The Bone Chamber

by Robin Burcell

  “My hand. God, it hurts.” When she tried to walk on her own, her knees gave out. He lifted her in his arms, carried her out of the room and up the stairs. At the entrance, he opened the door leading to the grounds, stepped out into the night air. He glanced right, then left, before crossing the distance to the remaining cars parked between the outbuilding and the main house. He was fairly certain he couldn’t carry her out the back way, the way he’d entered. Maybe he could get to the Lancia that she and Tex were forced to leave behind.

  “We’re almost there,” he told her, glancing down, seeing her eyes were closed. He could feel the blood soaking into his shirt.

  “Stop right there.”

  Griffin froze. He was ten feet from the Lancia. Ten goddamned feet. He looked up, saw the same two men he’d seen exiting the outbuilding, realized who the second man was. Leonardo Adami. “Perhaps you didn’t notice. The lady is hurt and she needs help.”

  “Perhaps you didn’t notice the gun pointed at you.”

  “And what?” Griffin said, looking around, trying to see if there was anyone there who might help. No cops in sight, only one of the diplomatic drivers, asleep behind the wheel of his sedan. He glanced at the weapons Leonardo and the guard were pointing at them. Nine-millimeter Berettas. “You’re going to shoot me here with the police on the grounds? How the hell are you going to explain that?”

  “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

  “Look, it’s me you want. She’s got nothing to do with this.”

  “And what did you have in mind?”

  “I let her go, she walks out of here. You get me.”

  “An interesting offer. But I have the advantage. My gun pointed at you.”

  “And no less than four police you’d have to explain the gunshots to, and how she ended up here, when they’re looking for her down there,” he said, nodding at the police vehicles still visible down at the edge of the cliff, never mind those parked in the drive at the front of the house.

  “My cousin was wrong about you. You do have a weakness.” Leonardo smiled. “Throw your handgun toward me, and your offer is accepted.”

  Sydney stirred in his arms. “What are you doing?” she whispered.

  “Doing what you did for me this afternoon.” Louder, to Leonardo, he said, “I’m going to lower her down. If you want my cooperation, you’ll get me the key to the Lancia, then let her walk over to her car, get in, lock the doors, then drive off.”

  “Why not let her go back inside?” Leonardo said with a smirk.

  “With her gown muddied and torn? You know how vain women can be. The key?”

  “It’s in the car.”

  He lowered Sydney to the ground, held her gaze, then nodded toward the Lancia, afraid that if he said anything further, they’d try to stop her, maybe even suspect his next move, which, considering he didn’t know what the hell he was going to do next, was laughable. Right now, he wanted Sydney safe.

  Keeping his hands up and visible, he watched as Sydney ambled toward the car, using the other vehicles to balance. She opened the door, sat inside, then pulled the door closed. He heard the lock engage, then turned his attention to Leonardo and the guard.

  A second later the car alarm pierced the air. Startled, Leonardo and the guard pointed their weapons at Sydney, who had opened the door, engaging the alarm. She slammed it shut as Griffin dove, scrambled for cover.

  “We’ll kill her!” he heard Leonardo shout to him over the alarm.

  Griffin ducked behind the front end of a limo, angling himself so the engine block stood between him and them. His weapon drawn, he watched their reflections in the rear windshield of the car to the front of him. They were walking forward, searching for him. When they passed by the car he was hiding behind, he moved toward Sydney and the Lancia. He was a car length from it when several uniformed police came running out of the house to investigate the cause of the alarm.

  Their shouts in Italian alerted Leonardo and the guard, who turned just as Griffin stood, tucked his gun at the back of his waistband, then raised his hands. He glanced toward the house, saw that several of the guests had followed the police out, as had Carlo Adami.

  Griffin continued to walk toward the Lancia. “My wife had a little too much to drink,” he said in Italian, loud enough for the cops to hear. “She stumbled and fell and accidentally set off the car alarm.” One hand held high and visible for the police, he slowly lowered the other, and opened the car door. “The alarm,” he told Sydney. When she shut it off, he looked up at the men on the porch, and again in Italian, said, “My apologies, Signore Adami, for giving everyone a scare. But after tonight’s earlier accident, you wouldn’t want her to drive home alone, now, would you?”

  Adami glanced at his cousin, then back to Griffin, his gaze narrowing. After a moment of sizing up the situation, Adami smiled. “You are wise to be concerned for her welfare, Signore Griffin. But perhaps she should not be behind the wheel?”

  “Of course.” Griffin leaned into the car, not about to let Sydney out, exposed in her condition, and have someone point out that she looked like the woman who ran from the party and jumped in a stolen car. “Do me a favor, dear. Could you slide over the console into the passenger seat?”

  Sydney scooted up onto the console, then over. The moment she was in her seat, Griffin waved to Adami, and in English, said, “Good night, and thank you for the invite.”

  Adami gave a brittle smile, then turned back into the house. Leonardo glared at Griffin as Griffin closed the door, locked it, started the engine, then drove off.

  “Thank you,” he told Sydney.

  “Likewise. Don’t suppose you have any aspirin?”

  “You’re probably going to need it. Don’t suppose you remember when your last tetanus shot was?”

  “No.”

  “Lucky you. Hear they hurt worse than anything else. We’re going to the hospital, have you looked over.”

  She didn’t argue.

  As they drove past the guardhouse, he saw one of the guards on the phone, watching them as they drove past. No doubt he was speaking to one of the Adamis, letting them know they’d driven by. He checked his rearview mirror. So far no one was following them. He didn’t think that would last; even so, he drove carefully down the winding road as they approached the turn to the cliffs, slowing at the flares the police had set out to warn other drivers of their presence.

  He glanced over, saw Sydney look out the window at the police cars, then turn away, closing her eyes. He didn’t ask her about it, figured she’d tell him when she was ready.

  And he was right. When they were halfway down the hill, she said, “The guard shot at us as we drove through the gate. The window shattered, but I thought it was okay. He was still driving…” He heard a deep intake of breath before she continued. “He wouldn’t answer me-”

  Griffin looked over at her, saw her staring out the windshield, her gaze empty. “He was shot?”

  “I don’t know. It could have been the gate, we drove through…Hit the roof. I don’t know.”

  “What happened?” he finally asked.

  “When he didn’t respond, I steered the car into the trees. I didn’t want to go over the cliff…Next thing, someone was dragging me from the car. That’s the last thing I remember until I woke up in that room.”

  “You did the right thing.”

  “But that’s just it. I shouldn’t have done this…I didn’t want to leave him.”

  “I know,” he said, checking his rearview mirror to see if they were followed. So far nothing.

  “Why did you come back for me?”

  “I found your bracelet in the road.”

  “I thought-”

  “Sometimes we break the rules that need to be broken.”

  He checked the mirrors again, still no sign of a tail. Normally that would be a good thing, but right now it bothered him. Adami wasn’t one to give up so easily. So what was his next move?

  And then it struck him.


  The car might be at the bottom of the lake, but Adami had Tex.

  16

  In the security room of the Smithsonian, Special Agent Tony Carillo scooted closer to the monitor, trying to get a better view of the woman standing near a display on the Templar Knights in the Smithsonian. She was young, early twenties, wearing a UVA alumni sweatshirt, similar to what Fitzpatrick had described. The girl seemed particularly interested in something in the display case, but from his angle, he couldn’t see what. After a couple of minutes, she walked a few feet, asked a security guard a question, and he pointed in the opposite direction. She turned, walked that way, was met by a man of East Indian descent, and both disappeared into a doorway. That was the last time either was seen on any of the tapes.

  “What was she looking at? Or for?” he asked the head of security for the Smithsonian.

  “This would have been a traveling display…” He consulted a calendar. “Templar Knights and the Holy Crusade. Relics, armor, that sort of thing.”

  “Anything the world hasn’t seen before?”

  “Not that I could tell. The display will be here a couple more days, if you want to see it, then it’s back to France.”

  “And what’s that she’s holding?”

  “The catalog. She would have purchased it from the gift shop. I have a copy here,” he said, handing Carillo a catalog on the display.

  It was slick, glossy, and Carillo looked through it, didn’t see anything earth-shattering, but figured it couldn’t hurt to compare the catalog to what was being shown, and once he was taken directly to the display, he checked off each item, figured everything was there. She’d seemed particularly interested in something at the end of the last case. There was an illuminated map, and next to that a belt buckle depicting the Templar cross, a ring with the same cross, an old coin showing the double Templar Knights on horseback, and then a very worn cross engraved with the Crucifixion.

  But then he looked at the catalog again, saw the price stamped on the cover. “I don’t suppose you have security tapes of the gift shop, do you?”

  “Actually, we do. Just never thought about that.”

  “I’d like to have a look.”

  Sydney woke with a start, looked around, not recognizing the darkened room. There was a second of momentary panic as she recalled the accident, her basement prison, and she thought about Tex, wondered if they’d found him yet. If they were even looking for him. Griffin had come after her, saved her in direct defiance of any orders. What she wanted to know was, orders from whom? What obscure branch of the government did he work for? Was ATLAS a shadow branch of one of the most covert branches? Very much like her father’s work. Before his death, he’d worked special ops, even black ops for the army, and kept it from his family, work that wasn’t always on the up-and-up.

  Was what she’d been doing on the up-and-up? She had only Griffin to assure her it was. Only his word that Carlo Adami, a man with legitimate ties to the U.S. and their allies, one of the most respected businessmen in the world, a man who funded numerous global charitable organizations, was up to his neck in murder and terrorist funding. Publicly accusing such a man of conspiring with terrorists to further his business interests would have been as welcome as someone accusing the pope of conspiring with the devil to help the church.

  “You’re awake.”

  She glanced over the edge of an eiderdown quilt, saw Griffin watching her from the arched doorway. “Yeah,” she said.

  “How do you feel?”

  “Sore all over. Groggy from the painkillers.” She remembered nothing after the stop at the hospital, other than sleeping on the long drive. “Where are we?” she asked, eyeing the wooden-beamed ceiling.

  He walked into the room, stood at the side of the large double bed. “Our safe house. Your CT scan was clean, so other than a few bruises and scrapes, the cut on your hand from the shovel-”

  “The least of my worries…Tex?”

  “Nothing yet. But it doesn’t look good.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “But he recognized me. Adami’s cousin. From the hotel. He came after me.”

  Griffin didn’t respond.

  “Is anyone going to look for Tex?” she asked.

  “Tex didn’t follow orders. He should have left. He knew the rules.” Before she could think of what to say, he turned, walked toward the door, and with his back to her, said, “I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Where are you going?”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to. She knew. Rules or no rules, he was going to look for Tex.

  Jon Westgate exited the sedan that pulled up in front of Adami’s villa. The morning sun lit up the hillside. It also blinded him as he was approached by one of Adami’s goons, who patted him down for weapons. If Adami weren’t so bloody important to their operation, he would never have submitted himself to such humiliation. Surely the man knew that all Westgate needed to do was make one phone call, and for all Adami’s millions, he would never survive the next day.

  But that was just it. Adami knew. And he also knew that as long as he held the cards he did, Westgate would never make that call. They’d needed him. But that was about to change.

  Weapons search over, the goon escorted Westgate up the travertine stairs, through a large salon, then past the impressive double staircase, and a length of windows that looked out over a massive veranda, which bore the remnants of the previous evening’s festivities. They continued on up a back set of stairs that led to a private balcony with an unparalleled view of the lake, where Adami sat eating his breakfast. He looked up, smiled at Westgate, then indicated he should sit.

  Westgate pulled out a chair, taking a seat across from Adami.

  “Would you care for something to eat or drink?” Adami asked him.

  “No, thank you. Tell me about the party.”

  Adami took his damned time, sipping at a glass of orange juice, keeping him waiting. “An unexpected visitor,” he finally said, then proceeded to tell him what had happened the night before.

  “Griffin was here? How did he get in?”

  “The back wall, apparently. The guard who was working it is no longer in my employ.”

  No doubt now residing at the bottom of Lake Nemi, Westgate thought. Adami’s penchant for killing aside, he turned his thoughts to what had transpired at the party before Griffin had arrived. “This woman, do you know who she was?”

  “Unfortunately, not yet. I sent someone out to the hotel where they first ran into her, but apparently the records were sanitized. We learned from a maid that a woman of her description checked in, but as for any names…” He shrugged in that insolent way of his, as though he couldn’t be bothered by such minute details. “A shame we lost her, though. I had some high hopes of using her to bait some of the attending dignitaries.”

  And there was the crux of Adami’s power. He had taken the lessons learned from the old Propaganda Due Masonic lodge, disbanded over two decades ago, and used them to his advantage. On the surface he was the king of altruism. Beneath, he had a number of high-ranking politicians and dignitaries from countless countries in his pocket. Most were brought into the fold by way of Freemasonry, a common bond exploited by Adami. He was careful to nurture this connection until he had them where he wanted them. Some were there due to simple bribery on a grand scale. Others because they believed in the cause, domination of the world’s banking system. A few very powerful heads of state, however, needed a bit more coercion, and therein was the key to Adami’s success, because he had dared to find out what their innermost fantasies were, then presented them with such, only to blackmail them once their wishes were fulfilled.

  Surprising how many of them were sexually deviant, when presented the right opportunity. Not surprising how many caved, once they were faced with reality and a few choice photos or tapes of their escapades. And the Freemasons were the perfect venue with which to hide and manipulate those men. The inner circl
e of a secret society lent itself to corruption, because there were no checks and balances, no oversight. The Catholic Church got that part right when it condemned Freemasonry all those years ago. So yes, aside from the plain, greedy power mongers, or the bribed officials, the new C3 Masonic lodge also had its share of extremely powerful deviant members who would go to great lengths to ensure that their intimate lives didn’t cross over to their public personas.

  It was perhaps this, more than the bribery and blackmail, that made Adami such a distasteful partner in crime. And the very thing that made him such a dangerous one. As much intel as Westgate’s boss had available at his disposal, he had yet to learn exactly who had been lured into this sexual den of Adami’s. Certainly a number of top-ranking C3 members, but who else?

  He smiled at Adami, decided it best to change the subject. “My boss doesn’t seem to think that this little plan of yours to stir up tension will work. He thinks you should just stick with supplying the bio arms that we agreed upon.”

  “Little plan? Trust me. If we find what we’re seeking, it will do more than stir up tension.”

  “Well here’s the thing-”

  “The thing…?”

  “Cut the I’m-Italian-and-don’t-understand-your-Americanisms crap. You’re as Italian as I am.”

  “I haven’t been to America in well over twenty years.”

  “Your loss, our gain,” Westgate said, tiring of always having to kiss Adami’s self-made “foreign” ass, when everyone knew he hailed from New Jersey. Which made him relish what he was about to do, because it was about damned time someone put Adami in his place. “As I was saying, here’s the thing. This map? We want it.”

  “I was under the impression that your boss called it a pipe dream, one that generations of men before me have searched for in vain.”

  “That was before he started looking into it. He is interested in knowing how you came about this knowledge.”