The Bone Chamber (25 page)

“Freemasonry was a jailing offense?”

“Let us just say that back then the church held far more sway when it came to dissuading its congregation from embarking down the path of darkness. The other matter she was looking into had something to do with columbaria.”

“Columbaria?”

“Ancient burial sites.”

“She did say she was doing research on ancient burial sites. Anything else?”

“You have the same information I have.”

“I appreciate the call.”

“I know you would do the same.”

Griffin wasn’t so sure about that, but he muttered, “Of course. I’ll let you know if we hear anything.” He disconnected, trying to determine if it was even worth their effort to try to find the professor. “Santarella took off,” he said to Giustino, who was busy perusing the book on the Egyptian influence on Roman history in hopes of discovering why it was sent.

“If she is stupid enough to leave on her own after being shot at, she deserves her fate.”

“I tend to agree with you.” He didn’t have time to run after the professor. Not with Tex’s situation unresolved, and not until he personally put Sydney safely on her flight out.

At least that was his thought until Sydney handed him back his cell phone, her look somewhat smug. “If I told you something you didn’t know,” she said, “would it change your mind about sending me home just yet?”

“I doubt it. But try me.”

“Two things. One, that book. Carillo said the security video from the gift shop showed that wasn’t the only thing Alessandra mailed.”

“It wasn’t?”

“She bought a postcard with a mummy on the front of it. On the back she wrote something and mailed it separately.”

“Any idea what she wrote?” Griffin asked.

“As a matter of fact I do. She drew a triangle, then the word
Egypt
inside the null sign.”

“A triangle?” He saw the image carved on Alessandra’s face, tried not to think of it, failed, and it took him a moment to recover his thoughts. “Like the triangle carved on her face?”

“It could be a pyramid,” she said. “Especially considering the word
Egypt
is next to it. Carillo thought the literal translation would be ‘pyramid no Egypt.’”

“They were in Egypt,” Griffin said. “Digging in a pyramid. Pyramid not in Egypt? But why mail the book?”

“Maybe as a decoy.”

“More importantly, what does this have to do with Adami building and smuggling bioweapons?”

“Maybe she was trying to tell you that the dig was a ploy?”

The same thing that Tasha had suggested…It made no sense. “This second thing?”

“You’ll never guess which professor’s name Carillo saw on a reference page to a research paper written by a second missing person from UVA—a student who was last seen with Alessandra.”

“Why do I not want to hear this?”

“Because the student also listed this professor’s address as being at the American Academy.”

Giustino set the book on the table. “What is that saying? The story fattens?”

“The plot thickens,” Sydney said.

“I can think of a few other choice sayings,” Griffin muttered. “None of them remotely polite.”

Sydney gave a shrug. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly plausible explanation, and I’d love to help you, especially with all the maps and notes tucked away in her office that probably have something to do with all this, but”—she made a show of looking at her watch—“have a plane to catch.”

Giustino’s smile turned into a full-blown grin, and Griffin glared at him before turning his attention back to Sydney. “Tell me about this paper Carillo found.”

“According to Carillo, genealogy, something about some long-lost relative in Naples who was a prince. The other paper, the one I brought a copy of, was on conspiracy theory.”

Hell. Dumas said Santarella was looking up something about a prince. “Like I said, what would either have to do with the smuggling of bioweapons?”

“Good question. Clearly the professor is hiding something.”

He hated to admit she was right, but she was. He’d been bothered by the same thing, something he might have taken more heed of had he not been so distracted by Sydney’s presence—which was another reason to get her on that plane tonight.

“Of course,” Sydney continued, “you could always ask her.”

“If I knew where she was.”

“You mean Dumas lost her?”

“She was looking up information on a prince,” he said, ignoring yet another smug look from her, “as well as something to do with the columbaria.”

“When I was in her office, I saw a lot of stuff on her walls that had to do with the columbaria.”

“What sort of stuff?”

“Maps, diagrams, photos, notes. I gathered it was sort of a specialty. What she was here to study. Maybe if we—if
you
stopped by her studio, you might find something that would give you an indication on where to look.”

The thought bore merit. “Even if we did find something, how would we even know what we were looking at? It would have been nice to have an expert solidly in our own court. Someone we could trust without question.”

Sydney walked over, picked up her travel bag, then placed it by the front door. “Too bad I’m leaving. I actually do have a go-to man when it comes to digging up obscure bits of information. If anyone can put a spin on some long-forgotten columbarium, Doc Schermer can.”

“Doc Schermer?”

“My ex-partner Carillo’s current partner.”

“May I ask you something, Special Agent Fitzpatrick?”

“Fire away.”

“Back in Quantico, when I mentioned that this case was not to be discussed with anyone, at what point did you disobey that directive?”

She gave a light shrug. “Couple hours into it when I called Carillo from my dorm room.”

“Figures,” he said, wondering how it was he’d so totally misjudged her. Then again, maybe had he given her free rein as she’d insisted, they might be further along.

Or she might be dead.

He’d had a number of good reasons for keeping things from her. Even now it was a risk. But like it or not, she was involved, not likely to change her mind, and he could use the help. Unlike Professor Santarella, Sydney Fitzpatrick knew most of the risks, was well-trained by the Bureau, and any knowledge she and her fellow agents brought to the table was a plus. He looked at Giustino, said, “I need two calls made before we move out. First, bring in someone to cover for you here. I don’t want this unmanned while Tex is still out there.”

“And the second?” Giustino asked.

“Call the airport and cancel Fitzpatrick’s flight,” he said, ignoring her catlike smile.

Sydney rolled up the cuffs on her ENEL coveralls, trying to make them look more like they fit her, when they belonged to Giustino, who stood about four inches taller. When she
finished, she smoothed out the uniform, and Griffin, also in ENEL coveralls, nodded.

“Not to worry,” he said. “No one will pay much attention.”

She could only hope, she thought as they walked across the street to the van where Giustino, dressed all in black, was waiting.

The moment she slid into the front passenger seat, Griffin said, “Do me a favor, Fitzpatrick. When we get to the American Academy, don’t say a thing.”

“Like the four words of Italian I know are going to do much good?”

“You sure you want to do this?”

“Absolutely.”

A little after ten, they drove to the academy, the ENEL electric company logo still on the van, a perfect cover for their plans this evening. Griffin dropped Giustino off around the corner from the entrance, then waited a short way down the street. About five minutes later, every light at the academy went out.

They waited a couple of minutes before Griffin drove up to the electric gate and parked. It was still open, which meant it would remain that way until Griffin called Giustino to restore the power.

“You don’t think we should have waited longer?” Sydney asked him.

“Trust me. The utility companies are notoriously slow. He’ll be grateful to see us.”

And sure enough, as the two of them, small toolboxes in hand, walked up to the open gate, the guard hurried toward them, smiling as he waved them through, saying, “
Non ha perso tempo!
”

Griffin rattled off something in Italian so fast that Sydney recognized only ENEL. Whatever he said worked. The guard returned to his shack, allowing Griffin and Sydney to enter the premises on their own. Their boots crunched the gravel path that circled the fountain, and just before they left the path, Sydney glanced back to see the guard standing near the open gate.

Flickering candlelight appeared in several windows, the academy residents quickly adjusting to the power outage. Upstairs, just over the main entrance, the windows of Professor Santarella’s studio were dark. Griffin and Sydney climbed the marble stairs, walked the short distance down the hall to studio 257. The door was locked. Griffin took a pick from his toolbox, slipped it into the lock, and had the door open in less than a minute. Sydney used a blue LED light for her search, while Griffin stood guard at the window, watching the gate. She wasn’t even sure where to begin, there were so many papers and books strewn about, as though someone else had already been there and done a hasty search. She glanced over at the desk, where Francesca had been working on her laptop earlier in the day, thinking there might be something there. The laptop was gone. Which meant the professor had returned.

Or someone else had. No doubt, she thought, realizing that the professor wouldn’t need to throw her things around to find them. She’d know where to look. Someone else had definitely been there.

But that didn’t mean they’d found whatever they were looking for, and Sydney checked the long table, the desk, the walls. Nothing screamed,
Look at me, the answer is here
. More like there were too many answers, and it would take days to search through them.

Griffin stepped back from the window. “We have to go. Now.”

“I need more time.”

“Now,” he whispered. “Someone’s out there, distracting the guard from his post.”

She gave one last look around, saw the hand-drawn maps on the wall, the weird lines drawn across them. What the hell, she thought, and pulled both down, rolled them together. “Ready.”

They walked out the door, and Griffin turned the lock, then pulled it shut. When she started toward the stairs they’d come up, he stopped her, listened. Someone was ascending, the quiet of the footfall enough to warn her it was someone who didn’t want to be discovered. They hurried
to the back stairs down the hall, past the kitchen. Griffin drew his weapon, then signaled for her to start down. They walked through the darkened archways of the cortile, slipped out past the fountain, and toward the guard in his shack. Sydney glanced back toward Francesca’s studio, saw a dim light bouncing off the wall as someone searched the room.

Griffin saw it, too. They walked up to the guard, and Griffin waved, told him something in Italian about the power. The guard looked up, nodded as they walked out. “Probably Dumas,” he said, when they’d gotten back in the van, as he picked up the phone to tell Giustino to restore the power in a few minutes. He didn’t want to do it too soon.

“How do you know it’s him and not the guys that came after us at the Passegiata?”

“Because the guard’s still alive. Adami’s men have no consciences.”

“Good point.”

Only when they were well away did he ask, “What was it you took from the wall?”

“A couple maps. Of what, I have no idea.”

“Nothing else?”

“Nothing in the time we had.”

“She’s on too many radars. That doesn’t bode well for her.”

“I’m more interested in what’s on
her
radar,” Sydney said.

Griffin looked over at her, then back at the road. “You might make a good spy, after all.”

“The word
spy
has connotations I don’t care for.”

“Secret agent, then.”

“Special agent.”

“FBI, through and through. Except when you’re busy breaking the rules.”

“Not rules. Guidelines,” she said, unrolling the parchment. Pale yellow moonlight washed the paper, but it was too dark to see.

Sydney turned on the small LED she’d used in the break-
in. The light was amazingly bright for such a tiny device, and he glanced over as she studied it. “Sort of looks like a map of the sewer system,” he said.

“Why would a professor intent on ancient history have a map of the sewer system, unless it was the aqueduct, which I don’t think this is.”

Back at the safe house, she unrolled it on the kitchen table. “I’m beginning to think this might be maps of different columbaria,” she said, seeing the arrows drawn on it and the notations, trying to decide what it was Francesca found so important that she went to the trouble of mapping it out on her wall. “Her writing’s terrible.” She squinted, tried to make out the tiny notations scrawled at various locations.

“I’d settle for finding which place she might be heading.”

“If I had to guess,” Sydney said, pointing, “it would be here.”

“Why there?”

Sydney couldn’t forget the image of Alessandra’s disfigured face. “Because the note she jotted on here looks like it says ‘pyramid skull.’ Alessandra’s killer used that symbol for a reason.”

“As damned good a place to start as any. Call your Doc Schermer and see what he can dig up on this.”

“When do we leave?”

“In the morning. The professor has to sleep, too.”

But the professor wasn’t sleeping. She sat at her desk in the dark, even after the power had been restored, not sure if she should cry, scream, or laugh. How stupid to wait for dark to break into her own studio at the academy. Or go to the trouble of calling the guard away, to explain that she needed to enter without being seen, and could he just let her through the gate?

Someone had already been here.

The maps were missing from the wall.

And her laptop.

Neither was good without the other, but someone had them both.

It had taken her months and months to plot out the maps. They were important. But so was the info on her computer, and she seriously questioned her ability to find the final location of the Prince of Sansevero’s crypt without it. How had she been so careless as to leave it on her laptop—believing that a lone guard at the gate would keep it safe?