Natalie gasped as Steven gently set her down, then held her back from the small pile of rubble.
“Don’t breathe. Give me the putty knife,” he instructed.
Natalie did as asked, and he cautiously flipped over the shards of the old document, piecing them roughly together. He unfolded the area that was doubled across the broken lower sheet, and it split at the fold. Steven gently eased that piece against the rest, creating a badly broken single page with faint coded writing on it. To Steven’s eye, it was the same code as the one that had led them there. With a trembling hand, he took several more photos, checking to ensure they were of adequate resolution to be analyzed later.
The clattering of the chain on the doors in the stairwell foyer above them jarred their moment of triumph.
Steven dropped the phone back into his pocket and whispered to Natalie, “Grab the stone and set it back in place. Hurry.”
He handed the coarsely crafted rectangle to her and knelt down again, swinging her up onto his shoulders and moving back towards the wall. He heard the scraping of the block as Natalie re-wedged it into place. More debris hit him in the face. Finished, she patted his head and he crouched so she could jump down. Just as her feet hit the floor, they heard the door swing open upstairs and a soft voice call out. Steven peered at his watch — their thirty minutes was up. He looked down at the parchment and saw with horror that his boot had crushed it into an unrecognizable pile of dust, intermingled with the tiny mortar specks from above. Moving quickly, he brushed the debris away from the wall, off into a dark corner at the far end of the chamber. Natalie quickly followed suit as they heard the heavy footsteps moving down the stairs and into the far gallery.
She looked up at Steven’s face and began lightly patting it in an effort to remove most of the telltale powdery residue. The footsteps neared the opening to the chamber, and she hastily moved a few paces away from the area, pulling Steven along by the hand. As the steps neared the main room, she pulled the zipper of her jumpsuit to her navel, threw her arms around Steven and kissed him full on the lips, her tongue finding his with a small moan.
The guard shuffled into the hall and cleared his throat. Steven and Natalie looked up at him, visibly startled. Steven wasn’t faking the surprise, and his tousled hair and expression clearly radiated shocked guilt. Natalie pulled away and hastily pulled up her zipper, allowing the man to catch a good glimpse of one perfectly-molded breast in the process. She cleared her throat and flashed a beaming smile at the entranced guard, then also smiled at Steven, who was struggling to regain his composure.
“Eh, so your half hour is over. Let’s have a look at the paintings to make sure you didn’t damage anything.” The guard leered at them both. “I hope it was worth it for you, si?”
Steven smirked in what he hoped was a lascivious manner. “Oh, it was, my friend. It was. Si.”
The guard performed a cursory inspection of the frescoes; satisfied that nothing had been touched, he motioned to them to accompany him up the stairs, muttering to himself and shaking his head along the way. Americans were an odd bunch. Who else would pay several thousand dollars to screw in a church basement? Then again, whatever floated your boat, he reasoned. If he had the money and a willing partner like this minx of a woman, he’d pretty much do it wherever she wanted, as well. When love was in the air, you didn’t question it…
Natalie took Steven’s hand as they mounted the stairs to the upper level. After thanking the guard and slipping him an extra hundred dollar bill for his discretion, they stepped out onto the empty street. Steven listened as the heavy iron security door closed behind them, sheltering the church’s treasures from blasphemers once again. Natalie was suddenly all business and detached her hand from Steven’s before moving down the block.
When they reached the corner of the building, they peeked around and confirmed that Frederick and the car were still there, waiting patiently for their return. The street was empty, with only a few streetlights glowing in the darkness. Steven followed Natalie to within a few yards of the passenger door, when he abruptly stopped and grabbed her arm. A man’s leg protruded from the bushes to their right, part of the church’s hedges.
What the hell was going on? Steven spun Natalie towards him and held his fingers to his lips before moving to the vegetation. A quick inspection revealed Frederick’s body lying twisted in the dirt, the telltale marks of stab wounds on his torso, his white shirt and black jacket gleaming with blood.
Steven reached into the bushes to confirm there was no pulse, then jerked Frederick’s weapon free of the shoulder holster — a Ruger SR9 semi-automatic pistol. Steven guessed by the still-wet blood he’d been killed no more than ten minutes earlier. Beyond him, in the space near the rear of the building, another man lay in a pool of his own fluids, also clearly dead.
Natalie was reaching for the car door when Steven hissed at her, “No. We’ve been blown. Leave the car. We’ve got to get out of here; it could be rigged.”
He grabbed her hand and they set off at a run, away from the church and the death that had suddenly surrounded them. The empty street gave no hint of pursuit, but still they ran like the devil himself was behind them.
CHAPTER 19
Diego Luca answered the strident ring of the cell phone without needing to ask who was calling. Only one person had the number of this new telephone, and that person was Colonel Gabriel Synthe. He stabbed the phone into active mode, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes as he noted the time displayed on his bedside clock. One forty-five in the morning.
“Yes?”
“There’s been a development. I thought you’d want to know,” Synthe reported.
“A development?”
“We installed a tracking device last night on the target’s car once we pinpointed them from the girl’s wire records — at a villa near Florence — and went on full alert when she left and drove to Rome today. We don’t know why she did, but we were following the car, which was our only lead. It arrived at the Basilica of Saint Clemente a little less than an hour ago. That seemed irregular, so I had two of my contractors dispatched to establish in-person surveillance.”
Luca took this in. “Yes, yes. And…?”
“The woman and her new companion entered the basilica at one, and the driver remained outside.”
“They went into the basilica? That’s impossible. It’s closed at night.”
Luca knew this particular church well. It was only a few miles from Vatican City, where he had resided much of his life and where he even now had been roused from his sleep.
“Closed or not, they disappeared into the church. Fifteen minutes later, all hell broke loose.”
“Damn it, man. Spit it out. What happened?” Luca demanded.
“Two men approached the target’s vehicle and killed the driver. When they saw the murder, my men took action,” Synthe finished.
“Took action?”
“They shot one of the assailants dead, and they believe they wounded a second, but he got away on a motorcycle. They pursued him for several kilometers, but he managed to give them the slip in the smaller streets.”
“Are you telling me that the Basilica of Saint Clemente has become a bloodbath?”
“The street outside certainly is,” Synthe confirmed.
Luca absorbed this. “What was the girl doing in the church?”