32
All was peaceful around the British Museum. Rafael parked in the same spot he had used the first time. They retraced their steps along Great Russell Street, up to the doors. There was no one at the guard station, so they rang the bell and waited.
Sarah was immersed in her thoughts. Rafael could easily sense she was still caught up in their recent conversation.
Finally a watchman appeared, a bald man who came running out of the building.
“Yes?”
“Professor Margulies is expecting us,” Rafael confirmed.
The man looked at them for a few moments, his gaze icy.
“Please go in.”
Sarah didn’t like his manner. He had just dashed her theory that bald men were usually nice. One more myth crumbled, on a night when everything she had taken for granted had gone on to a better life. All of it because of that Firenzi, whose connection to the whole thing she still didn’t understand.
Rafael walked quickly to the room where Margulies should still be working.
“Do you think the professor has deciphered the message?” Sarah asked softly, trying not to disturb the oppressive silence.
“No.”
“If he’d deciphered it he would have called.”
“Is it that complicated?”
“I don’t know.”
“It seemed like rapid scribblings, like our reporters’ scrawls at press conferences. Whoever wrote it was in a hurry.”
Upon opening the door to the room where they had last seen Margulies, they did not anticipate the scene awaiting them. Three men sat there, dressed in black like Rafael. Professor Margulies was with them, his face badly bruised and smeared with blood.
“Jack,” the fat man said.
“Barnes,” Rafael said calmly.
“Jack?” Sarah wondered, confused by the new name. She instantly forgot her confusion when two men pounched on Rafael, striking a blow to the back of his neck.
Rafael fell, but wasn’t knocked out. He instinctively raised his hand to his neck.
“And the girl can only be the famous Sarah Monteiro,” Barnes remarked from his comfortable perch.
Sarah was startled to find herself the center of attention.
“Geoffrey Barnes?”
Rafael’s words resurfaced in her mind: “Believe me, sooner or later they’re going to find us. It all depends on the cards we get to play at that point.” Dread paralyzed her; she couldn’t think.
“Isn’t that Sharon Stone?” Professor Margulies asked, gasping with pain.
Geoffrey Barnes roared with laughter.
“Sharon Stone? I assure you she’s not Sharon Stone. Give me the papers,” he ordered.
“The papers?” Sarah looked at Rafael, who stood up with difficulty. Of the two men, the one who’d struck him took this opportunity to grab him by the collar of his coat while the other searched him. They removed two guns equipped with silencers and used one to cuff him on the head, sending him back to the floor.
Geoffrey Barnes looked at Sarah.
“The papers?”
Sarah saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.
“They’re in a safe place.” Her voice didn’t quite carry the assurance she’d hoped to project. A slight quaver signaled the precarious value of the card she was playing.
“Don’t make me laugh. And, above all, don’t waste my time.”
“Do you think I would come here holding that list so I could hand it to the first person who asked for it? Who do you take me for?”
“You didn’t know we would be here. Don’t make me lose my patience.”
“Don’t you make me lose mine.”
I’m digging my own grave, Sarah thought anxiously, but I can’t turn back now. She continued the argument.
“How dare you underestimate me like that? I knew”-and here her words started to fail her-“I knew that sooner or later you were going to find us. The only question was when.”
Rafael looked up at her, out of the game for the time being. Barnes had a thoughtful expression, never taking his eyes off Sarah. For her part, she opted to gaze straight back, trying not to betray the fear threatening to consume her-fear of him, of them, of everything.
Barnes turned to face one of the men behind Rafael and Sarah.
“Search her.”
It’s over, Rafael thought, half leaning against the foot of one of the several tables around the room.
The man who had struck Rafael approached Sarah, who stood up and spread her arms, ready to be searched. The man used his hands liberally, patting down the young woman’s body with no restraint. All that remained was to check inside her undergarments, which he promptly did.
“Nothing,” the agent reported, stepping back with a professional air.
Rafael looked up at Sarah, intrigued.
Barnes opted for a change of tactics, He had to give the woman some breathing room, to let her relax for a few moments.
“We’re going to forget about the papers for now.”
Sarah tried to compose herself. She had spent the entire night on the verge of disaster, and now would be the worst moment to lose it.
“Here our friend Margulies was involved in a chore that you asked him to take care of. We know that he doesn’t have the papers. But these books on cryptography provide us with some clues. Do you know what books on cryptography are used for?” The question was addressed to Sarah.
“To study crypts?”
Geoffrey Barnes got up, and with two swift paces he stood right in front of the young woman and backhanded her. The pain was instant, and seconds later her tongue tasted blood. A red trickle flowed from a corner of her mouth.
Bastard, she thought. Immediately her eyes welled, but she avoided shedding a single tear, not wanting to show any sign of weakness.
“To a crypt is where you’ll be going, and very soon,” Barnes said, looking at her with the same coldness as before. Then he returned to his seat and again made himself comfortable. “Now that we’ve clarified this point, let me explain to you what I think has happened. You received something besides the papers. A coded message that in my opinion your limited brain capacity wasn’t capable of deciphering. Because of that, you resorted to Professor Margulies. Am I right?”
“Yes, you’re right, he ought to have the message,” Rafael said, trying to shift the focus of attention to himself.
“Correct,” Barnes agreed. “But, unfortunately, your loyal friend swallowed it before we had a chance to read it. And, as you can see by his condition, we tried to get him to tell us what he had discovered. But it seems we haven’t made any progress.”
“Great, Margulies.” Rafael’s voice was sarcastic. “You did it. You swallowed the coded message. How remarkable.”
“And, because of that, he’s no longer of any use to us,” Barnes announced, signaling to the agent behind Rafael. The man went up to Margulies, dragged him to the center of the room, and ordered him to kneel. The professor’s hands were tied behind his back.
Sarah didn’t even want to imagine what was about to happen, and turned her head in order not to look. She had never seen anyone die, even of natural causes. Sensing Margulies’s presence a couple of steps away, kneeling before an inevitable fate, she was unable to hold back her tears.
“So, now Sarah doesn’t want to watch the spectacle we’ve prepared for her,” Barnes boomed, displeased. “We can’t have that.”
Again the man who had searched Sarah approached her. A strong hand gripped the back of her neck, forcing her to witness the scene.
“No,” she protested.
“Yes,” the man holding her head answered in her ear. “Enjoy the unique experience of watching a body abandon life. It’s a most beautiful spectacle.” A snide chortle reached her ears.
The professor, on his knees, mumbled a litany to himself. It was his farewell, the offering of his spirit to the Creator, so that He would receive him under the best conditions. The way in which one faced one’s last breath gave humans greater or lesser dignity. And Margulies did it with integrity.