The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) (22 page)

“It sounds like stealing to me,” I said with a shrug.

“You wouldn’t understand,” he said. “Every day, precious artifacts are destroyed though carelessness, neglect, war and civil strife. Someone has to protect them for future generations.”

He smiled and took another sip of his wine.

“I’m confused about the vault,” I said. “Why do you need the key so desperately? We heard there were two keys. Surely you have one of them? Don’t you store all your ill-gotten loot in your vault?”

“By 1944, my great-uncle and my grandfather were the only remaining members of the Custodians. My great-uncle’s key was destroyed when his plane crashed in the ’sixties. He was killed, and the key was lost. The other, as you know, was taken from my grandfather during the war and hidden in an attic in England. I was not aware of its location until your father began asking questions, Claire, and that’s when its whereabouts came to light.”

“Did you kill my father?” Claire asked. She’d gone as white as the porcelain mugs arranged on the shelves.

Santini looked affronted. “I did not.” He leaned over to pat her hand, and she pulled away as though he’d sent an electric shock through her. “I’m very sorry about your father’s death,” he said, which made me want to throw up. I didn’t believe that he wasn’t responsible.

“Where is the vault?” Claire asked. “Is it the same one the Custodians used when they first rescued artworks from Savonarola?”

“The initial collection, the paintings rescued from the fires of Savonarola, were stored in the palazzo of one of the members. But that was a long time ago.” Santini paused to sip his wine. “Over the years, thieves came to hear of this treasure trove, and the palazzo was robbed several times. So in the late 1500s, the group commissioned the great Buontalenti to devise a vault that would be impossible to break into. You have heard of Buontalenti?”

“Of course,” she said. “Did he design the lock and the keys?”

“He did.” During a long pause, Santini finished his wine and held up the glass. “A little more please, Aldo,” he said to the gunman.

He raised the glass to his bloodless lips, his eyes narrowed, looking less like a genial uncle and more like the creepy cleric he was. “That’s enough chitchat. I need the key and the documents. Please hand them over.”

“Documents?” I asked, playing for time, although there wasn’t any point. We had no chance of being rescued. No one even knew where we were.

He nodded. “The list that Mr. Hamilton cut out of the cover of the
Della Pittura.
We retrieved the book, but the contents were already missing.”

“It was your men who stole the book from me on the
autostrada
?” Anger made my neck flush warm. “Didn’t you realize that someone innocent might have got hurt? In fact the taxi driver was. Your thug punched him. And, talking of thugs, what about our police escort, Federico? Your men left him lying on the street.”

Santini flapped a pale hand at me. “Better the street than the alternative. While I applaud your concern for others, I want the key now, please.”

I reached into my bag and pulled out the pouch, feeling the familiar shape of the key inside. I’d thought of it as a passport to safety for Ethan. Giving it up was as though something was being ripped away.

The cardinal snatched at the pouch like a greedy boy seizing candy. He withdrew the key and turned it over in his hands, caressing it gently. For the first time, I noticed the large gold ring on his right middle finger. On it was a small engraving of flames and the letter C, just like the one that Gardi had described. It matched exactly the image on the top of the key.

“At last,” he crooned. “I have waited so long for this.” He held it tight in his fist as though concerned we’d make a grab for it. “Give me the papers.”

When I held out the fragile provenance list, Claire took it from me before Santini could. “What about my brother?” she asked.

“I assure you I will return him to you as soon as I get what I want. Now, please, be sensible and give that to me.”

Claire held the page for a few seconds before relinquishing it to the cardinal.

“And the schematic?” he asked me.

“Schematic? I’ve no idea.”

“It’s a diagram showing the location of the lock.”

So that’s what it was. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t have…”

Before I was able to finish, the gunman came round to take my bag from my hands. He tipped the contents out on the table. The paperback and Simon’s notebook sat amid a clutter of keys, cosmetics and a few personal items that sent a flush of pink up the cardinal’s pale cheeks.

My passport was the last to make an appearance. I gazed at it wistfully, thinking I could be in the air now, on my way home.

Santini sorted through the mess and retrieved the paperback and the notebook. He flipped through the pages of the notebook and stopped when he came to the page with the string of letters that we now knew were the cypher.

“These are your notes?” he asked.

“My father’s,” Claire said.

He nodded as though understanding something. When he’d finished skimming the notebook, he looked up at us. “You two young ladies have surprised me. I was hoping that the attention of my colleagues would be enough to scare you into giving up the key, but you have remained remarkably impervious to intimidation. In my experience, women are normally far weaker than you’ve shown yourselves to be.”

“You obviously haven’t had much experience with women,” I said and couldn’t help smiling when I remembered he was a Catholic cardinal. Of course he hadn’t. “You really thought we’d hand over the key because one of your gangsters asked us to? You’re a walking, breathing cliché. It’s the twenty-first century, so you’d better catch up. We’re a lot stronger than you give us credit for.”

He clapped his hands slowly. “
Brava
, Miss Benedict. Now, I’d appreciate it if you would hand over your phones.”

Claire and I exchanged glances, but there was nothing to be done with Aldo standing there pointing his gun at us. Reluctantly, we gave them to Santini. He tapped on the screen of mine with surprising dexterity. “And your passwords,” he said.

I shook my head. “You can take my mobile, but the contents are private,” I said. “There’s nothing of interest to you on it.”

He looked up at Aldo, who promptly waggled the gun at me.

“The password?” Santini asked again.

I told him and he keyed it in while I sat on my hands to stop myself from lashing out at him. My mobile was my only link to everyone I loved. Without it, they’d have no idea of where I was. When Santini had Claire’s password as well, he took another sip of wine. We sat in silence as he scrolled through her phone and then turned it off. He picked mine up again. A sudden flush of warmth prickled my skin. Leo had texted me the deciphered instruction on how to find the lock. It was sitting there, right on my mobile. Would Santini find it? I leaned over, trying to see the screen, to watch what he was doing but he held the mobile at an angle close to his chest.

Without saying a word, he turned my phone off and laid it on the table.

“A necessary precaution in case anyone is trying to track you,” he said. “It would be unfortunate if any unwanted visitors were to turn up here, because we have reached, as it were, the moment of truth. I have the key, which means you’re no longer of any use to me. It is a shame.”

He leaned across the table to cup Claire’s chin in his hand. “What a waste.”

“This is ridiculous,” I said. “You’re a cardinal. You can’t get away with murder. And too many people are aware of our connection to the key. If we disappear, you’ll be one of the first people the police come to interview. Besides, don’t you still need that diagram you talked about? How will you get into the vault if you don’t know where the lock is?”

“You’re very curious for someone with such a short time to live. My line of work brings me in touch with many who are on their deathbeds, as you can imagine. For some, the presence of death numbs the brain, reducing all thought to only how to survive. In others, it triggers an intense desire to know everything, as though that knowledge will protect them or guide them as they leave this Earth. Interesting, don’t you think?”

When I didn’t answer, Santini’s lips moved upwards a fraction in a parody of a smile. “To answer your question, I have no need of the map. I can find the lock without it.”

“So why is all that stuff written down at all?” I asked. “Isn’t it the kind of information that would be passed verbally from one Custodian to another? For fear that it would fall into the wrong hands?”

“For many years, it was,” he said. “But in times of turmoil, death can come quickly. In the mid-eighteenth century, the Custodians decided it would be prudent to keep a copy of the schematic and to create a cypher to disguise the precise placement of the lock. The keyword was underlined in the original
Della Pittura
and the cypher was hidden in the list of the artworks that were in possession of the Custodians at that time. A casual observer would have no idea what any of it meant.”

I realized now that if we’d had the original leather-bound version of the
Della Pittura
, we would have broken the code more easily. Did that mean that Santini already knew the code? How could he? He’d had the book since Saturday morning, but he didn’t have the provenance list with the entries that composed the cypher text. By separating the documents from the antique book, Simon had prevented him from decoding the cypher. But now Santini had my phone with the instructions on it.

He was talking again, but I wasn’t listening. His aura was spiraling madly around his head. It had started to move faster when he picked up the key, just as Falcone’s aura had intensified when he touched it. I was pondering the implications of that when Claire interrupted Santini.

“What about Dante?” Claire asked him. “Is he working with you?”

Santini rubbed his chin. “Hardly. He knows nothing about any of this. My little brother and I don’t see eye to eye on many things,” he said. “We…” He stopped when a clock chimed somewhere in the house. The sound must have been a call to action, because he drained the last of his wine and stood up.

Claire turned to look at me, her eyes brimming with tears. Dante wasn’t involved after all. In spite of our dire circumstances, that had to be of some consolation to her.

“I regret that I have to leave now,” Santini said. “My people will stay with you tonight and await my phone call to execute you tomorrow.”

Claire stared at him, her cheeks flaming. “Why wait?”

“Two reasons. I intend to be far away when it happens, at breakfast with the Pope in fact. An excellent alibi.”

“You make me sick,” said Claire. “You call yourself a churchman and eat with the Pope while your men kill innocent people.”

“And tonight,” he went on, ignoring her outburst, “I will go to the vault and use this key. I wish you could be there to see the treasures inside but, alas, that can’t happen. Then I will return to Rome. In the unlikely event that I have any trouble opening the vault…” He hesitated. “You may still be of use to me if I need to negotiate for assistance.”

I shivered, wondering whom he might need to negotiate with. Ethan? I didn’t like the thought of being used as a bargaining chip. But it was a lot better than being shot right now.

“You can’t leave us here. You can’t kill us,” I said. “The police are looking for us.”

Santini cocked his head to one side. “I don’t think so. You never made it to the Carabinieri station.”

“There’s an investigator in Venice who’s helping us,” I said. “Detective Falcone. If we don’t check in with him, he’ll come looking for us.”

To my surprise, Santini laughed. “Falcone? That’s your knight in shining armor, coming to rescue you? I don’t think so.”

“You know him?”

“Of course I do. He and I work together from time to time. I’m sorry, but he won’t be rushing in to save you.”

“Did he tell you where to find us? Outside the train station in Florence?”

Santini didn’t answer but he nodded. My stomach seemed to plummet towards my knees. I’d been holding out hope that Federico and Falcone would somehow be able to trace our location.

“Now I must go,” Santini said. “Please finish the food and wine. I assure you that the small delay is of no consequence to me, but I imagine it will be of some relief to you both.”

Aldo handed him a heavy wool coat. Santini buttoned it up and slid both of our mobiles into its capacious pockets.

“Thank you for your company. The housekeeper will show you to your rooms when you are ready.” He paused, looking towards the door. “Ah, there you are, Sister Renata. These are our guests. Please look after them until tomorrow morning.”

A middle-aged woman stood at the doorway, almost filling it with her bulk. She wore a faded grey dress that hung loosely to her knees and a matching head covering that hid her hair, revealing only a deeply wrinkled face and a downturned mouth. Her jowls wobbled when she took a few steps forward and dipped a curtsey to the cardinal.

“Your Eminence,” she whispered. The cardinal held out his hand for her to kiss, which she did, keeping her lips on his fingers for a long beat of time.

She pulled herself back up to a standing posture and walked across the kitchen, taking up position near the warmth of the stove, glaring at us with undisguised contempt.

“
Ciao
, Claire and Kate. I enjoyed meeting you both. I will pray for your souls,” said Santini.

“Go to hell,” Claire muttered. The woman took a half step forward, her hand raised as if to slap her, but the cardinal shook his head before disappearing into the dark hallway. I heard the car engine rev into life and then gravel skittered under the tires. Soon, the only noise was the rumble of the wood stove and the wind whistling at the window.

“Come with me,” Renata said. She left the room without waiting to see if we were following. Claire poured more wine into her glass before we caught up with Renata on the stone stairway. Aldo, with his gun in hand, bolted the front door and came up behind us, completing a little procession that made its way up to a wide landing. Through the open door of a room closest to the stairway, I caught a glimpse of a neatly made single bed, over which hung a crucifix. A small TV blared in the corner, and a grey dress, identical to the one Renata wore, hung from a hook on the wall.