Nor did he have time to ask Dr. Valetta before they both heard Olivia explode from the end of the long gallery.
“What is he doing here?” she said. “Get out of there!” she shouted, and two or three researchers looked up from their seats in horror at this gross breach of decorum.
Storming into the alcove, her familiar overcoat flapping wide, her dark eyes darted around, swiftly taking in the dismantled stack of books, the loss of the borrower cards, and the look of confusion on David’s face.
“I can explain everything,” she said to David.
“I already have,” Dr. Valetta put in dryly.
“Oh, I’m sure you have.” Turning back to David, she said, “This man is just a functionary, another cipher”- she snapped her fingers to indicate what a trifle she was dealing with-“like all the others, who did the bidding of their overlords. Who knows who he really works for? God save us from the bureaucrats who clung to their desks while the Huns sacked the city!”
“All right,” Valetta said, “I’ve heard it all before, and I don’t need to hear it all again. Pack your things, Signorina, and get out of my library-”
“ My library?” Olivia exclaimed.
“-and understand that you will never again receive permission to enter here.”
“But I am employed by Signor Franco,” she said, holding her hands out toward David.
“I don’t care if you are sent here by the Pope himself. You’re not getting in.” The director turned slightly, to block out Olivia and address solely David. “You are welcome to continue to use our facilities, so long as I believe you are confining yourself to legitimate fields of study. And as long as you are working alone.”
David was incensed himself. No one had ever suggested censoring, or even monitoring, his work. “What are you saying? That you plan to approve, or disapprove, of my requests for material from now on?”
“Absolutely. And from that I will know whether or not you’re pursuing your own ends, or trying to assist Signorina Levi in hers.”
“That’s outrageous.”
“That’s necessity.”
“Then you won’t be seeing me here again, either,” David said, calling his bluff. In point of fact, he had already decided to follow the mirror, copy or not, to France, but it didn’t hurt to make a bold stand. “And I’ll be sure to tell Mrs. Van Owen that her donations would be better spent elsewhere.”
For a second, Dr. Valetta looked stricken. “As I have said, it is only Signorina Levi who has broken-”
“We’ll be packed and gone in five minutes,” David said, turning his back on him. Even Olivia looked surprised at this turn of events. “Gather your things,” he barked at her, and she quickly swept her pencils and pads into a pile on one side of the table.
Once that was all done, they walked in shame, like Adam and Eve being expelled from the Garden of Eden, down the length of the reading room, past the astonished stares of the other occupants, down the steps, and out into the courtyard, where Olivia immediately wheeled on him, and said, “I’m sorry, David. I’m so sorry. It was only while you were at the Accademia. I just wanted to tie up some loose ends on an old project of mine.”
“Don’t we have enough to do already?” David asked.
“I wasn’t going to get another chance.”
“To do what?”
“To prove that the Nazis had a special place in their hearts for Florence… and why.”
On the one hand, David was surprised that this was where she had been going, but on the other, it suddenly made perfect sense and brought together many separate strands of her research and proclivities.
“The Nazis not only looted Florence of its art,” she said, as they walked toward the Piazza San Marco, “they also pillaged its books and libraries and monasteries, searching for secrets that would add to their power.”
“Like ancient Egyptian rites?”
“Don’t laugh,” she warned. “Hitler believed in the occult. His top officers believed. The Third Reich was as mystical as it was military. No one must ever forget that.”
But much as David would have liked to stop and explore her theories further, right now he was trying to focus on their next move. “Where did you park your car?” he asked.
“I didn’t. It’s out of gas.”
He lifted his arm and waved for the first cab coming by.
“Where are we going?”
“To your place.”
Olivia looked surprised but not displeased.
“You have to pack a bag.”
“Why?” she asked. “Where do you think we are going?”
“To Paris.”
A white Fiat taxi cut across three lanes and jolted to a stop. She slid over in the backseat, David joined her, and the cabbie took off for the Piazza della Repubblica, the tinny sound of ABBA emanating from his radio. After a minute or two, Olivia couldn’t contain herself any longer and said, “What is in Paris that is so important?”
He opened his valise as the cab hung a sharp left, throwing her up against his shoulder, and showed her the facsimile pages from the Medici records. As she scanned the pages, he explained in a low voice how he had come across them, and why he was so sure it was La Medusa they referred to.
Olivia’s dark eyes absorbed every word and notation before she nodded solemnly, and said, “Then it does exist.”
“Or at least it did.”
“But what if, as you said, it’s just a copy?”
“Without the original to compare it to, who’s to say? I was sent to find it, and that’s what I intend to do.” What he did not say was what he felt in his heart, as surely as he could feel it beating. This was the real Medusa, and returning with it to Mrs. Van Owen would seal their bargain. He believed in it, like so much else now, because he had to. For his own sake, and Sarah’s.
“If it went to France,” she said, thinking aloud, “then it would have become a part of the crown jewels.”
“Exactly,” David replied. “Until the Revolution.”
“When it was turned over to the citizens of the French Republic.”
With Olivia, David never had to finish a thought. As the cab beat a path through the swarming, horn-blaring traffic, Olivia stared silently out her window and David, his mind going a mile a minute, was trying to organize the next leg of his journey and wondering how fast he could get it done. Taking out his phone, he quickly began scanning for flights to Paris. Cost was no object, but timing might be. Olivia would have to collect a few things, he would have to go back to the Grand for his own belongings, and then they’d need to get to the airport.
“How long do you expect me to stay on this job?” Olivia said.
“As long as it takes,” David said, concentrating chiefly on his cell-phone screen. Alitalia had a flight at three that they might be able to make if they hurried.
“But why,” she said, with an uncharacteristic hesitancy, “do you want me?”
“My French is really rusty,” David replied, before thinking.
And he could all but feel her fold in on herself.
And what made it worse was, it wasn’t even true. He just didn’t know how to tell her what he was really feeling and thinking. Here he was, on a desperate mission to save his sister, and he hadn’t confessed even that to her yet. He had so much to tell her that he didn’t know where, or when, to start. And in the back of a hurtling cab, it seemed like the worst possible time.
“Olivia,” he tried to begin, “I do need your help with this work. If anybody can help me cut through the thicket of the French archives and bureaucracy, it will be you.”
“So that’s the reason?” she said. “You just need me to help you with your… quest?”
God, he had gotten off on the wrong foot again. His French wasn’t nearly as rusty as some of his other skills.
The taxi had stopped at a busy crosswalk, but the driver, fed up with the unimpeded flow of pedestrians, leaned on his horn again and to a chorus of jeers, plowed through a narrow opening and sped on. Normally, David would have been appalled at such recklessness, but today he was thrilled.
