The Bone Chamber

exist? What’s to prevent someone from just going in and taking the damned map?”

“According to my research, historians believe he constructed his crypt to fall upon itself if anything is moved without benefit of the three keys.”

“And you believe this?”

“Di Sangro was considered the Leonardo da Vinci of the eighteenth century, and his job was to ensure that this map did not fall into the wrong hands-which makes perfect sense if, in fact, it does lead to something as deadly as a biblical plague and that plague could be used at will to kill one’s enemies. If someone should discover where this map had been hidden, then tried to remove it, death would be imminent.”

“Can we get past the curses and legends?” Griffin asked. “There’s got to be something more substantial.”

Giustino shook his head. “For Americans, legends are difficile to believe, probably because your country is so very young.”

“Giustino?” Griffin said.

“You want me to be silent?”

“Anything,” he said, fast losing his temper, “that will allow her to finish her story in a timely manner.”

“That,” Francesca said, “could take hours. You don’t understand-”

“You don’t understand,” he said, deciding the hell with keeping his cool. “We have less than twenty-four hours. I’ll give you five damned minutes to tell me what is going on.” He looked at his watch.

Francesca bit her lip, and looked around the room, as though trying to decide whether he was serious. No one moved, no one said a word. “I can’t possibly give you any more than a very rudimentary explanation in such a short time.”

“Not a problem,” Sydney said. “He’s a rudimentary kind of guy.”

Griffin made a show of consulting his watch. “You have four minutes and thirty seconds.”

“Fine. As I explained, Raimondo di Sangro, Prince of Sansevero, first Grand Master in Naples, was imprisoned and ordered by the King of Naples and the Vatican to reveal the names of each and every member of the lodge. Their ultimate goal was to learn who was in the inner circle and who might have knowledge of this fabled treasure, which had been hidden by the original Templar guardians when King Philip of France had every Templar in France imprisoned to take control of that treasure in 1307. The Templars went underground and were never heard from again-until the Freemasons emerged in the 1700s.”

“I don’t want a damned history lesson.”

“Then you don’t want the damned map, do you? Now if I might continue?” When he said nothing, she proceeded. “Di Sangro was brought in by the Vatican, questioned about his ties to Freemasonry, and forced to reveal the names of other Masons. Worried that his fellow Masons might give up some of the secrets of the inner circle, di Sangro moved the treasure to a new location, then entrusted the first key to his mentor from the Jesuit school he attended as a boy. Di Sangro gave explicit instructions about how and where the key was to be hidden, and how it should be passed on only to the next guardian. And that is a very, very basic explanation.”

“And who was this next guardian?”

“No one knows. The priest never gave up the information after he completed this quest of hiding the first key.”

“Then tell me what you do know.”

“According to my earlier research and confirmed by what I found in the Vatican archives, the Jesuit priest told his inquisitors truthfully that di Sangro had given him the first key to hide, and that key was hidden in the ossuary- the bone chamber-‘past the great pyramids of the Nile,’ and to look for the ‘graffito behind the wall beyond the tomb of the harpists.’ It was assumed that he was referring to Egypt, the Valley of the Kings, primarily because the Vatican’s search of the columbarium in Rome was fruitless. The priest also warned them that the map was well protected, and without all three keys, the finder would be crushed. According to the Vatican archives, he said he did not know the location of the other two keys, only di Sangro did.”

“Maybe this priest or di Sangro gave it to someone else? The next guardian.”

“As far as we know, both he and di Sangro died before the next guardian was chosen, and I don’t believe he would have ever entrusted the information to anyone else.”

“And so what you found in the columbarium?”

“I’m sure it was the first key.”

“But no second key at the crypt.”

“If it’s there, I can’t possibly say where or what it could be.”

“Do you know the location of the third key?”

“The general location of di Sangro’s hidden burial chamber is in Naples, but no one has been foolish enough to attempt to access it without having the three keys.”

“So this map everyone has been seeking has been sitting in some chamber for years on end, free for the taking?”

“If one has all three keys.”

“And what if the keys and this so-called curse or trap are merely a ruse?”

“Would you be willing to risk your life or another’s because you thought it was merely a ruse?”

“I’m not even sure the map exists,” Griffin said.

Sydney crossed her arms, gave a slight shrug. “Doesn’t matter what you think. Adami thinks it exists, which sort of makes it a moot point.”

Hell, he thought. Pyramids and bone chambers, and triangles carved on faces… Someone believed it was true. And if there was a trap, Adami had the advantage. Send in Griffin. If the trap worked, Griffin was dead…and so was Tex. “Get McNiel on the line,” he told Giustino. A moment later, Giustino handed him the phone. “Mac? Griffin. I have a…development on this third key.” He told McNiel what Francesca had said.

There was a long stretch of silence on the other end, and he was certain that like him, McNiel was having a hard time absorbing this. “How sure are you about this?”

“I’m not sure at all,” Griffin replied. “But as Fitzpatrick mentioned earlier, does it matter? Adami believes it to be true, therefore what choice do we have?”

More silence. Then, “When are you leaving for Naples?”

“First light.”

“If there’s any truth to this, that map isn’t to leave in unfriendly hands. Keep me informed.”

Griffin disconnected, then looked at Giustino. “You have almost everything ready to go here?”

“A team is on its way, adesso. We should be out within the hour.”

To Francesca he said, “Naples?”

“Naples.”

And just when he thought that was the end of any discussion on the matter, Sydney looked right at Francesca, and said, “You never did mention the name of this anthropologist you were speaking about…”

Great, he thought. How the hell was he going to get out of this one?

29

Sydney watched as Griffin quelled the professor into silence with one look, then asked Giustino to take the professor into the kitchen so that they could talk. If that wasn’t telling, the fact he could barely look Sydney in the eye was.

“Well?” Sydney asked.

“Your friend,” he said. “Dr. Natasha Gilbert was the anthropologist who had worked with Alessandra.”

“Tasha?” she said, and still had a hard time believing it. She wasn’t even sure what to say, what to think. It didn’t matter that she’d suspected this from the moment she’d heard Francesca mention that an anthropologist had been working with Alessandra. Too coincidental for it not to be she. Once again Sydney thought back to the beginning, the night she and Tasha went to dinner, the conversation they’d had.

She recalled thinking that something was off. Tasha had seemed jumpy, had purposefully deflected any