No Escape by Julie Moffett

 

Chapter Forty

 

Gio

 

“Whoa,” I breathed. “I didn’t see that coming.”

I stepped across the threshold, and the lights turned on automatically, abruptly illuminating the space. Dominating the center of the room was a life-size bronze statue of a wolf with two human figures crouched beneath it. The statue was perched on a large marble pedestal.

The rest of the room was filled with bookshelves and cartography tables. Mounted maps covered most of the right and back walls. The left wall contained a deep rack that supported hundreds of tubes, which presumably contained maps. A tall, wide metal file cabinet with dozens of shallow drawers stood in the back left corner of the room. To the right of that cabinet, a large flat table with swivel lights and magnifiers for map viewing had been positioned. The tubes and drawer fronts were clearly marked with library notations.

We’d clearly found the stash of maps noted in the card catalog.

“A map room,” Clarissa said softly from behind me.

I turned and saw the rest of the group had crowded inside with me and were looking around in awe. Vittoria slid up next to me, so I put an arm around her, pulling her against my side.

“This is incredible,” she breathed. “Gio, look at that statue. It’s an exact replica of the famous statue in Rome. You know, the one about the founding of the city.”

I studied it for a moment. “You mean the Lupa Capitolina?”

“Si, that’s the one.”

“I’ve seen that statue in a museum before,” Alessa said. “In Rome, I think. The wolf is suckling Romulus and Remus, the mythical founders of Rome. The twins were purportedly thrown into the Tiber River by their father—the god Mars—because he feared them to be a potential threat to his rule. The children were saved by Tiberinus, father of the river, who gave them to a she-wolf to care for and raise as her own. Eventually, Faustulus, a shepherd, adopted them and the twins grew up tending sheep, not knowing their true identities until much later.”

“It’s beautiful,” Clarissa said, running her fingers along the marble pedestal.

“There are Roman numerals on the pedestal,” Winston pointed out. “DCCLIII. Any idea as to the significance of that number?”

“Since the statue features Romulus and Remus, my best guess is that it stands for 753, the year Rome was founded,” Alessa said.

Two maps hanging side by side caught my eye, so I moved closer to inspect them. The map on the left showed ancient Rome, while the map on the right showed modern Rome. It was an incredibly interesting comparison.

“It’s truly fascinating that so many of the major highways and streets today follow the same routes and paths from two thousand years ago,” I said.

“Come look at this map, Gio,” Father Armando called while examining a huge floor-to-ceiling map along the back wall of the room. “This map shows the Roman Empire throughout its various periods of history. It covers all the Mediterranean, the Mideast, North Africa, and much of southern and central Europe. It’s extraordinary.”

I walked over to get a better look while Alessa pulled out a couple of random tubes and unrolled the maps onto one of the cartography tables. “These maps are a mixture of ancient, old, and modern,” she said. “The maps in the pull-out drawers, however, appear to be much older and probably far more valuable.”

“There are valuable historical documents here,” Vittoria said, coming to stand beside me. “I find it quite strange that Mr. Zachetti would find it acceptable to use them for a game. Please, handle everything with care.”

I’d been thinking the exact same thing. I ran my hand over her hair, and she smiled up at me.

“So, what exactly are we looking for?” Alessa asked. “And yes, I seem to be asking that question a lot.”

“I don’t know,” I said, blowing out a breath. “And I’m giving that answer a lot. There are too many things to see and not enough time to figure out what we need. We need another clue that gives us more guidance as to what we’re searching for with the map.”

“Not to be the bearer of bad news, but we only have forty-five minutes left,” Father Armando said.

“Okay, team, what clues haven’t we used yet?” I asked.

“We have the numbers and colors on the weights, and that’s all I can think of,” Alessa said. “We determined the numbers equal weight, but what about the colors?”

“And what about the scrap of paper I found on the floor?” Vittoria said. “It had some numbers on it, but they didn’t make any sense.”

“Let’s take a look at that again,” I said. “Bring me the paper, Vittoria, would you?”

She left the room and brought it back a minute later. “The numbers say 4075/1450 H15. Those don’t seem like map coordinates to me.”

“Let’s try it anyway,” I suggested. “We’ve got nothing to lose…except time.”

“Let’s assume the first number is the latitude.” Stefan came over to stand beside me and peered over my shoulder. “I guess it could be 04 north or 04 south or 40N or 40S, depending on whether it’s above or below the equator, and, of course, where the decimal place is.”

Alessa flanked me on the other side, her voice sounding excited. “That’s a great idea, Stefan. We could then assume the second number is the longitude. We try east and west and see if it could be 01 or 014 or 145.”

“What about the H15?” I asked, tapping my finger on the paper. “What does that mean?”

“I don’t know,” Stefan said. “But let’s see what the first numbers yield and go from there.”

“All of that is a good plan,” Clarissa noted. “But which map should we use?”

She’d asked a very good question. We were in a room surrounded by thousands of maps. Which one should we use?

“Let’s use the giant world map that opened the door to this chamber,” I decided.

“But it’s hidden in the wall since we used it to open the door,” Vittoria pointed out.

“I know, but the door was closed when we came in, so there must be some way to close it again, right?”

We all exited the map room and started searching along the wall. “I think I’ve got something,” Winston said, pointing just inside the right edge of the door. It was an inconspicuous metal symbol shaped like a compass rose.

“Rotate it,” I suggested.

Winston rotated the symbol, and the door closed. We quickly began trying to map the locations on the wall using the different longitude and latitude combinations. Most of them landed in the middle of the ocean. A couple were in the middle of the Congo, one was off the east coast of Spain…but the last one landed on the west coast of Italy, near Naples.

“Italy, at last,” I exclaimed. “That has to be it. Stefan, can you tell exactly where those coordinates are in Italy?”

“Not on this map. We need a bigger map of Italy.”

“What about the map of the Roman Empire on the back wall of the map room?” Clarissa suggested. “That was much bigger and centered on Italy. I don’t recall if it has latitude and longitude on it, but we can look.”

We reopened the door to the map room and checked it out. Stefan and Alessa read me the coordinates, and I plotted them carefully on the map. My finger fell directly on the Roman city of Pompeii.

“What does it mean?” Vittoria asked me.

“I have no idea.”

“Look,” Vittoria said, pointing at the map edges. “There’s another grid on the map.”

I bent down to look where she’d pointed. Sure enough, letters ran across the top of a small grid with numbers along the side.

Vittoria measured from my finger on the map to the grid. “Pompeii is at H15. I think that confirms our deduction. Now, we need to figure how Pompeii figures into this.”

“Who can find me a map of Pompeii?” I called out.

“Already ahead of you,” Stefan said running out of the room and presumably back to the card catalog. After a moment, he shouted, “See if you can find map 930M88-1.”

Winston, Clarissa, and Alessa began searching the tubes, while Vittoria and I searched through the pull-out map drawers.

“Got it,” Alessa shouted a few minutes later, sneezing as she pulled out a tube. “Wow, it’s dusty and heavy.”

Clarissa pointed to one end of the tube. “That’s because there is a weight attached to the end of the tube. Team, I think we’ve found our next clue.”