She’d just finished when Giovanni returned with Nico and Hector. Only five years old, Hector scampered around the low rocks like a monkey, smiling a big grin at Jess as he jumped around. He was fearless, and earned large return grins from Jess.
She attached the two topes to Giovanni and Hector in their climbing harnesses. Jess and Nico strapped into harnesses and attached themselves to the other ends of the ropes, taking up the slack as Hector and Giovanni climbed, with Jess calling out suggestions and encouragement.
“So what brought you to Ruspoli Castle?” Nico asked Jess. With Giovanni and Hector twenty feet overhead, Jess and Nico stood shoulder to shoulder, carefully taking in the excess rope as the two ascended.
Jess glanced at Nico, then returned to watching Hector, taking up the slack with the braking mechanism attached to her. “Funny story. My mom got a Facebook message from a long-lost relative a few weeks ago, said he still lived here and wanted to meet us.”
Nico jammed his brake into place and looked at Jess. “What? Who? Did you meet him?”
“No, not yet.” Jess frowned at Nico. What had gotten him so excited? “He hasn't responded since we've arrived. Why?”
Nico stared at Jess for a long second, then looked up at Giovanni and released the brake. “Just curious. So your family is from here?”
“My mom’s side, but from years ago. We didn’t think anyone from our family still lived here. So we came to investigate.”
“You came all the way from America just for that?” Nico nodded. “Family must be very important to you.”
Jess let her head sag to one side. “Well, it wasn’t just for that.” She pulled in two more feet of rope into the brake as Hector climbed. “And I don’t know anything about the old family. My mom says her dad refused to talk about it.”
“You know nothing?” Nico turned to look at Jess.
“Nothing at all.” Jess wagged her head, shrugging. “And you, do you have family here?”
Nico’s jaw muscles rippled, but he smiled. “No, I have no family.”
“You’re from Naples, though. Isn’t that what you said earlier?”
“That’s right.”
“And Giovanni’s father hired you to work here.”
Nico nodded. “Seven years ago he took me in. He was like a father to me, and I did my best to look after him when he got sick, even when Giovanni left.” He let out a long sigh. “Ah, I forget myself. I really should not talk of the Baron’s family.”
Where was Giovanni’s father now? In Florence, Jess guessed, but she didn’t want to pry, so she switched topics. “The police who were here this morning, did Giovanni really just shoo them away?”
“Yes.”
“He can do that?”
Nico grinned at Jess. “This is not America. The Ruspolis, well…I wouldn’t worry, not while you are his guest.”
“And Leone mentioned something about a controversia, what was that about?” Jess whispered.
Glancing to his right, toward the cable car and the castello on the opposite side of the gorge, Nico replied, “I don’t know.” He shrugged and jerked the cord tight, earning a muffled complaint from Giovanni thirty feet overhead. “Of that, I have no idea.”
8
ROME, ITALY
BEN PULLED BACK the curtains of his hotel room window and peeked out. Brilliant sunshine streamed in from a perfect blue sky. The traffic growled, and people shuffled by in the street, some shopping, some sipping coffees in the café.
A beautiful day for predicting the end of the world.
“Well, have a look in the back!” Ben shouted into his cell phone. Mrs. Brown, their seventy-eight-year-old administrative assistant, was going deaf. She refused to retire, and there was no way Ben would fire her. She’d been a part of his life longer than he could even remember now. “Yes, I know what time it is. I’m very sorry.”
Almost ten at night in Boston. He’d dragged her out of bed to search his office, to dig through the mountains of papers and boxes he’d accumulated in his thirty years at Harvard-Smithsonian. He needed data, really old data. Spools of tape he’d collected that dated back to the 1970s, before he’d even started at Harvard as a student, along with magnetic tapes; floppy disks from the 80s; CDs from the 90s. Ben was a pack rat, his office the epitome of the disorganized professor, but he knew what he needed was in there.
Ben let go of the curtain, casting the hotel room back into darkness. “Mrs. Brown, I know this is difficult, but please keep searching. This is an emergency.” He rubbed one temple to try to ease back a throbbing headache. The fate of the world might rest in the eyesight of Mrs. Brown, twice over a great-grandmother. “I’ll stay on the line while you look.”
Pushing mute on his phone, he turned to Roger, his grad student, sitting cross-legged on the room’s double bed. Although the Grand Hotel was fancy, the rooms were tiny. Ben had installed himself at the sliver of a working desk near the window, so the only other place to work was on the bed.