The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) (26 page)

I thought about what Gardi had told us about the man with the ring who’d come to the sanatorium in Florence, looking for the lost artworks. But Gardi was old. He said himself he’d given no thought to the key or Custodians for more than sixty years and he too had said that the 1930s and the war had inflicted serious damage on the group. Perhaps they were indeed all gone.

“So Santini is a Custodian?” Claire asked, her brows drawn together in a frown.

Dante shrugged. “He thinks he is. But with no key, and no access to the vault, if it even exists, he’s really the Custodian of nothing.”

“He seems convinced the vault exists. Convinced enough to commit a string of crimes.”

“Yes.” Dante sighed. “Did you give him the key?” he asked.

“We had no choice. He’s holding my brother. He said he’d release him if we gave him what he wanted and I was naive enough to believe him. Then, as soon as he had everything, he told us he intended to kill us.”

“Did he tell you where Ethan is?”

“No. And I’m scared that it’s too late now. You saved us, but I’m sure Santini has already given orders for Ethan to be killed, too.” Her voice caught and she gave a little sob. “We need to find him. Can you help us?”

“Of course,
cara
.” He patted her hand gently. “But tell me, if Santini intended to kill you, why didn’t he?”

Claire was crying too hard to speak, so I answered. “He told us he was waiting until this morning so that he could get to Rome to establish an alibi. Breakfast with the pope, if you can believe it. And I suspect he had some doubts that the key would work. He said something about using us to negotiate if he had any problems, but he seemed very confident.”

“Negotiate with whom?”

“I don’t know. But he didn’t seem to believe we’d told him everything we know, so maybe he just planned on trying to get more out of us.”

“And do you know something he doesn’t?”

“Well, there’s a diagram. But it’s not very helpful.”

“A diagram?”

I nodded. “It’s just a basic line drawing of irregular-shaped rectangles. If you squint, it looks sort of like a stone wall.”

Letting go of Claire’s hand, Dante got up and stood with his back to the fire. “And Santini doesn’t have that diagram?”

“No, it’s in the house in the country where he was holding us,” I said. “I hid it in the umbrella urn by the front door.”

Dante smiled. “Very enterprising of you. Is there anything else? Are there any other documents?”

Claire wiped her cheeks while she told him about the list of the artworks. “We call it the provenance list,” she said. “But there really wasn’t much information, other than the names of artists and some dates, which we think were buy and sell dates. Santini took it when he took the key.”

Dante glanced at his watch. “Give me a few minutes, please. I need to get an update on my brother’s whereabouts. Why don’t you two get cleaned up? Patrizia will come to help you, and Rocco is going to stay with you. Until I find out what Santini is up to, I want you under constant protection.”

After he’d gone, Rocco stood at the door and gazed into the middle distance. Although Claire had stopped crying, she looked washed-out, bruised and pensive. “I’m so glad I was wrong about Dante,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “I’m happy for you. For both of us, really.”

“It was a horrible feeling, when I thought that he’d betrayed me.” She laughed. “I need to have more faith in people.” But then her expression changed. Her lips trembled. “Santini still has Ethan, though,” she said. “I can’t be happy about Dante until I know what’s happened to Ethan.”

More to the point, Claire still had her aura. I couldn’t make sense of it. We were safe now. There was no way Santini’s men could get anywhere near us. So what was the danger to her?

My brain wasn’t working too well, fogged up by lack of sleep, limited food and the stress of the last few hours. I got to my feet and wandered through the spacious room. Glass cases arranged along one wall held an impressive collection of artifacts, including a number of small bronze statuettes, a Bible open to show the signature of the Medici Pope Clement, and several vases that I guessed were Etruscan. Dante had certainly made plenty of money as an art dealer.

A window in between two of the glass cases framed a view of the great dome of the cathedral. The sun had won its battle with the early morning fog, and the russet dome cast a shadow over the streets below, creating grey corridors along which cars and people moved as iridescent spots of color.

A few minutes later, the woman in the blue dress came in. She invited us to follow her, leading us along a wide hallway hung with old paintings to a large suite with a four-poster bed, a small living room and a spacious marble-tiled bathroom. Rocco followed close behind and stood outside the bedroom door.

“Have you met her before?” I asked Claire, after Patrizia had shown us how to use the rainfall shower and left us with a stack of fluffy white towels.

Claire nodded. “Yes, a few times. She’s Dante’s personal assistant. She’s rather formal with me, a little standoffish even. And she reminds me of the Cheshire Cat, the way she smiles all the time.” She picked up a towel and hurried into the bathroom. Not long afterwards, she came out to blow-dry her hair while I showered. By the time I’d dressed, she was anxious to get back to Dante, so I left my hair to dry by itself, but took ten seconds to put on some mascara and lip balm. A little make-up and washed hair did wonders for my morale, although I was dreaming of fresh knickers and clean clothes.

When we returned to the living room, Dante was waiting for us. “I have an idea on how to stop Santini,” he said at once.

“Stop him from opening the vault?” Claire asked. “It’s too late for that, I think.”

Dante smiled. “No, it’s not. My men reported that Santini cancelled his appointment with the pope. Only one thing could come between him and a chance to fawn at the feet of his master. The vault. He must have failed to open it, which would explain why he was bringing you to Florence this morning. So we are going to help him.”

“We’re going to help Santini?” Claire looked shocked.

“Yes. I have something I think he needs, something we can use to negotiate Ethan’s release.”

That sounded promising. Claire’s face lit up. “What do you have?”

“I’ll show you.” He stood up. “We will need to make a short trip.”

“Can I make a couple of phone calls first?” I asked, checking the gilt clock on the mantelpiece. It was almost eleven, which was ten in England. “Santini stole our mobiles, but there’s a detective in London who expected to see us an hour ago.”

Dante glanced at the clock. “You can make your calls from that phone.” He pointed to an old-fashioned porcelain phone on a table near the fireplace. “It’s an antique, but it works. And I’ll get Patrizia to secure some new mobile phones for you while we’re out.” He smiled at Claire. “I know how much you rely on yours.”

I dug in my bag for Lake’s card. His phone rang through to the duty desk and I left a message, asking Lake to call me back on Dante’s landline.

Claire was standing, fidgeting. “We should go,” she said. “Finding Ethan is the biggest priority.”

“I know. Just one more minute.” I wanted to talk to Leo and to Laura.

“No. Let’s go.”

Dante walked to the door as soon I put the receiver back in its cradle. “Follow me, please,” he said.

We did, with Rocco, the neckless brute, bringing up the rear. Dante led us downstairs, out through the lobby to the Mercedes. Claire and I sat together in the back for the short drive. After just a couple of minutes, we stopped on a side street, where the driver let us out and Dante led the way into a pedestrian alleyway. It had started to drizzle again, water dripping from the gutters of small workshops that lined both sides of the alley. Most of them were locked up, with heavy padlocks securing the shutters, but two of the buildings were open. A sprinkling of pale marble dust frosted the cobbles outside a sculptor’s workshop and the pungent smell of white spirit lingered in the air where a furniture restorer was working. We could have been in Florence at the time of the Renaissance.

At the end of the alleyway, we stopped in front of the last workshop on the right. It too was secured with several gleaming brass padlocks. Dante unlocked each of them and pushed the door open. Inside, the small space was crowded with items of antique furniture and empty gilt frames.

“We do repairs here,” he said, waiting until Rocco had secured the entry door behind us. Then he led us to a paneled wooden door in the center of the back wall. Next to it a red light flashed from an electronic keypad. Dante punched in some numbers. With a loud click, the door swung open to a dark, musty-smelling space.

“After you,” he said.

Dante flipped on a switch to reveal a small empty space. On the back wall was a lift, an old-fashioned type with iron bars rather than a closed-in cabin. It hardly looked safe for one person, but we all crowded in and descended to a spacious vestibule with painted walls and halogen lights. Set into one wall was a wide steel door that looked as though it concealed a safe, but when Dante pressed some buttons, the door swung open to reveal a corridor. It was about three meters wide, with a concrete floor and raw brick walls. Iron pipes and lengths of electrical conduit ran overhead. Lights flicked on automatically as we walked along.

After a hundred meters or so, we came to a second steel door where another keypad provided access to a freight lift, not much more than a platform with a low railing around it. When all four of us were on board, Dante pressed a button and the lift jolted into life. A red lamp flashed, eerie in the dim light. Seconds later, a siren wailed loudly.

“Just a safety measure in case anyone is on the warehouse floor,” he commented. “Not that there would be, of course. Only two people have access to this warehouse. It would be impossible to break into these premises, as you can see. No one can get out without knowing the pass codes either.”

We descended slowly into an ever-deepening darkness. Finally, the lift came to a stop and a blue light sputtered into life as the metal platform touched the ground. Dante opened the gate and stepped out, reaching out to flip on a series of switches. At once, a bank of overhead bulbs snapped on, casting pools of white light circumscribed by murky shadows.

As my eyes adjusted, I saw a cavernous space under a vaulted brick ceiling. Rows of metal shelving were stacked against the walls on either side of the room. The units were at least ten feet tall and filled with wooden crates in a variety of sizes and shapes. They were constructed of industrial-looking chipboard and each one was stenciled with a number in black paint.

“What is in them all?” asked Claire. Her voice was a whisper. The warehouse was cold and smelled of old plaster. It reminded me of a Gothic cathedral.

Dante spread his hands. “Paintings, sculptures, precious stones. There’s a little of everything here.”

“Hardly a little,” I said, stupefied by the sheer volume of crates.

Dante walked ahead and stopped in front of a tall wooden box that stood on the floor and towered several feet over his head. “Inside is a marble statue of Athena, a copy, much smaller of course, of the original gold and ivory sculpture that stood in the Parthenon. This copy was probably made in the third century CE.”

Claire touched the box gently. “She must be beautiful.”

“What would you do with a piece like this?” I asked. “Sell it?”

“Yes, of course. I have a buyer in South Carolina in the States. He has a house full of sculptures, but this will become his most precious acquisition. He’s having a safe room built for it before he takes delivery of it. He’s very excited, as you can imagine.”

“But shouldn’t something like that be on public display?” I asked. “In a museum? I mean, why should these pieces be in private collections? What’s the point?”

Dante looked at me, his eyebrows raised. “The point?” he asked, looking confused.

“What’s the point of having artworks that you never look at, jewelry that you never wear, books that you never read? They should be on display somewhere if they are such an important part of our heritage.”

Dante smiled. “I see that you don’t understand the world of antiquities and art. For many, many people, just owning a piece of art is enough. They may store it in a bank, or in a vault, but they know that it is theirs and that gives them all the satisfaction they need. Admittedly, many are lucky enough to own the type of property that allows them to display their treasures more boldly and they have the pleasure of looking at their Renoir or Rodin while they eat dinner every evening. Some have a special display room with which to impress their friends. Ownership
is
the point, Kate. Having something that is unique, that no one else has. In these days of mass-produced art, jewelry, and furniture, we have so little that is truly exceptional and distinctive.”

He turned to Claire. “Admit to me that you experience a little frisson of pleasure whenever you look at the Madonna on your living room wall. You do, don’t you? Because it’s matchless, its colors enhanced by the patina of age, the appeal of its connection to the past.”

Claire nodded. “Yes, I love it.” Her cheeks flushed red. “It’s only on loan though. I’ll give it back to you any time you ask me to.”

He waved a hand as though dismissing the idea and continued to lead us between the towering rows of shelving. I heard a faint hum of machinery and asked what it was.

“Temperature and humidity control,” said Dante. “We keep the warehouse dark and at an optimum temperature for preservation of the artworks.”

“When was the warehouse built?” asked Claire. “It’s huge.”

“It was excavated about three hundred years ago.” He walked in between two of the shelving units, beckoning us to follow. “This is solid rock,” he said, with his hand on the wall. “Here, if you look closely, you can see the chisel marks.” He pointed across the aisle. “And the other wall is formed by the brick and stone foundations of the medieval houses that used to stand above us. It’s a naturally protected space. The only access is the way we entered. It would be impossible for anyone to tunnel or dynamite their way through.”