The hakeem remembered that fateful visit with his grandfather. Set low in the chapel’s outer walls, by the entrance, were the barred cellar windows to what was once the prince’s laboratory. Inside, the small baroque church was resplendent with the most unique paintings and works of art. Marble statues, the most famous of which was Sammartino’s Veiled Christ, were mesmerizing in their detail, the features on their subjects’ faces clearly visible under a thin veil of marble. To this day, experts are puzzled as to how such an effect was achieved.
His grandfather had guided him beyond it, to Queirolo’s statue Disillusionment. Another veiled wonder, it showed the prince’s father trying to free himself from the confines of a net, aided by a winged youth. The hakeem’s grandfather had explained to the young boy how the statue represented man trying to free himself from the trap of false beliefs, aided by his intellect.
The basement housed more marvels. A narrow spiral staircase led down to the prince’s laboratory, where two glass cases held the infamous “anatomical machines,” skeletons of a man, on one side, and a heavily pregnant woman on the other, the veins, arteries, and organs of their entire circulatory systems immaculately preserved using an unknown and still-perplexing embalming technique.
Over the years, his grandfather had taught young Ludovico more about his ancestor’s mysterious life. The principe had, his grandfather told him, been obsessed with attaining human perfection. The castrati were perfect singers. The anatomical machines were part of his quest to create the perfect human body. His tombstone, fittingly, read, “An admirable man, born to dare everything.” It presided over an empty tomb: His body had been stolen. But at some point in his life, his obsession had taken a dramatic turn. And when Ludovico reached eighteen, his grandfather finally told him what had inflamed his ancestor’s obsession.
He also gave him Raimundo di Sangro’s diaries, as well as something else that he’d prized above all else: a talisman, a medallion bearing the mark of a tail-eating snake, one the young man would always wear, even to this day.
The revelation inspired Ludovico beyond his grandfather’s greatest dreams — or worst nightmares.
It had started off well enough. Ludovico had excelled in his studies and had gone on to the University of Padua, where he obtained a doctorate — with honors — in geriatric medicine and in cellular biology. By now a brilliant biogeneticist with a solid reputation, he ran a well-funded research lab at the university, exploring stem cells, hormonal pathways, and cellular breakdown. But, with time, he started to feel the constraints of acceptable science. He began to push the envelope and to challenge the accepted boundaries of bioethics. His experiments grew more adventurous. More extreme.
In a bitter twist of fate, his grandfather died at around the same time. His parents had tried to raise Ludovico as a good Catholic, and he’d been taught, at home and in church, that death was God’s wish for us, and that He was the only giver of immortality. His grandfather had tried to lessen the effects of their teachings, and in his death, in that single, passing event, his words would come to pass. It made Ludovico realize that it was not in his nature to accept death, nor to be defeated by it. He wouldn’t go down without a fight. The grave — his own, and that of his loved ones — could wait.
Love wouldn’t conquer death. Science would.
And so, with that mind-set, his experiments became less acceptable.
They soon became illegal.
He was hounded out of the university, chased away by the imminent threat of legal action.
No laboratory in the West would touch him.
Baghdad University would, however, offer him a way out. And, eventually, lead him — or so he now hoped — to the elusive discovery that had taunted his ancestor.
With his mind spurred by the chemicals whirling inside him, he found himself going over the events of the last few days, turning them upside down and examining them from fresh angles. Despite his almost rapturous exhilaration at the prospect of getting hold of the Iraqi dealer and the book, he couldn’t avoid going back to the American archaeologist’s long-lost lover. The notion kept ambushing and undermining his serenity, as if a sensor somewhere inside him had been tripped.
And in his heightened state, another piece of the puzzle, a delicious epiphany, burst from the outer reaches of his consciousness.
How could I not have seen it before?
He ran a quick mental calculation. From what Omar had told him about her daughter’s age, the fit was certainly feasible.
More than feasible. It was perfect.
That sly bitch, he mused. She had actually kept that little gem to herself.
He sprang to his feet and strode across his study, flying across the tiles as he barked out an order to be escorted down to the cellar.
Evelyn bolted upright as soon as she heard the key jangle in the door’s lock.
She didn’t know how long she’d been in there, or even whether it was day or night. All sense of time and place had receded into irrelevance in the brutal isolation of her cell. The one thing she did know was she hadn’t been in there that long, and that, if previous kidnappings in Beirut were anything to go by, she still had a long, long way to go.
The door swung open and her inquisitor stepped in. He wasn’t wearing a lab coat this time, which Evelyn found faintly reassuring. He gave the small cell a quick scan, like a stern hotel manager surveying a guest room, then sat down at the edge of her bed.
His eyes were alive with a manic energy that was deeply unsettling. “I think you forgot to mention a small detail during our last little chat,” he told her playfully.
She wasn’t sure what he was referring to, but whatever it was, he was way too delighted at having uncovered it for it to be good.
“This roving Casanova of yours,” he said, glowering with irritating condescension. “Tom Webster. I’m amazed you still feel so strongly about him, so protectively. Given how he left you.”
He leaned in, eyeing her with relish, as if savoring her apprehension at his little mind-game, and as he did, she spotted the medallion through the folds of his buttoned shirt. The brief glimpse was all she needed to recognize the Ouroboros symbol on it, and right then, she knew there was a lot he — and Tom — had been keeping from her about the long-lost occupants of the chamber in Al-Hillah.
“Pregnant,” the hakeem rasped. “I’m not mistaken, am I? Mia…she’s his daughter, isn’t she?”
Chapter 40
A man’s voice broke through Mia’s dour thoughts.
“You must be Mia Bishop.”
She turned. The man standing before her extended his hand. “Bill Kirkwood. I was looking for Jim?”
As she met his hand, she took in his features. He was a pleasant-looking guy, but there was something aloof in his manner, a reserved hesitance, that discomforted her. “I don’t know where he is,” she said. “He left me here about an hour ago.”
“Ah.” He seemed to hover for a moment before adding, “I’m sorry about what’s happened to your mom.”
Mia wasn’t sure how to answer that. She went with “It comes with the territory, I guess.”
“Not lately, it hasn’t. Not in Lebanon. It took us all by surprise. Still, I’m sure she’ll be fine.”
Mia nodded and let an awkward silence settle between them.
“So I hear you had another Wild West adventure,” he ventured.