Adami’s men any inkling that he intended to do anything but trade the map for Tex. Returning to the hotel would allow him to regroup, come up with an alternate plan. Or destroy the map if need be…
Dumas did as he was told, stopping the car in front of the hotel.
Griffin opened the car door. “You’re not even curious as to what this is?” he asked, tapping on the leather tube.
“I’ll find out in good time when you return it to the Vatican.”
“The Vatican?”
“The papal seal on the end?” he said, reaching out, touching the tooled leather. “That shows it is Vatican property. And the records the professoressa found confirm it. But I am a patient man if nothing else.”
Good thing, Griffin thought, because this map wasn’t going anywhere near the Vatican.
Sydney pushed through the door the moment Griffin inserted the key. “Let’s open that thing up and see what’s in there,” she said, walking to the table by the window and clearing the hotel’s literature from it. She looked up to see why he hadn’t immediately followed her. “Well?”
“This thing’s over two hundred years old at the least.”
“And at a constant fifty degrees, probably preserved better than if it was in some museum.” He didn’t move. “What? You think it’s going to disintegrate the moment you unlatch the top? At least take a look before we have to hand it over. If it seems crumbly, we wait. If not, I say pull the damned thing out and let’s see it. I’d like to see what we almost died for.”
He pushed the door closed, then walked over to the table, in no particular hurry.
Sydney tried to keep the impatience from her voice. “Anytime.”
Surprisingly, he handed the tube to her. “You rescued it. The honor should be yours.”
And suddenly she wasn’t sure she wanted it. What if she opened it, and she was the one responsible for destroying a piece of history? That thought lasted until the moment her hand gripped the still supple tube. Now that the danger was seemingly over, and they were no longer running, she had a moment to admire the intricate hand-tooled leather. The case itself was probably worth something, she thought, running her finger over the elaborate papal seal tooled on the top. She slid the thin leather strap up, allowing the top to be lifted. The edge of a rolled parchment was visible just inside, and she touched it with her finger. “It feels sturdy.”
“Slide it out.”
“Shouldn’t we be wearing gloves, or something?”
“Now you’re worried?”
“Maybe we should wait for Francesca. She is the expert, after all.”
Griffin’s answer to that was to grab several tissues from a box on the bathroom counter, then return and hand them to her. “Happy? Take the damned thing out.”
“I’d be happier if we had a camera,” she said. “What about the camera on your phone?”
“No. No photos.”
She looked up at him, wondered why he was so adamant, but figured he had his reasons. “It’s your mission,” she said, using the tissue to keep her fingers from touching the parchment as she carefully slid it partway from the tube, revealing a fleur-de-lis on the top corner. That was the only marking on the outside of the parchment. With Griffin’s help, they unrolled it onto the table, weighting it down with a telephone book on one side and an empty ice bucket on the other.
“This sure as hell doesn’t look like any key or map,” she said. It was a drawing of a large labyrinth, and with it what appeared to be a legend down the right side, unfortunately in some language that Sydney could only guess at. There was a coat of arms in the bottom left corner, with the Templar cross situated above another fleur-de-lis. “What do you think it’s for?”
“I have no idea.”
They stared at it for several minutes, and when nothing seemed to present itself, Sydney said, “You get the feeling that out of all the things down there, maybe this wasn’t the thing to grab?”
“Like we had a lot of time to think about it?” The muted ring of Adami’s cell phone sounded through Griffin’s pack. Sydney’s heart skipped a beat with each ring. Tex, she thought as Griffin pulled the pouch from his pack and then removed the phone, opened it.
He signaled for Sydney to move next to him, and he held the phone so that they both could hear.
“You’re back.”
“Yes,” Griffin said. “Where’s Tex?”
“I see you have the map?”
See? “We have it.”
“Do not leave