Turned to Stone (9 page)

11

“Man, it’s a good thing you didn’t have to use that pistol. You’re hopeless,” Roberto Barrero said after confirming that none of Jaime’s six bullets had come near the target.

“I told you: I’m for making love, not war. Plus, I’ve still got a cold.”

“In that case you should be at home, especially after the rough time you’ve had. Here, watch and learn.”

Roberto put on his ear protection and picked up the revolver. He loaded six bullets into the cylinder, cocked the weapon, and started pressing the trigger. There wasn’t much paper left at the center of the silhouette when he was done. “Impressive,” Jaime admitted.

“It’s just practice.”

“Let me try again?”

“No, that’s enough for today. If anyone catches you here they’ll have my balls.”

“But aren’t you the instructor?”

“Yep. And aren’t you the dickhead without a license?”

“I’m hoping to get one soon.”

“Well, it could take a while. Guns are like cats: some people love them and others are allergic. Come on, let’s grab a beer.”

“They let you drink beer here?”

“Not before practice. But afterward, yes.”

“I’ll just have a juice.”

As they seated themselves at a table in the firing range café, Jaime let out a groan.

“You’re still wiped out,” Roberto observed.

“I can’t sleep. This whole EHU thing has gotten to me. Paloma won’t answer my calls. Worst of all, I can’t stop puzzling over that damn Medusa.”

“Why? I thought you already were the world’s foremost authority on it.”

“Don’t be a dick, Roberto. We both know Paloma’s the expert, and she’s not talking.”

“But hang on—all she did was go to the museum in Verona to study the bust, gather all the technical documents, write an essay that got you both top grades, and get it published in the university journal. What’s all that compared to what you did? ‘The Curse of Medusa.’ Now
that’s
impressive!”

“Nice of you to say so.” Jaime smiled as he pulled a brown folder from his backpack. Inside were several sheets of paper, stapled together. “I’ve reviewed the article and done more research. This is everything I could find. Plenty there for a story.”

Roberto exhaled loudly. When Jaime said “plenty there for a story,” it invariably meant he was about to spin a yarn that fell somewhere between
The War of the Worlds
and
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
. “Don’t tell me you actually believe the things you write.”

“You know what they say: anything that can be imagined exists.”

“Including the curse of Medusa?”

“It’s not the only case of its kind. There have always been deaths blamed on some curse from an ancient object or work of art. Remember the Hope Diamond, or the monks of Lokrum? The diabolical amulet in
The Exorcist
? The curse of Tutankhamen?”

“Oh, that’s a classic.”

“Well, now it has a challenger. The death of that museum security guard is going to make our Medusa’s curse a critical and box-office success.”

“That explains the theft. Who wouldn’t go crazy for a cursed statue?”

“Go crazy? Die, is more like it. In every place the sculpture’s been exhibited, someone has met their death.”

“There it is.”

“What?”

“That look.”

“What look? I’m just telling you what I know.”

“Maybe, but when you start talking about these things, you lose touch with reality. Let’s review: Most of the people involved with Tutankhamen died naturally. One had an accident, another was sick. Lord Carnarvon, who funded the dig, was an old man who got bitten by an insect. It’s the same with this statue. Through all the years it’s been exhibited, a lot of people will have died, but that doesn’t mean we should blame poor Medusa. She’s got enough problems with that hair.”

Jaime sipped his orange juice. “If you stop interrupting me I’ll tell you what else I’ve found out.”

“All right, I’ll be quiet. But just so you can tell me about that woman again.”

“What woman?”

“The one Requena said we had to stay away from. What did you say her name was?”

“Sonia Durán. She’s an expert on heritage management and her legs are longer than both of ours put together, and much shapelier.”

“Speak for yourself. When are you going to introduce me?”

Jaime ignored the question and consulted his notes. “Let’s see . . . The statue is credited to Andrea Bolgi, a seventeenth-century sculptor who was a disciple of Bernini. They called Bolgi ‘Il Carrarino’ because he was born in 1605 in Carrara, the land of marble. He apprenticed at Pietro Tacca’s workshop, and in 1625 he moved to Rome, where he encountered the sculptor Francesco Baratta, who was desperate to gain access to Bernini’s circle. Baratta finally did so and worked with Bernini on one of his masterpieces: the Fountain of the Four Rivers, for which Baratta sculpted the figure representing the Río de la Plata. In 1627 Bernini commissioned Bolgi to help with the Vatican’s famous baldachin.” Jaime raised his glass of juice, as if he were Laurence Olivier holding up the jester’s skull in
Hamlet
, and recited: “What the barbarians did not do, the Barberini did.”

Roberto gave him a blank stare. “What the fuck was that?”

“That’s what Romans said when the Pope stripped a bunch of ancient Roman monuments for the bronze and other materials Bernini needed to build St. Peter’s Baldachin. Pope Urban VIII’s real name was Maffeo Barberini.”

“ ‘What the barbarians did not do . . .’ It’s an impressive turn of phrase.”

“Bolgi tried to continue in the tradition of Bernini’s aesthetics, but his classical style was too cold. His most important piece is one of the four statues set into the niches in Saint Peter’s Basilica: the
Saint Helena
.”

“Okay, great. But when are we going to get to the Medusa? I hate when you go all Wikipedia on me.”

“We’ll get there very soon. Unfortunately for Bolgi, he wasn’t able to produce much work of note. No one liked his
Saint Helena
, not even Bernini himself, who criticized Bolgi’s classicism and the excessive serenity of the saint’s face. Bolgi had been in Rome for ten years without receiving a single important commission, so in 1653 he left for Naples, where he tried to imitate his master, and there he produced some of his best pieces.”

“The fucking Medusa.”

Jaime nodded. “He produced it in 1656 for Domenico Corsini, a rich Neapolitan merchant who collected sculptures of mythological creatures.”

“There’s no arguing that the curse worked back then. No one from that time’s still alive.”

“Well, get ready: this is where the fun starts. Bolgi himself died that year, but so did Corsini. And over half the population of Naples, thanks to an outbreak of the plague. At the time, some sources said Corsini went mad and committed suicide. Apparently he believed the Medusa was cursed. He was a strange man, what we’d call an eccentric these days—who was at odds with Catholic doctrine and fanatical about classical mythology and culture. He became so unhinged, he started to believe that the spirit of the gorgon Medusa, after drifting aimlessly for centuries, had installed itself in Bolgi’s sculpture. That was the beginning of the end for him. One night, he went out into the garden and drowned himself in the pond, near the statue.”

“It’s guys like these that give eccentrics a bad name,” Barrero complained. “Anyway, that was four hundred years ago. What happened to the sculpture after that?”

“It stayed in the garden until 1799, when an Italian named Pietro Parodi bought it for his private collection. In 1940, one of his descendants went to live in Rome and took the entire collection with him. He had no heirs, so when he fell ill in the late seventies he donated it along with the rest of his collection to the Leoni Antique Center. The statue remained there until there was a fire. Fortunately, almost all of the sculptural pieces were saved; but many paintings of great value were lost, including a Parmigianino and two Beccafumis.”

“What happened to the things that were saved?”

“Years after the fire, the Petrarca Gallery bought some of the Leoni pieces, including, among other sculptures, our good friend Medusa. After the statue was transported and put on display there, three people died.”

“No shit. Did the pestilence get them, too?”

“Very funny. No. One was a caretaker who’d worked at the gallery his entire life. Another was some rich guy who went often to see the Medusa.”

“How did they die?”

“I have no idea. The papers didn’t find the story important enough to report more than that.”

“I don’t see why. Medusa, the beautiful princess who turned into a monster after screwing Poseidon in the Temple of Athena, would have been the perfect subject for a serial-killer profile. What about the third person?”

“We know a bit more about this one. He was a security guard, but not at the gallery; he worked at the Leoni Antique Center before it burned down.”

“A bit of a stretch, but it’s still a link to the Medusa.”

Jaime smiled. “You believe me now? As you see, anyone who takes an interest in the gorgon can wind up dead. This guy, Alvino Nascimbene, died in a car accident. The body was badly burned. Some Italian magazines actually published photos from the scene.”

“How tasteful.”

“Quite. There were even close-ups of some of the most spectacular burns. This whole business is enough to make your hair stand on end.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I tried to contact the Petrarca Gallery in Rome, but they won’t answer the phone. Yesterday I spoke to Antonio Miguel Galán, an antique dealer who’s a friend of my father’s. He said that about a year ago the Petrarca wanted to buy a couple of illuminated bibles from him, but in the end the gallery backed out. He offered to ask around and see whether he can find out anything about the statue’s history.”

“That’s my Azcárate. But . . .”

“What?”

“I know you won’t listen, but I’ll say it anyway: watch your step.”

“Why?” Jaime rolled his eyes back in his head and stuck his tongue out in imitation of a mummy. “Because of the curse?”

“Don’t be a shithead. I’ll bet you anything there’s no curse, but that some of those deaths still weren’t a coincidence.”

“I’ll take that bet.”

“All right, but be careful.”

“I don’t believe what I’m hearing. Are you actually worried about me?”

“Who wouldn’t worry after seeing the way you shoot?” Roberto drained the last drops of beer from his bottle.

12

Coast of Sardinia

From high in the sky the sun was painting a wide, glowing trail across the calm sea. Though it was well into October, the weather was almost summery, and there was no shortage of the bathers who came to Capo Testa to enjoy a pleasant swim in the Mediterranean. A group of boys and girls were surfing near the harbor, while people of all ages enjoyed the autumn morning beneath the small forest of umbrellas that had sprung up on the beach.

One of the surfers was thrown off his board when a large wave made him lose his balance. When his head reemerged from the water, he saw that the swell had been caused by a motorboat speeding toward a large white catamaran anchored some distance out from the turtle-shaped rock near the beach. The young people waved at the dark-haired woman in sunglasses who was steering, but when they received no response they went back to their surfing.

Skillfully, the woman turned to starboard and guided the motorboat to the stern of the catamaran, cutting the engine as she reached the boarding ladder. The name of the boat was painted on its side in black letters: “PHOENIX.”

A deckhand working at the catamaran’s stern approached and greeted the woman with a smile. “Good morning, Miss Carrera.”

The woman stood. She was tall and her black T-shirt and tight black pants emphasized her athletic figure. “My last name is Mazi,” she said in a cold voice. “Tie up the boat.”

The young man rushed to obey and threw her a rope. Slowly she climbed the ladder leading up to the yacht.

Rosa Carrera had changed her surname almost a year ago, but nobody seemed to have taken it seriously. She was starting to think that her attempt to put her past behind her had been a waste of time, especially since she was still doing the same things she’d done before. No matter what efforts she made to distance herself from her family, her destiny pursued her. She would always be a Carrera. Especially if she couldn’t bring herself to cut ties completely.

She stood on deck for a while, admiring the vessel’s aerodynamic design. Whenever she set foot on the family yacht she was filled with conflicting emotions. On the one hand, she enjoyed the sense of abundance, wealth, and danger that went with her family’s activities. On the other, she was filled with self-loathing because her attempts to leave it all behind had been in vain. A luxury yacht of the highest caliber, the
Phoenix
served as a reminder of everything she abhorred, even as it offered her an exciting life. Her father, the businessman and antique expert Angelo Carrera, had been on the ship when it sank off the coast of Cyprus three years earlier. Its recovery and restoration had cost the family a fortune, but the yacht was seaworthy once more and had been rechristened the
Phoenix
after the mythological creature reborn from its own ashes.

A man of about forty, dressed in a blue-striped T-shirt and shorts, stepped through a glass door and beamed at Rosa.

“The enchanting Mata Hari has returned.” He approached her with open arms. The red kerchief on his head and the ring in his left ear gave him the air of a pirate. He gave her a quick hug and led her toward the door. “Our venerable elder was just wondering aloud about when you might return.”

“Then why didn’t our venerable elder pick up the phone?” she said, sounding irritated. “I’ve been trying to call for hours.”

“You know how particular Papà is. He only likes to talk to us on the boat’s lounge. I spoke to him yesterday; he’s hoping you have some good news for him.”

“Well, he can keep on hoping,” Rosa muttered, shoving her brother aside and walking through the door.

At the bottom of a set of stairs was a short teak-floored hallway that led to a spacious lounge with tinted windows. The place had the look of a miniature museum, with oil paintings depicting ancient landscapes and ruins and busts representing historical figures from Socrates to Napoleon Bonaparte. In the corners of the room were marble pedestals decorated in relief, and above those were carvings of the Four Evangelists and their corresponding symbols—angel, lion, ox, and eagle. A bartender dressed spotlessly in white offered them glasses of champagne.

“So, how did it go?” Rosa’s brother raised his glass and gave her a look of genuine admiration.

“You’ll find out soon enough. I don’t like explaining things twice.”

“Uh-oh. Little sister’s in a bad mood.”

“I’ve been away from the gallery for almost a week.”

“I’m sure it’s fine. Your boyfriend will have taken care of everything.”

Rosa’s face turned red.

“Leave Dino out of this. That poor man would run for his life if he had any idea what his fiancée really did when she was supposed to be away on business.”

“Come on, I bet dangerous women like you are a turn-on for him.”

“Me, dangerous? Not dangerous enough for this job. At least I won’t have to quit. Papà won’t just fire me, he’ll disown me. And I’ll be glad of it.”

The man ran the tips of his fingers under the kerchief as he registered her implication of failure. “The policeman . . . ?”

“Amatriaín? He escaped from right under our noses. And so did the other guy, Jaime Azcárate.”

“Two screwups for the price of one, little sister.”

“It wasn’t my fault,” Rosa protested. “One of them disappeared and the other managed to put that moron Clark out of action and then kidnap
me
. I don’t get why Papà still trusts that idiot.”

“I think you’re about to find out.”

Rosa nodded with her characteristic self-assurance. But deep down, she envied her brother. Although Leonardo occasionally undertook fieldwork—the most recent example being the theft of the Medusa from the Verona museum—his primary responsibility was coordinating the organization’s activities. Thus he spent most of the day in a luxurious cabin on the family yacht, flicking through documents while sipping mojitos and caipirinhas. Rosa, meanwhile, was the one out risking her neck, since her father figured a beautiful young woman looked less suspicious than a guy with an earring.

As a criminal mastermind, Leonardo possessed all the skill and cunning of Lex Luthor. Thanks to him and Rosa, both sides of the family organization were ruled with strength. The problem was that for years, Rosa had been trying to reform herself. After several masterstrokes had sealed the family’s fortune, the youngest Carrera had decided to give up crime and devote herself to the legitimate art business. But she was still attached to her father, and he had persuaded her to take on one last mission, perhaps the most important of their criminal careers.

Rosa and Leonardo finished their champagne and crossed the lounge. A massive oak desk stood on a platform in the room and a portrait of an aristocratic-looking man wearing a proud expression hung above it, presiding over all that happened there. The man was bald and in the portrait he was leaning casually against a table, gazing out at the viewer with the indifference of a baroque monarch. Flanking the portrait, looking out of place, were two loudspeakers mounted at the height of the subject’s shoulders.

Aside from this depiction, and not counting the dozen or so marble and wooden faces represented artistically, there was no one else in the room. Leonardo walked somberly toward the portrait, his sister following close behind. Suddenly, a sharp voice crackled over the loudspeakers.
“So here you are.”

They stopped in the center of the room.

“And in one piece, from what I hear,”
the voice continued.
“How’s Clark? If he keeps injuring himself like this his medical treatment will cost me a fortune. Fortunately, very soon money will no longer be a problem.”

“Like it is
now
.” Rosa looked around the yacht’s impressive lounge.

“Tell me everything.”

“We encountered some difficulties,” she said loudly. It always made her feel uncomfortable to speak to a painting. “How are you today?”

“I’m tired,”
the voice said.
“But don’t use that as an excuse not to tell me the search was a failure.”

Rosa felt herself grow pale under the fluorescent lights. “How did you know?”

“From the pitch of your voice. It’s an octave higher than usual.”

She clenched her fists to contain the rage she felt at having to speak to a person she couldn’t see. “We looked everywhere. In drawers, notebooks—there wasn’t even a damn USB drive. I spent the entire return trip searching the CDs I took from her room, but I didn’t find anything. There was no sign of it on her computer. I was just starting a more thorough search when Clark saw her coming down the street with that journalist, Jaime Azcárate.” She waved her hand dismissively. “Clark wanted to stay and settle the score, but I convinced him to escape down the stairs. We didn’t have time to take the computer. One thing I can tell you with absolute certainty is that there was nothing in the documents I took even remotely related to Asclepius’s
Chronicle
. Isn’t it possible we’ve got the wrong person?”

“My dear Rosa, research is the key to all operations. That and luck. A few years ago, when I published my essay on the work of Filippo Baldinucci, Paloma Blasco came to my office with an absurd theory. I gave it a lot of thought, and the more thought I gave it, the less absurd it seemed. So I decided to conduct my own investigation, and that’s how I came across the university piece attributed to her and Jaime Azcárate, who she was besotted with at the time. Maybe she still is.”

“He’s an interesting guy,” Rosa admitted. Leonardo made a snorting sound. “What are you laughing about, jackass?”

“Nothing. ‘An interesting guy.’ So interesting you let him live?”

“Go fuck yourself, shithead.”

“Quiet, both of you. Rosa’s right: it was Paloma’s feelings for Azcárate that made her want to help him and, ultimately, to conduct the study. By all appearances, he was a crackpot who thought about nothing but travelling the world and searching for treasures. She was the more sensible party. She knew what it truly meant to be an art historian. The piece was hers. She’s the one who went to Rome and Naples, who studied and researched the Medusa, and discovered the truth about it.”

“So then what’s his involvement? Why was Azcárate in Soria on the very day we were planning to freeze Amatriaín?”

“There’s no such thing as a coincidence. We were following Amatriaín and he was following Azcárate, and that’s why you were all in the same place that night. Don’t forget, my girl: investigation can take you anywhere. And we’re going right to the top.”

“But Paloma doesn’t have a diary; there’s nothing written down. I’m telling you I carried out a thorough search.”

“Not thorough enough,”
was the calm but cutting reply.
“The diary must be somewhere that only she knows about. I’m certain that if you’d had more time you’d have found it.”

“And what if she doesn’t have it at home? She might have it stored in an e-mail account. Or hidden somewhere else—the museum, for instance. How was I going to sneak into the Prado Museum?”

“That possibility had occurred to me, too. Don’t worry: Clark will take care of everything.”

“What do you think Clark can do?” she asked. Although she was often forced to work with her cousin, she’d never liked the brute. The feeling was mutual, especially since the day Clark took a boot to the groin for trying to get too friendly with her.

“Everything has been planned. I’ve put Clark in touch with a colleague of Paloma’s who can get the truth out of her.”

“Seriously? And who is this genius?”

“His name’s Oscar Preston. Apparently there’s some professional rivalry between him and Paloma. Clark shouldn’t have any trouble persuading him to get his hands on her research.”

“I still don’t understand why this document is so important. We already know what it says.”

“We know the conclusion, but it is of vital importance to our negotiations that we get our hands on the original source material. Dr. Galliano is aware of its existence and insists that our documentation include this proof of the bust’s link to the legend. It’s a quirk common among collectors—what can I say?”

Rosa nodded even though he couldn’t see her, but she didn’t feel convinced.

“You trust Clark?” she asked.

“I know you don’t like him, but he’s my nephew, and he has rarely failed us. He has orders to report to Leonardo as soon as he discovers anything.”

“He couldn’t discover a nail if it was hammered through his foot.”

“Rosa, please don’t talk about your cousin like that. He has always been loyal to us.”

Rosa gave up. Clark had always been loyal to the family. But what about her? She was travelling all over the world, risking her life and neglecting her duties at the art gallery—and with each day, her chances of becoming a respectable businesswoman were growing that much smaller.

“All right,” she finally said.

“Excellent. Now, let me rest awhile.”

There was a crackling sound and then the room was silent. Rosa and Leonardo stood there for a few moments, showing an almost servile respect for the voice that was now gone. Then they went back to the main deck and looked out at the town of Santa Teresa di Gallura on the Sardinian coast.