Free Vigil by Robert Masello Page A

stuffed inside. He closed the chest and dragged it over to the side of the drafting table, put the bags of brushes and rubbing alcohol and surgical gloves on top of it, and then stood back to assess his handiwork.
    Not too bad, he thought. In fact, more than serviceable.
    Now there was nothing standing in his way. He could begin again on his work.
    He went into the closet and reached up high on the top shelf, behind the extra blankets. His fingers found the cardboard tube he’d hidden there and drew it down. Although what the tube contained weighed very little—measurable in ounces, not even pounds—that’s not how it felt as he cradled it in his arms. It felt as if he were holding something of unimaginable weight and significance. It felt as if he had climbed to the very summit of Mount Sinai, and he was holding in his hands the stone tablets once entrusted to Moses himself.
    For all he knew, he was.

SEVEN
    Even though Carter’s call wasn’t due for another hour, Giuseppe Russo wasn’t taking any chances; he was going to wait by the phone. Not that venturing outside right now would have been a very appealing prospect, anyway. It was dusk in Rome, and from the narrow windows of his office, on the top floor of the Hall of Biological Sciences, he could already see a huge bank of billowing clouds, dark and angry, buffeting the olive trees and sweeping over the ancient ruins on the Palatine Hill. The storm front had been blowing west from the Adriatic Sea for days, and now it appeared ready to unleash its fury.
    Russo settled himself into the rickety desk chair—not an easy task, given his size and the frailty of the old oak chair—and lighted another Nazionali. God, he was tired. It was all he could do to trudge to his lectures every afternoon, and then back home at night. He couldn’t even remember when he’d last had a decent night’s sleep. No, that wasn’t true. He could remember. It was the night before he’d ever laid eyes on the fossil from the cave. The fossil that now resided in the courtyard downstairs. And even though part of him believed that this find would make his reputation, another part, growing all the time, wished that he had never so much as heard of it.
    He blew a cloud of smoke toward the faded velvet curtains; a few preliminary raindrops spattered the window. He couldn’t understand it. He had been to dozens of dig sites; he had handled thousands of fossils and bone fragments, many of them human; but he had never felt anything like this. A nagging unease, a palpable sense of dread. Ever since his fingers had touched the wet talons, if that was indeed what they were, in the grotto of the Lago d’Avernus, his mind had been troubled and his spirits had fallen. At night, he tossed and turned in his bed, and his dreams, when they came at all, were nightmares. Several times he had walked in his sleep, something he hadn’t done since he was a child—awakening once, curled up like a dog, under a table.
    With a kitchen knife clutched in his hand.
    He stubbed out the cigarette in the ashtray on his desk and closed his eyes for just a second. He had to consider how he was going to make his case to Carter, how he was going to persuade him to join in this vast but curious endeavor. The mounting wind rattled the windows in their lead casements, and the red velvet curtains rustled in the draft. Like a boat unmoored, his mind began to drift. The radiator in the corner hissed, giving off more noise than heat, but under these sounds he thought he heard something else: a distant, irregular clanging. The sound of metal striking stone. He tried to ignore it, but the sound was so persistent he knew he’d never be able to rest or concentrate until he’d found out what it was and put a stop to it. Where, he wondered, was Augusto, the custodian, and why hadn’t he taken care of it?
    Weary and annoyed, Russo went to the top of the stairs and listened again. The sound was definitely coming from below. The stairs