We were about to call for help.” He wasn’t enjoying the lie.
Bescondi looked lost, visibly trying to make sense of the situation. Reilly knew he wouldn’t remember anything—not yet, anyway. But he would. And soon.
“Stay there,” Reilly told him. “We’ll go get help.”
The archivist nodded.
Reilly shot Sharafi a “let’s-go” flick of the head, his eyes darting discreetly to the codex he was carrying.
The Iranian got the message. He tucked the bulky book under his arm, away from the archivist, as he sidestepped around him and followed Reilly.
They reached the air lock. The two sets of sliding doors seemed to mock them as they plodded through their slow, synchronized two-step—then the outer doors finally parted and Reilly and the Iranian professor were in the reception area. The guard was already on his feet and alert, his brow furrowed, clearly reading the urgent tension in their movement and wondering why the archivist wasn’t with them.
“Monsignor Bescondi—something happened to him, he just fainted,” Reilly blurted, pointing at the archive while doing his best to shield Sharafi from the guard’s sight line. “He needs a doctor.”
The guard reached for his radio with one hand while holding his arm out, the heel of his palm in Reilly and the Iranian’s faces, signaling them to stay put. “One moment,” he ordered.
Reilly didn’t let up. “He needs a doctor, do you understand? He needs one now,” he insisted, his finger still jabbing the air, trying to spur the guard into going through the air lock.
The guard hesitated, mindful about leaving the two visitors unattended but needing to check on the archivist, while—
—INSIDE THE ARCHIVE, THE ARCHIVIST had just started to feel some glimmers of clarity and cast his gaze down the aisle to his right, then over to his left—and saw the messy stacks of codices and box files cluttering the floor.
The significance of their location speared through his dulled senses with the ferocity of a defibrillator. Dumbstruck, gasping with shock, he clambered to his feet and stumbled over to the air lock, reaching it in time to see Agent Reilly and his Iranian colleague in heated debate with the guard. The groggy archivist hit the doors’ command button, then started slamming his hands repeatedly against the air lock’s inner door while waiting for it to slide open, his cries for help bouncing off the reinforced glass and echoing deafeningly around him, and—
—EERILY MUTED FROM THE RECEPTION AREA by the air lock, the surreal sight snagging the guard’s attention.
The guard’s reflexes were quick—his stance went all tense and feral as he reached for the handgun in his holster while bringing up his mike to sound the alert, two actions that Reilly had to stop in their tracks if he and Sharafi were going to make it out of there. And though the guard was, like all the other members of the smallest army in the world, a soldier who’d been trained in the Swiss Army, he was a split second slower than Reilly, who launched himself at him, thrusting his left arm out to ward off his gun while using his other hand to wrench the radio from his opponent and fling it out of reach. The guard swung his free arm back at Reilly, the uppercut aimed at his head. Reilly avoided it by leaning back and countered with one of his own that slammed into the guard’s rib cage and winded him. The guard’s right hand slackened under the blow—enough for Reilly to wrest his handgun from him while ramming his body weight into him and shoving him back onto his desk. Reilly watched the gun skitter across the hard floor, away from the guard, who looked groggy from his collision with the desk—and turned and grabbed Sharafi.
“Move,” Reilly yelled as he dragged him forward and bolted for the stairs.
Chapter 5
They burst onto the ground floor and flew across the palatial halls unchallenged, though Reilly knew it wouldn’t last. Sure enough, within seconds, whistles and heavy footfalls were chasing after them—the Swiss Guard from below had recovered, and he wasn’t alone anymore—while up ahead, at the far end of the third chamber, four carabinieri were charging their way with raised handguns.
“This way,” he yelled to the Iranian professor as they flew through another opulent room and into the contemporary halls of the new wing of the Chiaramonti Museum. There were many more visitors around, turning the vast space into an obstacle course of people of all sizes that Reilly and his accomplice had to slalom through, leaving a trail of startled screams and indignant outbursts behind them, knowing that any collision would be disastrous. Behind, their pursuers had merged into one frantic pack and were cutting through the crowd, hot on their heels.
Reilly saw a main entrance looming on the right and veered toward it—only to stumble to a halt when three other cops stormed in through its big glass doors. He glanced left—there was another exit on the other side of the hall, directly opposite it. He scrambled toward it, with the Iranian tucked in right behind him, and blew out of its doors and onto an open-air terrace-like landing that was at the top of a pair of ceremonial, mirror-image flights of stairs.
The summer heat hit him like the exhaust of a transit bus. Sucking in big gulps of air, Reilly turned to Sharafi, hands beckoning. “Give me the book, it’s slowing you down.”
The Iranian was disconcertingly composed as he shook his head and clenched the book tight. “I’m fine with it. Which way?”
“No idea, but we can’t stay here,” Reilly answered before bounding down the stairs, his feet landing hard on every third step.
He heard the squawk of a two-way radio, and glancing over the marble balustrade, he glimpsed the caps of a couple more carabinieri who were surging up the lower flight of steps, aiming to box them in. In a second or so, they’d be face-to-face with the Italian cops on the landing—not ideal.
He steeled himself and banked off and hurdled the handrail, clearing it and landing heavily on top of the cops, knocking them down while clearing a path for the professor.
“Keep going,” he yelled to Sharafi as the downed carabinieri flailed around him, lashing out and grabbing at his arms and legs—but he managed to free himself from their grip and was soon hurtling down after the professor.
They were side by side as they sprinted across the manicured lawn of the central courtyard before ducking into a barrel-vaulted passageway that cut through the building and led back out onto the open ground of the Stradone del Giardini and the long row of parked cars on either side of it. Reilly paused, allowing a handful of precious seconds to flit by, scrutinizing the vicinity, searching for someone getting in or out of a car, a motorcycle, anything, just willing an opportunity to present itself, a chance to jack something with wheels to get them the hell out of there. But they were out of luck—there was no movement anywhere, no chirps of a remote control deactivating a car alarm, no obvious target for him—and then another clutch of carabinieri appeared, charging at them from the far end of the road, maybe a hundred yards away.
He racked his brain, trying to get a lock on his bearings and compare it to the map of the Vatican that he hadn’t had enough time to study properly before setting off on this ill-fated incursion. He knew where they were— roughly—but the holy city was haphazardly laid out, a maze of intersecting buildings and winding paths that would stump even the most orientation-ally gifted. No escape route epiphanies popped up, and his survival instinct took over again, spurring his legs forward and propelling him away from the oncoming danger.
