Rogue Angel 52: Death Mask (8 page)

9

19:15
—Valladolid

The flashlight’s beam, as intense as it was, barely penetrated the darkness.

It was as if the blackness swallowed the light whole, and no matter how brightly it burned, the darkness was desperate to keep its secrets safe. Below her, a steep stairway led down into the crypts beneath the church. She couldn’t make out the bottom step from where she was. It didn’t make sense that this would be a hidden passage, yet still feed into the same crypt-space the cordoned-off staircase led to.

Annja placed a foot on the first stone step—a step that almost certainly hadn’t been trodden on since the door was locked and hidden away behind the new chapel’s facade.

She descended into history.

With every step she took deeper down into the cold and damp, she became more certain that she’d found the remains of the Moorish palace.

Much of the stonework was crumbling, the integrity of the stone itself fighting a losing battle against the all-pervading damp. When she reached the bottom, Annja allowed herself a little time to shine the light around her. She didn’t have long. Someone—most likely a tourist—would discover the panel she’d left open up there. She’d tried to ease it closed, but there was no obvious way of closing or locking it from the inside. The keyhole hadn’t been constructed with that intention.

She was standing in a place where the Inquisition and the Moors had come together, just as they had in the intertwined pattern around the crucifix—two cultures existing one on top of the other. It was obvious that this space had been used long after the Moors had abandoned it. The beam of her flashlight illuminated intricate mosaics and plasterwork that had long decayed beyond the point of restoration, but as she worked her way around the room, she spotted more and more compelling evidence of Christians having been there before her. Crosses had been daubed on the walls to claim the place for the Church, as if ritual were enough to banish the religion of the foreigners, superimposing one belief system on top of the other.

She caught her breath when the light finally reached the far end of the room.

Hanging on the wall, trapped in the middle of the beam, was a life-size statue with its arms held wide.

It was a sculpture of the crucifixion. The look of suffering on Christ’s carved face perfectly captured the agony of the moment. It was a work of art. Of all the images and iconography, this was the one object that claimed these remains for the Church above all else, just as the Church had claimed the ground above her head. She moved toward the statue. Most of the evidence from the first faith that had been observed here had long since been defiled, destroyed or simply left to disintegrate.

Even the statue was showing signs of damage; a crack cut through one of Christ’s outstretched arms.

Annja shone her flashlight around the rest of the room once more before she noticed that there was something off about the statue. She moved closer, running the light slowly over every inch of the Son of God’s body, not sure what it was about it that had called her back. She took another step toward it, raising the light to the crack that ran through the Savior’s arm. It was
perfectly
straight, which was peculiar enough, but it continued as a fissure through the background fresco.

Sometimes a crack was just a crack. But it just felt too straight, too perfect.

She placed her hands on one of Christ’s knees and pushed.

The statue swung back a fraction, the split growing wider, leaving behind one arm still attached to the wall. A hidden space within a hidden space, perfect for keeping secrets from the world.

Stone ground against stone.

A shower of dust fell from the wall as the darkness opened up.

Annja’s heart was thumping, excitement surging through her system. This was what she lived for, the thrill of discovery, that moment when she opened something that hadn’t been opened in centuries, bringing it back to life; that moment when it was just her and the past; that moment when she bridged the now and the then, bringing them together with her bare hands.

Could this be where the Mask of Torquemada had lain hidden for so long?

It had to be, didn’t it?

She couldn’t believe it had only taken her a few hours to find something that had been lost for centuries.

Doubt niggled at the back of her mind.

It all seemed too
easy
.

She pressed herself close to the narrow opening and directed the flashlight’s beam while she reached inside with her free hand.

10

18:30
— Seville

“I’m going to ask you again—who were they?” Roux’s interrogator asked.

It wouldn’t be the last time the detective across the table asked it, either.

Roux had been taken to a police station and bundled forcefully into an interview room. He’d taken a number of carefully disguised blows in the process—they’d delivered a couple rabbit punches to his kidneys, cracked his head against the doorframe of the car as they’d pushed him into the backseat and shoved him across the polished floor of the interview room, cuffed, so he couldn’t reach out to break his fall. It was all fair game as far as they were concerned. He had been left there to stew, the clock in the room ticking on. He assumed they were gathering information for the interrogation, but they weren’t going to learn anything useful from traditional sources. He’d always been careful about what information made it out into the public domain, even on back channels. They’d stumble into a Roux-shaped wall of silence. That in itself wouldn’t help much today. It’d just make him look guilty, where for once he was actually innocent. There was an irony to the whole thing he would have appreciated if it had been someone else taking the beating.

So they asked their questions, and it was soon obvious they were on a fishing expedition. They didn’t have a clue who he was, who the gunmen were or how the two parties had ended up on a collision course. So he told the truth.

“I have no idea.”

It wasn’t what they wanted to hear.

Roux could stall them here for as long as he wanted. It wasn’t as if the traditional interrogation techniques of the Inquisition were available to the men on the other side of the table, after all. But as much fun as a game of cat-and-mouse might have been, it was just wasting more time, and even if he wasn’t particularly worried about Garin, he was worried about Annja. He should be out there helping her, not in here staring at a Spanish cop with a bad complexion, feigning ignorance whenever they got close to asking something interesting.

“So, what you are trying to say is your attackers came out of nowhere, started shooting at you for no reason and then ran away?”

“More or less, yes.”

“Which is it, more or less?”

“I noticed that we were being followed. I instructed my driver to stop so that I could address whoever it was and square away whatever perceived problem they had. Then they started shooting. From that moment on, I was only interested in getting away from a potentially lethal situation.” Again, the truth. Unnuanced, perhaps, lacking context, but still the kind of thing that would pass a polygraph.

“Why are you here? What is your business in Seville?”

“Sightseeing,” he said. No point telling the
whole
truth. It wouldn’t help matters. “It truly is a beautiful city. So much history. Amazing architecture. Sometimes it’s good to just slow down for a minute and take a look at the world around you. Visit the galleries and monuments and experience all that a city like yours has to offer.”

“And one of the men who tried to kill you was your driver?”

“Yes. We’d never met before today. My people arranged for a car to pick me up from the airport, and he came as part of the package. I couldn’t even tell you which company provided the service. I have people for that. Still, he seemed like a good man.”

“Tell me, do you hire a chauffeur wherever you go?”

“I can afford it,” Roux said. “Wealth isn’t something I’m ashamed of.” He knew he was in danger of antagonizing the policemen, but his patience wasn’t limitless. Roux checked his watch against the clock on the wall, emphasizing how much time he was wasting. “Is this going to take much longer?”

“It is going to take as long as it takes. I don’t think you realize just how serious your situation is. Let me spell it out for you, just in case something has been lost in translation between us. I’ve got two dead bodies and I have you. There is a definite connection between you and one of the victims. Let me tell you what will happen next—ballistics will match your gun with the bullets we’ve pulled from the bodies, and you’ll be going to jail.”

“Interesting theory, but for the fact that the only bullet of mine you’ll find is in the kneecap of the man who was lying in the street.”

The interrogator raised an eyebrow. “And what about the one in his head?”

“He didn’t have a bullet in the head when I last saw him.”

“You’re saying that he was shot by his own men? Or maybe it was one of my men? Is that what you’re saying?”

Roux struggled to keep the smile off his face. “More like his own people, but it isn’t inconceivable that one of them is also one of you. It’s about loose ends. He was a loose end. Leaving him behind alive meant leaving a living, breathing link back to them in your hands. Why would they do that? In their position, I wouldn’t. Would you?”

The policeman leaned back in his chair and gave Roux a long, cold stare.

“How about my phone call?” the old man asked.

“Phone call? What do you think this is? You have no rights here. You are not the victim, no matter what you want me to believe, so you will get a phone call if and when I say you do. That won’t be for a long time yet.”

“How about an attorney?”

“You will be given court-approved representation when the time comes.”

“I’d rather use my own, if it’s all the same. I find you get what you pay for, and as we’ve already established, I’m not averse to paying for the very best.”

The policeman opened a manila folder and spilled out a collection of photographs across the table between them. Some were the dead men’s faces, others were of their hands.

“What can you tell me about this?” the interrogator asked, jabbing a finger at a picture of the tattoo on the back of what he assumed was Mateo’s hand. Roux picked up the photograph to take a closer look.

“Very little. I’ve never seen it before today. And now it’s on the back of two men’s hands.”

“And you don’t think it’s strange that two dead men have the same tattoo?”

“Oh, very much so, but thinking it is peculiar sadly doesn’t mean I know anything about its origins. I assume it is some kind of gang mark?” It was a reasonable conclusion. He had nothing else to offer. It meant nothing to him.

“What do you know about the
Fraternidad de
la Quema?”

“Ferdinand what?”

“The
Brotherhood of the Burning.” The interrogator spoke slowly, enunciating each word very precisely.

Roux made a moue. Shook his head. “Sorry. Nothing. Alas, I am not up on the gang culture of Spain.”

The policeman said nothing for a moment, weighing his next words. He obviously knew something about the tattoo’s origins but wasn’t sure he wanted to reveal it. Finally, he said, “They have been behind a series of hate crimes both here and in other cities across the country.”

“Hate crimes?” That was unexpected. Roux leaned forward in his chair, interested now.

“They’ve been targeting Muslims. It started with little more than graffiti and threats, but has escalated recently to a number of severe beatings. Now, it would appear, they have managed to get their hands on weapons and escalated to attempted murder. Am I correct in thinking that you are not a Muslim?” Roux nodded. “Then that would be a flaw in my understanding. I do not like making mistakes or working on misunderstandings.”

Roux could hazard a few reasonable guesses that might connect the men with his visit to the museum, but he wasn’t about to share them. It wasn’t his job to solve the policeman’s puzzle. Right now, he needed to get out of here before the detective started asking better questions.

“And your understanding would be what? That this Brotherhood is drawing some kind of inspiration from the Inquisition?”

“I didn’t say that, but it’s interesting that you did. Why would that be your first conclusion?”

“Pure luck. Now how about my phone call?”

“There is something I don’t like about you, something that doesn’t ring true. I will find out how you are involved in this, because I don’t for a minute believe you are as innocent as you’d have me think.” The interrogator slipped the photos back into the folder, then took a cell phone from his pocket and handed it across to Roux.

It looked as if he was going to get his call, though he knew the detective had given him his own phone so that the number would be stored in its memory.

“It’s an international call,” he said. “Sorry. I don’t suppose I could have a little privacy?”

The interrogator shook his head. “I don’t think so. But that’s fine, isn’t it? It’s not like you have anything to hide.”

“Nothing at all,” Roux said, punching in the number.

The call was answered on the second ring.

There was no need to exchange names. Roux was the only one who called this number, and the man on the other end the only one who answered.

“I’m in a police station in Seville,” Roux began, giving the address to make sure there was no confusion about which one. The voice on the other end read it back to confirm its accuracy. “I need you to get me out of here,” Roux continued. “I don’t care how much it costs, do you understand?”

“Understood,” the man on the other end said, killing the call.

All he could do now was wait and trust his man to do what needed to be done.

“This isn’t Rome, you know,” the interrogator said, shaking his head. “You can’t just buy your way out of a murder charge.”

“Oh, I know that, but my lawyer is quite...creative.”

11

18:15
—Valladolid

Of course it had been too much to hope for. Life wasn’t like that. It didn’t just give you what you needed when you needed it. It made you work for it.

There was no mask hidden in the secret compartment.

But it wasn’t empty.

Annja’s fingers closed on something. She fished it out carefully, fingertips brushing against what felt like oilskin. Slowly, not wanting to risk damaging whatever lay inside, she unwrapped the skin. The ribbon that had secured it all those years crumbled into decay and fell away as she tried to release the bow. The only thing that didn’t simply turn to powder was the red wax seal. The wrapping itself was in better condition. It creaked and strained as she peeled it back, but it had done its job protecting the contents. She held a book in her hands. It appeared to be in excellent condition, but she wasn’t about to take any risks with it.

Carefully, the flashlight between her teeth, Annja opened the heavy boards of the cover and turned over the first few pages one at a time.

The script wasn’t easy to decipher, but even so, it didn’t take Annja long to realize she had to be looking at some kind of ledger. On the left-hand side of the page there was what seemed to be a list of items, and on the right a column of numbers. But that was as deep as her understanding went. Even without knowing what the ledger contained, someone had thought it was important enough to keep it so well hidden. This was not the place to try to examine it, though. Not with the secret chapel door still ajar upstairs. Still, she couldn’t resist taking a look at a few more of the pages in case something leaped out at her.

Somewhere in those fragile pages was a clue to the whereabouts of the mask.

She needed to believe that.

But it didn’t help if she couldn’t read it.

At first glance, she’d thought that the details in the ledger were in some sort of medieval Spanish, but they weren’t. The unusual hand the script had been written in was deceptive, she realized, recognizing a few words of Latin as she skimmed over the page. The names set above the list of items were not. She could have been mistaken, but her gut instinct was that the ledger contained a list of Moorish names and Latinized notations, but what did any of it
mean
?

She ran a finger down one page after another, looking for words she might recognize.

All she wanted was a single red thread she could unpick in search of the truth, whatever that might be.

She found her answer in the date that ran along the far left-hand side. The first was shortly after Torquemada’s rise to power and the last entry was made months before his death.

Annja knew that more than a million Moors and Jews had been driven out of the Iberian Peninsula or put to death during the course of the Inquisition. A million people. Did this ledger represent a fraction of those? She thought about the treasures that had been seized by the Nazis during the Second World War, only to be rediscovered more than a generation later, hidden in the vaults of Swiss banks. The Germans had kept meticulous records about many things. It was a shot in the dark, but Annja began to wonder if there were similarities, if this ledger contained a list of assets seized by the Inquisition. If it was, it was unlikely the Mask of Torquemada would be recorded as such an asset. And right now, as tempting as this treasure and the truth it represented were, she didn’t have time for distractions. When this was over, though, she promised the dead men listed in the ledger, she would solve the riddle she held in her hands. But until then, she could only think about one thing. The mask.

She carefully wrapped the book back in the oilskin, then slipped it and the fragments of decayed ribbon into her pocket before closing the compartment and easing the statue of Christ back into place.

If the ledger was a record of a vast amount of confiscated treasure—probably only the tiniest fraction of the amount collected over the years—it could be one of the most important finds of her career. The book had been kept safe all of these years... Did that mean the treasure was hidden somewhere? It was possible, wasn’t it? She was getting ahead of herself, but it was hard not to. If any such horde had been discovered, even centuries ago, she would have heard about it.

With that in mind, she retraced her steps back up to the church.

She needed to get out of there.

Ticktock. Ticktock.

The one nagging thought she had was that everything had pointed to the mask being hidden here, and yet she had found the book instead.

The two had to be connected somehow.

This couldn’t just be some random discovery; she was still on the right track; her Grail Quest was progressing, even if it didn’t feel like it right now. She was one step closer to finding the mask. One step closer to saving Garin Braden.