“You make him sound like Christ reincarnated.”
“I don’t expect him to rise from the grave, Master Simone. But if he does, the bastards will find a reason to kill him again.”
The vertical strip of shadow narrows, darkening into a thin black line, and then it is gone, displaced by oak planks and iron hardware. The opening into the darkness has closed, at least for now. Simone Martini — altered in ways he will not understand for years, if ever — turns from the realm of shadow and illusion and death, resuming his place in the world of life and breath, light and color.
CHAPTER 20
Light and color filled the square, a leafy park that was jammed this Sunday morning with tables of bright fabrics, fresh flowers, watercolor paintings, and Provençal delicacies — cheeses, wine, honey, olive oil, strawberries, raspberries. Miranda was auditioning samples of cheese and wine — wine tasting at 10 A.M. — to round out our picnic basket. Stefan had offered to meet us here and take us on a field trip to the Pont du Gard, an ancient aqueduct that was one of Rome’s finest feats of engineering. I wasn’t looking forward to having him along, but I was excited about the aqueduct. “Listen to this,” I said, glancing up from the guidebook. “The aqueduct is sixteen stories high and fifteen hundred feet long, but it drops only one inch from one end to the other. Can you imagine building with that kind of precision two thousand years ago?”
“Mmm.” Miranda smacked her lips. “I can imagine eating my weight in this goat cheese.”
“It carried forty-four million gallons of water a day. Isn’t that something?”
“You really are in touch with your inner nerd, you know that?”
“Where’s Stefan? He was supposed to be here half an hour ago, wasn’t he?”
“Forty-five minutes.”
“Try his cell phone, will you?”
“I have. Twice. My call went straight to voice mail.”
“Try it again. Maybe he’s over at the palace.”
“Oh, I’m sure he’s at the palace,” she groused. “Which is why he’s not getting my calls. A nuclear blast couldn’t get through those walls, let alone a cell phone signal.”
“Then let’s just go over there,” I suggested. “Seems silly to sit here and wait for him. Either he forgot about the plan, or he got sidetracked by something.”
I hoisted the backpack over one shoulder — Miranda had managed to cram a hefty load of lunch treats into it — and we headed for the palace, a ten-minute walk away. As we approached, Miranda phoned again, but once more the call went to Stefan’s voice mail.
At the palace’s main entrance, we flashed our badges, ducked behind a cordon, and threaded our way down the staircases that led to the base of the treasury tower. “I assume he’s locked the gate behind him,” I fretted. “Do you think he’ll hear us if we yell?”
“I’ve got a pretty good set of lungs,” she said. “The last guy who grabbed me in a parking garage got a perforated eardrum to go along with his scratches and bruises.”
Surprisingly, though, Stefan hadn’t locked the gate; he hadn’t even bothered to close it. “He must be expecting us,” I said. “Either that, or he’s getting really careless.”
“If he was expecting us, he should’ve left the lights on,” Miranda grumbled. She flipped open her cell phone to wake up the display screen, and used the light to scan the wall for the switch.
“Ingenious,” I said. “You’re so resourceful.”
“Hey, I grew up watching MacGyver. I can make a computer out of matchsticks and paper clips.”
“Really?” Even by the faint glow of the phone, I could see her eyes roll. “Oh. You were being sarcastic.”
“Not sarcastic. Only hyperbolic.”
“Miranda, if you hope to have any success in academia, you’ve got to stop exaggerating. If I’ve told you once, I’ve told you—”
“Yeah, yeah, a billion times,” she interrupted. “The same number of times you’ve told me that joke. Damn it, where’s the switch?” She yelped as a spark split the darkness, followed by the feeble glow of bulbs trailing down the staircase like luminous bread crumbs.
I’d expected the subtreasury to be brightly lit by the work lights, but it wasn’t. Miranda looked worried as we stepped into the gloom. “Stefan?” No answer. “Stefan, are you in here?” Silence. “Come on, Stefan, this isn’t funny. If you’re in here, come on out. You’re creeping me out.” The only sound I heard was Miranda’s breathing, which had turned fast and ragged.
“Let’s turn on the work lights,” I suggested, as much to distract Miranda as anything else. “Can you find the switches for those?”
She opened her cell phone again and disappeared behind one of the support pillars; a moment later, my eyelids and pupils clamped down against the glare of the halogen bulbs.
The lights only underscored the emptiness of the room. Miranda looked at me; wordlessly, we headed for the blue tarp that curtained off the excavation area. I ducked around one end of the tarp, Miranda around the other. Our eyes automatically swiveled to the same spot. The table was empty; the bones were gone.
“I feel sick,” Miranda said. “Whatever’s going on, it’s not good.”
“Maybe not,” I conceded, “but let’s try not to panic. Let’s look around a little more, then go outside and try to reach Stefan again.” She nodded, chewing her lip.
I studied the table where we’d laid out the bones in anatomical order. The white sheet was still in place; a few small smudges and stains confirmed that yes, this was where the bones had lain. I lifted the fabric that overhung the table and stooped to peer beneath it. “The ossuary’s gone, too,” she predicted, and she was right. “Goddamn it,” she said, but there was no heat behind the curse, just weariness. “I should have known.”
“Known what?”
“Known better. Known something would go wrong. Known that Stefan was working an angle. Known that he was still the same guy who cheats on his wife, shafts his colleagues, or does some other damn selfish thing that’s gonna blow up in our faces and make us the collateral damage, the civilian casualties, the friendly-fire deaths.” I considered trotting out my exaggeration joke yet again, but it dawned on me that Miranda might not be exaggerating this time. “He’s taken the bones and skipped town,” she said. “I just know it. They’re probably on eBay right now.”
“They won’t be on eBay,” I said, “but they sure aren’t here, and I don’t see a helpful note explaining why. Let’s lock up and see if we can find out what the hell’s going on.”
We switched off the work lights, climbed the stairs, and switched off the dim string of bulbs in the stairwell. By the faint light of Miranda’s phone, I wrestled the heavy gate shut, then hit a problem. “I don’t see the lock,” I told Miranda.
She brought the phone closer, playing its bluish-white glow over the hasp and then the nearby bars. “Hmm.” She widened her search, sweeping the light horizontally across the entire gate at waist height, then in progressively lower tracks at each horizontal crossbar. When she reached the level of the floor, she grunted, then said softly, “Oh, shit.” I bent to look at whatever she’d seen.
The padlock — the industrial-strength lock with the inch-thick shackle of hardened steel — had been cut in half.
“Now what?” asked Miranda.
We’d voiced our concerns to the ranking security officer at the palace; he took notes and promised to investigate, but he didn’t seem nearly as worried as Miranda and I were. After that, we’d gone to the police station, but the entrance was locked. A notice taped to the glass door announced FERMÉ—JOUR FÉRIÉ. OUVERT LUNDI. “Damn,” said Miranda. “Closed. Religious holiday. Open Monday.”