‘Which is my point exactly!’ he said with a dismissive wave. ‘For years now I thought that they were nuts, honoring Pontius Pilate as a hero. Calling him a Christian. Now I know that they were right. Good heavens! He actually started the religion. I feel like such a fool.’
‘You feel like a fool?’ she blurted. ‘How do you think I feel? I just found out that we’ve been running around Europe looking for my relative. That a painting of the laughing man was hanging on my father’s wall!’ She took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. ‘How could we have forgotten Pilate? He’s such an obvious candidate. We should’ve considered him.’
Boyd comforted her. ‘Come, come, my dear. You’re not alone in this. All of us ignored Pilate as a suspect. Cheer up! It’s not the end of the world.’
‘Yes, it is,’ said a new voice from the doorway. Stunned, they whirled around and saw Benito Pelati and four armed guards enter the room. ‘For Dante.’
Benito punctuated his statement by firing two quick rounds. Spray erupted from Dante’s chest, staining the painting of Pilate and the entire wall behind him. Then, as if in slow motion, his lifeless body slid out of the leather chair and onto the floor below. The sight of this filled Maria with such a murderous rage she sprang forward and tried to knock the gun out of her father’s hands. But a guard intervened, blocking her path with his body.
Undeterred, she tried to go through him, clawing at his face with a flurry of slaps and punches. The guard briefly took the punishment before ending Maria’s antics with a head-butt to the bridge of her nose. Then he finished her off with a right hook to the chin, a blow that sent her crashing through the glass coffee table behind her.
Impressed with her fighting spirit, Benito stared at Maria. ‘Who would have guessed it? Of all my children, the one with the biggest balls happened to be the girl.’
72
Maria regained consciousness, tied to a chair. Blood trickled from her nose and mouth. Gashes covered her. Shards of glass stuck out of her flesh like porcupine quills. The room was spinning.
She blinked a few times and tried to focus on the blurred figure in front of her. Fog blanketed everything. Her vision. Her memory. Her hearing. The muffled sound of her name filled her head like an echo. Someone was speaking to her. She blinked again, trying to figure out who it was.
‘Maria?’ her father repeated. ‘Can you hear me?’
‘What?’ she slurred. ‘Where am I?’
‘You’re home, Maria. After all these years, you’re finally home… I think that calls for a celebration.’ One of the guards handed a bottle of vodka to Benito, who preceded to dump it over Maria’s head. The fiery liquid seeped into her wounds, causing a thunderbolt of pain to surge through her body. He laughed at her screams of agony. ‘Makes you feel alive, doesn’t it?’
Suddenly the details of her situation hit her like an avalanche. She knew where she was and what was happening. Worst of all, she knew who was taunting her. In an instant her longtime nightmares had become a reality. She was sitting in front of her father.
Benito said, ‘I knew I’d see you again someday. Though I never imagined it’d be like this.’
‘Me, either,’ she spat. ‘I was hoping it was at your deathbed.’
He shook his head. ‘Instead, it’s taking place at yours.’
Maria glanced around the room, searching for hope. A weapon. An escape route. Anything helpful. That’s when she noticed Dr Boyd tied up next to her. His chin was slumped against his chest. His shirt was drenched in blood. His eyes and cheeks were swollen from repeated blows to his face. ‘Oh my God! What did you do to him?’
‘I didn’t do anything. My men did quite a bit, though. They got angry when my questions went unanswered.’ He studied the horror in her dark brown eyes. He had seen the same look many years ago during a similar situation, one that had happened in the same room. ‘Hopefully, you’ll be more cooperative than he was.’
‘Don’t count on it.’
He shrugged. ‘Too bad. Then I guess you’ll suffer the same fate as your mother.’
‘My mother? What do you mean? What are you talking about?’
He smiled. He knew she would take the bait. How could she possibly avoid it? ‘Come now, Maria. You don’t really think that she killed herself, do you?
You knew her better than anyone. Did she seem like the suicidal type?’
The room started spinning again, this time from all the questions that were swirling in her head. She’d always had doubts about her mother’s death. Suddenly everything started rushing to the surface. How did her mother die? What really happened? Was she killed? Was it an accident? There were so many things that she wanted to ask, she was unable to speak at all.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ Benito offered. ‘I’ll trade you for information. You answer one of my questions and I’ll answer one of yours… How does that sound?’
She nodded, accepting the devil’s terms without hesitation.
He pulled up a chair and sat across from her, hoping to read the truth in her eyes. ‘Who knows about the Catacombs?’
‘Half of Europe,’ she groaned, still feeling the burning in her skin. ‘People have been talking about them for years.’
Benito smirked at her insolence. Then he showed how he really felt by pushing a chunk of glass that jutted out of her thigh. Her scream filled the room, turning his smirk into a smile. ‘This doesn’t have to be difficult. All I’m looking for is the truth. If you give that to me, I’ll give you what you’re looking for… But if you lie, you will suffer… Understood?’
She nodded in understanding.
‘Who knows about the Catacombs?’
‘Just us… Boyd and me… We didn’t trust anyone else… so we kept it to ourselves.’
‘And what of the others? Petr Ulster? Payne and Jones? What do they know?’
‘Nothing,’ she insisted, still catching her breath. ‘They know we were looking for them. They didn’t know we found them.’
Benito nodded. Unbeknownst to Maria, Dr Boyd had blurted the same thing during his interrogation, leaving Benito little choice but to believe them. At least for now. Later he’d let his men take a crack at them with slightly more persuasive methods.
‘My turn,’ she grunted. ‘What happened to my mother?’
‘You don’t waste any time, do you? So I won’t either. Your mother was killed.’
‘Killed? By who?’
‘Sorry, Maria. It’s my turn now. You just used your question.’
‘But — ’
‘But nothing!’ He tapped his finger on the shard of glass, just to let her know he was in charge. ‘What did you take from the Catacombs?’
‘A scroll. We took a scroll. Nothing else.’
‘Be more specific,’ he demanded. ‘Tell me about the scroll.’
‘No, that’s another question.’
He shook his head. ‘It’s not a question. It’s an order. Tell me about the scroll.’ He emphasized his point by putting more weight on the shard. ‘Your original answer was incomplete.’
‘Fine,’ she grunted, hating him more by the minute. ‘We found it in a bronze cylinder. In the basement.’
‘In the documents room. Inside a stone chest with his picture on it.’ He pointed to the painting behind the desk. ‘Am I right?’
She nodded, confused. ‘How did you know that?’
‘How? Because that’s where I left it. You don’t actually think that you were the first explorers inside the Catacombs?… That’s amazing. Women can be so naive.’