The Bone Chamber

21

Francesca sat in the back of the van, gripping her briefcase as they went around yet another turn. The man called Griffin assured them that he’d at last lost the tail, and she finally felt as though she could breathe. Until the moment he answered Father Dumas’s query as to where he was going to take them.
“My opinion,” Griffin said, “they’ll be safer in the States. We take the professor to the airport with Special Agent Fitzpatrick.”
“You don’t have any say,” Francesca said. “I have a deadline. I stand to lose my entire grant if I don’t have my research finished and to the academic press in time.”
“Impossible,” Griffin replied. “The men who tried to kill you up at the Passegiata will stop at nothing to get what they want. They’ve seen you. No doubt they’re already investigating who you might be, if they haven’t already discovered it.”
“I am not leaving, and I’m fairly certain that you have no authority to make me.”
Griffin looked at Dumas. “Maybe next time you can put in a good word and keep me from being saddled with stubborn women?”
“Come to church on Sunday and I’ll see what I can do.”
“Trust me. You wouldn’t want to hear my confession.”
Griffin checked each of the mirrors, then pulled over.
“Why are we stopped?” Francesca asked.
“To change my insignia. They’ll be looking for the phone company. I’d rather not make it easy.” He got out and walked around the van. A moment later, the side door opened, and he slid in two large magnetic signs, then removed two others that read “ENEL,” for the electric company. A couple of minutes later, he was back in the driver’s seat, looking back at Francesca. “Convince me why we should let you stay.”
“As I explained, I must finish my research to keep from losing my grant.”
“You realize after this afternoon that it isn’t safe for you to return to the academy? Not until this matter is resolved.”
She didn’t even want to think what methods they’d use to resolve it. “But all my notes are there.” When that didn’t faze him, she added, “And I need to use the library there.”
“What is it you’re researching?”
She decided that Griffin didn’t trust her, nor was he going to buy any simple explanations. It was true she had some research to do, but not for the reasons given. A partial truth was best in cases like this. “Historical burial sites.”
“And the academy has the only library suited for this?”
“No, of course not.”
He looked over at Dumas, then back at Francesca. “The Vatican has a library, doesn’t it?”
“Of course,” she said.
“Won’t it do?”
It would more than do, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to seem too eager. “I believe so.”
To Dumas, he asked, “Will she be safe there?”
“I will make sure of it.”
“Then it’s settled. You stay with Dumas. Now about this package Alessandra sent…”
Francesca said, “Alessandra was explicit on the code, and that until you answered to it, I wasn’t to give out anything.”
“There is no code. Alessandra’s head was filled with fantasies.”
“The code or no package,” Francesca said.
Dumas smiled.
Griffin, however, looked more than annoyed as he said, “All for one and one for all. Alessandra had taken it upon herself to liken us to the Three Musketeers. Alessandra, Dumas, and me, of course.”
“Three Musketeers?” Sydney replied, looking at the both of them. Neither Dumas nor Griffin said a thing. “That means that Alessandra was working with you?”
Dumas shifted in his seat, his eyes downcast, as Griffin said, “Dumas recruited her.”
“And you agreed,” Father Dumas pointed out.
“Since by then it was too late.”
Francesca’s eyes narrowed as she looked at Dumas. “You’re a spy? Housed in the Vatican?”
“Spy is a harsh word. As I explained earlier, I am looking out for the Vatican’s interests, which happen to sometimes coincide with those of…certain governments that have embassies residing here,” he said, casting a dark look toward Griffin.
Francesca rested her hand on the package Alessandra had sent. “I find it interesting that she chose to assist something she had come to detest. Governments and their machinations.”
“Actually,” Dumas said, “she came to us because of government machinations. She had overheard a few things by some men who attended her father’s parties at the embassy, and—”
“And now it matters little,” Griffin said, though his expression told Francesca it mattered very much. “What does matter is proving who killed Alessandra, and continuing the work she started.”
In this at least Francesca recognized his sincerity, and she finally removed the package from her briefcase.
Tunisia

Lisette and Rafiq stared at Marc, as he related what he’d seen. They’d fled the compound, supposedly en route to the hospital to have Rafiq examined for his chest pains, instead picking up Marc a few streets away. Lisette finally had to pull over. “You’re sure of what you saw?”
“Positive,” Marc said. “I couldn’t believe it myself.”
“You’re sure it wasn’t Dr. Balraj? It was Tex?”
“I couldn’t see his face clear enough. Not enough time to get that close to the monitor. But it definitely wasn’t Balraj. Besides, who the hell else would be wearing a tux and cowboy boots in the middle of the bloody afternoon in Tunisia?”
“Was he alive?” she asked.
“He wasn’t moving.”
Rafiq shook his head. “He was dead. Had to be.”
“No,” Lisette said. “Why go to the trouble of killing someone else to make us think Tex is dead, only to kill him, then hide his body in another country?”
Marc knew exactly why.
Rafiq answered. “He might not have been dead then, but maybe he is now. They needed time to torture him in hopes of finding out what we were about. If we thought he was dead, there would be no rescue attempts.”
Lisette looked sick. “You don’t think they have him in there because they know that building is our next target?” she asked Marc.
“We didn’t even know it was our next target, which means Tex couldn’t have known. Either way, we have to tell Griffin,” Marc said, trying to recall exactly what he’d seen. If Tex was tied up, then he wasn’t dead. But he couldn’t remember seeing any ropes, primarily because he wasn’t looking for them.
“They were best friends,” Lisette said. “To get Griffin’s hopes up…”
No one dared finish the thought. To get his hopes up, only to face the realization that if it was Tex in that warehouse, fortune would have to be smiling on them to perform a rescue. They were under orders that the warehouse and all its contents be destroyed by 0830 hours tomorrow. Any later and they risked that the biological weapons that were recently manufactured and stored there would be shipped out and used. According to Lisette, Adami’s scientists were working primarily with bacteria. For that she was grateful. Should any biomatter escape the blast, the full desert sun would kill what was left, so the earlier the better.
Tex’s life for possibly those of hundreds of thousands of innocents…
Marc looked at his watch. They had until tomorrow morning to destroy Adami’s warehouse. Now that they had the delivery schedule, they needed to figure out who they were going to impersonate, and how they were going to get the explosives onto the compound. “We need to get to a secure phone. I’ve got to call HQ.”