Sant’Angelo guided the lumbering professor past several salons and corridors, lined with faded tapestries and furniture, and into the main library of the house-a cavernous space with shelves from floor to ceiling and a wooden ladder on wheels to help reach the books on top. There, the marquis kept an extensive collection, everything from Marcus Aurelius to Voltaire, all in fine bindings, their titles lettered in gold on their spines. Most of the books he had purchased while traveling the world, and as a result they were in many languages-Italian, English, German, French, Russian, Greek. The professor placed his own bulging briefcase on the center reading table and strolled about the room, whistling under his breath.
“Fantastic,” he said. “Simply fantastic.”
Many times he stopped and lovingly removed an ancient volume from a shelf. “The complete histories of Pliny the Elder,” he said in wonderment. Leafing through another volume, he said mournfully, “The Philippics of Tacitus. My copy was lost in a fire in Heidelberg.” Once or twice, Mainz seemed so immersed that Sant’Angelo thought he might simply be able to steal away and not be missed. Another round of dynamite exploded, and Sant’Angelo could hear huge trees toppling over.
But after perusing a couple of dozen books, even inspecting the volumes on the higher shelves, Mainz stopped, and from his perch atop the ladder, looked down at the marquis and said, “But this is not where you do your own work.”
“Work?” Sant’Angelo replied, assuming a touch of haughtiness. “I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to.”
Mainz waved his hand around the room. “There’s not a book missing from a shelf. Not a paper or pen on the table. And these,” he said, gesturing at the thousands of volumes on display, “are not the kinds of books I know you own.”
He stepped down from the ladder, and with an icy smile, said, “I want to see the private collection.”
When Sant’Angelo didn’t reply, Mainz went on. “You can show it to me yourself, or I can have the soldiers find it, even if it means breaking down every door in the place. Come on,” he said, again in that comradely tone, “how often do you meet someone like me, who can appreciate the true worth of such stuff?” He walked on toward the door, turning only to say, “Which way do we go, marquis?”
Sant’Angelo began to wonder if Ascanio had not been right about killing them on sight. But there was little he could do now, with Himmler himself and the SS dispersed all over the chateau and its grounds.
He led the way back down the corridor, then up the winding staircase to his private study high in the eastern turret. It had never been wired for electricity, and with dusk falling, the marquis had to stop to light the gas lamps in sconces along the walls. The room was stuffy, too, and he threw open the French doors to the terrace and stepped outside to see what destruction had been wrought to his estate.
There was the smell of scorched wood in the air, and when he walked to the end of the parapet and looked toward the sheep meadow, he saw that the Germans had blown up the old oaks that ran along the ridgeline and were now using their armored cars to push the splintered trunks off the cliff.
Before he could think why they were doing it, he heard Mainz inside the study, exclaiming over something.
“Like me, you are a Renaissance scholar!” the professor said, when Sant’Angelo stepped back inside. He was holding a copy of Cellini’s autobiography in his hand-the original printing, done by Antonio Cocchi in 1728. “But you have this book in half a dozen other languages, too! Along with his treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture. Then you must admire him as much as I do?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Then you know, too, that he was not just a great artist. He was also a great occultist. Surely you remember his account of conjuring demons in the Colosseum?”
“He was given to tall tales, I think.”
But Mainz shook his head vigorously. “No, it was not a tall tale, as you call it. In fact, it was not the full tale-I am convinced of that. In the 1500s, it was simply too dangerous to tell the whole truth about such things. One day,” he said, slipping the book lovingly back into the shelf, “I will find the rest of the story.”
Then he simply looked around the room-a pentagon, with cherrywood bookcases alternating with floor- length mirrors-and said, “I envy you this aerie.” He shrugged off his loden coat, revealing a white shirt stuck to his body with sweat, and laid it across a chair. “At home, just to get some peace and quiet, I must work in a pantry!” He wandered around the room, touching the books-their subjects ranging from stregheria to astrology, numerology to necromancy-and seemed transported. This, his expression advertised, was what he’d been looking for. His stubby fingertips trailed over the edge of the writing table, where a gilded bust of Dante, his head surmounted by a silver wreath, stood in pride of place. Sant’Angelo was careful not to let his own eyes linger on the piece.
“I regret that my Italian is so bad,” the professor said. “The infinite charms of The Divine Comedy are sometimes lost on me.”
“That’s a pity. He was the greatest poet the world has ever known.”
But Mainz laughed. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? Judging by your name, you’re an Italian. And yet your family has lived in France for centuries. Why is that?”
Sant’Angelo shrugged, and said, “Ancient history.”
The professor paused, then went to his briefcase and unfastened the leather strap. “Ah, but ancient history is my specialty.” He began to root around inside, pulling out a stack of papers. “Only last week, we turned up some interesting information at the National Archives.” He pushed the bust of Dante to one side, nearly displacing the wreath around its brow, to make some room on the table. “I took the photographs myself. I think you’ll find them quite interesting.”
They were meticulously done photos of handwritten and hand-drawn pages, the text in Italian.
“The scribe who made the original drawings and notes worked for Napoleon. The words were taken down from the walls of a cell in the Castel San Leo, outside Rome. We went there, too, of course, but nothing much remained. So all we have left is these transcriptions.”
Sant’Angelo suddenly understood why the Nazis were there.
“I assume you can guess the occupant of the cell,” Mainz said.
“Count Cagliostro.” What use was there in playing dumb anymore? The words themselves, accompanied by Egyptian symbols and signs, were gibberish, but several times they made mention of Sant’Angelo and a lost castle. The Chateau Perdu. The old charlatan might have been constrained from uttering a word about what he knew, but apparently it had not kept him from writing about it. In the end, he might as well have provided the Nazis with a road map.
“So you can see why we wanted to make this call. Reichsfuhrer Himmler has a great interest in the more arcane sources of knowledge. Wherever we go, we root it up, like truffles,” he said, snuffling like a pig.
Sant’Angelo was well aware of the Nazis’ predilections. The swastika itself was an ancient Sanskrit symbol of peace, now turned back on its axis to suggest something else entirely.
“Obviously, the count-the master of the Egyptian Masonic lodges-was well acquainted with your predecessor,” Mainz said, smiling coldly. “But I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were friends. Professional rivals, I would call them. Wouldn’t you?”
The marquis stifled an impulse to retort that the powers of the count had been vastly overrated.
“Cagliostro seemed to think that the Chateau Perdu contained some powerful secrets.”
“That may be,” Sant’Angelo replied, “but in that case, they’re still undiscovered.” He might have said more, but he noted that the professor’s attention had been diverted; his ears had pricked up, like a hunting dog’s, and now the marquis could hear it, too-the low thrum of an airplane engine in the distance.
“Come,” Mainz said, hurrying out onto the balcony. “He’s coming!”
Who’s coming? Sant’Angelo thought, following him out. Dusk was falling, and from the west, he saw the red wing lights of a small plane, racing toward the chateau as if it were fleeing from the setting sun. It was going to come in low, just above the ridgeline, and he understood why the soldiers had felled the oaks; they had been clearing a runway approach. All down the sheep meadow, he saw that the armored cars had been placed in parallel lines with their headlamps on, and soldiers with flags and flashlights were positioned on the field.
The wheels of the plane touched the grass, bounced up, and touched again as the ailerons were deployed to cut its ground speed. Even from the parapet, Sant’Angelo could see the Nazi insignia on the fuselage, along with the number 2600-the number that the Fuhrer believed held some mystical power, and that he insisted be placed
