The Bone Chamber

He glanced in his mirror, saw the car skid as it rounded the Garibaldi statue after them. As the mounted carabinieri spurred their horses, the crowd was just becoming aware that something was amiss, that there was more than just the bells tolling the hour.

Griffin stabbed the gas, careened around the hairpin turns down the hill. The gray car was still on them. He made a diversionary cross of the Tiber River on the Principe Amedeo Bridge. Their only hope was to lose the car in the maze of Renaissance streets.

Tunisia

Marc heard the guard’s footsteps as he closed in on the hiding place beneath the desk. Kill or be killed. He braced his knife on his thigh, heard the phone ringing, the damned phone that was likely to ruin an entire operation. Unless Rafiq or Lisette could figure something out-the heart attack scenario wasn’t flying. He heard Lisette calling out that her husband needed help. The faltering footstep of the guard, weighing duty over honor.

And then Marc’s gaze caught on the phone cord draped down the side of the desk…

Hell. How’d he not think of that?

He reached behind him, unplugged the damned phone. Silence. The guard stopped midstep, mumbled something, then turned back the way he’d come. Through the one-way glass, Marc could see Lisette hovering over Rafiq, playing the panicked helpless woman to the hilt. The guard came out, and together they assisted Rafiq to the passenger side of the car, Marc’s cue to leave once he photographed the schedule and returned it to the cabinet.

And he was just about to make his exit when he saw something in the monitor, the top left quarter that flashed on the interior of a warehouse on the premises. It was there and gone, its image replaced by another location, and he had to wait until it cycled back to the warehouse to see if he’d really seen what he’d thought was there.

Or was it his imagination?

Definitely not his imagination. The very sight drenched him with sweat. That was the warehouse they were blowing to smithereens. It took him a moment to rouse himself, realize that nothing was happening if he didn’t get his ass out of there so they could figure out what to do next.

But as he slipped out of the guard shack, then on past the cement barricade, he couldn’t shake the image from his mind.

That of a man heaped on a pallet, his face bloodied, his tux torn and dirty, his cowboy boots covered in mud.

Tex?

But he was supposed to be dead. Griffin had identified him at the morgue.

No, he realized. Griffin had made an identification of a man whose face had been removed…

21

Francesca sat in the back of the van, gripping her briefcase as they went around yet another turn. The man called Griffin assured them that he’d at last lost the tail, and she finally felt as though she could breathe. Until the moment he answered Father Dumas’s query as to where he was going to take them.

“My opinion,” Griffin said, “they’ll be safer in the States. We take the professor to the airport with Special Agent Fitzpatrick.”

“You don’t have any say,” Francesca said. “I have a deadline. I stand to lose my entire grant if I don’t have my research finished and to the academic press in time.”

“Impossible,” Griffin replied. “The men who tried to kill you up at the Passegiata will stop at nothing to get what they want. They’ve seen you. No doubt they’re already investigating who you might be, if they haven’t already discovered it.”

“I am not leaving, and I’m fairly certain that you have no authority to make me.”

Griffin looked at Dumas. “Maybe next time you can put in a good word and keep me from being saddled with stubborn women?”

“Come to church on Sunday and I’ll see what I can do.”

“Trust me. You wouldn’t want to hear my confession.”

Griffin checked each of the mirrors, then pulled over.

“Why are we stopped?” Francesca asked.

“To change my insignia. They’ll be looking for the phone company. I’d rather not make it easy.” He got out and walked around the van. A moment later, the side door opened, and he slid in two large magnetic signs, then removed two others that read “ENEL,” for the electric company. A couple of minutes later, he was back in the driver’s seat, looking back at Francesca. “Convince me why we should let you stay.”

“As I explained, I must finish my research to keep from losing my grant.”

“You realize after this afternoon that it isn’t safe for you to return to the academy? Not until this matter is resolved.”

She didn’t even want to think what methods they’d use to resolve it. “But all my notes are there.” When that didn’t faze him, she added, “And I need to use the library there.”

“What is it you’re researching?”

She decided that Griffin didn’t trust her, nor was he going to buy any simple explanations. It was true she had some research to do, but not for the reasons given. A partial truth was best in cases like this. “Historical burial sites.”

“And the academy has the only library suited for this?”

“No, of course not.”

He looked over at Dumas, then back at Francesca. “The Vatican has a library, doesn’t it?”

“Of course,” she said.

“Won’t it do?”

It would more than do, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to seem too eager. “I believe so.”

To Dumas, he asked, “Will she be safe there?”

“I will make sure of it.”

“Then it’s settled. You stay with Dumas. Now about this package Alessandra sent…”

Francesca said, “Alessandra was explicit on the code, and that until you answered to it, I wasn’t to give out anything.”

“There is no code. Alessandra’s head was filled with fantasies.”

“The code or no package,” Francesca said.

Dumas smiled.

Griffin, however, looked more than annoyed as he said, “All for one and one for all. Alessandra had taken it upon herself to liken us to the Three Musketeers. Alessandra, Dumas, and me, of course.”

“Three Musketeers?” Sydney replied, looking at the both of them. Neither Dumas nor Griffin said a thing. “That means that Alessandra was working with you?”

Dumas shifted in his seat, his eyes downcast, as Griffin said, “Dumas recruited her.”

“And you agreed,” Father Dumas pointed out.

“Since by then it was too late.”

Francesca’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Dumas. “You’re a spy? Housed in the Vatican?”

“Spy is a harsh word. As I explained earlier, I am looking out for the Vatican’s interests, which happen to sometimes coincide with those of…certain governments that have embassies residing here,” he said, casting a dark look toward Griffin.

Francesca rested her hand on the package Alessandra had sent. “I find it interesting that she chose to assist something she had come to detest. Governments and their machinations.”

“Actually,” Dumas said, “she came to us because of government machinations. She had overheard a few things by some men who attended her father’s parties at the embassy, and-”

“And now it matters little,” Griffin said, though his expression told Francesca it mattered very much. “What does matter is proving who killed Alessandra, and continuing the work she started.”

In this at least Francesca recognized his sincerity, and she finally removed the package from her