Alex Archer - Death Mask

Annja held her breath, sure the noise would summon someone, and counted to ten before she pushed again. No one came. She put all of her strength behind the next push. This time the rotten wood splintered and the rusted metal snapped, the entire frame giving way under the force. The door scraped open into the room beyond, releasing a rush of air that hadn’t been breathed for probably two hundred years or more.

Annja paused on the threshold, shining the flashlight inside.

The beam illuminated dust-and-cobweb-covered shapes that made no sense at first.

Then Annja realized she was looking at bones covering every inch of wall from floor to ceiling. On and on, as far as the light shone, bones. Annja had visited the catacombs beneath Rome and other ossuaries in and around Vienna and Prague, but they never ceased to take her breath away.

She paused while the dust of centuries—which she’d shaken up simply by breaking the seal of the door—settled again before she entered. It was an unconscious act of reverence. She lived for places like this and had no desire to disturb the dead if she could help it.

She took a deep breath before she entered the chamber of bones.

The long, narrow passage stretched deep inside this new—or rather, much older—section of building, reaching at least thirty feet ahead of her before another corridor crossed it. The walls of this second corridor were shored up with bones, as well. It was as if the entire catacombs had been constructed from bones, but of course there must have been stones somewhere beneath the skeletal remains, now yellowed and calcified with age.

Annja’s footsteps echoed back to her as she advanced slowly through the passageway. She kept one hand held out in front of her face, brushing away the strands of cobweb before they smothered her face. So many bones, so many bodies piled atop one another, all of them becoming one in death, abandoned and long forgotten. She was sure no one even knew that they were still down there.

The tunnel stretched far beyond the flashlight’s beam. She continued on, one step at a time, checking every inch of the damned place for a clue, for something that would link to the mask and give her a chance to save Garin. That was all she wanted. She’d already done the impossible and found the Convent of San Francisco, a building that hadn’t existed for the best part of two hundred years, but that wasn’t enough. She needed to find the mask. And if not the mask itself, something that would lead her to it. She was wasting her time. There was nothing here.

She walked on, her boots grinding dust and grit into the stone floor with each step.

She passed another intersection and another and she began to grasp the sheer scale of what lay down here.

She was tempted to try one of the many passages branching off the main corridor, but knew that if she ventured off the central path, she risked walking into a labyrinth of bone and becoming disoriented. So she continued going forward, trying not to think about how many thousands of people must have died to make these walls.

A few minutes later, Annja was grateful she hadn’t deviated from the main passageway.

Bones gave way to rows of stone coffins set in alcoves in the walls.

Coffins meant a more important kind of dead. She walked down the line, fingers lingering on the crosses and tracing the inscriptions that told the briefest stories of the lives they contained. The coffins held the remains of women who had held office within the convent. But the farther along the line she went, the more male names she encountered, until she realized she was standing before the tombs of men who had served the Inquisition.

One coffin stood out because it didn’t bear the cross or any Christian blessing meant to serve the deceased in the next life.

It bore only a single word: Morisco.

That was the word the curator had used at the monastery in Ávila, the term for the Moors who’d converted to Christianity rather than fleeing the country from the Inquisition.

But why would a Muslim, even one who’d changed his religion—in public at least—be buried in such an obviously Christian place? The curator had said the word was an insult, hadn’t he? She lingered in front of the stone sarcophagus. There was definitely something wrong about its presence here, amid the tombs of the Inquisitors and the sisters of the convent. It fairly screamed at her.

Annja wasn’t going to learn its secrets just by staring at it, though. She needed to look inside. She placed the flashlight on top of the stone lid, then took a deep breath before pushing hard. She was rewarded with the sound of stone grinding on stone until it had opened a crack.

She picked up the flashlight once more and shone it into the coffin.

She could never have imagined what its beam revealed.

6

20:30 —Seville

Roux stepped onto the tarmac and into the sudden heat. It was fierce enough to drive the breath from his lungs after the unnatural cool of the air-conditioned private jet. He was glad to have something solid beneath his feet even though the flight had been relatively short. It certainly hadn’t been smooth. Long ago, he’d realized that as luxurious as the Gulfstream was, it was still just a tin can hurtling through the sky. It didn’t matter whether he owned it or an airline did, the plane was still going to get battered around by the elements on any given flight.

The old man was a frequent flier.

Although he kept an overnight bag on board, packed with the essentials of modern living, he left it behind. Sleep wasn’t on the schedule. Walking across the landing strip, he listened to Annja’s message. He returned her call, but it went straight to voice mail.

“It’s Roux,” he said. “I’m in Seville. I’ll give you a call when I have news. Check in when you can.”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and pulled out his passport, ready to present it to the immigration officer. There would be no complications; there never were when you paid the kind of money he had to arrange this short-haul flight. A car would be waiting for him when he stepped out of the terminal. Money made the world go round.

He wasn’t disappointed. Less than ten minutes after the cabin door had depressurized, Roux was sitting comfortably in the back of a chauffeur-driven black Mercedes Benz. He could have rented a car and driven himself, but it was just easier to take the driver.

“Where to, sir?” the driver asked in flawless English. The company Roux had contracted had offered a selection of drivers able to speak a wide range of languages, anything to suit his needs. He learned forward, checking the man’s name against his license. Mateo.

“First stop, the remains of the Castillo de San Jorge, Mateo, there’s a good man,” Roux said, assuming that the driver knew where it was.

“Of course, sir. Is your interest in the Inquisition?” The driver had struck on the connection straightaway, but then no doubt everyone who visited the place had that particular interest.

“One of many,” he said. “Do you know it well?”

“I worked there as a tour guide during my studies. Unsurprisingly, people only ever wanted to hear the goriest details of tortures.”

Roux smiled. “Human nature, my friend. And, you must admit, there’s plenty to keep them entertained.”

“Oh, yes, but it was always more fun to make up something particularly awful, just to watch them squirm.” He laughed.

Roux liked the man. Sometimes there was too much truth in the world. A guide having a little bit of fun at the expense of a few tourists wasn’t that big a crime...all things considered.

“You’re more than welcome to come inside and revive your fledgling career as a tour guide,” he offered.