The Bone Chamber (24 page)

“Marc just called in on the secure line. He says it’s urgent.”

Griffin slid his chair over, took the phone. He hadn’t even heard it ring, he’d been so wrapped up in getting Sydney home, and trying to figure out what the hell he was missing in this case. “Marc. Talk to me.”

“I believe Tex is alive.”

Griffin froze. The image of the faceless man at the morgue, his throat cut—He’d seen the ring, Tex’s ring…If not Tex, then who? “Alive? Where? How?”

Marc told him what he’d learned.

“Why would they take him to Tunisia?”

“Perhaps for you not to follow, should you think he’s alive?”

Griffin’s first thought was to fly out to Tunisia, to look for Tex himself, but he knew that Marc could handle the matter as well if not better. “Do what you have to do to bring him home.”

“A problem with that. The warehouse I saw him in? It’s the one that we’re going to take out. HQ wants us to proceed. I did not want to until I called you.”

Griffin’s pulse thudded at the realization of what Marc was saying. Tex had been considered collateral damage from the moment he was taken in Adami’s villa. HQ wasn’t about to stop the operation now for one man who was already considered dead. Should the bioweapons make it out of that warehouse, too many lives could be lost. And now Marc was looking for further direction, something outside the standing orders, direction he couldn’t give—at least not explicitly. “Do
just
as I would. As ordered.”

The slightest of hesitations, then, “Yes, sir.”

“Marc?”

“Griff?”

“Let me know the moment you find anything further.” Griffin hung up, not sure what to think.

Alive.

He clung to that small hope. Tex was alive.

Or was it a trap? Meant to lead them astray? The body in the morgue, no prints or identifiable features. Much like Alessandra’s body. It took a week to get her identified. Here in the chaos of Rome…

“Marc thinks Tex may be alive,” he told Giustino. “He thinks he saw him in the warehouse they have to take out.”

“He will go in for him?”

“He’s going to try.”

Sydney walked into the room at that moment, just as Giustino said, “This I cannot believe. Tex? Alive?”

She turned to Griffin. “Did I hear right?”

“Yes.”

“Then who is at the morgue?” she asked.

“I have no idea. But if what he is saying is true, they killed someone else who matched Tex’s physical description to make us believe he is dead.”

“Why would they want you to think he was dead?” Sydney asked.

“Who searches for a dead man?” He stared out the window, barely seeing the sunset gilding the scalloped cupola of Sant’Andrea della Valle. He didn’t want to think what his friend had been going through since that night at the villa. “Assuming the information is correct, of course. It has yet to be verified.”

“I will check the databases on missing persons,” Giustino said, his expression somber. He sat at his desk, picked up the phone to call his
carabinieri
contact.

Sydney watched him a moment, as though trying to decipher the man’s rapid-fire Italian as he spoke on the phone. “They had to think Tex had something they wanted. Information, maybe.”

“Undoubtedly,” Griffin replied.

“The Tunisia operation Marc is working on?” Sydney asked. “Maybe they know. Maybe they’re trying to keep Tex there to protect it somehow.”

“But Tex didn’t know. We found out that information afterward.”

She looked at the radio that Giustino had been manning. “Clearly they didn’t know of the bug…”

“Not at first, but we haven’t heard a word since we learned of the bio arms shipment.”

“Which means they very well may have learned of the bug by now…From Tex…”

She’d only said what he’d been thinking. And it could be true. What Adami couldn’t have known was what his team intended to do with that information, because that was something they’d only decided on after the fact.

After about a half hour, Giustino finally dropped the phone onto the cradle. “One of our investigators, he is searching for someone missing, who looks much like the victim in the morgue. This he discounts, because the pathologist, he tells him this victim, he is already identified. They are going to look more.”

Griffin paced the room. “If it’s not Tex, they killed this
man and put Tex’s ring on his hand, because he fit the general description. I need a positive identification. Now.”

“You forget. This man’s fingertips they are removed with his face, and the backlog for DNA is worse than in your country.”

Griffin stopped, looked right at Sydney. “What about doing a forensic sketch, like you did for Alessandra?”

“That’s a possibility,” she said, “but before you go that route, it might help to look at the missing person’s report. Maybe there’s something in it—something no one noticed, because they weren’t thinking it was anything beyond the routine.”

“Have them fax you a copy,” Griffin told Giustino.

Giustino made the call. A few minutes later, the fax purred to life. The moment the missing person’s report dropped into the tray, Griffin picked it up. He spoke fluent Italian, but his grasp of the written language wasn’t as good, and after looking it over, he gave it to Giustino to translate.

“The victim, Enzo Vitale, he goes for a walk with his dog that evening. He never returns. I see nothing else. He and Tex, they are very close in size, but there is no more to identify.
Niente
.”

To which Fitzpatrick said, “Something I didn’t take into consideration. How many overworked officers bother to ask for minute details on a standard missing person’s report? Especially when nine times out of ten, the victims turn up safe and sound?”

Griffin stopped at that. “Good point. Giustino? Call the family. See if there’s some detail, some identifying detail they might have forgotten to tell the officer…And do it gently, in case it is this Enzo Vitale.”

Giustino nodded, took the report, and made the call. When he hung up, he looked hopeful. “The wife of Enzo Vitale, she describes a heart-shaped mole about four centimeters below his navel.”

Something only a wife would know. “Call the morgue.”

Giustino dialed, related the information to the investigator on duty, then waited. Time stilled. No one moved, no one said a thing while Giustino sat there, the phone pressed
to his ear. From the open windows, they could hear bits of conversation drifting up several stories from the piazza below, as diners arrived at Arnaldo’s ristorante. Almost eight o’clock, and the three of them had yet to eat. After several minutes, Giustino sat up, said, “
Certo. Grazie, Commissario
.”

He hung up the phone, closed his eyes, seeming to sink in his seat, and Griffin had no idea if it was good news or bad, until Giustino said, “It is him. Enzo Vitale. They found the mole.”

University of Virginia

“Professor Denise Woods?” Carillo held out his shield and credentials for the petite woman to see.

“You’re here about my missing student? Please tell me you’ve found him and he’s okay?”

“Actually,” Carillo said. “I’m here on a somewhat related matter. My partner saw you earlier in the week? Special Agent Fitzpatrick?”

“Yes. She’s the one I gave the papers on conspiracy theory to. I’ve had so many people here asking about my students lately, I can’t keep it straight.”

“You’ve spoken to other agents?” he asked. Fitzpatrick had indicated there was more to this case than met the eye. “From which agency?”

“Come to think of it, they didn’t really say.”

“And what’d they ask you?”

“Same thing as your partner. Sort of. They were interested in my assistant. Wanted to know when was the last time I saw Alessandra, if she’d discussed anything out of the ordinary with me.”

“And did she?”

“No. That was the gist of it, and they left.”

“Anything else you can tell me?”

“About Alessandra? No.”

“What about the other student?”

“Xavier, the young man Alessandra had befriended. Nor
mally I don’t encourage my assistants to become so closely involved in the projects of my students, but Alessandra had said she’d seen something in his work, something she’d like to explore further.”

“What sort of something?”

“Two things, actually, the first being the conspiracy report I gave to your partner. What Alessandra saw in it besides the usual rubbish found on the Internet, I’m not sure.”

“And what was the other?”

“An odd thing on genealogy he’s working on with another professor who is away on sabbatical. It was, in fact, the reason that Alessandra befriended him.”

“My partner see that report?”

“Actually, no. I didn’t think of it at the time, because she specifically asked if he was working on conspiracy theory.”

“You don’t still have it, do you?”

“Of course.” She opened a file on her computer and printed something out. “Here it is, along with a copy of the conspiracy report.”

“Mind if I copy it?”

“If it helps you in your investigation, it’s yours.”

“Thanks,” Carillo said. “One other thing. You have the name of this professor on sabbatical that your student was working with?”

“Francesca Santarella.”

Carillo handed Professor Woods a card, asking her to call if anyone else inquired into the matter, regardless of what governmental agency they said they were from. He left, sat in the car and sipped at his lukewarm coffee he’d picked up earlier that morning, and read the papers he’d been given.

The odd thing on genealogy turned out to be a report on family trees and the skeletons one might find in their closets if they dug back far enough in their research. It was titled: “Six Degrees to a Serial Killer or King.” Starting with the fact that everyone has two sets of grandparents, who each have two sets of grandparents, who have two sets of grandparents, and so on and so on. A tongue-in-cheek look at the pyramidal scheme of family trees. Even those who might
lay claim to royalty no doubt had some nefarious relatives tucked in their closets. And to prove his point, the author researched his own history, discovering that, while there were no serial killers in his tree, he was directly related to the Prince of Sansevero, reported to be the first Freemasons Grand Master in Naples.

Carillo flipped through the report, and there were a couple of things that bothered him. The biggie was that the kid was missing after drafting such a report, whether it was this report or the other one he’d done on conspiracies. Now maybe it was merely coincidence that the kid happened to be friends with the daughter of the ambassador to the Holy See, who also happened to be missing—well,
was
missing, now dead. But Carillo didn’t like coincidences, and this thing smacked of conspiracy all over the place. The other thing that bothered him was, as Professor Woods mentioned, under the list of references on his report, the kid noted a Professor Francesca Santarella. That in itself wouldn’t bother him, since he had no idea who she was. It was her current address at the American Academy in Rome that made him look twice, something he might not have noticed if not for the fact Sydney was looking into the death of the ambassador’s daughter. First thing he did once he found out that little tidbit was look up the ambassador’s residence on a nice, big, fat Internet map. That, of course, was the only reason he even knew that the American Academy was directly across the street.

And that was one hell of a coincidence he wasn’t about to overlook.

He hit a number on his speed dial for the San Francisco office. Michael “Doc” Schermer picked up on his end of the phone. “I need you to check into something,” Carillo said. “It’s below the radar. That thing Fitz is working on. We need you to work your research magic, figure out what the common thread in all this is.”

“Between you and Fitzpatrick, I should be getting paid double time.”

“That’s the beauty about government salaries. No double time. Saves the taxpayers’ money.”

“Yeah, well, I suppose they have to give me a lunch break sometime. What’dya got?”

“I’m gonna fax you over a couple reports,” he said. “And I want you to dig up some information on a Professor Francesca Santarella.”

About an hour later, Doc Schermer called him back. “These look like college term papers.”

“They are.”

“Some of this conspiracy stuff’s swiped straight from the Net. I have to admit, the one he’s working on with this Professor Santarella on six degrees of separation? At least it’s interesting.”

“And your point?”

“This stuff is pretty far out there. Any idea what you’re looking for?”

“I was hoping you could tell me.”

Griffin, not trusting Sydney for an instant, handed her his cell phone, then listened intently to her conversation with her partner, Carillo, while she told him that she was booked on a flight out that very night. Suddenly her voice dropped, and she turned her back. Griffin should have put her on speakerphone, but he didn’t want to tie up the secure line, and a good thing, too, because a moment later, it rang. Griffin grabbed it, hoping it was Marc with more information on Tex, now that the
carabinieri
had made a tentative ID on the man at the morgue as their missing person, Enzo Vitale.

It was Dumas. “We have a situation.”

“What is it?” Griffin asked, shaking his head at Giustino to let him know it was not about Tex.

“The
professoressa
. She slipped out of the Vatican.”

“Slipped out for what? A cappuccino?”

“Somehow I don’t think that is foremost on her mind.”

“Great. This is all I need right now.”

“Something else going on?”

“Nothing,” he said, not willing to share his hopes that Tex might be alive. Not yet. “Why would the professor leave?”

“According to Father Martinez, who was assisting her with her research, he noticed her taking numerous notes, and happened to walk past to see what had caught her interest.”

“I don’t suppose you happen to know what her notes said?”

“Actually I do. She only took the top sheet when she left. Father Martinez was able to bring up the remnants. The name Raimondo di Sangro came up. Apparently she was looking at transcripts that had to do with this prince in the 1700s, who managed to find himself jailed for matters that now would seem inconsequential, but back then were the height of scandal. Something to do with his involvement with Freemasonry.”