Paul Christopher - Michelangelo_s Notebook

She reached the end of the tunnel and stumbled out into the circular chamber behind the hidden doorway in the basement of the house on St. Luke’s Place. She stopped, rearing back, eyes wide. Lieutenant Vincent Delaney of the New York Police Department was squatting over the figure of a man slumped against the stone wall of the room. A man with half of his face blown into a bloody pulp, disfigured beyond recognition except for the white circlet of a Roman collar, bloody around his neck. A priest. A priest with the flat black shape of an automatic pistol in his hand. As Finn stopped, gasping for breath, the policeman rose and turned, the Glock that had killed the man still in his hand-the sound of the shot she’d heard half a lifetime ago at the other end of the tunnel.

“Miss Ryan,” he said slowly, “I knew you’d turn up eventually. Still with your new friend, Valentine?”

“How did you know about that?”

“I know more than you think.”

“Why are you here?” She stared at the shrunken form of the dead priest. “What’s going on?”

“Is Valentine with you?”

“What is a priest doing here?”

“He’s not a priest. He’s a hired killer. An assassin.”

“He killed Peter?” Her head was beginning to spin, the connections she’d been making disintegrating and flying in all directions, sense and logic vanishing.

“No. Peter was an accident. It was meant to be you.”

“Why?”

“Because you stumbled onto the drawing. If you’d pursued it, you would eventually have made your way here. You had to be stopped.” He paused. “I asked you a question. Is Valentine with you?”

“Yes.”

“The child?”

“What child?” This was insane.

“Botte. Frederico. An old man now.”

“Fred? The security guard?”

“He’s always been referred to as the child. Every man was once a child. This one has been dangerous from the moment of his conception.”

“You’re out of your mind,” Finn whispered.

“What are you talking about? There’s a vault full of stolen, looted art back there! Billions of dollars! People have been murdered to cover up the fact of its existence. What does an old man have to do with it? For that matter, what do you have to do with it?” She looked down at the corpse huddled against the wall. “Or him?”

“I’m more than just a policeman, Miss Ryan,” said Delaney quietly. “And the people I work for have secrets to keep-old secrets. It’s never been about the art. It’s always been about the child. We thought we had him and then we lost him. He’d started to kill again. If the wrong people catch him, the truth will come out. That can’t be allowed to happen. The Church is in enough trouble as it is. This would be the end.” He nodded in the direction of the dead man. “He worked for another faction who believed that your death would be enough, who craved power more than protection. To reach your hoard of looted art and steal it back, they would have risked everything.”

“He was trying to destroy it,” whispered Finn. “A thousand years of priceless beauty and he was going to burn it all.” She paused, bewildered, staring at the policeman. “Who is he?”

“Eugenio Pacelli’s son. The bastard child of a pope, held ransom by the Nazis for blackmail, for services rendered, for your looted treasure until they ran into James Cornwall and his own group of thieves, his own band of Nazis: American ones.”

“Carduss. Greyfriars. The Grange Foundation.”

“If you wish. Much more than that now.”

“How did you find this place?”

“I followed the priest. I knew he’d eventually lead me to the child. He found out where the freak had been living but he was already gone.”

“The freak, as you call him, is dead,” said Valentine, stepping out of the tunnel. Startled, Delaney turned, the Glock in his hand coming up, its aim centering on Valentine’s chest. “It’s over.”

“Not quite,” said Delaney. “Just a little bit of housekeeping.”

“We’re housekeeping?” said Finn.

“He means murder,” explained Valentine. “He can’t leave us alive. He knows none of this can be made public. He’s right. Eugenio Pacelli, Pius XII, is about to be canonized. It’s bad enough he’s been called Hitler’s Pope, but fathering a child? Vatican spies and assassins-real ones, not just imaginary ones of some paranoid Hollywood script-wouldn’t look good on the front page of the New York Times.” Valentine took half a step forward, turning his body slightly, offering Delaney a fractionally smaller target.

“Something like that.”

In that moment Finn knew exactly what was going to happen. Any second now, Valentine, sublimely and with idiot chivalry, was going to make his move, distracting the policeman and giving her at least the faint possibility of escape. What was that silly thing her mother used to say? Faint heart ne’er won fair lady? Sometimes she wondered how the world had continued to exist in the face of that kind of thinking, Helen of Troy being a prime example.

Not today, she thought to herself. Not today and not on my account. She realized that she had the bunch of duplicate keys in her hand and gently she eased the long jagged door key for the Toyota into her fist, end pointing out. She hesitated for a second, swallowing, her eyes flickering to Valentine, knowing desperately that she didn’t have what it took, the courage or the foolishness, the anger or even the basic instinct for self-preservation. Jesus! She was from Ohio! This kind of thing didn’t happen! She was a girl!

“Bullshit!” she whispered. Delaney turned, his eyes on her again, widening as she danced toward him, a single blinding image of Michaelangelo’s dissection drawing of the woman in her mind. Valentine moved as she did, and for a fatal instant the policeman froze, unable to decide.

Finn’s balled fist struck him in the neck and the gun went off, shattering the light over his head and throwing Finn into darkness for the second time, shards of glass scattering everywhere. She felt the length of the newly cut car key tear into Delaney’s flesh, the rough burrs of the stabbing metal shaft ripping through his external carotid artery, blood suddenly pumping up and splashing across Finn’s cheek. The Glock fired a second time, the bullet tearing past her ear, the muzzle flash lighting up the gouge she’d torn with the key and Delaney staggering back, free hand clapped to the spurting wound. He dropped to his knees in front of the body of the man from Rome, life draining away in measured pulses as he fell and darkness furled inward once again.

She sat on the front steps of the elegant old house on St. Luke’s Place and looked out through the rustling trees to the park beyond. The children were still skipping as darkness fell. The lights of the night city were blossoming everywhere. She could hear Valentine on the reception phone, calling everyone he could think of in the press. The police were on their way, as were the FBI. He’d called Barrie Kornitzer as well, who would now get busy spreading the story across the World Wide Web. Notoriety would keep them safe enough, at least for the time being.

The next hours and days were going to be a nightmare, but at least the killing was over, and slowly, very slowly, the pent-up fear was fading. In a little while she’d figure out some way of getting in touch with her mother and begin to tell her at least some of what had happened, perhaps even a little bit about Michael Valentine and the drawing she’d discovered from Michelangelo’s notebook. But not yet. All she really wanted now was to rest. She listened to the invisible children, chanting:

“Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,

Once they were, but now they’re gone.