Page 88 of Fastest Kill

Agrippa's estate sat twelve kilometers outside the city in the direction of the old Roman road that had once connected Cologne to Bavay and the coast.

In Roman times, the wealthy had built their villas along the road's western reach, where the land was high enough to be dry and close enough to the city to be useful.

The property itself was registered to a private cultural foundation with an address in Zurich. From the road, it looked like a large, converted farmhouse: stone-built, seventeenth-century, well-maintained without being conspicuous. The kind of building old money bought and forgot about.

The Weiden burial chamber, a second-century tomb belonging to a family of considerable means, still stood not far from the estate's boundary wall, behind a low iron fence and a heritage sign that nobody read.

Beneath it, via a cellar that had been sealed on the official survey but not on Tore's hand-drawn addendum, the Roman sewer network began. That was the way they were getting in.

Now it was dusk, and Dario and Frederica were already slipping through permiters and had found the locked tomb. They had just reached them when Dario's comm crackled in his ear.

"East team, this is your future father-in-law speaking," Tore said, his voice dry and unhurried despite the edge underneath it. "The tomb access has a modern lock on a medieval door frame. Your favorite assassin should be able to open it."

"We are already there, and it's already done, Baba," Frederica said, and pulled out her picks from the lock. Dario hid his smile as he discovered the easy way she picked locks was yet something else about her that turned him on.

"Va bene. Now, at the back of the tomb, there are shelves of bones."

Dario turned on a small flashlight, and they stepped inside. "Okay, I see the shelves."

"See the engraving on the side? Looks like an inverted triangle with a line bisecting it," Tore instructed.

"You mean like the alchemical symbol for earth?" Dario asked.

Frederica smiled at him over her shoulder, and in the low light, he could see how surprised she was.

"What? I read," he said.

"Not just a pretty face, are you?" she teased back.

"I got loads of pretty parts as you well⁠—"

"I'm still here, you two. Find the damn symbol," Tore prompted.

Frederica turned back to the wall and dusted off some cobwebs. "Don't worry. I found it." As soon as she pressed it, the stone shelves groaned and slid back to reveal a doorway of complete darkness.

"Listen closely in case you lose the comms underground. The sewer you are about to enter branches twice inside the first hundred meters. Take the left fork at both junctions," Tore instructed. "The right fork fills with groundwater after forty meters and becomes unpassable. The third branch, straight ahead at the second junction, was the one I used for the delivery. It leads up to a loading area inside the estate's east wing. I don't know what's beyond it now."

"And the sanctum?" Dario asked, checking the photo of an old map on his phone.

"Not on any map I ever saw, but the floor of that loading area always sounded wrong underfoot. Too hollow. Whatever is there, it's further down." Tore cleared his throat. "Frederica."

"Baba."

"Your mother is going to have people to be angry at when you find her. Try and get out of her way before she starts shooting."

Frederica barked out a harsh laugh. "I know. Don't worry. I'm going to give her a gun and stand behind her."

"Good. Bring her home, gioia mia. Make sure Dario doesn't get shot."

"I'll try, but he is such a big target."

Tore laughed and disconnected from the comms line with a final, "Buona fortuna."

The darkness below smelled of wet earth, and the faint mineral sourness of water that had been sitting too long.

"Ladies first," Dario said, shining the torch inside.

"Chicken," Fredercia snickered, before pulling out a gun, turning on the light clipped to her vest, and starting down the stairs.