Heinrich had not, of course, allowed Angelina, Ben or Thomás to get a step closer to the vault’s ground-level entrance than the distance Angelina had crossed as the door opened. After barking his commands to the special forces teams he’d spun to face them.
‘Get back in the car,’ he ordered, his voice stern and his motions already marked by the swift strokes of military efficiency. ‘You’ve done enough. Stay put, and stay out of the way until this is over.’
He’d said no more. The Major was a man in command and he’d spun back to his teams and his task, disappearing into the dark entrance.
Angelina, Ben and Thomás were left on the square in what quickly became silence, as the last of the teams followed their colleagues inward and vanished.
They were alone.
The situation appeared to suit Ben and Thomás just fine, both men tense but clearly relieved that troops of agents with large guns were buffering them from Durré’s men underground. Men who had already left behind corpses.
But her inner voice seemed to scream at Angelina. You have to go in! You can’t just stand here. You have to act!
And Angelina decided to obey.
Without saying a word, she simply turned towards the entrance, raced inside and began to run down the stairs.
Ben’s horror at the sight of Angelina running into the vault’s entrance was immediate. If there had ever been an order he was willing to heed, it was the one to stay put and out of the way.
‘Angelina, stop!’ he shouted, but he knew the words were in vain even as they came from his mouth. ‘What are you doing?’
She didn’t answer, and didn’t slow. And somehow, it didn’t come as a surprise to Ben that his own feet were beginning to move as his next words fell from his lips. ‘Oh, hell.’ He drew together his strength – and followed.
Not wanting to be left entirely alone on the piazza, Thomás was in motion an instant later, following Ben into the vault.
Ahead of them, Angelina had already descended a second flight of stairs and was rounding a final corner when a man in black, barely visible in the darkness, shot out of a concealed space in front of her. He swivelled deftly on his feet, and before Angelina could register anything else, the barrel of his gun was held at the level of her face. He was close enough for her to see his eyes on the other end of the weapon.
His helmet! her thoughts barked. Helmet! It was the only fact she needed in order to react.
‘Stop!’ she shouted. ‘It’s me! I’m with you!’
The Swiss Guardsman dressed in his Special Activities Teams kit didn’t lower his gun, but registered her words and held back from firing.
Then, behind her, two more bodies became visible in his range of sight. Ben and Thomás descended in a flurry from the steps above.
‘It’s us,’ Ben corrected, his breath heavy, ‘all three of us.’
Despite the gun still held at her face, Angelina turned around at the sound of his voice. She smiled, surprisingly happy to see him, and even the sight of Thomás’s young features encouraged her.
When she turned back again, the Guardsman had been replaced by the commanding figure of Hans Heinrich.
‘What the hell are you doing down here?’ he shouted. ‘I told you all to stay put!’
The opportunity to defend their infraction of his rules was, however, cut short by a barrage of small-arms fire that suddenly boomed through the access corridor.
Heinrich’s men were in action without needing any additional command, their weapons levelled and brilliant flashes of light marking the explosions of return fire unleashed at targets Angelina couldn’t yet see.
The sound of exploding stone, though, was one she knew well. Centimetres from her head, a bullet slammed into the rock wall and blew it apart. Shards of stone ricocheted into her face, and Angelina could feel blood start to pour from a dozen tiny wounds in her cheek.
‘You’re exposed!’ Heinrich cried out, reaching out towards her and her friends. ‘Quick, down, and over here!’
He motioned towards a control box on the far side of the landing at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I’ll cover you, just get your asses over there and behind that, all three of you!’
None of them argued. Crouching as low as they could, Angelina, Ben and Thomás dodged across the small open landing as Heinrich fired a barrage of bullets into the space beyond.
Seconds later, they were protected – as much as they could be – behind a large metal electronics control box, as the gun battle between Heinrich’s men and Emil’s played itself out around them.
Beyond the box, as she peered around its edges, was a sight Angelina Calla never in her life thought she would see.
The enormous door of the Vatican Bullion Vault stood open in the centre of the subterranean chamber that had been excavated for it a few years after the conclusion of World War Two. The vault itself was a massive concrete cube, built up right to the edges of the purpose-dug chamber, and its opened door revealing that its thick concrete exterior was only the external of a three-layer construction that made for more than a metre of solid wall on all sides, most of it metal.
Inside, the vault shone with a radiant sparkle of more gold and silver than Angelina had ever seen.
The light that illuminated it came from the far side of the vault, which was also open. There was no door there, Angelina realised as she looked at the scene more closely through the gunfire. It was an immense hole, obviously blown through the encasement by brute force. Beyond it, another excavated landing, more rugged than this.
Angelina sprang back as a bullet slammed into the other side of the control box that was her only shield. Another flew into the stone wall above them, and Angelina, Ben and Thomás were showered in a rain of dust and debris.
The gunfire sounded everywhere, reports echoing over the top of each other, the noise deafening.
Until one noise rose above it.
‘ENOUGH!’
The voice took advantage of a hesitation in the firing and boomed out with feral strength. ‘ENOUGH!’ it thundered again.
As if controlled by the command, the firing ceased. The echoes wore away, an eerie silence replacing them.
It took Angelina a few seconds to muster her courage, but she leaned sideways and tilted past the edge of the control box, looking again towards the vault.
On its far side, a bank of men had their slew of firearms aimed in her direction. On her side of the space, Heinrich’s men had theirs raised back. Face to face, barrel to barrel, across an expanse interrupted by the tunnel-like structure of the vault in its centre.
From the midst of the men on the far side, a single figure emerged. He stood among his weaponised companions, wearing a suit though covered by a protective bulletproof vest – the only one on his side of the vault that was. As if he’d been prepared for anything, at least for himself.
Angelina heard Ben flinch, his breath drawing in sharply over his teeth as he leaned out behind her and took in the same scene.
The identity of the man was clear to her from the headshot she’d seen in Heinrich’s office.
‘We seem to be at something of an impasse,’ Emil Durré announced, his voice tense but controlled. He directed his sardonic expression towards Heinrich, who was crouched in the midst of his men. Recognising he was being addressed, the Major rose slightly, signalling his troops to keep low and cover him.
Emil had identified the man in charge.
‘I think we both know,’ he continued, ‘that there are only a few ways this can end.’
Angelina was shocked by the man’s confidence. It was true that he had a sizeable group of men around him, all armed and clearly willing to kill, but Emil Durré was standing with more than a dozen Swiss Guard elites pointing guns at his head, and yet he spoke with an almost preternatural calm.
Preternatural. Was it that thought that caused her to take notice of Thomás, huddled at her left?
He was still crouched down, his back to the metal control box, knees in front of his chest, rocking on his ankles and muttering.
For the briefest instant, his behaviour distracted Angelina from the drama playing itself out a few metres away.
Because, she realised, Thomás wasn’t muttering. He was whispering a single phrase, over and over again.
‘The prophecies aren’t over yet. The prophecies aren’t over yet. The prophecies aren’t over yet.’
It was at precisely that moment that the world began to shake.