The Fallen Angel

softly.
    “It looks like a portion of a red-figure Attic vessel of some sort.”
    Chiara nodded. “Judging from the shape and the imagery, I’d say it comes from the upper portion of a stamnos , a Greek vase used for transporting wine. The woman is clearly a maenad, a follower of Dionysus. The instrument is a two-reed pipe known as an aulos .”
    “Could it be a Roman copy of a Greek original?”
    “I suppose so. But in all likelihood, it was produced in Greece two and a half millennia ago specifically for export to the Etruscan cities. The Etruscans were great admirers of Greek vases. That’s why so many important pieces have been discovered in Etruscan tomb rooms.”
    “What’s it doing in a cardboard box on Roberto Falcone’s dining room table?”
    “That’s the easy part. He’s a tombarolo .”
    A tomb robber.
    “That would explain the dog,” said Gabriel.
    “And the muddy boots at the back door. He’s obviously been doing some digging, probably quite recently.” She held up the newspaper. “It’s from last week.”
    Gabriel reached into the box again and withdrew another bundle of newsprint. Inside was another section of the vase. The face of a second maenad was visible, along with the kylix , a shallow cup for drinking wine, she held in her hand. Gabriel examined the image in silence before looking at the newspaper. It contained a fragment, too—a fragment of a story about a Vatican curator who had committed suicide by hurling herself from the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica. The account neglected to mention that the curator had been conducting a secret inventory of the Vatican’s collection of antiquities. It appeared her inquiry had led her here, to the home of a tombarolo . Perhaps that alone had been enough to get her killed, but Gabriel suspected there had to be more.
    He looked at the fragment of pottery again and lifted it to his nose. There was a trace of a chemical odor, not unlike the smell of the solvents he used to remove varnish from paintings. It suggested the fragment had recently been cleaned of soil and other encrustations, probably with a solution of nitrohydrochloric acid. Even an old man living alone in an unkempt house would find it difficult to be around such a smell for more than a few minutes. He would need to maintain a separate facility where objects could be left for long periods without fear of discovery.
    Gabriel placed the fragment of pottery into his coat pocket and looked out the window toward the tumbledown outbuilding at the back of the property. Pacing outside, head down, ears back, was Falcone’s dog. Gabriel sighed heavily. Then he went into the kitchen, found a large mixing bowl, and began filling it with anything that looked remotely edible.
     
     
    There were two padlocks, German made, rusted by rain. Gabriel picked them as the dog supped greedily on a casserole of canned tuna, fava beans, artichoke hearts, and condensed milk. When the door swung open, the animal looked up briefly but paid Gabriel and Chiara no heed as they slipped inside. Here the stench of acid was overwhelming. Gabriel groped blindly, one hand covering his nose and mouth, until he found the light switch. Overhead a row of fluorescent lamps flickered to life, revealing a professional-grade laboratory built for the care and storage of looted antiquities. Its neatness and order stood in stark contrast to the rest of the property. One object looked slightly out of place, a javelin-like iron pike suspended horizontally on a pair of hooks. Gabriel examined the traces of mud near the tip. It was the same color and consistency as the mud on the boots.
    “It’s a spillo ,” Chiara explained. “The tombaroli use it to probe for underground burial chambers. They insert it into the ground until they hear the telltale clank of a tomb room or a Roman villa. Then they bring in the shovels and the backhoes and grab whatever they can find.”
    “And then,” said Gabriel, looking around, “they bring it here.”
    He walked over to Falcone’s worktable. Clean and white, it was similar to the tables in the restoration lab at the Vatican Museums. At one end was a stack of scholarly monographs dealing with the antiquities of the Roman, Greek, and Etruscan empires—the same sort of books Gabriel had seen in Claudia Andreatti’s apartment. One of the volumes lay open to an image of a red-figure Attic stamnos vase decorated with maenads.
    Gabriel snapped a photo of the open page with his