given her to hold was probably remotely picking up their conversations, and she wasn’t about to risk anyone’s lives by speaking now. Besides, Tex was alive and they had a chance to rescue him, and Griffin understandably needed to concentrate on that, as well as the security of Giustino and the safe house. For now, she did her part, kept an eye on the side mirror, the passing cars, making sure there was no immediate danger. Whatever this map business was about, Francesca Santarella seemed to be in the thick of it, and like it or not, they had no choice but to stay the course.
The trip to the safe house was quiet. The professor had the presence of mind not to say a word, a good thing, because Griffin looked ready to do some serious harm.
At the safe house, Giustino buzzed them through the door. He was already packing up equipment when they walked in. “What happened?” he asked Griffin.
“We have to go to Naples. Adami has Tex.”
Sydney pulled out the cell phone that Griffin had given her, holding her finger to her lips, then saying, “They gave us this and said if they lose contact via this phone, they’ll kill Tex.”
She gave the phone to Giustino, who examined it, walked to the front door, saying loudly, “I watch your phone while you get your things together.” He opened the door, set the cell phone just outside on the landing, before he closed the door again. “No sound comes through reinforced door. The phone may pick up your conversations, even if turned off.”
“What if it rings?” Sydney asked.
“If it rings, I hear it on the monitor.”
The very mention of the monitor reminded her of her encounter with Griffin on the stairs, and she studiously avoided looking at him. Instead, she leaned against the wall, keeping an eye on the closed-circuit monitors of the area surrounding the safe house as Giustino said, “Tell me about Tex.”
Griffin directed Francesca to a chair at the dinette table, glared at her until she finally sat, then turned his attention to Giustino. “I spoke to him myself. Typical Tex. He says he’s fine, and not to do what anyone’s asking. They took the phone away from him after that.”
“Where?”
“I have no idea. But at least he wasn’t in the warehouse when it blew.”
“Then what is happening? Why do they take him?”
“I’m baffled on this one.” He looked at Francesca, who still seemed to be shaken over the night’s activities. As well she should be, Sydney thought. And Griffin said, “They want some map. Perhaps the professor wouldn’t mind explaining to us what it is we need to know?”
“I—Where would you like me to start?” she asked, her voice breaking.
“The beginning would be nice,” he said, taking a seat at the table opposite her.
“Alessandra had contacted me after she had gone to work on an excavation in Egypt. She said the government, you, I presume, thought the whole dig was a setup to cover illegal arms dealing.”
“She told you this?”
“Only because she believed that the government had made a mistake, but she wanted to verify it. She thought the dig was absolutely authentic.”
Sydney tried to remember her conversation with Tasha at dinner that night in D.C. Something about returning from some dig, and her apparent paranoia. And Sydney wondered, What were the chances it was the same one? Not that she was about to interrupt Griffin’s interrogation to ask.
“I thought you hated big government,” Griffin said. “Why did you agree to work with her?”
“Because she’d overheard something by the men she was supposed to be watching, something that had to do with a third key.”
Griffin’s reaction was barely noticeable, a slight tensing of the shoulders, and Sydney figured he was thinking of what she’d been able to pick up at Adami’s gathering at his villa. “What about this third key?” he asked Francesca.
“It’s supposed to be the means of finding—well, of finding this map. Alessandra was certain that this is what the men were actually searching for in Egypt, but something made her think that perhaps they were searching in the wrong place. That they’d misinterpreted the location, and she wanted proof. She sent a postcard from the Smithsonian with a note. The pyramid. Not in Egypt. I’m sure she felt that one couldn’t disrupt an entire government operation based on conjecture about some map that many scholars think is merely legend.”
“A map to what?”
It seemed several heartbeats before she finally answered, as though it