all of my family here in Italy.”
“Well, well,” he replied slowly, now staring at her with a strange, savage gleam in his eyes. “I thought there was something vaguely familiar about you the first time we met. My instincts weren’t wrong, it seems,” he added with a sinister smirk.
“And guess what?” Nicola interrupted him, her voice filled with hate. “I’m part Jewish myself. My grandmother would never have given you a second glance, you monster, even if you hadn’t been a priest. Her Jewish boyfriend was my grandfather, and I’m proud to be part Jewish.”
“ ‘Proud to be part Jewish?’ ” he asked, his voice low and menacing. “You have no idea what you’re talking about. That perfidious race! Those vermin! The Jews killed our Savior. For centuries they have stubbornly refused to recognize Holy Mother Church and the truth of her teachings. They have deserved every misfortune that has been visited upon their miserable heads. And I am glad to have had a part in it,” he boasted. “Proud to have been given the opportunity to help punish them.”
Nicola recoiled in horror at his last words. “What do you mean, ‘glad to have had a part in it’? What part could you have possibly played in the historical tragedies of the Jews, apart from murdering my family?”
His eyes glittered maniacally and he stood more erect, watching her carefully. “Why do you think the Pope refrained from condemning the deportation of the Jews of Rome during the war, my dear Professoressa Page? Who do you think counseled him to remain silent?” he asked, tapping himself on the chest repeatedly, for emphasis.
“Yes, it was me. And he never knew why,” he gloated, his eyes burning with fierce pride. “He was too unworldly to realize that I was the real architect of the Church’s foreign policy during the war, not him. How naïve and weak he was!”
Nicola listened in revulsion, understanding that she was hearing things no one else could possibly know, dangerous things that would now compromise her personal safety with complete and utter finality. She was no longer sure that Father Benedetto or Bruno would arrive soon enough to help her, so she forced herself to remain silent, hoping to stall for time.
Rostoni now seemed nearly oblivious to her presence, caught up in a delirium of memories of the past and his boasts of power over the aging Pope. “Hah!” he said triumphantly. “Those Germans thought they could blackmail the Church, but I was more clever than they were. They thought they could force us to surrender the Temple artifacts. But I made a bargain with them—a deal they couldn’t refuse.
“I convinced the Pope to remain silent when the Jews were rounded up in their homes and deported to extermination camps—as they deserved to be, those treacherous Christ-killers. And I made sure the Temple treasures were safe from greedy German hands.
“Two birds—no three!—killed with one stone!” he exclaimed, counting, with a nearly theatrical gesture, on his fingers. “We kept our protected status, we retained control over the Jewish treasures, and we got rid of a significant portion of the Jews of Rome, with very little effort.” He snapped his fingers. “Just like that!”
“So where are the Temple treasures, then?” she asked quickly, fearful that he would lose his train of thought. “Where have you hidden them?”
“What an amusing question, my dear Professoressa Page, especially coming from you.” He turned slightly and pointed at the enormous hand-woven tapestry that she had admired on her first visit to the Apostolic Palace. “Behind that tapestry, my very clever Professoressa Page, is a doorway. It leads to an underground chamber that's been there for centuries.
“It’s climate-controlled and monitored by the most powerful sensors and advanced technology in the world. And in fact, should anyone attempt to tamper with its protective devices, it will self-destruct, explode—poof! Nothing left! I’m the only person who has the code and can disarm it. Not even the engineers who installed the finishing touches can safely access the room and its contents.
“But come,” he now said, motioning with a broad sweep of his arm. “You expressed a desire to see the private collections of the Vatican Museums the very first time you came here. Well, I’m about to gratify that wish.” He paused, adding with a sly smile that frightened her, “Not out of any special liking for you personally, you realize, but for your dear grandmother’s sake, whom I still think of with fond recollection from time to time. A pity we have not seen each other in so many years.”
Nicola was repulsed beyond words by everything she had heard, but his mention of her grandmother and his fond memories of her were nearly beyond belief. Hiding her loathing as best she could, she followed him over to the tapestry, cautiously keeping at a distance from him, her hand now clenching the halothane. Strangely, she felt no immediate physical threat from Rostoni, though she knew he'd been responsible for the two assassins who had tried to silence her and Bruno only a few short hours ago.
Despite the fact that he appeared younger than his age, more vigorous than he had any right to be after a lifetime of evil, she felt confident that she could hold her own against him, that he would be unable to s
ucceed if he tried to attack her. And even if he had more squadisti at his disposal, he wouldn't be able to avail himself of their services immediately. Not now. Not in the middle of the night, when she had arrived at his office so unexpectedly.
The tapestry resembling Poussin’s painting of the Temple had been hung on a heavy bronze rod, which Rostoni now shifted away from the wall, revealing a locked door with a flat coded keypad near it. Opening the door, he led her through a dimly lit, sometimes serpentine corridor and then down a series of wide steps that had apparently been quarried out of the bedrock beneath the very foundations of the Apostolic Palace. They continued towards a subterranean vault that she guessed was probably somewhere under the Vatican gardens.
There was a small vestibule outside the chamber, and Rostoni now stopped there and turned towards her. “Here we are,” he said, looking at her with a strange gleam in his eyes. “But I’ve changed my mind about showing it to you. I really would have, you know, for your dear grandmother Elena’s sake. But since you’re also the grandchild of that Jewish scum, whom she preferred over me,” he added maliciously, “I think not.”
He twisted his pectoral cross as he spoke, and suddenly detached it from its heavy chain, holding it out towards her as she backed away, more in puzzlement than in shock.
“You know too much,” he said. “Too much about my activities during the war. Too much about my private hobbies. And too much about what this room contains. You know that the Museum of Dead Nations is still remarkably alive and flourishing, and I’m afraid that that’s an untenable situation.”
“I think you’ve forgotten one small, but important little detail,” she countered, moving slowly backwards towards the stairs. “Both Bruno and Father Benedetto know precisely where I am and with whom. And by now Bruno has reported this night’s events to a news agency. He’ll be here quite soon. And with enough reporters and photographers, I might add, to spread the word of your crimes everywhere—in print, on radio, on the web, and on TV.
“I’m afraid that your long tenure as Director of the Vatican Museums—and of the Museum of Dead Nations,” she added with contempt, “is about to end.”
“You’re bluffing,” he replied, grasping his pectoral cross more closely.
“No, I assure you I’m not, Your most dubious Eminence. I’m sure the newspapers will be thrilled to print an exposé. I can just see it now,” she taunted him recklessly, “a banner headline—‘Director of Vatican Museums Implicated in Fencing Stolen Art during the War.’ Or perhaps you prefer some other options—‘Cardinal Trades Jews of Rome for Temple Treasures during World War II’—or maybe ‘Cardinal Preserves Nazi Cadavers in a Bid to Re-establish the Third Reich.’ Any of those would make an interesting possibility.”
“True, but you’ll never live to see those headlines, Professoressa Page.” He pushed against the side of the large cabochon ruby at the center of his pectoral cross, and a sharp stiletto sprang out with an audible click from the end of its vertical post. Grasping the crossbeam of the crucifix in his hand, he held it like the deadly knife that it was.
“Don’t underestimate me, Professoressa. I may be well over eighty years old, but I’ve taken very good care of myself over the years. Very good care indeed. You’d be surprised if you knew how I’ve managed to do it,” he sneered.
Suddenly he lunged at her. She sidestepped him and pivoted, grasping his arm in an upward thrust, inadvertently dropping the halothane as she struggled. The antechamber was small, with little room to maneuver. He was much stronger than she had imagined and tried to break her hold with his other hand.
She had to reach the canister—it was her only hope—but it had spun across the floor, to the other side of the room. The stiletto was just inches from her throat. In desperation, she jabbed her fingers into his eyes and bit his hand as hard as she could, hearing a satisfying crunch, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth.
She looked around her frantically, barely managing to hold him off with repeated kicks to his shin as he attempted to stab her with the deadly crucifix. She had to reach the halothane. There was no other way to stop him.
But no, she’d nearly forgotten. She still had the can of mace that she’d taken from the Swiss Guards, tucked into her waistband. She lashed out again at Rostoni, kicking him in the groin over and over again, and as he doubled over, she reached for the mace. To her horror, she saw that the cap was stuck. She had to pry it off, but she needed her other hand to block and parry Rostoni’s fist and the deadly stiletto. If only she could get the cap off the canister and hold her breath long enough to disable him!
In desperation, she gripped the tall can as tightly as she could and hit him on the head with it, over and over again, punching him simultaneously with her free hand. Finally she knocked the stiletto out of his grasp, but not before she had scratched him in the process with his own weapon.
She pinned him down and kicked the horrible crucifix out of reach, unsure of what to do next. Punching him in the jaw for good measure, she began to back away, grabbing for the halothane, which had rolled towards the stairway, poised to spray it at him should he manage to get up. Suddenly she saw that he had begun to turn pale, his arms and legs shaking with tremors and froth coming out of his mouth.
“The tip . . . ,” he said, his breath labored and harsh sounding, “ . . . I have . . . no regrets.” He shuddered and lay still.
Nicola backed away further from his body, unconvinced that he was really dead. Why had he mentioned the tip of his stiletto? My God, it must have been poisoned, she realized with a shudder. He’d known that he only had to scratch her with it and she would have died, without any further effort on his part.
Her thoughts raced feverishly. Maybe that’s how Matt died, she suddenly grasped, as she continued to maintain a careful distance from Rostoni. All that had been needed was the tiny prick of a needle, administered by a casual passerby in the Athens marketplace—most likely by one of Rostoni’s associates. A tiny prick of some deadly, untraceable poison that could mimic a heart attack. That’s all it had taken, she concluded in a rush of understanding. That’s all it had taken to kill poor Matt.
Her heart hardened as she now viewed the body before her with surprising detachment. After all she had witnessed that night, another corpse could no longer move her, could no longer frighten or even repulse her. Not now. Not any longer.
This monstrous Cardinal had killed her young grandfather. He had killed two sets of her great grandparents, right here in Rome. He had tried to murder her with a crucifix, symbol of the religion he had served so hypocritically over the years. And he had not only knowingly appropriated the property of Nazi victims for his hideous Museum of Dead Nations, but he had preserved the bodies of scores of Nazi murderers in the hope of re-establishing the Reich at a later date.
Though he had been a prince of the Church, he had died unrepentant and unabsolved. For him there would be no resurrection of the soul, she reflected. She doubted that he had been born with one.
As she stood there, staring at the lifeless body of the man who had destroyed so many of her loved ones and colluded with the Nazis, profiting from the deaths of so many innocent people, she heard footsteps on the stairwell, hurrying towards her. Her hand tightened on the can of halothane, and she readied herself to attack. Please, God, she prayed, don’t let it be the Swiss Guards. She’d had enough violence to last a lifetime.
“Nicola, Nicola, are you all right?” cried out a familiar voice. It was Father Benedetto. “I came as soon as I could. Dio! What happened?” he asked, staring in shock at Rostoni’s corpse.
She relaxed her grip on the canister and, taking a deep breath, began to explain what had happened, more dispassionately than she would ever have imagined a few short hours ago. “He was in his office when I arrived. He tried to kill me with his pectoral cross. It had a knife hidden inside. A stiletto. The tip was apparently poisoned, and he got nicked by his own blade. He meant for me to die,” she finished matter of factly.
“Believe me, I won’t let this go unanswered. But I would never have suspected Luciano,” he added, shaking his head in disbelief. “He seemed so quiet and industrious. I’ll need to mount a thorough investigation to see if there are any others in the Archives who were working for Rostoni.”
“I think that would be a good idea. The other goon, incidentally, was German. No surprises there. Not when the mastermind”—and here she glanced venomously at the Cardinal’s body—“not when the mastermind was a Nazi sympathizer. He told me, you know, that there are others out there, ready to take on the mantle of the Reich and continue its evil work. Not to mention all those disgusting frozen cadavers that he'd hoped to revive. It’s not over yet, I’m afraid.
“But by now Bruno should have brought some reporters to the catacombs, to photograph and document the Museum. Maybe that will put a pall on Rostoni’s successors, for the time being.
“By the way,” she continued quickly, “you don't have to bother searching anymore for evidence that Rostoni was the one who denounced my grandmother’s family. He admitted it himself. He even boasted about it.”
Benedetto looked at her intently and hesitated for a moment before speaking. “Actually, Nicola, there is something you need to know—and see for yourself. Something that will surprise you, to put it mildly. I did search for evidence, as I said I would—evidence in parish records at Santa Maria in Trastevere. But I found nothing of interest. My colleague there, however, came across something stuck at the back of his desk drawer tonight while searching for a file. I only received it about an hour ago, by messenger service.”
The Lost Catacomb Page 33