“And bring it over here,” Vernet said, leading them to an equally dusty research table surrounded by some beat-up wooden chairs. David plopped the box down, and the professor said, “Every day that Cagliostro was imprisoned, he scrawled one sentence, with a sharpened rock, on the wall of his dungeon. Napoleon-who was also a great believer in the occult-later sent an aide to the cell where Cagliostro had died, with instructions to copy down all the words and images that remained.” Tapping the top of the box, the professor said, “I’m afraid there are no amulets in here, but perhaps the information will guide you in your quest?”
David doubted it, but for want of any other lead, he was certainly prepared to follow this one. And Olivia looked genuinely elated.
“Normally, you understand, you would not be allowed to work here unattended,” Vernet said, glancing at an old wall clock as it audibly clicked off another minute, “but I have some work to finish, and the archives are technically closed today.”
“We’ll be careful with everything,” Olivia assured him, “and replace the box before we leave.”
Vernet still hesitated, then said, “If mademoiselle would just be so kind as to drop by my office on her way out, I would like to hear how things went.”
“Delighted,” Olivia said, pouring it on.
And David couldn’t resist adding, “I’ll come, too.”
The professor appeared not to have heard him, but before he’d rounded the corner of the shelves, David had popped the lid off the box. Inside, there were several plastic sleeves, each with its own typed label, many of them yellowed and peeling off. Olivia peered in, rummaged through, then grabbed one and plunked herself down in a chair on the opposite side of the table. David picked out another, this one marked “ Documents originaux, C. San Leo, 1804.” These would be the first field notes from Napoleon’s emissary, and he removed them with all the appropriate caution.
Written, or drawn, on paper as yellowed and crinkled as papyrus, and in an ink that had faded from black to gray, the entries were barely legible-and, as far as David could tell, they were all over the lot. Many of them were the traditional Masonic symbols-hammers and mallets, bricks and trowels-but others were crude facsimiles of Egyptian hieroglyphs. He recognized Anubis, the jackal-headed god of the underworld, and Isis, goddess of nature and magic, crowned with the curving horns of a bull. The aide had dutifully copied them down, as well as the sentences scrawled on the stone in Italian.
“The eye of the pyramid sees into all things,” was one.
“The master of the Lost Castle possesses the secret of secrets,” was another.
To David, they seemed like nothing more than the ravings of a man consigned to a dungeon.
But suddenly, one of them brought him up short.
“The immortal Gorgon belongs to Sant’Angelo.”
The Gorgon… could this be a reference to La Medusa? And why would he say it belonged to a Roman prison? Had Cagliostro hung on to the glass when he fled France and run to Rome? Had the Pope relieved him of it, along with all his other blasphemous possessions? Or had he managed to hide it there, somewhere within the prison walls, before being taken away to San Leo? David focused all his attention on the pile of sketches and writing-whoever Napoleon had sent had done a thorough job of it-as he dug through them, front and back, but there was nothing more that seemed explanatory or revealing.
Still, it was a start, and it was only when he was about to tell Olivia about what he’d found that he realized she had fallen uncustomarily quiet ever since they’d opened the box.
When he glanced across the table at her, he saw that she had opened an envelope containing old black- and-white photographs, each one about eight-by-ten. Slowly, methodically, she was going over each one, then laying it on the stack in front of her.
“I think I might have found something,” he said, relating the line about the Gorgon. “Sounds like it was too important to Cagliostro for him to leave it behind.”
But Olivia, still absorbed in her own task, nodded absentmindedly, and said, “I think I’ve found something, too.”
David reached over and turned one of the photos around. It showed the ruins of a fortress, atop a craggy cliff, and was captioned San Leo. So this was where Cagliostro had been imprisoned.
He turned another shot around, and this one showed a low dungeon door, with thick iron bars. The third picture was taken inside the cell, where portions of the stone wall had completely disintegrated and fallen apart. There were holes large enough to reveal fallen timber and rubble in the next cell.
“Something tells me Napoleon’s crew didn’t take these Polaroids,” David said. “Who did?”
“Turn them over,” Olivia replied, laying down yet another one on the pile.
David flipped the photo, and saw a faded black stamp on its back-two jagged lightning bolts, on either side of the words Das Schwarze Korps. The Black Corps. It meant nothing to him.
“ Das Schwarze Korps was the official newspaper of the SS, Heinrich Himmler’s personal mouthpiece,” Olivia explained. “It was the place where all the racial theories, and occult underpinnings, of the Nazi regime were broadcast. According to the dates of entry in this file, the Nazis received permission from the Vichy government to access these files on June 15, 1940. That’s exactly one day after they took Paris. You have to give them credit for one thing-they didn’t let the grass grow under their feet.”
“But if these photos were taken in Italy by the Nazis, how’d they wind up here, in the French files?” David asked.
“I would say that the investigator was compiling the complete dossier here. Why not? After all, he expected the Reich to be around and running the place for another thousand years.”
“Who did? Himmler?”
“No, he was a little busy just then. But it appears he sent his right-hand man.”
She showed him a letter from a French bureaucrat, summarily dismissing the previous administrator of the archives-Monsieur Maurice Weinberg-and cosigned, in a crabbed, precise hand, by the Reichsfuhrer himself. The letter appointed in his place an emeritus professor of philosophy and theology at the University of Heidelberg. A man named Professor Dieter Mainz.
Dieter Mainz, whose name had appeared on all of those library request cards at the Laurenziana, too.
Olivia looked like she had struck gold. “I knew it!” she said. “They were tracking count Cagliostro all along.”
But were they tracking him in search of La Medusa? David thought with horror. And what if they had found it? What if it had been but one tiny item in their massive plunder of Europe? So much of the treasure looted by the Nazis had been destroyed in the war, or lost. And plenty more was still stashed away in secret vaults, under aliases and forgotten code numbers, from Brussels to Buenos Aires.
“But do you want to know the best news yet?” Olivia said.
“What?” He could use some good news.
She held up her hand, covered with dust from the box and papers. “Nobody else has come this way in a long time.”
It was a good point, and he was glad she had made it. This was a trail no one else had blazed, though whether it led anywhere was still an open question.
When they had completed their review of everything else in the box, which included several pamphlets printed in France and extolling the power of the magic Cagliostro had uncovered in ancient Egypt, they closed up the carton, replaced it, and threaded their way back to the museum director’s office. It looked as if it had once been a large recital hall, and had a desk at one end and a long table covered with rocks and chisels and tools at the other. Professor Vernet was turning the handle on a vise, to crush a stubborn specimen, when Olivia said, “Thank you for your help.”
The professor looked over his shoulder, turned the crank one more time, and said, “Happy to be of assistance, mademoiselle.”
His eyes, David noted, never left Olivia.
Brushing the rock residue from his hands and removing his apron, he offered to escort her-them-to the doors of the museum. All the way, he engaged Olivia in a discussion of her work, where she had studied, how she liked Paris, while David followed along. In the portico, Vernet took her hand, and while assuring her again that he was available for consultation at any time-“Did I mention that I live quite close by?”-David idly surveyed the Board of Governors plaque. Several dozen names were listed, in no particular order, and while most of them meant
