The Bone Chamber

by Robin Burcell

  “And who was this next guardian?”

  “No one knows. The priest never gave up the information after he completed this quest of hiding the first key.”

  “Then tell me what you do know.”

  “According to my earlier research and confirmed by what I found in the Vatican archives, the Jesuit priest told his inquisitors truthfully that di Sangro had given him the first key to hide, and that key was hidden in the ossuary-the bone chamber-‘past the great pyramids of the Nile,’ and to look for the ‘graffito behind the wall beyond the tomb of the harpists.’ It was assumed that he was referring to Egypt, the Valley of the Kings, primarily because the Vatican’s search of the columbarium in Rome was fruitless. The priest also warned them that the map was well protected, and without all three keys, the finder would be crushed. According to the Vatican archives, he said he did not know the location of the other two keys, only di Sangro did.”

  “Maybe this priest or di Sangro gave it to someone else? The next guardian.”

  “As far as we know, both he and di Sangro died before the next guardian was chosen, and I don’t believe he would have ever entrusted the information to anyone else.”

  “And so what you found in the columbarium?”

  “I’m sure it was the first key.”

  “But no second key at the crypt.”

  “If it’s there, I can’t possibly say where or what it could be.”

  “Do you know the location of the third key?”

  “The general location of di Sangro’s hidden burial chamber is in Naples, but no one has been foolish enough to attempt to access it without having the three keys.”

  “So this map everyone has been seeking has been sitting in some chamber for years on end, free for the taking?”

  “If one has all three keys.”

  “And what if the keys and this so-called curse or trap are merely a ruse?”

  “Would you be willing to risk your life or another’s because you thought it was merely a ruse?”

  “I’m not even sure the map exists,” Griffin said.

  Sydney crossed her arms, gave a slight shrug. “Doesn’t matter what you think. Adami thinks it exists, which sort of makes it a moot point.”

  Hell, he thought. Pyramids and bone chambers, and triangles carved on faces…Someone believed it was true. And if there was a trap, Adami had the advantage. Send in Griffin. If the trap worked, Griffin was dead…and so was Tex. “Get McNiel on the line,” he told Giustino. A moment later, Giustino handed him the phone. “Mac? Griffin. I have a…development on this third key.” He told McNiel what Francesca had said.

  There was a long stretch of silence on the other end, and he was certain that like him, McNiel was having a hard time absorbing this. “How sure are you about this?”

  “I’m not sure at all,” Griffin replied. “But as Fitzpatrick mentioned earlier, does it matter? Adami believes it to be true, therefore what choice do we have?”

  More silence. Then, “When are you leaving for Naples?”

  “First light.”

  “If there’s any truth to this, that map isn’t to leave in unfriendly hands. Keep me informed.”

  Griffin disconnected, then looked at Giustino. “You have almost everything ready to go here?”

  “A team is on its way, adesso. We should be out within the hour.”

  To Francesca he said, “Naples?”

  “Naples.”

  And just when he thought that was the end of any discussion on the matter, Sydney looked right at Francesca, and said, “You never did mention the name of this anthropologist you were speaking about…”

  Great, he thought. How the hell was he going to get out of this one?

  29

  Sydney watched as Griffin quelled the professor into silence with one look, then asked Giustino to take the professor into the kitchen so that they could talk. If that wasn’t telling, the fact he could barely look Sydney in the eye was.

  “Well?” Sydney asked.

  “Your friend,” he said. “Dr. Natasha Gilbert was the anthropologist who had worked with Alessandra.”

  “Tasha?” she said, and still had a hard time believing it. She wasn’t even sure what to say, what to think. It didn’t matter that she’d suspected this from the moment she’d heard Francesca mention that an anthropologist had been working with Alessandra. Too coincidental for it not to be she. Once again Sydney thought back to the beginning, the night she and Tasha went to dinner, the conversation they’d had.

  She recalled thinking that something was off. Tasha had seemed jumpy, had purposefully deflected any personal questions…

  Sydney got up, walked to the window, stared out, seeing nothing. With the clarity of hindsight, she realized that Tasha had been worried about something, no doubt this dig she’d gone out on. Tasha probably had no idea the depths to which it ran, or the dangers involved. Nor was she trained to deal with such matters. Griffin, however, did know, and Sydney turned, glared at him. “How could you not tell me?”

  “What good would it have done, except make you worry?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Make me trust you a little more from the get-go? What the hell else haven’t you told me?” He simply looked at her, his face unreadable, and that infuriated her even more. She paced the room, tried to think…“How long did you know she was involved with Alessandra’s case?”

  “From the beginning.”

  She thought of the implications, tried to determine what all this meant. “And yet you let me suggest her name for that drawing?”

  He hesitated, looked away a moment, and she wondered what kind of bullshit excuse he was going to give her. “The information was classified. I couldn’t tell you.”

  “Couldn’t or wouldn’t? Maybe if you’d trusted someone else besides your goddamned self-”

  “At least I trust myself.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  He didn’t answer.

  Suddenly she wondered if he’d known how much confidence she’d lost in her own judgment ever since her father’s murder investigation. And then she recalled that he’d done a complete background on her, decided he knew exactly what he was saying. “You’re a bastard.”

  “You’ve established that on more than one occasion. It doesn’t change the fact I could not tell you.”

  “I went to dinner with her, for God’s sake. She was clearly worried about whatever this was. I could have talked to her. Maybe found out something, helped her.”

  “It was out of your control, Sydney,” he said, his voice so quiet, she barely heard him. “Just like everything that’s going on right now is out of my control. All we can do is work with what we have right here, right now.”

  And he was right. They had one objective right now, and that was to find Tex. “Fine. But when this is over, it’s over. I never want to run into you or anyone from ATLAS again.”

  “At least we agree on something.”

  They took the early morning train to Naples, and Sydney was glad for the chance to relax, even if only for the next couple hours. Griffin continued to query the professor on this Prince of Sansevero and his missing map, and when that line of questioning was done, he moved on to why she insisted on keeping something like this from him when she knew that Alessandra had been killed over it.

  “I don’t expect you to understand.” Francesca sighed, leaning her head against the train window, staring out at the long unbroken series of arches of the Roman aqueduct, with the green cascading plants sprouting from the ancient bricks. “I cannot sit idly by and allow your government to get in the way of something I’ve devoted my life to discovering.”

  “And yet you’d risk your life, and the lives of the rest of us around you?” Griffin looked at Sydney. “Watch the professor. I’m going to check the train, then find us some coffee.”

  He left, and Francesca leaned back in her seat, seeming resigned to her fate. “I suppose you must think I’m a calloused academic, obsessed with myself
and my glorious goal of publish or perish.”

  “What I think,” Sydney said, “is that your goal is getting in the way of your common sense. These people who are after whatever this is, they’ll kill you and anyone around you without batting an eye.”

  “You don’t understand.”

  “You’re right. Your friend was murdered, brutally, and then my friend was killed as part of the investigation looking into that murder. We won’t even go into the number of attempts on my and Griffin’s lives as a result, never mind the attempt on your and Dumas’s just, when? Day before yesterday? Does that mean nothing to you?”

  “Of course not.” Francesca had the grace to look somewhat humiliated. “But this is my life’s work.”

  “And your life’s work won’t mean a thing if you’re dead.”

  “But my work will still be here.”

  “I’m sure that means a lot to Alessandra and my friend Tasha.”

  “I did not ask Alessandra to become involved. She and I merely shared some of the same academic interests which happened to involve ancient burial sites.”

  “How do you know it wasn’t your interests that got her killed?”

  Francesca’s brown eyes glistened. “I’ve thought of nothing else. Or maybe I’ve tried not to think it…”

  Someone jostled Sydney from behind, trying to move through the aisle, and she turned to see a teenage boy with an accordion, who filled the space with his presence as he pumped a lively off-key rendition of the Venetian Boat Song-a little too lively for that hour of the morning. Behind him was a young girl with long dark braids, who moved shyly forward, her calloused hand outstretched, and a sweet, professional smile playing about her pretty face as she begged for coins. Sydney judged her to be about the same age as her own sister, Angie, just eleven, and her heart went out to the girl, her instinct to dig into her purse. Before she could, Francesca said something in Italian, rather rudely, judging from the tone of her voice.

  To Sydney, the girl said, “You are American? I tell your fortune, yes?”

  Francesca looked about to protest, but Sydney waved her back, dug into her bag, and pulled out a few euros, handing them to the girl. “What’s my fortune?”

  “It smiles on you, nice lady.”

  To which Francesca said, “Va via!” She waved her hand impatiently, and the boy and the girl moved on, but not before the girl turned around, looked back at Francesca, then Sydney, her dark eyes sharp, unyielding, the smile from her young face gone.

  When they were out of earshot, Francesca said, “Professional beggars. Bad idea to encourage them.”

  After a silence, Sydney asked, “What is the Vatican’s involvement in this affair? Father Dumas? If he was working with Alessandra, he must have known about this map.”

  “I’m quite sure he does,” Francesca said. “This map is said not to exist, yet the most powerful church in the world has been searching for it for the past two centuries, perhaps even longer, since it appears that someone had to have been a guardian before di Sangro was appointed. That they would imprison di Sangro because he is a Freemason? I have always found that suspect, especially considering their interrogation of the Jesuit priest who hid the first key. They were interested then, and they’re interested now. Whether or not it is for the same reason that your government wants it, I don’t know. And if you have any suppositions about my callousness, put yourself in my shoes. When I find what I’m looking for, then I find out why Alessandra was killed.”

  “I am in your shoes,” Sydney said. “In a fashion.”

  “How so?”

  “Let’s just say I insinuated myself in this investigation to find answers as to why my friend was killed. I might be employed by the government, but my loyalties belong to Tasha, because in a way, it’s my fault she’s dead. I was the one who recommended her services to Griffin in order to discover Alessandra’s identity after she was killed.”

  “Her identity?”

  “She was missing her face and her fingerprints at the time.”

  Francesca paled. “Missing them…?”

  “Her face was carved off, or a piece of it in the shape of a pyramid was removed, and her fingerprints removed as well. My friend was a forensic anthropologist. I was the forensic artist who was supposed to work with her.”

  Francesca stared mutely out the window for several long seconds. Finally she said, “Was your anthropologist friend killed the same way?”

  “No. A hit-and-run, no doubt intended to deflect our attention from the two cases, so we wouldn’t think they were connected.”

  “A hit-and-run…? I-I didn’t think any of this would lead to…” She took a breath. “I can’t believe this…” Looking shaken, she closed her eyes, crossed her arms tightly about her, as though the thought of so much death was too much to bear.

  Griffin walked up just then, bearing a plastic tray with three espressos. “If any of Adami’s crowd is on this train, I haven’t noticed them,” he said, taking a seat besides Sydney. He turned his attention to Francesca, then back to Sydney. “What happened?” he asked, nodding toward the professor.

  “We were discussing Alessandra’s murder,” Sydney replied, taking one of the plastic cups from the tray. Francesca took hers, but didn’t drink. Griffin asked no further questions, and the remainder of the trip passed in a relative and uncomfortable silence.

  An hour and a half later, the train slowed to a stop in the Naples station. Griffin handed Sydney her bag that contained her sketchbook and the two maps she’d taken from Francesca’s wall, then slung his backpack over his shoulder. “We can get a cab in the taxi line just outside the station.”

  They walked down the binario into the station, wading through the mass of passengers moving in all directions. Sydney saw the accordionist and the young girl moving through the crowd. A loud argument between two men turned into a shoving match, and everyone seemed to surge back at the same time, trying to avoid the fight, which made it more difficult to get through the crush.

  As they left the station, they joined the taxi line, which moved swiftly, thanks to what looked like a sea of official yellow cabs waiting to pick up their fares. A cab pulled up, and Griffin held the door open, allowing Francesca to slide in first.

  Sydney was about to get into the cab when she felt the slightest of tugs at her back. She turned, glimpsed the dark braids as the girl from the train darted through the crowd, and she knew without a doubt that her bag had just been picked. Doubt turned to wonder when she checked her bag, found her money still there. She looked around her, saw the boy with the accordion, and decided that the girl had to be close. Sure enough, she saw the girl through the crowd, looking right at her, as though daring her to give chase. Whatever, Sydney thought, about to get into the cab, when she caught sight of what was in the girl’s hand. A rolled parchment. “The professor’s maps,” she whispered to Griffin.

  “What?”

  “Pickpocket.”

  “Professor, get out of the cab.”

  The driver shouted at them as they abandoned the cab. Griffin followed Sydney toward the entrance to the station, and Francesca raced after them.

  “Why would she take the maps?” Sydney asked.

  “Maps?” Francesca said. “Why would a street girl take maps, when she could just as easily get your money?”

  “Maybe she figured they were something valuable,” Sydney said. “You did give them a nice antique appearance.”

  “They were my maps?”

  “Let’s hope that’s all it is,” Griffin replied. “I’d hate to think someone else already had us pegged.”

  There were still too many people about to find such a small girl, who was no doubt an expert at remaining hidden. But the accordion-wielding accomplice stood out easily, and Sydney pointed him out, saying, “They were together.”

  “Then we wait here,” Griffin said.

  And they did just that, waiting near the newspaper kiosk.

  After several minutes, Sydney found the girl
, darting in and out of the crowd, no doubt filling her pockets as she did so. “There, by the magazine kiosk.”

  Griffin nodded, started that direction. He looked everywhere but at the girl. A moment later, he had her by the scruff of the neck. Sydney and Francesca walked up in time to hear the girl say, “These papers, I only take them from the signorina, because she is nice. I take them to protect her.”

  “Protect her from whom?”

  She pulled the maps from the back of her shirt, holding them out to Sydney.

  Clever, Sydney thought. She took the maps from the girl, then told Griffin, “Pay her.”

  “For our own property?”

  “You heard her, she thinks I’m nice.”

  Griffin dug into his pocket, pulled out a few euros and held them out.

  The girl looked at the money, then frowned at Griffin. “This is all, when I return your valuable papers out of the kindness of my heart?”

  “You are lucky I don’t send the carabinieri after you for this.”

  The girl’s smile brightened as she reached for the money, then said, “And how much I get if I tell you that you are followed?”

  Griffin didn’t let go of the money. “That depends on the information.”

  Sydney looked around, but trying to see if they were truly being followed in this crowd was impossible.

  The girl, however, clamped her mouth shut, and Griffin let go of the money, which she quickly pocketed, as he took a few more bills from his wallet. “Tell me what you know, and I’ll decide what it’s worth.”

  “The white taxi, do you see it?” she said, pointing across the piazza to where several limousines and a few odd-colored taxis were parked farther beyond the official taxi line. “He follows you.”