The Bone Chamber

by Robin Burcell

  “If the ambassador’s not there, why would he stop for tea?” Agent Fitzpatrick asked.

  “Maybe he’s friends with someone on staff.” The portière came to the gate, and after a few words, let the priest in.

  “That small gray car farther up the street,” Agent Fitzpatrick asked. “With the two men sitting in it. Is that part of the police detail?”

  Francesca peered out the window in the direction indicated. “Hard to say. I saw it there yesterday, but since I was away for a couple of weeks, working down in the columbaria, I don’t know whether it was there previously.”

  Agent Fitzpatrick nodded, sipped her Darjeeling, then glanced over at Francesca. “Why is it that Alessandra mailed this package to you instead of her father?”

  She hesitated, not sure how much she should divulge, since she had yet to decipher what the agent was searching for. “I think that there was someone in her father’s service whom she didn’t trust. A servant, assistant, maybe even a friend,” she said, as a woman wearing bottle-lensed glasses walked into the kitchen. Francesca tried to remember her name, couldn’t, then nodded in greeting as the woman made a beeline for the refrigerator. “For whatever reason,” Francesca continued, as the agent focused on the street below, “Alessandra thinks it’s important that this information reach Mr. Griffin, and until I hear otherwise from her, I intend to honor her request.”

  Agent Fitzpatrick frowned, and Francesca imagined she was about to protest, about to attempt to persuade her to hand the package over. Instead, the agent stepped back from the window, set her teacup on the table, and asked, “This special detail to the ambassador’s residence. Have you ever known them to use sentries on the neighboring rooftops?”

  Griffin opened the door of the safe house, taking in the aroma of freshly brewed espresso. Giustino drank the stuff like water, all day long, and sure enough, was sipping a cup when Griffin walked into the salon. He threw his keys on the table, poured himself a large glass of water, then sat, glad the morning was almost over.

  “Did Marc arrive in Tunisia?” Giustino asked.

  “Should be landing there any moment. How about our wayward FBI agent? She make it to the airport?”

  “The signorina left in the cab about two, two and a half hours ago.” He glanced up at the clock. “The plane should be taking off any moment.”

  “No trouble?”

  “She gives many apologies,” he said, reaching over to adjust the controls on the monitoring equipment. “I think if she could, she would stay.”

  “Pick up anything this morning?” Griffin asked, not wanting to think about what Sydney was involved in the past few days. Truth be told, he was relieved that she’d left. Less to worry about.

  “Niente. Unless one counts the fax.”

  “Intercept it?”

  Giustino nodded toward a paper on the table. “A catering menu. Commendatore Adami must be having another party.” Griffin reached for the menu, curious to see what a multimillionaire ordered for his guests, when Giustino added, “But we did receive a call on the Journal line. From a Professoressa Francesca Santarella. She speaks of a package and some code. Signorina Alessandra mailed it to her at the American Academy two weeks ago.”

  “We?”

  “The Signorina Fitzpatrick took the call.”

  “The same Fitzpatrick who is allegedly on her way to America?”

  “There is, perhaps, another one?”

  “Damn it!” Griffin slammed his hand on the table.

  “Cosa c’è?”

  “Do we even know if she ever got on board that flight?”

  “You would like me to inquire?”

  “Don’t bother,” he said, grabbing his keys. “I already know the answer. Get a landline to Professor Santarella’s office. If she picks up, patch it through to my cell.” He stormed toward the door, cursed himself three times over for not personally putting Fitzpatrick on that plane himself.

  Standing at one side of the window, Sydney studied the man on the rooftop a few buildings down from the ambassador’s residence, someone she wouldn’t have noticed had it not been for the sunlight reflecting off what appeared to be the lenses of binoculars. She pulled Francesca back, out of sight, even though she was fairly certain that the object of the surveillance was the ambassador’s grounds and not anyone at the American Academy. “I’ve changed my mind about the tea,” Sydney said. “I think we should return to your studio.”

  Francesca looked at Sydney as though she’d lost her mind. “Is something wrong?”

  “I’d rather explain it back at your room.”

  The professor shrugged, set their still full teacups in the sink, then led Sydney back to her office, which was obviously intended to be an artist’s studio at one time. Francesca had her work sorted out neatly on a long white table in the center of the room, with photographs and charts tacked to one wall. These seemed to focus on maps of underground chambers of some sort. A large drawing of a map of Rome was taped to another wall. A laptop sat on a desk next to the huge windows, which must have been a good fourteen feet in height. And beside the computer was a clear vase of yellow autumn crocus. What held Sydney’s interest on the desk, however, was the U.S. Global Priority Mail shipping label on the small box. What the hell was in it, and why had Alessandra sent it here? And just when Sydney had decided what line of questioning she wanted to follow in hopes of gaining her answers, the professor’s phone rang.

  Francesca answered it, with “Pronto?” Listened a moment, then said, “Grazie, Roberto.” Then, turning to Sydney, she asked, “Now what was it you wanted to explain to me here, instead of in the kitchen?”

  “First, I’m wondering if anyone knew of your friendship with Alessandra.”

  “An odd question. I’m assuming that this has something to do with the package she sent?”

  “I’ll explain it in good time,” she said, since Alessandra’s murder wasn’t yet public knowledge. “Just believe me when I say it’s important.”

  “It wasn’t a secret,” she said. “Her father knew, and I presume most of his household staff did. I’ve been to several parties across the street over the last two years, even on occasions when she was back at school in the States.”

  Footsteps echoed on the tiles outside the door. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “Father Emile Dumas,” the professor said. And a moment later there was a knock. Before Sydney could stop her, Francesca opened the door to a tall man, his dark hair flecked with gray. His white clerical collar contrasted sharply against his black suit, something that might have put the average person at ease had it not been for one thing.

  Sydney had seen him before.

  At the Smithsonian museum standing next to the building housing the Holy Crusades display.

  18

  Sydney looked around the room, grabbed an unopened wine bottle from a table, positioned herself between the priest and Francesca. Priest or no priest, she wasn’t about to take a chance with the professor’s safety. “What do you want?”

  “It’s important I speak with the professor. Urgent,” he said in impeccable English, but with a slight French accent.

  “Why?”

  “The professor has something I’ve been waiting for. Something of great importance to me. You do not realize the danger she is in.”

  “I think I do.”

  “Well I don’t,” Francesca said.

  “Mademoiselle Alessandra meant for me to receive the package. She would have explained this in her letter.” He took a step closer, and Sydney raised the bottle in warning. “She did not mention a code?”

  Francesca stared in disbelief. “How did you know?”

  “It’s our code.”

  The shrill ring of the telephone interrupted the discussion, and the priest raised his hand in warning. “Don’t answer it,” he said. “They may be checking to see if you’re home. I think they’re watching the ambassador’s residence, maybe even this place as well.”

  “And who are �
��they’?” Sydney asked.

  “Those who’d think nothing of killing any one of us.”

  That she did believe. And still she hesitated. Until the sound of screeching tires on the street below brought her to her senses. She strode toward the window, looked out, saw the small gray sedan pulling up out front, then the driver leaning out, asking the guard something. “Now would be a good time to take a back exit,” she said, while the telephone continued to ring. “Don’t suppose either one of you have a car nearby?”

  Griffin turned into Via Angelo Masina, drove up, parked just down the street from the academy gate, then phoned Giustino. “Any word?”

  “No answer. Phone just rings.”

  He disconnected, pulled on an SIP jacket, deciding that the phone company was the best disguise for the institution, as that would allow him to walk around unnoticed. He grabbed his toolbox, then walked up the street just as a small gray sedan pulled slowly away from the academy gate. Griffin stopped at the gate to speak with the guard, identifying himself as the telephone repairman, a plausible pretense, since Italian telephones were perpetually guasti-on the blink.

  Toolbox in hand, Griffin said, “Il telefono di professoressa Santarella è guasto. Cos’è il numero del suo studio?”

  The guard glanced at the SIP logo on his jacket, then telephoned up to the professor’s studio, but after several seconds, told Griffin there was no answer, and that he couldn’t let him in, to which Griffin responded that there couldn’t be an answer if her phone wasn’t working.

  The guard muttered something about too many people looking for the professor, and that set Griffin’s senses on alert. “Duecentocinquantasette!” said the guard, pointing to the great windows over the academy doors. “La scala alla sinistra!” Number 257. Up the stairs and to the left.

  Griffin nodded, then strode toward the building, just as the guard called out that if she wasn’t in her room, she might be in the kitchen. Once inside, Griffin headed straight for Professor Santarella’s, climbing the stairs two at a time. When he turned into the hall, and saw the partially open door, he lowered the tool chest to the ground, drew his gun. Pressing himself against the wall, he stopped just before the threshold, listened. He heard nothing.

  Not necessarily a good sign, and gun at the ready, he stepped in, scanned the room.

  Empty.

  He saw papers dumped on the floor, and a wine bottle lying beside them. The bottle, he figured, could have been used as a makeshift weapon, one that was dropped, perhaps at the sight of a gun. Or maybe it had simply been knocked over. Even the papers on the ground weren’t enough to make him think there was a struggle. But there by the door was Sydney Fitzpatrick’s travel bag.

  So they either left willingly, or something alerted them, sent them running.

  The best bet, he figured, was to rule out one or the other scenario. With the exception of Sydney’s bag, maybe the papers on the ground, there was nothing inside the studio that shouldn’t be there, at least nothing he could see. He glanced outside, saw the academy entrance, the fountain, the street beyond the gate. The gatekeeper had the iron gate closed, and Griffin doubted anyone was getting in or out without the gatekeeper’s knowledge-unless they’d taken a back way. Perhaps they were still on the premises, in the kitchen as the guard had surmised.

  Griffin retrieved his toolbox, set his weapon just inside it, then left the studio, walked down the long hall. None of the residents milling about in the upstairs halls paid him the least attention in his SIP jacket. Apparently telephone repairs were commonplace at the academy. At the end of the hall, he turned into an open door that led to the kitchen, where a heavyset woman in thick-lensed glasses was cooking something that looked indigestible. No one else present there, or in the adjoining television room.

  “Telefono!” he said to the woman at the stove, and she hardly glanced at him as he walked over to the red telephone by the window. “Professor Santarella was having problems with her phone, but I can’t find her.”

  “She was here a minute ago, but left in a hurry.”

  Not exactly a telephone repairman’s business, but he sized up the woman, decided she wasn’t paying too much attention to give his questioning much notice. “Was she with someone?”

  “Yes. Another woman.”

  “Problems with the phone here?” he asked, picking up the red phone, and placing it to his ear.

  She shrugged, then went back to her cooking.

  He hit the flash a few times to make it look good as he glanced out the window and saw there was a clear view of the ambassador’s residence across the street. He also noticed the guards were gone, and the flag was down, which meant the ambassador wasn’t there-he’d returned to the States to claim his daughter’s body.

  Either way, he saw little that seemed to present a threat. Perhaps Fitzpatrick and the professor had gone for a stroll on the premises, though judging from the papers scattered on the floor, it seemed they left in a hurry, and why would they leave in a hurry for a casual stroll? The events of the past few days and his instincts told him otherwise. He had to assume that Fitzpatrick’s training gave her an advantage, perhaps let her notice something that wouldn’t stand out to the ordinary person. His gaze swept the street, the garden beyond, and then the ambassador’s residence, first the windows on each floor, and then the rooftop. Nothing there, and he kept searching. And that was when he saw the man in the palazzo two doors down, standing in an open tower room, watching the ambassador’s residence and the street around it through binoculars. No doubt it was how Griffin’s arrival was observed at the ambassador’s residence his first day back in Rome. And how he’d been so easily followed back to the hotel by the assassin that Adami had sent after him.

  He hung up the phone, stepped back, not sure if he’d been seen in the apartment, if they were even watching the academy. Either way, if the two women had come into the kitchen, and Fitzpatrick had looked out the window, seen the rooftop surveillance, it could very well have spooked her enough that she’d left in a hurry with the professor, and perhaps left her bag behind as a sign.

  And now all he had to do was find her.

  Griffin walked past the goggle-eyed woman who was now carrying her meal toward the table. His “Arrivederci!” went unnoticed, and he walked the long hall back to Professor Santarella’s studio, grabbed Sydney’s bag and walked out, pulled the door shut behind him. He descended the stairs, asked the guard if the professor had any visitors who might have used the phone, and was told that the professor had not one, but two visitors. An FBI agent and a priest who came by to use the academy library. When the guard was called away by the arrival of a young woman, Griffin glanced at the guard’s clipboard, saw the name Dumas written upon it.

  Griffin walked casually to the SIP van, then drove off down the street, trying to see if there were any more sentries watching the area. The academy didn’t appear to be the main object of the surveillance, which meant it was more than likely the ambassador’s residence-but they might notice the comings and goings here at the academy as well.

  He had to think about this. What reason would Adami have to still be watching the ambassador’s residence?

  To await Griffin’s arrival, and take him out? He doubted that. He was fairly certain that on that first day in Rome, his appearance at the ambassador’s and the ensuing assassination attempt on his life had been an opportunity of circumstance. No one had known he was en route to Rome. Even he hadn’t known until the last minute, once Fitzpatrick had finished the drawing, confirmed that Alessandra was, in fact, the victim.

  So what was the purpose of still manning the operation? What were they waiting for? And why had Dumas suddenly showed?

  It struck him then. They had figured the same thing he had figured. The day he’d made the death notification, he’d asked Alessandra’s father if she’d sent anything home. Why would Adami think anything different? And how had Dumas known to retrieve Alessandra’s package from Professor Santarella?

  Quite
simply, no one had suspected that Alessandra would send the package to her friend, Professor Santarella, across the street, or that her friend wouldn’t discover it until later, because she had been out of town.

  Until now.

  And just when he was convincing himself that Adami’s men were focusing on the ambassador’s residence and not the academy, and that he was worrying for nothing, a faded red Peugeot, driven by a priest, pulled out of the lot down the street from the academy. There were two passengers in the car, and though he had no doubt as to their identities, that wasn’t what concerned him. They were being followed. By the same gray car he’d seen at the academy gate.

  Tunisia

  Marc di Luca headed toward the Medina-the old quarter, which dated back to the Middle Ages. He thought about Griffin, wondering if he shouldn’t call HQ, mention that maybe they should pull Griffin from the case. It was no small feat that Marc had managed to convince Griffin that he needed to stay in Italy, that they had enough operatives to manage the mission to destroy the bioweapons that Adami was trying to smuggle into Italy via the Tunisia warehouse. The last time he’d seen Griffin that upset was after that operation two years ago…The ambush. He hadn’t been the same since. As it stood, the only reason Marc hadn’t called HQ was that, miracle of miracles, Griffin backed off at the last minute and told Marc to head the bioweapons mission.

  Marc glanced over his shoulder, checked for the umpteenth time that he wasn’t being followed, then turned into the wide Avenue Bourguiba, where a small regiment of shoeshine boys, sheltered from the sun by shaded arcades, called out to him in French, apparently oblivious to the fact that he was wearing suede-topped hiking boots. He made his way into the narrow-laned maze of the Medina. With its rough-hewn paving stones, the quarter had lost none of its charm, despite the number of tourist shops peddling red carpets, brass hookahs, and fezzes of all colors. A spice shop displaying huge bowls of powdered saffron, cumin, and harissa filled the air with pungency.