The Medusa Amulet (46 page)

SS soldiers, in pea green uniforms, were poking the muzzles of their machine guns everywhere, ordering the marquis’s staff to open every door, empty every drawer, and pull back every curtain.

In the center of the entry hall, overseeing it all, stood a man recognizable from every newsreel and newspaper in Europe: Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer, Hitler’s second-in-command and head of the dreaded Gestapo. In person, he was an even more spindly creature than he appeared in the carefully contrived news footage. He was wearing a dove gray uniform, with boots that came all the way up to his knees; the fearsome
Totenkopf
, or death’s head, gleamed above the black visor on his cap. He was wiping his wire-rimmed spectacles clean with a handkerchief when the marquis approached.

A soldier immediately interposed himself, but Himmler waved him away with the handkerchief.

“Herr Sant’Angelo?”

“Oui,”
the marquis replied, staying sufficiently distant that any handshake could be avoided.

“You know who I am, no doubt,” he said in German, slipping his spectacles back on.

“Ich mache.”
I do.

“But I doubt you know my adviser.”

A big man with a squarish head stepped forward. He was wearing a green loden coat, far too warm for the weather, decorated with the War Merit medal and the requisite Nazi armband; he carried a bulging briefcase under his arm.

“This is Professor Dieter Mainz, of the University of Heidelberg.”

Mainz bowed his head and clicked the heels of his boots.

“He has been eager, as have we all, to make your acquaintance.”

The marquis expressed surprise. “I live a quiet life, here in the country. How could I have come to anyone’s attention?”

“I will be happy to explain,” Mainz said, in a voice that sounded as if it would be more comfortable booming out in a lecture hall. “We have reason to believe—good reason, based on my own research—that your ancestor, from whom your title descends, was a man of extraordinary talents.”

“How so?” Sant’Angelo replied, knowing full well that this ancestor stood before them at that very moment.

“My investigations,” Mainz confided, “suggest that he was well versed in many of what are commonly—and unwisely—dismissed as the occult arts.”

Sant’Angelo again feigned ignorance. “I come from a long and distinguished family, but I can’t say I know much about that. Are you sure you’ve come to the right place?”

“Quite,” Mainz said. “Quite sure.”

Himmler was squinting at him closely. “Apart from your servants, do you have anyone else here at present?” he asked abruptly.

“No. I have no family.”

“No guests either?”

“No.”

“No woman?” he asked, with a tilt of his pale, anemic face. “Or man?”

Sant’Angelo took his meaning, but he didn’t deign to answer.

“Then you won’t mind,” the Reichführer went on, “if we continue our inspection.” Without waiting, he barked some orders and half a dozen of the soldiers charged up the two sides of the staircase. All of them, Sant’Angelo could not help but notice, were tall, blond, and blue-eyed. He had heard that Himmler, the architect of the Nazi breeding programs, liked to handpick his recruits.

Ironically, Sant’Angelo thought, the Reichsführer could never have met his own criteria.

An adjutant whispered something in Himmler’s ear, and the two of them retired to the adjoining
salle d’armes
, or armor hall, where Sant’Angelo could see that a command post of sorts was being hastily assembled. The medieval weaponry that lined the walls was overwhelmed by the flood of modern communications equipment—radio sets and decoding machines and rickety antennae—strewn around the room. One soldier was standing on top of the refectory table to loop a wire over the chandelier, while another had opened a casement window to affix a receiver to its frame.

“I’m dreadfully sorry about the inconvenience,” Professor Mainz leaned close to say, “but they have so much to do just now.” He said it as if he were talking about some local burghers who were preparing for a visit from the mayor. “Tonight, as you may be aware, is the summer solstice.”

True enough
, the marquis thought,
but what of it?

“It’s one of the ancient celebrations that we have reconsecrated,” Mainz offered. “It takes the place of all that Judeo-Christian claptrap. In fact, I’ve written a book on the subject,
Arische Sonne-Rituale.
” Aryan Sun Rites. “If you like, I would be happy to send you an inscribed copy for your private library.”

Sant’Angelo nodded, as if in gratitude.

“I’m a devoted bibliophile myself,” Mainz confided. “My house is so full of books, my wife says I’d fill the bathtub with them if she’d let me.”

Ascanio and Celeste walked by, with several glasses and a wine bottle on a tray.

“But you must have inherited quite an impressive collection yourself.”

Sant’Angelo shrugged, to suggest he didn’t bother himself with such things.

“Oh, don’t be so modest. Books make the house, don’t you think?”

“I’ve heard that said.”

“But where do you keep your library?” Mainz asked, looking around as if he might have missed it somehow.

Ah, so this was where it had been going
.

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” Sant’Angelo replied.

“Oh, let me be the judge of that. I may be able to share with you things about your ancestors that you never knew. In fact, I believe that when I have told you about the arcane knowledge acquired by your forebears, you will be pleased and astonished. Now,” he said, taking his host by the elbow and steering him back toward the grand escalier, “perhaps you can show me those books, yes? Upstairs? In one of the towers? I thought most of these pepperpot turrets were truncated in the sixteenth century? I wonder how these were spared.”

Sant’Angelo deftly removed his arm.

“Perhaps a bit of your ancestor’s hocus-pocus?”

They were halfway up the stairs when the marquis heard the first explosion outside.

He stopped and was about to run back down, but Mainz said, “Just a safety precaution. No serious damage will be done. Now, let’s go see that library!” It wasn’t a request but an order.

Sant’Angelo guided the lumbering professor past several salons and corridors, lined with faded tapestries and furniture, and into the main library of the house—a cavernous space with shelves from floor to ceiling and a wooden ladder on wheels to help reach the books on top. There, the marquis kept an extensive collection, everything from Marcus Aurelius to Voltaire, all in fine bindings, their titles lettered in
gold on their spines. Most of the books he had purchased while traveling the world, and as a result they were in many languages—Italian, English, German, French, Russian, Greek. The professor placed his own bulging briefcase on the center reading table and strolled about the room, whistling under his breath.

“Fantastic,” he said. “Simply fantastic.”

Many times he stopped and lovingly removed an ancient volume from a shelf. “The complete histories of Pliny the Elder,” he said in wonderment. Leafing through another volume, he said mournfully, “The Philippics of Tacitus. My copy was lost in a fire in Heidelberg.” Once or twice, Mainz seemed so immersed that Sant’Angelo thought he might simply be able to steal away and not be missed. Another round of dynamite exploded, and Sant’Angelo could hear huge trees toppling over.

But after perusing a couple of dozen books, even inspecting the volumes on the higher shelves, Mainz stopped, and from his perch atop the ladder, looked down at the marquis and said, “But this is not where you do your own work.”

“Work?” Sant’Angelo replied, assuming a touch of haughtiness. “I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to.”

Mainz waved his hand around the room. “There’s not a book missing from a shelf. Not a paper or pen on the table. And these,” he said, gesturing at the thousands of volumes on display, “are not the kinds of books I know you own.”

He stepped down from the ladder, and with an icy smile, said, “I want to see the private collection.”

When Sant’Angelo didn’t reply, Mainz went on. “You can show it to me yourself, or I can have the soldiers find it, even if it means breaking down every door in the place. Come on,” he said, again in that comradely tone, “how often do you meet someone like me, who can appreciate the true worth of such stuff?” He walked on toward the door, turning only to say, “Which way do we go, marquis?”

Sant’Angelo began to wonder if Ascanio had not been right about killing them on sight. But there was little he could do now, with
Himmler himself and the SS dispersed all over the chateau and its grounds.

He led the way back down the corridor, then up the winding staircase to his private study high in the eastern turret. It had never been wired for electricity, and with dusk falling, the marquis had to stop to light the gas lamps in sconces along the walls. The room was stuffy, too, and he threw open the French doors to the terrace and stepped outside to see what destruction had been wrought to his estate.

There was the smell of scorched wood in the air, and when he walked to the end of the parapet and looked toward the sheep meadow, he saw that the Germans had blown up the old oaks that ran along the ridgeline and were now using their armored cars to push the splintered trunks off the cliff.

Before he could think why they were doing it, he heard Mainz inside the study, exclaiming over something.

“Like me, you are a Renaissance scholar!” the professor said, when Sant’Angelo stepped back inside. He was holding a copy of Cellini’s autobiography in his hand—the original printing, done by Antonio Cocchi in 1728. “But you have this book in half a dozen other languages, too! Along with his treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture. Then you must admire him as much as I do?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then you know, too, that he was not just a great artist. He was also a great occultist. Surely you remember his account of conjuring demons in the Colosseum?”

“He was given to tall tales, I think.”

But Mainz shook his head vigorously. “No, it was not a tall tale, as you call it. In fact, it was not the full tale—I am convinced of that. In the 1500s, it was simply too dangerous to tell the whole truth about such things. One day,” he said, slipping the book lovingly back into the shelf, “I will find the rest of the story.”

Then he simply looked around the room—a pentagon, with cherrywood bookcases alternating with floor-length mirrors—and said, “I envy you this aerie.” He shrugged off his loden coat, revealing a
white shirt stuck to his body with sweat, and laid it across a chair. “At home, just to get some peace and quiet, I must work in a pantry!” He wandered around the room, touching the books—their subjects ranging from
stregheria
to astrology, numerology to necromancy—and seemed transported. This, his expression advertised, was what he’d been looking for. His stubby fingertips trailed over the edge of the writing table, where a gilded bust of Dante, his head surmounted by a silver wreath, stood in pride of place. Sant’Angelo was careful not to let his own eyes linger on the piece.

“I regret that my Italian is so bad,” the professor said. “The infinite charms of
The Divine Comedy
are sometimes lost on me.”

“That’s a pity. He was the greatest poet the world has ever known.”

But Mainz laughed. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? Judging by your name, you’re an Italian. And yet your family has lived in France for centuries. Why is that?”

Sant’Angelo shrugged, and said, “Ancient history.”

The professor paused, then went to his briefcase and unfastened the leather strap. “Ah, but ancient history is my specialty.” He began to root around inside, pulling out a stack of papers. “Only last week, we turned up some interesting information at the National Archives.” He pushed the bust of Dante to one side, nearly displacing the wreath around its brow, to make some room on the table. “I took the photographs myself. I think you’ll find them quite interesting.”

They were meticulously done photos of handwritten and hand-drawn pages, the text in Italian.

“The scribe who made the original drawings and notes worked for Napoleon. The words were taken down from the walls of a cell in the Castel San Leo, outside Rome. We went there, too, of course, but nothing much remained. So all we have left is these transcriptions.”

Sant’Angelo suddenly understood why the Nazis were there.

“I assume you can guess the occupant of the cell,” Mainz said.

“Count Cagliostro.” What use was there in playing dumb anymore? The words themselves, accompanied by Egyptian symbols and
signs, were gibberish, but several times they made mention of Sant’Angelo and a lost castle. The Chateau Perdu. The old charlatan might have been constrained from uttering a word about what he knew, but apparently it had not kept him from writing about it. In the end, he might as well have provided the Nazis with a road map.

“So you can see why we wanted to make this call. Reichsführer Himmler has a great interest in the more arcane sources of knowledge. Wherever we go, we root it up, like truffles,” he said, snuffling like a pig.

Sant’Angelo was well aware of the Nazis’ predilections. The swastika itself was an ancient Sanskrit symbol of peace, now turned back on its axis to suggest something else entirely.

“Obviously, the count—the master of the Egyptian Masonic lodges—was well acquainted with your predecessor,” Mainz said, smiling coldly. “But I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were friends. Professional rivals, I would call them. Wouldn’t you?”

The marquis stifled an impulse to retort that the powers of the count had been vastly overrated.

“Cagliostro seemed to think that the Chateau Perdu contained some powerful secrets.”

“That maybe,” Sant’Angelo replied, “but in that case, they’re still undiscovered.” He might have said more, but he noted that the professor’s attention had been diverted; his ears had pricked up, like a hunting dog’s, and now the marquis could hear it, too—the low thrum of an airplane engine in the distance.