That small mystery resolved itself soon enough, when Marius stopped a few minutes into the journey to speak into another voice tube, exactly like the one Franco had used back in the warehouse. Clearly, the Furedis were receiving updates on the Russians’ whereabouts from allies elsewhere in the tunnel system. Alerted to the presence of the speaking tube, Ivanov began to see them sprouting from the wall at seemingly random intervals. Minutes might go by without encountering one, then two or three would appear at the juncture of a couple of tunnels. The priest and his bandit companions appeared to be intimately familiar with the layout of the ancient passageways and their crudely effective communication system. Ivanov wondered when it had been installed. Obviously not when the tunnels were dug.
The fetid stink of the sewers and drains was not nearly as powerful down here. Not initially anyway. When his nostrils flared and his nose twitched at the first strong whiff of raw effluent, Ivanov wondered if they might be approaching their destination. The candle Marius was using to light their way had burned down about half its length. Their pace slowed and eventually he brought them to a halt where the tunnel widened slightly before splitting into two diverging passages. He motioned for the others to gather closely around him.
“We must be very quiet now,” he said in a voice so low, Ivanov was forced to lean forward to make out each word. “We will separate here. Franco, you will take the Russian to the upper gallery. Giorgio and I will join Stefan and Marco on the southern terrace.”
The last two names meant nothing to Ivanov, but he assumed these were the men Marius had consulted. Were there more of them around? he wondered. Did they work for the priest, and for his masters in the Vatican, the warrior monks of Circostanze Particolari? Or were they from Franco’s “other” family. He hoped the latter. If they were about to do battle with an NKVD strike team, he preferred to have killers and thugs on his side rather than ecclesiastical agents. Although, for all Ivanov’s certainty that Marius Furedi was a soldier of God, the man had about him the cold, detached air of an actual soldier who had seen enough death to become fatalistic about his own chances.
“Franco will lead you, Russian,” said the priest. “Follow him and do as he says. The Communists have reinforcements. We have counted fifteen of them in the chamber ahead and more on the way.”
He must have seen the look on Ivanov’s face.
“It matters not,” he assured the Russian. “We shall kill them all.”
“But not Skarov,” warned Ivanov.
“No. He is not there.”
The numbness disappeared, replaced with a low, boiling cauldron of anger deep behind his eyes. Ivanov let some of the tension loose from his left hand before squeezing it into a fist, so tightly that knuckles popped. So now they were off on a forlorn hunt to bag a few foot soldiers for no apparent end.
“Do not concern yourself with him,” said the priest. “He has returned to the surface. We are watching him, and we will take up our business with him when we are done here. If you want your foe, you must draw him back down. And making a sacrifice of his men will do just that.”
Fury and murder burned behind Ivanov’s eyes, but he had not survived so long in this game by allowing himself to vent his feelings uncontrollably. More than ever he was beholden to these Italians. Not just to guide him through the world beneath the streets of the city but to guide him back toward his original objective-the contact at the Grimaldi. And now also to Skarov, who seemed to be using Sobeskaia as bait. Ivanov diverted his anger and used it to clear his mind, burning away fear, extraneous thoughts, and any desire he had to slit the throats of his Roman companions. With a deep breath, he clamped down on ill feeling and turned his wits to the task at hand.
“It is for the best,” Marius told him. Franco nodded solemnly beside him, at least having the good grace to look a little ashamed. Giorgio remained as he always had-a stone-faced killer.
Marius blew out the candle and Ivanov reached instinctively for his NVGs. Still set to infrared, they picked out the heat signatures of the three Italians but little of the background detail. The men appeared like three red ghosts floating in the vacuum of space. Switching to low-light amplification was a surprise. The tunnels were more brightly illuminated than he would have imagined when the priest extinguished the candle. A hot wash of photons was leaking from a powerful light source nearby.
The Furedis and Giorgio moved off without apparent difficulty. Franco trailed his fingertips along the ceiling and the rough-hewn rock face of the ancient shaft. The other two disappeared before Ivanov could see whether they were negotiating their way in the same fashion. For the moment, he decided he would stick with LLAMPS vision, adjusting the photon gain as they drew closer to the light.
The tunnel took a sharp turn to the left and climbed steeply up a flight of worn steps carved directly out of the granite floor. A millennium or more of foot traffic had smoothed the edge of the steps and eroded a deep bowl in each of them. Franco was moving very quietly now, reminding Ivanov of an old and mangy but dangerous cat. He drew to a stop a few paces beyond the top step.
Another man awaited them there.
Or rather, a boy, to judge by his prominent cheekbones and the fiery eruption of acne that covered most of his face. His eyes shone brightly in the NVGs, like poisonous green stars, making him a monstrous visage that was not helped by his vulpine smile. Precisely the sort of creature who might live in the underworld, with greasy, matted hair and a mouthful of crooked teeth.
The boy gestured at Franco, who turned and pointed at Ivanov’s combat goggles, indicating that he should remove them. The OSS operative did so, surprised to discover that after a few seconds of squeezing his eyes closed to adjust, he could see quite well. He could also hear the voices of a number of NKVD troops somewhere below their position.
Franco had led him into a cavern just large enough to accommodate the three of them. To Ivanov’s dismay, the boy was armed with a Great War-vintage bolt-action rifle. There was no time to change that now.
A careful peek around the entrance of their cave confirmed that the troopers had gathered in a much larger cavern beneath their vantage point, and were all toting reengineered AKM-74s with folding stocks and rails loaded with LED tactical lights, laser sights, and, in some cases, grenade launchers. They were also illuminated by battery-powered camp lights and appeared to be setting up a base from which to conduct a systematic search. Ivanov closed his eyes and did his best to recall every detail of the site picture he had snapped in his mind.
He saw three camp lights, a stack of bedding, two foldout tables covered in rolls of paper-drawings and maps of the sewers, from the city engineers perhaps? — a couple of modular-frame tents, and even a portable cooking stove. There were at least twelve to fifteen men down there, similar to the report Marius had received.
What Ivanov did not see was any sign of Skarov, of course. The spy catcher had run where the trail was hot. Back to the hotel, as Furedi had said, to secure the only link to Ivanov that he had. The boyar.
The former Spetsnaz officer shook his head, unhappy with the way this was playing out, with him being pushed across the chessboard as somebody else’s pawn. He was used to moving other people around-not being played by them. Resolving to speak to the priest before this whole thing went completely off the rails, he had just moved toward Franco, intending to whisper to him that he urgently needed to see his brother, when a Russian voice shouted out in alarm. Within a second, two explosions roared and shook the ground underfoot, knocking Ivanov slightly off balance.