Sant’Angelo began to wonder if Ascanio had not been right about killing them on sight. But there was little he could do now, with Himmler himself and the SS dispersed all over the chateau and its grounds.
He led the way back down the corridor, then up the winding staircase to his private study high in the eastern turret. It had never been wired for electricity, and with dusk falling, the marquis had to stop to light the gas lamps in sconces along the walls. The room was stuffy, too, and he threw open the French doors to the terrace and stepped outside to see what destruction had been wrought to his estate.
There was the smell of scorched wood in the air, and when he walked to the end of the parapet and looked toward the sheep meadow, he saw that the Germans had blown up the old oaks that ran along the ridgeline and were now using their armored cars to push the splintered trunks off the cliff.
Before he could think why they were doing it, he heard Mainz inside the study, exclaiming over something.
“Like me, you are a Renaissance scholar!” the professor said, when Sant’Angelo stepped back inside. He was holding a copy of Cellini’s autobiography in his hand—the original printing, done by Antonio Cocchi in 1728. “But you have this book in half a dozen other languages, too! Along with his treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture. Then you must admire him as much as I do?”
“Yes, I suppose so.”
“Then you know, too, that he was not just a great artist. He was also a great occultist. Surely you remember his account of conjuring demons in the Colosseum?”
“He was given to tall tales, I think.”
But Mainz shook his head vigorously. “No, it was not a tall tale, as you call it. In fact, it was not the full tale—I am convinced of that. In the 1500s, it was simply too dangerous to tell the whole truth about such things. One day,” he said, slipping the book lovingly back into the shelf, “I will find the rest of the story.”
Then he simply looked around the room—a pentagon, with cherrywood bookcases alternating with floor-length mirrors—and said, “I envy you this aerie.” He shrugged off his loden coat, revealing a white shirt stuck to his body with sweat, and laid it across a chair. “At home, just to get some peace and quiet, I must work in a pantry!” He wandered around the room, touching the books—their subjects ranging from stregheria to astrology, numerology to necromancy—and seemed transported. This, his expression advertised, was what he’d been looking for. His stubby fingertips trailed over the edge of the writing table, where a gilded bust of Dante, his head surmounted by a silver wreath, stood in pride of place. Sant’Angelo was careful not to let his own eyes linger on the piece.
“I regret that my Italian is so bad,” the professor said. “The infinite charms of The Divine Comedy are sometimes lost on me.”
“That’s a pity. He was the greatest poet the world has ever known.”
But Mainz laughed. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? Judging by your name, you’re an Italian. And yet your family has lived in France for centuries. Why is that?”
Sant’Angelo shrugged, and said, “Ancient history.”
The professor paused, then went to his briefcase and unfastened the leather strap. “Ah, but ancient history is my specialty.” He began to root around inside, pulling out a stack of papers. “Only last week, we turned up some interesting information at the National Archives.” He pushed the bust of Dante to one side, nearly displacing the wreath around its brow, to make some room on the table. “I took the photographs myself. I think you’ll find them quite interesting.”
They were meticulously done photos of handwritten and hand-drawn pages, the text in Italian.
“The scribe who made the original drawings and notes worked for Napoleon. The words were taken down from the walls of a cell in the Castel San Leo, outside Rome. We went there, too, of course, but nothing much remained. So all we have left is these transcriptions.”
Sant’Angelo suddenly understood why the Nazis were there.
“I assume you can guess the occupant of the cell,” Mainz said.
“Count Cagliostro.” What use was there in playing dumb anymore? The words themselves, accompanied by Egyptian symbols and signs, were gibberish, but several times they made mention of Sant’Angelo and a lost castle. The Chateau Perdu. The old charlatan might have been constrained from uttering a word about what he knew, but apparently it had not kept him from writing about it. In the end, he might as well have provided the Nazis with a road map.
“So you can see why we wanted to make this call. Reichsführer Himmler has a great interest in the more arcane sources of knowledge. Wherever we go, we root it up, like truffles,” he said, snuffling like a pig.