Rogue Angel 52: Death Mask (16 page)

23

The hotel was almost full.

Annja had passed it on the way from the airport. It was business-class, not a tourist trap, which meant an added layer of anonymity, plus decent food. She was starving. She headed straight for the hotel rather than waste time looking for something else. They needed to freshen up, regroup, think. They needed to get that mask back.

Garin stood beside her, the only colors in his face the red-brown of the cuts and grazes and the blue-black of the bruises that bore testament to the beating he’d taken. He wasn’t his usual talkative self. He didn’t try to flirt with the woman behind the reception desk. There was no dazzling smile. That, more than anything else, convinced Annja that he was in worse shape than he was letting on.

So Annja pasted the smile on her face and leaned across the desk. “Two rooms, please. As close to each other as possible if you can manage that?”

The receptionist looked down her nose at Garin. Annja had to admit the only fashion statement he was making in his bloody jeans and torn T-shirt was how drugs still screwed you up. He had Annja’s leather jacket draped over his shoulders and was shivering. Either shock or cold. Or both.

“Certainly, madam. Unfortunately, the only rooms we have available are on different floors.”

“That’s fine,” Annja said. She likely wouldn’t get to use hers for a few hours, anyway. She’d be fretting over Garin, making sure he was settled and resting properly. Then she’d have to track down Roux, wherever he was. The old man had been out of contact for longer than she would have liked, but that was him all over—not exactly selfish, but easily preoccupied with his own thing. He’d be in touch when he needed something, and now that they’d made the handover and Garin was safe... Well, for the first time since she’d woken up in Valencia, there wasn’t a little voice in her head going “Ticktock.”

She handed over her credit card. The receptionist ran it and handed it back along with two sets of keys. If the numbers were any indication, their rooms were almost one above the other. She waved away the bellhop. They didn’t have any bags to carry.

Annja took Garin to the lower of the two rooms and helped him inside, leading him across to the bed, where he sprawled out. The room was like any one of a hundred hotel rooms she’d stayed in around the world. They weren’t designed for visits of more than a couple days. That was just fine. They wouldn’t be staying that long. Garin wasn’t in any condition to complain. He rested on the bed for ten minutes. She thought he’d fallen asleep but he was just staring at the ceiling. Finally, he said, “I need a shower. I stink.”

She couldn’t argue with that.

“Do that. You want anything from room service? I’m so hungry I could eat a horse.” She picked up the menu.

“Anything bloody,” he said, pushing himself up from the mattress. He hobbled toward the bathroom. “Not that I can promise to stay awake long enough to eat it.”

She ordered a steak and fries for each of them, making sure hers would be sent to her room. They promised to have it with her in twenty minutes. She listened to the water run, trying not to imagine Garin’s bruised and battered body standing under it.

“Make sure you eat something,” she called to him. “And then get yourself into bed. I’m going to go freshen up. Give me a call when you’re awake. I’ll go out and get you a change of clothes. I can’t imagine there’ll be much available in the gift shop apart from a nice touristy T-shirt. I’ll leave my spare key on the nightstand.”

He laughed at that. Maybe there was a little bit of Garin Braden that hadn’t been battered out of him. She smiled and headed up to her own room.

It had the same layout as Garin’s, the same decor, the same pictures on the wall, identical down to the smallest detail. That was part of the appeal to the traveling businessmen. All she wanted to do was kick off her boots and stretch out on the bed, but she knew if she did that she wouldn’t be moving until the sun rose. Besides, room service would be knocking on her door in a few minutes. She punched in Roux’s number. The call went straight to voice mail.

“Roux, it’s Annja. I’m at the...” She glanced at the key, realizing she didn’t even know the name of the hotel. “The Alhambra Sol Hotel. It’s near the airport. Garin is here. He’s safe. Call me when you get this. We need to put our heads together. They’ve got the mask. They tried to take us out, so right now the Brotherhood is probably working under the misapprehension that we’re dead. That buys us a bit of time, but someone will find their bodies soon enough. I’m not leaving here without the mask, so call me. Doesn’t matter what time you get this, okay?”

She hung up.

She knew that the Alhambra, or at least the part of it they were interested in, was a dead zone. Roux had warned her he’d be incommunicado. She wasn’t worried about him. He’d check in when he could. She looked at her watch. It was late. They were only a few hours from the imposed deadline the kidnappers had set, meaning she’d been running on adrenaline for one long, seemingly endless day. Now the reality of the situation was beginning to sink in and exhaustion was catching up with her fast. The Brotherhood didn’t have Garin. She was off the clock. She could afford to relax for a few hours. But she’d eat first. And shower. Then she’d worry about what was going to happen in the morning.

Her phone rang.

She snatched it up from the bed. “Roux?”

“This is Aldo Zanetti. We talked earlier today? About the mask?”

“Sorry, yes, of course, Professor,” Annja said, pulling herself together. “I was expecting someone else.”

“No need to apologize. I shouldn’t be calling at such an ungodly hour, but I thought you would want to hear as soon as I finished the translation.”

“Absolutely. What have you got for me?”

“It’s a map,” he said.

“A map? I didn’t see any... How...?”

“Actually, to be more precise, it’s a treasure map. Yes, you heard me correctly. Assuming I’m not mistaken, what you have in your possession is a map that purports to lead to the Moorish wealth hidden from the Inquisition and kept safe until such time as the Moors—or their descendants—would be able to return to recover it.”

“Okay,” Annja said slowly. “But how can that be? The map was engraved on the inside of the Mask of Torquemada? He
was
the Inquisition. It doesn’t make sense. Surely he was the one they were hiding it from?”

“Ah, but there’s the ingenuity of a dead language guarding your secrets. The man who engraved the mask, Abdul bin Soor, was one of the men who hid the treasure. Part of it was his. It belonged to him and the five men from Calahorra who died with him. They knew that the Inquisition would never find out where or what it led to, and they were sure that by hiding the truth amid complex patterns and Mozarabic script, their enemies would never be able to translate it. A wonderful irony, don’t you think? The treasure the Church sought hidden right in front of the Grand Inquisitor’s eyes. Wonderful. Just wonderful.”

“Devious,” Annja said appreciatively. “And you’re certain?”

“Absolutely.”

“Incredible...” A thought struck her. “Was there any reference to something called the Brotherhood of the Burning?” She tried to remember what Roux had called it the first time he’d mentioned it. “I think it would be something like
Fraternidad de
la Quema in Spanish? That won’t help you at all, will it?”

“Well, there were several symbols engraved on the interior of the mask that I haven’t been able to decipher, ones I took to be somewhat elemental in nature—earth, air, water and, yes, a flame. But there was no specific mention of a brotherhood.”

There was one obvious question she hadn’t asked. She couldn’t help herself. “I have to ask,” she said. It was obvious he knew what was coming. He didn’t try to hurry her along. “The map itself...were you able to work out where the Moors hid their treasure?”

“Oh, yes, and this is where the strangest of coincidences arises. You recall we talked about Boabdil’s regret, looking back from the Pass of the Moor’s Sigh on everything he had abandoned?”

“Yes.”

“As far as I can tell, that’s where the treasure is. I haven’t been able to decipher a precise location, but I suspect it is hidden within the iconography rather than the Mozarabic text. I’ll work it out, I have no doubt about that. For now, if you were a treasure hunter, I think the Pass of the Moor’s Sigh would be the best place to start looking.”

“You are an absolute legend, Professor. Thank you,” she said.

“My pleasure, Miss Creed. Just one thing, a small request. If you ever find yourself this way, I would dearly love to see the mask for myself. To touch something that has sat against the Grand Inquisitor’s face, to look through its eyes as he must have done so many times... Perhaps we could even arrange for it to be exhibited here in Rome?”

“Of course,” she said warmly. She hoped she could make good on that promise.

Annja’s medium-well steak arrived, along with a healthy selection of dips and sauces to accompany the fries. She took a soda from the minibar to wash it down and watched the news while she ate. There were no stories about the bodies she’d left behind. That was something. There was, however, plenty about the suspected act of terrorism in Seville that had seen the courthouse bombed earlier in the day. The police were looking for a man whose photofit was a perfectly grainy likeness of the old man. Roux would be delighted that they’d burned one of his identities. That was what they were for, she supposed.

Annja decided she would give him another twenty minutes, taking it up to the hour, and then she hit the shower.

She emerged feeling half-human again.

She dressed and decided to check in on Garin.

The tray of food she’d ordered for him was sitting outside his door.

She assumed he’d crashed out and tapped gently on the door, then used her copy of the room key to enter. The room was dark, the thick curtains drawn, but in the dim light from the hall she could see that the bed hadn’t been slept in. Something felt wrong.

“Garin,” she called softly as the door swung shut behind her. “Garin,” she called again, a little louder this time. There was nowhere he could hide in the room. She felt the stir of a breeze. He’d opened the window. She went to check the bathroom, terrified he’d blacked out in the shower and that she’d find him slumped against the ceramic wall tiles.

Damp towels were strewn over the floor but there was no sign of Garin.

He was gone.

24

Annja took the stairs two at a time.

The lobby was only a couple of floors down, and the elevators were clogged with new arrivals from a late flight. She reached the ground floor much quicker than she would have if she’d waited. The receptionist who’d checked them in was still on duty. She glanced up as Annja approached, still half running, and pasted a too-friendly smile on her face.

“Excuse me,” Annja said. “Have you seen my friend? The man I checked in with?”

She nodded. “
Sí.
He left a little while ago.”

That didn’t make any sense. “Left?”

“
Sí.
He met a man here in reception. They left together.”

“Did you see which way they went?”

“No, madam. Once people step out our front doors, I have no idea what they do.” She shrugged.

Annja looked toward the huge glass doors. There was no sign of Garin out on the curb.

“Perhaps when he returns you could suggest he change his clothes?” The receptionist paused for a moment as if she was searching for the right word. “It is a little unsettling for the other guests, you understand.”

The same bellhop that had offered to carry their bags up to the rooms emerged from the elevator as Annja was digesting what the receptionist had just said.

“The man who came for him gave him a sweater,” the receptionist continued, lifting her nose a fraction. “But he still had no shoes.”

“What did this man look like?”

Her first thought was that it was Roux. That the old man had come to collect Garin and whisked him off with some harebrained scheme to get the mask back by themselves. Would they have returned to the Alhambra? But then why hadn’t Roux phoned her?

“Tall, dark, late thirties, early forties, maybe. He was Spanish.”

Definitely not Roux, then. The bellhop spoke rapidly in Spanish. Annja thought she caught some of it, but his accent was too strong for her to understand more than the occasional snippet. The receptionist responded more slowly, only to get another rapid response. Annja could pick out individual words, but not enough to make sense of what they were saying.

“It seems that you are in luck. Franco saw your friend leave with this other man.”

The boy nodded rapidly. “
Sí,
sí
, I saw him get into a car.”

“Do you know which way they went?”

The boy’s expression became puzzled and the receptionist intervened on their behalf. “He says that he thinks they were heading toward the Alhambra.”

“
Sí,
sí
, Alhambra,” the boy repeated.

Annja reached into her pocket and pulled out a twenty-euro note. It was less than the information was worth, but the bellhop smiled gratefully and pocketed it without a word.

“Thank you, both of you,” Annja said.

“We are here to serve you,” the receptionist said, that same fake smile in place.

She’d left the keys to the Alfa Romeo in her room. She cursed the lost minutes, even though she knew they were unlikely to make any significant difference. She was behind Garin now, playing catch-up. She really didn’t like playing catch-up.

She rode up in the elevator and was sliding the key card into the lock of her door when she heard her phone ringing on the other side. By the time she reached it, the call had gone to voice mail.

One missed call: Roux.

She called him back as she grabbed her jacket and keys, and was already halfway out of the door when he picked up.

“Have you made the exchange yet?”

“Yes, nearly an hour ago.”

“Damn. You’ve already handed the mask over?”

“How else was I supposed to get Garin released?”

The old man sighed in her ear. “There’s no easy way to say this, my dear, but we’ve been played. Garin is part of it.”

“What?”

“It was a charade, smoke and mirrors. A scam. Whatever the hell you want to call it, he was part of it. A willing accomplice. Who knows, maybe the bastard was even the brains behind the whole thing.”

“But his injuries? His bodyguards?”

“Collateral damage. And he obviously thought more of his damned paintings than he did of them.”

“What? I don’t understand what you’re saying, Roux. This doesn’t make sense. Garin couldn’t have been part of it. He wouldn’t do that. Innocent people died!”

“Trust me, Annja. I’m not wrong about this. I’ve seen the evidence with my own eyes.”

“What evidence?”

“Security footage from the Madrid office. Minutes before the kidnappers stormed the conference room and killed Garin’s bodyguards, he had the foresight to exchange a priceless work of art hanging on the wall and replace it with a worthless print. He knew what was going to happen in there. He took steps to protect the only thing he has ever cared about. His beautiful possessions.”

She couldn’t believe it. “You’re kidding me. This has to be some kind of mistake. Surely?”

“I only wish it was. That selfish piece of shit is as much to blame for the deaths of those men as the men who fired the shots. He’s always been a magpie, attracted to shiny things, but I never thought he’d do something like this—use us...put you at risk.”

“But why would he do it?” Even before the question had left her lips, Annja knew the answer. This was all about the mask—not as a treasure itself, but as a key to a bigger haul. Garin had figured out that the mask was the one thing he needed to get to the Moorish wealth. As always with Garin, this was about greed.

“Do you need me to spell it out for you?” Roux asked.

“No, I get it. He’s a scorpion. It’s in his nature. I’d just forgotten who he really is.”

“So where is he?”

“On his way back to the Alhambra,” she said, though she wasn’t completely sure. There were other places he could have turned off the main road. Theoretically, he could be anywhere by now, but her money was on him going back there, especially given what Zanetti had said about the Pass of the Moor’s Sigh being at the heart of the mystery. “Where are you?”

“I’m already here,” he said. “Our hacker friend was right about this being the Brotherhood’s base. They set up their operations in a tiny chapel here. There’s scaffolding up against the outside wall, but it’s the only building not being worked on. It’s the center of the dead zone. You’ll be alone, no cell phone, no gadgets. There’s some sort of dampening field in operation. You’ll know it when you see it. I’m going to take a quick peek around before he gets here. See what I can find now that I’m looking with a different set of eyes. Knowing he’s not the victim means I’m looking for completely different stuff.”

“True. How on earth did you find that footage?”

“I didn’t. Oscar did. He found it on the Brotherhood’s computer network. We got lucky.”

“I still can’t believe it,” Annja said.

“He’s played us, Annja, and that sticks in my craw. We’re going to get that mask back one way or another. I would rather destroy it than have it become yet another one of his beautiful treasures hidden away in his offices, lost to the world.”

“It’s not the mask he’s interested in,” Annja said. “It’s never been about some wonderful artifact from the past. It’s all about greed. Those engravings on the inside of the mask are basically a treasure map. It’s not even riches that the Church took from the Moors, like I thought at first. This leads to the real treasures of the Moors, the objects so precious to them they couldn’t risk them ever falling into the Inquisitors’ hands.”

“So the ledger was their own record of what they had hidden away for safekeeping,” Roux said, piecing it together. He didn’t sound the least bit surprised by the revelation.

“Okay, but it doesn’t explain why the ledger was recorded in Latin,” Annja said.

“Unless there was someone in the Church who was helping them.”

“Would they have done that?”

“There were enough people, good people, who didn’t approve of what was happening, even though they were part of the Church. Remember, Torquemada’s uncle was unhappy about the way the Moors were being treated. He was not alone.”

Sometimes it was easy to forget just how long the old man had been around. He delivered that last statement with absolute certainty. She knew he’d been alive during the Inquisition, but he’d brushed over it. Suddenly, she was struck by all the things he must have seen—and all the things he must have done in order to stay alive. She’d never considered the possibility that he might have known some of the people caught up in it.

If there was someone in the Church helping the Mudéjars smuggle belongings away, making sure that their wealth was preserved for the next generation, that would have demanded absolute trust, absolute faith.

“Who could they have trusted that completely? Given everything that was happening all around them. Who could they have believed in?”

“I don’t know,” Roux admitted. “All I know is that I’m not having that son of a bitch Braden undo their sacrifice. He’s not getting his hands on a penny of their treasure. Come here. I need you to help me stop him.”

“I’ve got a car,” Annja said, turning the keys in her hand as she made her way back to the door. “I’ll be with you as soon as I can.”

She hung up, still not quite believing that Garin could sink so low.

Yes, he had caused enough problems in the past that now she didn’t trust him, not completely, and that went all the way back to their first meeting, when Garin and Roux had been at each other’s throats, Garin trying to kill him before he could find the last piece of Joan of Arc’s shattered sword and put it together again. That had been about staying alive. That had been Garin’s fear that once the blade was re-formed, it would undo whatever curse it was that had kept them breathing for six hundred years. Self-preservation was a powerful instinct.

This was different.

This felt like a step too far, even for Garin Braden.