His fingers trembled as they flicked through the rows of index cards. What Brugnone was looking for wasn't listed in any of the various known indexes and inventories of the archive's collections, not even in the Schedario Garampi, the monumental card file of almost a million cards listing virtually everything held in the archive up to the eighteenth century. But Brugnone knew where to look. His mentor had seen to that, shortly before his death.
His eyes fell on the card he was looking for, and he pulled it out of its drawer.
With a deepening sense of foreboding, Brugnone trawled through the stacks of folios and books.
Reams of tattered red ribbon, bound around official documents and thought to be the origin of the term "red tape," dangled in deathly silence from every shelf. His fingers froze when he finally spotted the one he was looking for.
With great discomfort, he lifted down a large and very old leather-bound volume, which he placed on a plain wood table.
Sitting down, Brugnone flicked over the thick, richly illustrated pages, their crackling loud in the stillness. Even in this controlled environment, the pages had suffered the ravages of time. The vellum pages were eroded, and iron in the ink had turned corrosive, creating tiny slashes, which had now replaced some of the artist's graceful strokes.
Brugnone felt his pulse quicken. He knew he was near. As he turned the page, he felt his throat tighten as the information he was seeking appeared before him.
He looked at the illustration. It depicted a complex arrangement of interlocking gears and levers.
Glancing at his copy of the e-mail, he nodded to himself.
Brugnone felt a headache forming at die back of his eyes. He rubbed them, tJien stared again at die drawing before him. He was quietiy furious. By what delinquency had this been allowed to happen?
He knew the device should never have left the Vatican and was immediately irritated with himself.
He rarely wasted time in stating or thinking the obvious, and it was a measure of his concern that he did so now. Concern was not the right word. This discovery had come as a deep shock. Anyone would be shocked, anyone who knew the significance of the ancient device. Fortunately, there were very few, even here in the Vatican, who did know die legendary purpose of diis particular machine.
We brought it upon ourselves. It happened because we were too careful not to draw attention to it.
Suddenly drained, Brugnone pushed himself upright. Before he moved to return the book to its place on the shelf, he placed the file card that he had carried with him from die cabinet randomly inside it. It would not do to have anyone else stumble across this.
Brugnone sighed, feeling every one of his seventy years. He knew the threat wasn't from a curious academic or from some rutiilessly determined collector. Whoever was behind this knew exacriy what he was looking for. And he had to be stopped before his ill-gotten gain could unveil its secrets.
Chapter 7
F our thousand miles away, another man had the exact opposite in mind.
After closing and locking the door behind him, he picked up the intricate machine from where he had placed it on the top step. Then he moved slowly down into the cellar, his movements careful.
The machine wasn't too heavy, but he was anxious not to drop it.
Not now.
Not after fate had interceded to bring it within reach, and certainly not after all that it had taken to seize it.
The underground chamber, although lit by the flickering glow of dozens of candles, was too spacious for the yellow light to reach into every recess. It remained as gloomy as it was cold and damp. He no longer noticed. He had spent so long here that he had grown accustomed to it, never felt any discomfort. It was as close to being a home as anything could be.
Home.
A distant memory.
Another life.
Placing the machine on a sagging wood table, he went over to a corner of the cellar and rummaged through a pile of boxes and old cardboard files. He took the one he needed to the table, opened it, and gently withdrew a folder from it. From the folder, he pulled out several sheets of thick paper that he arranged neatly beside the machine. Then he sat down and looked from the documents to the geared device and back again, relishing the moment.
To himself, he murmured, "At last." His voice was soft, but cracked from too little use.
Picking up a pencil, he turned his full attention to the first of the documents. He looked at the first line of faded writing, then reached for the buttons on the top casing of the machine and began the next, crucial stage in his personal odyssey.
An odyssey, the end result of which he knew would rock the world.
Chapter 8
A fter finally succumbing to sleep barely five hours earlier, Tess was now awake again and eager to start work on something that had been bugging her ever since those few minutes at the Met, before Clive Edmondson had spoken to her and all hell had broken loose. And she would get to it, just as soon as her mother and Kim were out of die house.
Tess's mother Eileen had moved in with them at the two-story house on a quiet, tree-lined street in Mamaroneck soon after her archaeologist husband, Oliver Chaykin, had died three years ago. Even though she was the one who had suggested it, Tess hadn't been too sure of the arrangement. But the house did have three bedrooms and reasonably ample space for all of them, which made things easier. Ultimately, it had worked out all right even if, as she sometimes guiltily recognized, the advantages seemed more skewed her way. Like Eileen babysitting when Tess wanted to be out evenings, driving Kim to school when she needed her to, and like right now, when taking Kim out on a doughnut run would help get the girl's mind off the previous night's events and probably do her a world of good.
"We're going," Eileen called out. "You sure you don't need anything?"
Tess came into the hallway to see them off. "Just make sure you save me a couple."
Just then, the phone rang. Tess didn't look like she was in any rush to answer it. Eileen looked at her. "You gonna get that?"
"I'll let the answering machine pick it up." Tess shrugged.
"You're gonna have to talk to him, sooner or later."
Tess made a face. "Yeah, well, later's always better where Doug's concerned."
She could guess the reason for the calls her ex-husband had left on her voice mail. Doug Merritt was a news anchor at a network affiliate in Los Angeles, and he was totally absorbed in his job. His one-track mind would have linked the raid on the Met with the fact that Tess spent a lot of time there and would definitely have contacts. Contacts that he might use to get an inside track on what had become the biggest news story of the year.
The last thing she needed right now was for him to know that not only was she there, but that Kim was there with her. Ammo he wouldn't hesitate to use against her at the first opportunity.
Kim.
Tess thought again about what her daughter had experienced last night, even from the relative shelter of the museum's restrooms, and how it would need to be addressed. The delay in the reaction, and die odds were there would be one, would give her time to better prepare how to deal with it. It wasn't something she was looking forward to. She hated herself for having dragged her tliere, even though blaming herself was far from reasonable.