The Judas Strain - James Rollins [6]
So Stefano had agreed, promising at first to deliver it up. What was one small nondescript stone obelisk? The object had remained crated for almost a full century according to the manifest. And its terse description probably explained why: Unmarked marble obelisk, excavated in Tanis, dated to the late dynastic period (26th Dynasty, 615 B.C.). There was nothing unusual or particularly intriguing, unless one looked closer, followed its trail of provenance. It had come out of a collection that graced one of the Musei Vaticani in Rome: the Gregorian Egyptian Museum.
How it ended up in the vaults here in Venice was unknown.
Then yesterday morning, Stefano had received a newspaper clipping, sent by private courier in an envelope with a single symbol stamped into a wax seal.
The Greek letter sigma.
He still did not understand the significance of the seal, but he did understand the import of the enclosed clipping. A single article, dated three days prior, reported news of a man’s body found on an Aegean beach, his throat slashed, his body bloated and nested with feasting eels. An especially fierce storm surge had returned the body from its watery grave. Dental records identified the body as that of his university colleague, the one who had reportedly sent the Egyptian.
The man had been dead for weeks.
Shock had caused Stefano to act rashly. He clutched the heavy object to his bosom, wrapped in sackcloth and still prickling with packing hay.
Stefano had stolen the obelisk from the vault, knowing the act would put him, his wife, his whole family, at risk.
He’d had no choice. Along with the dire article, the sealed envelope had contained a single message, unsigned, but plainly scrawled in a hurry, in a woman’s hand, a warning. What the note contended seemed impossible, incredible, but he had tested the claim himself. It had proved true.
Tears threatened as he ran, a sob choked his throat.
No choice.
The obelisk must not fall into the hands of the Egyptian. Still, it was a burden he refused to shoulder any longer than necessary. His wife, his daughter…he pictured the bloated body of his colleague. Would the same befall his family?
Oh, Maria, what have I done?
There was only one who could take this burden from him. The one who had sent the envelope, a warning sealed with a Greek letter. At the end of her note, a place had been named, along with a time.
He was already late.
Somehow the Egyptian had discovered his theft, must have sensed Stefano was going to betray him. So he had come for it at dawn. Stefano had barely escaped his offices. He had fled on foot.
But not fast enough.
He checked over his shoulder. The Egyptian had vanished into the milling crowd of tourists.
Turning back around, Stefano stumbled through the shadow of the square’s bell tower, the Campanile di San Marco. Once the brick tower had served as the city’s watchtower, overlooking the nearby docks and guarding the port. Would that it could protect him now.
His goal lay across a small piazzetta. Ahead rose the Palazzo Ducal, the fourteenth-century palace of Venice’s former dukes. Its two levels of Gothic arches beckoned, offering salvation in Istrian stone and rosy Veronese marble.
Clutching his prize, he stumbled across the street.
Was she still there? Would she take the burden?
He rushed toward the sheltering shadows, escaping the blaze of the sun and the glare off the neighboring sea. He needed to be lost in the maze of the palace. Besides housing the duke’s personal residence, the Palazzo Ducal also served as a governmental office building, a courthouse, a council chamber, even an old prison. A newer prison