The Judas Strain sf-4 Read online

  Now sadly, the library had much more room.

  “Prefetto Verona!”

  Vigor startled back to the present, almost wincing, hearing an echo of another’s voice. But it was only his assistant, a young seminary student named Claudio, calling down from the top of the stairs. He awaited Vigor in the Meridian Room, having reached the destination well ahead of his older superior. The young man held back a drape of clear plastic tarp that separated the stair from the upper room.

  An hour ago Vigor had been summoned to the tower by the head of the restoration team. The man’s message had been as urgent as it was cryptic. Come quickly. A most horrible and wonderful discovery has been made.

  So Vigor had left his offices for the long trek to the top of the freshly painted tower. He had not even changed out of his black cassock, donned for an earlier meeting with the Vatican’s secretary of state. He regretted his choice of garment, too heavy and warm for the arduous climb. But finally he reached his assistant and wiped his damp forehead with a handkerchief.

  “This way, prefetto.” Claudio held the drape aside.

  “Grazie, Claudio.”

  Beyond the tarp, the upper chamber was oven-hot, as if the stones of the tower still retained heat from the two-year-old fire. But it was just the midday sun baking the tallest tower of the Vatican. Rome was going through an especially scorching heat wave. Vigor prayed for a bit of a breeze, for the Torre dei Venti to prove its namesake with a gust of wind.

  But Vigor also knew most of the sweat from his brow had nothing to do with the heat or the long climb in a cassock. Since the fires, he had avoided coming all the way up here, directing from afar. Even now he kept his back to one of the chambers off to the side.

  He once had had another assistant, before Claudio.

  Jakob.

  It hadn’t been only books that had been lost to the flames here.

  “There you are!” a voice boomed.

  Dr. Balthazar Pinosso, overseer of the Meridian Room’s restoration project, strode across the circular chamber. The man was a giant, nearly seven feet tall, dressed almost like a surgeon in white with paper-booted feet. He had a respirator pushed to the top of his head. Vigor knew him well. Balthazar was dean of the art history department at the Gregorian University, where Vigor had once served as the head of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.

  “Prefect Verona, thank you for coming so promptly.” The large man glanced at his wristwatch and rolled his eyes, silently and amusingly commenting on his slow climb.

  Vigor appreciated his gentle teasing. After he’d assumed the high mantle of the archives, few dared to speak to him beyond reverential tones. “If I was as long-legged as you, Balthazar, I could have taken two stairs at a time and gotten here well ahead of poor Claudio.”

  “Then best we finish here so you can return for your usual afternoon nap. I’d hate to disturb such diligent labors.”

  Despite the man’s joviality, Vigor recognized a bit of tension in his eyes. He also noted that Balthazar had dismissed all the men and women who worked alongside him on the restoration. Recognizing this, Vigor waved Claudio back toward the stair.

  “Could you give us a few moments of privacy, Claudio?”

  “Certainly, prefetto.”

  Once his assistant had retreated back to the stairs and vanished through the drape of plastic tarp, Vigor returned his attention to his former colleague. “Balthazar, why this urgency?”

  “Come. I’ll show you.”

  As the man stepped toward the far side of the chamber, Vigor saw that the room’s restorations were nearing completion. All along the circular walls and ceilings, Nicolò Circignani’s famous frescoes depicted scenes from the Bible, with cherubs and clouds above. A few scenes were still crisscrossed with silk grids, awaiting further work. But most of the repairs were already complete. Even the carving of the zodiac on the floor had been cleaned and polished down to its bare marble. Off to the side, a single spear of light pierced a quarter-size hole in the wall, spiking down atop the room’s slab floor, illuminating the white marble meridian line that ran across the dark floor, turning the chamber into a sixteenth-century solar observatory.

  On the far side, Balthazar parted a drape to reveal a small side closet. It even looked like the original stout door was still intact, evident from the charring on its thick wooden surface.

  The tall historian tapped one of the bronze bolts that pegged the door. “We discovered the door has a bronze core. Lucky for that. It preserved what was in this room.”

  Despite Vigor’s trepidation at being here, his curiosity was piqued. “What was in there?”

  Balthazar pulled the door open. It was a cramped, windowless space, stone-walled, barely room for two people to stand abreast. Two shelves rose on either side, floor to ceiling, crowded with leather-bound books. Despite the reek of fresh paint, the mustiness of the chamber wafted out, proving the power of antiquity over human effort.

  “The contents were inventoried when we first took over here and cleared the closet,” Balthazar explained. “But nothing of great significance was found. Mostly crumbling historical texts of an astronomical and nautical nature.” He sighed loudly and a tad apologetically as he stepped inside. “I’m afraid I should have been more careful, what with all the day laborers. But I was focused on the Meridian. We kept one of the Swiss guards posted up here at night. I thought all was secure.”

  Vigor followed the larger man into the closet.

  “We also used the room to store some of our tools.” Balthazar waved to the bottom shelf of one rack. “To keep them from getting underfoot.”

  Vigor shook his head, growing tired from the heat and the heaviness of his heart. “I don’t understand. Why then was I summoned?”

  Something like a grumble echoed from the man’s chest. “A week ago,” he said, “one of the guards chased away someone snooping about.” Balthazar waved a hand to encompass the closet. “In here.”

  “Why wasn’t I informed?” Vigor asked. “Was anything stolen?”

  “No, that’s just it. You were in Milan, and the guard scared off the stranger. I just assumed it was a common thief, taking advantage of the confusion here, with the comings and goings of work crews. Afterward, I posted a second guard up here, just in case.”

  Vigor waved for him to continue.

  “But this morning one of the art restorers was returning a lamp to the closet. He had it still switched on when he entered.”

  Balthazar reached behind Vigor and shifted the door closed, shutting out the light from the other room. He then clicked on a small hand lamp. It bathed the room in purple, lighting up his white coveralls. “We use ultraviolet light during art restoration projects. It can help bring forth details the naked eye can miss.”

  Balthazar pointed to the marble floor.

  But Vigor had already noted what had appeared under the lamp’s glow. A shape, painted crudely, shone on the center of the floor.

  A curled dragon, nearly turned upon its own tail.

  Vigor’s breath choked in his throat. He even stumbled back a step, trapped between horror and disbelief. His ears roared with the memory of blood and screams.

  Balthazar placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. “Are you all right? Maybe I should have better prepared you.”

  Vigor stepped out of the man’s grip. “I…I’m fine.”

  To prove this, he knelt closer to inspect the glowing mark, a mark he knew too well. The sigil of Ordinis Draconis. The Imperial Royal Dragon Court.

  Balthazar met his eye, the whites glowing under the ultraviolet. It was the Dragon Court that had burned this tower two years ago, aided by the traitorous former prefect of the Secret Archives, Prefetto Alberto, now dead. It was a story Vigor had thought long ended, finally put to rest, especially now with the tower’s phoenix-like rise from the smoke and ashes.

  What was the mark doing here?

  Vigor knelt with a crick of his left knee. The mark looked hastily sketched.
Just a crude approximation.

  Balthazar hovered at his shoulder. “I studied it with a magnifying loupe. I found a drop of restoration paste beneath the fluorescent paint, indicating it had been recently drawn. Within the week, I’d guess.”

  “The thief…” Vigor mumbled, remembering the start of the story.

  “Perhaps not just a common thief after all.”

  Vigor massaged his knee. The mark could only be of dire import. A threat or warning, maybe a message to another Dragon Court mole in the Vatican. He remembered Balthazar’s message: A most horrible and wonderful discovery has been made. Staring at the dragon, Vigor now understood the horrible nature of that message.

  Vigor glanced over his shoulder. “You also mentioned discovering something wonderful in your note.”

  Balthazar nodded. He reached behind and opened the closet’s door, allowing in a flood of light from the outer room. With the brightness, the phosphorescent dragon vanished off the floor, as if shunning the light.

  And Vigor allowed a long breath to escape with it.

  “Come see this.” Balthazar knelt beside Vigor. “We would have missed this if not for the dragon painting on the floor.”

  He leaned forward on a palm and reached out with his other hand. His fingers brushed across the bare stone. “It took the loupe to reveal this. I caught sight of it when examining the fluorescent paint. While I waited for you, I cleared some of the centuries of grime and dirt from the carving.”

  Vigor studied the stone floor. “What carving?”

  “Lean closer. Feel here.”

  Concentrating, Vigor obeyed. He felt more than saw, with his fingertips, like a blind man reading Braille. There was a faint inscription in the stone.

  Vigor didn’t even need Balthazar’s assessment to know the carving was ancient. The symbols were as crisp as scientific notation, but this was no physicist’s scrawl. As the former head of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, Vigor recognized the significance.

  Balthazar must have read his reaction. His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. “Is it truly what I think it is?”

  Vigor sat back and rubbed the dust from his fingertips. “A script older than Hebrew,” he mumbled. “The first language if you were to believe the stories.”

  “Why was it drawn here? What does it signify?”

  Vigor shook his head and studied the floor, another question growing. Again the dragon sigil appeared, but only in his mind’s eye, lit by his worry rather than the glow of ultraviolet. Upon the stone, the dragon had coiled around the inscription, as if protecting it.

  His friend’s earlier words returned to Vigor. We would have missed this if not for the dragon painting on the floor. Maybe the dragon was not so much protecting the ancient carving as meant to illuminate it, to cast a spotlight upon it.

  But whose eyes was it meant for?

  As Vigor pictured the twisted dragon, he again felt the weight of Jakob’s body in his arms, smoking and charred.

  In that moment Vigor knew the truth. The message was not meant for another Dragon Court operative, another traitor like Prefect Alberto. It was meant to draw someone intimately tied to the history of the Dragon Court, someone who would know its significance.

  The message had been left for him.

  But why? What was its meaning?

  Vigor slowly stood. He knew someone who might be able to help, someone he had avoided calling for the past year. Until now, there had been no need to keep in touch, especially after the man had broken up with Vigor’s niece. But Vigor knew a part of his reticence rested not just with broken hearts. The man, as much as this tower, reminded Vigor of the bloody past here, a past he wanted to forget.

  But now he had no choice.

  The dragon sigil glowed before his mind’s eye, full of dread warning.

  He needed help.

  JULY 4, 11:44 P.M.

  Takoma Park, Maryland

  “Gray, can you empty the kitchen trash?”

  “Be right there, Mom.”

  In the living room, Commander Gray Pierce picked up another empty bottle of Sam Adams, another dead soldier of his parents’ July Fourth celebration, and chucked it into the plastic bin under his arm. At least the party was winding down.

  He checked his watch. Almost midnight.

  Gray gathered another two beer bottles off the front entry table and paused before the open doorway, appreciating a bit of breeze through the screen door. The night smelled of jasmine, along with a lingering hint of smoke from fireworks exploded by the block party. Off in the distance, a few whistles and crackles continued to punctuate the night. A dog howled from the yard behind his mother, aggravated by the noise.

  Only a few guests remained on the front porch of his parents’ Craftsman bungalow, lazing about on the porch swing or leaning on the railing, enjoying the cool night after the usual swelter of a Maryland summer. They had watched the fireworks from the perch there hours earlier. Afterward, the partygoers had slowly dwindled away into the night. Only the most diehard remained.

  Like Gray’s boss.

  Director Painter Crowe leaned against a post, bent next to the teaching assistant who worked for Gray’s mother. He was a dour young man from the Congo who attended George Washington University on a scholarship. Painter Crowe had been inquiring about the state of hostilities in the man’s homeland. It seemed even at a party, the director of Sigma Force kept a finger on the world’s pulse.

  It was also why he made such a great director.

  Sigma Force functioned as the covert field arm for DARPA, the Department of Defense’s research and development division. Members were sent out to safeguard or neutralize technologies vital to U.S. security. The team consisted of ex — Special Forces soldiers who had been handpicked in secret and placed into rigorous doctoral programs, forming a militarized team of technically trained operatives. Or as Monk, Gray’s friend and team member, liked to joke: killer scientists.

  With such responsibility, Director Crowe’s only relaxation this night seemed to be the single-malt scotch resting on the porch rail. He’d been nursing it all evening. As if sensing the scrutiny, Painter nodded to Gray through the door.

  In the wan illumination of a few candlelit lanterns, the director cast a stony figure, dressed in dark slacks and a pressed linen shirt. His half — Native American heritage could be read in the hard planes of his face.

  Gray studied those planes, searching for any cracks in his demeanor, knowing the pressure he must be under. Sigma’s organizational structure had been undergoing a comprehensive NSA and DARPA internal audit, and now a medical crisis was brewing in Southeast Asia. So it was good to see the man out of Sigma’s subterranean offices.

  If only for this one night.

  Still, duty was never far from the director’s mind.

  Proving this, Painter stretched, pushed off the rail, and stepped to the door. “I should head off,” he called to Gray, and checked his wristwatch. “Thought I’d stop by the office and check to see if Lisa and Monk have arrived safely.”

  The pair of scientists, Drs. Lisa Cummings and Monk Kokkalis, had been sent to investigate a medical crisis among the Indonesian islands. The pair, traveling as adjuncts to the World Health Organization, had left this morning.

  Gray pushed through the swinging screen door and shook his boss’s hand. He knew Painter’s interest in the pair’s itinerary stretched beyond his role as field ops director. He read the worry of a man in love.

  “I’m sure Lisa is fine,” Gray assured him, knowing Lisa and Painter had barely been apart of late. “That is, as long as she packed her earplugs. Monk’s snoring could rattle the engine off a jet’s wing. And speaking of the one-man bugle corps, if you hear any news, you’ll let Kat know—”

  Painter raised a hand. “She’s already buzzed my BlackBerry twice this evening, checking if I’d heard any word.” He downed his scotch. “I’ll call her immediately once I hear.”

  “I suspect Monk will beat you to t
hat call, what with two women to answer to now.”

  Painter smiled, if a bit tiredly.

  Three months ago Kat and Monk had brought home a new baby girl, six pounds and three ounces, christened Penelope Anne. After being assigned this current field op, Monk had joked about escaping diapers and midnight feedings, but Gray recognized how it tore a little hole in his friend’s heart to leave behind his wife and baby girl.

  “Thanks for coming over, Director. I’ll see you in the morning.”

  “Please pass on my thanks to your folks.”

  Reminded, Gray glanced to the flood of light along the left side of the house, coming from the detached garage around back. His father had retreated there some time ago. Not all the fireworks this evening had been out on the streets. Lately, his father was finding social situations more and more difficult as his Alzheimer’s progressed, forgetting names, repeating questions already answered. His frustration led to a private flare-up between father and son. Afterward, his father had stomped off to the garage and his shop.

  More and more his father could be found holed up back there. Gray suspected he was not so much hiding from the world as circling the wagons, seeking a solitary place to protect what remained of his faculties, finding solace in the curl of oak from his wood planer or turn of a well-seated screw. Yet, despite this manner of meditation, Gray recognized the growing fear behind his father’s eyes.

  “I’ll let them know,” Gray mumbled.

  As Painter departed, the last of the straggling partygoers followed in his wake. Some stopped inside to wish his mother well while Gray said his good-byes to the others. Soon he had the porch to himself.

  “Gray!” his mother called from inside. “The trash!”

  With a sigh, he bent and recollected the bin with empty bottles, cans, and plastic cups. He would help his mother clean up, then bicycle the short way back across town to his apartment. As he let the screen door clap behind him, he switched off the porch light and headed across the wood floor toward the kitchen. He heard the dishwasher humming, and the clatter of pans in the sink.