Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny Read online

  Replacing the panel, I once more take hold of the box handle.

  “Let’s go, pal,” I say. “Run.”

  Together, we sprint the length of the narrow corridor that’s constructed over the Ponte Vecchio. When that portion of corridor comes to an end, we hook a right and follow the rest of the long narrow space all the way to the entrance at the Uffizi Gallery.

  The door opens for us.

  It’s Mario. His face bears an expression of confusion.

  “But where are the others?” he asks.

  “They had a meeting with their maker,” Cal answers. “They ain’t never coming back.”

  Mario purses his lips. “I’m not sure I understand. And I’m not sure I want to understand.”

  “Shall we go?” I say.

  “Yes,” Mario states. “Time is tight. Put these on. The closed-circuit cameras are operational again.”

  Gripped in his hands are two baseball hats and two white jackets that bear the word, “POLIZIA.” Without bothering to ask, we put them on over our clothing.

  “We go now,” he says, locking the door behind us. “Vai, vai. Go, go.”

  We step out into the gallery and begin making our way back down the marble staircase.

  Chapter 31

  We maintain our police disguises during the ten-minute walk to the Goose. It’s well after midnight, so the city is quiet while surrounded by a damp darkness that’s broken only by the electric street lamps. Coming upon the Goose, Cal knocks on the front door, waits.

  After a time, Matt comes to the door, looks at us through the glass.

  “Thank Christ,” he says, unlocking the deadbolt.

  We step inside, remove out Polizia disguises.

  “I thought you were dead,” Matt goes on. “Where in the bloody hell are the others?”

  “They won’t be coming back,” I say.

  “Ever,” Cal adds, with a wink of his eye.

  “They turn on you?” Matt asks, the scruffy haired man more than likely already knowing the answer to his question. “I knew something wasn’t right with those two.”

  “They turned on God,” I say. “Betrayed the one man in this life and the next you don’t wanna betray. The big guy. God.”

  “Now what?” Matt says. “We go to the police?”

  “The police will be looking for us,” I say. “For that shootout near the Forte. For the dead body we left there. For the body we’ve got hogtied in the kitchen. For the grenade we set outside the Uffizi.”

  “I tossed in the grenade,” Cal admits, not without a smile. “That was my handy work, don’t forget.”

  “Listen, Matt,” I go on. “We’re into this thing up to our neck, and even though we’re on the side of the good guys, we’re going to be seen by the authorities as big trouble. At the very least, we’re obstructing justice by taking the law and the search for the Pope into our own hands.”

  “So, what will you do to clear your names?” Matt pleads. “Our names, Chase.”

  Cal goes behind the bar, pulls a bottle of Irish whiskey off the shelf, pours himself a shot.

  “Down the hatch,” he says. Then, pouring himself another. “We already got the spear, Matt. It’s in that case.”

  Matt’s eyes light up.

  He says, “Brilliant, mates. That means all we have to do is return it to the proper authorities and we’ll be the good guys again.”

  “I’m afraid that’s not enough,” I say, my eyes drifting down to the case still gripped tightly in my hand. “We need to do something else before we turn ourselves in.”

  I go to the bar, nod at Cal. He interprets the nod as Pour me a shot too. He pours me a double, sets the whiskey before me. Placing the attaché case onto the bar, I drink the shot down.

  “We’re going to go after the Pope,” I say. “Only after we find him . . . find him alive . . . will we be ready to surrender ourselves to the authorities, Matt. Understand? The Pope himself will give us his blessing and absolution.”

  Matt purses his lips, crosses his arms over his food-stained white T-shirt. Or should I say, formerly white T-shirt.

  “And how do you propose we do that?” he asks.

  “That Nazi still tied up in the kitchen,” I say, pouring another shot for Cal and me. “How’s he feeling?”

  “Still alive and kicking,” Matt says. “Not for long I hope. I need my kitchen back by mid-morning for the bloody lunch rush.”

  “He’s our key,” I say. “He and he alone knows precisely where the Pope is being held against his will.”

  I down my shot. Cal downs his.

  “What time it is?” the bearded Scott asks.

  I look at my watch.

  “Three in the morning.”

  “What’s say we grab a few hours sleep in the cellar,” he says. “We’ve been up almost twenty-four hours. In the morning, when that Nazi bastard in the kitchen has had enough of his hogtied situation, we get the info we need out of him, and get the job done right.”

  “I agree, we should take in some sleep while we can.” I grab hold of the case. “Sounds like a plan, Cal.”

  We head down into the basement. Alistair is still asleep on the couch, which is a good sign. He’s still bleeding which is most definitely not a good sign. I feel for his pulse by pressing my fingers against his wrist. It’s slow but, steady.

  “Matt,” I say, “no matter what happens at first light, your job will be to see to it that he gets to the hospital. By then we’ll be gone already, or on our way to being gone. Understand?”

  “Got it,” Matt says.

  With that decided, Cal and I set ourselves down on the floor. Using the case for a pillow, I close my eyes. I don’t know about my big Scottish friend, but I pass out from exhaustion right away.

  He comes to me from out of a cloud-like mist. A man wearing the uniform of the first-century Roman conscript. Polished metal helmet, matching chest plate with the stamp of the Roman Legion embossed upon it. The fog lifts and I see him standing atop a rocky outcropping that’s shaped like a skull. The surface is barren and covered with dust and gravel. There’s a man being crucified on a wood cross. Two more men are crucified on each side of him. All three appear to be dead.

  The soldier is holding a spear in his right hand. He turns to me, says, “He might not be dead, Chase.”

  “Who?” I ask, taking a step toward him.

  “The guy nailed to this cross,” he says. “The one they call Jesus of Nazareth.” Refocusing on the condemned man. “He could still be alive. It’s my job to make sure he’s dead before we allow his body to come down from the cross.”

  The man on the cross is hard to look at. He’s wearing a crown of thorns. Jagged streaks of blood pour out of the thorn wounds and down his face. One of his eyes is swelled shut, the socket possibly shattered. His nose is broken, and his lips punctured. His torso and legs are covered in dozens of cuts and lacerations that must have come from a scourging. Some of the wounds on the chest are so deep, his white rib bones are exposed. The wrists and the ankles are nailed to the cross not with nails, but instead, metal spikes. How anyone could live through this horror, I don’t know.

  “Hey, Chase,” the Roman soldier says. “You listening to me, man? I ain’t got all day, you know?” Pointing to the rolling black clouds on the horizon. “Storm’s brewing and there’s already been an earthquake. I just wanna get home, get some wine in me, maybe a little one-on-one with the old lady. I’m way too old for this crap.”

  “You’re Longinus, aren’t you,” I say.

  “Hey, give the New Yorker a prize,” he says. Then, cocking his head in confusion. “Where’s New York again?”

  I stare at the man, at the gray whiskers popping out of his concave cheeks, at his crooked teeth, most of them blackened from a prolonged diet of red wine and African tobacco. But something else draws me to the man. To his face. It’s the eyes.

  The irises are clouded over.

  That’s when it hits me that this man is the victim of severe
cataracts. He’s as blind as a bat. Or close to it, anyway.

  “Listen, Chase,” he says. “I hate to be a pain, but they want me to stick this thing into this poor soul after everything he’s already been through. But orders are orders and here’s the thing . . . I can’t see all that great. Would you mind doing the honors for me?”

  My pulse elevates, my stomach tightens.

  “Me?” I say. “You want me to run a spear through Jesus Christ? Are you nuts? One day there’s going to be an entire religion built around him, and billions of people are going to follow his teachings. The bedrock of his Church will be located in a place called the Vatican which is in Rome, but his word will be taught the world over.”

  “Yes, I know,” he says. “And the world will anoint a Pope who will be the supreme leader of his church, and the Pope will live in the Vatican, and he will be protected by Saint Angelo who will surround him with stone walls if need be and yadda, yadda, yadda. Which makes it all the more important that I get this right. I mess this up by poking wildly in the air, I’m liable to change history forever. I mean, what happens if I end up stabbing him in the thigh? Imagine future populations making the sign of the cross by touching their lower leg? We can’t have that, can we Chase? We need to be accurate. You need to be accurate on my behalf.”

  He holds out the spear for me. Reluctantly, I take hold of it.

  He steps aside, says, “Try for his heart. You can get to it if you enter in through the lower abdomen and push the spear up and under the rib cage. When you come to the cardiac sack, poke right through it and into the heart. Easy peasy.”

  “If it’s so easy,” I say, “why don’t you do it?”

  “’Cause, I can’t see nothing but a blur and outlines of things. Now, please, let’s just do this and get home. This place is giving me the heebie jeebies.”

  “The term heebie jeebies hasn’t even been invented yet,” I say. “But then, neither has New York.”

  He gives me another confused look.

  “That so,” he says. “The words just sort of came out of my mouth instinctively.”

  Lightning flashes, followed by the deep rumble of thunder.

  Longinus takes a step back. “You can do eeeet, Chase,” he says. “I have complete faith.”

  Inhaling a breath, I slowly exhale it. Then, aiming the tip of the spear at Jesus' lower right abdomen, I thrust the blade in and up on through the heart. Pulling the blade out, both Longinus and I are showered by a mixture of blood and water. He immediately falls to his knees and runs his filthy hands over his face.

  “Dear God in heaven,” he bellows. “I can see! Chase, man, I can see!”

  “Truly,” I say, tasting the Lord’s salty blood on my lips and tongue, “this man was the Son of God.”

  When I come to, my head is resting on the solid concrete. Adrenalin shoots through my veins, and I’m suddenly wide awake.

  “The case,” I say, flipping my prone body around. “Cal, what the hell happened to the case?”

  But Cal is asleep, eyes closed, his mouth wide open, chest heaving with each guttural snore.

  Footsteps.

  Footsteps on the wood staircase. I turn and catch a glimpse of military booted feet making the basement corner and heading up the staircase. I shake the cobwebs from my head, jump up onto my feet.

  I give chase.

  I come around the corner, see him go from the top step to across the bar room floor where he disappears from view. It’s the Nazi we hog-tied in the kitchen. He must have somehow got hold of a knife, cut himself loose.

  Turning, I see that the kitchen door has been left wide open.

  Someone is laid out on the floor, a wide pool of blood forming beneath him. Matt. I go to him, see right away that his throat has been cut. So deep I can make out the whiteness of his vertebra through the dark red arterial blood that pulses out his ceratoid artery. He’s staring up at me like he wants me to do something. But there’s nothing I can do for him, and he’s already gone anyway.

  “You Nazi bastard,” I say, reaching inside my bush jacket, pulling the .45 from my shoulder holster. “I will get you for this.”

  Turning, I sprint out of the kitchen, across the barroom floor and punch my way out the front door.

  Chapter 32

  The dawn is just emerging on Florence.

  The sun is bright orange on the horizon and the sky crystal clear.

  I look left. The road is empty, other than the occasional bicycle chained to a bike rack, or a piece of newspaper drifting in the morning breeze. I look right and spot a man dressed in military tactical clothing. He’s carrying the case that contains the spear. He’s turning a corner in the direction of the Duomo Cathedral.

  Acting on instinct, I raise the .45, shoot.

  The blast reverberates off the brick and stone walls, the round ricocheting off the corner the Nazi disappeared around only a half-second prior. I run over the cobbled road to the corner and make the turn.

  I see him clearly now. He’s got a thirty-foot lead on me. Even from that distance, I see that he’s got the case gripped in his left hand, while in his right is the French knife he used to slice Matt from ear to ear.

  I squeeze off another round, but whiff the round, shattering against the cobbles and raining bright orange sparks.

  “Stop!” I shout.

  But he picks up speed as he enters the Piazza del Duomo. He heads not for the doors of the six-hundred-year-old cathedral, but instead Giotto’s three-hundred-foot-tall bell tower. I make my way onto the empty piazza, and follow him to the tower. He turns and peers at me, while he lifts his right leg and kicks the wood door in. The door bursts open and he enters inside.

  “You dumb son of a bitch,” I say, to myself. “I got you now. There’s no way out of there.”

  I go to the door, barrel my way through the busted door to the high-pitched squeal of the alarm and the flashing white, wall-mounted security lamps. Looking up, I see the security cameras, and I know that within a matter of minutes, this joint is going to be crawling with cops.

  Jumping over the turnstile, I head to the narrow stone stairway that wraps its way around the tower, all the way to the top. Neo-Nazi still has a decent lead on me, but this staircase is steep, the stone stair risers higher than modern risers, making the climb difficult even under normal conditions.

  Still, I’m able to take the risers two at a time, my lungs burning, heart pounding, adrenalin filling the veins and capillaries in my brain, triggering rapid fire synapses, making my temples pound. Maybe fifty steps up, I spot him, aim and shoot. The bullet misses its target, bounces off one stone block wall and then the other. He turns, grips the French knife by the blade, thrusts it down the stairwell at me. The blade narrowly misses my head and slaps the wall. He about-faces, resumes his climb.

  No choice but to follow, try and narrow the gap.

  When I come to the first landing, I scoot out into the center, peer upwards and wait. When Neo-Nazi shows himself on the second landing, I shoot. I make out a slight spray of blood coming from the top of his left arm. I’ve hit him. But I haven’t slowed him down. He turns, takes off for the top of the bell tower.

  I pursue, going up and up until the staircase becomes so narrow it’s all I can do to fit my body through it. It no longer winds around the tower structure but has instead become a circular staircase that leads up to the brass bells.

  When I get to the landing, I’m sucking the oxygen into my lungs, exhaling the CO2. The air is noticeably cooler, and the newly risen sun is bright in my eyes as I step out of the stairwell. That’s when I feel the full battering ram-like force of the aluminum case pounded against my face.

  The shock of the unexpected blow sends me onto my back, and down half a dozen stone stairs. The pain shoots from the bottom of my spine all the way up to the top of my head and back again. Electric pain that steals my breath away. But the pain turns to relief when I find I can move all my limbs without a problem.

  “Nothing broken,”
I whisper aloud, stating the obvious.

  Pulling myself up, I once more head back up the stairs. I spot him on the opposite side of the platform. Assuming combat positon, gripping the .45 with both hands, I trigger three back to back rounds. He ducks just in time and the rounds connect with a bell, the loud hollow metal noise reverberating across the city.

  I go after him across the platform.

  When I spot him again, he is teetering on the edge of the tower. He’s still got the case gripped in his hand. It’s possible that if he jumps he’ll damage or even destroy the spear.

  “Drop it,” I say, aiming the gun point-blank for his back. “You’ve got nowhere to go. Drop the case and we can work this out.”

  Turning his head slowly, Neo-Nazi smiles.

  “Heil Hitler,” he says before he jumps.

  Chapter 33

  Heart drops into my stomach.

  I make a bee-line to the platform’s edge. I’m half expecting to spot a bloody road-kill mess staining the cobbles at the base of the tower, the aluminum case having shattered and the ancient spear having been destroyed along with it.

  But Neo-Nazi is nowhere to be found.

  Or is he?

  Because when I raise my head and focus on the dome atop the cathedral, I see just how wrong I am. He’s making his way across the dome, attempting to access the gold cupola that crowns it.

  Two choices.

  Give up and watch Neo-Nazi get away with the spear and give up on saving the Pope.

  Or . . . jump.

  I gaze at the space that separates me from the tile covered dome. It seems an impossible distance away. Slipping my .45 back into its shoulder holster, I swallow a breath.

  I jump.

  Chapter 34

  I land on my chest, my hands barely gripping the metal snow stop that surrounds the entire circular perimeter of the dome’s base. My legs and feet are dangling in the air. If I lose my grip, the fall is nearly four hundred feet to the solid cobbles below.