Chase Baker and the Spear of Destiny Page 15

  Looking up, I see Neo-Nazi lose his footing on the slippery, loose shingles. He goes down face first and begins sliding down the curved dome in my direction. Until he catches himself and attempts to regain his footing. Just the sight of him falling provides me with enough renewed strength to pull myself up and over the metal stop.

  He turns, looks at me, and like an insect, begins crawling back up the dome on all fours. But the spear case and the wound in his shoulder is making his forward progress awkward, and he slips again. This time, he barrels right into me, and we nearly both go over the side together.

  I go for my gun, but he once again slams me in the face with the case. I feel consciousness slipping away, the world around me turning on and off like a defective light bulb. Gravity is pulling at me. It wants to dig its claws into me, pull me backward off the side of the Cathedral and to my death on the cobbles below.

  Neo-Nazi rears back with the case and hits me again. The day turns into night, for just a second or two, until the daylight returns. But I am sliding off the dome, losing control, my strength almost all gone.

  But that’s when I see him.

  The man from my dreams. The Roman soldier. I see Longinus standing on the Duomo cupola. He’s looking down at me, his now healed eyes open wide. It’s as if he’s saying Don’t die on me, Chase. Not when so much is at stake. My mind spins. Suddenly, the dream I experienced just a couple of hours ago comes back to me. Like a video on fast forward, I see myself back on Golgotha, standing beside Longinus as he instructs me to stab the crucified Jesus.

  I remember his words.

  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 . . .

  Is it possible Rickman and his people didn’t hide the Pope in another country? That they didn’t toss him into the river once they ripped the spear tip off his neck? Is it conceivable they took him to a place that exists less than a mile away from the Vatican? A place that serves as a fortress for the Pope during times of siege?

  It’s all beginning to make sense.

  I feel the strength suddenly return to my muscles, as though my veins have been injected with a drug. I regain my balance, reach out with my left hand, grab hold of the aluminum case, snatch it from Neo-Nazi’s hand.

  The look on his face is total shock. He reaches for my throat, squeezes.

  I reach into my jacket, draw the .45. Shove the barrel into his ribs.

  “Tell me where the Pope is,” I insist

  “Go to hell,” he says, his voice angry and coming from his mouth like a hissing serpent. “No one can stop the Fourth Reich. No one. Now that we possess the Spear of Destiny.”

  I jam the gun barrel harder into his side.

  The hand he has around my throat begins to tremble. The fear settles into his eyes.

  “You won’t shoot me,” he spits. “You do not have the guts.”

  I pull the barrel away from his gut, press it against his thigh, pull the trigger.

  He screams. The fear in his eyes is now replaced with tears.

  “Please,” he says, as he slides further down to the edge of the dome. “I’m . . . falling.”

  “Tell me where the Pope is,” I demand. “Is it Castle St. Angelo?”

  But he just looks up at me, his eyes tear-filled and cloudy.

  “Tell me,” I demand, “and you will live.”

  “Okay, okay. I . . . will . . . tell . . . you.”

  I wait, my hand that grips the case, still holding onto his hand.

  “Come . . . closer,” he says. “I am . . . so weak . . . Lean into me.”

  I come closer, my ear close to his mouth.

  “Fuck . . . you,” he hisses.

  He pulls his hand away from mine.

  He falls.

  Chapter 35

  His eyes go wide as he falls backward, a strange smile painting his face as if in the final act of his life, he got the better of me. But then I hear the spatter of his body against the cobblestone paving . . . feel it as much as I hear it . . . and I know that whatever smile he wore on the way down is replaced with something far worse, now that his soul resides in hell.

  Sirens.

  I’ve got to get the hell out of here before the police take me into custody.

  That’s when I hear, “Chase, Chase!”

  A quick glance over my shoulder, up toward the cupola. I’ll be damned. It’s Cal. I don’t know how it’s possible he made it up on top of the cathedral this early in the day. All I know is that I’m one grateful son of a bitch right about now.

  “We have to move,” he shouts, both his hands cupped over his mouth like a megaphone. “In another minute Florence will be crawling with police!”

  The attaché case in hand, I slowly raise myself up and shift myself along the narrow circular perimeter until I come to a metal ladder that spans the entire length of the dome. It’s just one of a series of narrow black ladders that must be utilized by the crews who inspect and replace the dome’s thousands of slate tiles on a regular basis. Thank luck or Providence that in all his panic, the Neo-Nazi never noticed the ladders or he might be gone-baby-gone by now with the spear.

  I make the climb up the ladder and to the cupola in under a minute. By then it’s not only sirens we’re hearing, but police cars coming to a screeching stop inside the piazza. Police officers shout out orders in Italian, their deep voices reverberating off the stone walls of the Cathedral, the bell tower, and the old hexagonal-shaped Baptistry.

  “Jesus, Cal,” I say, “where the hell can we go without running into a cop? Florence is crawling with them.”

  “Follow me,” he says. “I know of a way out of here. But we have to be quick about it.”

  “Lead the way,” I say.

  He leads me inside the dome and onto a stone staircase that winds its way along the dome perimeter, much like the narrow stone staircase that revolved around the bell tower perimeter. When we come to the bottom, we enter the giant, cavernous cathedral. It’s empty at this time of the morning, which is a good thing for us.

  “Come on, Chase,” Cal pushes. “Follow me to the basement gift shop stairs.”

  “The gift shop stairs,” I say. “Are you kidding?”

  “Just keep following,” he says. “I know a guy who knows a guy.”

  “And thank God for that.”

  There’s a staircase that’s located toward the back of the Cathedral. It leads down into the bowels of the almost eight-hundred-year-old house of God. When we come to the bottom of the stairs, the gift shop is situated to our right-hand side, while to the left, are the exposed stone foundations of the massive structure.

  Cal proceeds along a corridor that fades into darkness. But that darkness is suddenly broken when a flashlight is triggered.

  “Calum Candlish,” says a deep husky voice. “Is that you?”

  “You know it’s me, Daniel,” Cal says. “Thank you for agreeing to meet me.”

  We come upon a small man. A man barely five feet tall. He’s stocky, his face clean shaven, hair black with some gray mixed in. He’s not Italian, but judging by his eyes and his accent, I peg him for a Philippine. Florence is home to many Filipinos.

  Cal quickly introduces us. Then, looking into my eyes, he says, “Two thousand euros.”

  I return the look.

  “I’ll see what’s left,” I say, digging into my pocket, producing a wad of bills. When I count out two thousand, I feel relieved. I hand Danny the bills. He counts it, stuffs it into his pocket.

  “Please,” he says turning. “This way.”

  Cal follows. “Watch your head, Chase,” he warns. “Low ceiling beams.”

  We move on in a darkness that would be absolute if not for Danny’s flashlight, until we come to a heavy wood door that’s secured with an old padlock, like the kind that secured the doors inside the Vasari Corridor. Danny produces a skeleton key from a rin
g that must hold a hundred keys, both new and old. The keyring is attached to his leather belt by means of a retractable cable device.

  He unlocks the door.

  “You have a flashlight?” Danny says. “I can provide you with mine for another five hundred euros.”

  I reach into my bush jacket pocket, pull out the Maglite. Depressing its rear, latex covered trigger, I produce a bright round beam of white LED light. The beam reveals a long corridor formed by stone foundations and massive overhead wood ceiling beams.

  “You know where to go from here, Cal.” Danny presents this like a question, but I’m guessing it’s more like a statement of fact.

  Cal places his big hand on the smaller man’s shoulder.

  “Thank you, my friend,” he says. “I won’t forget your kindness.”

  “You have paid me well,” Danny says with a smile. “That is kindness enough. Go with God.”

  “Let’s go, Baker,” Cal says. “There’s only so much time.”

  We enter the dark bowels of Florence.

  Chapter 36

  The tunnel is damp, and we’re far enough underground that some of the packed gravel-covered surface is soaking in ground water. The smell is old mold and decay. We pass through spider webs as thick as shoelaces. A black spider with an orange belly scurries up its web and disappears behind the old ceiling beam. A centipede, that must be a foot long, speeds along the wall. Its many little legs move in unison to propel its long exo-shell-covered body along the impossibly narrow space between two old foundation stones.

  We move on, not saying anything, just feeling the cool dampness that surrounds our bodies. Feeling the claustrophobia that tickles my nerves. We seem to be going deeper and deeper as we cross through the central portion of the city, the smell of the air growing more rancid with each step.

  That’s when I make out the noise. It’s subtle at first, like the rustle of a paper bag. But then the further we move on, the louder the noise grows until the gentle rustling becomes loud flapping and slapping, like loose skin pounding loose skin.

  Cal stops so suddenly, I nearly run into his broad backside.

  “Chase,” he says, voice low, tone stressed. “Give me your Maglite.”

  Feeling for the Maglite in my jacket with my free hand, I give it to him. He points it not directly ahead but at an upward angle, so that it exposes the ceiling, and the thousands of bats that are hanging from it.

  I feel a lump in my chest.

  “That explains the noise,” I say.

  “When I give you the word,” Cal says, under his breath, “drop down flat on your belly and cover your face.”

  The noise getting louder. More intense. The bats are flapping their leathery wings, baring their fangs.

  “How the hell did bats get inside a tunnel?” I say.

  “They were brought here back in the seventeen hundreds with the Romanians. It’s like a cave down here, and they’ve thrived.”

  The noise rises in intensity.

  “Vampire bats,” I say, swallowing. “That whole thing about them being killers is just a fable, right? You know, bite our necks, drink our blood, turn us into vampires? Just the stuff you see in old black and white Bello Lugosi flicks or J.R. Rain novels.”

  “Believe what you want,” he says. “But just be ready.”

  The bats are not only flapping their wings, they are screeching, their fangs white, long, and curved like a half moon in the powerful Maglite beam. When one of the bats drops from the wood beam it was clinging to by its claws, another follows. Then two more follow.

  “Word!” Cal barks.

  As instructed, I drop down flat onto my chest and belly. So hard I’m afraid the spear case might spring open. I cover my face with my arms, and hold onto the case with every bit of strength inside me like it contains my beating heart.

  The bats are dive bombing us, flying so close to my head I can feel their wings against my scalp. I can also feel something else. Something squishy and moist under my chest and belly. Bat shit. The floor is covered with it.

  “How long will this last?” I shout. “I’m about to die in bat excrement.”

  “I’m not sure,” Cal responds. “Just try not to get bitten.”

  The winged creatures come at us with a ferocity I never would have imagined. The sound is so high-pitched and loud, it feels like my eardrums are bursting. A bat lands on my shoulder, goes for my neck with his teeth. I swipe it off just in time. Another one lands and then another. I manage to swipe them both off.

  “Christ, they’re trying to bite me, Cal!”

  “Play dead,” he says. “You play dead, they can’t see you!”

  “How do you know?”

  “It also helps if you shut the hell up. They don’t fly with eyes, they fly with sonar. They’re attracted to noise even more than movement.”

  “How do you know this shit? You run a bar. Before that, you were a soldier.”

  “Bartenders know a little bit about everything. The good ones anyway.”

  “So, that explains why you suck at cards.”

  “Will you shut up already, Baker?”

  I decide to take the big man’s advice before one of these bats gets through and bites my neck, gives me one hell of a case of rabies.

  Silence and stillness do the trick.

  After maybe a full minute of acting like a mannequin, the bats manage to calm down and reclaim their upside down perches on the old ceiling beams.

  After a few beats, Cal slowly raises himself back up, brushes the bat crap from off his chest and thighs. He gives me a hand signal that tells me to get up, but to do so quietly and slowly.

  I do it, all the time wiping the bat droppings away from my bush jacket and jeans.

  Without another word, he starts moving forward, shining the Maglite not at the ceiling, but on the floor out ahead of us. We walk like that for another two hundred feet or more until we come to another wood door that’s not secured with a lock. Cal opens it, and we step on through.

  We enter a wide-open room that’s octagonal in shape. The floor is stone, and the walls are made of white marble that’s collected dirt and filth over the years.

  “This place was built by Brunelleschi more than five hundred years ago,” Cal offers. “Same guy who built the dome on the Cathedral. As you can see it’s not open to the public.”

  “How the hell do we get out of here?”

  He shines the light on a pair of double doors that are constructed of steel plates that must date back to the Renaissance era.

  “Wait,” I go on. “Don’t tell me. A friend of a friend.”

  “Danny took care of us,” he says. “Go to the doors. They should be open. Just pull it open.”

  Making my way across the floor, my boot heel clicking against the marble floor, I come to the door, push it open. Stepping slowly outside, I look both ways along the quiet cobbled street. Although I can still make out the sirens sounding off in the direction of the Piazza Del Duomo, I’m not making out any sirens in the immediate vicinity.

  I wave Cal on.

  He joins me outside, closing the door behind him. Making a slow 360° revolution on the balls of my feet, I try and gather my bearings.

  “I think I know where I am,” I say. “My apartment isn’t far from here.”

  “Do we need to go there?” Cal asks.

  “We need money,” I tell him. “And extra bullets.”

  “For what?” Cal says.

  “For the trip back down to Rome,” I say. “We’re going to free the Pope from the Castle St. Angelo.”

  Chapter 37

  We make it up to my apartment on Via Guelfa without being spotted. That much I’m sure about. But what won’t be a certainty is making it to Rome without being followed, either by any Neo-Nazis still hanging around, or the police . . . or both. No choice but to get there as fast as possible.

  “Train or car?” Cal asks, popping the top on a bottle of beer, while I stuff a wad of Euros in my pocket and fill two extra
magazines with .45 cal automatic hollow-points.

  “How long will it take to get a car?” I ask.

  “Could take forever,” Cal says. “I’m just about all out of favors in this town. It’s not like I can go back to Fix Betti for any more help. Not while his .30 cal, his RPG, and his automatic rifles are still missing.”

  “Then no choice but to take the train,” I say. “Next one out to Rome.”

  “Lots of cops in the train station,” he reminds me.

  “Chance we gotta take. Besides, no one has made out our faces. We’re liable to skate on through without anyone giving us a second look.”

  “Doesn’t make me feel any better, Chase.”

  I steal a sip of his beer . . . my beer, I should say.

  “The things one must do to save the world,” I declare. Chase, the resolute.

  My laptop is set out on a dining room table that serves as my writing desk. It’s not a place to display fine china, but instead, stacks of papers, old manuscripts that contain line edits in various colored Sharpie, a manual Olivetti Lettera 32 typewriter, a copy of the St. James Bible, and a desk lamp.

  I type ‘Santa Maria Novella train schedule’ into the Google search engine and wait. When the schedule appears a second later, I find a train that will depart for Rome in just ten minutes. It’s an express which is exactly what we want since it will get us there in just under an hour and a half.

  “That’s the train we need,” I say, clicking on the Purchase button, and securing two electronic tickets that are immediately delivered to my email. Pulling out my smartphone, I check my emails to see if the tickets have successfully appeared. They have.

  “Let’s bolt,” I say, stuffing the phone back into the chest pocket on my jacket. “We’ll have to run if we’re going to make it.”

  “I can run,” Cal says, finishing the beer, setting the can on the counter in the kitchen. “You’re more of a hobbler, old timer.”