Sydney typed in the combination, let it sit there a moment, her finger poised over the enter key. It seemed they all held their breaths. What if she was wrong? What if she was the one responsible for the loss of all the information? She glanced at Griffin. He gave a slight nod. Reassurance. She needed that, and she pressed the key, felt Griffin tense beside her. How long would it take to send the computer to forensics, recover the info, if she screwed this up?
Suddenly the picture disintegrated into pixels that dropped to the bottom of the screen. What was left was a white background, with a few lines of type, reading: “Observe with an attentive eye and with veneration the urns of the heroes endowed with glory and reflect with astonishment on the precious homage to the divine work and the tomb of the deceased and when you have given due honor, contemplate profoundly and distance yourself.”
“What does it mean?” Sydney asked.
“It’s the translation from the side entrance to di Sangro’s chapel,” Francesca said.
“Then we’re on the right track.”
“Yes, but we knew that. This is something else. Almost as important as the third key. Maybe it is the third key. I remember overhearing a phone conversation she had with her friend, the anthropologist, talking about this very thing.”
Griffin ignored the dark look Sydney tossed him at the mention of Tasha’s occupation. “This conversation you overheard,” he said. “Do you recall what Alessandra or this friend of hers
“A hidden meaning. Subtext,” Francesca replied. “Now that I think about it, I wonder if that has something to do with the second key, the one we couldn’t find.” She gave Xavier a brief rundown on their trip through the Capuchin Crypt, then added, “Di Sangro was all about hidden meanings. His entire chapel is filled with Masonic symbolism and iconology.”
“So we have to interpret it right or we’re caught in this trap he’s set up?”
“Exactly.”
And Xavier said, “We believe he modeled it much like the deadfall traps in the ancient Egyptian tombs. That may be why everyone thought Egypt was the location of the first key.”
Griffin leaned back in his chair, pushing his coffee aside. “Deadfall. As in a wall falls on top of someone?”
“More like the entire tomb comes crashing down on the tomb raiders,” Francesca said.
“That’s my theory,” Xavier said. “I also think that when you find this hidden crypt, it’ll lead you to di Sangro’s body. And the treasure map. But Alessandra said that maybe the plagues were hidden there, and that’s why she wanted to connect with Dr. Balraj. She wanted to be prepared for either scenario. So whatever we find, extreme caution needs to be taken.” He pointed to a location on his map of the tunnels. “This,” he said, “is where we will enter. The basilica houses the entrance to the tunnels behind its altar. We have a lot of ground to cover. According to my cousin, who works for the city, all of Naples and the surrounding area sits upon a honeycomb of about a million square meters of caves, grottos, tunnels, and catacombs, all carved from volcanic sandstone,
Griffin’s brows raised slightly at the number. “And where is this crypt located?”
To which Xavier replied, “Hard to say. Countless churches and cathedrals in Italy were built atop older churches, which commonly were built atop underground crypts for burial purposes. There’s a lot of bones down there.”
And Francesca said, “Everything I have heard on the keys directs us to a bone chamber of some sort. Since the first key was an inscription by a skull, and that led us to the Capuchin Crypt, I have to think we may be looking for another skull, or if it is truly leading us to a Templar map, a skull and crossbones.”
Sydney glanced over at the computer and the phrase from the chapel entrance. “How does this old quote help us?”
“That,” Francesca said, “is what we hope to find out once we get to the right location.”
“In other words,” Griffin said, copying the phrase onto a napkin. “Like the missing second key, you don’t have the answer.”
Francesca shook her head. “No. Not yet. But if time is of the essence, then what choice do we have?”
“No choice,” Griffin said.
Xavier smoothed out the map. “Here is the last place I was able to explore, using the coordinates we pieced together before-” He cleared his throat, took a breath. “-the last time I saw Alessandra.”
Sydney wanted to reach out, touch his hand, tell him it would be okay, but she knew it was a promise she couldn’t make, and he continued with “This is where di Sangro lived. And over here is a long section of tunnel that was known to have led to an underground marketplace back in the first and second century A.D. Di Sangro spent his fortune retrofitting his church, but it’s believed he was also retrofitting the caverns below it near that marketplace. It’s here that makes the most sense, because they could enter the tunnel without being seen from the outside, work as long as they needed, and no one’s the wiser.”
Griffin studied the map. “Do
“Legend aside, it would have taken a genius to design it, and the expertise of master masons to pull it off. Di Sangro was a genius in his own right. He ruined his own reputation, allowed himself to be shunned by society to protect the greater good, guarding this map. Which is a long way of saying yes, I do believe it. Without the key, anyone who enters the cache and disturbs the treasure will be crushed.”
“And these other paths,” Griffin said. “Where do they lead?”
“To here,” Xavier replied, pointing to each direction on the map. “This is my best estimation of where we want to end up. My cousin and I have done some exploring at this location, but we hit a dead end going down into a cistern. This time, I think we need to go up further in the tunnel, not down.”
Griffin leaned in for a better view. “It doesn’t look all that far.”
“Even so, I have to warn you, we’ll be heading into an area that, if you’re the least bit claustrophobic or afraid of the dark or heights, might make you uncomfortable.”
Okay, probably not the time for Sydney to mention her fear of the dark. But that’s what flashlights were for. Aloud, she said, “Heights? We’re going underground.”
“When you’re hanging from a rope with nothing beneath your feet but unending darkness and over a hundred- foot drop, it really doesn’t matter what you call it.”
At which point she had to remind herself this wasn’t about her and what she feared, especially when Griffin said, “You’re welcome to stay behind.”
“So you can get all the credit for rescuing Tex? Don’t think so.”
“To the tunnels, then.” He smiled, but it was grim, and she gathered that traveling to the center of the earth wasn’t his idea of fun, either.
Xavier’s cousin, Alfredo, met them at the basilica, handing them each a small pack containing extra rope, a hard hat with headlamp, gloves, water, and a flashlight from the back of his utility van. He eyed each of them, judging their sizes, then gave each a bright orange jumpsuit with reflective strips across the chest and back and sleeves. Apparently he had plenty to spare. “It’s a steady fifty degrees down there. Chilly. These will help keep you warm, and protect your skin and clothes from those tight spaces.”
Sydney took the pack, realized it was too small to put her travel bag with her sketchbook into it, and decided to leave the travel bag behind in Alfredo’s van. She pulled on the jumpsuit, then started toward the entrance to the catacombs beneath the basilica, when Griffin stopped her. “Take these,” he said, handing her a folding knife and a semiauto from his backpack, the Beretta they’d taken from their earlier assailants.
From the weight of it, it felt fully loaded, and she ejected the magazine, saw there were fifteen rounds. “You think it’s Adami’s men following us?”
“Like his man said when I called him at the train station to ask that very question, he has no need to follow when he knows where we are going, and where we’ll end up.”
“If it’s not his men, then who?”
“Someone who knew enough to follow us on a train to Naples-which makes me wonder if it isn’t whoever stole the professor’s computer. We’re assuming we lost the man at the hotel, and we got to Xavier first, but as of now, we have no way of knowing that Xavier or his cousin were not being followed.”
Sydney glanced over at Xavier and Alfredo, who were helping Francesca with her jumpsuit. Suddenly the
