on all his private aircraft.
Hitler himself had come to his chateau?
The soldiers waved their lights like fireflies as the plane jounced along for the entire length of the meadow. It was only as it was about to run out of room and go crashing into the dense forest that it came to a halt, so abruptly that the nose dipped and the tail end rose up like a scorpion’s stinger.
When the engines were cut off, two SS men ran to the port-side door, just aft of the wings, and helped unfold the stairs. The others-Himmler among them-stood at attention in a single line, facing the plane.
In the descending gloom, the marquis saw a figure appear in the door. He was wearing a mustard-colored field uniform, with breeches, boots, and a visored cap. And even from the balcony, his face, with its doleful eyes and toothbrush moustache, was unmistakable.
Sant’Angelo suddenly realized that the professor standing beside him, like all the SS men on the field, had raised his arm in the stiff-armed Nazi salute.
It was returned with a desultory flip, from the elbow alone, by their master, who was already strutting toward the main gate of the chateau, trailed by several officers and attaches.
“You are being granted a great honor,” Mainz said. “The Fuhrer will be spending the night under your roof.”
Sant’Angelo’s mind reeled.
“So let’s have something to show him!” Like a schoolboy giddily awaiting a visit from his sweetheart, Mainz hurried back inside and began to riffle through the photos.
“For instance,” he said, flourishing a photograph and proffering it to Sant’Angelo, “on this one Cagliostro has scrawled ‘The little palace’ and drawn this hieroglyph beside it.” It was a raven with its wings spread.
“It looks like a raven.”
“Of course it does,” Mainz said impatiently. “And the three short vertical lines beside it indicate a flock of them. But does it mean anything to you? Is such a motif present anywhere in this chateau, or in a family coat of arms, perhaps?”
The little palace-no doubt he meant Le Petit Trianon, Sant’Angelo thought, though he did not share that insight with the professor.
“And this glyph, placed below it,” Mainz said, showing another photo, one depicting a jackal, but with its head thrown back, as if its neck were broken.
“He has written, ‘The master of the lost castle prevails.’ But prevails over what? Over Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead?”
Sant’Angelo remembered well the psychic battle in Marie Antoinette’s hideaway. Apparently, the good count had remembered it, too, even as madness overtook him.
Mainz laid out several more photos of the transcriptions. Even though he had not understood the meaning of what was recorded on the walls of the cell, the French scribe had made fine and accurate renderings. But the marquis sensed that the professor was expecting greater help in deciphering them.
“And then there’s this,” he said, delicately removing a yellowed sheet of paper-this one was no photograph-done in gray charcoal and what might have once been red wine. “Although I have a great reverence for the French National Archives,” Mainz said, “I felt that this was art, and needed to be more widely seen in the original.”
It was a powerful sketch of the Gorgon’s head, suspended as if on chains. The caption read, “ Lo specchio di Eternita, ma non ho visto! ” The glass of eternity, but I did not see! The professor pulled the damp collar of his shirt away from his thick neck. “As it turns out, the count was a fairly good draftsman. But have you ever seen anything like this, a mirror perhaps, or an amulet, with the face of the Medusa on it? I suspect it belonged to your ancestor.”
Sant’Angelo’s mind was racing. The glass, as always, was hanging under his very shirt.
“Cagliostro appeared to put great stock in it,” Mainz added. “For four years, he wrote on the walls of his cell with a jagged stone, or a lump of charcoal. But this picture he daubed on the only sheet of paper he had, using his own blood.”
So it was blood, not wine… and the count had finally figured out the value of La Medusa. Judging from his inscription, however, he had not fathomed its secret until he had lost it to the marquis, and by then, of course, it was too late. Was the bitterness of that knowledge what had driven him insane?
“Come now,” Mainz cajoled, “let’s not pretend that you are a neophyte in these matters. This library alone confirms that you are a student of the dark arts. Perhaps you are even a master. Why don’t we put our heads together? There’s probably a lot we could teach each other.”
Oh, yes, there were any number of things that the marquis would have liked to teach him, right then and there, but the professor had turned away again, his face suddenly flushed. Voices echoed up the stairs, followed by the clomping of heavy bootheels. Mainz whirled around, and, despite the warm night, put on his green, bemedaled coat again.
The first ones to enter the study were a pair of SS guards, the jagged sig runes that looked like thunderbolts glittering on their epaulets. They quickly moved aside to make room for Himmler, holding a wineglass in one hand, as he calmly surveyed the mirrored walls and the packed bookshelves, the gleaming table with its bust of Dante, the photographs from the French archives. He actually sniffed the air, as if to detect any potential menace-or latent powers?-lurking in the room. The marquis had the impression that he was doing a final security check before permitting his master to venture inside.
But he barely glanced at Sant’Angelo.
“What have we learned?” he said to the professor.
“We’ve really just begun,” Mainz replied. “I’ve been showing the marquis-”
Himmler snorted at the mention of the title.
“-some of the material we’ve recently acquired.”
Himmler took the sketch from the professor’s hand, studied it, then held it up between pinched fingers in front of Sant’Angelo.
“Ever seen this?”
“The Medusa is one of the most common images from antiquity.”
“But this one is a dead likeness of one that was done by the necromancer Cellini, as a design for a Medici duchess.” Himmler rudely shoved the bust of Dante aside so that he could sit on an edge of the desk, and in so doing, knocked the garland loose. To Sant’Angelo’s relief, no one paid any attention as it rolled out of sight under the desk chair. “And in what godforsaken spot,” Himmler asked Mainz, “was it that you found that other drawing?”
“In the Laurenziana. Among the papers of the Medicis.”
“Ah, yes-in Florence. I don’t understand it myself, but the Fuhrer is oddly fond of that town. He likes the old bridge.”
The collar of his Gestapo uniform was too big for his scrawny neck, Sant’Angelo noted, and the service medal that was pinned to it only made it gape more. His gray tunic was festooned with other military ribbons and pins.
“It’s hard to believe that such a storied object-one that Cellini made, Cagliostro captured, and Napoleon coveted-could simply have gone missing,” Himmler said, his eyes-small and pale and mean-glimmering behind his spectacles.
It was then that Sant’Angelo decided… I could kill him. Or, better yet- I could wait for my chance and kill his master. Strike the serpent at its head. He wished he had his harpe at hand; he could have used it, like Perseus, to chop off the head of the monster. But there were other ways. He had reduced Cagliostro to a weeping, craven coward, and in the centuries since, even as his artistic powers had withered, his occult faculties had become more refined. Like a fine wine, they had matured. And despite the risk, when would he ever have a better chance than this to deploy them?
“The sketch,” Himmler continued, “suggests it might have been worn like a necklace.” His bony fingers caressed his own medal. He cocked his head at one of the guards, who promptly came around the table unholstering his gun, and then roughly pressed the muzzle to Sant’Angelo’s temple.
“Open his shirt,” the Reichsfuhrer told the other guard.
The second one, a towering blond oaf, yanked the marquis’s shirt open, sending the button flying, and then,
