Читать книгу Death Mask - Alex Archer - Страница 13

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 a cross that marked them as being under investigation by the Inquisition. Roux had seen the original many times, and not only on the walls of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts of San Fernando in Madrid, where it hung. He had spent almost a year in the artist’s company after he fled to Paris. The last time they talked had been only days before Goya suffered his fatal stroke. It brought back so many memories, some of which he would much rather forget.

“You think it was really like that?” Mateo asked.

“Not at the beginning,” Roux said. “But by the end, certainly.” He spoke with more certainty than the driver could have expected. But then, the man could never have guessed the old man he was talking to had witnessed many of the Inquisition’s horrors firsthand.

“There are some more of his drawings here in Seville,” Mateo said. “Some of them are studies that may have led to this painting.”

“Are there?” Roux had thought the artist had destroyed everything related to his dark pieces. This was news to him. But did it matter? Was this the important thing he’d been hoping to find? A few sketches by a lost friend?

“They are in the Museum of Fine Arts. Fifteen minutes’ walk from here, not even half that in the car.”

“Then what are we waiting for?”

“They aren’t on display—they’re only brought out for special exhibitions.”

“There are always ways and means,” Roux said.

He suddenly had a hunch and was curious to see what of his old friend’s art had survived. He remembered Goya’s fascination with the darkest days of his country. The man was a scholar with a passion for learning and a habit of hiding those things he had discovered in his art—especially in the sketches that formed the foundations of the finished paintings. There was no telling what he might have hidden on those charcoals. Roux hadn’t planned on this detour, but the few minutes it would add to the search could prove invaluable in the long run.

Roux didn’t waste his time calling some petty bureaucrat in the museum. He cut to the chase, speed-dialing one of the movers and shakers in the country. The woman was on the board of a number of museums and art galleries and could pull strings quickly. She was also an ex-lover, which made the first sixty seconds or so of the conversation a little awkward. It had been more than thirty years since they’d spoken, and although she sounded much the same, she couldn’t be the young woman she had been, even if he was exactly the same man he was that last time he’d lain down beside her. The phone line was like the dark, though. It hid the truth of the years between them.

She promised the pictures would be waiting for him when he arrived. He promised to come visit her soon. One of them was lying and they both knew it.

The traffic made the journey slower than Mateo had suggested, but only by a few minutes, and it gave the curator time to set up a private room with the sketches displayed for Roux’s viewing. The curator, a short, balding man, met them at the door as they arrived, a hand held out in welcome as if they were old friends.

“Welcome,” he said, ushering Roux inside. “I was given to understand you only have a limited amount of time, and with the very short notice, well, the space we’ve been able to make available for viewing...isn’t optimal. The lighting, et cetera... I hope you understand.”

“Of course,” Roux said, waving away the apologies. “I’m sorry it was such short notice and appreciate your efforts to accommodate a demanding old man.” He smiled wryly.

“Please, please,” the little man said, “let’s just forgive each other, then. This way, gentlemen.” He offered a mildly disapproving glance in Mateo’s direction as the driver climbed out of the car to follow them.

“It might be better if you wait with the car, Mateo,” Roux said, deciding he’d rather not have a witness. There was a chance money might well need to change hands, if the curator was holding out on anything, and a man was always more susceptible to a bribe if he wasn’t being watched.

Once they were inside the room it was clear why the curator had been reluctant to have the extra body inside. The private viewing room was barely larger than a broom cupboard—a particularly small one, at that—and was obviously set up for restoration work rather than viewing. A woman Goya would have dearly loved to have painted waited for them inside the room.

“Our collection of Goya drawings is really quite remarkable, the pride of our humble little museum,” the woman said. “We were incredibly fortunate to have these willed to us in a patron’s estate many years ago. They are by far the most precious treasure we have in our care.” She waved an open hand toward a folio on a workbench that had been cleared. “Please.” She slipped on a pair of cotton gloves before she opened it. “Just let me know when you are ready, and I’ll turn them over.”

Roux was momentarily disappointed he wasn’t going to be able to touch the drawings himself, but then they were the property of the nation, and she had no idea Roux’s own face could be hidden away inside one of them, just another one of the artist’s little jokes.

She opened the folder to reveal the first of the pictures.

It was a study of a man’s face beneath a pointed hat.

The second was the face of a monk.

The third was of a row of officials sitting in judgment.

None of them were significantly different from the final pictures he’d seen in Milan.

But as the woman revealed the fourth picture, Roux’s breath caught.

The sketch was of a mask, or rather, a face wearing a mask.

This was what he’d been hoping against hope to find. He’d half expected it not to be here. His friend had been obsessed with the Inquisition, and it was no surprise that Tomás de Torquemada figured into this. Still, he hadn’t dared to hope Goya had known anything about a mask because there was no way for him to reach across the years and ask him. Francisco Goya, though, had reached across the years to talk to Roux the only way he knew how—through his art.

“What can you tell me about this?” Roux asked, trying not to make the inquiry sound as urgent as it felt. He wanted to hear it from their lips, but it was hard not to jump to conclusions. It had to be the Mask of Torquemada.

“Ah, this one. Quite...haunting, isn’t it? Certainly one of his darker studies. There is, of course, the possibility this study has nothing to do with his Inquisition sketches,” the curator began, but the woman cut him off.

“There were stories, none of them written down at the time, sadly—at least none that have been recovered—and many of them conflict, but it is believed that the Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada himself, wore a mask when he witnessed interrogations.” The woman pursed her lips, clearly not comfortable bringing anything as sordid as torture into the conversation. The art was all that mattered to her. “There is one school of thought that believes he wore it chiefly to terrify, but there is another that believes it was to hide his own fear.”

“From what I know of the man, that doesn’t seem likely,” Roux said. The many religious zealots he’d encountered in his life had all relished their work. It was the one thing they all had in common.

“As I was saying,” she continued as if he hadn’t spoken. “There is an alternative theory, that the mask was actually a torture device itself.”

“Interesting.”

“Indeed. It may even have been the inspiration for Alexander Dumas’s The Man in the Iron Mask.”

“Or Dumas’s mask might have helped create some of the myth around Torquemada himself,” the curator suggested.

It was possible, of course. And from what Roux remembered about Goya in his final years, it was likely the artist would have made that kind of connection, too. In 1847, Dumas had popularized the story of Eustache Dauger, held in jail in 1669. Roux had never particularly liked the man. Dauger was a poseur, but then, by the time they had rubbed shoulders in the royal court of Versailles, Roux was long past the part of his life where he’d craved any sort of notoriety. He was a creature of shadows by then, moving silently, obsessed with the search for the lost fragments of Joan of Arc’s shattered blade.

“When do you think these were drawn?” he asked.

“Goya started work on The Inquisition Tribunal in 1812, so these sketches must date from earlier than that.”

More than a decade before he’d first met the man. “The mask did not make it into that painting,” Roux noted.

“Which is not particularly unusual for an artist like Goya. He made hundreds of preliminary sketches, working on countless details that didn’t make it into the final works for whatever reason.”

What she said was quite true, but there was something about the drawing that made Roux think the artist had other reasons for not including it in the final painting. Certainly this wasn’t something conjured from his imagination. Goya was quite grounded in his studies of the Inquisition pieces. He wasn’t given to flights of fancy. No, the old man couldn’t shake off the feeling that Goya had drawn this from life, right down to the ribbon that tied the mask in place.

“Is there any way I could have a copy of this?”

“I’m sorry, that’s quite out of the question,” the woman said, but this time it was the curator’s turn to step in, not wanting their unhelpfulness to get back to the board member who’d facilitated Roux’s visit. She was that powerful in this world.

“I’m sure there’s some way we can accommodate you, sir.”

The woman gritted her teeth, determined to put herself in between the man and her treasure. “These cannot just be placed in the photocopier, you know.”

Roux had no idea if that was what the curator had in mind, but he had a simple enough solution and one that would be far more efficient, while leaving the drawings untouched. He fished his phone out of his pocket and held it up like a flag of truce. They both looked at him as if they couldn’t quite comprehend what he was thinking. He spelled it out for them.

“If I could just take a photograph? That would be quite incredible. I would be forever in your debt.”

“Of course,” the curator said, fussing around to make sure that Roux had enough room.

Roux glanced at the woman. While she didn’t seem enamored by his request, she didn’t object.

He captured a single image of the sketch. There was nothing else he was likely to learn here, so he gave his thanks and made his farewells, promising to put in a good word with his friend when he saw her next.

The curator couldn’t hide his pride. “Our pleasure.”

The woman forced a smile. She clutched the portfolio close to her breast. It would be hidden away again, lost to the world until the next exhibition. There was something sad about that, but it was equally wonderful that new generations would discover these treasures and keep on discovering them as long as there was someone like her to cherish them. He smiled his thanks and followed the curator back out through the warren of corridors to the main glass doors.

Stepping outside, Roux had to look up and down the street several times before he spotted the car, and Mateo standing beside it. The driver waved and slid back behind the wheel, driving up to him. As he got in and closed the door, Roux heard the sound of an engine starting up close by.

“Did you find what you were looking for?”

“I think perhaps I did,” Roux said, studying the picture on the phone’s screen.

He forwarded the photograph to Annja, then tried to call her, but it went straight to voice mail again. He hung up without leaving a message. Roux put the phone back into his pocket. He glanced through the rear window, taking one last look at the museum. All this time, it had held a secret without even knowing it. Annja would appreciate that.

Roux was still looking out the rear window as the car took a slow right turn. The driver in the car behind them was staring back at him far too intensely for comfort.

This wasn’t the old man’s first time at the rodeo.

He was being followed.