The Columbus Affair: A Novel

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

TOM HUSTLED DOWN THE STAIRS WITH ALLE CLOSE BEHIND.

They found the bottom.

Before them stretched a maze of passageways, all hewn from bedrock centuries ago. Now it was an elaborate, Baroque necropolis where bishops and provosts lay buried. He’d studied the cathedral guidebook while waiting and had learned the layout, knowing where he had to go. When he’d met with Inna, one favor had been to get him inside the cathedral unnoticed.

The other had been to get him out.

“That way,” he pointed.

———

ZACHARIAH HALTED HIS AND RÓCHA’S ADVANCE AND THEY sought cover behind one of the pillars. Brian Jamison hurried the attendant, who was still trying to reopen the gate. The commotion had drawn some attention from visitors, but not much. He’d toured the catacombs before. Lots of tombs, crypts, and bones. But he wondered. Was there another way out?

The older woman fumbled with her keys and finally inserted the right one into the lock.

Jamison disappeared, descending stairs.

He and Rócha rushed forward just as the woman was beginning to relock the gate. He was careful to keep his face angled away from her.

“Entschuldigen sie bitte,” he said as they slipped past.

The older woman opened her mouth to speak, but Rócha slammed the gate shut behind them.

———

ALLE WAS CONFUSED AND SHAKEN. SHE’D HAD NO CHOICE BUT to go with her father. Zachariah had sold her out. He seemed irritated. But how could she blame him? She’d accused him of trying to kill her. Had he in fact saved her? And was it Brian, not Zachariah, lying to her?

She had no idea.

She knew about the catacombs, though. A series of vaulted subterranean rooms. Lots of clergy were buried here, along with the bodies, hearts, and viscera of the Hapsburgs who, for centuries, ruled much of Europe. There were also the bones of over 11,000 people moved from the cemeteries above after an outbreak of plague in the mid-18th century. Their remains lay in massive piles, the display a bit macabre for her tastes. She recalled from her tour that the subterranean rooms flowed one into the other, each lit from the amber glow of incandescent fixtures. Her father seemed to know exactly where he was going, bypassing the main visitor areas that lay straight from the stairs, leading them left toward the bone rooms. Along the way they passed several notable tomb monuments with elaborate copper coffins.

She stopped. “Where are we going?”

He turned. “Out of here.”

“How do you know there’s a way out?”

She caught the irritation on his face.

“Contrary to what you may think, I’m not stupid. I thought ahead.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“Maybe because I got to watch while my daughter was groped by two men, tied to a bed. You think that might motivate someone? Now I’m told the whole thing was an act. Was it, Alle?”

She hadn’t seen anger from her father in a long while and its presence unnerved her. But lying seemed useless. “He was right. It was an act.”

He stepped closer to her. “And you have the nerve to judge me.”

She knew what he meant. All those times she’d told him what a lousy husband and father he’d been, calling him a liar, a fraud, culminating at her mother’s funeral when she demanded he leave.

“Nothing to say?” he asked.

“I wanted you to open the grave. I knew you wouldn’t do it if I simply asked.”

“I wouldn’t have. But you still should have asked.”

They stood at a junction where the main passage continued ahead and another disappeared left. A placard indicated that the bone rooms lay that way. Movement to her right caught her eye.

Fifty feet away Brian appeared.

Her father saw him, too.

Their pursuer reached beneath his jacket. She knew what he kept there.

The shoulder holster.

A gun appeared.

———

TOM REACTED TO THE SIGHT OF THE WEAPON, DECIDING INSTANTLY that they could not flee straight ahead, as this man would have a clear shot at them. Earlier, when he’d reconnoitered the catacombs, Inna had shown him the shortest way out—which, unfortunately, waited where they could not go.

No choice.

He grabbed Alle’s hand and they raced down the connecting passage toward the bone rooms.

———

ZACHARIAH DESCENDED THE STAIRS THAT LED INTO THE CATACOMBS. Light from below illuminated the flooring, and he caught the faint movement of a shadow disappearing to his left.

He grabbed Rócha’s arm and signaled for them to slow down.

He also gestured with his head and Rócha found his weapon, a sound suppressor already attached to the automatic’s short barrel. He was hoping for a few undisturbed minutes down here. The problem of Brian Jamison irked him, as did something else.

Had Sagan provided him everything?

They ended at the bottom of the stairs in a long room with pews. Some kind of underchurch. A Baroque crucifix hung above an altar. Carefully, he peered around the edge of the wall. A corridor led out. Jamison stood fifty feet away, a gun in hand, turning left around another corner.

He and Rócha followed.

———

TOM WAS CONCERNED. THIS WAS NOT GOING AS PLANNED. HE should have entered the catacombs with Alle, the iron gate locking behind them to keep Zachariah Simon at bay. He hadn’t expected a third party in the mix and certainly had not expected his own daughter to be in collusion with the other side. From the catacombs diagram in the guidebook, he knew that the route they now were following would eventually lead to the exit he’d planned on utilizing, just in a longer and more roundabout path.

Inna was waiting there, at the top of another stairway beyond the church’s east façade, the exit opening into a side alley, there for centuries, rarely used. A metal door, which could be opened only from the inside, protected that entrance, but Inna had managed to convince her contact at the diocese to allow her reclusive American visitor to leave from there once his private tour of the catacombs had ended. Inna herself assumed the responsibility to make sure the door was closed after they left. The diocese’s PR person had been more than willing to accommodate, knowing he was accumulating a favor from the press that might come in handy.

Tom understood that currency.

Once he’d been a world-class trader in it.

They came to the end of the corridor and turned.

Niches opened to their right and left, each blocked by iron bars. Beyond the bars, illuminated by more incandescent fixtures, bones were stacked eight feet high. Some in precise piles, others in a bewildering mix, as if tossed there. The sight was troubling and surreal. So much death packed so tight. Who were these people? How had they lived? What was their story?

He noticed Alle’s gaze was drawn toward them, too.

He just wanted to get out of here. But the corridor that bisected the bone rooms was long and straight. Maybe sixty feet from end to end with stone arches and iron bars lining both sides. Little cover. Not good.

“Stop right there,” a voice said behind him.

He and Alle halted and turned.

Their pursuer stood twenty feet away.

A gun pointed straight at them.