The Florentine Cypher: Kate Benedict Paranormal Mystery #3 (The Kate Benedict Series) (32 page)

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth back there in Ethan’s room,” Dante said. “I told you that I’d kill Ethan if you don’t cooperate. The fact is that I will kill Claire first and then Ethan. So, Kate, just say the words.”

The text that Leo had sent me had said “
Cinquegiùnovedasinistra
,” typed in haste without any spaces. The instruction indicated ‘five down and nine from the left.’ But should I lie, come up with a different set of numbers? I was sure we were going to be alive only for as long as it took Dante and Santini to open the vault. Once they’d succeeded, there would be no reason I could think of for Dante not to kill us.

“Seven down, ten from the right,” I said.

Claire squeezed my hand. I knew we were just playing for minutes. But even a minute is attractive if it’s about to be your last one.

“Good,” Dante said, moving towards the wall. It stood about four meters high, I thought, and six across. The block faces were smoother than I’d expected, but were very irregular in size, varying in length and height, some of them cracked, or stained black with algae growth. Each stone was bonded to its neighbor with dark grey mortar.

Dante counted blocks down from the ceiling, moving his hand in time with his counting. He did the same from the left and placed his hand on the block he’d pinpointed. Then he turned to look at us. “Come here,” he ordered.

When we were closer, he jabbed his finger at the block. “This is it,” he said. A hole in the center of the block could be the keyhole, although I knew it wasn’t. Now I could see the wall in more detail, I realized how deliberately confusing the design was. There were holes drilled into many of the larger stone blocks, although not all. I couldn’t detect a pattern. Without the decoded instructions, it would be impossible to locate the correct place to insert the key. It was a happy coincidence that the numbers I’d given him landed on a block with a hole in it. That gave us a little more time to delay the inevitable.

“I’m relieved, Kate, that you decided to cooperate…”

A burst of noise in the tunnel interrupted Dante. Rocco swung his gun towards the door and lowered it when Santini made an appearance, accompanied by our old friend Aldo.

“Signorine,” Santini said. “What a pleasure to see you again.”

His aura circled wildly around his head. I felt my knees wobble. There were going to be deaths and very soon, probably in this stone chamber deep underground. Santini and Claire, for sure. And me? Almost certainly.

“Do you have the key?” Dante asked, holding his hand out.

Santini withdrew it from his suit pocket but kept it in his hand. “My privilege, I think,” he said. “As I’m the oldest. Show me the place.”

I recalled what Dante had told us earlier about the booby trap built into the vault by Buontalenti. If Santini inserted the key in the wrong place, the vault would fill with water. Did I want to be responsible for destroying an untold number of priceless masterpieces? More to the point, I thought now that the brothers might feel more kindly towards us if they succeeded in opening the vault. If they failed, we were sure to be the first target of their disappointment.

I looked at Claire and she nodded her head. “Tell them,” she said.

“I made a mistake,” I said. “The count should be…”

Dante’s hand shot out and grabbed me by the neck. “Do you think you can play games with me?” He shouted so loudly that his voice ricocheted around the chamber.

Santini pulled Dante’s arm away from me. “Patience, Dante, patience.” He nodded towards Aldo, who pointed a gun at me.

“Now,” Santini said. “Let us talk calmly. Kate, as you seem to be the one causing problems here, I want you to keep your mouth shut. Claire, please tell us the correct numbers. Any tricks and your friend will die.”

Claire took a deep breath. “It’s five down and nine from the left,” she said. “I swear, that’s the code that Kate’s brother sent us.”

“Good girl,” Santini said. He stepped up to the wall, counted quickly, and pressed his hand against a block. He ran his hand over it.

“There’s no hole in this block.” His voice was low and menacing. He turned to look at Dante. “What’s going on?”

The unnatural light pointing up from the ground made Dante’s chiseled face appear skeletal, his eyes sunk deep into black sockets. “I don’t know any more than you do,” he said. “And I’ve had enough of these women playing their stupid tricks.”

I’d been staring at the wall, not really seeing it, a little dazed by all the aura activity. Pulling my brain back to attention, my eyes focused again.

“I know what it is,” I said.

Santini turned his head to look at me. “I told you to shut up.”

He nodded at Aldo, who rushed at me. He seized me, his forearm across my neck, the gun pressed to my head. I started shaking so violently I could hardly think straight but I knew that, in their rush to open the vault, the brothers had forgotten about the diagram, the vital third component.

The wall in front of me consisted of roughly twenty-four blocks from floor to ceiling and thirty or so from one side to the other. The diagram showed only ten blocks down and twelve across, which meant it didn’t represent the whole wall, just a portion of it. The decoded instructions intended the user to find the block five down from the top of the diagram, not from the top of the real wall. It added a level of security, ensuring that whoever held the key also had the diagram.

“Look at the diagram,” I said as loudly as I could with my throat constricted. The words came out in a hoarse whisper.

Dante’s eyes widened. He must have understood what I meant. “Wait, Santini,” he said. He reached into his jacket and withdrew the original diagram that he’d brought back from the warehouse.

Santini nodded towards Aldo, who released his death grip on my throat. I stepped away to lean against a wall, massaging my neck. My head hurt as the blood started to circulate freely again. Claire came to stand next to me, sliding her arm through mine. “Are you all right?”

“Yeah, I’m fine,” I whispered back. “We have to get out of here.”

The two brothers perused the diagram together, glancing up at the wall and then staring at the paper again.

“I think I’ve got it,” Dante said.

Santini shook his head. “Show it to Claire. I want another opinion.”

I felt a little flush of annoyance at being ignored, but looked over Claire’s shoulder when Dante came to stand next to us and held the diagram out where we could see it.

“The pattern of blocks from here down and across matches the ones in the wall,” Claire said, outlining the area she meant with her forefinger.

She was right. The diagram was like a snapshot of the lower left quadrant of the real wall.

“Good, we try again.” Dante went back to the wall and began counting, while I held my breath. I wanted it to work. Santini stood to one side, cradling the key in his hands.

“This one.” Dante bent over to look at the stone block, and then straightened up. “And there’s a hole in it, right in the middle.”

For a couple of seconds, the two brothers gazed at each other, each wearing a self-satisfied smile.

“Our ancestors would be proud of us,” Santini said, wiping away a tear. Who’d have thought the cardinal harbored any emotions under that silvery, icy exterior?

I heard something in the tunnel. Aldo must have heard it too because he turned to face the doorway, gun raised and ready. Footsteps echoed against the walls. One or two people? I couldn’t be sure. Probably more security or maybe some muscle men who’d come to help empty the vault.

A figure appeared in the doorway. I gasped out loud as Detective Falcone, still wearing his long black coat, stepped into the cavern. The light from the lantern on the floor cast a huge vulture-like shadow on the wall behind him.

“Cardinal Santini, it is an honor to see you again,” he said.

Dante glanced at Santini in evident confusion. “Who is this? Did you invite him here?”

“Of course I didn’t. What the hell are you doing here, Falcone?”

The three men faced off, their shadows shifting on the walls like predatory beasts measuring up their adversaries.

Claire squeezed my hand as we both stared at Falcone. He didn’t acknowledge us. His eyes were on Santini. So he was here to help the cardinal. What would they do to Dante? I didn’t plan to stay long enough to find out. Falcone’s arrival had upset the status quo enough that it was a good time to run. I straightened up, preparing to move.

“You’re not going anywhere,” Dante said. When Rocco pointed his gun at us, I eased back against the wall, grasping Claire’s arm. So much for that plan.

“How did you get down here?” Dante asked Falcone.

“Tell him, Santini,” Falcone answered.

The cardinal looked calm and poised. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Falcone laughed, a dry, grating sound that conveyed no humor. “My feelings are hurt, Eminence. I thought we were better friends than that.”

He turned to look at Dante, whose eyes were darting between his brother and Falcone.

“I am a detective with the Carabinieri in Rome,” he said to Dante. “Your brother and I have been collaborating on some business dealings over the last few years. I’m disappointed that he now denies our partnership.”

Falcone was disappointed? I was devastated. I’d guessed Falcone was crooked ever since Santini kidnapped us, but the revelation still turned my stomach.

“You lied to us,” I said to him. I watched his beaked nose turn in my direction.

“Ah, Kate,” he said, as if noticing me for the first time. “If you had been listening properly when we talked in Venice, you would have heard the truth.”

What the heck was that supposed to mean? Obviously everything he’d told us had been fabricated, apart from the fact of his being a policeman and maybe even that wasn’t true.

“What kind of business dealings?” Dante demanded. “What’s he talking about? And why is he here?”

Santini raised his hands palms up. “None of that is important now. We’ll deal with him later.”

A distinctive clicking noise made me jump. It was the sound of a safety catch being released. Rocco pointed his gun at Santini, who raised his hands in the air.

Aldo, lurking in the shadows, now stepped forward into the circle of light and aimed a gun at Dante.

“Enough of this,” Falcone said. “Who has the key?”

“I do,” said Santini. “And I suggest we use it. Dante, have your man stand down and I’ll do the same.”

Even with a gun pointed at him, Santini’s voice stayed steady and strong, the tone of someone accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. After a long pause, Dante told Rocco to lower his gun, which he did. Aldo followed suit.

“Excellent,” Falcone said. “Now shall we proceed?”

Santini held up the key and took a step closer to the wall. Claire dug her fingers into my arm. In spite of the testosterone-laden theatrics and the danger, a perverse piece of me was still curious to see what the vault contained.

But Dante suddenly pulled a gun from his jacket pocket and aimed it at Santini. Rocco pivoted on his heel with the grace of a ballerina and pointed his gun at Falcone. It felt as though all the air in the cavern had been sucked out. I was having trouble getting oxygen into my lungs.

Santini swore colorfully, a string of words I didn’t think a cardinal would know. He raised his hands in the air again. “You have to trust me, Dante. Shoot Falcone, I don’t care.”

I looked back at Falcone. His aura gyrated over his head so fast it made me feel faint. Everything else seemed to be happening in ultra-slow motion.

“Claire, move six feet along the wall,” I said. That would put her behind Dante, who didn’t have an aura. There was a chance, I thought, that there would be a bullet-free zone around him, the safest place for Claire to be. Without question, she sidled along the wall and stood absolutely still. I had no time to think but, for some reason, my instinct drove me to side with Falcone. We already knew that Dante and Santini had no interest in keeping us alive. I didn’t know what Falcone’s intentions were, but maybe he wouldn’t kill us.

When Rocco’s finger tensed on his gun, I covered the space between me and Falcone in a single stride, grabbed his arm and pulled him off balance so that he stumbled towards me.

Rocco fired. The smell of hot metal filled my nostrils, making me gag. I felt a searing pain in my upper arm. Beside me, Falcone slumped to the ground, clutching at his shoulder. Blood, black in the lamplight, oozed between his fingers. His aura started to fade, circling more and more slowly, becoming less distinct. That could mean that he was dying, or that he was safe, but I had no time to determine which. Dante was pointing a small, black gun at Santini.

The noise of the shot in the enclosed space had set my ears ringing. As my hearing returned, I heard Dante speak. “You’ve always been against me, Santini, but I never thought you’d betray the Custodians,” he said. “Father would have been ashamed of you.”

“I haven’t betrayed the Custodians,” Santini argued. “I can explain all of this. Falcone and I have been collaborating on other business, importing religious relics. That’s all. I told him nothing about the vault.”

He pointed a finger at me. “These women must have told him. They brought him here.”

Dante lowered his gun and turned to look at me. “Is that true?”

Before I could answer, Santini lunged at Dante and the two of them fell to the ground, flailing their fists at each other. I wondered if they’d fought like this when they were boys. Another gunshot boomed in the enclosed space. Seconds later, Dante rolled away from Santini, who lay motionless on the stone floor, his blood spilling from a wound I couldn’t see. Claire screamed and covered her mouth with her hand as the spinning of Santini’s aura slowed. Aldo fell to his knees and leaned over the cardinal. His guard down, he was no match for Rocco, who darted towards him and struck him with the butt of his gun. Aldo collapsed over the cardinal’s body.

Rocco turned towards Falcone with his gun raised. Falcone stirred, pulling himself up into a sitting position, as his aura faded away completely. For him at least, the worst of the danger must be over.