The Bone Chamber (38 page)

Griffin shook himself. Sure, with Sydney’s help they’d
rescued Tex, but at what price? The map was lost and he had no one to blame but himself for their failed mission.

“Easy does it,” Tex said, as Dumas cut the cords at his wrists. When he was free, he rubbed the circulation back, glaring at Griffin. “I spent how many days tied up in some room of his, and you let him get that map? You do realize what it leads to? Why he wanted it?”

“It’s not his fault,” Sydney interjected. “There’s something I—”

“
Now
isn’t the time,” Griffin told her.

“Hell if it isn’t,” she said. “When Adami figures out that that map isn’t quite what he bargained for, we’re going to be in a world of hurt.”

“What are you talking about?” Griffin asked.

She lifted her shirt.

Francesca sucked in her breath. Tex whistled. “That what I think it is?”

“When Griffin sent me into the bathroom to destroy it, I figured why not cut out the important parts? Give him what’s left over?”

“Jesus Christ,” Griffin said. “We need to get the hell out of here. Now!”

“Xavier is waiting at the café for Alfredo,” Dumas said. “My car is there.” Dumas took one side of Tex, Griffin the other, just in case he needed help, but Tex held his own as they raced around the corner.

“Where are they?” Griffin asked.

Dumas looked about the piazza. “There!” he said, pointing to a table at the café.

Alfredo and Xavier saw them and ran across the cobbled piazza, Alfredo carrying Sydney’s black bag on his shoulder. He held it out. “This was left in my van.”

Griffin took the bag and handed it to Sydney. “Right now, the farther you are from us, the safer you’ll be,” he told Alfredo. “Adami will undoubtedly be coming after us and the map.”

“Where should we go?” Alfredo asked.

“Take Xavier to the nearest
carabinieri
office. Have them contact the
vice-comandante generale
in Rome. Give them my name and they’ll know what to do.”

“Very good,” Alfredo said.

“And thanks for your help. Both of you.”

The two took off toward Alfredo’s van, and Dumas directed the others to his car parked nearby. He unlocked it, then threw Griffin his keys. “You’re better at evading,” he said, getting into the front passenger seat.

Francesca and Sydney got into the back. Tex was just about to slide in beside them when Griffin looked up, saw a black Mercedes drive past the intersection. The telltale sound of tires skidding on pavement told them that he and Tex had been spotted. “Hell,” he said, digging out his phone and tossing it into the backseat for Tex, before he got in. “HQ has a chopper on standby at the airport. Get it here.”

Tex called HQ as Griffin hit the gas, sped off. Traffic was incredibly thick on the main street. He pulled in at the first opening, not pausing to see if Adami was following.

“May I see it?” he heard Francesca ask Sydney.

Griffin eyed Sydney in the rearview mirror. “Do
not
pull that thing out under any circumstances.”

Francesca wasn’t about to let the matter drop. “I have to know how you did it?”

“Did what?” Sydney asked.

“Fooled Adami into making him think he had the map?”

“Technically he did have it. Just not all of it.”

“But I saw it!”

“Only what was left of it. I unrolled it just far enough so he couldn’t see that I’d cut out most of the labyrinth from the middle and the list of words of what I presumed was some sort of key or legend.”

Francesca gave a horrified gasp. “Do you realize what you’ve done? The history you’ve decimated?”

“And the lives she saved?” Griffin replied, braking to avoid a motorcycle that pulled out in front of him.

That, at least, shut Francesca up, but any chance of peace was lost when Dumas slammed his hand on the dashboard. “What about the lives I may have lost?”

Griffin checked the mirrors, saw the roof of a black vehicle about four cars back. “You sure it can’t wait for Sunday confessional? I could use your help trying to save the lives in this car right now. He’s behind us.”

“But what he told you about the ambassador.”

“What the hell? You didn’t think I believed that shit?” When there was no answer, Griffin glanced over, saw the look of self-loathing on the priest’s face. “For Christ’s sake. You mean you
knew
the ambassador was relaying info to Adami?”

“No. But I
should
have known.”

“How?” Griffin said, looking into the mirror. Adami’s driver veered into the opposing lane, passed two cars, then jumped in again. “He was as much a part of ATLAS as you and I.”

“Yet you didn’t pass on information, thereby endangering the team.”

Griffin felt Sydney’s gaze on him. “No, but my failure to pass on information caused issues.” He hit the horn, trying to get the car in front of him to pull aside.

“That makes us quite the pair. You trust no one, and I put all my trust in God.”

To which Tex said, “This Kumbaya shit is all well and good, but I could sure use a shot of Johnnie Walker and a shower, and if Adami catches up to us, I’m not getting either.”

Griffin checked his mirror. The black Mercedes was closing in on them. He whipped the wheel, made a hard right turn down a narrow street. “Find out where that chopper is, Tex.”

Tex made the call. “They’re tracking our cell now.”

Griffin turned left down an alley, then down another street that opened into a plaza. He blasted the horn. Pedestrians fled. The Mercedes was on their tail. Silvio leaned out the window, pointed a gun at them. And then the welcoming thrum of helicopter rotor blades filled the air. Griffin looked up, saw the military helicopter hovering above an Egyptian obelisk in the plaza’s center.

The chopper maneuvered down, and two uniformed
carabinieri
leaned out, submachine guns in hand. He saw Giustino behind the crew, talking to someone on his headset. “The cavalry’s here,” Griffin said.

“Adami’s backing off,” Tex replied.

“They’re leaving!” Dumas cried, and he made the sign of the cross.

Not until they’d landed safely at the
carabinieri
helipad, and Giustino guided everyone into an office, did Griffin agree to let Sydney pull out the map. She spread it out on the table and he studied the portion of the labyrinth she’d cut out, as well as the words listed down the side. “Not bad, Fitzpatrick,” he said. “But it would’ve been nice to have gotten us the whole thing.”

“I was working on a time crunch.”

Francesca ran her fingers against the cut edge, looking sick to her stomach. “Ruined. Almost half of the labyrinth is missing. To be so close…”

“These words,” Sydney asked her. “Any idea what they mean?”

It was Dumas who answered. “Possibly Old French, archaic. They’d need to be researched. That of course can be done once it is rightfully returned to the Vatican.”

“Like hell it will be,” Griffin replied. “And even if it does belong to the Vatican, you think the pope will do a better job protecting the world from the threat of a plague released by a madman?”

“With God’s help.”

“What were you saying earlier about putting all your trust in God? Maybe a little trust in ATLAS’s capabilities?”

Dumas gave a heavy sigh. “Agreed. There has been too much death where this thing has been concerned.”

“Maybe you should put it away,” Griffin told Sydney, taking out his phone to call headquarters. “Less temptation for everyone.”

Sydney removed her sketchbook from the bag Alfredo had returned. She opened it to slip the map in, and Father Dumas saw one of the sketches of the loculi in the columbarium. “May I?”

“Sure,” she said, handing him the sketchbook. “I wish I’d had more time there. It was an amazing place.”

Giustino was talking to a fellow
carabinieri
near the door, arranging vehicle transportation for Griffin and the others back to Rome. He looked up, stopped when he realized Griffin was trying to make a call, and signaled for the other officer to step out with him. Even so, Griffin moved to the far side of the room for some privacy. The thought of telling McNiel about Ambassador Harden weighed on him, but he had no choice.

McNiel answered.

Griffin heard several people talking in the background. “You’re up late.”

“Damage control,” McNiel replied. “The thing we tried to avoid by keeping Alessandra’s murder from the press? It’s happening now. Ambassador Harden unwittingly started a firestorm at his daughter’s funeral, stating he wouldn’t rest until he learned who had killed her. We barely got him away from the press, before they started asking if he knew if his daughter was having an affair with Congressman Burnett. It’d be nice to bury this thing without exposing ATLAS.”

“About that,” Griffin said, watching as Sydney pointed out the details on one of the sketches, talking avidly about
the columbarium to Dumas and Tex. “It might be too late. Who’s there with you?”

“I’m sitting here with the directorate and half the ATLAS oversight committee. What do you have to report?”

“Good news and bad. I’ll give you the good first, which you
can
relay,” he said, emphasizing the word as a warning. “We found Tex. He’s safe.”

“Thank God.” He heard McNiel repeat the information. Heard the congratulations being passed around the room. After a moment, McNiel said, “And this other news?”

“Ambassador Harden. He’s been passing on information to Adami. And Adami hinted that Harden was reporting to someone higher up.”

A long stretch of silence on the other end, then finally, “Yes, of course we heard about the warehouse and the bioweapons being destroyed. Everyone here is ecstatic.”

Translation: McNiel wasn’t about to reveal to anyone in that room that he knew there might be a mole. “Unfortunately,” Griffin continued, “Adami got part of the map. A very small piece if that’s any consolation. But it also renders the part we have as unusable. There was nothing we could do.”

“Clearly we know your next mission.”

Recover the rest of the map to stop Adami
. Griffin realized the others had grown silent, and he glanced up, saw them all staring at him. Tex had an odd look on his face. “I should go,” he said. “I think we should get Tex to a hospital.”

“Tell him I’m glad he’s safe.”

“I will.”

Griffin disconnected. “What’s going on?” he asked them.

“This,” Sydney said, lifting up the sketchbook, showing him her drawing of the mosaic on the columbarium floor. And then she held up the parchment and what was left of the labyrinth beside it.

The map. There on the columbarium floor the whole time.

Outside, he heard the helicopter starting up. He shook himself, ran from the room. Giustino and the other officer were just getting on. “Giustino!”

Giustino stopped, looked back.

“Any chance we can commandeer that helicopter one more time? There’s something important we need to see in Rome. And time is of the essence.”

The following evening,
en route to Fiumicino airport, Rome

Sydney shifted in the front seat of the car, trying to get a glimpse of the Colosseum, its arches lit against the black night sky. “Are you sure we don’t have time to stop? It’s the Colosseum, after all. When in Rome…”

“Not a chance,” he said. “You have a plane to catch, and I intend to make sure you’re on it.”

“There is no way I’m going to miss it. It’s not as if I have a reason to stay this time. I know who killed Tasha, and you now have a complete copy of the map—though Francesca wasn’t too happy to learn you ripped up the floor of the columbarium after you got your photos. I think she would like to have had her own photos to publish, since as far as she knows, no one has ever seen the floor from that high up to determine the pattern on it.”

“She can’t complain too much, since she will be helping us research the Old French so that we can decipher the labyrinth and find out where the map leads to. Once we have the location secure and stabilized, she can publish the photos anywhere she wants.”

“And the scientists you rescued? Do they get any credit?”

“What they’re getting is new identities to ensure their safety and keep their work from falling into enemy hands. According to Dr. Balraj, Dr. Zemke did more to set back Adami’s plans than Adami ever realized. She was genetically engineering a super-plague that was more of a super-dud. It looked virulent in the lab, but its DNA was faulty.”

“No one ever suspected her?”

“One of his scientists did, but she managed to convince him that the test sample he was viewing had been contaminated. She said it was a matter of days before they would
have realized that she was working against them. Regardless, Adami had enough material down there to cause some serious damage, even without creating a super-plague. Her fear is that Adami will find this new source and start over again.”

“Any chance he’ll succeed?”

“Since he has very little of the map, I’d say no. Not that we’re about to take any chances, should he have another lab equipped to pick up where he left off. Thanks to Dr. Balraj and Zemke, we have a fair idea where that lab might be,” he said, slowing behind a bus that pulled out from the curb. “Our next step is to recover the lost part of the map from Adami, before he or his associates attempt to discover the location it leads to. And once we discover that location and what the map leads to, our team of scientists will go in and assess exactly what it is we’re dealing with. In other words,” he said, glancing over at her, then back to the road, “nothing that we can’t handle on our own, which means
you
are no longer needed.”

“You could at least wait until
after
I’m on the plane to gloat.”

“Trust me. I won’t be gloating until you are well across the Atlantic. Past experience tells me I’ll need all my wits about me to get you on that plane and home for Thanksgiving.”

“Aren’t you the funny one.” She leaned back in her seat, thinking that if truth be told, she was glad to be going back to San Francisco. “What about you? Who are you spending Thanksgiving with?”