bargain and returned Tom’s watch.
Inside, a thin carpet of dirt and leaves covered the black-and-white mosaic floor and lay pooled in the room’s dark corners. At the far end stood a black marble altar with the name
The room was empty.
‘Where the hell have they gone?’ Archie exclaimed, rapping the walls to make sure they were solid.
Tom examined the floor with a frown.
‘How did they expect to bury anyone in here?’
‘What do you mean?’ Dominique frowned.
‘It’s a family vault. There should be a slab or something that can be lifted up.’
‘No inscriptions either,’ Archie chimed in. ‘Not even a full set of dates.’
‘And the one that’s here doesn’t fit,’ Dominique pointed out. ‘This graveyard wasn’t used until the 1730s. No one would have been buried here in 1696.’
‘It could be a birth year,’ Tom suggested, crouching down in front of the altar. ‘Maybe the second date has come away and…’
The words caught in his throat. As he’d rubbed the marble, his fingers had brushed against the final number, causing it to move slightly. He glanced up at the others to check that they had seen this too, then reached forward to turn it, the number spinning clockwise and then clicking into place once it was upside down so that it now read as a nine.
Archie frowned. ‘1699? That doesn’t make no sense either?’
‘Not 1699-1969,’ Tom guessed, turning each of the previous three numbers so that they also clicked into place upside down. ‘The year the Caravaggio was stolen.’
There was the dull thud of what sounded like a restraining bolt being drawn back from somewhere in front of them. Then, with the suppressed hiss of a hydraulic ram, the massive altar began to lift up and out, pivoting high above their heads, stopping a few inches below the coffered ceiling.
They jumped back, swapping a surprised look. Ahead of them, a flight of steps disappeared into the ground.
SEVENTY-EIGHT
20th March-10.37 p.m.
The steps led down to a brick-lined corridor set on a shallow incline. It was dimly lit, the sodium lighting suspended from the vaulted ceiling at irregular intervals forming pallid pools of orange light that barely penetrated the cloying darkness. In places the water had forced its way in, the ceiling flowering with calcite rings that dripped on to the glistening concrete floor.
Treading carefully, their guns aiming towards the darkness into which the three armed men who had preceded them down here had presumably disappeared, they crept down the tunnel. Tom had the vague sense that they were following the contour of the Aventine as it rose steeply to their right, although it was hard to be sure, the passage tracing a bewildering course as it zigzagged violently between the graveyard’s scattered crypts and burial chambers. Eventually, after about two hundred yards, it ended, opening up into a subterranean network of interlinking rooms supported by steel props.
‘It’s Roman,’ Dominique whispered, stooping to look at a small section of the frescoed wall which hadn’t crumbled away. ‘Probably a private villa. Someone rich, because this looks like it might have been part of a bath complex.’ She pointed at a small section of the tessellated floor which had given way, revealing a four-foot cavity underneath, supported by columns of terracotta tiles. ‘They used to circulate hot air through the
They tiptoed through into the next room, their path now lit by spotlights strung along a black flex and angled up at the ceiling, the amber glow suffusing the stone walls. Dominique identified this as the
Picking their way through the thicket of metal supports propping the roof up, they arrived at the main part of the buried villa, the tiled floor giving way to intricate mosaics featuring animals, plants, laurel-crowned gods and a dizzying array of boldly coloured geometric patterns. Here, some restoration work appeared to have been done: the delicate frescoes of robed Roman figures and carefully rendered animals showed signs of having been pieced back together from surviving fragments, the missing sections filled in and then plastered white so that the fissures between the pieces resembled cracks in the varnish on an old painting.
An angry shout echoed towards them through the empty rooms.
‘You think Santos is already here?’ Dominique whispered.
‘Allegra first,’ Tom insisted. ‘We worry about Santos and the painting when she’s safe.’
They tiptoed carefully to the doorway of a small vaulted chamber. The walls here had been painted to mimic blood-red and ochre marble panels, while the ceiling had been covered in geometric shapes filled with delicately rendered birds and mischievous-looking satyrs. And crouching on the floor with their backs to them, checking their weapons and speaking in low, urgent voices, were the three men they’d seen earlier.
Tom locked eyes with Archie and Dominique; both of them nodded back. On a silent count of three, they leapt inside and caught the three men completely cold.
‘
It was Orlando-the priest from the Amalfi. Tom returned his hateful glare unblinkingly. Strangely, the murderous rage that had enveloped him in Monte Carlo had vanished; he felt almost nothing for him now. Not compared to Santos. Not with Allegra’s life at stake.
‘I’ll watch them,’ Dominique reassured him, waving the men back into the corner of the room with her gun.
‘You sure?’
‘Go.’
With a nod, Tom and Archie continued on, a bright light and the low rumble of voices drawing them across an adjacent chamber decorated with yellow columns, to the next room where they crouched on either side of the doorway.
Edging his head inside, Tom could see that they were on the threshold of the most richly decorated space of all, the floor covered in an elaborate series of interlocking mosaic medallions, each one decorated with a different mythological creature. The frescoes, meanwhile, looked almost entirely intact and mimicked the interior of a theatre, the left-hand wall painted to look like a stage complete with narrow side doors that stood ajar as if opening on to the wings. To either side, comic and tragic masks peered through small windows that revealed a painted garden vista.
‘Look,’ Archie whispered excitedly. Tom followed his gaze and saw that a large recess, perhaps nine feet high, six across and three deep, had been hacked out of the far wall. And, hanging within this, behind three inches of blast-proof glass, was the Caravaggio. It was unframed, although its lack of adornment seemed only to confirm its raw, natural power.
‘That’s Faulks,’ Archie whispered.
At the centre of the room, over a large mosaic of a serpent-headed Medusa, was a circular table inlaid with small squares of multicoloured marble. The man Archie had pointed out was clutching an umbrella and standing in front of three other men who were seated around the table as if they were interviewing him.
‘The guy on the left is De Luca,’ Tom breathed, recognising the badger streak running through his hair and the garish slash of a Versace tie. ‘And the one in the middle who’s speaking now…’ He broke off, his chest tightening as he realised that this was the face of the man he’d overheard on the yacht in Monaco. The same man who’d ordered Jennifer’s death. ‘That’s Santos.’
