Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6)

by Vincent Zandri

  “What are you waiting for, Andrea?” I say. “Come on up.”

  When I get to the top, I press one hand flat against the circular metal disc and push up. It’s heavier than hell, but it pulls away from its metal frame. The dirt and dust that has accumulated inside its circular support over the decades comes raining down on us. I push until the disc is free, and allow it to drop onto the floor beside it. The metal creates a reverberating racket as I push it across what I’m guessing is a stone floor, telling me that we’re about to access a wide open building like a church or a library.

  Climbing the rest of the ladder, I stick my head out of the opening and see wooden pews—not in a church or cathedral, but a chapel. It takes me a moment, but I quickly realize we’re inside Dante’s chapel in central Florence, only a few hundred feet from the Piazza della Repubblica, the area where Florence was first born two thousand years ago when Roman soldiers established the area as a military encampment.

  “All clear?” Andrea echoes from down in the tunnel.

  “Clear,” I say. Then, when she’s standing beside me. “Dante’s Chapel, or what’s also known as the Chiesa di Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi.”

  “Like, the Divine Comedy, Dante?”

  “The one and only.”

  We take a second to gaze upon the plain altar that, over the past few years, has been transformed from a house of God into an art gallery. Subdued ambient orchestral music is being piped into the otherwise silent space, filling the cold emptiness of the stone and wood chapel. The sound is eerie and sad, but it beats the chewing noise from the millions of centipedes that crawled through the walls and ceiling of the catacomb sub-chamber.

  “This is a lonely place,” Andrea observes while finger coming her hair.

  “This is the place where Dante married the one love of his life, Beatrice Portinari, only to lose her to a dreadful disease a few short years later. That’s why lonely folks travel here from miles around to ask Dante, and God, to help heal their broken hearts.”

  A door that leads from the altar to a sacristy in the back of the church opens. Out steps a man in a long brown robe, his hood pulled all the way over his head, hiding his face entirely in a dark shadow. My pulse quickens. I recall the monk walking along Via Guelfa earlier . . . and the monk who stopped and stared at me when I was placed in the back of a van in the middle of the night by Andrea’s cohorts, the Poseidon Brothers. Like I said, Florence is no stranger to priests, friars, and monks, but why do I get the feeling I keep seeing the same one again and again?

  A cell phone vibrates and chimes. Andrea pulls out her phone, peers down at the screen. She thumbs a few commands. A quick beat later, she’s looking intently at a video that someone just forwarded to her.

  “Good Christ,” she says. “Look at this Chase.”

  Staring down at the phone, I see two men standing outside what appears to be the mouth of a small cave located in a heavily wooded area. One of the men is tall and gray bearded, the other shorter and bearing a thick five o’clock shadow. The men are dressed for the wild in military gear, as are the team of men accompanying them. They are also heavily armed. The video is shaky, and often loses its focus, as if the person shooting it is doing so in secret.

  “Who sent you this?” I ask.

  “Millen,” she says. “It’s Soleimani and Putin and, by the looks of things, they think they’ve located the cave. We managed to place a mole on their expeditionary team.”

  “Well, if they have, it means they just happened to stumble upon it.”

  She cocks her head, bites down on her lips.

  “Regardless of the probability of finding the cave without the Books of Truths, it’s still possible. We already told you, we believe Dr. Belli was feeding them information regarding the specific location of the cave. For a price, of course. After all, he alone was in possession of the sketch book. There is much he would have known about the cave.”

  “It’s a wonder he didn’t stake his own claim on the place.”

  “Why would he do that when, in the end, he’d have to give the find up to Italian authorities for free? What Dr. Belli wanted was money. And certain groups, like ISIS and countries like Iran and Russia, have no trouble paying big money for a find as important as the da Vinci cave.”

  I stare down at the screen as the video stops, causing the picture to become still. My eyes, however, remain focused on the cave’s mouth.

  “It’s too small,” I say.

  “What?”

  “It’s too small. My guess is, what da Vinci discovered was a big opening in the earth with vast tunnels and chambers. Not some little cave that, at best, houses a couple of black bears or a family of boar. I’m betting da Vinci discovered something so large it could house something important. Like a flying machine maybe. A place that could serve as a kind of earthly hangar to an out of this world flying machine.”

  “Now it’s you who’s suggesting E.T. Nothing divine in that, Chase.”

  “Maybe,” I say, my eyes shifting back to the altar and the monk who is no longer there. “We were just attacked by killer centipedes inside the tomb of a half-man half-beast whose body remains largely intact after six hundred years of death. How much weirder can this day get?”

  She tugs on my arm.

  “Time is wasting,” she says. “We need to take a look at that sketch book and start searching for the real cave, before the bad guys truly do get lucky.”

  Exiting the chapel through the front door, we leave the broken hearts behind us.

  22

  Back at my place, we strip down and take hot showers. Then, having wrapped towels around our damp bodies, I spread the map contained in the Book of Truths out onto the dining room table and pull up two chairs so that Andrea and I can examine it together.

  “There’s nothing written on the map,” I note. “No benchmarks, nothing to indicate precisely what we’re looking at, other than a big chunk of northern Italy.”

  “We need a topographical map to compare it to.”

  Pushing out my chair, I stand and go to the bookshelf in the sitting room. In a section where I keep maybe a dozen books dedicated to travel, I’ve also stored maybe an equal amount of maps. Rummaging through them, I find the one that represents Italy, retrieve it, and spread it out on the table beside the da Vinci hand-drawn map.

  My eyes dart from the sketching to the topo map. I begin to recognize certain similarities and landmarks, the main one being Vinci itself and the countryside that surrounds it. But all in all, the map is still vague at best. Something I don’t mince words over with Andrea.

  “I have visited Vinci several times,” I say, “and I can tell you this: the town sits on a hilltop surrounded by wooded hills, streams, orchards, olive groves, vineyards, grazing fields for livestock, you name it. It’s a paradise for a naturalist like da Vinci was, even as a kid.” Then, with my left index finger pointing to the sketch of the Vitruvian Man on da Vinci’s map, I point to what I believe is the corresponding area on the modern day topo map with my right hand index finger. “If I had to make an educated guess, girlfriend—and this is by all means, an educated guess based on his Vitruvian Man marking—I’d place the cave right here.”

  I tap the topo map with my finger in an area maybe three miles due north of Vinci. A hilly, almost mountainous, area that’s still wild. Standing up straight, I gaze down at Andrea, her hair damp and glistening from the shower, her exposed shoulders smooth and soft.

  She looks up, locks eyes. “But if the cave—perhaps the most important cave ever known to mankind—is indeed located only three miles from da Vinci’s birthplace, how is it even remotely possible it has yet to be discovered?”

  I shrug my shoulders, cock my head. “Who knows? The wilderness is a very strange place. You can’t take it for granted. People have gotten hopelessly lost in patches of woods that measure less than five square miles.” I toss up my hands. “Maybe the opening has been covered up by time and geological shifts. You just can’t assume i
t would have been found by now.”

  Andrea gets up, goes into the bedroom, comes back with her phone.

  “Soleimani and Putin,” she says. “The cave they discovered is not far from the area indicated on da Vinci’s map. Or so Millen insists.”

  “So you think it’s possible they found the true cave? That stupid little hole in the ground?”

  “There’s only one way to find out, Chase,” she says, allowing her towel to drop to the floor. “We need to go there. Now.”

  “Right now?” I say, allowing my own towel to fall.

  “In a few minutes,” she says. “The fate of the world can wait that long, don’t you think?”

  “Me thinks you’re right.”

  Grabbing hold of her hand, I lead her into the bedroom, the fate of the world resting on our naked shoulders.

  23

  The afternoon sky is bright and crisp as we take the North/South road through Fiesole in a Land Rover Defender commandeered by Andrea from her contacts at MI16. It’s a barebones, 4-speed manual, fleet vehicle, but it can, without question, handle some very tough off-road terrain. Dressed in our field clothes, I’ve also brought along the da Vinci map, the sketch book, and—just for the hell of it—the now battered, but still fully functional, da Vinci art book. You never know when it might come in handy.

  About an hour into the drive, we arrive at Vinci—the small, hilltop village that looks like somewhere out of another century. A tall, pyramid-topped bell tower occupies the center of the place. The tower is attached to a church and a community center, both of which are constructed of the same stone.

  We drive the cobbled road past the oversized, out of place, modern visitor center and museum which is dedicated to the town’s most famous resident. We keep going, however, until we’ve driven past the town altogether as we head back into the countryside on our way toward some larger, forested hills. Coming to a fork in the road, we catch a road sign that indicates “Casa d’infanzia di Leonardo da Vinci.”

  “Da Vinci’s childhood home,” I say, downshifting, slowing the vehicle. “That’s our benchmark.”

  Andrea draws her service weapon, pulls back on the slide, cocks a round in the chamber, re-holsters the weapon on her right hip.

  “Expecting company?” I cock an eyebrow, turning onto the road that will lead to the house.

  “Trust no one, boyfriend,” she says. “Our Iranian/Russian friends are still out there in the forest somewhere. Who knows, maybe even ISIS is out there, too. Whatever and whoever we encounter, it will not be pretty.”

  “Unless, of course, we can avoid them altogether.”

  “You go with that,” she says.

  I drive for another few miles, past olive groves and vineyards on my left, and on my right, a steep hillside covered in tall pines and thick brush. When we come to the da Vinci home—a two-story, stone structure that’s recently been renovated to its original state—Andrea retrieves the da Vinci map once more, carefully unfolds it.

  Holding it up so that she’s staring at it, instead of peering through the windshield, she says, “Chase, stop the truck.”

  “Whaddya mean stop the truck?” I question. “Let’s get this show on the dirt road, make these woods our bitch.”

  “I mean stop the truck. I no longer think we need to guesstimate the cave’s precise location.”

  Shoving the shift into neutral, I depress the emergency brake, then kill the engine.

  “I’m all ears, girlfriend.”

  “You don’t need your ears,” she says, slowly handing me the ancient map. “All you need is your eyes.”

  24

  Da Vinci is famous for possibly hiding another face in what some consider the most famous painting of all time, the Mona Lisa. And then there’s the disappearing Angel Gabriel in the Annunciation. But never before has da Vinci’s talents for hiding images in his works of art become more apparent to me than with this map. When exposed to light, a brand new map takes shape. A topographical map that is both 3D and highlighted with specific landmarks.

  In place of an almost blank image of the northern Italian landscape is now a path from the stone casa that leads directly down the hill, across the stream bed, up a tall, jagged hilltop, and out into a valley to the west. Inside that space, da Vinci wrote the word: “ᗡiviniƚà” in Italian … and mirrored, of course.

  “Divinity,” I say. “His name for the cave.”

  Sketched directly above the mirrored word is our old buddy, Vitruvian Man, who seems to have miraculously shifted himself a good three to five kilometers from his previous location on the non-illuminated map, to this new, more precise location.

  I burst out laughing.

  “Soleimani and Putin,” I say, slapping my thigh, “they most definitely found the wrong cave.”

  “They must have listened to Dr. Belli,” Andrea says. “He must not have known about the map within the map. A map that could only be seen with the naked eye when exposed to the sun’s rays, at a very specific angle.”

  “My guess is artificial light would have no effect on it. You need the Tuscan sun, or nothing.”

  She leans in to me, kisses my cheek, squeezes my hand. She’s as giddy as a school kid.

  “I knew you were the one man who could find the location of the cave,” she says. “I knew only you could do it, Chase Baker.”

  “We knew you could do it too, Mr. Baker,” says the deep voice of the man standing outside my open window. “Now, if you would be so kind as to hand over the map.”

  25

  The automatic rifle barrel feels cold and hard pressed against the tender skin above my left ear. Out the corner of my left eye, I see the gray-bearded face of the man I take to be Soleimani. The man holding the gun is not easy to catch sight of, but, from what I can make out in the driver’s side-view mirror, he’s a tall, dark-skinned, black-haired man with a thin mustache covering his lip. He’s also as big as a house judging by the way he fills my mirror, and dressed like his boss—in green fatigues. He’s a goddamned Jolly Green Giant, minus the Jolly part.

  Glancing into the rearview, I spot a small army of soldiers accompanying the Iranian Kud leader. Then, shooting a look into the side-view mirror, I spot another man. This one shorter, his light blond hair receding, his little blue eyes beady inside his round face. He’s not wearing fatigues but a black turtleneck sweater and black trousers instead.

  Vlad Putin’s first cousin.

  I know it would be foolish to reach for my gun, but all Andrea has to do is gently pull hers out of her holster, slip it to me across the center console, and I can give Jolly Green Giant a bad ending to this otherwise beautiful day.

  “Gun,” I whisper out the side of my mouth, my right hand set palm up on top of the center console. “Gun, Andrea . . . then get ready for me to pull out of here like a bat out of Dante’s Inferno.”

  She turns to me, smiles. A smile so bright and lovely it’s like I just offered her a proposal of marriage.

  “Oh, Chase,” she says, forcing a frown on her beautiful face. “Didn’t I tell you not to trust anyone?”

  I’ll be a dumb son of a bitch. She’s the mole working for the bad guys …

  She slips out her gun, all right, but not to hand it over to me. Instead, the woman who I spent the past fifteen hours falling in love with, aims the barrel at my face.

  26

  My stomach sinks.

  Jolly Green Giant opens the door, yanks me out by my leather coat collar, tosses me to the ground. He yanks the map from my hand, like it’s a common road map purchased at the gas station for five bucks.

  “That map is priceless, pal,” I declare. “You might want to treat it with some tender loving care.”

  Soleimani steps over to me, bends down at the knees, back hands me across the face. Now I’m getting pissed off. He reaches into my coat, relieves me of my .45. Then he reaches into the satchel, steals the Book of Truths. He also pulls out the art book, but then, seeing that it’s useless for his purposes, tosses
it to the ground.

  “You will speak only when spoken to,” he orders.

  He stands while Andrea slips out of the Defender, goes to Putin, kisses him on the mouth, taking him into her arms, holding him tightly.

  “Him?” I protest. “Anybody but him. Oh, come on, Andrea, he looks just like his dictator cousin.”

  She turns to me, smiles.

  “Take a look in the mirror, boyfriend,” she says. “Only then will you realize precisely how blind love can be.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve decided not to be your boyfriend after all. So how’s about them apples?”

  But why does it hurt so much when I say it? …

  “Let’s get moving, everyone,” the tall, bearded, Soleimani commands. “I want to find this cave before the sun sets.”

  The soldiers pile into two separate Toyota 4X4 trucks, not unlike the kind you might find your average terrorist using on the besieged streets of Damascus.

  Putin approaches Soleimani.

  “I suggest we take the Defender, da?” His tiny blue eyes shifting to my own. “The Chase Baker, he will accompany us. He might become useful resource for when we get to cave.”

  “In what regard?” the Iranian general poses.

  “If the cave is there,” he says, “it may very well contain traps and other dangers. It would be wise of us to have the Chase Baker lead the way inside, da?”

  Soleimani smiles.

  “I like the way you think, Russian,” he sneers. “Just like your cousin. Cold, cunning, and entirely ruthless. Evil is the new black, Putin.”

  The two share a hearty belly laugh over that one. Until Soleimani turns to Jolly Green Giant.

  “Place the prisoner inside the Defender,” he barks. “I want him right next to me. Make sure he’s tied up.”

  Inches from my left hand, the da Vinci art book. My built-in shit detector speaks to me. Tells me to grab the book now, while everyone is distracted, shove it back into my satchel while Jolly Green Giant is busy retrieving duct tape from the Toyota closest to him.