The face of evil.

And the face of greed...

The video showed a nearly naked man bloodied and beaten. Even as archaeologist and TV presenter Annja Creed watched, the clock on his suicide vest ticked down, and precious seconds were lost. But this was no stranger. Garin was her friend. Their fates had been bound by the secrets of Joan of Arc’s sword. And Annja had less than twenty-four hours to save his life...

The price for Garin’s life was the lost mask of Torquemada, rumored to have been cast by the Grand Inquisitor himself, five hundred years ago during the Spanish Inquisition. Abandoned crypts, lost palaces and a cruel and ancient brotherhood: all clues to the mask’s complicated and deadly mystery that Annja, and her mentor, Roux—using all of their considerable resources and cunning—must solve before Garin runs out of time.

Annja Creed is facing her greatest trial. And not even the holy sword of Joan of Arc can spare her from the final judgment.

“It’s rather a plain church, don’t you think?”

Annja glanced around, looking for someone who stood out, someone who was obviously watching her, who had a phone to his ear. The street was quiet. She couldn’t see anyone. But they knew where she was.

“Is this a social call?” she said into the phone, still looking up and down the street.

“No. Definitely not. I like to think of it as incentivizing.” The man on the other end laughed. In the background, she heard a cry of pain. Garin. Why were they doing this to him? Why torture him? If he knew where the mask was, he would have told them. He wasn’t a hero. There was only one thing Garin Braden valued above and beyond the possession of beautiful things, and that was

self-preservation. “There’s someone here who wants to talk to you,” he said.

There was a pause. A second. Two. It felt like forever.

A weak and mumbling voice spoke. “Don’t do it...don’t give them what they want. Even if you find it...”

It was Garin. The phone was snatched away before he could finish speaking. The next thing she heard was a grunt and the sound of flesh slapping flesh.

“Garin!” Annja called, unable to stop herself.

“You’ve wasted four hours, Miss Creed. Don’t waste any more.” The kidnapper killed the connection.

Death Mask

Alex Archer

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

The Legend

Prologue

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

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24

25

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28

29

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31

32

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40

Epilogue

Copyright

PROLOGUE

Late-night traffic roared along Madrid’s Gran Vía. These cars were status symbols driven by men in the throes of their midlife crises. Overpowered engines strained in the chassis of superlight metal. Beautiful people stumbled in and out of bars. There was no room for ugliness or poverty in this make-believe world that pretended not to be in turmoil. They partied hard and loud, the constant babble of noise disguising the rotors of the approaching helicopter.

It was a quarter to midnight, not quite the magical hour when the luxury sports cars would turn into pumpkins and the men behind the wheel into the rats they were deep down.

The men on board the helicopter paid no attention to the world below. They had their mission objectives and wouldn’t be distracted from them by little black dresses. They had the job timed down to the second. They had covered every possible parameter and were prepared for every eventuality. They would be long gone before the first alarm sounded.

The helicopter circled what passed for one of the only skyscrapers in the downtown area, giving the six men on board time to confirm they were good to go, and then they pulled ski masks down over their faces. This was a well-drilled team, used to dealing with high-risk ops, infiltrations and extractions, scenarios which could turn on a dime. That killed complacency before it could get a foothold in their ranks. Every op carried danger. Planning minimized the risk but never truly took it away.

The first man jumped out seconds before the skids had settled on the roof of the office block. Head down, he ran hard, arms and legs pumping, toward the infiltration point. The arrogance of money had made their job so much easier. A helipad on the roof of an office block? It was like taking candy from a baby.

Nine seconds after the initial breach lines were tethered to the building, the first three men stepped off the edge of the roof, beginning to rappel down the side. The second trio was nine seconds behind them. The building’s panoramic windows were made from high-tensile glass, essentially bulletproof. The men drew level with the target’s floor, pulling off to pause on either side of his office. The front three men attached devices right, left and top-center on the huge window. Bullets were one thing, concentrated explosives quite another. A hand went up, each finger closing one second after the other, counting down to the detonation. Noise-reduction earbuds saved their hearing as the charges blew, and the men turned their faces away to protect their eyes as the glass shattered.

The window blew inward, showering the three men deadlocked in a late-night meeting in the Rojo International offices with deadly rain that cut through their designer threads as if they were paper.

Less than a minute had passed since the team had rolled out of the helicopter. Fifty-five seconds, to be precise.

All six team members swung inside the gaping wound in the side of the skyscraper before the last glass fragments had started their downward spiral to the street below.

A hail of gunfire tore into the ceiling, meant purely to terrify.

It had the desired effect.

A second volley of gunfire had two of the suits dancing in jerky rhythm as their bodies were riddled with bullets. Blood spattered the wall behind them, leaving silhouettes of the dying clearly visible.

The third man sat motionless in the midst of the carnage. Well, not quite motionless, the team leader realized, seeing the man’s eyes dart to the Mark Rothko painting on the wall that had caught some of the blood spray. The arc of red was incongruous with the blocks of color. The man seemed more concerned about the damage to his painting than he was about the two men bleeding out on the expensive silk rug.

He said nothing.

The boardroom door burst open and another man—broad, burly and dead before he took his first step inside the room—managed a single shot before a hail of bullets took him down. The bullets cut through his torso, the impact driving him back through the doorway.

“Two more,” the leader said, motioning left and right for two of his men to go on the hunt while the other three followed him.

The man at the table didn’t so much as flinch as cable ties were slipped around his wrists and cinched so tightly they drew blood. He looked up at the security camera high in the corner of the room, making sure it saw everything. The red light winked back. It was recording.

“You,” the leader said to one of his men, who crossed the room quickly and blacked out the lens with spray paint.

Ninety seconds had passed since the helicopter had touched down.

Everything was on schedule. Clockwork precision. The silent alarm would have been tripped the second the window shattered. Police response times were fast when it was big money they were protecting, but there was no sign of any kind of armed response yet. The leader had it timed to two minutes twenty-five for the first siren. Anything after that was sloppy, and he wasn’t about to let sloppiness carry the day. He’d planned for two twenty-five; he’d stick with the plan. More gunfire ripped through the office, followed by the crash of furniture being tipped over.

There was a single shot after that, then silence.

The two men sent on patrol returned to the boardroom as a harness was being strapped to their target’s chest. One of them gave a single nod, confirming that everything had been taken care of.

No one had imagined an “unbreakable” window on the thirty-second floor posed a substantial security risk. Not the architects. Not the men who had taken up residence in the high castle of Rojo International’s offices. And most importantly, not the man being strapped into the harness by his team.

“Move,” the team’s Number Two barked, hauling their captive to his feet.

The man resisted, but that only resulted in pain as Number Two delivered a punishing blow to his gut that doubled him up, and as his head came down, a crunching right uppercut that sent him staggering sideways. “Move,” Number Two repeated, and this time the man did as he was told.

“You are going to pay for this,” he snarled. Rather than another blow, his defiance was paid back with silence—a wad of tissues forced into his mouth and a strip of gaffer tape slapped across it. Number Two dragged him to the window and stood only inches from the edge, grabbing a fistful of his hair and forcing him to look down.

The drop was dizzying.

“A spectacular view, I’m sure you’ll agree, Mr. Braden?” the team leader said, bracing himself against the window frame. “An entire city quite literally at your feet. Look at it. Drink it in. It could well be the last thing you ever see. I’d hate for you to forget it.”

* * *

GARIN BRADEN WASN’T used to people treating him like this. He wasn’t a victim. He’d lived his entire long life by one simple credo: “Do unto others before they can do unto you.” A man didn’t get to Garin’s age by being a victim. He pushed back against the hand on his head, but the man didn’t relinquish his grip. Garin felt the air rush into his face. It was all too easy to imagine the sidewalk rushing toward him. He swallowed. He wasn’t in control. He didn’t like that. He tried to run through his options, but with the harness pinning his arms, and the assassin’s fingers tangled in his hair, there was little he could do. Sadly, learning how to fly wasn’t possible, though it was looking increasingly like a necessity. Lacking wings, Garin felt hands on the center of his spine and then he was kicking against nothing, falling.

For a second—the silence between terrified heartbeats—he was suspended in the air thirty-two stories above the Madrid streets before the line hooked through his harness snapped taut and stopped his plunging descent. And then he was rising as he was hoisted toward the roof.

Less than a minute later, a battered and bloody Garin Braden was secure in the helicopter, the last of the team clambering in to join him; another thirty seconds and they were airborne.

They were more than half a mile away before they heard the sirens of the first responders.

All the money in the world hadn’t been able to keep Garin Braden safe.

The clock was ticking.

1

24:00—Madrid

The drumming vibration of her cell phone on the nightstand dragged Annja Creed out of sleep. For a moment the noise had been part of the surreal landscape of her imagination, but as she opened her eyes she completely forgot what she’d been dreaming. Annja had been in Valencia for a week working on a piece on gargoyles for Chasing History’s Monsters, and now she was in Madrid, recharging her batteries. There was nothing like the mix of modernity and history as a backdrop for a little R & R. She looked at the alarm clock and saw it was ungodly early, for a vacation day. Who in their right mind would be calling? Then she realized it was probably Doug Morrell, completely forgetting she’d booked the next few days off. Her producer could be a pain when she was overseas, always wanting an update, querying her expense claim or just reminding her the show needed to be sexy. That was the nature of the beast, after all. Sexy television. Sexy history. Sexy monsters. Sexy claims of links between the two. She’d just turned the latest segment in. Doug could wait. She rolled over and closed her eyes again, but a second and a third call came in quick succession.

She gave in and picked up.

“What do you want, Doug? It’s the middle of the night.”

That wasn’t quite true. The morning sun filtered through the too-thin hotel curtains, picking out the cigarette-smoke discolorations on the fabric.

It wasn’t Doug. “Check your email. Click on the link. I will wait,” the voice said. She couldn’t place it.

“Who is this?” Annja heard another voice in the background but couldn’t catch what was being said. The line went dead. She checked her recent calls, but the number had been blocked. Annja pushed the covers back and sat up. It was almost seven, and the cleaners were already moving around outside her room, no doubt wishing she’d go down for breakfast so they could do their jobs.

She got out of bed reluctantly and headed through to the bathroom. She’d check her email, but not before taking a hot shower to help wake her up.

When she emerged, one towel wrapped around her and another making a turban around her wet hair, she crossed the floor to her laptop on the dressing table and powered it up.

She had a single new email.

The subject line said Urgent, and the sender was Garin Braden.

But it hadn’t been Garin’s voice on the phone.

If you want to see Mr. Braden alive again, follow this link.

Annja clicked.

A window opened on her screen and a few seconds later the image resolved into what looked like a live video feed. The sole image on the screen was a digital clock that read 23:52:27. It took her a couple seconds to realize it was counting backward from 24:00:00.

“Hello, Annja, so glad you could finally join us,” a voice said. It sounded different through the tinny speakers than it had on the phone. There was no sign of the male speaker on the screen.“Time is precious. You have already wasted seven and a half minutes of it.”

Wasted?

She didn’t know what was going on, and the steaming-hot water had only dragged her so far from sleep. “Stop messing around, Garin. I’m tired and in no mood for your stupid jokes.”

The camera zoomed out, gradually revealing that the clock was in the middle of a man’s chest. He was slumped in a chair, his hands tied behind his back. He was breathing, but he was bloodied and bruised, and Annja couldn’t tell if he was conscious. Wires ran from the clock to a box beneath the chair he was tied to. Water was thrown from off camera, soaking his blood-streaked shirt. The man lifted his head slowly, staring at the camera through one swollen eye. His mouth was smeared with red. Still, he was immediately recognizable.

“Garin!” Annja said, his name catching in her throat.

His eyes didn’t seem to register his name or Annja’s voice. He was dazed and confused and clearly had no idea what was going on.

“What do you want?” Annja asked.

“I like that,” said the off-camera voice. “Straight down to business. No pretense of bargaining. No bluster or demands that I let him go. We can work together, Miss Creed.”

“What do you want?” Annja repeated.

“The Mask of Torquemada.”

“The what?” She knew exactly what the voice had said, and had a good idea what it had meant. But that didn’t mean she’d be able to meet this person’s demands.

“Do you really want to waste time pretending you don’t know what I am talking about, Miss Creed?” the voice said. “Nine minutes. Ticktock. Ticktock. The more time you waste now, the less you will have to save your friend. Find the mask or your friend dies. Is that incentive enough for you? Twenty-three hours, fifty-one minutes.”

“You can’t expect me to find something that’s been lost for centuries in a single day. That’s impossible.”

“You better hope not, for Mr. Braden’s sake.”

“This is insane! I don’t have the first idea where to start looking...or what I’m even looking for. You can’t just say ‘Find it.’ I’m not a miracle worker!”

“Well, there’s one man here who is desperately hoping you are, Miss Creed. His life depends upon it. I will call you again in a few hours to see how you’re getting on. Godspeed, Annja Creed. Ticktock. Ticktock.” The camera zoomed in to focus on the clock in the middle of Garin’s chest, then panned up to his face. “Just in case you need reminding.”

Annja couldn’t look away.

Garin looked at her with dead eyes.

She wondered if he had been drugged or just beaten so badly he couldn’t focus.

His head slumped forward again. This time it stayed down.

Annja watched as the clock ticked down another minute. She had less than a day to save Garin, with no idea where to begin, no clue as to where he might be. Normally there was one man she’d turn to if she needed technology to help her find someone—Garin. He wasn’t going to be able to help her now.

She continued to stare at the screen, trying to learn as much as she could about the place he was being held, but there was precious little to be gleaned from it. The light was artificial, the walls behind him were bare brick. It could have been, quite literally, anywhere in the world.

Another minute passed by and she knew she had to do something; anything.

She’d wasted ten minutes of his life already.

Ticktock. Ticktock.

2

23:45—Madrid

“Annja? As much as I adore you, my dear, I adore my sleep much more.”

“This is work,” Annja said.

“A four-letter word,” Roux said. She could imagine the smile playing across his lips as he grumbled. He could be a crank at the best of times. “And not one of the more amusing ones.”

“Have you heard from Garin?”

“Not recently. Last week. Why?”

“I was just sent a link to a video chat. Garin was on the other end. There was a clock strapped to his chest and a bomb under his chair. He was in a bad way. Beaten bloody.”

“Couldn’t happen to a nicer chap.”

“This is serious,” she said. “In less than twenty-four hours that clock hits zero and the bomb detonates, taking Garin with it. That’s the threat.”

“I assume this is a kidnapping? So what do they want?”

She heard him moving around the château, talking with her as he made his way to his study.

“They’re asking for the Mask of Torquemada,” she said. It came out in a more matter-of-fact way than she’d expected. Everyone knew who Torquemada was—a Dominican zealot who rose up to become the first Grand Inquisitor of the Spanish Inquisition, rabidly anti-Semitic, the scourge of the Moors—but in all the stories she’d heard of his vile purge, there had never been anything about a mask.

“Good luck with that,” Roux said dismissively. “It’s been missing for more years than I can remember.”

“So there is a mask. But you were there, weren’t you? You and Garin.”

“I may have been,” Roux said, not giving anything away. “But I had other things on my mind than a mad Dominican obsessed with religious purity. I’d already had a lifetime of that. I was in France. It’s not like we had CNN giving us hourly updates as the atrocities rolled on, but yes, you heard things, obviously. It was easy to throw accusations around, and you know the old adages about mud sticking, no smoke without fire. People were willing to believe anything if it meant they were safe from the worst of it, that it couldn’t happen to them. Torquemada was a Christian zealot. He was the driving force behind maybe as many as two hundred thousand Jews fleeing Spain. His priests encouraged another fifty thousand to convert to Christianity. Though I use the term encouraged in its most liberal sense.”

“And the mask?”

“If it ever existed, buried with him.”

“So we’re just talking about a little tomb-robbing here. I guess I can deal with that. Wouldn’t be the first time. Where’s he buried? Do we know?” She had already forwarded the email to Roux, along with the link.

“Yes. It’s a matter of public record. Unfortunately, his grave was ransacked only a couple of years before the Inquisition was disbanded.” Meaning the task had already become exponentially more difficult than she’d thought it would be in the matter of a few seconds. “They took everything in the tomb. Burned his bones, mask, everything destroyed in an auto-da-fé. An act of faith.” He fell silent and she knew he was waiting for her, giving her the chance to respond and draw her own conclusions.

“Okay. Well... If it was destroyed, then that’s a death sentence for Garin, so I’m going to ignore that option for now and assume that the mask was stolen and is still intact. People are greedy. If it was worth something, someone might have taken it.” She took the old man’s silence as agreement. “Where was he buried?” It was a starting point. Nothing more than that. But it was better than sitting around waiting for inspiration to strike. Five hundred years was a long time, but Annja hoped the normal logic of a search would hold true: the best place to start looking for something that had been lost was the last place it had been seen.

“The Monastery of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Ávila,” he said. “I’ll join you there as soon as I can, but first I think I shall pay a visit to Seville.”

“What has Seville got, apart from a barber and some oranges?”

The old man chuckled down the long-distance line. “It’s where so much of it began, my dear. As you say, for want of a better place, why not start at the beginning? Seville is where the first of these so-called acts of faith of the Inquisition took place in a particularly grisly sacrifice. Six people were burned alive.”

“That’s barbaric.” The history of the Inquisition was fascinating in and of itself, but she’d never considered it for the show. There were plenty of human monsters from that time, without the need to invent others for public edification. Using religion and ethnicity as a means of population control turned her stomach. It didn’t matter if it was five hundred years ago in Spain, sixty years ago in Germany or twenty years ago in Rwanda. Genocide was one of the few horrors that didn’t lessen with time.

“Yes, it was. Just as all forms of human sacrifice are,” Roux agreed. There was a pause. He was obviously thinking. “I won’t touch down for at least three hours, even if I get airborne in the next thirty minutes. I’ll contact you as soon as I land. In the meantime, I’ll make a call. Garin isn’t the only one with a little black book. I know a guy...he might be able to pinpoint the IP address from the webcam. See if we can’t find a source. You look at finding the mask, I’ll try to find Garin—hopefully, we’ll meet somewhere in the middle. Twenty-four hours is a long time.”

“In politics, maybe. In kidnap and ransom? I’m not so sure.”

“Just concentrate on getting to Ávila. I’ll give my guy your details and have him meet you there.” Roux hung up without waiting for her response. There was no “good luck.” He was all business, which was exactly what she needed from him right now. There wasn’t a moment to lose. She pillaged the hotel room of anything useful, throwing a change of clothes into a backpack, then zipped herself into her motorbike leathers and headed down to the hotel’s underground garage.

The Triumph Rocket III Roadster was where she’d left it.

It was a beast of a machine. She loved it. Annja slipped her bag from her shoulder and stowed it inside one of the panniers, then straddled the bike. It was bigger and heavier than she was used to, but the Roadster had so much pent-up power as she gunned the engine, she couldn’t help but grin at the thrill when it roared to life beneath her. There were perks to being a celebrity of sorts: companies bent over backward in exchange for a little publicity. She was a great ad for the bike. As Doug said, there was something inherently powerful about a great bike and a leather-clad rider. He would have called it sexy. She liked to think of it as iconic. Giving the Roadster up when she left Spain was going to be tough. She intended to hit the open road and see as much of the countryside as she could before then.

The bike roared up the ramp and out of the garage, banking sharply as she took the turn into the street. She was strong, but still, the muscles in her shoulders and forearms tightened as she leaned to keep the bike upright. She opened up the throttle, slipping into the early-morning city traffic. In a car, the congestion would have been a problem, bumper-to-bumper impatient drivers trying to cut in and out of lanes. But even though the Roadster was designed for the open road, it was maneuverable enough to weave in and out of the snarl of vehicles.

She accelerated ahead of the traffic jam, hitting the lights just as they changed from red to green, and left the line of cars trailing in her wake. They couldn’t match the bike’s speed in these conditions.

A few minutes later, she was more than a mile outside of the city, but the road ahead was blocked by a pair of trucks struggling uphill side by side, slowly losing momentum as the incline increased, neither one prepared to slow down or change lanes in case they couldn’t make it to the top of the hill. A snake of frustrated drivers had built up behind them.

Annja didn’t have time to waste.

She leaned to the left, letting her weight steer the bike into the narrow space between the lanes, and raced toward the gap between the two trucks. Drivers vented their frustration at her gambit, but that voice and its damned “ticktock, ticktock” was all she could hear. Annja twisted the throttle hard. Her grip tightened as she leaned forward, and the rush of air battered her. Still, she accelerated, surging past the barely moving cars. A chorus of horns bade her farewell as she disappeared between the trucks, her shoulder blades inches from the high-paneled sides of both. The huge vehicles drifted closer together as she sped between them.

She caught a glimpse of one of the drivers in his wing mirror. There was no mistaking the panic in his eyes. She grinned, but realized there was no way he’d be able to see the expression through her helmet’s black visor, which, all things considered, was probably for the best. He veered away suddenly, widening the gap for Annja, who surged ahead of the trucks and into the freedom of the open road.

She hit a hundred and thirty-six miles an hour in a few seconds, topping out the engine. The landscape blurred in her peripheral vision. Annja kept her head down. Speed limits didn’t matter. She’d take the ticket, if the cops could keep up with her. Ticktock. Ticktock. It was just her and the road, but she didn’t have time to enjoy it. She only had eyes for the dashed line leading all the way to the horizon.

She could feel the heat of the engine through the leathers on the inside of her right leg by the time she pulled up outside the high stone walls of the Royal Monastery of Saint Thomas Aquinas in Ávila.

She’d ridden as if the devil was on her tail.

The journey hadn’t even taken an hour.

She checked her phone. There was a message from Roux’s hacker giving her the name of a café—Giorgio’s—and instructions to meet her there in forty-five minutes. The message was fifteen minutes old. That gave her half an hour to unlock the secrets of the Grand Inquisitor’s shrine.

Ticktock.

3

23:00—Ávila

Ávila, the City of Stones and Saints.

That was how the place was described in the tourist brochure Annja picked up from the dispenser just inside the monastery walls. Footsteps echoed deeper inside the medieval building. She thumbed through the leaflet. It was the standard tourist fodder, ready to guide her to all kinds of attractions inside the city. She was only interested in the monastery. She handed over five euros at the glass window and put the change in a tip jar for renovations. Annja couldn’t tell whether the look the young museum worker gave her was admiring or disapproving, but the way his eyes lingered was most certainly lacking piety.

She gave him a smile that raised the color in his cheeks and followed the sign that led inside.

The monastery consisted of two floors built over three cloisters, and according to the floor plan, the initial building had begun in 1482 but only been completed in 1493. She skipped through much of what came next, looking for the name Tomás de Torquemada. It would be too much to expect any kind of reference to a mask in the literature, but she found plenty of the usual tourist facts broken down for easy consumption. A simple engraving showed him in profile, bearing the familiar tonsure of a Dominican friar. He looked...ordinary. It was hard to believe she was looking at the man behind one of the most ruthless religious purges of all time. There were a few cursory details about the Inquisition and the fact that Torquemada had lived out his final days here, being buried within the grounds of the monastery five years after its completion.

Two elderly washerwomen busied themselves with mops, sluicing them across the stone floor of the cloister of Silencio. They worked in silence and Annja had no intention of making them uncomfortable by asking questions. She walked quickly across the wet floor, shrugging in apology to the women. There was no sign of anyone remotely official, which would have made asking questions easier. She worked her way slowly around the room, looking for any kind of visual clue in the decor.

“It’s quite plain compared to the Reyes cloister,” a man said behind her. She hadn’t heard his footsteps on the tiled floor.

Annja turned, expecting to come face-to-face with a monk. He wasn’t. Or at least he wasn’t dressed like one. He wore a lightweight charcoal suit with a matching shirt. “Sorry?”

“The Cloister of the King. You were looking at the ceiling?”

She glanced up at the vaulted Gothic-style ceiling above her, surprised that it hadn’t been the first thing to catch her attention when she entered the cloister.

“There was a beautiful mosaic in the dome, the work of a Mudéjar—a Moor who remained in Spain after the country began to be reclaimed for Christians—but it’s long gone now, I’m afraid. Lost to time and vandals. The Mudéjars kept their faith even though they couldn’t make their devotions publicly. Such a sad time for our country. Our great shame. And yes, I say that with no hint of irony, given who is buried next door.” He offered her a wry smile. “The word Mudéjar also refers to the style of architecture, but in this case the ceiling was the work of a single man, or so we have come to believe. Sadly, as I said, it has long since been lost. Of course, not all Moors remained faithful—many converted to Christianity. They were called Moriscos, but that was a title that came loaded with contempt and mistrust.”

So many Moors and Jews had been driven out of the country or forced to renounce their own faith under fear of death, and yet others were allowed to continue with their lives. But why? The cynical side of Annja wanted to say money. So often it came down to money. People bought their freedom with it. Was that what had happened all those years ago? The Mudéjars had paid off the Inquisition?

“Might I ask, are you planning on making a program about us?”

“Sorry?” she said again, running about three steps behind the man as he moved from subject to subject.

“You are Annja Creed, aren’t you? I may be speaking out of turn, but I rather hope you aren’t planning on featuring Friar Torquemada in an episode of your Chasing History’s Monsters. He was one, of course, but he was a very human one,” he said, holding out a hand. “Francesco Maffrici. I am the curator here.”

She smiled, shaking his hand. His palm was soft against hers. “No, no, this isn’t exactly work, more a personal interest.”

“Excellent, then anything I can do to help, I am at your service.”

“Well, obviously, I am interested in Torquemada, but not for the show.”

The man nodded, offering her a wry smile. “The man and the Inquisition. They provide our daily bread.”

“I can well imagine. Actually, I’m interested particularly in the Mask of Torquemada. I understand that it was buried with him?” She offered it as a question rather than a statement, inviting him to correct her.

“That rather depends on which version of the legend you want to believe.”

Annja was intrigued. Two legends meant a mystery. Not that she had time for one.

“It wasn’t uncommon for a death mask to be made to capture the features of the recently deceased. Generally they would use wax and plaster. And perhaps that was so with Torquemada, but then you have to ask yourself—why would something like that be buried with him? That’s not so much a legend as a rationalization. The second hypothesis suggests that a mask was cast in metal some time before his death so that others could act in his place while he was ill. It would have meant that anyone could have overseen the tortures of the Inquisition, making it clear that they were acting in his name. Of course, once he was dead there was no need for it. None of his successors found the need to follow his example. Perhaps they were not quite so driven to inspire fear or could more easily hide the delight they took in their work?”

“You think he enjoyed it?”

“Oh, absolutely. Without doubt. His interests lay far beyond driving non-Christians out of Spain. It might have begun that way, a means of driving Jews and Muslims out of our land, but it lit a fire in the dark places of his soul. In the earliest days of the Inquisition, the Moors and Jews were given the option to convert, which meant they were able to remain in the country as second-class citizens. Later, their conversion offered no protection. The Inquisition turned on them and on other minorities that were considered to be outside the teachings of the Bible.”

“If only they’d been the last ones to take that approach,” she said. She hadn’t meant to say it aloud.

“We never learn the lessons of the past, despite the threat of being doomed to repeat it,” he said. “But I suppose you know that as well as anyone.”

They both fell silent for a moment as they considered the wider implications of what they’d been saying. It was a comfortable silence, interrupted only by the clatter of metal buckets and the spilling of water. The two women seemed to bicker rapidly, but the words quickly turned to laughter and they set about mopping up again.

“We should leave them to it,” the curator said, turning his back on the women. “I have something interesting you might like to see.”

Maffrici led the way out of the cloister toward the church that stood inside the monastery walls. He opened the door for her to follow. Annja noticed he was wearing white gloves, and assumed he was being careful not to leave greasy fingerprints on the relics here. It was a good precaution, with so many enzymes secreted by even carefully washed human skin. Years and years of handling would damage just about anything, and why risk making a further impact?

Annja was only half listening as Maffrici talked her through the architecture of the building. Garin was still sitting in that chair somewhere, battered and bloody and needing her help...help that, right now, she was in no position to give. She needed help of her own to find the mask before the seconds ran out.

That meant being direct, even if it felt rude. “Is there any more you can tell me about the mask?”

“Not really. I’m afraid that there are no pictures of it, not even a drawing from the time, as far as I am aware.”

“But you are sure it was buried with his body?”

He nodded. “Assuming it actually existed, yes, but you know how it is—stories get passed down from generation to generation, records get lost. A lot of truth becomes legend, but much more legend becomes truth. What we believe has a tendency to change over the generations. There is almost always a kernel of truth at the core of any enduring story, but it is so much harder to identify it among the embellishments that come later.”

Annja tried to read between the lines. “Are you suggesting Torquemada might have not been as bad as he’s currently portrayed?”

“Quite the reverse, actually—that he was perhaps not as pious and devout as he is now remembered to be. For a man who was a scourge on nonbelievers and heretics, isn’t it peculiar that he carried what he believed to be the horn of a unicorn for protection?”

“No more crazy than the zealots who think they’re carrying a piece of the True Cross,” she said.

“Ah, perhaps not, but does a man wielding supernatural protections—the objects of witchcraft—strike you as someone who believes absolutely in the protection of his God?” The curator came to a halt. “His tomb was broken into in the 1830s, his bones removed and burned here, on this spot, mimicking an auto-da-fé, the kind of act of faith Torquemada would have ordered during his lifetime. It was something in the nature of poetic justice. The Inquisition had fallen out of favor and the people were no longer afraid of the Church in the way they had been for hundreds of years. So much of the monastery was destroyed thanks to those revolutionary hammers. Which is of course how we lost that wonderful Mudéjar ceiling.”

“And that was when the mask was removed?” Or more likely destroyed, she thought.

“There is no record of anything other than his remains having been removed from the tomb, but that was not the first time his rest had been disturbed.”

“The tomb had been broken into before?”

“Indeed, yes. Only a couple of years after his death, in fact. Records indicate that a ring was taken from the remains. It was recovered and returned to the corpse. The thief was given the same treatment as many of Torquemada’s own victims. Of course, that doesn’t mean something else wasn’t taken and never returned.”

Annja was already running the permutations in her head. If the mask had remained in the tomb until the 1830s, then it had almost certainly been destroyed in the desecration or fallen into the possession of some rich private collector with a penchant for the macabre. The latter possibility would only make the treasure hunt more difficult. Theft a few years after the dead man’s burial was preferable, since it meant there was much more time for the mask to have become lost and ultimately forgotten. But its chances of survival increased markedly if it had been stolen in the nineteenth century. The question was, where was it most likely to have gone next?

“There is a plaque,” the curator said. “Let me show you.”

The man led her through to what remained of Torquemada’s tomb. It was little more than a symbolic plaque.

“‘Here Lies the Reverend Tomás de Torquemada, One of the Holy Cross, the Inquisitor General. This House’s Founder. Died 1518, on 16 September,’” Annja translated from the Latin inscription.

“Very impressive,” said the curator. “It’s rare to find a—” he checked himself before saying woman “—person these days with a fair grasp of Latin.”

“I’m all about the dead languages.” She laughed, spotting another inscription on the wall. “They look great on the dating profiles.” That confused the poor guy for a moment, reminding her that they were communicating in what was obviously his second or even third language.

She mouthed the next words without actually making a sound. May This Plague of Heretics Pass.

“I don’t think he really wanted to be buried here. It was more of a political decision than anything else,” Maffrici said. “He was born in Valladolid and never really severed ties with the city. He established a tribunal for the Inquisition there and remained connected to the Convent of San Francisco until his dying day. The strange thing is...” He broke off suddenly, as if not sure he should be speculating so freely in front of her. Annja waited patiently while he considered whatever it was he was about to say—or not say.

“What is it?” she asked eventually, breaking into his private world.

“There’s a novel,” he said. “El hereje. The Heretic by Miguel Delibes, one of our most celebrated novelists. Perhaps you’ve heard of it? The inscription there reminds me of it. The book is set in Valladolid and describes something called the path of the heretic, or the pass. But that is not what I just realized...what...stopped me. I haven’t really thought about this before, but it has been staring me in the face for such a very long time.” He rubbed his white-gloved hands together as though in appreciation or greed. “The ceiling, the one that’s missing from the dome...that depicted Valladolid, too.”

“So what you’re saying is, in terms of Torquemada at least, all roads lead to Valladolid,” she said, grinning. It was too much for this all to be coincidence. Of course, there was no guarantee that the mask had been taken there, but there was a strong connection between this place, the Grand Inquisitor and the city of Valladolid. She checked her watch. She could make the ride in an hour, ignoring speed limits, but first she had to meet Roux’s hacker.

4

22:30—Ávila

Annja had to ask for directions to Giorgio’s. It wasn’t on the main drag, but rather tucked away on a quaint side street that, as she walked down it, gave her the distinct impression of time travel. Each step seemed to take her back a decade until she was somewhere around the fifteenth or sixteenth century, surrounded by amazing buildings that had withstood the Inquisition and the civil war and the ravages of change. Giorgio’s was one of those hip spots where the beautiful people went and made sure that everyone else knew just how hip it was.

Annja checked her reflection in the Roadster’s side mirror, the bike helmet in her hand, long hair spilling over bike leathers. She grinned. She certainly didn’t resemble some young, upwardly mobile stockbroker, or a woman in search of one.

She opened the door, and even before she’d taken her first step inside, she received a mixture of looks from the clientele that could have frozen a penguin on an ice floe. The women scowled in disapproval, sneering at the skintight leathers, while the men leaned forward, interested, engaged. She ignored both. She was used to being stared at. It was part of being a celebrity. Even if she wasn’t a big star, there was always someone on the street who would do a double take, obviously thinking, Aren’t you the woman from the TV show?

She scanned the room. There were at least a dozen guys sitting alone in different parts of the café. A few had shot a glance—or more than a glance—in her direction, but none of them had raised a hand in recognition. She didn’t hold any of their gazes, and it didn’t take long for most of them to look away, drawn back to their computer screens and cell phones. As she walked toward the counter at the far side of the café, she noticed that one man was still watching her. There was a paperback copy of Howard Fast’s Torquemada next to his untouched cappuccino. That was enough to convince Annja he was her guy.

She walked to his table and sat down.

“Annja,” the young man said. He didn’t rise to shake her hand. And unlike the rest of the men in the vicinity, he didn’t appear to be mentally stripping her leathers. “You made good time. I’m Oscar.”

She sat down across from him. He was barely old enough to be out of university, but when it came to tech wizardry it was a case of “the younger, the better” these days. His tousled, sun-bleached hair was stylishly unkempt. He fit in here far more than she did. His olive skin was offset against a white cotton shirt. Not that she was one to judge a book by its cover, but this kid was the polar opposite of every computer nerd she’d ever met. She didn’t know what to make of that, but Roux trusted him with Garin’s life. She knew that much.

“So, the old man said you needed to trace the source of a video stream, right? Shouldn’t be too difficult.” He held his hand out across the table. For a weird second she thought he was asking her to dance, but then she realized he wanted her phone. She handed it over. “You go order a drink,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

She watched as he connected the phone to his laptop via USB cable. As soon as the jack went in, Oscar was lost in concentration. Stylish or not, he was definitely a tech nerd.

Annja ordered herself a latte from the barista. Drink in hand, she rejoined him at the table, but didn’t say a word. The meeting wasn’t about social niceties; it was about helping Garin, plain and simple. And in any case, the kid was absolutely oblivious to the rest of the world, his entire focus zoned down to the screen in front of him. The coffee was hot but good and went down creamy.

“Okay,” Oscar said after a few seconds, though he wasn’t talking to her. “Good. Yes. Okay...no. Not good.” He looked up at her across the top of the laptop. “Whoever wrote this code knows their stuff. And they’re determined to stay hidden. The signal is being bounced through half a dozen countries, via anonymous routers, and each connection in the chain is changing its IP addresses every minute or so. It’s not impossible to trace, but it’s not easy. For a start, it’s going to take time to crack the algorithm they’re using to cycle through IP addresses, so we can predict where they’re going to switch to next and keep the line open long enough to trace it all the way back to source.”

Annja had a decent idea what he was talking about, but there was a huge difference between a decent idea and the kind of understanding the hacker obviously had.

“But you can trace it?” she asked.

He nodded.

“Good. That’s all I needed to hear.”

His fingers moved quickly across the keyboard, picking out commands in rapid-fire succession, then pausing a beat as he waited for responses to come back to him.

Oscar swore under his breath, suddenly working faster.

“There’s a worm embedded in the file,” he said. “It’s trying to take over my system. It’s got the processor going crazy, and the core temp is rising. I think it’s trying to blow my battery. Ingenious bastard. Well, at least this is going to be fun now.”

He turned the machine slightly so Annja could see what was happening—not that she knew what she was looking at beyond a guy hammering out what seemed to be random letters on a keyboard.

“I’m just making sure I’ve got a backup of everything here. Assume the worst,” he said, but even as he spoke, streams of numbers and letters filled the screen, superimposed with picture after picture. The deepening furrow in the hacker’s brow worried her. So much for “shouldn’t be too difficult.”

He swore again and killed the Net connection, disabling the Wi-Fi. That didn’t slow the virus now that it was in his hard drive, and it continued chewing up data and spitting it out again, faster and faster until trying to focus on it hurt Annja’s eyes. The fan whined as the first faint whiff of smoke curled up from beneath the laptop.

Oscar acted quickly, closing the lid and flipping the machine over.

It took two hands to release the catch and pop the battery, but the second he did it heads turned, drawn by the stench of burning.

He dropped the battery, staring at the smoldering plastic housing as if his entire understanding of the world had just been betrayed.

“What the hell just happened?” Annja asked.

“Some serious piece of code. Some seriously serious piece of code. The virus overloaded the system resources, then created a surge back into the battery. That’s not an easy thing.”

“So we’re up against someone who knows what they’re doing—IP masking, making computers burn up...”

“Yep, we’re not talking spotty teenagers in their bedroom, that’s for sure.”

“Is there anything you can do?”

He looked at the sorry state of the battery. “This thing’s fried, but there’s always something that can be done if you’re resourceful enough,” he said, fishing inside his laptop bag for a small device that he connected to her phone. “I’m going to make an image of your phone—basically clone it—and see if I can trick the code into thinking it’s your phone that’s trying to access the file, not my laptop. It could take me a while, but sooner or later I’ll crack it.”

“Unfortunately, time’s the one thing I don’t have.”

“This is personal now. Trust me. I’ll get you what you need. There’s something I can tell you right now, though.”

“What’s that?”

“You were watching a recording. It wasn’t a video chat.”

5

21:05—Valladolid

Plaza Mayor was already a hive of early-morning activity, bustling with tourists and locals when Annja reached Valladolid.

Even with the steady hubbub, the huge plaza still felt like a wide-open space in the claustrophobic Old Town. The city wasn’t what she’d been hoping to find, even if she wasn’t entirely sure what that had been. The buildings might not have been as thoroughly modern as many of the cities she’d visited around the world—all glass, concrete and steel—but everything here was still far too new to be hiding any ancient secrets. Almost all of the buildings appeared to have been built in the past hundred and fifty years. There was absolutely nothing amid all of the banks, gift shops, cafés and restaurants that could have been standing even two hundred years after Torquemada’s death, never mind the early days of the Inquisition.

Annja slammed down the kickstand and parked the bike up. She walked around the outskirts of the plaza, taking a closer look at each building, but no matter how desperately she willed it, she found nothing of interest. Feeling her mood darkening, she realized she hadn’t eaten all day. She didn’t want to stop the search, not when time was so short, but she wasn’t going to be any use to Garin if she starved herself, so she went inside the nearest café and ordered a coffee and a Caesar salad. It would be enough to keep her going.

There were a dozen metal tables and chairs outside the café, so she picked one and, like a tourist, stretched out her legs to ease the cramped muscles and soak up the sun while she waited for her meal. On any other day, she could have happily wasted a couple of hours just drinking in the ambience, but today wasn’t a day like any other. Today she had a job to do. She pulled out her phone and called Roux. She knew he’d be in the air. All she wanted to do was leave a voice mail he could check as he landed. Her message was to the point. “I’m in Valladolid. Following leads I picked up at Ávila. Everything points to this place being central to Torquemada’s tale. I’m not sure what I’m looking for. I’m just hoping I’ll recognize it when I see it.” She killed the call.

A flyer on the table caught her eye. She picked it up. The flyer showed the same image as the billboard outside a theater on the opposite side of the square—a woman dressed in nothing but black underwear, smoking a cigarette from a long holder, obviously advertising some kind of burlesque show. It seemed out of place among the restrained buildings. It took Annja a moment to realize that the woman was actually a man. That brought a smile to her lips; clearly things weren’t always what they seemed to be. There was a good lesson there. First impressions could be deceptive. She flipped the leaflet over and read the small blurb that explained the show was taking place at the Teatro Zorrilla.

“It’s very good, even if you can’t speak Spanish.” Annja looked up to see a waitress clearing plates from one of the neighboring tables. She was surprised that the waitress spoke to her in English until she realized she must have overheard at least part of the message she left for Roux.

“I’m afraid I’m not going to be around long enough to take in a show.”

“Ah, that’s a shame.”

The girl smiled and started back toward the door, balancing a tray of dirty cups.

“I know this might seem like a stupid question,” Annja said. “But I don’t suppose you know where the Convent of San Francisco used to be?”

The girl shrugged. “Sorry. Was it around here?”

“I was really hoping so, but I can’t see anything to even suggest where it might have been.”

“Well, it depends how old it is. Most of the buildings around the plaza were built in the 1800s, I think, and some of it is more modern than that. A lot of the old buildings that were here before that were demolished to make way for the new. There’s some kind of plaque on the theater—one of those historic-landmark things—but I can’t remember what it says. Sorry.”

“That’s okay. Thanks, anyway,” Annja said. “I’ll go take a look.”

The theater was closed, its front doors locked and everything inside dark. Even the box office. The plaque was on the wall beside the main door. It detailed how the Zorrilla had been built on the original site of the Convent of San Francisco.

A dead end, Annja thought miserably, realizing how much time she’d wasted only to reach a standstill.

She was already three hours down and all she had to show for it was a burlesque theater built on the site of an old convent. That wasn’t going to help Garin.

Or was it?

That very much depended upon what had happened to the convent and whether the theater had been constructed in its place or on top of its partial remains. She’d seen enough buildings that had been built directly on top of previous ones to know that there was a chance the foundations and any lower levels might—just might—have survived beneath the new one. There was an entire city beneath Chicago, for instance, not that you could access it. Annja had no guarantee that there was anything of the convent left, not even a few broken stones. There was a chance, though, and in the absence of any other leads, she was going to take it and hope the old builders had simply chosen to bury the convent, or the cellars and mausoleum level at least, rather than waste time and resources demolishing it. Hell, it was even possible the lower levels had been used in the construction of the theater’s foundations, but she doubted she’d be that lucky. Given the way her day had been going thus far, the place had probably burned to the ground.

Hammering on the front door brought no response.

She headed around the side of the building in search of the stage door, hoping there’d be someone inside the building who’d let her in, assuming she could make herself understood—though how convincing her Spanish would be was anyone’s guess.

Unsurprisingly, though, the side door was locked, as were some larger doors at the rear where stage equipment was likely delivered.

Having exhausted her options at ground level, Annja looked up. There was a small window ajar more than twenty feet above her, so she couldn’t simply make a jump for it, but there was an inviting drainpipe that would take her up to a ledge from which she could probably reach it. The drainpipe flaked paint and rust when she tested it, but she thought it might just hold her weight. She glanced back down the alleyway and into the plaza to be sure no one was watching her, then she shimmied up the pipe. A small boy turned in her direction, an ice cream in one hand, his mother holding the other one. He gave her a white-smeared smile and then disappeared, dragged out of sight by Mom.

Annja hauled herself up, finding her first foothold in the grouting as she scrambled upward. Less than thirty seconds later, she was inching along the ledge. She pressed up against the glass and reached inside to open the window wide enough to flop inside.

She found herself in a janitor’s cupboard, full to overflowing with the clutter of cleaning supplies—buckets, brushes and disinfectants all promising the reek of summer forests and autumn meadows, and enough toilet rolls to keep a small army clean and fresh. Annja managed to negotiate the obstacle course without sending the precarious piles of chemicals and cleaning fluids sprawling. The door opened—mercifully, it wasn’t locked—to reveal a heavily carpeted hallway. The carpet was one of those old red faux-Chinese patterns that cinemas and theaters around the world loved so much in the seventies. She wasn’t going to find anything ancient on this floor, so her first job was to locate the stairs. She followed a sign for the emergency exit, figuring it would offer the most direct route down. The stairwell was undecorated, showing the weeping brickwork of the old theater. It opened up onto the front of the auditorium, stage left.

The auditorium was in near-absolute darkness; only a strip of low-level security lights was on, giving enough of a glow for Annja to approach the stage without falling over.

She was certain there would be a space beneath the stage, and with luck, that would lead into the bowels of the theater, where she’d find the remains of the previous building...if they even existed. The curtain was down, so thick it gave no hint of the burlesque backdrop it hid.

A door with a glowing sign displaying the word Salida took her in the right direction.

Another door led her to the backstage area, where a flight of wooden stairs led down into the darkness below.

No one challenged her as she moved through the old theater.

She’d been reluctant to turn on additional lights in case they alerted anyone connected to the theater, inside or out, but once she started descending she had no such reservations about turning on the first light she found.

Annja detected the faintest odor of damp as she reached the bottom of the staircase.

The glow of the strip lighting failed to illuminate much beyond the stairs, but she saw a flashlight standing upright on a small desk close by. It didn’t take long to sweep the entire area with the beam. She made her way back among the scenery boards, playing the flashlight beam between them, searching for a sign, anything, that hinted at another way down, deeper. Cobwebs clawed at her face as she made her way into the gloom. Annja peered behind stacked boards, moving them so she could see behind them properly.

The shadows gathered around her feet masked the step. Her heel caught, but she stopped herself before she went sprawling to the ground. She took more care as she moved on. There was another step only a few feet away. And another beyond that, turning slightly. She followed the spiraling steps, descending into a space below the theater’s storeroom.

Her heart raced as she realized this space was much older than the Zorrilla itself—which had to be a good thing. Surely that meant the theater had been built on top of the old convent, didn’t it? The room before her extended far beyond the walls of the theater. Annja tried to orient herself with the world above. As best she could tell, the vast chamber seemed to lead away from the plaza, running beneath other buildings that now occupied the land where the convent had once stood. Meaning she was standing in whatever remained of the ancient building.

Playing the light around the room, she spotted a passage. It was the only one. She followed it, but before she had moved too far along it, her way was blocked by a stone wall with a stout iron-banded wooden door set into it. A heavy iron ring hung as a handle.

She pushed against the door. It didn’t give.

Locked, or bolted from the other side? She put her shoulder against it and pushed again, harder this time. The door gave a little, the creak echoing through the low-ceilinged passage to the cavernous room behind her.

Annja held her breath, sure the noise would summon someone, and counted to ten before she pushed again. No one came. She put all of her strength behind the next push. This time the rotten wood splintered and the rusted metal snapped, the entire frame giving way under the force. The door scraped open into the room beyond, releasing a rush of air that hadn’t been breathed for probably two hundred years or more.

Annja paused on the threshold, shining the flashlight inside.

The beam illuminated dust-and-cobweb-covered shapes that made no sense at first.

Then Annja realized she was looking at bones covering every inch of wall from floor to ceiling. On and on, as far as the light shone, bones. Annja had visited the catacombs beneath Rome and other ossuaries in and around Vienna and Prague, but they never ceased to take her breath away.

She paused while the dust of centuries—which she’d shaken up simply by breaking the seal of the door—settled again before she entered. It was an unconscious act of reverence. She lived for places like this and had no desire to disturb the dead if she could help it.

She took a deep breath before she entered the chamber of bones.

The long, narrow passage stretched deep inside this new—or rather, much older—section of building, reaching at least thirty feet ahead of her before another corridor crossed it. The walls of this second corridor were shored up with bones, as well. It was as if the entire catacombs had been constructed from bones, but of course there must have been stones somewhere beneath the skeletal remains, now yellowed and calcified with age.

Annja’s footsteps echoed back to her as she advanced slowly through the passageway. She kept one hand held out in front of her face, brushing away the strands of cobweb before they smothered her face. So many bones, so many bodies piled atop one another, all of them becoming one in death, abandoned and long forgotten. She was sure no one even knew that they were still down there.

The tunnel stretched far beyond the flashlight’s beam. She continued on, one step at a time, checking every inch of the damned place for a clue, for something that would link to the mask and give her a chance to save Garin. That was all she wanted. She’d already done the impossible and found the Convent of San Francisco, a building that hadn’t existed for the best part of two hundred years, but that wasn’t enough. She needed to find the mask. And if not the mask itself, something that would lead her to it. She was wasting her time. There was nothing here.

She walked on, her boots grinding dust and grit into the stone floor with each step.

She passed another intersection and another and she began to grasp the sheer scale of what lay down here.

She was tempted to try one of the many passages branching off the main corridor, but knew that if she ventured off the central path, she risked walking into a labyrinth of bone and becoming disoriented. So she continued going forward, trying not to think about how many thousands of people must have died to make these walls.

A few minutes later, Annja was grateful she hadn’t deviated from the main passageway.

Bones gave way to rows of stone coffins set in alcoves in the walls.

Coffins meant a more important kind of dead. She walked down the line, fingers lingering on the crosses and tracing the inscriptions that told the briefest stories of the lives they contained. The coffins held the remains of women who had held office within the convent. But the farther along the line she went, the more male names she encountered, until she realized she was standing before the tombs of men who had served the Inquisition.

One coffin stood out because it didn’t bear the cross or any Christian blessing meant to serve the deceased in the next life.

It bore only a single word: Morisco.

That was the word the curator had used at the monastery in Ávila, the term for the Moors who’d converted to Christianity rather than fleeing the country from the Inquisition.

But why would a Muslim, even one who’d changed his religion—in public at least—be buried in such an obviously Christian place? The curator had said the word was an insult, hadn’t he? She lingered in front of the stone sarcophagus. There was definitely something wrong about its presence here, amid the tombs of the Inquisitors and the sisters of the convent. It fairly screamed at her.

Annja wasn’t going to learn its secrets just by staring at it, though. She needed to look inside. She placed the flashlight on top of the stone lid, then took a deep breath before pushing hard. She was rewarded with the sound of stone grinding on stone until it had opened a crack.

She picked up the flashlight once more and shone it into the coffin.

She could never have imagined what its beam revealed.

6

20:30—Seville

Roux stepped onto the tarmac and into the sudden heat. It was fierce enough to drive the breath from his lungs after the unnatural cool of the air-conditioned private jet. He was glad to have something solid beneath his feet even though the flight had been relatively short. It certainly hadn’t been smooth. Long ago, he’d realized that as luxurious as the Gulfstream was, it was still just a tin can hurtling through the sky. It didn’t matter whether he owned it or an airline did, the plane was still going to get battered around by the elements on any given flight.

The old man was a frequent flier.

Although he kept an overnight bag on board, packed with the essentials of modern living, he left it behind. Sleep wasn’t on the schedule. Walking across the landing strip, he listened to Annja’s message. He returned her call, but it went straight to voice mail.

“It’s Roux,” he said. “I’m in Seville. I’ll give you a call when I have news. Check in when you can.”

He slipped the phone back into his pocket and pulled out his passport, ready to present it to the immigration officer. There would be no complications; there never were when you paid the kind of money he had to arrange this short-haul flight. A car would be waiting for him when he stepped out of the terminal. Money made the world go round.

He wasn’t disappointed. Less than ten minutes after the cabin door had depressurized, Roux was sitting comfortably in the back of a chauffeur-driven black Mercedes Benz. He could have rented a car and driven himself, but it was just easier to take the driver.

“Where to, sir?” the driver asked in flawless English. The company Roux had contracted had offered a selection of drivers able to speak a wide range of languages, anything to suit his needs. He learned forward, checking the man’s name against his license. Mateo.

“First stop, the remains of the Castillo de San Jorge, Mateo, there’s a good man,” Roux said, assuming that the driver knew where it was.

“Of course, sir. Is your interest in the Inquisition?” The driver had struck on the connection straightaway, but then no doubt everyone who visited the place had that particular interest.

“One of many,” he said. “Do you know it well?”

“I worked there as a tour guide during my studies. Unsurprisingly, people only ever wanted to hear the goriest details of tortures.”

Roux smiled. “Human nature, my friend. And, you must admit, there’s plenty to keep them entertained.”

“Oh, yes, but it was always more fun to make up something particularly awful, just to watch them squirm.” He laughed.

Roux liked the man. Sometimes there was too much truth in the world. A guide having a little bit of fun at the expense of a few tourists wasn’t that big a crime...all things considered.

“You’re more than welcome to come inside and revive your fledgling career as a tour guide,” he offered.

“It’s your dime, boss,” the man said. “Doesn’t matter to me if I’m kicking back in the car waiting for you to come back, or if I’m giving you the grand tour of the ruins. Costs the same for you. But are you sure you want me making stuff up?” He grinned in the rearview mirror as he pulled into traffic.

The journey was short, the private landing strip only a few minutes outside of town. The driver didn’t take any risks, waiting patiently for the lights to change before indicating and turning right, going against the flow. The entrance to what remained of the Castillo de San Jorge lay next to the market in the center of Seville, though the remains themselves were buried beneath the “new” market, close to the river Guadalquivir. New was a relative term. There’d been a market on the spot for over a century. Roux could remember what it had been like before. Sometimes his longevity weighed heavily on him. He could look at the ever-changing world and realize just how little of it was actually permanent, and no matter how much it changed, none of those changes lasted all that long.

It was going to be damp in the ruins, moist and clammy, especially where they butted up against the riverbed. There was no guarantee he’d even be able to get that far. He couldn’t remember what the Castillo de San Jorge had been like in the late 1800s when he’d last been there. There certainly hadn’t been a visitors’ center, though, or tour guides to answer his questions.

Mateo dropped him at the entrance, then went to park the car.

By the time he returned, Roux had worked his way through the selection of brochures without finding what he needed.

The driver slipped his phone back into his jacket pocket as he approached. Roux nodded, assuming the man had taken a few minutes to chat with his employers or the significant other in his life. In the past fifty years or so, the world had changed so much he didn’t even automatically think “woman in his life” when he looked at a handsome guy like the driver.

“Everything okay, boss?” Mateo asked. “You look...troubled.”

“I’m reading about how the trials actually took place in the Town Hall.”

“The Ayuntamiento? That’s right. But this is where the first auto-da-fé took place, making it very much the birthplace of the Inquisition. The first executions happened in Seville. Those poor souls who fell foul of the Inquisition were burned alive on a platform designed just for the purpose.”

Roux sighed deeply. “There’s no end to the ingenuity of men who want to make others suffer.”

“Spoken like a man who knows his stuff,” Mateo said. “Do you want to know what the real irony is?”

“Go on, amaze me,” said Roux, expecting to hear one of those little lies the driver had used to spice up his guided tours.

“The guy who designed the burning tables they called the quemadero was a Jew. He became a victim of the Inquisition himself.”

“So his ingenuity bought him no favors with the men in power.”

“None.”

It was no different from Joan of Arc’s France, Roux knew. There, the executioner might have had mercy on the “witch” and snapped her neck before she burned. It was barbaric and brutal, and the horrors he’d seen over the centuries still lived on inside his head.

They moved through the room, toward a display that showed a reproduction of a painting by Goya along with sketches of suspects wearing pointed hats and tabards bearing a cross that marked them as being under investigation by the Inquisition. Roux had seen the original many times, and not only on the walls of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, where it hung. He had spent almost a year in the artist’s company after he fled to Paris. The last time they talked had been only days before Goya suffered his fatal stroke. It brought back so many memories, some of which he would much rather forget.

“You think it was really like that?” Mateo asked.

“Not at the beginning,” Roux said. “But by the end, certainly.” He spoke with more certainty than the driver could have expected. But then, the man could never have guessed the old man he was talking to had witnessed many of the Inquisition’s horrors firsthand.

“There are some more of his drawings here in Seville,” Mateo said. “Some of them are studies that may have led to this painting.”

“Are there?” Roux had thought the artist had destroyed everything related to his dark pieces. This was news to him. But did it matter? Was this the important thing he’d been hoping to find? A few sketches by a lost friend?

“They are in the Museum of Fine Arts. Fifteen minutes’ walk from here, not even half that in the car.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“They aren’t on display—they’re only brought out for special exhibitions.”

“There are always ways and means,” Roux said.

He suddenly had a hunch and was curious to see what of his old friend’s art had survived. He remembered Goya’s fascination with the darkest days of his country. The man was a scholar with a passion for learning and a habit of hiding those things he had discovered in his art—especially in the sketches that formed the foundations of the finished paintings. There was no telling what he might have hidden on those charcoals. Roux hadn’t planned on this detour, but the few minutes it would add to the search could prove invaluable in the long run.

Roux didn’t waste his time calling some petty bureaucrat in the museum. He cut to the chase, speed-dialing one of the movers and shakers in the country. The woman was on the board of a number of museums and art galleries and could pull strings quickly. She was also an ex-lover, which made the first sixty seconds or so of the conversation a little awkward. It had been more than thirty years since they’d spoken, and although she sounded much the same, she couldn’t be the young woman she had been, even if he was exactly the same man he was that last time he’d lain down beside her. The phone line was like the dark, though. It hid the truth of the years between them.

She promised the pictures would be waiting for him when he arrived. He promised to come visit her soon. One of them was lying and they both knew it.

The traffic made the journey slower than Mateo had suggested, but only by a few minutes, and it gave the curator time to set up a private room with the sketches displayed for Roux’s viewing. The curator, a short, balding man, met them at the door as they arrived, a hand held out in welcome as if they were old friends.

“Welcome,” he said, ushering Roux inside. “I was given to understand you only have a limited amount of time, and with the very short notice, well, the space we’ve been able to make available for viewing...isn’t optimal. The lighting, et cetera... I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Roux said, waving away the apologies. “I’m sorry it was such short notice and appreciate your efforts to accommodate a demanding old man.” He smiled wryly.

“Please, please,” the little man said, “let’s just forgive each other, then. This way, gentlemen.” He offered a mildly disapproving glance in Mateo’s direction as the driver climbed out of the car to follow them.

“It might be better if you wait with the car, Mateo,” Roux said, deciding he’d rather not have a witness. There was a chance money might well need to change hands, if the curator was holding out on anything, and a man was always more susceptible to a bribe if he wasn’t being watched.

Once they were inside the room it was clear why the curator had been reluctant to have the extra body inside. The private viewing room was barely larger than a broom cupboard—a particularly small one, at that—and was obviously set up for restoration work rather than viewing. A woman Goya would have dearly loved to have painted waited for them inside the room.

“Our collection of Goya drawings is really quite remarkable, the pride of our humble little museum,” the woman said. “We were incredibly fortunate to have these willed to us in a patron’s estate many years ago. They are by far the most precious treasure we have in our care.” She waved an open hand toward a folio on a workbench that had been cleared. “Please.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves before she opened it. “Just let me know when you are ready, and I’ll turn them over.”

Roux was momentarily disappointed he wasn’t going to be able to touch the drawings himself, but then they were the property of the nation, and she had no idea Roux’s own face could be hidden away inside one of them, just another one of the artist’s little jokes.

She opened the folder to reveal the first of the pictures.

It was a study of a man’s face beneath a pointed hat.

The second was the face of a monk.

The third was of a row of officials sitting in judgment.

None of them were significantly different from the final pictures he’d seen in Milan.

But as the woman revealed the fourth picture, Roux’s breath caught.

The sketch was of a mask, or rather, a face wearing a mask.

This was what he’d been hoping against hope to find. He’d half expected it not to be here. His friend had been obsessed with the Inquisition, and it was no surprise that Tomás de Torquemada figured into this. Still, he hadn’t dared to hope Goya had known anything about a mask because there was no way for him to reach across the years and ask him. Francisco Goya, though, had reached across the years to talk to Roux the only way he knew how—through his art.

“What can you tell me about this?” Roux asked, trying not to make the inquiry sound as urgent as it felt. He wanted to hear it from their lips, but it was hard not to jump to conclusions. It had to be the Mask of Torquemada.

“Ah, this one. Quite...haunting, isn’t it? Certainly one of his darker studies. There is, of course, the possibility this study has nothing to do with his Inquisition sketches,” the curator began, but the woman cut him off.

“There were stories, none of them written down at the time, sadly—at least none that have been recovered—and many of them conflict, but it is believed that the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada himself, wore a mask when he witnessed interrogations.” The woman pursed her lips, clearly not comfortable bringing anything as sordid as torture into the conversation. The art was all that mattered to her. “There is one school of thought that believes he wore it chiefly to terrify, but there is another that believes it was to hide his own fear.”

“From what I know of the man, that doesn’t seem likely,” Roux said. The many religious zealots he’d encountered in his life had all relished their work. It was the one thing they all had in common.

“As I was saying,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “There is an alternative theory, that the mask was actually a torture device itself.”

“Interesting.”

“Indeed. It may even have been the inspiration for Alexander Dumas’s The Man in the Iron Mask.”

“Or Dumas’s mask might have helped create some of the myth around Torquemada himself,” the curator suggested.

It was possible, of course. And from what Roux remembered about Goya in his final years, it was likely the artist would have made that kind of connection, too. In 1847, Dumas had popularized the story of Eustache Dauger, held in jail in 1669. Roux had never particularly liked the man. Dauger was a poseur, but then, by the time they had rubbed shoulders in the royal court of Versailles, Roux was long past the part of his life where he’d craved any sort of notoriety. He was a creature of shadows by then, moving silently, obsessed with the search for the lost fragments of Joan of Arc’s shattered blade.

“When do you think these were drawn?” he asked.

“Goya started work on The Inquisition Tribunal in 1812, so these sketches must date from earlier than that.”

More than a decade before he’d first met the man. “The mask did not make it into that painting,” Roux noted.

“Which is not particularly unusual for an artist like Goya. He made hundreds of preliminary sketches, working on countless details that didn’t make it into the final works for whatever reason.”

What she said was quite true, but there was something about the drawing that made Roux think the artist had other reasons for not including it in the final painting. Certainly this wasn’t something conjured from his imagination. Goya was quite grounded in his studies of the Inquisition pieces. He wasn’t given to flights of fancy. No, the old man couldn’t shake off the feeling that Goya had drawn this from life, right down to the ribbon that tied the mask in place.

“Is there any way I could have a copy of this?”

“I’m sorry, that’s quite out of the question,” the woman said, but this time it was the curator’s turn to step in, not wanting their unhelpfulness to get back to the board member who’d facilitated Roux’s visit. She was that powerful in this world.

“I’m sure there’s some way we can accommodate you, sir.”

The woman gritted her teeth, determined to put herself in between the man and her treasure. “These cannot just be placed in the photocopier, you know.”

Roux had no idea if that was what the curator had in mind, but he had a simple enough solution and one that would be far more efficient, while leaving the drawings untouched. He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it up like a flag of truce. They both looked at him as if they couldn’t quite comprehend what he was thinking. He spelled it out for them.

“If I could just take a photograph? That would be quite incredible. I would be forever in your debt.”

“Of course,” the curator said, fussing around to make sure that Roux had enough room.

Roux glanced at the woman. While she didn’t seem enamored by his request, she didn’t object.

He captured a single image of the sketch. There was nothing else he was likely to learn here, so he gave his thanks and made his farewells, promising to put in a good word with his friend when he saw her next.

The curator couldn’t hide his pride. “Our pleasure.”

The woman forced a smile. She clutched the portfolio close to her breast. It would be hidden away again, lost to the world until the next exhibition. There was something sad about that, but it was equally wonderful that new generations would discover these treasures and keep on discovering them as long as there was someone like her to cherish them. He smiled his thanks and followed the curator back out through the warren of corridors to the main glass doors.

Stepping outside, Roux had to look up and down the street several times before he spotted the car, and Mateo standing beside it. The driver waved and slid back behind the wheel, driving up to him. As he got in and closed the door, Roux heard the sound of an engine starting up close by.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think perhaps I did,” Roux said, studying the picture on the phone’s screen.

He forwarded the photograph to Annja, then tried to call her, but it went straight to voice mail again. He hung up without leaving a message. Roux put the phone back into his pocket. He glanced through the rear window, taking one last look at the museum. All this time, it had held a secret without even knowing it. Annja would appreciate that.

Roux was still looking out the rear window as the car took a slow right turn. The driver in the car behind them was staring back at him far too intensely for comfort.

This wasn’t the old man’s first time at the rodeo.

He was being followed.

7

20:00—Valladolid

Annja had expected bones. Bones or dust. Or fragments of one and a gathering of the other. A few rags, perhaps, untouched for generations.

Deep down, there’d been a tiny part of her that had hoped it’d be easy, that she’d push back the lid and see a silver mask lying on some moldering cushion, just waiting to be found. That would have been all of her lottery-ticket, late-running-for-a-train and traffic-lights-in-her-favor luck for the rest of her life all rolled into one.

But it wasn’t to be.

She wasn’t that lucky.

Which was bad news for Garin.

The flashlight beam played across the only thing the stone casket contained: a key. A small brass key with worn teeth.

Annja reached inside for it.

She assumed the metal would feel rough, pitted with corrosion given its obvious age, but it was surprisingly smooth. There was the obvious coarseness associated with something made so long ago, but it had weathered the passage of time relatively unharmed, no doubt because of the near-vacuum seal the sarcophagus lid provided. It had been hidden for a reason. More than that, it had been hidden here for a reason. Why, though, had it been placed in an empty coffin marked for a Moor and surrounded by tombs of the Inquisition’s most faithful? That only opened a nest of questions, the most immediate being: What did it unlock?

She heard a sound originating from the direction she’d come. The unexpectedness of it caused her heart to skip a beat.

Someone was heading her way.

Had she been followed down here?

She could make herself known, avoiding an unpleasant confrontation—but that would mean having to explain herself, and it wasn’t as though she had a right to be down here. It would eat up valuable time she couldn’t spare. Or, to be blunt, time Garin couldn’t spare.

She turned off the flashlight and did her best to slide the lid of the sarcophagus back into place without making enough noise to wake the rest of the dead down here. Even so, the grating of stone-on-stone echoed through the chamber.

A voice cried out.

She didn’t like the sound of it.

Annja crept deeper into the catacombs, not wanting to be discovered by whoever was down there with her. She could only hope she’d be able to find another way out of this charnel house, but the odds weren’t in her favor.

She edged forward in the dark, trying not to make a sound.

She was lucky the avenue was straight and that the person moving toward her was carrying a hooded lantern, which spread its glow across the floor without lighting the entire tunnel. She was going to have to get out of there, though. There was no way her luck was going to hold. Annja crept along the passageway, trying to time her footsteps to those of the newcomer. It wasn’t easy, but thankfully, the other person wasn’t trying to be quiet.

Annja almost missed the narrow flight of stairs—old stone steps with well-worn edges leading upward.

She held her breath as the lantern swung in the darkness.

A muffled voice called out, too indistinct for her to make out any words.

She stopped moving.

She could wait and hope the newcomer missed her, or trust to whatever god looked after reckless explorers in ancient crypts, and take the stairs, praying they’d lead her out of there and not into trouble. Fortune favors the brave, she thought. She took the first few stairs as fast as she could, making sure that she got her body out of the line of sight in case the hooded lantern’s light got too close too quickly. When she was high enough up the staircase, Annja turned on the flashlight. The time for stealth was over. She broke into a run, her boots clattering on the stone.

“¿Quién es?” the newcomer shouted from below. Annja took no notice. She needed to get out, fast, and hang on to the key. That was the most important thing right now. That key opened something, somewhere. A Moorish tomb in a Christian burial ground—that had to mean something. She wasn’t far enough down the path to know what, yet, but she would. Did it have anything to do with the mask she was looking for? Impossible to say. She couldn’t worry about that now. All she could do was run. And she did, clutching the flashlight in one hand, the key in the other. She wasn’t about to risk it falling out of her pocket.

An icy thrill of fear coursed through Annja when she saw the heavy wooden door blocking her way at the top of the stairs. She hit it hard, expecting it to bounce her back, but it swung open easily. Without hesitating, she stepped through and slammed it closed behind her. There was a key in the lock. She turned it, locking it on the person in the crypt.

It took a moment for Annja to realize where she was. She hadn’t emerged in the Zorrilla Theater, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, in a church.

Her phone rang almost as soon as she took her first steps down the aisle toward the door that would take her outside. The only worshipper, a woman kneeling at the altar, turned and offered her a withering glance. Annja was getting a lot of those these days. She hurried down the aisle and out into the fresh air before she checked her phone.

Number withheld.

“Hello,” she said.

“Well, well, well... Am I to take it you have found religion?” the voice in her ear mocked.

It took her a moment to realize she was speaking to Garin’s kidnapper, the voice from the video feed. The fact that he knew where she was located was unnerving, to say the least. Were they watching her? Using satellites to track her like Garin had in the past? GPS on her phone? She glanced back inside the cool confines of the church. The woman had returned to her devotions and had absolutely no interest in Annja. There was a priest in the chancel now, lighting candles. Assuming it hadn’t been the priest himself, there was no sign of the person she’d heard in the catacombs.

“It’s rather a plain church, don’t you think?”

She glanced around, looking for someone who stood out, someone who was obviously watching her, who had a phone to his ear. The street was quiet. She couldn’t see anyone. But they knew where she was.

“Is this a social call?” she asked, still looking up and down the street.

“No. Definitely not. I like to think of it as incentivizing.” He laughed. It wasn’t a maniacal sound, not the mwahahaha of a cartoon villain. It was filled with genuine mirth. In the background, she heard a cry of pain. Garin. Why were they doing this to him? Why torture him? If he knew where the mask was, he would have told them. He wasn’t a hero. There was only one thing Garin Braden valued above and beyond the possession of beautiful things, and that was self-preservation. He would have given them what they wanted if he thought it would buy his freedom. Once he knew he was safe, then he’d figure out how to get it back. That was the kind of man he was.

“There’s someone here who wants to talk to you,” the voice said.

There was a pause. A second. Two. It felt like forever.

A weak and mumbling voice spoke. “Don’t do it...don’t give them what they want. Even if you find it...” It was Garin. The phone was snatched away before he could finish speaking. The next thing she heard was a grunt and the sound of flesh slapping flesh.

“Garin!” Annja called, unable to stop herself.

“You’ve wasted four hours, Miss Creed. Ticktock. Ticktock. Don’t waste any more.” The kidnapper killed the connection.

Annja looked around again, phone still pressed to her ear.

She tried to think. Yes, they knew where she was, but she couldn’t see anyone watching her. There was no obvious tail. Her first thought when the phone rang had been that they were close, maybe even behind the light in the catacombs, but there was no proof, only paranoia. Her phone hadn’t worked down there, which meant the kidnapper’s couldn’t, either. It was much more likely they were using the same kind of technology that Garin would have. They had her phone number. Maybe they had a way of monitoring her SIM? She thought about pulling the battery out of the phone, but she needed to stay in contract with the old man.

She called Roux.

He answered on the third ring. “I’ve been trying to reach you.”

“I went on a little trip. Underground.”

“Find anything?”

“Maybe. The old Convent of San Francisco is gone, but the builders got lazy. They just leveled the land out and built over the old foundations. I found a way down into the catacombs. In among all of the tombs of the sisters and the good Christian servants of the Inquisition, I found a single sarcophagus that was out of place. It was marked Morisco.”

“Interesting. A Moorish grave hidden in the heart of a Christian shrine.”

“Exactly.”

“I’m assuming you opened it?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“No bones. No body.”

“It was empty?”

“I didn’t say that. There was a key inside.”

“A key? That seems like a lot of trouble to hide a key, don’t you think?”

“I do. Which makes it important. I don’t know what it opens or why it was hidden, or even who did the hiding, but I’ll work it out. That’s what I do. How about you?”

“If you check your texts you’ll find a picture of a preliminary sketch by Goya. Like your key, it has been hidden away, this time in the archives of a gallery here. It’s a drawing of a mask. I’m sure it’s the one we’re looking for. I’m also sure it was drawn from life.”

“Which would be proof that the mask exists.”

“Or at least existed,” he agreed.

“Well, it’s a start.”

“Indeed it is. The other thing that makes me think I’m on to something here is the fact that I’m being followed.”

Annja felt the fine hairs on the nape of her neck prickle.

It was one thing for the kidnappers to know where she was and what she was doing, but they were keeping tabs on Roux, too? That meant they knew about them, how they worked. Knowing their enemy, knowing how they’d act and react, gave them a distinct advantage over Annja and the old man.

“Funny you should say that,” she said.

“Are you being followed?”

“As good as. I just had a call from the kidnappers. They knew where I was. Pretty much described the church I’d just walked out of.” She looked back at the woman who was still kneeling in prayer, but it was the reredos that caught her attention, an ornate altarpiece depicting Saint James killing Moors. The image was enough to trigger a thought inside her head. The sarcophagus, and by extension the key, was a Moorish relic hidden away beneath a Christian church. What if that was the clue itself?

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