Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) (13 page)

“Centipede check,” I say, running
my hands through her hair, then patting her back and her legs. She does the
same for me.

“I think we’re clean,” she says. “But
that doesn’t mean I’m not going to itch for the rest of my life or not have
nightmares.”

“Are you stung or bit badly?”

She shakes her head. “Mostly just
creeped the hell out is all.”

“Me too,” I say. “Those insects
have probably been nesting there for centuries. When Florence eradicated most
of the plague ridden rats, I think it’s safe to say they thrived.”

“Survival of the fittest,” she announces.
Then, looking me in the eye. “What’s next?”

“We follow this tunnel out,” I say.
“Maybe we still have a shot at running into our mysterious benefactor.”

“Doubtful,” she says.

“Well, we have the
Book of Truths
.
Let’s get out of here, get back to my place, and figure out where the hell that
cave is located.”

“That’s why we hired you.”

“So far, so good, girlfriend.”

“Don’t push your luck, boyfriend.”

The Maglite cuts through the
eternal darkness of the tunnel.

We walk, strangers in a strange and
unforgiving underground land.

We walk the catacombs for another fifteen minutes until we come
upon a vertical tunnel that appears to access the outside world. Precisely
where that outside world is, however, is anyone’s guess. Standing at the bottom
of the vertical shaft, looking up at what seems to be a metal cover, much like
a manhole in a road. A metal ladder, that looks older than time itself, is bolted
into the stone wall. What other choice do we have but to climb it?

“You first,” Andrea says.

“Oh, thanks,” I say. “Why is it
always brawn before brains?”

“Why didn’t you say brawn before
beauty?”

“A woman is running for President.
She wouldn’t like my objectifying you.”

Gripping the old, rusted rungs, I
start climbing. The ladder seems solid and in decent shape. Whoever constructed
it meant for it to last a good long time.

“What are you waiting for, Andrea?”
I say. “Come on up.”

When I get to the top, I press one
hand flat against the circular metal disc and push up. It’s heavier than hell,
but it pulls away from its metal frame. The dirt and dust that has accumulated inside
its circular support over the decades comes raining down on us. I push until
the disc is free, and allow it to drop onto the floor beside it. The metal
creates a reverberating racket as I push it across what I’m guessing is a stone
floor, telling me that we’re about to access a wide open building like a church
or a library.

Climbing the rest of the ladder, I
stick my head out of the opening and see wooden pews—not in a church or
cathedral, but a chapel. It takes me a moment, but I quickly realize we’re
inside Dante’s chapel in central Florence, only a few hundred feet from the
Piazza della Repubblica, the area where Florence was first born two thousand
years ago when Roman soldiers established the area as a military encampment.

“All clear?” Andrea echoes from
down in the tunnel.

“Clear,” I say. Then, when she’s
standing beside me. “Dante’s Chapel, or what’s also known as the Chiesa di
Santa Margherita de’ Cerchi.”

“Like,
the
Divine Comedy, Dante?”

“The one and only.”

We take a second to gaze upon the
plain altar that, over the past few years, has been transformed from a house of
God into an art gallery. Subdued ambient orchestral music is being piped into
the otherwise silent space, filling the cold emptiness of the stone and wood
chapel. The sound is eerie and sad, but it beats the chewing noise from the
millions of centipedes that crawled through the walls and ceiling of the
catacomb sub-chamber.

“This is a lonely place,” Andrea observes
while finger coming her hair.

“This is the place where Dante
married the one love of his life, Beatrice Portinari, only to lose her to a
dreadful disease a few short years later. That’s why lonely folks travel here
from miles around to ask Dante, and God, to help heal their broken hearts.”

A door that leads from the altar to
a sacristy in the back of the church opens. Out steps a man in a long brown
robe, his hood pulled all the way over his head, hiding his face entirely in a dark
shadow. My pulse quickens. I recall the monk walking along Via Guelfa earlier .
. . and the monk who stopped and stared at me when I was placed in the back of
a van in the middle of the night by Andrea’s cohorts, the Poseidon Brothers.
Like I said, Florence is no stranger to priests, friars, and monks, but why do
I get the feeling I keep seeing the same one again and again?

A cell phone vibrates and chimes.
Andrea pulls out her phone, peers down at the screen. She thumbs a few
commands. A quick beat later, she’s looking intently at a video that someone
just forwarded to her.

“Good Christ,” she says. “Look at
this Chase.”

Staring down at the phone, I see
two men standing outside what appears to be the mouth of a small cave located
in a heavily wooded area. One of the men is tall and gray bearded, the other
shorter and bearing a thick five o’clock shadow. The men are dressed for the
wild in military gear, as are the team of men accompanying them. They are also
heavily armed. The video is shaky, and often loses its focus, as if the person
shooting it is doing so in secret.

“Who sent you this?” I ask.

“Millen,” she says. “It’s Soleimani
and Putin and, by the looks of things, they think they’ve located the cave. We
managed to place a mole on their expeditionary team.”

“Well, if they have, it means they
just happened to stumble upon it.”

She cocks her head, bites down on
her lips.

“Regardless of the probability of
finding the cave without the
Books of Truths
, it’s still possible. We
already told you, we believe Dr. Belli was feeding them information regarding
the specific location of the cave. For a price, of course. After all, he alone
was in possession of the sketch book. There is much he would have known about
the cave.”

“It’s a wonder he didn’t stake his
own claim on the place.”

“Why would he do that when, in the
end, he’d have to give the find up to Italian authorities for free? What Dr.
Belli wanted was money. And certain groups, like ISIS and countries like Iran
and Russia, have no trouble paying big money for a find as important as the da
Vinci cave.”

I stare down at the screen as the
video stops, causing the picture to become still. My eyes, however, remain
focused on the cave’s mouth.

“It’s too small,” I say.

“What?”

“It’s too small. My guess is, what da
Vinci discovered was a big opening in the earth with vast tunnels and chambers.
Not some little cave that, at best, houses a couple of black bears or a family
of boar. I’m betting da Vinci discovered something so large it could house
something important. Like a flying machine maybe. A place that could serve as a
kind of earthly hangar to an out of this world flying machine.”

“Now it’s you who’s suggesting E.T.
Nothing divine in that, Chase.”

“Maybe,” I say, my eyes shifting
back to the altar and the monk who is no longer there. “We were just attacked
by killer centipedes inside the tomb of a half-man half-beast whose body
remains largely intact after six hundred years of death. How much weirder can
this day get?”

She tugs on my arm.

“Time is wasting,” she says. “We
need to take a look at that sketch book and start searching for the real cave,
before the bad guys truly do get lucky.”

Exiting the chapel through the
front door, we leave the broken hearts behind us.

Back at my place, we strip down and take hot showers. Then,
having wrapped towels around our damp bodies, I spread the map contained in the
Book of Truths
out onto the dining room table and pull up two chairs so
that Andrea and I can examine it together.

“There’s nothing written on the
map,” I note. “No benchmarks, nothing to indicate precisely what we’re looking
at, other than a big chunk of northern Italy.”

“We need a topographical map to
compare it to.”

Pushing out my chair, I stand and
go to the bookshelf in the sitting room. In a section where I keep maybe a
dozen books dedicated to travel, I’ve also stored maybe an equal amount of
maps. Rummaging through them, I find the one that represents Italy, retrieve
it, and spread it out on the table beside the da Vinci hand-drawn map.

My eyes dart from the sketching to
the topo map. I begin to recognize certain similarities and landmarks, the main
one being Vinci itself and the countryside that surrounds it. But all in all,
the map is still vague at best. Something I don’t mince words over with Andrea.

“I have visited Vinci several
times,” I say, “and I can tell you this: the town sits on a hilltop surrounded
by wooded hills, streams, orchards, olive groves, vineyards, grazing fields for
livestock, you name it. It’s a paradise for a naturalist like da Vinci was,
even as a kid.” Then, with my left index finger pointing to the sketch of the
Vitruvian Man on da Vinci’s map, I point to what I believe is the corresponding
area on the modern day topo map with my right hand index finger. “If I had to
make an educated guess, girlfriend—and this is by all means, an educated guess
based on his Vitruvian Man marking—I’d place the cave right here.”

I tap the topo map with my finger
in an area maybe three miles due north of Vinci. A hilly, almost mountainous,
area that’s still wild. Standing up straight, I gaze down at Andrea, her hair
damp and glistening from the shower, her exposed shoulders smooth and soft.

She looks up, locks eyes. “But if
the cave—perhaps the most important cave ever known to mankind—is indeed
located only three miles from da Vinci’s birthplace, how is it even remotely
possible it has yet to be discovered?”

I shrug my shoulders, cock my head.
“Who knows? The wilderness is a very strange place. You can’t take it for
granted. People have gotten hopelessly lost in patches of woods that measure
less than five square miles.” I toss up my hands. “Maybe the opening has been
covered up by time and geological shifts. You just can’t assume it would have
been found by now.”

Andrea gets up, goes into the
bedroom, comes back with her phone.

“Soleimani and Putin,” she says. “The
cave they discovered is not far from the area indicated on da Vinci’s map. Or
so Millen insists.”

“So you think it’s possible they
found the true cave? That stupid little hole in the ground?”

“There’s only one way to find out, Chase,”
she says, allowing her towel to drop to the floor. “We need to go there. Now.”

“Right now?” I say, allowing my own
towel to fall.

“In a few minutes,” she says. “The
fate of the world can wait that long, don’t you think?”

“Me thinks you’re right.”

Grabbing hold of her hand, I lead
her into the bedroom, the fate of the world resting on our naked shoulders.