Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) (11 page)

A bright, overhead light automatically flashes on inside the
long, narrow room, as the door opens up. The room contains floor-to-ceiling
shelves on both sides. The shelves support skulls that have browned over the
years, as well as antique crosses inlaid with gold and precious jewels. There’s
a glass ossuary that contains an entire hand, the skin shriveled around the
bone, the black fingernails overgrown by inches. A metal plate attached to the
wood base of the ossuary is embossed with the words, “Mano destra di
Michelangelo” or “Right hand of Michelangelo.”

There are dozens, if not hundreds,
of old leather-bound volumes that must be worth a fortune to collectors. The
floor space contains mounts for suits of armor, small arms of the Renaissance
and Medieval periods, plus daggers, knives, and crossbows.

“How do we know what to look for?”
Andrea says.

“The sketchbook will be small,” I reply.

“Like, how small, Chase?”

“It’ll be smaller than those
volumes,” I say, my eyes scanning the far end of the shelves on my right-hand
side. “About the size of the diary you kept as a teenage girl.”

“How did you know I kept a diary?”

“Wild guess. Let’s just call it a
girl thing.”

I hear rummaging coming from Andrea’s
side of the room, and then, “Is this what we want?”

In her hand is a small,
leather-bound book attached to a leather lanyard so that the user could carry
it around his neck, thus freeing his hands.

I go to her.

“Open it,” I say, “carefully.”

She opens the cover to reveal a
book written in Italian with the same mirror writing only da Vinci would have
been capable of. But it’s not the writing I’m concerned about right now. I’m
more interested in the sketches.

“Look for a map,” I command.

She flips a few more pages until
she comes upon a map that bears the backward, but easily translated, word
Vinci
in its center. Off to the south is Firenze, and to the right is a shaded area,
perhaps indicating forest.

“What’s that?” Andrea says after a
beat, her index finger pointing to a place in the forest that’s been circled—a
miniature, barely discernible sketching of Vitruvian Man inside its center.
There’s a backward word penciled over the miniature Vitruvian Man.

attorG

“What’s that?” she says

“Grotta,” I announce, a smile
forming on my face.

“That means cave in Italian, am I
right, Chase?”

“Girlfriend,” I say, packing the
notebook into my satchel, “I think we’ve discovered the legendary
Book of Truths
.”
I can feel the smile burning into my face. “Now let’s get the hell out of here,
before we discover more assholes who want to kill us.”

It’s precisely what we would do,
too, except the concrete door slams closed and the overhead lights go out.

Andrea flicks on the Maglite while drawing her weapon. I pull
out my .45, thumb off the safety.

“Who’s there?” I shout. Then, to
Andrea, “Give me the lamp.”

She hands it to me. I shine it against
the door. No one there.

Then, footsteps behind me. I turn,
shoot. The bullet ricochets against the wall.

“Get down!” I shout.

Andrea screams as the overhead
lights turn back on. Standing only a few feet before me, Dr. Belli is holding
Andrea in a choke hold, a dagger that must be at least five hundred years old
pressed against her neck. Her eyes are wide, not blinking. Belli is breathing
hard, his face red, forehead sweating under that scraggly Beatles haircut.

“I’ll take my sketchbook back, Mr.
Baker,” he declares.

“Or, let me guess,” I retort with a
roll of my eyes. “The girl gets it, right?”

I raise my gun, plant a bead on his
forehead.

“Don’t test me.” He’s pressing the
knife hard enough against her neck to break the skin. A normal woman might beg
for mercy or even pass out. Andrea swallows the pain, stoically, bravely, while
a tear of blood runs down her neck.

“The book, Mr. Baker.”

“Shoot him, Chase,” Andrea orders. “Shoot
the son of bitch. Don’t worry about me. Shoot him. Go find the cave. Save the
damned world.”

It’s possible I could get a shot
off, and even connect with him. But I can’t take the chance that in his dying
breath he’ll run that blade across her throat.

Thumbing the hammer back to its
safety position, I lower the pistol.

Belli grins.

“Too bad, she’s got to die anyway,”
he says, gripping a fistful of her hair, yanking her head back, exposing her
neck.

I’m raising the pistol barrel back
up when an arrow plows through his eyeball and out the back of his skull.

Belli doesn’t know what’s hit him. All he knows is he’s dropped
the knife and released his grip on Andrea. She steps away from him as he
staggers one step forward, then one step back, and then one more to the side.

“Doomed to the immortal,” he says,
before collapsing onto his own bloody footprint.

I go to him, lower myself onto one
knee. Blood streams from the corners of his mouth and out his nostrils. I can
tell he’s trying to communicate something. Slipping my right hand under the
back of his blood-soaked head, I raise it up.

He struggles for the strength to
speak. “I am not … the evil man … you think, Baker.” The words are
followed by a gurgle, then the exhalation of a very deep breath, after which,
the lungs do not re-inflate. Slowly, I lower the head back onto the floor.

“Adios, Dr. Belli,” I whisper.

Standing up straight, I turn, fully
expecting to see the person who shot an arrow or, more accurately, what looks
to be an old crossbow bolt, through Belli’s eye. Someone has to be there.

“Who’s there?” I demand. “Reveal
yourself.”

“Look what you’re doing, Chase,”
Andrea says, digging a bandage from her utility belt, tearing open the paper
packing, applying it to her wound. Or, to be more precise, slapping it on her
wound. “No one’s there.”

“But how the hell can that be?” I
bark. “Somebody had to shoot Belli and it wasn’t you or me.”

She’s retrieved her sidearm and now
grips it with both hands. “Maybe he’s hiding somewhere at the other end of this
room.”

“Where exactly?” I whisper, my own
gun gripped in my shooting hand at the ready. “Stay close behind.”

It takes maybe twenty slow steps to
reach the opposite end of the long room. But when we get there, no sign is to
be found of anyone else occupying the space other than Andrea and myself. But
something catches my attention and it tells me we’re definitely not alone. It’s
a crossbow. By the look of it, a vintage weapon dating back to the fourteen or
fifteen hundreds.

Returning the .45 to my shoulder
holster, I bend at the knees, pick it up. It’s solid and heavy in my hands. Remarkably
well preserved. Then, upon closer inspection I make out a name carved into the
hard wood stock.

Leonardo da Vinci

“That’s a relic,” Andrea says,
lowering her weapon. “He must have pulled it off the wall.”

“Whoever he is,” I say.

I point to the name on the stock.
Her eyes light up.

“You think that’s for real?”

“Let’s ask the man who saved our
lives.”

“Yeah, but who was
that
?”

“Would have been nice to get more
info out of Belli before he met his creator.”

“No point in crying over spilled
blood, boyfriend.”

“You think the guy who shot Belli
is the same guy who’s been dropping notes under my apartment door, then quickly
disappearing like he’s Batman?”

“Why do you assume it’s a guy?”

“Figure of speech. You’re not sure
of a person’s gender, you tend to use the male singular personal pronoun. Maybe
he’s an alien, or a zombie, or a goddamned unicorn.”

She bites down on her bottom lip
for a beat while her eyes focus on something down on the floor.

“Whoever he or she is,” she says, “they’re
not magical.”

“How’s that?”

“He, or she, simply plans escapes very
carefully and very much in advance.”

I follow her eyes, peer down to the
floor. At the same time, I discover a trap door that must lead into the murky
depths of old Florence.

The trap door is accessed by an old metal handle recessed into a
thick, heavy wood plank. Now on bended knee, I take hold of the handle and pull
up on it. I find cobwebs attached to the bottom of the door. Cobwebs recently
disturbed, as in only seconds ago.

“Borrow your Maglite again?”

Andrea hands it to me. Turning it
back on, I point the LED flashlight into the tunnel and immediately see death.
That is, I see the skull face of a man dead probably five or six hundred years.
His dark sockets seem like they’re staring directly up into my face. Warning
me. Begging me to go back.

“Hope you’re not squeamish,” I say,
swinging my legs around and dropping myself onto the sloping side of the tunnel
until my boot heels land on top of a flat, altar-like platform that serves as
the final resting place for the skeleton.

“I’m a soldier and a spy,” Andrea
says, following me boots first into the tunnel. “I don’t scare so easy.”

We both jump down from the stone
bed, onto the solid rock floor. I shine the light against both walls and reveal
more crypts full of bones. Some of them containing possibly hundreds of stacked
skulls, others just leg bones, and still others … arm bones.

“It’s a catacomb,” I say, the damp,
musty air filling my nasal passages. “I’m not aware of any catacombs below Florence.”

“Neither am I,” Andrea says,
following close behind. “But then, why would I be?”

We walk, taking it slow, the floor
going from dry, to damp, to wet. The cool, foul smelling water comes up to our
ankles. The walls, for the most part, are plain, blank stone hewn by hand.
Walls built centuries, if not a thousand years, before. Soon, that blank canvas
becomes the home to symbols of the medieval era. Coats of arms chiseled into
the stone, the Christian cross, and even the crescent moon of Mohammad.

Farther up is another series of
carvings that still contain some of the patina from the paints that once gave them
color. Like some of the Renaissance paintings I observed with Andrea and Deputy
Inspector Millen, there’s a scene of the Virgin Mary holding the baby Jesus. Above
their heads is a triangular-shaped object, and spewing forth from its tail is
what appears to be fire and smoke.

Andrea pauses to study this image,
along with a few others that appear to be created by the same hand.

“Chariots of fire, Chase,” she
says. “That’s what the ancients thought of these unidentified flying objects.
But they are clearly something out of this world.”

“Back to E.T.,” I say.