“The basilica is closed up tight as a drum,” Shawn spat. “Look, don’t do this to me. You already agreed to do it. The time is right. We’ve got the tools. We know where to look. And by using the drill to probe for the stone ossuary, we should be in and out in a couple of hours. If you’re dying for something to worry about, worry about lugging the ossuary out of the necropolis and into the trunk of the car.”

“You make it sound so easy,” Sana commented. She stared out the windshield into Piazza San Pietro with Bernini’s curved, elliptical colonnades sweeping off on either side.

“I’m telling you it will be easy,” Shawn said with apparent conviction, though Sana’s misgivings were heightening his own. In reality he knew there were plenty of opportunities for things to go wrong. Despite what he’d just said, he was aware they could get caught. A more probable problem was they wouldn’t find the ossuary. If they didn’t, he’d have to tell the authorities about Saturninus’s letter and share the prestige if the ossuary was eventually found. Of course, that would happen only if the pope allowed the search to take place—unlikely, since the ossuary’s discovery would put Church dogma and papal infallibility in question.

“All right,” Sana said suddenly. “If we’re going to do this, let’s do it and get it over with. Why are we still sitting here?”

“I told you. We got here faster than I thought. The last security sweep of the basilica is at eight p.m. I want to give them plenty of time to finish and get the place locked up tight.”

Sana looked at her watch. It was almost eight-thirty. “What if they find something amiss, like the Pietà is gone?”

Shawn turned to study his wife’s profile in the dark. He was hoping she was teasing him, but that didn’t seem to be the case. She was looking out the car windows like some kind of hyperalert prey about to be eaten. “Are you being serious?”

“I don’t know,” Sana admitted. “I’m nervous and exhausted. I mean, we traveled all the way from Egypt today. That might be easy for you, but it’s not for me.”

“You can be nervous, that’s okay. Hell, I’m nervous, too. It’s natural to be a little nervous.”

“What if I get claustrophobic?”

“We’ll make sure you don’t. I won’t make you come into the tunnel. There probably won’t be room for you anyway.”

Sana regarded her husband in the half-light of the car’s interior. Headlights from the multitude of passing cars played intermittently across his face. “Are you sure you won’t need me in the tunnel?”