David’s footsteps echoed across the empty square, a flock of dirty gray pigeons scooting out of his way.
But under the sound of their fluttering wings, he became aware of sneakers squeaking in one of the shadowy arcades. When he stopped, pretending to tie his shoe, the squeaking stopped, and when he stood up and went on, he could hear it again, not far behind. He turned quickly, but saw only one old matron, in hard black shoes, persistently scrubbing a window frame. He waited for another second, peering into the arcade, with its rounded arches and deep recesses, but no one appeared.
Was he being followed? Was it just a pickpocket, and not a particularly good one at that? Was it someone who knew what he carried in the fancy valise?
Or had he just seen too many movies?
He shook his head and climbed the stairs to the second floor of the cloister, where the library and its world-famous collection of books and codices was housed.
But he was no sooner at the top than he heard that squeaking sound again. Was Mrs. Van Owen—rich and eccentric as she was—having him tailed, for God’s sake?
For all he knew, that maniac in the BMW had followed him all the way from the States.
He no longer knew what to believe.
But he did know how to waylay his pursuer and find out once and for all.
The vestibule of the library had been purposely designed by Michelangelo to be dim—the windows had been bricked up, in fact—so that the visitors to the library would feel themselves ascending from its gloom into the sudden illumination—in every sense—of the library at the top of the stairs. David pressed himself into a niche that housed a marble bust of Petrarch, and with the valise clutched under one arm, held his breath.
The steps came closer, and paused just outside the vestibule.
Had the tracker decided to abandon his quarry?
And then, squeaking softly, the steps continued. David saw the back of a hat and raincoat, with a newspaper sticking out from under one arm.
Stepping out of the niche, David said in Italian, “What can I do for you?”
The figure whirled around, a copy of La Stampa flying out from under one arm, one palm dramatically pressed to her chest.
To his astonishment David saw that it was the tour guide, Olivia Levi, from the day before.
“Maron!” she cried. “You nearly killed me! Why did you do that!”
“Not until you tell me why you’ve been following me!” At least his suspicions had been proven correct—he had been followed.
Olivia bent to pick up the scattered pages of the newspaper, just as a heavyset female guard, in a gray uniform and cap, showed up at the top of the steps to see what the sudden commotion was all about.
“Oh no,” she shouted, glaring at Olivia, “not you again! You’re barred from the library—you know that—so get going!” She slapped her hands together, up and down, to emphasize her dismissal.
“But I’m not done with my research!”
“That’s too bad. The director is done with you.”
There was a pleading look on Olivia’s face and, without missing a beat, she added, “But I am working today! I am this man’s assistant. He has hired me to help him with his work here.”
She quickly glanced at David, waiting for confirmation, and David didn’t know what to do. His normal impulse was to help out a fellow scholar, but there was too much about this woman that he simply didn’t know, or trust.
“Is that true?” the guard asked suspiciously. “She works for you?”
But it wasn’t going to be that easy. “Why are you barred?” David whispered in English.
“What does it matter?” Olivia whispered back. “It was nothing!”
“Last chance—why are you barred?”
“I had an argument with the director,” she said, shrugging. “The man is a Nazi.”
From the way she said it, coupled with that weary shrug, David almost laughed. But it still took him several seconds before he decided to take a chance. Looking up at the guard, he said, in Italian again, “Yes, I’ve hired her.”
“And who are you?”
David took his own letter of introduction from his pocket and advanced with it in hand. “Dottore Valetta is expecting me.”
The guard studied the paper, glared one more time at Olivia, then turned around and waddled into the library, a nightstick straining in the belt at her side.
“Grazie mille,” Olivia mumbled to David, who mumbled back, “But we’re not done—you’ll still have to tell me why you were following me.”
“Because you told me you would be working here,” she said. “I needed a way back in.”
“Why didn’t you just ask me?”
“Because you didn’t know me.”
“And I do now?”