The Mephisto Club

to defend them.

She considered how easily he had accessed confidential details of the investigation. Thought of how Jane’s inquiries about Sansone had met with silence from the FBI and Interpol and the Department of Justice. They are all protecting him.

“Our work has not gone unnoticed,” he said, and added softly, “unfortunately.”

“I thought that was the point. To have your work noticed.”

“Not by the wrong people. Somehow, they’ve discovered us. They know who we are, and what we do.” He paused. “And they think you’re one of us.”

“I don’t even believe they exist.”

“They’ve marked your door. They’ve identified you.”

She gazed out at moonlit snow, its whiteness startling in the night. It was almost as bright as day. No cover, no darkness. A prey’s every movement would be seen in that merciless landscape. “I’m not a member of your club,” she said.

“You might as well be. You’ve been seen at my home. You’ve been seen with me.”

“I’ve also visited all three crime scenes. I’ve only been doing my job. The killer could have spotted me on any one of those nights.”

“That’s what I thought at first. That you just happened to cross his line of vision, as incidental prey. It’s what I thought about Eve Kassovitz as well-that maybe he spotted her at the first crime scene on Christmas Eve, and she attracted his interest.”

“You no longer think that’s what happened?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Why not?”

“The seashell. If I’d known about it earlier, we all would have taken precautions. And Joyce might still be alive.”

“You think that seashell was a message meant for you?”

“For centuries, Sansone men have marched into battle under the banner of the seashell. This was a taunt, a challenge aimed at the foundation. A warning of what’s to come.”

“What would that be?”

“Our extermination.” He said it quietly, as though just speaking those two words aloud would bring the sword down on his neck. But she heard no fear in his voice, only resignation that this was the fate he’d been dealt. She could think of nothing to say in response. This conversation had strayed into alien territory, and she could not find her bearings. His universe was such a bleak landscape of nightmares that just sitting with him, in his car, altered her view of the world. Changed it to an unfamiliar country where monsters walked. Daniel, she thought, I need you now. I need your touch and your hope and your faith in the world. This man is all darkness, and you are the light.

“Do you know how my father died?” he asked.

She frowned at him, startled by the question. “I’m sorry?”

“Believe me, it’s relevant. My whole family history is relevant. I tried to walk away from it. I spent thirteen years teaching at Boston College, thinking I could live a normal life like everyone else, convinced that my father was just a cranky eccentric, like his father, that all the bizarre stories he told me when I was growing up were quaint family lore.” He glanced at her. “I believed it about as much as you do right now, which is to say, not at all.”

He sounds so rational. Yet he isn’t. He can’t be.

“I taught history, so I’m familiar with the ancient myths,” he said. “But you’ll never convince me that there were once satyrs or mermaids or flying horses. Why should I believe my father’s stories about Nephilim?”

“What changed your mind?”

“Oh, I knew some of what he told me was true. The death of Isabella, for instance. In Venice, I was able to find the record of her imprisonment and death in church documents. She was burned alive. She did give birth to a son, just prior to her execution. Not everything that was passed down in Sansone family lore was fantasy.”

“And the part about your ancestors being demon hunters?”

“My father believed it.”

“Do you?”

“I believe there are hostile forces who would bring down the Mephisto Foundation. And now they’ve found us. The way they found my father.”

She stared at him, waiting for him to explain.

“Eight years ago,” said Sansone, “he flew out to Naples. He was going to meet an old friend, a man he’d known since his college days in New Haven. Both of them were widowers. Both of them shared a passion for ancient history. They planned to visit the National Archaeological Museum there and catch up on each other’s lives. My father was quite excited about the visit. It was the first time I’d heard any animation in his voice since my mother died. But when he got to Naples, his friend wasn’t there at the airport. Or at the hotel. He called me, told me that something was terribly wrong, and he planned to return home the next day. I could hear he was upset, but he wouldn’t say much more about it. I think he believed our conversation was being monitored.”

“He actually thought the phone was tapped?”

“You see? You have the same reaction I did. That it was just dear eccentric old Dad imagining his goblins again. The last thing he said to me was, ‘They’ve found me, Anthony. They know who I am.’”

“They?”

“I knew exactly what he was talking about. It was the same nonsense I’d been hearing since I was a kid. Sinister forces in government. A worldwide conspiracy of Nephilim, helping one another into positions of power. And once they assume political control, they’re able to hunt to their hearts’ content, without any fear of punishment. The way they hunted in Kosovo. And Cambodia. And Rwanda. They thrive on war and disorder and bloodshed. They feed off it. That’s what Armageddon means to them: a hunter’s paradise. It’s why they can’t wait to make it happen, why they look forward to it.”

“That sounds like the ultimate paranoid delusion.”

“It’s also a way to explain the unexplainable: how people can do such terrible things to one another.”

“Your father believed all that?”

“He wanted me to believe it. But it took his death to convince me.”

“What happened to your father?”

“It could easily have been taken for a simple robbery gone wrong. Naples is a gritty place, and tourists do have to be careful there. But my father was on Via Partenope, alongside the Gulf of Naples, a street almost always crowded with tourists. Even so, it happened so quickly, he had no time to call for help. He simply collapsed. No one saw his assailant. No one saw what happened. But there was my father, bleeding to death on the street. The blade entered just beneath his sternum, sliced through the pericardium, and pierced the right ventricle.”

“The way Eve Kassovitz died,” she said softly. A brutally efficient killing.

“The worst part for me,” he said, “is that he died thinking I’d never believe him. After our last phone call, I hung up and said to one of my colleagues, ‘The old man’s finally ready for Thorazine.’”

“But you believe him now.”

“Even after I got to Naples, a few days later, I still thought it was a random act of violence. An unlucky tourist, in the wrong place at the wrong time. But while I was at the police station, waiting for a copy of their report, an older gentleman stepped into the room and introduced himself. I’d heard my father mention his name before. I never knew that Gottfried Baum worked for Interpol.”

“Why do I know that name?”

“He was one of my dinner guests the night that Eve Kassovitz was killed.”

“The man who left for the airport?”

“He had a flight to catch that night. To Brussels.”

“He’s a member of Mephisto?”

Sansone nodded. “He’s the one who made me listen, made me believe. All the stories my father told me, all his crazy theories about the Nephilim-Baum repeated every one.”

“Folie a deux,” said Maura. “A shared delusion.”