“Shit!” Jack exclaimed. Then, realizing what he’d said, he excused himself. “I’m just so desperate for this information,” he said. “I wanted to know how many deaths the OCME has seen over the last thirty years or so that involved alternative medicine. It’s that type of statistic that gets people’s attention.”

“Sorry,” Alida said with a forced smile.

Chapter 14

14

10:08 P.M., TUESDAY, DECEMBER 2, 2008
ROME
(4:08 P.M., NEW YORK CITY)

Just keep your eyes closed!” Shawn whispered. “Don’t open them, no matter what! Just imagine you’re on a beach and the sun is streaming down, and white, puffy clouds are passing overhead against a faraway blue sky.”

“It’s too cold to imagine I’m on a beach,” Sana said, with desperation in her voice.

“Then for chrissake, imagine you’re lying in the snow at Aspen, looking up at a crystalline winter sky that makes you feel you’re seeing beyond the Milky Way.”

“It’s not that cold.”

For a moment, Shawn didn’t respond. He was running out of patience and things to say to Sana, whom he’d been comforting the entire time they’d been hiding, pressed together in the tunnel. He’d known her for nearly five years, and never suspected the severity of her claustrophobia or the panic it was capable of creating. She began vociferously complaining from the moment they turned off their headlamps and dove into the tunnel headfirst, ending up on their sides facing each other in an uncomfortable embrace. Initially he had just shushed her, as he was nearly as terrified as she was, though his fear was driven by the real danger of discovery by Vatican security, not claustrophobia.

Unfortunately, her panic was such that he had had to try to calm her or she would have been the reason they were discovered. Looking at her with the meager light creeping in from both ends of the tunnel, he had seen she was trembling, her forehead was dotted with perspiration, and her eyes were thrown open to their absolute limit.

“You have to calm down!” Shawn had snapped in a hard whisper.

“I can’t,” she had cried in the softest voice her panic would allow. “I can’t stay here. I’ve got to get out. I’m going crazy!”

Forced to be creative, he ordered her to close her eyes and keep them shut. To his unexpected gratification, it had had the desired effect. She’d immediately calmed enough to stay put.