The Bone Chamber (23 page)

Sydney watched as Francesca pulled a book from
the package. A photograph of a pyramid was displayed on the dustcover beneath a title that read
Egyptian Influence on Ancient Roman History
. Griffin took it, flipped through the pages, then looked at Francesca in question. “
This
is what she sent?”

“It appears she bought it at the Smithsonian gift shop and had it mailed here,” Francesca said.

“There’s nothing in it. Why was it so important that she get it to us?”

“I have no idea. I’m only the messenger.”

He flipped through the book once more, then handed it to Dumas. “See if you can find something in it.”

Dumas opened it, doing a more thorough perusal of each page as Griffin started up the van, then pulled back onto the road. Dumas found nothing. Sydney was tempted to ask to see the book herself, but one look at Griffin’s face when he glanced back at her told her he was not even remotely close to forgiving her for not flying home this morning—a feeling that persisted long after they’d dropped off Dumas and the professor at the Vatican.

Still, she thought, once they started the long and circuitous trip back to the safe house, someone was going to have to talk first, and Sydney figured it might as well be her. “Exactly who does Father Dumas work for?”

Griffin looked at her, his anger over her actions still evident on his face. He turned back to the road, let out a tense breath. Then, surprising her that he was even going to talk to her at all, said, “The Vatican first and foremost. After that, he is, for all intents and purposes—and to my objection—part of our team.”

“I take it you don’t trust him?”

“I trust him as long as the needs of the Vatican and ATLAS coincide. It’s when they don’t that I have concerns.” He glanced in his rearview mirror, then over at her. “His loyalties to the church aside, his placement in the Vatican is a valuable resource, one that can’t be ignored.”

“It never occurred to me that the Vatican would be working covert operations.”

“It never occurred to the Vatican, either, at least not officially, until Pope John Paul I decided to investigate the Mafia’s involvement in the Vatican finances that uncovered the Banco Ambrosiano scandal. Unfortunately for him, the Mafia and the Black Network, another criminal organization, had infiltrated more than just the Vatican’s bank. They’d also penetrated the most venerable walls of the Vatican’s governing body, the Curia. There’s no doubt why he died thirty days after becoming pope.”

“So you believe his death was a murder?”

“Some historians might believe otherwise, but he was poisoned—not, however, before he handpicked a few of his most trustworthy associates to look after the Vatican’s true interests. Dumas is the second generation of the team that Pope John Paul I started. They are covert, but not black ops. They are rarely called out on our business, and only as a liaison to the church.”

“Why was Dumas called out on this operation?”

“That’s the problem. He wasn’t called out, though we had considered it initially. So either Alessandra brought him into this, or he is here for the church. That isn’t necessarily a
bad thing. It does present problems. It’s clearly understood that Dumas has divided loyalties. Where our team must answer to the director of operations, Dumas must answer to God. And since God usually makes himself unavailable for personal interviews, the current pope stands in.”

“And the pope is aware of Dumas’s actions?” she asked, watching the side view mirror for any tails, and making sure she looked up at the corner buildings to read the street placards in case she ever had to navigate this place on her own. “He knows what you do?”

“The pope is aware of anything that directly involves the church. That does not necessarily mean he knows what we are doing.”

Griffin turned off the Corso Vittorio into the Via dei Chiavari, then drove into a horseshoe-shaped parking lot. He pulled into a slot marked “
Riservato per SIP
.” The telephone company, Sydney recalled, thinking of the phone company cover he’d used earlier. The van currently had the ENEL logo on it. That, of course, made her wonder if the sign was legit, or if he’d had it erected for his operation. At the moment, she was more interested in Dumas. “Hard to imagine a priest working covert ops.”

“Don’t let the clerical garb fool you. The man is as dangerous as any of our full-time operatives. And he’s been a valuable resource at times. By the way, your bag is in the back. You left it at the academy.”

Only because she wanted there to be some sign of where she’d been. This didn’t seem the time to point that out, and she grabbed her bag, exited the vehicle. “Then what is the problem with Dumas?” she asked, as Griffin walked up to the sign, casually removed it, then replaced it with one that read “
Riservato per ENEL
” which matched the logo currently on the van. So much for the question of its legitimacy.

“The problem?” Griffin replied. “He saved my damned life two years ago in an operation that went bad. And I hate owing favors to guys I can’t trust.”

Trust. Now there was a word Sydney had difficulty embracing. She didn’t trust herself, and apparently Griffin
didn’t trust anyone. Quite a team. Especially when it came to this case. Not that she was about to mention this to him. Instead, she asked, “Do you get the feeling that the professor was holding something back?”

“Right now I’m more interested in why you aren’t seated on a plane that should be across the Atlantic right now.”

Too much to hope that he was going to let that slide. “Had I been, the professor and your spy at the Vatican would both be dead, and Adami’s men would have the book that Alessandra sent.”

“Or they’d never have been followed to begin with.” He placed the SIP sign in the back of the van, picked up the book in question, then shut and locked the van door.

“Don’t try to blame this on me,” she said, as they walked over the cobbled street toward the dark green door of the apartment house. “If I had to guess, they saw Father Dumas enter the ambassador’s residence, then saw him head to the academy and followed us from there. There were sentinels posted, maybe even the same ones who followed you to my hotel.”

“The outcome doesn’t excuse the fact you should have been on that plane.”

“Had I been, you wouldn’t have rushed hell-bent to find me, thereby saving the day. You got to play hero.” She glanced over at him, saw him clench his jaw as he rang the bell for Giustino to unlock the door. He jabbed the bell a second time, then held it far too long, clearly annoyed with her, and she realized he was right in some respects. “Look, I’m sorry. But Tasha was my friend, and just as you’re not about to let Tex’s murder go by without a fight, I wasn’t about to let Tasha’s go.”

“You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“Then by all means, clue me in.”

He looked over at her as though contemplating just what it was he was going to tell her. But then suddenly looked away, and under his breath, said, “I could have you ordered back with one call.”

“Yeah, you could,” she said as the lock clicked and Griffin pushed open the door, revealing a whitewashed
stairwell, with flagstone steps that wound upward in a square around the broken lift cage. At the moment she was thinking he should make that call. Somehow in the midst of all this, she’d forgotten just why it was that she’d gone off to Quantico. She’d lost her edge on that last case she’d worked, not trusting herself that she could do her job without endangering others. And now, because of her headstrong foolishness, she’d been shot at more times in the last week than in all her years of law enforcement service. And what bothered her the most was that a simple operation up at Adami’s villa had resulted in the loss of one of Griffin’s friends, and she couldn’t absolve herself of that blame, either.

Griffin held the door for her, and she moved past him, then up the stairs, a number of emotions washing over her. Halfway up the first flight, she stopped, turned, looked him right in the eye. “Fine. Send me home. I’ll go. You’re right. I mean, maybe I shouldn’t have jumped the gun on this, but I needed to do something and—” She stopped, unable to keep her train of thought under the intensity of his stare. She was no longer sure of herself. Hell, she wasn’t sure she’d ever been sure of herself. And now, the way he watched her…“Goddamn it, was there something wrong with me last night? I haven’t slept with a guy in close to a year, and I’d like to know if it’s just me or—” Too late she clamped her mouth shut, then looked away, her face turning hot, unable to believe those words had even slipped from her mouth.
Idiot
.

The resulting silence made her feel an even bigger fool, and she wanted to get as far from him as she could. But when she tried to head back up the steps, he grabbed her arm, held her there, his expression unreadable.

It was everything she could do to gather her thoughts. “Can we pretend like I never brought up the subject? Just put me on a plane, send me home?”

In answer, he pulled out his cell phone, flipped it open, pressed a button, and she figured this was it, he was making that call to have her sent back to the States.

“It’s Griffin,” he said into the phone. “Turn off the camera in the stairwell.”

A camera in the stairwell?
Great. Heat flooded her cheeks, and she wished she could melt into the walls or slither down past him and never come back.

He closed the phone, returned it to his belt, saying nothing, his grip on her arm firm, unyielding. Several seconds passed by before he said anything, then, “I do not like racing through the streets, feeling helpless because someone is walking into danger. Not in this country, not in our own. And I especially don’t like the feeling I get when it’s
you
walking into that danger.”

She tried to smile, felt her lips tremble. “Does sorry work?”

“You’re a distraction, and I don’t like distractions.” He stepped so close, his face was mere inches from hers, and she didn’t dare move. Couldn’t move. He glanced at her mouth, and just when she thought,
knew
he was going to kiss her, he pulled away, looked her in the eye. “I barely know you. I don’t want to, Sydney. I can’t be worried about you. You were supposed to be a rule follower…”

He took a step back, then down, and she tried to make light of the situation. “I’ve changed.”

“I can’t afford distractions.”

“You mentioned that.” She stepped away from him, brushed her hands over her clothes, surprised to feel her pulse racing. She wanted him. He didn’t want the distraction. She was tempted to quip something about not worrying, because she damned well would be staying out of his bed from this point on. After all, they’d be separated by an entire ocean, never mind that her ego wasn’t that fragile, no matter what stupid things she might utter about her nonexistent sex life.

Without another word, he indicated she should precede him up the stairs, and just like that the matter was dropped. As it should be, she figured. She had a life of her own, and it did not involve Zachary Griffin.

Professor Francesca Santarella tried to get past the horrific details of how she’d come under such tight security. As if Alessandra’s murder hadn’t been bad enough, and never mind the attempt on their lives, Dumas had told her that the anthropologist whom Alessandra had chosen for her dig was also dead, apparently from a hit-and-run back in the States.

All twists of fate? Francesca didn’t believe it for an instant, and in her mind the weak link in all this was Father Dumas. No one had shot at her until he’d showed up on her doorstep. He had also been involved with Alessandra, and apparently the dead anthropologist, Dr. Natasha Gilbert.

Perhaps it was some chance alignment of the stars that Dumas wasn’t currently standing over her shoulder at the moment while she read the centuries-old documents before her. Somehow she doubted that Dumas would have let her near them if he’d known that the very subject of her research had been imprisoned under orders of the pope for his involvement with Freemasonry, then held until he gave up the names of every member in his lodge. The church was and always had been anti-Masonic, but she knew for a fact the arrest over Freemasonry had been but a pretext. The church wanted what her subject had hidden, the third key. But perhaps Dumas was not up on church history from the 1700s. He had looked at the time period she’d requested and gave his approval to the priest assigned to assist in finding the documents. The silver lining, if one could call it that, was that she was sitting here in the Vatican, reading transcripts from the secret archives, and was given more freedom than most in that she had no time constraints.

The only thing that hindered her was that Father Dumas had insisted on being her guide while she was here. She gathered that his activities with Mr. Griffin were known to none but a select few, and that set her to contemplate just what it was they did. Some sort of governmental agency, which made her wonder how it was that Alessandra had become involved. And why? Somehow it had never occurred to her that Alessandra might have had her own agenda.

Then again, no one had checked with Francesca to determine what her agenda might be, and that was something she had no desire to reveal. She was quite certain that if Dumas even suspected what it was, she would never have been allowed in here.

She glanced around, saw Father Dumas sitting in a chair not too far away, and decided that he was probably more guard than guide. He smiled when he noticed her look up, and she smiled back, then forced her gaze back to the transcripts in front of her. Her mind kept wandering to the message Alessandra had sent, what she’d tried to convey. The proof, she figured, was probably buried in these transcripts, and she scanned the text, hoping she was right. And if she was right, her next step needed some careful contemplation. Slipping out of the Vatican was one thing. Escaping the notice of Dumas, not quite the mild-mannered priest he portrayed, was quite another.

“Sir?”

Giustino’s voice cut into Griffin’s thoughts about the latest turn of events on this case, and it took him a moment to realize he was being spoken to. He drew his attention from the security screen that covered one wall of the safe house, and looked over to see what it was Giustino wanted.