The Judas Strain - James Rollins [9]
“This way, prefetto.” Claudio held the drape aside.
“Grazie, Claudio.”
Beyond the tarp, the upper chamber was oven-hot, as if the stones of the tower still retained heat from the two-year-old fire. But it was just the midday sun baking the tallest tower of the Vatican. Rome was going through an especially scorching heat wave. Vigor prayed for a bit of a breeze, for the Torre dei Venti to prove its namesake with a gust of wind.
But Vigor also knew most of the sweat from his brow had nothing to do with the heat or the long climb in a cassock. Since the fires, he had avoided coming all the way up here, directing from afar. Even now he kept his back to one of the chambers off to the side.
He once had had another assistant, before Claudio.
Jakob.
It hadn’t been only books that had been lost to the flames here.
“There you are!” a voice boomed.
Dr. Balthazar Pinosso, overseer of the Meridian Room’s restoration project, strode across the circular chamber. The man was a giant, nearly seven feet tall, dressed almost like a surgeon in white with paper-booted feet. He had a respirator pushed to the top of his head. Vigor knew him well. Balthazar was dean of the art history department at the Gregorian University, where Vigor had once served as the head of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology.
“Prefect Verona, thank you for coming so promptly.” The large man glanced at his wristwatch and rolled his eyes, silently and amusingly commenting on his slow climb.
Vigor appreciated his gentle teasing. After he’d assumed the high mantle of the archives, few dared to speak to him beyond reverential tones. “If I was as long-legged as you, Balthazar, I could have taken two stairs at a time and gotten here well ahead of poor Claudio.”
“Then best we finish here so you can return for your usual afternoon nap. I’d hate to disturb such diligent labors.”
Despite the man’s joviality, Vigor recognized a bit of tension in his eyes. He also noted that Balthazar had dismissed all the men and women who worked alongside him on the restoration. Recognizing this, Vigor waved Claudio back toward the stair.
“Could you give us a few moments of privacy, Claudio?”
“Certainly, prefetto.”
Once his assistant had retreated back to the stairs and vanished through the drape of plastic tarp, Vigor returned his attention to his former colleague. “Balthazar, why this urgency?”
“Come. I’ll show you.”
As the man stepped toward the far side of the chamber, Vigor saw that the room’s restorations were nearing completion. All along the circular walls and ceilings, Nicolò Circignani’s famous frescoes depicted scenes from the Bible, with cherubs and clouds above. A few scenes were still crisscrossed with silk grids, awaiting further work. But most of the repairs were already complete. Even the carving of the zodiac on the floor had been cleaned and polished down to its bare marble. Off to the side, a single spear of light pierced a quarter-size hole in the wall, spiking down atop the room’s slab floor, illuminating the white marble meridian line that ran across the dark floor, turning the chamber into a sixteenth-century solar observatory.
On the far side, Balthazar parted a drape to reveal a small side closet. It even looked like the original stout door was still intact, evident from the charring on its thick wooden surface.
The tall historian tapped one of the bronze bolts that pegged the door. “We discovered the door has a bronze core. Lucky for that. It preserved what was in this room.”
Despite Vigor’s trepidation at being here, his curiosity was piqued. “What was in there?”
Balthazar pulled the door open. It was a cramped, windowless space, stone-walled, barely room for two people to stand abreast. Two shelves rose on either side, floor to ceiling, crowded with leather-bound books. Despite the reek of fresh paint, the mustiness of the chamber wafted out, proving the power of antiquity over human effort.
“The contents were inventoried when we first took over here and cleared the closet,” Balthazar explained. “But nothing of great significance