pick it up from them.”
Sydney smiled at the dark look from the man as he said, “You know they won’t return it to me.”
“A shame,” Griffin said. “Now get the hell out of here so we can find that damned map.”
The two men wasted no time in leaving, and Sydney kept the weapon trained on them as she watched them go. “Adami’s men?”
“That remains to be seen.” He stormed across the street, then dragged the professor up by her arm, demanding, “What map is he talking about?”
27
Griffin resisted the urge to strangle the professor, only because it would make it very difficult to get answers from a dead woman. “I said, what map?”
“I have no idea what he’s talking about.”
“The hell you don’t. Now I suggest you answer my question, because I owe my life to the man they’re holding. In fact, every citizen of America and, yes, even this country, owes their miserable life to that man.”
The professor shook her head, tried to back away. “It’s only a map. I have no idea why anyone else would want it.”
“A map that has something to do with some prince named di Sangro?”
She said nothing.
He let her go, and she fell against the staircase.
“Honestly,” she said, righting herself. “I didn’t think it would be so…I had no idea.”
“No idea about what? That your life was in danger? That others’ lives were as well? The people shooting at you weren’t a clue?”
“I thought the shooting had something to do with whatever Alessandra had gotten herself involved in.”
“You’re telling me Alessandra didn’t know anything about this map?”
“No. I mean I thought it was her association with you and this—this other matter. The one where she went out on that spurious dig with the anthropologist.”
“Anthropologist?” Sydney asked.
Hell. That was all he needed right now, for Sydney to realize that Tasha Gilbert was the anthropologist in question. He didn’t need the grief that would cause once she discovered that it was Tasha who set up his meeting with Sydney back in Quantico. “We’ll talk about this back at the safe house,” he said to Francesca. “And if I have to hook you up to a polygraph to get to the truth, I will.”
Of course, returning to the safe house presented a problem of its own. He had no idea whether its location was compromised. Had Adami’s men followed them from there to the crypt? Or was there a simpler explanation?
He looked at the professor. “Who knew you were coming here?”
“No one.”
“You didn’t telephone anyone?”
“One. A friend in Naples.”
“When?”
“Yesterday. After I left the Vatican. But I had no idea at the time that I was coming here. We hadn’t yet been to the columbarium to discover the clue.”
“Naples? What’s in Naples?”
“Allegedly, the map.”
Griffin ran his fingers through his hair, frustrated, angry, wanting to smash something. They’d undoubtedly followed her to the columbarium, and from there, followed all of them to the restaurant and then to the Capuchin Crypt. “Let’s get to the car,” he said, realizing that even if the safe house wasn’t compromised, it would be, the moment he walked into it with the damned cell phone Adami’s goon had given him. It probably had GPS tracking on it, maybe even a remote-activated listening device as well—hell, what was he thinking? Of course it had a listening device, and he tried to recall everything the three of them had discussed since he’d taken possession of the phone. He didn’t think they’d said anything Adami’s men didn’t already know, but even so, he took out the phone, held it up so that Sydney and Francesca could see it, and put his finger over his lips to indicate they weren’t to talk. Sydney nodded, then leaned over to whisper to Francesca, in case she didn’t understand why.
It took them about fifteen minutes to walk back to the van. Once there, he handed Adami’s phone to Sydney, signaled that he was going to make a call with his own, then walked off about twenty feet, standing near a group of tourists who were busy talking, the better to cover his own conversation. He called Giustino. “I think your location’s been compromised. And if it hasn’t, it’s about to be.”
Sydney knew better than to demand that Griffin stop and answer her question as to who this anthropologist was. Nor was she about to demand any answers from Francesca, even though she was fairly certain the professor knew far more than she was letting on. The damned phone Griffin had