an unfinished basement, if I had to guess. Maybe the opening was blocked until the cave-in.”
She closed her eyes in relief, opened them again, worried that the light from the windows above would disappear, that it had all been a dream. But no, it was still there. And in that moment, she reached out, felt the round shape of the tube from the cavern. “What time is it?” she asked.
Griffin looked at his watch. “We have less than an hour before Adami expects us to contact him.”
Together they moved to the window. Griffin opened it, about to help Sydney out, but stopped at the sound of the sirens.
“What’s going on?” Sydney whispered.
She peered out the window they’d almost climbed through, saw general chaos with people running in every direction, then froze at the sight of dark-clad legs walking toward their window. She looked up, saw Dumas looking down at them.
“Need a hand?” Dumas said.
Griffin hesitated. He glanced over at Sydney, then turned his attention back to Dumas. “As it turns out, yes.” Griffin held up the window, and Sydney handed him the tube, then allowed Dumas to help her out. Griffin followed.
Dumas eyed the leather tube that Griffin now carried, but said only, “This way.” They followed him down the street to a small car parked about two blocks away. “The professoressa and her friend were most insistent on helping draw off the men searching for you. A favor returned, she said. They are watching for you on the other side of the collapsed building. His cousin has returned to start a search-and-rescue operation for the both of you. He should be back shortly.”
“These men the professor and Xavier drew off? How many?”
“Two chased after them, and just before the collapse I saw another two. Conjecture, of course, based on their inordinate interest in the known locations of that particular tunnel entrance. I recognized Adami’s men. These others, I do not know them. Someone else is after this thing.”
“There were at least two down in the tunnels that we know of. I doubt they’re coming up.”
They piled into the car, Sydney in the front passenger seat, Griffin in the back. “What about Francesca and Xavier?” he asked.
Dumas pulled out and into traffic. “The young man, Xavier, seems to have a grasp of these streets that will serve them well. I will meet up with them after I take you wherever it is you need to go. First I intend to see if we are being followed. I take it you found the key? That is what is in the tube?”
Griffin saw Sydney’s shoulders tense as she said, “What makes you say that?”
“The collapse,” Dumas replied. “After the professoressa fled the Vatican, Father Martinez brought me the documents she’d been researching. It was there I found the passage about di Sangro. Depending on how you interpreted it, it could mean one of two things. Whosoever found the key and moved it would meet a most untimely death, turning their corpses into dust, or, whoever finds the key must choose the right time and direction to avoid such a fate.”
“The eternal clock in the Capuchin Crypt,” Sydney said. “We chose to interpret it as a compass that indicated north. That’s the direction we fled.”
“And a good thing you did,” Dumas said, expertly weaving in and out of traffic with the finesse of a local cabbie. “How did you guess in time?”
“Lady Luck,” Griffin said, as he leaned back, far too exhausted to explain. But he couldn’t help but think of their near escape.
“Or perhaps,” Dumas said, “God was watching over you.”
“As were you, it seems.”
Dumas didn’t reply, and Griffin felt only slightly guilty. He had no doubts as to Dumas’s loyalty. The church first, their mission second. That he’d come here to warn them was something, at least.
Dumas slowed as a bus pulled out in front of him, then glanced in his rearview mirror. “I am not sure what your plans were, but it seems I underestimated the number of men following you. The man in the car directly behind us made a point to let me know he is armed.”
Griffin shifted in his seat, looked out the back, recognizing the man in the front passenger seat as one of the two men who had followed them from the Capuchin Crypt. So much for his plans for quietly leaving Naples with the map.
“What is it you’d like me to do?” Dumas asked.
“Drive us to the hotel,” he said, not wanting to give