The Medusa Amulet (47 page)

“Come,” Mainz said, hurrying out onto the balcony. “He’s coming!”

Who’s coming?
Sant’Angelo thought, following him out. Dusk was falling, and from the west, he saw the red wing lights of a small plane, racing toward the chateau as if it were fleeing from the setting sun. It was going to come in low, just above the ridgeline, and he understood why the soldiers had felled the oaks; they had been clearing a runway approach. All down the sheep meadow, he saw that the armored cars had been placed in parallel lines with their headlamps on, and soldiers with flags and flashlights were positioned on the field.

The wheels of the plane touched the grass, bounced up, and touched again as the ailerons were deployed to cut its ground speed. Even from the parapet, Sant’Angelo could see the Nazi insignia on the fuselage, along with the number 2600—the number that the Führer believed held some mystical power, and that he insisted be placed on all his private aircraft.

Hitler himself had come to his chateau?

The soldiers waved their lights like fireflies as the plane jounced along for the entire length of the meadow. It was only as it was about to run out of room and go crashing into the dense forest that it came to a halt, so abruptly that the nose dipped and the tail end rose up like a scorpion’s stinger.

When the engines were cut off, two SS men ran to the port-side door, just aft of the wings, and helped unfold the stairs. The others—Himmler among them—stood at attention in a single line, facing the plane.

In the descending gloom, the marquis saw a figure appear in the door. He was wearing a mustard-colored field uniform, with breeches, boots, and a visored cap. And even from the balcony, his face, with its doleful eyes and toothbrush moustache, was unmistakable.

Sant’Angelo suddenly realized that the professor standing beside him, like all the SS men on the field, had raised his arm in the stiff-armed Nazi salute.

It was returned with a desultory flip, from the elbow alone, by their master, who was already strutting toward the main gate of the chateau, trailed by several officers and attachés.

“You are being granted a great honor,” Mainz said. “The Führer will be spending the night under your roof.”

Sant’Angelo’s mind reeled.

“So let’s have something to show him!” Like a schoolboy giddily awaiting a visit from his sweetheart, Mainz hurried back inside and began to riffle through the photos.

“For instance,” he said, flourishing a photograph and proffering it
to Sant’Angelo, “on this one Cagliostro has scrawled ‘The little palace’ and drawn this hieroglyph beside it.” It was a raven with its wings spread.

“It looks like a raven.”

“Of course it does,” Mainz said impatiently. “And the three short vertical lines beside it indicate a flock of them. But does it
mean
anything to you? Is such a motif present anywhere in this chateau, or in a family coat of arms, perhaps?”

The little palace—no doubt he meant Le Petit Trianon, Sant’Angelo thought, though he did not share that insight with the professor.

“And this glyph, placed below it,” Mainz said, showing another photo, one depicting a jackal, but with its head thrown back, as if its neck were broken.

“He has written, ‘The master of the lost castle prevails.’ But prevails over what? Over Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead?”

Sant’Angelo remembered well the psychic battle in Marie Antoinette’s hideaway. Apparently, the good count had remembered it, too, even as madness overtook him.

Mainz laid out several more photos of the transcriptions. Even though he had not understood the meaning of what was recorded on the walls of the cell, the French scribe had made fine and accurate renderings. But the marquis sensed that the professor was expecting greater help in deciphering them.

“And then there’s this,” he said, delicately removing a yellowed sheet of paper—this one was no photograph—done in gray charcoal and what might have once been red wine. “Although I have a great reverence for the French National Archives,” Mainz said, “I felt that this was art, and needed to be more widely seen in the original.”

It was a powerful sketch of the Gorgon’s head, suspended as if on chains. The caption read,
“Lo specchio di Eternità, ma non ho visto!”
The glass of eternity, but I did not see! The professor pulled the damp collar of his shirt away from his thick neck. “As it turns out, the count was a fairly good draftsman. But have you ever seen anything
like this, a mirror perhaps, or an amulet, with the face of the Medusa on it? I suspect it belonged to your ancestor.”

Sant’Angelo’s mind was racing. The glass, as always, was hanging under his very shirt.

“Cagliostro appeared to put great stock in it,” Mainz added. “For four years, he wrote on the walls of his cell with a jagged stone, or a lump of charcoal. But this picture he daubed on the only sheet of paper he had, using his own blood.”

So it was blood, not wine … and the count had finally figured out the value of
La Medusa
. Judging from his inscription, however, he had not fathomed its secret until he had lost it to the marquis, and by then, of course, it was too late. Was the bitterness of that knowledge what had driven him insane?

“Come now,” Mainz cajoled, “let’s not pretend that you are a neophyte in these matters. This library alone confirms that you are a student of the dark arts. Perhaps you are even a master. Why don’t we put our heads together? There’s probably a lot we could teach each other.”

Oh, yes, there were any number of things that the marquis would have liked to teach him, right then and there, but the professor had turned away again, his face suddenly flushed. Voices echoed up the stairs, followed by the clomping of heavy bootheels. Mainz whirled around, and, despite the warm night, put on his green, bemedaled coat again.

The first ones to enter the study were a pair of SS guards, the jagged sig runes that looked like thunderbolts glittering on their epaulets. They quickly moved aside to make room for Himmler, holding a wineglass in one hand, as he calmly surveyed the mirrored walls and the packed bookshelves, the gleaming table with its bust of Dante, the photographs from the French archives. He actually sniffed the air, as if to detect any potential menace—or latent powers?—lurking in the room. The marquis had the impression that he was doing a final security check before permitting his master to venture inside.

But he barely glanced at Sant’Angelo.

“What have we learned?” he said to the professor.

“We’ve really just begun,” Mainz replied. “I’ve been showing the marquis—”

Himmler snorted at the mention of the title.

“—some of the material we’ve recently acquired.”

Himmler took the sketch from the professor’s hand, studied it, then held it up between pinched fingers in front of Sant’Angelo.

“Ever seen this?”

“The
Medusa
is one of the most common images from antiquity.”

“But this one is a dead likeness of one that was done by the necromancer Cellini, as a design for a Medici duchess.” Himmler rudely shoved the bust of Dante aside so that he could sit on an edge of the desk, and in so doing, knocked the garland loose. To Sant’Angelo’s relief, no one paid any attention as it rolled out of sight under the desk chair. “And in what godforsaken spot,” Himmler asked Mainz, “was it that you found that other drawing?”

“In the Laurenziana. Among the papers of the Medicis.”

“Ah, yes—in Florence. I don’t understand it myself, but the Führer is oddly fond of that town. He likes the old bridge.”

The collar of his Gestapo uniform was too big for his scrawny neck, Sant’Angelo noted, and the service medal that was pinned to it only made it gape more. His gray tunic was festooned with other military ribbons and pins.

“It’s hard to believe that such a storied object—one that Cellini made, Cagliostro captured, and Napoleon coveted—could simply have gone missing,” Himmler said, his eyes—small and pale and mean—glimmering behind his spectacles.

It was then that Sant’Angelo decided … 
I could kill him
. Or, better yet—
I could wait for my chance and kill his master. Strike the serpent at its head
. He wished he had his harpe at hand; he could have used it, like Perseus, to chop off the head of the monster. But there were other ways. He had reduced Cagliostro to a weeping, craven coward, and in the centuries since, even as his artistic powers had withered, his occult
faculties had become more refined. Like a fine wine, they had matured. And despite the risk, when would he ever have a better chance than this to deploy them?

“The sketch,” Himmler continued, “suggests it might have been worn like a necklace.” His bony fingers caressed his own medal. He cocked his head at one of the guards, who promptly came around the table unholstering his gun, and then roughly pressed the muzzle to Sant’Angelo’s temple.

“Open his shirt,” the Reichsführer told the other guard.

The second one, a towering blond oaf, yanked the marquis’s shirt open, sending the button flying, and then, spotting the chain, lifted it over his head.

“You see?” Himmler said to Mainz. “Direct action is always best.”

The guard placed
La Medusa
in Himmler’s hand, where he let it dangle from his fingers. “It doesn’t feel especially powerful,” Himmler said, weighing it up and down. “Is it?”

Sant’Angelo prayed that he could retrieve it before the Nazis ever had the chance to gauge its full potential. But the Luger was still grazing his skull, and he hardly dared to breathe.

“You can put that down now,” Himmler said, and the guard immediately obliged, stepping back a few feet, but with the gun still in his hand. “We don’t want anyone’s head exploding while there’s still something worthwhile in it.” A wintry smile creased his lips. “Now,” he said to Sant’Angelo, “answer the question.”

“It’s simply a good-luck charm that has been in my family for many years.”

“Has it worked?” Himmler asked in a doubtful tone.

Before Sant’Angelo could summon a reply, there was a sharp cry—“Heil, Hitler!”—from the bottom of the steps, and he could see a long shadow playing on the wall of the stairwell … and rising up into the turret.

Himmler quickly got off the desk and the guards went rigid at attention. Mainz mopped the sweat from his forehead and wiped it on his sleeve.

The shadow grew larger, nearer, and the mirrored walls of the study suddenly seemed as if they were closing in. Even the marquis felt the imminence of something powerful … and evil.

“Who can breathe in here?” he heard the Führer complain as he entered the room. “Open those doors all the way.”

The oafish guard leapt to the French doors and threw them back.

The Führer’s eyes darted around the room, taking in everything without turning his head more than a few degrees. His field uniform was more modest than Himmler’s, decorated with only the red armband and, on his left breast pocket, an old-fashioned Iron Cross, the one engraved with the year 1914 and given out to veterans of the First World War. Surveying the many mirrors, he said, “Vanity is a weakness. A weak man worked in here.”

No one contradicted him.

“And why, even this high up, is there still no breeze?”

Sant’Angelo had the impression that they were all being blamed for the lack of air.

Taking off his hat, adorned with the gold Imperial Eagle, he placed it on the desk upside down, then smoothed the back of his head with a trembling left hand. His eyes were an icy blue, and his brown hair was shorn oddly close along the sides. In the front, it fell in a heavy sweep from a parting on the right. Only his bristly moustache was tinged with gray. Noting the Medusa in Himmler’s hand, he said, “You hold that bauble as if it were significant.”

“It is, Mein Führer.”

“Given the trouble you’ve put me to, it had better be.”

Hitler took it in his right hand—Sant’Angelo noticed that he had placed the left one behind his back—and took an interested, but skeptical, look. First he studied the glaring face of the Gorgon, then he turned it over and grunted when he saw its black silk backing. With a thumb, he removed it, uncovering the mirror.

Sant’Angelo prayed that he would stay clear of the moonlight just beginning to show on the terrace outside.

“So it’s a lady’s looking glass,” he said, looking away from the mirror. “And not a particularly good one. The glass seems flawed.”

Sant’Angelo hoped he would put it aside; but instead, he distractedly wound the chain in and round his fingers, the
Medusa
herself cupped firmly in his palm.

“We believe there is more to it than meets the eye,” Himmler said, though with great deference.

“Yes, yes indeed,” Professor Mainz blurted out. “I believe that a manuscript exists, perhaps in this very chateau, which will explain how it was made—and the powers that it can bestow.”

Hitler flicked his eyes toward Sant’Angelo. “Well? Can you speak?”

“I can.”

“Then do so. I haven’t got all night.”

“You have already taken the measure of the thing quite accurately,” Sant’Angelo replied, in a deliberately timid tone. “It’s simply a little mirror, poorly made, without a single precious stone to distinguish it.”

“Ah, but that’s exactly it!” Mainz said, unable to restrain himself. “The things that have the greatest power always disguise themselves!” As he went off on a fevered disquisition of the occult and its physical phenomena, the marquis gently folded his hands together, in an innocent gesture, and lowered his eyes. He knew that he had been dismissed—judged and found wanting in Hitler’s eyes—and that was just what he hoped for.

He focused his thoughts entirely on the Führer … focused them, as he once had done years ago, on a sham Italian count. If he was going to break this monster’s mind, he first had to find a way inside it.

The discussion went on all around him, Mainz rambling on about a Spear of Destiny, Himmler babbling about an ancient king named Heinrich the Fowler, but Sant’Angelo tuned them out, as if adjusting a wireless set, and concentrated on a single signal … the one coming from the Führer himself.