Reilly looked again at the blonde's face. Usually, Amelia's alluring presence made other women pale into insignificance.
Not this one.
Even in her current state, something about her was simply mesmeric. Her eyes connected briefly with his before looking down to the clutter under her feet. Whoever she was, she was seriously shaken.
Reilly watched as she headed for die door, picking her way through the debris with unease. Another woman, older but with a vague physical resemblance, was close behind. Together, they walked out of the museum.
Reilly turned, refocusing. "The first sort-through's always a huge waste of time, but we've still got to go through the motions and talk to everybody. Can't afford not to."
"Probably more of a waste of time in this case. The whole damn thing's on tape." Buchinski pointed at a video camera, then another. Part of the museum's security system. "To say nothing of all the footage from the TV crews outside."
Reilly knew from experience that high security was all very well for high-tech crimes, but no one had allowed for low-tech raiders on horseback. "Great." He nodded. "I'll get the popcorn."
Chapter 6
From his seat at a large mahogany table, Cardinal Mauro Brugnone glanced around the high-ceilinged room that was located close to the heart of the Vatican, studying his fellow cardinals.
Although, as the only cardinal-bishop present, Brugnone outranked the others, he deliberately avoided sitting at the head of the table. He liked to maintain an air of democracy here, even though he knew that they would all defer to him. He knew it and accepted it, not with pride, but through pragmatism. Committees without leaders never achieved anything.
This unfortunate situation, however, called for neither a leader nor a committee. It was something Brugnone would have to deal with himself. That much was clear to him from the moment he had seen the news footage that had been broadcast around the world.
His eyes eventually settled on Cardinal Pasquale Rienzi. Although he was the youngest of them all and only a cardinal-deacon, Rienzi was Brugnone's closest confidante. Like the others seated at the table, Rienzi was speechlessly engrossed in the report before him. He looked up and caught Brugnone's eye. The young man, pale and earnest as always, promptly coughed gently.
"How could something like this happen?" one man asked. "In the heart of New York City? At the Metropolitan Museum . . ." He shook his head in disbelief.
How foolishly otherworldly, Brugnone thought. Anything could happen in New York City. Hadn't the destruction of the World Trade Center proved that?
"At least the archbishop wasn't harmed," another cardinal stated somberly.
"It seems the robbers escaped. They don't yet know who is behind this . . . abomination?" another voice asked.
"It's a land of criminals. Lunatics inspired by their amoral television programs and sadistic video games," another answered. "Their prisons ran out of room years ago."
"But why dress as they did? Red crosses on white mantles . . . They were masquerading as Templars?" asked the cardinal who had spoken first.
There it is, Brugnone thought.
That was what had set off his alarm bells. Why, indeed, were the perpetrators dressed as Knights Templar? Could it be simply a matter of the robbers seeking a disguise and fastening onto whatever happened to be available? Or did the apparel of the four horsemen have a deeper, and possibly more disturbing, significance?
"What is a multigeared rotor encoder?"
Brugnone looked up sharply. The question had been asked by the oldest cardinal there. "A multi . . .?" Brugnone asked.
The old man was peering short-sightedly at the circulated document. " 'Exhibit 129,' " the old man read out. " 'Sixteenth century. A multi-geared rotor encoder. Reference number VNS 1098.' I've never heard of it. What is it?"
Brugnone feigned studying the document in his hands, a copy of an e-mail that contained a provisional list of items stolen during the raid. Again, he felt a shiver—the same shiver he felt the first time he spotted it on the list. He kept his face impassive. Without raising his head, he flicked a quick glance around the table at the others. No one else was reacting. Why should they? It was far from common knowledge.
Sliding the paper away, he leaned back in his chair. "Whatever it is," he stated flatly, "those gangsters have taken it." Glancing at Rienzi, he inclined his head slightly. "Perhaps you will undertake to keep us informed. Make contact with the police and ask for us to be kept abreast of 17
their investigation."
"The FBI," Rienzi corrected, "not the police."
Brugnone raised an eyebrow.
"The American government is taking this very seriously," Rienzi affirmed.
"And so they should," the oldest cardinal snapped from across the table. Brugnone was pleased to see that this elder appeared to have forgotten about the machine.
"Quite," Rienzi continued. "I've been assured that everything that can be done will be done."
Brugnone nodded, then motioned to Rienzi to continue with the meeting, his gesture implying, wind it up.
People always had deferred to Mauro Brugnone. Probably, he knew, because the way he looked suggested a man of great physical strength. If it were not for his vestments, he knew that he looked like the burly, heavy-shouldered Calabrian farmer he would have been had the Church not called him more than half a century ago. His rough-hewn appearance, and the matching manner he had cultivated over the years, first disarmed others into thinking he was just a simple man of God. That he was but, because of his standing in the Church, many proceeded to another assumption: that he was a manipulator and a schemer. He was not, but he'd never bothered to disabuse mem. It sometimes paid to keep people guessing, even though in a way, that was in itself a form of manipulation.
Ten minutes later, Rienzi did as he asked.
***
As the other cardinals filed from the room, Brugnone left the meeting room by another door and walked along a corridor to a stairwell that took him out of the building and into a secluded courtyard. He made his way down a sheltered brick pathway, across the Belvedere courtyard and past the celebrated statue of Apollo, and into the buildings that housed part of the Vatican's enormous library, the Archivio Segreto Vaticano—the secret archive.
The archive wasn't, in actual fact, particularly secret. A major part of it was officially opened to visiting scholars and researchers in 1998 who
could, in theory at least, access its tightly
controlled contents. Among the notorious documents known to be stored in its forty miles of shelf space were the handwritten proceedings of Galileo's trial and a petition from King Henry VIII seeking an annulment to his first marriage.
No outsiders, however, were ever allowed where Brugnone was headed.
Without bothering to acknowledge any of the staff or scholars working in its dusty halls, he quietly made his way deeper into the vast, dark repository. He headed down a narrow, circular stairwell and reached a small anteroom where a Swiss Guard stood by an immaculately carved oak door. A curt nod from the elderly cardinal was all that was needed for the guard to enter the combination into a keypad and unlock the door for him. The deadbolt snapped open, echoing up the hollowness of the limestone stairs. Without any further acknowledgment, Brugnone slipped into the barrel-vaulted crypt, the door creaking shut behind him.
Making sure he was alone in the cavernous chamber, his eyes adjusting to the dim lighting, he made his way to the records area. The crypt seemed to hum with silence. It was a curious effect that Brugnone had once found disconcerting until he had learned that, just beyond the limits of his hearing, there really was a hum, emanating from a highly sophisticated climate control system that maintained constant temperature and humidity. He could feel his veins tighten in the controlled, dry air as he consulted a file cabinet. He really didn't like it down here, but this visit was unavoidable.