Except for the criminals who had just broken into the archives.
The elevator arrived and the doors opened.
“Fire!”
Nichetti and his men opened fire.
Mason and the others heard the sound of Nichetti’s gunfire as they sprinted up the stairs above the elevator motor room. Climbing up through the open hatch and riding on the roof of the elevator had bought the four of them a valuable few seconds, and as they hit the top floor and burst out onto the roof, Mason blinked in the bright sun and spoke to Milo.
“All right, we’re out.”
“The codex is still safe?” Eva said over the radio.
“Of course.”
“Thank God.”
“Don’t sound so surprised,” Zara said. “That’s kind of what we do for a living.”
“I can’t wait to see it!” Eva said.
Mason’s voice was calm, but he spoke quickly. “Are the bikes in place?”
“Exactly as planned,” Milo said. “You’re welcome.”
“Get everyone in the van back to the plane,” Mason said. “We’ll meet you there when we’re clear of the police.”
“The raid’s already on the internet,” Milo said. “Pretty soon all of Rome’s going to be on lockdown.”
Mason, Caleb, Zara and Ben Speers sprinted along the apex of the tiled roof connecting the Vatican Library to the museum in the north. Reaching the edge of the roof, they opened their bags and started to pull out rappelling equipment. They quickly sorted the small collection of ropes and clips and then positioned their anchors to make the abseil safe.
“Man, that’s a lot of police sirens,” Ben said.
“You don’t say?” said Zara. “Anyone would think someone just knocked off the Vatican.”
“Point taken,” he said.
“Less chat, more work,” Mason said firmly. “We’re not out of the woods yet.”
With the screwgate carabiner attached to the anchor, Mason looped his rope into a clove hitch and clipped the doubled loop into it. Fixing the other end of the rope to a figure-8 descender, he then attached the descender to a second screwgate carabiner attached to his harness. Clipping the rope to another carabiner to a leg-loop, he lowered himself over the edge of the roof and started to rappel down toward the ground in between the Vatican library and the city wall. He was fast and efficient. He had done this countless times before.
Following his lead, Caleb, Zara and Ben went over the edge on their own rappel lines and ten seconds later all four of them were unclipping themselves from their harnesses and sprinting to where Virgil had parked the bikes.
Mason turned the corner and sighed with relief when he saw the two motorbikes — a Kawasaki and a Suzuki, parked up in the shade of an umbrella pine. How the hell does he do it? he asked himself. He and Zara climbed on one and Caleb and Ben took the second.
“Now we split up,” Mason said. “Meet at the destination after we lose the cops.”
Caleb kick-started his bike and Ben climbed on the back. Seconds later they were skidding away to the northeast.
Mason then fired up his bike, but nothing happened. “Shit!”
“What’s up, Jed?”
“Flat battery!”
Zara kicked the bike’s rear tire. “I’ll fucking kill Virgil for this!”
“Steady as she goes,” Mason said. “He’s never let us down before.”
“Over there!” Zara said. “I believe you were looking for a powerful superbike?”
She was pointing to a Ducati Panigale in a small car park outside the museum. It had two large panniers attached to it.
“Just one problem, Z — the driver’s sitting on it.”
“I don’t see that as a problem at all.”
They ran to the bike, and the man gave a cheery wave, but that all ended when Mason dragged him off the bike and jumped astride it, tossing the codex and his bag in one of the panniers.
Zara climbed on the back and rode pillion as he revved the 1.2 liter engine and skidded away into the traffic. In his rear view he saw Nichetti kick over a Vespa in rage and reach for his cell phone. The Italian police chief didn’t exactly look thrilled with how his week was turning out — first the Director of the Vatican Library had been brutally murdered and now the culprits of the worst robbery in Vatican history had escaped and were on the run in Rome.
“Better hold on tight,” Mason shouted. “Things could get nasty.”
“You don’t have to tell me that!” Zara said. “They’ve got guns and I’m the one sitting on the damned back!”
They took off into the backstreets of Rome, racing through the warm summer air as Mason negotiated the foreign city’s maze-like roads. Zara slipped a Glock from inside her jacket and aimed it at the pursuing police.
“Bloody hell, Zara! Ezra said no guns.”
“What can I say? I always come prepared for fubars like this.”
“Just please don’t kill anyone, Dietrich.”
“Oh, ok then. I’ll aim above their heads.”
“That’s what worries me.”
Zara ignored the slur and fired a warning shot over the heads of the police. They ducked and scattered behind a line of parked cars for a few moments, but seconds later an irate Nichetti waved two men on police motorbikes rapidly forward to give chase.
Kiya watched the Fiat Talento with passive eyes as Tekin followed Milo and the rest of the second team. They were still in Rome, and it looked like they were heading for a destination somewhere to the city’s southeast.
“Keep on their tails,” she said.
“I won’t let them out of my sight,” said the Raven.
She closed her eyes and sighed. “Looks like they’re aiming for the military airport.”
“Where they go, we go. I just hope Mason can escape from the police.”
“He just broke into the Vatican Secret Archives with a few hours’ notice,” she said with respect. “He’ll escape, all right. Keep up with the van.”
He changed up into fifth, and pushed the stolen Alfa Romeo another hundred meters closer to the Raiders’ Fiat van. “We’ve got them this time.”
Kiya blew out a breath but her shoulder muscles were tight with stress. “Somehow Mason has somehow relieved the Vatican City of the Nectanebo Codex, and that will lead them to the Book of Spells, but if we lose them now… just one more error from us and we’re dead.”
“No more mistakes,” Tekin said. “Soon we will have what is rightfully ours, and the gods will be revealed to us.”
But Kiya wasn’t listening to him. She was already dreaming of her elevation to a Hidden Hand Soldier. All she had to do now was hold her nerve and let Mason and his team lead her to the greatest prize of all.
CHAPTER FORTY-TWO
With Zara’s hands clamped firmly around his waist, Mason watched as Caleb and Ben skidded away to the northeast and then took off to the south. Rounding a sharp corner, he tracked the Vatican City walls until they hit some traffic on the Via di Porta Angelica. Checking the mirror, he saw police bikes and cars, as well as a van, on their tail and gaining fast.
Looking ahead into the traffic he saw a clear way through. He floored the throttle on the Ducati and it surged ahead, splitting the lane and scorching past the mostly stationary cars either side of them. They made a junction and he braked hard.
“Where did the police van go?” he asked.
Zara stood up and put her hands on his shoulders as she scanned the busy city in search of the police van.
“Got it,” she said. “Three o’clock, turning into that side street.”
“I see it. We’ll go the other way.”
Mason twisted on the accelerator again and steered the handlebars to the left. The Panigale reacted instantly as he cut across the other lane of cars and drew closer to their planned escape route. The powerful engine growled hard as he swerved into the side street and accelerated away from the police van.
“We lost him, Jed!”
“We’re not free yet!”
The needle on the speedometer swept around the dial in a second, indicating in the clearest terms that the Ducati Panigale was not a machine to be messed with. Mason loved speed, but he had to admit he had never gone from nought to sixty miles per hour in 2.6 seconds before. It felt electric, and as the monstrous, liquid-cooled 1.2 litre l-twin engine roared beneath him, for one terrifying second he had visions of himself simply flying off the thing and coming to a bone-crunching end on the hot asphalt.
“You know how to control this thing, right?” Zara called out. “I don’t think I ever saw you ride a bike before.”
Mason acted cool. “Oh yeah,” he lied. “No problem.”
They raced away from the Apostolic Palace along the narrow, cobblestone road to the east, Mason furiously blowing the horn to clear the way of tourists gently ambling along with ice creams and cameras. They burst out on the Via de Mascherino, a broad two-lane road lined with shops and parked cars.
Mason had understeered the powerful bike and they mounted the kerb on the east side of the street and plowed their way along the sidewalk. He hit the brakes and slowed the Ducati from fifty miles per hour down to thirty, steering back onto the road and then increasing power. Soon they were speeding up to one hundred once again, and he felt a surge of adrenalin as he weaved the bike at high-speed through the Roman traffic.
The Vatican City was behind them now, but a Vatican Gendarmerie BMW i3 was sticking to their tail for all their life was worth. He watched them in the mirror as they powered up behind them. The bike was faster, but in the traffic there was a limit to how fast he could push things if he wanted to avoid spending the next three months in traction in a Rome hospital.
“Holy crap!” Zara screamed. “Tram! Tram!”
Mason looked up from the mirror to see one of the famous city trams rattling around the corner to his left and about to cross his path. He swerved the bike to the right and hit the brakes again to avoid smashing into the hood of a Nissan emerging from the traffic on Via Crescenzio.
Clear now, he hit the power and the bike surged forward out of the chaos behind them. “Holy shit, Jed!” Zara cried out. “You nearly killed us!”
Mason said nothing. He felt the same fear but time was running out and Nichetti was closing in. He could see in the mirror that the commissario was on the radio, no doubt calling back up six ways from Sunday and soon they would have nowhere left to run.
“So what do we do now?” Zara said.
“Just as we planned. We get back to the plane and get this codex the hell out of here!”
It was the only plan he had, even though the Citation was still miles way. They could get there if they were lucky and drove like the devil, but they would be cutting things fine, and there was nothing to say that the plane and the rest of the team hadn’t already been shut down by the Italian carabinieri.
The road curved around to the right and he powered up again, racing up a long, straight road called the Via Cola di Rienzo. The road was clear and he decided to open the Ducati up and rag the hell out of it for a few seconds.
“Hold on, Z!”
It was a hair-raising experience.
With the throttle fully open, the superbike easily screeched past one hundred miles per hour, then one-twenty, one-fifty and was soon approaching its maximum speed of a little over one hundred and seventy miles per hour. It had taken a few short seconds and they were going faster than a jet plane at takeoff speed. As a result, they hit the end of the road before they knew it, and Mason saw a bridge fast approaching them.
It was the Ponte Regina Margherita, stretching over the River Tiber in the center of the ancient city. He hit the brakes and slowed to swerve around a line of cars and then revved up to roar across the bridge. Nichetti was still behind them in the BMW i3, but thanks to racing along the last road at nearly two hundred miles per hour, he was further back now and Mason had bought them some much-needed time.
East of the Tiber now, they were heading into the very oldest part of Rome, weaving the Ducati in and out of thousands of years of history. “Over there!” Mason said, looking ahead to a narrow side street. “He’s not getting the Beamer down there.”
He slowed down to walking speed and manoeuvred the bike around a tight corner and into a public walkway no wider than a meter and half. Checking the mirror, he saw Nichetti screech to a halt at the mouth of the walkway, curse, and then zoom away.
“He knows where this is going,” Mason said.
“You think he’s going to try and head us off?”
“He’s not going for gelato, that’s for damned sure.”
“I was just asking a question!”
“Sorry…”
They reached the end of the walkway and burst out onto a small public square filled with tourists. Opposite them were the world-famous Spanish Steps near where Lord Byron had lived, but Mason’s mind was firmly on the BMW i3 that Commissario Nichetti was racing furiously toward him on their left.
“Hold on!” he yelled. “He’s found us already!”
“You’re not going to… you have to be kidding!”
Mason didn’t kid on missions, and now he revved the Ducati and aimed it toward the Spanish Steps. Tourists screamed and ran for cover as he hit the first step, and then increased power as he ziz-zagged his way up the famous landmark in a hail of tire squeals and burning rubber.