“The Doge?”
“Yes.”
“Doge dead.”
“Yes, we know. Is he here?”
“No. Dead. Long time dead.”
Sam tried a different tack: “We came from Venice. From Poveglia Island. Tradonico was brought here, from Poveglia.”
Andrej’s eyes lit up and he nodded. “Yes, 1805. Pietro and wife Majella. This way.”
Andrej came out from behind the counter and led them to a glass case in the center of the room. He pointed to a framed wood-carved icon painted in flaking gold leaf. It showed a narrow-faced man with a long nose.
“Pietro,” Andrej said.
There were other items in the case, mostly pieces of jewelry and figurines. Sam and Remi walked around the case, inspecting each shelf. They looked at one another, shook their heads.
“Are you a Tradonico?” Remi asked, gesturing to him. “Andrej Tradonico?”
“Da. Yes.”
Sam and Remi had discussed this next part on the plane, but hadn’t decided how to handle it. How exactly did you tell someone you wanted to gawk at their ancestor’s remains?
“We would like to see . . . perhaps we could—”
“See body?”
“Yes, if it’s not an inconvenience.”
“Sure, no problem.”
They followed him through a door behind the counter and down a short hallway to another door. He produced an old-fashioned skeleton key from his vest pocket and opened the door. A wave of cool, musty air billowed out. Somewhere they heard water dripping. Andrej reached through the door and jerked down a piece of twine. A single lightbulb glowed to life, revealing a set of stone steps descending into darkness.
“Catacombs,” Andrej said, then started down the steps. Sam and Remi followed. The light faded behind them. After they’d descended thirty feet the steps took a sharp right and stopped. They heard Andrej’s shoes scuffing on stone, then a click. To their right a string of six bulbs popped on, illuminating a long, narrow stone passageway.
Cut into each wall were rectangular niches, stacked one atop the other to the twenty-foot ceiling and spread down the length of the passage. In the glare of the widely spaced bulbs, most of the niches were cast in shadows.
“I count fifty,” Sam whispered to Remi.
“Forty-eight,” Andrej replied. “Two empty.”
“Then not all of the Tradonico family is here?” Remi asked.
“All?” He chuckled. “No. Too many. The rest in graveyard. Come, come.”
Andrej led them down the corridor, occasionally pointing at niches. “Drazan . . . Jadranka . . . Grgur . . . Nada. My great-great-great-grandmother.”
As Sam and Remi passed each niche they caught glimpses of the skeletal remains, a jawbone, a hand, a femur . . . bits of rotted cloth or leather.
Andrej stopped at the end of the passageway and knelt at the bottom niche in the right-hand wall. “Pietro,” he said matter-of-factly, then pointed at the niche above. “Majella.” He reached into his pants pocket, withdrew a tiny flashlight, and handed it to Sam. “Please.”
Sam clicked it on and shined it into Pietro’s niche. A skull stared back. He shined it down the length of the skeleton. He repeated the process with Majella’s niche. Just another skeleton.
“Nothing but bones,” Remi whispered. “Then again, what were we expecting, that one of them would be holding the bottle?”
“True, but it was worth a try.” He turned to Andrej. “When they were brought from Poveglia, was there anything else with them?”