busy street outside. Instead, she watched the news on the TV, saw the view of the Tiber River, with the familiar sight of the Vatican in the background. The camera shot moved to a close-up of a bridge in the foreground filled with pedestrians walking past statues of angels. The words
“He will call when he can,” Marc said, intent on the news. He took a drink from his water bottle, then used it to point at the television. “Another one on the Ponte Sant’Angelo. What is that, three suicides this month?”
Giustino adjusted his earphones, then held his hand up. “Quiet. I think I have something.” Sydney looked over, saw him adjust a slide control. “We’re still in.”
Marc shut off the TV. He and Sydney walked up, listened in as Giustino put the audio on speaker, and she could make out someone speaking Italian. Giustino took notes as a backup in case the recording equipment failed. “We’re definitely in,” he said, then gave a gratified shout, and slammed his hand on the table.
“What’s he saying?” Sydney whispered to Marc, watching as Giustino took notes.
“Something about a shipment to Tunisia, once the money is transferred. They expect their new scientist to help in the preparation, as he is now being cooperative…It’s Balraj. They have Dr. Balraj…”
“Balraj?”
“He was kidnapped. We thought he was dead. It is, as you say, very big. That’s what we were looking for. We knew Adami was trying to build bioweapons. We didn’t know where he-” His face paled as he looked at Giustino. “Did I hear that correctly?”
“What is it?” Sydney asked, just as she heard laughing on the monitor.
He waved for her to be quiet, while Giustino played back the digital recording. She listened to the rapid Italian, understanding next to nothing, until an echo of what she’d heard on the news, the Ponte Sant’Angelo, stood out.
“They laugh about this report of a suicide off the bridge, and then they discuss what will happen when we-I assume they speak of us here-investigate this death at the…how do you say it? Morgue. And this other man, he asks how will they get us to look for the agent there. The first man says that when news of the death is out, we will know. They stripped him and removed his face.”
“His face…?” she repeated. “Tex?”
Giustino said, “What else can we believe? They say agent. They must have guessed as much when Griffin arrived at the villa to find you.”
Marc sank into his chair, burying his face in his hands. “We must verify this.”
She stood there for several seconds, while the news washed over her, bringing with it an enormous load of guilt, even though she couldn’t have known that the guy from the BMW was Adami’s cousin, or that he would recognize her. Had Griffin not come back for them, she’d be there, too…
Sydney walked to the front window, stared out at the great baroque cupola of Sant’Andrea della Valle, trying to recall what Marc had told her of it-anything to get her mind off Tex. After several seconds she turned to the men in the radio room. “Can we get in touch with Griffin?”
“I’ve already tried,” Marc said. “All we can do is wait for him to check in. We can, however, let HQ know.” He picked up the phone, hit a number on speed dial. When the phone was answered on the other end, he asked for Ron McNiel. She wasn’t sure why she should be surprised that he answered to the same boss as Griffin, which made her wonder who McNiel answered to. When Marc finished his conversation with HQ, he hung up and seemed to sink in his chair.
“
“Griffin is due to check in with the director in about an hour. McNiel wants to be the one to tell him.”
“For that we thank God. I do not look forward to sweeping up broken glass.”
“In the meantime, we prepare for Tunisia come morning,” Marc said. “We need to destroy the bioweapons.”
And for the next hour, the three of them sat in that room, waiting for word, and Sydney’s stomach knotted every time she heard a noise on the monitor, wondering if it was Griffin. Finally the phone rang. Marc pounced on it, answered, “
The news did nothing to lessen the tension in the room, something that increased tenfold when Griffin walked in the door two hours later, strode past the three of them to the garden doors without a word, his face grim, his eyes cold, hard. He opened one of the double doors, stepped out to the terrace, then pushed the door shut behind him with enough force to warn the others off. If any of them harbored the thought that it might not be Tex at the morgue, their hopes were dashed as they watched Griffin.
For thirty minutes he didn’t move, just stood there with his back to them, looking out at the forest of television antennas-transmuted into gold by the November sun-toward the cupola of San Carlo ai Catinari in the distance. Across the courtyard, two cats were stalking a pigeon on the weed-choked tiles of a rooftop. Inside, no one said a thing. Sydney and the others pretended great interest in the radio monitors, even though there had been no traffic since the last report of Adami’s men talking about the morgue. But when Griffin didn’t move after a half hour, Sydney said, “Someone should go to him.”
“One must stay at one’s post,” Giustino said.
“And what if he needs help translating?” Marc said.
“Translating what?” Sydney said. “You all speak Italian.”
Marc shrugged. “You never know when a foreigner might walk into the room. Why don’t you go?”
“It should be someone he knows. And likes.”
The two men looked at each other, both shaking their heads. “His temper I know well,” Marc said. “
Giustino said, “With his bare hand we have seen him break a man’s arm.”
“What’s another trip to the hospital?” Sydney said. “I’ll go.”
She walked up to the terrace doors, hesitated at the thought that Griffin might blame her for his friend’s death. One look at him told her otherwise. It was clear he was blaming himself. Steeling herself for whatever might happen, she opened the door and stepped out.
“Leave.”
Sydney ignored his order, closing the door behind her. At first she merely stood beside him, shoulder to shoulder. The sun had slipped behind the bell tower that graced the terrace garden of the safe house. Silhouetted against the silver incandescent sky, chimney swifts were darting into their nests. Gradually the sky’s luminescence was dissolving into azure, and finally she dared a glance, looked up at him, saw his attention fixed on a bat flitting in the distance. “I’m sorry,” she ventured.
“I said leave.”
“If you wanted to be left alone, you wouldn’t have come back here.”
He didn’t respond, but neither did he tell her to leave again, and after several long moments, she reached up, put her hand on his shoulder. He stiffened, as though her touch repelled him, and she wondered if he really did blame her. And then he reached up, grabbed her wrist, his grip strong, sure, and she thought of what Marc said, about him breaking a man’s arm when he lost his temper…
But Griffin didn’t move, just held her wrist in his hand, held it tight, as though he couldn’t let go.
“Do you know what happened?” she asked.
Several seconds ticked by and she thought he wasn’t going to answer, then, “Do you know that Freemasons take an oath of secrecy? ‘To all of this I most solemnly and sincerely promise and swear-’” His voice caught. She glanced up at him, saw his eyes closed, his face taut, his jaw clenched. But a moment later, he continued, saying, “The oath is supposed to be metaphorical. The metaphorical penalty of having one’s throat cut across, one’s tongue torn out by its roots and buried in the rough sands of the sea at low-water mark, should one ever knowingly or willingly violate that oath.”
Sydney froze. “Tell me they didn’t…?” She couldn’t even finish the thought, felt sick to her stomach.
“They did. And like Alessandra, his face was removed, as well as his fingertips. The medical examiner said it
