Caught in the light were four men who leapt out of the blind corner and grappled with them, trying to overpower them and bring them to the floor of the crypt. Sam, who had been training in judo for most of his life, put the first man down in his initial moment of surprise and delivered a debilitating punch to his chest. The second man had thrown himself on Sam’s back and clung to it. Sam ran hard at the wall, pivoted and hurled himself into it. The man slumped down the wall to the floor.

Captain Boiardi was a police officer trained in hand-to-hand combat and a tall man who was stronger than either of his attackers. He put the first one down with combination punches to the jaw and belly, then put the second out with a choke hold.

As Sam squatted to pick up the flashlight Boiardi had dropped, he saw that two women were crouching in a shadowy corner of the crypt.

Boiardi shouted something in Italian and they looked frightened. Both held their hands up. “We don’t understand you.”

“Don’t shoot just yet,” said Sam. “I know who they are.”

“Who?”

“They work for a company called Consolidated Enterprises, based in New York.”

“How do you know them?” asked Boiardi.

“They seem to be following Remi and me around. They’re supposed to be commercial treasure hunters, but I don’t know if they are or not.”

“Why would they assault a captain of the Carabinieri?”

“You’ll have to ask them. They were following us when we were diving off Louisiana and then again in Berlin. They got arrested in Berlin and then Hungary. I don’t know how those arrests were resolved, but we can call Captain Klein of the Berlin police.”

“You framed us,” said the young woman with the short blond hair who had followed Sam and Remi in Berlin. “Of course the charges were dropped.”

The tall man with the shaved head said, “They held us for two weeks!”

One of the other men said, “Don’t say anything else until we have a lawyer.”

“What’s wrong with you Americans?” Boiardi said. “Do you watch only American movies? The whole world doesn’t require a Miranda warning. And if you want legal advice, I’ll give you the best. Don’t attack any police officers.”

Sam nodded. “I’ve found that to be excellent advice. How did you people even get into the catacomb?”

The brown-haired woman said, “We followed you. We went into the church as soon as we were sure you’d be in the catacomb. When that monk saw us, we said we were part of your group and we were late. He was really nice and showed us which way you’d gone.”

“Very clever,” said Boiardi. “Trespassing for the theft of national treasures, but still pretty good.”

“What are you going to do?” asked the man with the shaved head.