Chase Baker and the Da Vinci Divinity (A Chase Baker Thriller Series Book 6) (14 page)

The afternoon sky is bright and crisp as we take the North/South
road through Fiesole in a Land Rover Defender commandeered by Andrea from her
contacts at MI16. It’s a barebones, 4-speed manual, fleet vehicle, but it can,
without question, handle some very tough off-road terrain. Dressed in our field
clothes, I’ve also brought along the da Vinci map, the sketch book, and—just
for the hell of it—the now battered, but still fully functional, da Vinci art
book. You never know when it might come in handy.

About an hour into the drive, we
arrive at Vinci—the small, hilltop village that looks like somewhere out of
another century. A tall, pyramid-topped bell tower occupies the center of the
place. The tower is attached to a church and a community center, both of which
are constructed of the same stone.

We drive the cobbled road past the oversized,
out of place, modern visitor center and museum which is dedicated to the town’s
most famous resident. We keep going, however, until we’ve driven past the town
altogether as we head back into the countryside on our way toward some larger,
forested hills. Coming to a fork in the road, we catch a road sign that indicates
“Casa d’infanzia di Leonardo da Vinci.”

“Da Vinci’s childhood home,” I say,
downshifting, slowing the vehicle. “That’s our benchmark.”

Andrea draws her service weapon,
pulls back on the slide, cocks a round in the chamber, re-holsters the weapon on
her right hip.

“Expecting company?” I cock an
eyebrow, turning onto the road that will lead to the house.

“Trust no one, boyfriend,” she
says. “Our Iranian/Russian friends are still out there in the forest somewhere.
Who knows, maybe even ISIS is out there, too. Whatever and whoever we
encounter, it will not be pretty.”

“Unless, of course, we can avoid
them altogether.”

“You go with that,” she says.

I drive for another few miles, past
olive groves and vineyards on my left, and on my right, a steep hillside
covered in tall pines and thick brush. When we come to the da Vinci home—a
two-story, stone structure that’s recently been renovated to its original state—Andrea
retrieves the da Vinci map once more, carefully unfolds it.

Holding it up so that she’s staring
at it, instead of peering through the windshield, she says, “Chase, stop the
truck.”

“Whaddya mean stop the truck?” I question.
“Let’s get this show on the dirt road, make these woods our bitch.”

“I mean stop the truck. I no longer
think we need to guesstimate the cave’s precise location.”

Shoving the shift into neutral, I depress
the emergency brake, then kill the engine.

“I’m all ears, girlfriend.”

“You don’t need your ears,” she
says, slowly handing me the ancient map. “All you need is your eyes.”

Da Vinci is famous for possibly hiding another face in what some
consider the most famous painting of all time, the
Mona Lisa
. And then
there’s the disappearing Angel Gabriel in the
Annunciation
. But never
before has da Vinci’s talents for hiding images in his works of art become more
apparent to me than with this map. When exposed to light, a brand new map takes
shape. A topographical map that is both 3D and highlighted with specific
landmarks.

In place of an almost blank image
of the northern Italian landscape is now a path from the stone casa that leads
directly down the hill, across the stream bed, up a tall, jagged hilltop, and
out into a valley to the west. Inside that space, da Vinci wrote the word: “
ᗡ
iviniƚ
à
” in Italian … and
mirrored, of course.

“Divinity,” I say. “His name for
the cave.”

Sketched directly above the mirrored
word is our old buddy, Vitruvian Man, who seems to have miraculously shifted
himself a good three to five kilometers from his previous location on the
non-illuminated map, to this new, more precise location.

I burst out laughing.

“Soleimani and Putin,” I say,
slapping my thigh, “they most definitely found the wrong cave.”

“They must have listened to Dr.
Belli,” Andrea says. “He must not have known about the map within the map. A
map that could only be seen with the naked eye when exposed to the sun’s rays,
at a very specific angle.”

“My guess is artificial light would
have no effect on it. You need the Tuscan sun, or nothing.”

She leans in to me, kisses my
cheek, squeezes my hand. She’s as giddy as a school kid.

“I knew you were the one man who
could find the location of the cave,” she says. “I knew only you could do it,
Chase Baker.”

“We knew you could do it too, Mr.
Baker,” says the deep voice of the man standing outside my open window. “Now, if
you would be so kind as to hand over the map.”

The automatic rifle barrel feels cold and hard pressed against
the tender skin above my left ear. Out the corner of my left eye, I see the
gray-bearded face of the man I take to be Soleimani. The man holding the gun is
not easy to catch sight of, but, from what I can make out in the driver’s
side-view mirror, he’s a tall, dark-skinned, black-haired man with a thin
mustache covering his lip. He’s also as big as a house judging by the way he
fills my mirror, and dressed like his boss—in green fatigues. He’s a goddamned
Jolly Green Giant, minus the Jolly part.

Glancing into the rearview, I spot
a small army of soldiers accompanying the Iranian Kud leader. Then, shooting a
look into the side-view mirror, I spot another man. This one shorter, his light
blond hair receding, his little blue eyes beady inside his round face. He’s not
wearing fatigues but a black turtleneck sweater and black trousers instead.

Vlad Putin’s first cousin.

I know it would be foolish to reach
for my gun, but all Andrea has to do is gently pull hers out of her holster,
slip it to me across the center console, and I can give Jolly Green Giant a bad
ending to this otherwise beautiful day.

“Gun,” I whisper out the side of my
mouth, my right hand set palm up on top of the center console. “Gun, Andrea . .
. then get ready for me to pull out of here like a bat out of Dante’s Inferno.”

She turns to me, smiles. A smile so
bright and lovely it’s like I just offered her a proposal of marriage.

“Oh, Chase,” she says, forcing a
frown on her beautiful face. “Didn’t I tell you not to trust anyone?”

I’ll be a dumb son of a bitch.
She’s the mole working for the bad guys …

She slips out her gun, all right,
but not to hand it over to me. Instead, the woman who I spent the past fifteen
hours falling in love with, aims the barrel at my face.

My stomach sinks.

Jolly Green Giant opens the door,
yanks me out by my leather coat collar, tosses me to the ground. He yanks the
map from my hand, like it’s a common road map purchased at the gas station for
five bucks.

“That map is priceless, pal,” I declare.
“You might want to treat it with some tender loving care.”

Soleimani steps over to me, bends down
at the knees, back hands me across the face. Now I’m getting pissed off. He
reaches into my coat, relieves me of my .45. Then he reaches into the satchel,
steals the
Book of Truths
. He also pulls out the art book, but then,
seeing that it’s useless for his purposes, tosses it to the ground.

“You will speak only when spoken
to,” he orders.

He stands while Andrea slips out of
the Defender, goes to Putin, kisses him on the mouth, taking him into her arms,
holding him tightly.

“Him?” I protest. “Anybody but him.
Oh, come on, Andrea, he looks just like his dictator cousin.”

She turns to me, smiles.

“Take a look in the mirror,
boyfriend,” she says. “Only then will you realize precisely how blind love can
be.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve decided not to be
your boyfriend after all. So how’s about them apples?”

But why does it hurt so much
when I say it? …

“Let’s get moving, everyone,” the
tall, bearded, Soleimani commands. “I want to find this cave before the sun
sets.”

The soldiers pile into two separate
Toyota 4X4 trucks, not unlike the kind you might find your average terrorist
using on the besieged streets of Damascus.

Putin approaches Soleimani.

“I suggest we take the Defender,
da?” His tiny blue eyes shifting to my own. “The Chase Baker, he will accompany
us. He might become useful resource for when we get to cave.”

“In what regard?” the Iranian
general poses.

“If the cave is there,” he says, “it
may very well contain traps and other dangers. It would be wise of us to have the
Chase Baker lead the way inside, da?”

Soleimani smiles.

“I like the way you think, Russian,”
he sneers. “Just like your cousin. Cold, cunning, and entirely ruthless. Evil
is the new black, Putin.”

The two share a hearty belly laugh
over that one. Until Soleimani turns to Jolly Green Giant.

“Place the prisoner inside the Defender,”
he barks. “I want him right next to me. Make sure he’s tied up.”

Inches from my left hand, the da
Vinci art book. My built-in shit detector speaks to me. Tells me to grab the
book now, while everyone is distracted, shove it back into my satchel while
Jolly Green Giant is busy retrieving duct tape from the Toyota closest to him.

When he returns, I’m tossed into
the front passenger seat of the Defender, my chest and arms taped to the bucket
seat-back. He doesn’t bother with taping my ankles together or gagging me. On
the console sits the da Vinci map. While Soleimani gets behind the wheel, Putin
and Jolly Green Giant get in back with Andrea seated between them.

“Like one big happy family,” I say.

That little wisecrack invites a
backhand from the General. I feel a sting in my upper left, lip, and sense the
faint, metallic taste of blood. If only my hands were free, I’d yank on his
beard and call the Ayatollah a pussy.

Starting up the Defender, he throws
the floor-mounted shift into first, pulls ahead, going downhill toward a stream
that forms a long, narrow valley. A valley that must have been very familiar to
the young da Vinci.

Glancing over my shoulder, I catch
Andrea placing her hand on Putin’s left leg, squeezing it. She’s got this smile
on her face that tells me she’s looking forward not to uncovering what will
arguably be one of the most important archaeological finds of the past five
hundred years, but to being filthy rich. Beside her sits the mustached Jolly
Green Giant who, with his near perpetual sneer, is anything but.

The Defender bucks and bounces. I
taste the blood on my tongue and feel the pressure of the duct tape against my
chest as we continue to descend at a thirty-degree angle. I know I should keep
my mouth shut but, me being me, I can’t help but raise a couple of questions.