The Medusa Amulet

Chapter 33

Alone at last, the marquis threw another log into the fireplace and stared into the rising fire.

Was it possible? Could Caterina still be alive? Could she have been alive all these centuries?

He felt at once an agony in his heart, the agony of all those lost years, and a kindling of hope, a kindling like nothing else he had felt for ages. The expression on David Franco’s face had conveyed the truth more eloquently than any words could do.

While Sant’Angelo could see now that the public accounts of his own death and burial must have persuaded her that he had indeed left this world, how could he have been so misled himself?

What foolishness, what insanity, what melancholy dolor had allowed him to believe the accounts of her demise? He could see that the sources of the story had all had their own reasons to say what they had said, to swear to what they averred. And he lambasted himself for his gullibility, his blindness, his despair. Had he believed in her death because he could not bear the thought that he had condemned her to the destiny he had endured?

And now, she wanted the mirror back. She wanted La Medusa back, at all costs. But why? To work its magic on someone else? Or, to see if, in its destruction, she could undo the curse she had brought on herself that fateful night in his studio?

He drew a chair closer to the fire-it was at that time of night that his legs always gave him the most trouble-and sat down. He must think, he must make a plan. He must rouse himself to fight for a future. Tonight he had learned that there was more than a reason to exist-there was a reason to live.

He put his head back, his eyes closed, and felt the heat from the fire wash over him.

But first he would have to confront the greatest defeat of his life, the one from which he had never fully recovered. He would have to conquer a dread that even he, the immortal Cellini, felt in the very marrow of his broken bones. Only once in his life had he confronted a foe so powerful, and in command of such dark resources, that his own abilities had paled in comparison. For decades, he had been content to observe a stalemate with this evil adversary, a stalemate that his enemy appeared content to observe, too. Sant’Angelo imagined them like two prizefighters, mauled beyond recognition, but still respectful and wary of the other’s power. Each of them knew the gift that La Medusa bestowed, along with the mighty cost it exacted, but so long as the marquis remained aware of his enemy’s whereabouts, and sure of his limitations, he was willing to bide his time.

Now, that time was up. If by acting at last to reclaim the mirror, he could reclaim the greatest love of his life… if he could share his sentence with the only woman in the world who would understand it… then the stalemate had to be broken. It was fate that had sent him into the Colosseum that night with Dr. Strozzi, fate that had taught him how to create La Medusa, fate that had shuttled him like a spinning top from one country to another, for hundreds of years. Now, it was fate that had sent these two young adventurers to his door, each with his or her purpose. But the main purpose they would fulfill would be his own. They would have to go into the lion’s den itself, a place where his own broken legs could not take him and where his very essence could trigger the alarms. Once there, they would have to defeat a creature more bloodthirsty than any Gorgon that had ever haunted the underworld, a creature whose reputation was still so fearsome that it was the one thing he dared not reveal.

He pulled the black tie loose from his collar and let it drop to the floor, as, in his mind’s eye, he recalled the summer of 1940… and the caravan of armored cars that had snaked up the private road leading to the Chateau Perdu. He could still hear the rumble of their engines.

He had been out hunting with his gamekeeper, old Broyard, when they heard them wending their way along the long drive that led to the castle. Quickly, he’d climbed higher on the ridge, then, trading his rifle for the pair of binoculars Broyard was holding out, swung himself up into a tree. Brushing away the leaves with one hand, he caught a glimpse of a quartet of armored cars, followed by a long black Mercedes, racing through the woods. Nazi pennants rippled over the front fenders of the limousine.

“Germans?” Broyard asked nervously.

“Who else has petrol?”

So it had come, he thought. It was inevitable. The Nazis had invaded France in early May, taking only a few weeks to breach the Maginot Line and, by the fourteenth of June, their tanks had been roaring in triumph down the Champs-Elysees. It had only been a matter of time before the marquis received just some unwelcome deputation as this.

“How many?” the gamekeeper asked, as Sant’Angelo climbed down. He said it as if he were contemplating how many rounds he’d need to shoot them all.

“Too many,” the marquis replied, clapping a hand on the man’s aged shoulder. He shared his sentiment, but knew he had to be more cautious than that.

“Come on,” he said, slinging his rifle across his shoulder.

As swiftly as the old gamekeeper’s legs allowed, they scrambled along the top of the ridge, with the dense forest on one side and the river Loire far below on the other. As they came closer to the chateau, a vast field opened up on the hillside, a sloping meadow where sheep had once grazed, but from which, the marquis feared, they might be more easily spotted by the intruders still motoring up the drive. Keeping close to the ground, he ran toward a large and circular stone pit. Built by the Norman knight who had erected the chateau in the fourteenth century, the pit had once been used to bait animals-bears, wolves, boars. A set of stone steps descended several meters into the ground, where it was joined to a barred cage. Sant’Angelo grabbed the rusty handle and pulled hard, opening the cage. It still bore a telltale animal scent. Lowering his head, he crept inside, then groped along the moss-covered wall until he found an identical iron handle in the seemingly solid stone. Pulling with all his might, he was finally able to unseal the hidden door there, and, doubling over, duck inside.

“Keep a lookout from the ridge,” Sant’Angelo said, “and don’t do anything to set them off.” Broyard nodded, before closing the stone slab behind the marquis.

The darkness was absolute, but the marquis fumbled in his pocket and found a pack of matches. Apart from a tunnel that led down to the riverbank, there was only one way to go from there. Lighting one match after another, he inched along, hearing only the squelching of his boots and the occasional squeak of a rat. The tunnel-the knight’s secret escape route-went even deeper than the moat, and its rock walls still held the rusted chains where prisoners had once been kept.

But when the marquis felt his boot stub against an iron grate, he knew that the oubliette, into which the condemned had been hurled, lay just below him. The lucky ones died from the fall, the others died a slow death from starvation.

Sant’Angelo stepped carefully around its edge before eventually coming up against the back of a towering old wine rack. He pushed it to one side on creaking hinges, and emerged, blowing out his last match, into the wine cellar.

Celeste, a pretty young housemaid, was so startled that he had to clap a hand over her mouth to keep her from screaming. She was passing dusty bottles to Ascanio.

“I was wondering where you were,” Ascanio said crossly.

The marquis removed his hand, and Celeste fell against Ascanio’s chest with relief.

“How many of them are there?” Sant’Angelo asked, brushing the dirt and cobwebs from his hunting jacket.

“Ten or fifteen. All SS.”

“More,” Celeste said, her eyes wide.

“What do they want?”

“Right now, they want wine.” Ascanio tucked another bottle under his arm. “I was trying to decide which bottles had already turned.”

The marquis smiled, and said, “Don’t do anything rash.”

“You mean like killing them?”

“I mean, anything that will bring the whole Third Reich crashing down on our heads.” Then he mounted the back stairs up to his rooms, where he changed into the houndstooth jacket and trousers of a country squire-a fashion he had adopted when he lived in England-before descending the grand escalier to the main hall… where confusion reigned.

SS soldiers, in pea green uniforms, were poking the muzzles of their machine guns everywhere, ordering the marquis’s staff to open every door, empty every drawer, and pull back every curtain.

In the center of the entry hall, overseeing it all, stood a man recognizable from every newsreel and newspaper in Europe: Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsfuhrer, Hitler’s second-in-command and head of the dreaded Gestapo. In person, he was an even more spindly creature than he appeared in the carefully contrived news footage. He was wearing a dove gray uniform, with boots that came all the way up to his knees; the fearsome Totenkopf, or death’s head, gleamed above the black visor on his cap. He was wiping his wire-rimmed spectacles clean with a handkerchief when the marquis approached.

A soldier immediately interposed himself, but Himmler waved him away with the handkerchief.

“Herr Sant’Angelo?”

“ Oui,” the marquis replied, staying sufficiently distant that any handshake could be avoided.

“You know who I am, no doubt,” he said in German, slipping his spectacles back on.

“ Ich mache.” I do.

“But I doubt you know my adviser.”

A big man with a squarish head stepped forward. He was wearing a green loden coat, far too warm for the weather, decorated with the War Merit medal and the requisite Nazi armband; he carried a bulging briefcase under his arm.

“This is Professor Dieter Mainz, of the University of Heidelberg.”

Mainz bowed his head and clicked the heels of his boots.

“He has been eager, as have we all, to make your acquaintance.”

The marquis expressed surprise. “I live a quiet life, here in the country. How could I have come to anyone’s attention?”

“I will be happy to explain,” Mainz said, in a voice that sounded as if it would be more comfortable booming out in a lecture hall. “We have reason to believe-good reason, based on my own research-that your ancestor, from whom your title descends, was a man of extraordinary talents.”

“How so?” Sant’Angelo replied, knowing full well that this ancestor stood before them at that very moment.

“My investigations,” Mainz confided, “suggest that he was well versed in many of what are commonly-and unwisely-dismissed as the occult arts.”

Sant’Angelo again feigned ignorance. “I come from a long and distinguished family, but I can’t say I know much about that. Are you sure you’ve come to the right place?”

“Quite,” Mainz said. “Quite sure.”

Himmler was squinting at him closely. “Apart from your servants, do you have anyone else here at present?” he asked abruptly.

“No. I have no family.”

“No guests either?”

“No.”

“No woman?” he asked, with a tilt of his pale, anemic face. “Or man?”

Sant’Angelo took his meaning, but he didn’t deign to answer.

“Then you won’t mind,” the Reichfuhrer went on, “if we continue our inspection.” Without waiting, he barked some orders and half a dozen of the soldiers charged up the two sides of the staircase. All of them, Sant’Angelo could not help but notice, were tall, blond, and blue-eyed. He had heard that Himmler, the architect of the Nazi breeding programs, liked to handpick his recruits.

Ironically, Sant’Angelo thought, the Reichsfuhrer could never have met his own criteria.

An adjutant whispered something in Himmler’s ear, and the two of them retired to the adjoining salle d’armes, or armor hall, where Sant’Angelo could see that a command post of sorts was being hastily assembled. The medieval weaponry that lined the walls was overwhelmed by the flood of modern communications equipment-radio sets and decoding machines and rickety antennae-strewn around the room. One soldier was standing on top of the refectory table to loop a wire over the chandelier, while another had opened a casement window to affix a receiver to its frame.

“I’m dreadfully sorry about the inconvenience,” Professor Mainz leaned close to say, “but they have so much to do just now.” He said it as if he were talking about some local burghers who were preparing for a visit from the mayor. “Tonight, as you may be aware, is the summer solstice.”

True enough, the marquis thought, but what of it?

“It’s one of the ancient celebrations that we have reconsecrated,” Mainz offered. “It takes the place of all that Judeo-Christian claptrap. In fact, I’ve written a book on the subject, Arische Sonne-Rituale.” Aryan Sun Rites. “If you like, I would be happy to send you an inscribed copy for your private library.”

Sant’Angelo nodded, as if in gratitude.

“I’m a devoted bibliophile myself,” Mainz confided. “My house is so full of books, my wife says I’d fill the bathtub with them if she’d let me.”

Ascanio and Celeste walked by, with several glasses and a wine bottle on a tray.

“But you must have inherited quite an impressive collection yourself.”

Sant’Angelo shrugged, to suggest he didn’t bother himself with such things.

“Oh, don’t be so modest. Books make the house, don’t you think?”

“I’ve heard that said.”

“But where do you keep your library?” Mainz asked, looking around as if he might have missed it somehow.

Ah, so this was where it had been going.

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed,” Sant’Angelo replied.

“Oh, let me be the judge of that. I may be able to share with you things about your ancestors that you never knew. In fact, I believe that when I have told you about the arcane knowledge acquired by your forebears, you will be pleased and astonished. Now,” he said, taking his host by the elbow and steering him back toward the grand escalier, “perhaps you can show me those books, yes? Upstairs? In one of the towers? I thought most of these pepperpot turrets were truncated in the sixteenth century? I wonder how these were spared.”

Sant’Angelo deftly removed his arm.

“Perhaps a bit of your ancestor’s hocus-pocus?”

They were halfway up the stairs when the marquis heard the first explosion outside.

He stopped and was about to run back down, but Mainz said, “Just a safety precaution. No serious damage will be done. Now, let’s go see that library!” It wasn’t a request but an order.

Sant’Angelo guided the lumbering professor past several salons and corridors, lined with faded tapestries and furniture, and into the main library of the house-a cavernous space with shelves from floor to ceiling and a wooden ladder on wheels to help reach the books on top. There, the marquis kept an extensive collection, everything from Marcus Aurelius to Voltaire, all in fine bindings, their titles lettered in gold on their spines. Most of the books he had purchased while traveling the world, and as a result they were in many languages-Italian, English, German, French, Russian, Greek. The professor placed his own bulging briefcase on the center reading table and strolled about the room, whistling under his breath.

“Fantastic,” he said. “Simply fantastic.”

Many times he stopped and lovingly removed an ancient volume from a shelf. “The complete histories of Pliny the Elder,” he said in wonderment. Leafing through another volume, he said mournfully, “The Philippics of Tacitus. My copy was lost in a fire in Heidelberg.” Once or twice, Mainz seemed so immersed that Sant’Angelo thought he might simply be able to steal away and not be missed. Another round of dynamite exploded, and Sant’Angelo could hear huge trees toppling over.

But after perusing a couple of dozen books, even inspecting the volumes on the higher shelves, Mainz stopped, and from his perch atop the ladder, looked down at the marquis and said, “But this is not where you do your own work.”

“Work?” Sant’Angelo replied, assuming a touch of haughtiness. “I’m not sure I know what you’re referring to.”

Mainz waved his hand around the room. “There’s not a book missing from a shelf. Not a paper or pen on the table. And these,” he said, gesturing at the thousands of volumes on display, “are not the kinds of books I know you own.”

He stepped down from the ladder, and with an icy smile, said, “I want to see the private collection.”

When Sant’Angelo didn’t reply, Mainz went on. “You can show it to me yourself, or I can have the soldiers find it, even if it means breaking down every door in the place. Come on,” he said, again in that comradely tone, “how often do you meet someone like me, who can appreciate the true worth of such stuff?” He walked on toward the door, turning only to say, “Which way do we go, marquis?”

Sant’Angelo began to wonder if Ascanio had not been right about killing them on sight. But there was little he could do now, with Himmler himself and the SS dispersed all over the chateau and its grounds.

He led the way back down the corridor, then up the winding staircase to his private study high in the eastern turret. It had never been wired for electricity, and with dusk falling, the marquis had to stop to light the gas lamps in sconces along the walls. The room was stuffy, too, and he threw open the French doors to the terrace and stepped outside to see what destruction had been wrought to his estate.

There was the smell of scorched wood in the air, and when he walked to the end of the parapet and looked toward the sheep meadow, he saw that the Germans had blown up the old oaks that ran along the ridgeline and were now using their armored cars to push the splintered trunks off the cliff.

Before he could think why they were doing it, he heard Mainz inside the study, exclaiming over something.

“Like me, you are a Renaissance scholar!” the professor said, when Sant’Angelo stepped back inside. He was holding a copy of Cellini’s autobiography in his hand-the original printing, done by Antonio Cocchi in 1728. “But you have this book in half a dozen other languages, too! Along with his treatises on goldsmithing and sculpture. Then you must admire him as much as I do?”

“Yes, I suppose so.”

“Then you know, too, that he was not just a great artist. He was also a great occultist. Surely you remember his account of conjuring demons in the Colosseum?”

“He was given to tall tales, I think.”

But Mainz shook his head vigorously. “No, it was not a tall tale, as you call it. In fact, it was not the full tale-I am convinced of that. In the 1500s, it was simply too dangerous to tell the whole truth about such things. One day,” he said, slipping the book lovingly back into the shelf, “I will find the rest of the story.”

Then he simply looked around the room-a pentagon, with cherrywood bookcases alternating with floor-length mirrors-and said, “I envy you this aerie.” He shrugged off his loden coat, revealing a white shirt stuck to his body with sweat, and laid it across a chair. “At home, just to get some peace and quiet, I must work in a pantry!” He wandered around the room, touching the books-their subjects ranging from stregheria to astrology, numerology to necromancy-and seemed transported. This, his expression advertised, was what he’d been looking for. His stubby fingertips trailed over the edge of the writing table, where a gilded bust of Dante, his head surmounted by a silver wreath, stood in pride of place. Sant’Angelo was careful not to let his own eyes linger on the piece.

“I regret that my Italian is so bad,” the professor said. “The infinite charms of The Divine Comedy are sometimes lost on me.”

“That’s a pity. He was the greatest poet the world has ever known.”

But Mainz laughed. “You would say that, wouldn’t you? Judging by your name, you’re an Italian. And yet your family has lived in France for centuries. Why is that?”

Sant’Angelo shrugged, and said, “Ancient history.”

The professor paused, then went to his briefcase and unfastened the leather strap. “Ah, but ancient history is my specialty.” He began to root around inside, pulling out a stack of papers. “Only last week, we turned up some interesting information at the National Archives.” He pushed the bust of Dante to one side, nearly displacing the wreath around its brow, to make some room on the table. “I took the photographs myself. I think you’ll find them quite interesting.”

They were meticulously done photos of handwritten and hand-drawn pages, the text in Italian.

“The scribe who made the original drawings and notes worked for Napoleon. The words were taken down from the walls of a cell in the Castel San Leo, outside Rome. We went there, too, of course, but nothing much remained. So all we have left is these transcriptions.”

Sant’Angelo suddenly understood why the Nazis were there.

“I assume you can guess the occupant of the cell,” Mainz said.

“Count Cagliostro.” What use was there in playing dumb anymore? The words themselves, accompanied by Egyptian symbols and signs, were gibberish, but several times they made mention of Sant’Angelo and a lost castle. The Chateau Perdu. The old charlatan might have been constrained from uttering a word about what he knew, but apparently it had not kept him from writing about it. In the end, he might as well have provided the Nazis with a road map.

“So you can see why we wanted to make this call. Reichsfuhrer Himmler has a great interest in the more arcane sources of knowledge. Wherever we go, we root it up, like truffles,” he said, snuffling like a pig.

Sant’Angelo was well aware of the Nazis’ predilections. The swastika itself was an ancient Sanskrit symbol of peace, now turned back on its axis to suggest something else entirely.

“Obviously, the count-the master of the Egyptian Masonic lodges-was well acquainted with your predecessor,” Mainz said, smiling coldly. “But I wouldn’t go so far as to say they were friends. Professional rivals, I would call them. Wouldn’t you?”

The marquis stifled an impulse to retort that the powers of the count had been vastly overrated.

“Cagliostro seemed to think that the Chateau Perdu contained some powerful secrets.”

“That may be,” Sant’Angelo replied, “but in that case, they’re still undiscovered.” He might have said more, but he noted that the professor’s attention had been diverted; his ears had pricked up, like a hunting dog’s, and now the marquis could hear it, too-the low thrum of an airplane engine in the distance.

“Come,” Mainz said, hurrying out onto the balcony. “He’s coming!”

Who’s coming? Sant’Angelo thought, following him out. Dusk was falling, and from the west, he saw the red wing lights of a small plane, racing toward the chateau as if it were fleeing from the setting sun. It was going to come in low, just above the ridgeline, and he understood why the soldiers had felled the oaks; they had been clearing a runway approach. All down the sheep meadow, he saw that the armored cars had been placed in parallel lines with their headlamps on, and soldiers with flags and flashlights were positioned on the field.

The wheels of the plane touched the grass, bounced up, and touched again as the ailerons were deployed to cut its ground speed. Even from the parapet, Sant’Angelo could see the Nazi insignia on the fuselage, along with the number 2600-the number that the Fuhrer believed held some mystical power, and that he insisted be placed on all his private aircraft.

Hitler himself had come to his chateau?

The soldiers waved their lights like fireflies as the plane jounced along for the entire length of the meadow. It was only as it was about to run out of room and go crashing into the dense forest that it came to a halt, so abruptly that the nose dipped and the tail end rose up like a scorpion’s stinger.

When the engines were cut off, two SS men ran to the port-side door, just aft of the wings, and helped unfold the stairs. The others-Himmler among them-stood at attention in a single line, facing the plane.

In the descending gloom, the marquis saw a figure appear in the door. He was wearing a mustard-colored field uniform, with breeches, boots, and a visored cap. And even from the balcony, his face, with its doleful eyes and toothbrush moustache, was unmistakable.

Sant’Angelo suddenly realized that the professor standing beside him, like all the SS men on the field, had raised his arm in the stiff-armed Nazi salute.

It was returned with a desultory flip, from the elbow alone, by their master, who was already strutting toward the main gate of the chateau, trailed by several officers and attaches.

“You are being granted a great honor,” Mainz said. “The Fuhrer will be spending the night under your roof.”

Sant’Angelo’s mind reeled.

“So let’s have something to show him!” Like a schoolboy giddily awaiting a visit from his sweetheart, Mainz hurried back inside and began to riffle through the photos.

“For instance,” he said, flourishing a photograph and proffering it to Sant’Angelo, “on this one Cagliostro has scrawled ‘The little palace’ and drawn this hieroglyph beside it.” It was a raven with its wings spread.

“It looks like a raven.”

“Of course it does,” Mainz said impatiently. “And the three short vertical lines beside it indicate a flock of them. But does it mean anything to you? Is such a motif present anywhere in this chateau, or in a family coat of arms, perhaps?”

The little palace-no doubt he meant Le Petit Trianon, Sant’Angelo thought, though he did not share that insight with the professor.

“And this glyph, placed below it,” Mainz said, showing another photo, one depicting a jackal, but with its head thrown back, as if its neck were broken.

“He has written, ‘The master of the lost castle prevails.’ But prevails over what? Over Anubis, the Egyptian god of the dead?”

Sant’Angelo remembered well the psychic battle in Marie Antoinette’s hideaway. Apparently, the good count had remembered it, too, even as madness overtook him.

Mainz laid out several more photos of the transcriptions. Even though he had not understood the meaning of what was recorded on the walls of the cell, the French scribe had made fine and accurate renderings. But the marquis sensed that the professor was expecting greater help in deciphering them.

“And then there’s this,” he said, delicately removing a yellowed sheet of paper-this one was no photograph-done in gray charcoal and what might have once been red wine. “Although I have a great reverence for the French National Archives,” Mainz said, “I felt that this was art, and needed to be more widely seen in the original.”

It was a powerful sketch of the Gorgon’s head, suspended as if on chains. The caption read, “ Lo specchio di Eternita, ma non ho visto! ” The glass of eternity, but I did not see! The professor pulled the damp collar of his shirt away from his thick neck. “As it turns out, the count was a fairly good draftsman. But have you ever seen anything like this, a mirror perhaps, or an amulet, with the face of the Medusa on it? I suspect it belonged to your ancestor.”

Sant’Angelo’s mind was racing. The glass, as always, was hanging under his very shirt.

“Cagliostro appeared to put great stock in it,” Mainz added. “For four years, he wrote on the walls of his cell with a jagged stone, or a lump of charcoal. But this picture he daubed on the only sheet of paper he had, using his own blood.”

So it was blood, not wine… and the count had finally figured out the value of La Medusa. Judging from his inscription, however, he had not fathomed its secret until he had lost it to the marquis, and by then, of course, it was too late. Was the bitterness of that knowledge what had driven him insane?

“Come now,” Mainz cajoled, “let’s not pretend that you are a neophyte in these matters. This library alone confirms that you are a student of the dark arts. Perhaps you are even a master. Why don’t we put our heads together? There’s probably a lot we could teach each other.”

Oh, yes, there were any number of things that the marquis would have liked to teach him, right then and there, but the professor had turned away again, his face suddenly flushed. Voices echoed up the stairs, followed by the clomping of heavy bootheels. Mainz whirled around, and, despite the warm night, put on his green, bemedaled coat again.

The first ones to enter the study were a pair of SS guards, the jagged sig runes that looked like thunderbolts glittering on their epaulets. They quickly moved aside to make room for Himmler, holding a wineglass in one hand, as he calmly surveyed the mirrored walls and the packed bookshelves, the gleaming table with its bust of Dante, the photographs from the French archives. He actually sniffed the air, as if to detect any potential menace-or latent powers?-lurking in the room. The marquis had the impression that he was doing a final security check before permitting his master to venture inside.

But he barely glanced at Sant’Angelo.

“What have we learned?” he said to the professor.

“We’ve really just begun,” Mainz replied. “I’ve been showing the marquis-”

Himmler snorted at the mention of the title.

“-some of the material we’ve recently acquired.”

Himmler took the sketch from the professor’s hand, studied it, then held it up between pinched fingers in front of Sant’Angelo.

“Ever seen this?”

“The Medusa is one of the most common images from antiquity.”

“But this one is a dead likeness of one that was done by the necromancer Cellini, as a design for a Medici duchess.” Himmler rudely shoved the bust of Dante aside so that he could sit on an edge of the desk, and in so doing, knocked the garland loose. To Sant’Angelo’s relief, no one paid any attention as it rolled out of sight under the desk chair. “And in what godforsaken spot,” Himmler asked Mainz, “was it that you found that other drawing?”

“In the Laurenziana. Among the papers of the Medicis.”

“Ah, yes-in Florence. I don’t understand it myself, but the Fuhrer is oddly fond of that town. He likes the old bridge.”

The collar of his Gestapo uniform was too big for his scrawny neck, Sant’Angelo noted, and the service medal that was pinned to it only made it gape more. His gray tunic was festooned with other military ribbons and pins.

“It’s hard to believe that such a storied object-one that Cellini made, Cagliostro captured, and Napoleon coveted-could simply have gone missing,” Himmler said, his eyes-small and pale and mean-glimmering behind his spectacles.

It was then that Sant’Angelo decided… I could kill him. Or, better yet- I could wait for my chance and kill his master. Strike the serpent at its head. He wished he had his harpe at hand; he could have used it, like Perseus, to chop off the head of the monster. But there were other ways. He had reduced Cagliostro to a weeping, craven coward, and in the centuries since, even as his artistic powers had withered, his occult faculties had become more refined. Like a fine wine, they had matured. And despite the risk, when would he ever have a better chance than this to deploy them?

“The sketch,” Himmler continued, “suggests it might have been worn like a necklace.” His bony fingers caressed his own medal. He cocked his head at one of the guards, who promptly came around the table unholstering his gun, and then roughly pressed the muzzle to Sant’Angelo’s temple.

“Open his shirt,” the Reichsfuhrer told the other guard.

The second one, a towering blond oaf, yanked the marquis’s shirt open, sending the button flying, and then, spotting the chain, lifted it over his head.

“You see?” Himmler said to Mainz. “Direct action is always best.”

The guard placed La Medusa in Himmler’s hand, where he let it dangle from his fingers. “It doesn’t feel especially powerful,” Himmler said, weighing it up and down. “Is it?”

Sant’Angelo prayed that he could retrieve it before the Nazis ever had the chance to gauge its full potential. But the Luger was still grazing his skull, and he hardly dared to breathe.

“You can put that down now,” Himmler said, and the guard immediately obliged, stepping back a few feet, but with the gun still in his hand. “We don’t want anyone’s head exploding while there’s still something worthwhile in it.” A wintry smile creased his lips. “Now,” he said to Sant’Angelo, “answer the question.”

“It’s simply a good-luck charm that has been in my family for many years.”

“Has it worked?” Himmler asked in a doubtful tone.

Before Sant’Angelo could summon a reply, there was a sharp cry-“Heil, Hitler!”-from the bottom of the steps, and he could see a long shadow playing on the wall of the stairwell… and rising up into the turret.

Himmler quickly got off the desk and the guards went rigid at attention. Mainz mopped the sweat from his forehead and wiped it on his sleeve.

The shadow grew larger, nearer, and the mirrored walls of the study suddenly seemed as if they were closing in. Even the marquis felt the imminence of something powerful… and evil.

“Who can breathe in here?” he heard the Fuhrer complain as he entered the room. “Open those doors all the way.”

The oafish guard leapt to the French doors and threw them back.

The Fuhrer’s eyes darted around the room, taking in everything without turning his head more than a few degrees. His field uniform was more modest than Himmler’s, decorated with only the red armband and, on his left breast pocket, an old-fashioned Iron Cross, the one engraved with the year 1914 and given out to veterans of the First World War. Surveying the many mirrors, he said, “Vanity is a weakness. A weak man worked in here.”

No one contradicted him.

“And why, even this high up, is there still no breeze?”

Sant’Angelo had the impression that they were all being blamed for the lack of air.

Taking off his hat, adorned with the gold Imperial Eagle, he placed it on the desk upside down, then smoothed the back of his head with a trembling left hand. His eyes were an icy blue, and his brown hair was shorn oddly close along the sides. In the front, it fell in a heavy sweep from a parting on the right. Only his bristly moustache was tinged with gray. Noting the Medusa in Himmler’s hand, he said, “You hold that bauble as if it were significant.”

“It is, Mein Fuhrer.”

“Given the trouble you’ve put me to, it had better be.”

Hitler took it in his right hand-Sant’Angelo noticed that he had placed the left one behind his back-and took an interested, but skeptical, look. First he studied the glaring face of the Gorgon, then he turned it over and grunted when he saw its black silk backing. With a thumb, he removed it, uncovering the mirror.

Sant’Angelo prayed that he would stay clear of the moonlight just beginning to show on the terrace outside.

“So it’s a lady’s looking glass,” he said, looking away from the mirror. “And not a particularly good one. The glass seems flawed.”

Sant’Angelo hoped he would put it aside; but instead, he distractedly wound the chain in and round his fingers, the Medusa herself cupped firmly in his palm.

“We believe there is more to it than meets the eye,” Himmler said, though with great deference.

“Yes, yes indeed,” Professor Mainz blurted out. “I believe that a manuscript exists, perhaps in this very chateau, which will explain how it was made-and the powers that it can bestow.”

Hitler flicked his eyes toward Sant’Angelo. “Well? Can you speak?”

“I can.”

“Then do so. I haven’t got all night.”

“You have already taken the measure of the thing quite accurately,” Sant’Angelo replied, in a deliberately timid tone. “It’s simply a little mirror, poorly made, without a single precious stone to distinguish it.”

“Ah, but that’s exactly it!” Mainz said, unable to restrain himself. “The things that have the greatest power always disguise themselves!” As he went off on a fevered disquisition of the occult and its physical phenomena, the marquis gently folded his hands together, in an innocent gesture, and lowered his eyes. He knew that he had been dismissed-judged and found wanting in Hitler’s eyes-and that was just what he hoped for.

He focused his thoughts entirely on the Fuhrer… focused them, as he once had done years ago, on a sham Italian count. If he was going to break this monster’s mind, he first had to find a way inside it.

The discussion went on all around him, Mainz rambling on about a Spear of Destiny, Himmler babbling about an ancient king named Heinrich the Fowler, but Sant’Angelo tuned them out, as if adjusting a wireless set, and concentrated on a single signal… the one coming from the Fuhrer himself.

But no sooner had he found it, loud and clear, than he felt as if a wintry wind had just blown through his very bones. Even in that stifling room, he felt a glacial chill. Rather than being able to marshal his own thoughts, he found them scattering in all directions, like dead leaves drifting across a field of rubble.

Concentrate, he told himself. Concentrate.

But it was like loitering on a battlefield, after the slaughter.

He gathered himself together, trying to erase the desolate scene, and tried again. With every ounce of energy that he could muster, he burrowed into the Fuhrer’s brain.

And this time-this time-he saw Hitler’s head snap backwards. The palsied left hand-was the man diseased?-brushed the back of his hair again, in what was plainly a nervous tic.

He had found his point of entry, and now the marquis bored in deeper, harder. His own temples throbbed with the effort. The Fuhrer’s shoulders seemed to droop, his knees to bend.

“Of course we haven’t even begun a proper interrogation,” Himmler was saying, as if Sant’Angelo weren’t there to hear it. “This so-called marquis cannot be as ignorant as he claims.”

Sant’Angelo was careful not to move a muscle, or call any undue attention to himself, as he continued about his work.

“But in my estimation, the entire chateau is a source of power,” the professor added. “I felt it the moment we passed the gatehouse. We must look under every stone.”

The blood drained from the Fuhrer’s face, and he wavered on his feet. His hand shook more violently, and Himmler suddenly took note.

“Mein Fuhrer,” he said, “are you all right?” He motioned for the desk chair-an ornately carved throne-and one of the soldiers carted it around the table as if it were made of toothpicks and slapped it down behind him. Himmler guided their shaken leader onto its velvet seat.

“Go get the doctor!” Mainz cried, and the soldier standing by the door bolted down the stairs.

Beads of sweat dotted Hitler’s brow.

The marquis concentrated even more. Like a mole, he was tunneling into the deepest recesses of the monster’s brain, and there, once he was at the very core, he would brew a storm so great that the Fuhrer’s eyes would go blind, his ears go deaf, and his blood would boil beneath his skin. To the Nazis in the room it would look like a stroke-a fatal stroke-the kind that might suddenly afflict anyone… even the master of the almighty Third Reich. And no one would be the wiser.

But then the jolt came. The counterattack.

Sant’Angelo had never felt such a powerful blast. It dwarfed Cagliostro’s powers.

The Fuhrer, whose chin was nearly resting on his chest now, whose whole left arm was quivering, showed no emotion, but the shock wave came again, rocking the marquis so hard he nearly lost his balance. He was amazed that no one else had felt it.

Recovering himself, he leaned forward, his hands on the desk to brace himself, but now he saw Mainz, kneeling by the chair, glance up at him suspiciously.

“What are you doing?”

Sant’Angelo couldn’t reply-he needed to focus all his attention. Hitler slumped in his chair, as Himmler stood helpless by his side.

“Answer me!” Mainz stood up, fists clenched, the veins bulging in his neck. “What are you doing?”

Sant’Angelo summoned all his strength, whipping the storm inside the Fuhrer’s head to an absolute fury, a raging tornado of pulsing blood and engorged vessels, of electrical discharges and chemical surges… dragging him toward the brink of a fatal seizure or stroke. He didn’t care which.

But Mainz had figured it out, and he was grabbing at the marquis, wrestling with him.

“Shoot him!” he shouted at the oafish guard. “Shoot him in his fucking head!”

As the two men fall to the floor, struggling, the marquis felt another shock of retaliation, as powerful as a hammer blow to his chest. The Fuhrer’s power was greater than anything he had ever encountered, as if he were channeling the devil himself.

The guard was trying to get a clear shot, but Sant’Angelo and the professor were so entangled that it wasn’t possible.

And that was when the marquis was able to reach under the table and snare the garland.

Mainz’s heavy hands were grappling at his throat, but Sant’Angelo banged a fist under the man’s chin, so hard that the back of his head smashed against the bottom of the table. While he was absorbing the shock of the blow, the marquis was able to crawl free… and settle the silver circlet around his brow.

He was crouching on the floor, framed between the open French doors, when the band took its effect. The marquis watched in the mirrored walls as his own image rippled, faded… and then disappeared. A bullet from the guard’s gun shattered the glass behind him, as Hitler’s head came up, his hooded, bleary eyes searching out his enemy. His face had the demonic glow of a furnace.

Himmler, who had spent his whole life in search of just such magic as the marquis had displayed, stood slack-jawed, while Mainz and the soldier, gun still raised, froze in place, not knowing what to do.

Before they could gather their wits, Sant’Angelo sprang to his feet and moved to one side.

“Shoot where he was!” Mainz screamed, and a second later the woodwork exploded in splinters.

“Block the door!” Himmler cried, and the remaining soldier jumped to block the stairs.

There was only one way to go, and even as Sant’Angelo realized it, so did Mainz.

The marquis ran out onto the balcony, and was about to climb over the railing and down the vines, when he felt the professor’s hands, groping wildly in the air, catch hold of his collar. Sant’Angelo squirmed out of his grip, but Mainz seemed to have a sixth sense about where he was, and snagged him again.

“I’ve got you now, you bastard!” Mainz crowed, his hair sopped in blood, his lips flecked with foam, as he pulled him back from the balustrade. “I’ve got you!” he spat at the night air.

And Sant’Angelo took hold of his loden coat and swung him around so violently that he tripped over his own feet, struggling all the while to hang on to his invisible prey.

“I’ve got you!” he rasped, as the marquis swung him around one more time, before suddenly letting him go. Mainz careened toward the balustrade, teetering there for just an instant, his arms spread wide, before the invisible marquis shoved both hands against his burly chest and sent him plummeting over the rail.

“Shoot everywhere!” Himmler shouted, and the soldier emptied his Luger in an arc, hitting nearly every spot on the balcony.

“Alive!” the Fuhrer croaked. He had lurched up from his chair and was leaning hard against the doorframe, his left arm shaking uncontrollably. “I want him alive!”

A dozen soldiers charged up from the stairwell, rifles at the ready.

And that was when Sant’Angelo, perched like an acrobat on the balustrade, leapt into the embrace of the closest oak. Crashing down through the boughs, his legs twisting and breaking as he fell, he was finally, miraculously, suspended, as if by a celestial hand. High above the ground, in the blackness of the night, he was sheltered among the thick branches and leaves.

But the pain in his legs was nothing compared to the pain in his heart. In one fell swoop, he had lost his chance of assassinating the Fuhrer… and he had lost La Medusa, too.