The Medusa Amulet

by Robert Masello

  He’d have to run it by Schillinger in Chicago and see if it rang any bells. If not, Schillinger could always kick it upstairs.

  He waited in the cold for another hour or two before deciding to call it quits for the day. He was damn tired of running around. He hadn’t been to Florence in years-the last time he’d been there, he was part of the official Swiss Guard accompanying the Pope-but he remembered where Julius Jantzen, his local contact, lived, and fortunately it wasn’t far.

  He set out on foot, into the increasingly seedy districts of the city, now inhabited by immigrants and foreign workers. Many of the shops had signs in Arabic and Farsi, and the streets were littered with dirt and refuse. This part of town was definitely off the tourists’ maps. There were dozens of cheap hotels, betting parlors, and kebab joints, punctuated, oddly enough, by the occasional ancient church, or-and wasn’t it another sign of the times-a makeshift mosque.

  On the corner of a dismal street, there was a sliver of a building painted a faded orange, with a tobacconist’s shop on the ground floor. Escher brushed past a few young men loitering in front and into a shadowy courtyard surrounding a stagnant green fishpond. At the back there was a sheet-metal door-the only thing in the building that looked new and intact-and dropping his overnight bag on the threshold, he banged on the metal with his closed fist three times.

  He eyed the window beside the door and saw two fingers part the dingy blind. Stepping back to make sure Julius could get a good look at him, he heard the locks being turned and the bolts unlatched, and while waiting he noticed one of the young men he’d just passed-they looked like Turks to him-watching him from the street.

  “What are you looking at?” Escher called out.

  The man didn’t answer, but his dark eyes lingered on the over-stuffed bag on the threshold. Ernst had half a mind to go back and kick the shit out of him.

  But the door opened partway, revealing Julius’s hand waving him in. Escher slipped in, and the door slammed closed behind him. After the locks and latches had all been resealed, Jantzen turned around and looked his visitor up and down.

  “You shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Nice to see you, too.”

  “I told them, I’m done. They have already ruined my life.”

  Looking around the place-one lousy room with a cracked linoleum floor and an unmade bed behind a Chinese screen-Escher thought he might have a point.

  “You’re never done,” Escher said, “You know that.”

  Julius Jantzen had once been a respectable doctor in Zurich, best known for his work with Swiss athletes and cyclists. He had also been a pioneer in the use of anabolic steroids, blood oxygenation, and other performance-enhancing techniques. Escher had been one of his best clients… before it all came crashing down.

  “What are you doing here, anyway?” Julius asked, brushing some unruly curls of hair back off his forehead. He looked like a sick little rabbit, with stooped shoulders and a concave chest under a flannel shirt and rumpled trousers. Escher suspected him of using some of his own pharmaceuticals-just not the right kind.

  “Running a fool’s errand, if you ask me.” He threw some newspapers off the couch and sat down. “What are you going to offer me to drink?”

  Julius let out a breath of disgust, went into the kitchen, and came back with a cold bottle of Moretti.

  “You’ve gone native,” Escher said, raising the bottle, then drinking off half of it at once. A soccer match was playing on the TV, with the sound muted. Escher had grown to prefer American football. More action, more scoring, more physical contact.

  Julius sat down in what was clearly his favorite chair, a battered Naugahyde monster next to a side table littered with a full ashtray, a beer bottle, a TV remote, and a scattering of pistachio shells. Now that he looked around, Escher saw that there were pistachio shells all over the floor, too.

  “Why don’t you get your pistachios already shelled?”

  “I enjoy the exercise.”

  Julius turned the sound back up, and for a while they watched the game in a wary, if companionable, silence. Escher was tired and could use a bit of a boost himself. Back in Rome, Jantzen had visited the barracks once every month or two with a bulging satchel of everything from B-12 to Oxycontin. To stay in the Swiss Guard you had to keep fit, and with the help of some regular injections Escher had always remained ahead of the pack. But judging from the looks of Jantzen now, and the dump he lived in, his dealing days were over. Escher had been sent here for two things-a gun (there was no way to smuggle one aboard the flight from Chicago) and a base to work from.

  He would take the gun, but he’d sooner check into any flophouse than try to sleep here even for one night.

  Still, he put his head back, closed his eyes, and gradually drifted off. When he awoke with a start, the soccer match was over, and the evening news was on. No daylight at all was slanting in through the front blinds.

  And he was alone.

  “Julius!” he called out. “Where the hell are you?”

  He got up, looked behind the Chinese screen, then went down the short hall, between a galley kitchen and an immense old wardrobe, to the bathroom. But he wasn’t in there, either. Nor was there any note lying around.

  “Jantzen!” he called out one last time, and as if out of nowhere, the man appeared behind him, in a white surgical apron. The door to the wardrobe was open, and Julius said, “Christ, you snore.”

  “Where were you?” Escher said, peering around the wardrobe door. There was no back to the thing, and a bright light washed into the hallway from a room tucked away behind the cabinet’s false front.

  “Working,” Jantzen said, stepping back through the armoire, with Escher close behind.

  No one would ever have guessed the lab was there. It was spotlessly clean and antiseptic, with bright fluorescent lighting overhead, an examining table, sink, and metal racks well stocked with everything from medical equipment to drug supplies. And suddenly, it all made much more sense to Escher.

  “I put out something you might want,” Julius said, gesturing at a Glock nine-millimeter, with its silencer already attached to its muzzle, on the counter. Escher was glad to see that Jantzen had followed orders, and he picked up the gun and examined it. “It’s loaded, so please be careful,” Jantzen said, as he finished counting out a pile of pills into waiting vials. “Are you hungry?”

  “Yes.”

  “There’s a decent little place down the street,” he said, brushing his hands on his apron, then taking it off and folding it on the examining table.

  “Looks like you’ve got quite an operation here,” Escher said, impressed.

  “We have a small, but loyal, clientele.”

  When they were back in the hall, Jantzen slid a panel across the back of the armoire and pulled a bunch of old shirts and jackets across on the rod.

  “You can leave your things here,” Jantzen said, “and spend the night on the sofa. Tomorrow, I expect, you’ll want to find better accommodations.”

  Escher said nothing though he had no intention of waiting that long. He rummaged in his bag for a pack of cigarettes as Jantzen pulled on an overcoat, stuck a silly Cossack-style hat on his head, and undid the locks. He had no sooner thrown the last bolt and cracked the door open-“The restaurant’s run by Spaniards”-when the door flew back and he was hit so hard by a flying tackle that he was carried halfway into the room, with a dark-skinned man in a sweatshirt still gripping his shoulders. Escher looked up just as two more men-the Turks who’d been watching him when he arrived-charged into the room, one with a knife drawn, the other holding a gun.

  The one with the knife kicked the door closed while the one with the gun pointed it at Escher, who held up his hands to show he wasn’t armed, and ordered him to move away from the bag.

  Escher backed off, and the gunman knelt by it, quickly groping through the things inside.

  “You can keep the cigarettes,” Escher said, “if you get out now.”

  “
Shut up,” the man said before giving up on the bag and kicking it aside. Escher figured the Turks must have thought he was making a delivery.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” Escher said, and the gunman fired a warning shot into the sofa pillow, six inches from his arm. A plume of feathers erupted into the air.

  “Ahmet, put the gun down,” Jantzen pleaded, still on the floor.

  So he knows him, Escher thought. A customer. But how much does this customer know?

  “In back,” Ahmet said, gesturing with the gun toward the hallway-and the armoire.

  Too much.

  Jantzen got to his feet, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth, and both he and Escher were herded toward the wardrobe.

  Ahmet and the others let Jantzen push the clothes to one side, slide the panel back, and step through. Jantzen flicked the lights on, and Escher moved calmly but deliberately toward the Glock 9 on the counter.

  “What are you doing there?” Ahmet said, his view blocked by Escher’s back. “Stop now, or I will shoot you.”

  Escher discreetly picked up the gun, turned slowly with his head cocked to one side as if to signal acquiescence, and shot Ahmet point-blank in the chest. He dropped to his knees, mouth gaping, and the other two looked stunned. Escher took advantage of their shock to shoot the one in the sweatshirt, too, the bullet whipping his head back against a metal rack; but Jantzen was in the way of the third one, who hurled his knife wildly, then rushed from the room, screaming.

  “Get out of the way,” Escher said, pushing past Jantzen, whose own eyes were bugging out of his head, and followed the last one out into the apartment. He was already at the door, struggling to turn a lock and get it open, when Escher said, “Hold on, I’m not going to hurt you.”

  The man turned his head, his face twisted in fear, and Escher said, “Step away from the door.”

  His fingers fumbled at the lock again, and the door was just starting to open when Escher shot him. The bullet caught him in the shoulder, but the man barely reacted. Escher had to leap at him, grab hold of his sleeve, and pull him back into the room.

  “No, no, don’t shoot!” the man shouted, putting his hands together and crumpling to his knees. “Don’t shoot me!”

  But Escher knew that some things, once begun, had to be finished.

  He pressed the gun to the kneeling man’s forehead, fired, and let him drop to the floor like a sack of potatoes.

  He heard Jantzen throwing up in the hallway.

  That would be just one more thing to clean up, he thought.

  Wedging the gun under his belt, he stepped away from the body. Christ, what a mess. He considered calling his boss, the fancy ex-ambassador, but he knew he had a reputation already for a certain hotheadedness. And for all he knew, it was Schillinger who was responsible for this whole fiasco. Had he sent Escher off to Italy in secret, on his own initiative? An initiative that had conflicted with someone else’s greater plan?

  The pool of blood was widening, and he had to step back again.

  If that was the case, then Escher was caught in the gears of a colossal case of miscommunication-a place he always hated to be.

  Or was it only what it seemed? A drug robbery gone wrong? Given Julius’s clientele, that wasn’t so hard to believe, either.

  Now he regretted having been quite so hasty. If one of the Turks had been kept alive, he might have been able to get some answers out of him. Next time he’d have to remind himself to be more patient.

  “Julius,” he called out, rolling up his sleeves.

  “What?” Jantzen replied, still doubled over and averting his gaze from the door.

  “You ever going to stop puking?”

  Jantzen replied with another dry heave before croaking, “What… the hell… do we do now?”

  “Well,” Escher said, putting aside his deeper ruminations, “I’d say we start with a mop and a pail. You do have them, don’t you?”

  Chapter 13

  Cellini could tell from the slant of fading sunlight on the wall of the dungeon that it was almost time for his single meal of the day. He slumped in the corner, watching idly as a pair of tarantulas mated in the straw spilling from his mattress. He had grown used to them, along with the rats and other vermin that inhabited his tiny cell. After months of imprisonment, he might have missed them if they’d gone.

  There was a shuffling tread outside, a clanging of keys, and the wooden door creaked open. While the guard stood outside with a drawn sword, the jailer, in clothes almost as soiled as the rags Cellini wore, carefully placed a pewter bowl filled with the usual cold gruel on the floor.

  “Eat well,” he said, stopping to admire the rough sketches that Cellini had scrawled on the wall with cinders and chalk. The centerpiece depicted Christ among a host of angels.

  While he gazed with amazement, Cellini’s own glance went to the door, and specifically its hinges. He had worked on loosening the real ones and replacing them with facsimiles made out of candle wax and rust since the day he arrived, and he was close to completing his task. When he had been taken to the Castel St. Angelo, he had declared no prison could hold him, and he hoped to prove it soon.

  “Oh, and the Duke of Castro asked me to add this, since it’s a feast day today,” the jailer said, pulling a hunk of fresh bread from his pocket and dropping it beside the bowl.

  “Tell Signor Luigi-the duke, I mean-that I look forward to thanking him soon, in person.”

  “Benvenuto, Benvenuto,” the jailer said, shaking his head. “Why do you make things so hard on yourself? A man who can draw like that,” he said, gesturing at the sketches, “can do anything. Tell the duke what he wants to know, beg forgiveness of the Pope, and you’ll be a free man again.”

  “I can’t confess to what I didn’t do. I can’t give back gold and jewels that I never stole.”

  The jailer, a simple soul, shrugged his shoulders. “These things are too much for me to understand.”

  He turned around and shuffled out, the door slamming closed behind him. The artificial hinges held, and despite himself, Cellini eagerly scuttled toward the food, dipping the bread in the cold slop and shoving it into his mouth with trembling fingers. A rat in the corner watched greedily.

  It was only as he scraped up the last of the gruel with his tin spoon that he felt something crunch between his teeth, and he stopped chewing. Studying the bottom of the bowl, he saw an almost invisible shard glistening there, and his heart suddenly sank as the truth of what had just happened dawned on him.

  He had been poisoned… and by a common enough method among princes and noblemen.

  A powdered gem-a diamond-had been introduced into his food. Unlike other pulverized stones, the diamond kept its sharp edges and, instead of passing harmlessly through the body, its tiny pieces-no matter how fine-clung to the intestines and pierced the linings. The result was not only a slow and agonizing death, but one that could be confused with a host of natural afflictions. The duke, who had no doubt hatched the plan, could never be held accountable by his father that way.

  Cellini keeled over, his forehead touching the damp floor, reciting a Miserere under his breath. It was just a matter of time-hours, or maybe a day or two-before he would begin to feel the effects.

  But what then?

  The shock of the thought actually brought him back up. What would happen to a man such as he, a man who had manufactured La Medusa and gazed into its magical depths? He would not die; he could not die.

  But would he, then, be destined to suffer forever?

  Suddenly, he had to wonder if his adventures in sorcery were not the making of his own doom. Hadn’t Dr. Strozzi warned him?

  But when had he ever listened to warnings?

  The bulrushes, they had been one thing. The ones that had clung to his clothes in his escape from the Gorgon’s pool, he had gathered in a bunch-not an easy task, as they continually appeared and vanished and reappeared-before swiftly twining them together and dipping the garland in a bath of molten silver. S
ettled upon the brow, like the laurel wreath upon the head of Dante, the finished piece granted the wearer the gift of invisibility.

  By the standards of his trade, it was a comparatively simple procedure.

  But the looking glass was quite another matter. When he had made it, he had been so intent on its creation that he had hardly stopped to think through its myriad implications. He had focused all his skills, all his cunning, on replicating the fearsome visage of the Gorgon he had slain. Countless hours had been spent in his studio, the midnight oil burning in the lamp, as he made models, then casts, for the front of the mirror. And though glassmaking had not been among his many talents, he had apprenticed himself for weeks to a master blower, who had taught him how to make the beveled glass in back.

  And when he thought he had acquired the requisite skills, he made one mirror-just as he had told the Pope-as a gift for the Medici duchess, Eleonora de Toledo. (He was forever having to find ways to stay in her good graces.) To add some luster to its burnished niello finish, he had placed two rubies in the Gorgon’s eyes.

  And then, satisfied that he could accomplish the work, he had cast another.

  This one was for himself, to achieve his lifelong dream.

  This one was to award himself the gift of the gods themselves… the gift of everlasting life.

  He had consulted Strozzi’s books, he had pored over the grimoires from France and England, Portugal and Spain, and then, with the greatest care he had ever mustered, he had opened the flask containing the pale green water he had salvaged from the infernal pool. The waters of immortality that had returned with him, trapped in his boots.

  With the mirror laid facedown on his workbench, he had poured the glistening liquid into the hollow of its back. The droplets swished and hissed in the tiny, lead-lined basin, moving and coagulating like mercury. It was almost as if they were struggling to get out, but Cellini quickly fixed the glass into place and sealed the edges tight. Under his breath, he recited the Latin incantation from Strozzi’s book, the final benediction that would complete his task and forever empower his creation.