in spades.
Schillinger reached for his phone and placed a call to France.
“ Oui? ” the voice on the other end snapped. “ Que voulez-vous? ”
Every time Schillinger had to speak to Emil Rigaud, he had to swallow his bile. To think that a former United States ambassador could be treated so contemptuously by a decommissioned French army captain, was infuriating, to say the least. But keeping his temper, he explained what he had just learned.
“But how much do you think he knows,” Rigaud asked, “this David Franco?”
“He’s a very intelligent young man,” Schillinger said, vaguely proud that they shared an alma mater, “but he’s just getting started. At this point, I suspect he knows only a bit less than I do.”
Rigaud sighed, as if he’d heard this veiled complaint before. “We keep it that way for your own benefit, Joseph. If you knew more than what we tell you, if you took it upon yourself to start nosing around where you are not wanted, dire consequences could ensue.”
Schillinger, insulted, went silent.
“ Comprendez-vous? ”
“ Je comprends.”
“Good,” Rigaud said. “Now call Gropius in Antwerp. Ask him about the small Corot oil that has just come to light.”
Schillinger had always coveted a Corot. How did they know that? “Thank you, Emil.” Maybe he wasn’t such a bad sort after all. “But what would you like me to do about this David Franco? I have Ernst Escher with me here, and something,” he said, in a more sinister tone of voice, “could be done.”
“Do nothing. When we have to, we will take care of things from our end.”
“And Mrs. Van Owen? We move in similar circles. Her husband recently died. Perhaps I could become her friend and learn something more that way.” He felt absurdly like a young flunky, trying to ingratiate himself with the boss.
“Monsieur Linz has the situation well in hand,” Rigaud replied, as if lecturing a schoolboy.
“I’m sure he does, but I thought-”
“Stop thinking, will you? Monsieur Linz is a Grand Master, and you are playing at tic-tac-toe. Call Gropius.” And then the line went dead.
When the ambassador looked back toward the library, Franco was trudging up the steps like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders. What did he know that Schillinger didn’t? There were times, and this was one of them, when Schillinger felt that he was playing for penny antes when great stakes were being wagered all around him. Perhaps if he pursued his own interests a bit more strenuously, he would not only gain in the material sense-and his acquisitive instincts had not lessened with age-but he might find himself in a position to command some respect from that toady Rigaud and his mysterious master.
“Well?” Escher said, eagerly, from the front seat.
“Home,” Schillinger replied, and he could see his driver’s shoulders fall with disappointment. He had so hoped for a confrontation. As Escher pulled the car back into the city traffic, blasting his horn at a slow-moving school bus, the ambassador put in the call to Antwerp.
Chapter 8
The hood was left on his head until the coach had rumbled over the last bridge leading out of Florence and taken to one of the bumpy rural roads. After another hour or so, a pair of rough hands loosened the cord and yanked it off. Cellini gasped for a breath of the fresh country air.
One of his captors leaned back in the opposite seat and surveyed him with a crooked smile. The other two, he presumed, were up on top, driving the horses.
“They said we’d need ten men to subdue you,” the man said, glancing at the ropes binding his prisoner’s hands and feet. “And now look at you, trussed up like a prize pig.”
Though there were black muslin curtains in the open window, the moon was bright, and Cellini was able to see enough of the countryside to know what road they were on and to guess where they must be going.
Rome.
Which meant that these men, prepared to abduct a man of Cellini’s stature-a man in the current employ of the Duke de’Medici, the ruler of Florence-could only be in the service of the Pope himself, Paul III. No one else would have dared.
But for what offense? Cellini had served the Papacy well for years. He had fashioned the elaborate cope, or clasp, for the ermine gown of the previous Pope, Clement VII, and made a dozen other jeweled ornaments, silver ewers and basins, coins and medals, for the leaders of the Church. And when the Duke of Bourbon, and his army of mercenaries, had invaded and sacked Rome in 1527, who had been its ablest defender? It was Cellini who had manned the gun batteries of the Castel St. Angelo, where Clement had taken refuge for seven long months from the marauding troops-if those savages could be dignified with such a term. Indeed, it was Cellini to whom Clement had turned when all seemed lost and the hoard of papal treasures threatened to fall into enemy hands.
And now this new Pope, Paul III, had sent his ruffians to set fire to his studio and carry him off by force?
“Don’t you want to know who we are?” the man in the carriage said. He was an ugly brute, whose teeth had all grown in sideways so that his words came out with a whistling sound.
“You’re the scum the Pope sends to do his dirty work.”
The man laughed, clearly unoffended. “They said you were smart,” he conceded, digging at something in the corner of his mouth with a long, filthy fingernail. “I see that now. I’m Jacopo.” He flicked the offending particle to the floor.
“But why like this? If the Pope wished to see me, he had only to send a request.”
“We are the request. He requests that you throw yourself at his holy feet and beg him not to hang you from the Torre di Nona.”
“For what?”
Ignoring his question, Jacopo lifted the curtain and stared out at the rolling hills of Tuscany. “It’s nice up here,” he said. “I’ve never been this far from Rome.” He wiped some spittle from his chin with the back of his hand-a gesture Cellini imagined must be routine.
“Well? Are you going to answer me?”
“You’ll find out soon enough,” he said, before settling his head against the rocking wall of the cabin and dropping into a deep, snoring sleep.
And there he was right. Most carriages would have put in for the night, but this one, with lighted lanterns swinging from the four corners of its roof, managed to drive all night, even at the risk of running off the road or injuring the horses. At dawn, they pulled into a post house, and though Cellini was allowed some bread and wine and a chance to put a cold compress on his head, he was bundled back into the carriage as soon as the new horses had been harnessed. Jacopo took the reins, and one of his accomplices-a wiry fellow with a huge, livid bruise on one cheek and a blackened eye-assumed his place inside the cabin.
“What happened to you?” Cellini said, knowing full well. “You look like you got hit with a bucket.”
The man spat in Cellini’s face. “If I wasn’t under orders to deliver you in one piece, I’d break you in two.”
“And if my hands weren’t tied, I’d give you another black eye to match the one you’ve got.”
The carriage rolled on for several days, until Cellini felt that his back would break from the constant jouncing. With his hands and feet tied-these scoundrels must have been expecting a good bounty for his safe delivery-there was little he could do to make himself comfortable, and the prospect of whatever awaited him in Rome was hardly encouraging. As they finally approached the Eternal City, the roads became smoother and better paved, but they also became more crowded, with shepherds bringing their flocks to market, and rickety wagons carrying barrels of wine from Abruzzo, wheels of cheese from the Enza Valley, and loads of the distinctive blue- gray marble from high in the Apennines. Cellini could hear the driver-right then it was Bertoldo, the one with the sword who had first clapped him on the shoulder in Florence-shouting, “Make way! We come on order of His
