The Bone Chamber (34 page)

“Now you’re starting to sound like me.” Sydney switched on her light.

“What are you doing?”

“Looking for a shovel. Or maybe something we can toss up, try to hook that ladder.” She reached for her pack, then stood, slowly. “Uh, Griffin? You might want to take a look at this.”

He turned. Saw what she saw. What they hadn’t had time to see when they were being shot at. The rock behind them wasn’t the solid mass of
tufo
it appeared to be. In fact, had Sydney not moved to the side, shone her light just so in looking for the shovel, they might never have noticed the outcropping that hid the tunnel behind it. “You think that arrow you saw in the cavern above was pointing to this?”

“Xavier said he looked down here. There was nothing,” she said. “But if he continued down that ladder past this ledge into the cistern, he could very well have missed this. The ledge isn’t very big, and from where the ladder was situated, you’d never see this.”

“Beats trying to dig our way out.” Griffin scooped up his pack, and followed her between the outcropping and the tunnel hidden in the V of it. “One problem I see.”

“What’s that?”

“It barely looks big enough to fit through.”

“Yeah, well unless you have a better idea…”

He wasn’t kidding about the tight spaces. He hated them. But he’d trained himself over the years to get past the absurd fear that he’d get stuck. He would have never made the ATLAS team otherwise. And hell if he was going to let Sydney show him up. “After you.”

“By all means. Brawn before beauty.”

He hesitated, took a deep breath, then entered. Though tall enough, it was narrow, so narrow in places that Grif
fin’s shoulders hit the walls, and he had to turn to his side to pass through. The entire passageway was much rougher than the tunnels off the cavern above, as though this particular area had been excavated more hastily, and perhaps, judging from the outcropping that hid it, on the sly to keep it from being discovered. At one point, they had to snake through on their bellies, and he concentrated on his breathing, the better to keep his mind off the confining passageway. “Hard to imagine anyone going to this much trouble for a burial chamber.”

“If we get out of here,” Sydney said from behind him, “I never want to be in another fifty-degree underground chamber again.”

“I’ll second that.” After several more feet, the floor in front of him dropped sharply into a wide cavern that looked like a massive honeycomb of stalactites and stalagmites.

He crawled out, slid down a few feet to the cavern floor. Sydney did the same.

“Amazing,” she said. “I thought water seepage made the columns, but these look too uniform, like they’re all carved.”

She was about to take a step forward when he reached out, stopped her. “Don’t move.”

“What’s wrong?”

He pointed between the columns into the interior, his headlamp sweeping across strangely shaped mounds. It took several moments for his sight to adjust, to see what was beneath the
tufo
dust that covered everything. The realization of what he was seeing hit him. Urns and chests, each strategically placed around the center columns. “Hell,” he said, not daring to let go of Sydney’s arm.

“But that means the map has to be here.”

“Yeah? And we never discovered the second key. So if it is all true…”

One false step and they were dead.

Francesca tried to catch her breath, leaning against
the rough wall of the tunnel, while Xavier and Alfredo felt around with their hands. The passageway they’d taken led up, and they’d run the entire way.

“What exactly are you looking for?” she asked, her voice low.

“I just don’t understand it,” Xavier said.

“Understand what?” she replied, not liking the worry in his voice. She had enough to worry about right now, like what had happened to Sydney and Griffin. Were they still alive? Bleeding and injured down in the cavern? The two agents had sacrificed their own safety so the three of them could get away. But how the hell were they going to get help to them if they couldn’t avoid being shot by the men who were chasing them?

“There should be a sign,” Xavier said. “A skull and crossbones that tells me this is the right passageway, just like the one in the tunnel below that led us up here.”

“You mean this might not be the right way?”

Alfredo slammed his hand against the stone wall. “It’s certainly looking that way.”

“Calm down,” Xavier said. “Maybe the signs change.
Maybe it’s not supposed to be a skull and crossbones. Maybe that’s one of the things we’re supposed to learn.”

“For God’s sake,” Francesca said. “This is not the time to make that discovery. We should have known this before we even set out.”

“Yeah?” Xavier whispered harshly. “And when was that? Between the five minutes I’d learned you wanted to meet me and the announcement that Alessandra was murdered? You’ve had a hell of a lot longer to look at the flash drive she sent, so get off my case.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “What can I do to help?”

“Not a lot. By all calculations, this should lead to the passageway that di Sangro plotted out.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure where it’s not, and it’s not here.”

“Actually,” Alfredo said, “if I had to guess, this passageway leads right back to the basilica. We’ve gone in one big giant circle.”

“I wonder if that’s what Sydney saw down in the main cavern.”

Xavier stopped pressing on the wall. “What are you talking about?”

“Right before those men shot at us, she called Griffin over. I think she realized something was off down there.”

“Well,” Alfredo said. “Whatever it was, we have to be grateful, or more than likely we’d all be dead,” he said, as he and Xavier continued to push on the rock wall with their gloved hands. “We’d have been sitting ducks if those men had followed us up here right away. All we can do now is hope that your agent friends were able to fight them off and discovered the right passage, and we can get the hell out of here before those guys find us.”

A scuffling sound echoing up from the passage below sent her heart racing. “They’re getting closer.”

“Look there!” Xavier said, pointing his flashlight beam toward a crevice in the wall, narrow at the base but widening as it rose. The light bounced off the tunnel walls into a ceiling that seemed to disappear into a deep blackness. “We’ll make them think we’re gone.”

Alfredo began climbing up the V-shaped crevice. He reached down for Francesca’s hand, pulled her up, as Xavier boosted her from the floor, then followed. Inching their way inward and upward, they didn’t speak. Suddenly Xavier reached over, gripped her arm, his fingers digging into her in warning.

She needed none. She heard the two men coming up the tunnel, and she held her breath, praying they wouldn’t hear anything. Beside her, Alfredo’s foot slipped, knocking loose a bit of
tufo
that skittered down the crevice into the tunnel below, and she thought this was it. They were caught.

“You hear that, Vinny?”

“You shut up long enough and I might.”

Francesca’s heart pounded at the realization of just how close the men were to their hiding spot.

“It’s coming from up there,” the first man said.

“It’s them. It has to be.” Francesca heard what sounded like a gun being racked, as though one of the men was checking his weapon, checking to see if he had enough ammunition. “Hurry. They might be getting away.”

“What’s your rush? Even if this tunnel does lead out, we have someone posted on almost every street corner around the basilica. They can’t get farther than that.”

“Yeah, well we need to be there when they find what they’re looking for.” A light bounced off the tunnel walls. She closed her eyes, pressed her face into the rock.
Please don’t let them find us…

“Why do you suppose Mr. Westgate wants to get this thing?”

“Because Mr. Westgate’s boss wants to get power over Adami.”

“How’s some stupid map gonna get him that?” Vinny asked. “They both got more money than God. Seems to me that if we were smart, we’d get the map for ourselves.”

“And have both Adami and Mr. Westgate’s boss after us? You got a death wish?”

“Just thinking aloud.”

“What the hell?” She heard their footsteps stop, heard some shuffling. “They’re gone! I could’ve sworn I heard something coming from up this way.”

“They must have gone out a different tunnel.” Francesca dared a look over Xavier’s shoulder, caught a glimpse of the light beam as it swung the opposite direction.

“Now what?”

“The only thing left. We go after the two down in the cistern.”

Griffin stared at the mass of urns before them, certain they were filled with gold—not that he was about to disturb the
tufo
dust to find out. Even so, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were the first in centuries to look upon this chamber. The treasure reported to be a deathtrap by the mad genius.

“This is what they’re killing for,” she said. “Gold.”

“I’m fairly certain it’s more about where it’s reported to have come from, assuming it really is Templar treasure from Solomon’s Temple.”

“You believe that?” Her voice was quiet, filled with awe, perhaps at the thought that they could indeed be standing amid something historic. “Do you think the Templars became Freemasons, all as a duty to protect this?”

“The gold or the map? The bigger question is what’s the secret of getting out without being crushed, or releasing some disease. There’s a reason di Sangro chose to hide this treasure, even at the cost of his reputation. He took an oath.”

“My. You were listening in class.”

“Very funny,” he said. “If Francesca is correct, and others in the past knew the treasure existed, the danger would have to be very real in order for someone to leave this amount of gold alone. Sort of makes you wonder about the loyalty of whoever set this up. Who was it who walked away from all this, and wasn’t tempted?”

“I’m thinking whoever put him here.”

She pointed to the interior of the cavern, her headlamp shining on a wide rock formation near the center, where, sur
rounded by even more urns, it appeared as though a man sat resting, his back to a large chest, his hands crossed over his midsection, as though someone positioned him after he died. Together, they walked over, touching nothing, carefully weaving around the rock columns, the chests and urns, their footsteps echoing off the cavern roof. Griffin looked around, trying to decide if there was any truth to the possibility that the place was an elaborate trap, meant to snare di Sangro’s perceived enemies. As they approached, it became apparent that the dead visitor, a male, had indeed been resting there for quite some time, perhaps a century or more, judging from his clothing. Like the monks in the Capuchin Crypt, this man seemed well preserved, no doubt due to the constant cool, dry temperature of the underground cavern. “Prince of Sansevero?” Griffin asked.

“A good guess, since his clothes seem a bit too fancy for a mere laborer,” she said, nodding at the bunch of lace at his throat. “And he’s wearing a Masonic ring.”

“The shield behind him, that would be the crest we saw on the computer,” Griffin said, nodding toward a blue and gold crest beneath a crown. “Definitely royalty.”

“Royalty or not, what if he died because he couldn’t find his way out?” She pointed to the numerous openings throughout the cavern.

“Any one of those could be the way out, or simply part of the maze we’re already lost in.”

She looked down at the corpse again, eyed the ring, careful not to touch anything. “Okay. Let’s say this is Raimondo di Sangro. It might be my imagination, but could we be looking at a very obvious skull and crossbones, sort of what was carved over the tunnel in the upper chamber? That is supposed to be the sign the Templars took up after they were hunted down. Maybe this one happens to be pointing at something with his right hand?”

Griffin saw exactly what she meant. Every finger but his right index was folded. “Pointing to the way out? Or better yet, to this missing key?”

“Or the way that leads to death? And what’s with all the sand piled up behind him and these urns?”

“Good question.”

“We need to think about this,” she said. “Francesca told us that Alessandra and Tasha were talking about subtext. Freemasons were all about symbols and the hidden meaning…”

“The skull and crossbones led down. If this is a trap, it’s a trap for the unwary, for those who aren’t supposed to be here. Assuming what the good professor told us was correct.” He glanced over at the tunnel opening, the one the corpse seemed to be pointing toward. It was tall, cleanly carved, and wide enough for two to walk abreast. The others were of varying sizes, and all far more claustrophobic-looking. “It could be any one of these. Seven openings, including the one we just came through. Maybe they all lead to the same place?”

“That shadow arrow I saw up there clearly pointed down. And yet the entrance was hidden from any who dared venture into that cistern, and now we have Dead Guy here, pointing to God knows where.”

“Pick one?”

“And hope we don’t end up as two more bone markers, pointing out the road that led us to our deaths?” she asked.

“Or end up as pancakes.”

She looked over at the tunnels, then grinned. “How much you want to bet it’s going to be the smallest, darkest tunnel?”

“Some secrets should never be shared.”

Her smile faded. “Yeah. And some things, especially about friends, should never be secret, but it’s a little late for that, isn’t it.”

Moment of levity over. Not that he blamed her. “Look, I know it’s late, but I’m sorry about what happened. If I could change things, I would.”

She refused to look at him.

“Truce?”

This time she looked right at him. “Fine. Only because we need to get out of here. But understand this. Any chance we had of liking each other ended the moment you let her lie to me, and
then
never told me.”

“You’re taking this far too personally.”

“Personally?” She stood up straight, putting both hands on her hips. “Personally?”

“She was working for the government. It was a job. She was doing it.”

“Don’t try to put this on Tasha. You’re the one who couldn’t trust anyone. Maybe if you didn’t have that little flaw, things might have been different.”

He wanted to rail at her, but all he could do was say, “You’re right.”

She stared at him for several seconds, as if refusing to believe he wasn’t going to argue. Finally she said, “Fine. Truce. Now where the hell is this map, and how do we get out of here?”

“I’m not sure we should be searching for anything but the way out, since we have no idea what the trap is. Death by crushing or disease. We can always come back.”

“What about Tex?”

“We can’t save him if we don’t save ourselves.” Griffin eyed the wide tunnel. “Is he or isn’t he pointing to the way out?”

“Maybe we’re being too literal.”

He looked back toward her, saw she was kneeling on the ground before the corpse. “Please don’t touch anything.”

“Do you realize he’s sitting next to a leather tube? Like something you might carry a map in?”

Griffin leaned down, saw what she was looking at. Sure enough, next to the corpse, between it and the large chest, was a leather tube, maybe two feet in length, and three inches in diameter. Out of everything in the chamber, this was the oddest. It wasn’t gold, didn’t look valuable at all, and he was half tempted to pull it out. But on closer inspection, he realized that the tube was acting like a stopper. Move it and the sand would be released…“Like a ballast.” He looked around, pointing. “Move his body, to get to the chest beneath him, the gold piled behind him, and the sand is released.”

“It’d be nice to come back after the place was surveyed by engineers first.”

“We don’t exactly have that luxury.” He looked at his
watch. They had two hours and twenty minutes left to trade the map for Tex. Hell. What was he thinking? There would be no trade. The map was not to leave their hands.

A feeling of helplessness swept through him. Not only was Tex’s life in the balance, at the moment, their lives were as well.

Sydney reached out, touched his arm. “We’ll figure this out.”

“How?”

“Francesca said that there were three keys.”

“And we know of only one of any certainty.”

“No, we know the third is the inscription from his door. And we were at the Capuchin Crypt where the second was, so maybe we can apply that knowledge?”

She was right. They’d been everywhere that Francesca had been. Maybe they could work this out…“Okay,” he said, wanting to pace, to think it through, but knowing any unnecessary movement could prove fatal. “Alessandra went to the trouble of saying the key is below Sansevero, and here, allegedly, is the Prince of Sansevero, or a man bearing his crest. And he’s sitting on a tube that might or might not be the missing map. Yank it out and run?”

“Run to where? If he was that smart, and he took the trouble to set up this elaborate trap, then there has to be something more to this. What was that inscription on the door again?”

Griffin took out the napkin that he’d written it on, and read, “‘Observe with an attentive eye and with veneration the urns of the heroes endowed with glory and reflect with astonishment on the precious homage to the divine work and the tomb of the deceased and when you have given due honor, contemplate profoundly and distance yourself.’”