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his arms. For a moment he thought this was the point she was going to remonstrate with him and call him a coward. He’d discovered in the heat of the moment that good sense was often confused with cowardice by those watching from the sidelines.
    Two of the young men from the production crew poked their heads up from where they were hiding. When they weren’t shot on the spot, Lourds deemed it safe enough to stand. He did so, helping Leslie to her feet.
    Walking out to the hall, Lourds stared at the bullet holes that marred the hallway’s end as well as the walls, ceiling, and floor. The bad guys hadn’t been sharpshooters, but they’d certainly sprayed enough bullets into the general vicinity to make a statement.
    “Call the police,” Lourds told one of the young Arabic men. “Tell them that the thieves have gone, and the only ones left here are us. We want them aware of that when they get here, or things could get exciting again.”
    One of the crew, already pale, turned white and reached for the phone.
    Leslie pulled away from Lourds and ran to a window. She looked out over the city.
    Lourds joined her, but he saw nothing.
    “We lost the bell,” she said, “before we even knew what it was.”
    “That’s not entirely true,” Lourds told her. “I took copies of the inscription on the rubbing as well as taking a full set of photos of the bell with the digital camera. We may have lost the bell itself, but not the secrets it contains. Whatever they are, they aren’t totally beyond our grasp.”
    But he had to wonder if pursuing the puzzle wasn’t going to put them back in front of someone’s guns. Somebody had wanted that bell enough to kill him and the entire crew for it. Would they kill to squash research about it as well? That wasn’t what being a professor of linguistics was about.
    Nor was talking to a hundred revved-up Egyptian cops.
    But judging from the sounds of the footsteps in the hall, it looked like he was about to learn all sorts of new things today.

CHAPTER 3

    PIAZZA SAN PIETRO
STATUS CIVITATIS VATICANAE
AUGUST 17, 2009
     
    F ewer than a thousand people lived inside the walls of Vatican City, but millions of tourists and faithful visited from all around the world every year. Consequently, the smallest nation in Europe also had the highest per capita crime rate on the planet. Every year, along with the tourists and faithful, the purse snatchers and pickpockets turned out in droves.
    Cardinal Stefano Murani was one of the year-round dwellers in the Holy City, and—for the most part—he loved living there. He was treated well, and was given immediate respect whether he wore his robe of office or an Armani suit, which was what he often donned when he wasn’t in his vestments. He wasn’t in them today, because he was on personal business and didn’t care to be remembered afterwards as an agent of the Roman Catholic Church.
    At six feet two inches tall, he was a good-looking man. He knew that, and he always took care to make certain he looked his best. His dark brown hair, cut once a week by his personal stylist, who came to Murani’s private suite to groom him, lay smooth. A thin line of beard traced his jawline and flared briefly at his chin to join the razored mustache. Black eyes dominated his face, and those were the things most people remembered when they met Murani. He’d been told by some that they were cold and pitiless. Others, who were not so experienced in the worst the world could offer, thought his eyes were merely direct and unwavering, a sure sign of his faith in God.
    His faith in God, like his faith in himself, was perfect. He knew that.
    His work was God’s work, too.
    At the moment, the ten-year-old boy struggling in Murani’s grip was convinced that the devil himself had hold of him. Or so the boy had said, before Murani silenced him. Now terror widened the boy’s eyes and drew plaintive mewling sounds from him. He was a thin whisper of a boy, no more than bones and