Death Mask. Alex Archer

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СКАЧАТЬ 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 СКАЧАТЬ