The Judas Strain (Sigma Force 4)

"Why wasn't 1 informed?" Vigor asked. "Was anything stolen?"

"No, that's just it. You were in Milan, and the guard scared off the stranger. I just assumed it was a common thief, taking advantage of the confusion here, with the comings and goings of work crews. Afterward, I posted a second guard up here, just in case."

Vigor waved for him to continue.

"But this morning one of the art restorers was returning a lamp to the closet. He had it still switched on when he entered."

Balthazar reached behind Vigor and shifted the door closed, shutting out the light from the other room. He then clicked on a small hand lamp. It bathed the room in purple, lighting up his white coveralls. "We use ultraviolet light during art restoration projects. It can help bring forth details the naked eye can miss."

Balthazar pointed to the marble floor.

But Vigor had already noted what had appeared under the lamp's glow. A shape, painted crudely, shone on the center of the floor.

A curled dragon, nearly turned upon its own tail.

Vigor's breath choked in his throat. He even stumbled back a step, trapped between horror and disblief. His ears roared with the memory of blood and screams.

Balthazar placed a hand on his shoulder, steadying him. "Are you all right? Maybe I should have better prepared you."

Vigor stepped out of the man's grip. "I. . . I'm fine."

To prove this, he knelt closer to inspect the glowing mark, a mark he knew too well. The sigil of Ordinis Draconis. The Imperial Royal Dragon Court.

Balthazar met his eye, the whites glowing under the ultraviolet. It was the Dragon Court that had burned this tower two years ago, aided by the traitorous former prefect of the Secret Archives, Prefetto Alberto, now dead. It was a story Vigor had thought long ended, finally put to rest, especially now with the tower's phoenixlike rise from the smoke and ashes.

What was the mark doing here?

Vigor knelt with a crick of his left knee. The mark looked hastily sketched. Just a crude approximation.

Balthazar hovered at his shoulder. "I studied it with a magnifying loupe. I found a drop of restoration paste beneath the fluorescent paint, indicating it had been recently drawn. Within the week, I'd guess."

"The thief.. ." Vigor mumbled, remembering the start of the story.

"Perhaps not just a common thief after all."

Vigor massaged his knee. The mark could only be of dire import. A threat or warning, maybe a message to another Dragon Court mole in the Vatican. He remembered Balthazar's message: A most horrible and wonderful discovery has been made. Staring at the dragon, Vigor now understood the horrible nature of that message.

Vigor glanced over his shoulder. "You also mentioned discovering something wonderful in your note."

Balthazar nodded. He reached behind and opened the closet's door, allowing in a flood of light from the outer room. With the brightness, the phosphorescent dragon vanished off the floor, as if shunning the light.

And Vigor allowed a long breath to escape with it.

"Come see this." Balthazar knelt beside Vigor. "We would have missed this if not for the dragon painting on the floor."

He leaned forward on a palm and reached out with his other hand. His fingers brushed across the bare stone. "It took the loupe to reveal this. I caught sight of it when examining the fluorescent paint. While I waited for you, I cleared some of the centuries of grime and dirt from the carving."

Vigor studied the stone floor. "What carving?"

"Lean closer. Feel here."

Concentrating, Vigor obeyed. He felt more than saw, with his fingertips, like a blind man reading Braille. There was a faint inscription in the stone.

Vigor didn't even need Balthazar's assessment to know the carving was ancient. The symbols were as crisp as scientific notation, but this was no physicist's scrawl. As the former head of the Pontifical Institute of Christian Archaeology, Vigor recognized the significance.

Balthazar must have read his reaction. His voice lowered to a conspiratorial whisper. "Is it truly what I think it is?"

Vigor sat back and rubbed the dust from his fingertips. "A script older than Hebrew," he mumbled. "The first language if you were to believe the stories."

"Why was it drawn here? What does it signify?"

Vigor shook his head and studied the floor, another question growing. Again the dragon sigil appeared, but only in his mind's eye, lit by his worry rather than the glow of ultraviolet. Upon the stone, the dragon had coiled around the inscription, as if protecting it.

His friend's earlier words returned to Vigor. We would have missed this if not for the painting on the floor. Maybe the dragon was not so much protecting the ancient carving as meant to illuminate it, to cast a spotlight upon it.

But whose eyes was it meant for?

As Vigor pictured the twisted dragon, he again felt the weight of Jakob's body in his arms, smoking and charred.

In that moment Vigor knew the truth. The message was not meant for another Dragon Court operative, another traitor like Prefect Alberto. It was meant to draw someone intimately tied to the history of the Dragon Court, someone who would know its significance.

The message had been left for him.

But why? What was its meaning?

Vigor slowly stood. He knew someone who might be able to help, someone he had avoided calling lor the past year. Until now, there had been no need to keep in touch, especially after the man had broken up with Vigor's niece. But Vigor knew a part of his reticence rested not just with broken hearts. The man, as much as this tower, reminded Vigor of the bloody past here, a past he wanted to forget.

But now he had no choice.

The dragon sigil glowed before his mind's eye, full of dread warning.

He needed help.

July 4, 11:44 p.m. Takoma Park, Maryland

"Gray, can you empty the kitchen trash?"

"Be right there, Mom."

In the living room, Commander Gray Pierce picked up another empty bottle of Sam Adams, another dead soldier of his parents' July Fourth celebration, and chucked it into the plastic bin under his arm. At least the party was winding down.

He checked his watch. Almost midnight.

Gray gathered another two beer bottles off the front entry table and paused before the open doorway, appreciating a bit of breeze through the screen door. The night smelled of jasmine, along with a lingering hint of smoke from fireworks exploded by the block party. Off in the distance, a few whistles and crackles continued to punctuate the night. A dog howled from the yard behind his mother, aggravated by the noise.

Only a few guests remained on the front porch of his parents' Craftsman bungalow, lazing about on the porch swing or leaning on the railing, enjoying the cool night after the usual swelter of a Maryland summer. They had watched the fireworks from the perch there hours earlier. Afterward, the partygoers had slowly dwindled away into the night. Only the most diehard remained.