The Lost Catacomb (48 page)

She had to reach the canister
—
it was her
only hope
—
but it had spun across the floor, to the other side of the
room. The stiletto was just inches from her throat.
 
In desperation, she jabbed her fingers
into his eyes and bit his hand as hard as she could, hearing a satisfying
crunch, the metallic taste of blood in her mouth.

She looked around her frantically, barely managing to hold
him off with repeated kicks to his shin as he attempted to stab her with the
deadly crucifix.
 
She had to reach
the halothane.
 
There was no other
way to stop him.

But no, she
’
d nearly forgotten.
 
She still had the can of mace that she
’
d taken
from the Swiss Guards, tucked into her waistband.
 
She lashed out again at Rostoni, kicking
him in the groin over and over again, and as he doubled over, she reached for
the mace.
 
To her horror, she saw
that the cap was stuck.
 
She had to
pry it off, but she needed her other hand to block and parry Rostoni
’
s fist and
the deadly stiletto.
 
If only she
could get the cap off the canister and hold her breath long enough to disable
him!

In desperation, she gripped the tall can as tightly as she
could and hit him on the head with it, over and over again, punching him
simultaneously with her free hand.
 
Finally she knocked the stiletto out of his grasp, but not before she
had scratched him in the process with his own weapon.

She pinned him down and kicked the horrible crucifix out of
reach, unsure of what to do next.
 
Punching him in the jaw for good measure, she began to back away,
grabbing for the halothane, which had rolled towards the stairway, poised to
spray it at him should he manage to get up.
 
Suddenly she saw that he had begun to
turn pale, his arms and legs shaking with tremors and froth coming out of his
mouth.

“
The tip .
. . ,
”
he
said, his breath labored and harsh sounding,
“
. . . I have . . . no regrets.
”
 
He shuddered and lay still.

Nicola backed away further from his body, unconvinced that
he was really dead.
 
Why had he
mentioned the tip of his stiletto?
 
My God, it must have been poisoned, she realized with a shudder.
 
He
’
d known that he only had to scratch her with it and she
would have died, without any further effort on his part.

Her thoughts raced feverishly.
 
Maybe that
’
s how Matt
died, she suddenly grasped, as she continued to maintain a careful distance
from Rostoni.
 
All that had been
needed was the tiny prick of a needle, administered by a casual passerby in the
Athens marketplace
—
most likely by one of Rostoni
’
s
associates.
 
A tiny prick of some
deadly, untraceable poison that could mimic a heart attack.
  
That
’
s all it
had taken, she concluded in a rush of understanding.
  
That
’
s all it
had taken to kill poor Matt.

Her heart hardened as she now viewed the body before her
with surprising detachment.
 
After
all she had witnessed that night, another corpse could no longer move her,
could no longer frighten or even repulse her.
 
Not now.
 
Not any longer.

This monstrous Cardinal had killed her young
grandfather.
 
He had killed two sets
of her great grandparents, right here in Rome.
 
He had tried to murder her with a
crucifix, symbol of the religion he had served so hypocritically over the
years.
 
And he had not only knowingly
appropriated the property of Nazi victims for his hideous Museum of Dead
Nations, but he had preserved the bodies of scores of Nazi murderers in the
hope of re-establishing the Reich at a later date.

Though he had been a prince of the Church, he had died
unrepentant and unabsolved.
 
For him
there would be no resurrection of the soul, she reflected.
 
She doubted that he had been born with
one.

As she stood there, staring at the lifeless body of the man
who had destroyed so many of her loved ones and colluded with the Nazis,
profiting from the deaths of so many innocent people, she heard footsteps on
the stairwell, hurrying towards her.
 
Her hand tightened on the can of halothane, and she readied herself to attack.
 
Please, God, she prayed, don
’
t let it
be the Swiss Guards.
 
She
’
d had
enough violence to last a lifetime.

“
Nicola,
Nicola, are you all right?
”
cried
out a familiar voice.
 
It was Father
Benedetto.
 
“
I came as
soon as I could.
 
Dio
! What
happened?
”
he
asked, staring in shock at Rostoni
’
s corpse.

She relaxed her grip on the canister and, taking a deep
breath, began to explain what had happened, more dispassionately than she would
ever have imagined a few short hours ago.
  
“
He was in
his office when I arrived.
 
He tried
to kill me with his pectoral cross.
 
It had a knife hidden inside.
 
A stiletto.
 
The tip was
apparently poisoned, and he got nicked by his own blade.
  
He meant for me to die,
”
she
finished matter of factly.

“
But we
knew that already.
 
He was the one
who sent the two thugs to the catacombs this evening.
 
He didn
’
t deny
it.
 
One of them spoke Italian.
 
As I told you, it was one of the
librarians from the Secret Archives
—
Luciano.
 
He
must have been planted there as a mole.
 
You might want to check for unusual surveillance or camera equipment
that doesn
’
t belong there.
 
Maybe you can figure out who else is behind this.
”

“
Believe
me, I won
’
t let this go unanswered.
 
But I would never have suspected
Luciano,
”
he
added, shaking his head in disbelief.
 
“
He seemed so quiet and industrious.
 
I
’
ll need to mount a thorough investigation to see if there
are any others in the Archives who were working for Rostoni.
”

“
I think
that would be a good idea.
 
The
other goon, incidentally, was German.
 
No surprises there.
 
Not when
the mastermind
”—
and here she glanced venomously at the Cardinal
’
s body
—“
not
when the mastermind was a Nazi sympathizer.
 
He told me, you know, that there are
others out there, ready to take on the mantle of the Reich and continue its
evil work.
 
Not to mention all those
disgusting frozen cadavers that he'd hoped to revive.
 
It
’
s not over yet, I
’
m afraid.

“
But by now
Bruno should have brought some reporters to the catacombs, to photograph and
document the Museum.
 
Maybe that
will put a pall on Rostoni
’
s successors, for the time being.

“
By the
way,
”
she
continued quickly,
“
you don't have to bother searching anymore for evidence
that Rostoni was the one who denounced my grandmother
’
s
family.
 
He admitted it
himself.
 
He even boasted about it.
”

Benedetto looked at her intently and hesitated for a moment
before speaking.
 
“
Actually, Nicola, there
is
something you need to know
—
and
see for yourself.
 
Something that
will surprise you, to put it mildly.
 
I
did
search for evidence, as I said I would
—
evidence in
parish records at Santa Maria in Trastevere.
 
But I found nothing of interest.
 
My colleague there, however, came across
something stuck at the back of his desk drawer tonight while searching for a
file.
 
I only received it about an
hour ago, by messenger service.
”

He drew a large manila envelope out of his cassock and
carefully removed a flat, yellowed piece of stationery.
 
“
Here,
”
he said with a sober
expression on his face.
 
“
Sit down and read it
for yourself.
”

She looked at Father Benedetto questioningly, but sat down on
a step and began to read the cramped handwriting, her brows knitted together in
concentration.

“
February
1944
—
Rome,
Italy

“
I,
Angelo Donato, parish priest of the congregation of Santa Maria in Trastevere,
know that I am soon to die.
 
My
heart has finally weakened beyond all hope of recovery, and my desire to live
has now faded to calm acceptance of my imminent end.

“
But
I cannot go to meet my Maker without one last confession.
 
It is something I should have confessed
long ago.
 
Something of which I have
always been ashamed.
 
I am dictating
this to a friend as I lie here on what may prove to be my deathbed, in the
hope that it will reach you, my most reverend Bishop, and that you will absolve
me of the grievous sin that I committed so many years ago.

“
Mea
culpa. Mea maxima culpa.

“
Well
before the terrible time of the war
—
some twenty years ago
—
I had occasion to
visit a member of my flock in the hospital, a woman who had given birth
prematurely after many years of agonizing barrenness. I went to urge her to
baptize her child as soon as possible, in the event that it did not
survive.
 
I wanted nothing more than
to ensure its safe passage to Heaven.

“
In
the bed next to this woman lay another patient who had given birth to a baby
boy by emergency surgical procedure several days earlier.
 
She had been run over by a tram that had
skidded off its tracks in the deep snow and had been taken by ambulance to the
hospital, unconscious and without any identification papers or means of
verifying who she was.
 
She lay
there in a delirium, tossing and turning, muttering words in a strange language
that I could not understand.

“
The
nurses speculated that she was a tourist, a visitor in Rome, since no one had
come looking for her in all the time that she had been hospitalized.
  
Perhaps she was from Poland or
Romania, they conjectured.
 
On her
neck was a chain with a small cylindrical gold pendant that was embellished
with curving letters which I recognized as being part of the Hebrew
alphabet.
 
She pulled repeatedly at
the chain in her delirium, and finally the object flew off her neck and fell to
the floor.
 
I picked it up and
placed it on the nightstand next to her bed.

“
Just
as I was about to leave, having obtained my parishioner's consent that the
baptism would take place as soon as her husband could return to the hospital, a
nurse entered the room with tears in her eyes.
 
She asked me to remain as she informed
my poor parishioner that her tiny infant had succumbed and died.

“
As
the young woman cried out for her child, sobbing inconsolably, the patient in
the next bed began to cough up blood and was dead within minutes.
 
It was a sign from G-d.
  
Or so I thought at the time.

“
One
baby was dead, but another lived.
 
One woman had been bereaved, and one baby had been orphaned.

“
The
exchange was rapidly concluded. The dead woman's baby would be given to
Fiorella
. . ."