The Grey Falcon

by J. C. Williams

  In contrast to St. John the Baptist, this church had a simple design. A row of pews on the left and one on the right faced a pulpit at the front. There were altars instead of chapels on each side. The arched ceiling was adorned in murals. Though a smaller and simpler church, its altar area was no less ornate.

  “Nida Grech. Mr. Grech,” she repeated in English, “said you were looking for numbered artifacts. Part of our extensive collection from around the world.”

  “Yes,” Chad said. He was hopeful. The ledger indicated the objects located here were from Slovenia. Though none of the descriptions referred to weapons.

  “I will take you underground,” she said and swung open an iron gate that opened to stone steps leading down to a basement. Chad noted the single iron forged Maltese eight-pointed cross on the gate.

  The basement ceiling was low, not much over Chad’s six one height. It was arched and filled with repair materials.

  “I could have told you above, but I thought you would want to see for yourself. There were a number of items here before, but we needed the room for renovation materials and wanted to protect them. When renovation began, we moved them all to St. Catherine, across the street.”

  Chad’s moment of disappointment changed to hope again. Despite the dim lighting in the basement, Chad used his phone to take several pictures.

  Maria accompanied them across the street.

  “Trif in-nofsinhar?” Chad asked reading the street sign.

  “South Street,” Maria said. “This church is called St. Catherine of Italy. The Italian Knights of St. John built it in 1576. Originally it was just a chapel, which remains the main altar of the church. An octagonal church was built around it a hundred years later. It was recently renovated.”

  “It looks new,” Harry commented when inside.

  Maria laughed. “Good. It is supposed to look new, like the way it was when it was built four hundred years ago.”

  “It feels homey,” Chad remarked taking a seat in one of the pews.

  “Homey?” Maria asked.

  “Comfortable. Like at home.”

  “Ah,” she nodded in understanding.

  An hour later Chad’s hope had disappeared. The items supposedly located here were indeed from Italy, but half of the ones they sought were missing. The other half was found in use in the church. Curtain rods, candelabra, and statues were identified. The curtains had been replaced during the renovation.

  “The curtains were worn and faded red. They were saved and sent to the MCC,” Maria explained.

  The largest disappointments were the crates from Slovenia. Chad’s translation of the contents was weaponry. The correct translation was cutlery. Knives, forks, and spoons. Similarly, his translation of shields should have been metal ware, and consisted of pots and pans.

  “Grazzi, Maria,” Harry said as they left the church.

  “Mhux problema. No problem,” she smiled. “I am sorry that you did not find what you are looking for. I hope you do at your next stop. It could be exciting for you.”

  “Thank you,” Chad answered. “I hope so.”

  Outside he added for Harry’s ears, “But, I doubt it. This does not appear to be an exciting day.”

  He had no idea what was coming.

  Chapter 34

  Harry was reading a pamphlet at the door of the next church. Chad looked about the street. The church was on a block dominated by businesses and a few scattered flats.

  “I’m not sure what we can expect here, Chad. This is the second church on the site. This one was built in the 1600s. If our things were put here in the 1500s, it’s likely they’ve been moved.”

  “Let’s check it out,” Chad said nearly pushing Harry ahead of him.

  “Okay,” Harry replied giving Chad a look. “In a hurry?”

  “Let’s find a side door, Harry.”

  Harry noticed Chad’s worried look. “What’s up?”

  “You know those two guys that were following us at lunch?”

  “Yes. Did you see them again?”

  “One of them. He saw me looking his way and turned around walking back the way he came.”

  “How far away was he?” Harry asked.

  “End of the block. Why?”

  “Your eyesight that good, mate?”

  “Maybe. Why?”

  “I want to know how sure you are. I was already paranoid. Now that you are too, well, it doubles it up for me.”

  “Can you drive while you’re doubled up paranoid?”

  “Sure,” Harry said.

  “Good. Let’s get the car and drive to Our Lady. It’s at the end of the island. They won’t follow us there.

  -----

  “Hello, I’m Detective Constable Higgins,” he said flashing his warrant card. “This is Inspector Moffatt and Inspector Williams. Are you Elizabeth Benton?”

  “Yes. What’s this about?”

  “May we come in?” Higgins asked.

  After a brief hesitation, “Yeah, sure.”

  Dickie and Sandy entered with Higgins and made the slow policeman walk around the flat looking into the kitchen and the loo.

  “One bedroom?” Dickie asked.

  Benton just looked at him, getting angry.

  “I think you better…,” she began.

  Sandy interrupted. “Do you know Margaret or Maggie Biddel?”

  “Why?” Benton asked.

  “Do you?” Sandy pressed.

  “Yes. Is she okay? What happened?”

  “We’re looking for her. You were her flat mate at Lennox Estates?”

  “Yes. We shared a flat. But, we’re not a ‘we’ anymore.”

  “How long since the breakup?” Dickie asked.

  “Six months maybe.”

  “Do you know where we can find her?” Dickie followed up.

  “I don’t know where she lives. I heard Wavertree.”

  Higgins wrote that in his notebook.

  “Why’d you break up?” Sandy asked softly, inserting herself between her colleagues and the woman.

  Benton shrugged. Obviously she did not want to share.

  “Know any of her friends?” Dickie asked talking over Sandy’s back.

  Sandy turned to the two coppers, “Darlings, can you give us a moment?”

  Dickie and Higgins stepped out. Sandy stayed with Benton.

  A few minutes later, Sandy came out. Higgins was lighting a cigarette. Dickie, arms folded, leaned back on the boot.

  “Maggie dumped Benton. When they moved here to Liverpool, it was for Benton’s career. Graphic design. She wanted to settle in. Look to the future, she said. Maggie tried it for a few months but couldn’t find a job. She wanted the wilder life they lived in London. Maggie moved on. However, Liz has run into her once or twice. Maggie hangs at a pub called Nesbo’s? Do you know it, Tom? Okay to call you Tom?”

  “Tom is fine. My mates call me Popper. Popper is fine, too.”

  “Detective Constable Higgins, I think you have a story to tell us. We’ll definitely need a pint when we’re done here tonight,” Dickie said.

  “Sure. I know Nesbo’s. As you would expect from what you told me about Benton and Biddel, it’s a lesbian bar. Sometimes a few gay men. I think Nesbo is a reference to Lesbo.”

  “Well that’s where we’re going,” Sandy said.

  “We might stand out in there,” Dickie said.

  Sandy quipped, “I don’t know, Dickie. I think you and Popper make a nice couple.”

  -----

  Jovan Zevic waited for his boss once more in Vienna. Today, Jovan felt he was indeed an employee, not a friend. The big brother fraternal relationship he had with Branko Nebojsa had often vanished over their three plus decades together in times like this. Times of crisis. Times of disappointment.

  Jovan rarely failed to carry out a job, a mission, face it he thought, an assignment. Branko never lost his temper but Jovan knew when his boss was angry. Jovan had seen the warm grey eyes turn to cold steel. Branko’s mouth, that perpetu
ally had an upturn at the corners making his many business partners and acquaintances feel comfortable, would turn down. Just a small amount. Just enough that the recipient would feel uncomfortable. Some described it as a menacing look. Those people were few because Branko Nebojsa could control his features and show only what he wanted to be seen.

  Jovan knew all of this and called for the face-to-face meeting because he needed to see how Nebojsa felt. He couldn’t trust words on the telephone.

  Jovan watched the six-year - old girl that he borrowed for the meeting run and play on the slides in the Augarten. What a difference from his own childhood he thought. When Branko was six and he was eight, they already were caught up in the rhetoric and militant actions of their fathers. Five years later they had killed their first men. Muslims. Bosnian Muslims, who called themselves Bosnians. Not acceptable to Branko or him and their paramilitary unit.

  Nope. No playground for them growing up. Branko’s choice of location was not lost on Jovan. There are many parks for children in Vienna. Many that had fewer cameras than the twenty or so strategically placed throughout the Augarten. This park was chosen because in addition to a park and art museum it was the location for the Porzellan Manufaktor, Europe’s second oldest porcelain factory. The oldest being the Meissen near Dresden, the starting point of the mission.

  “Run along and play,” Branko told his son. He sat down on the bench next to Jovan.

  “Jovan, is she yours?” Branko asked looking toward the little girl now on the swings.

  “No. Daughter of a friend.”

  “She is enjoying herself,” Branko said. “A friend in Vienna? You have friends in many places, Jovan. I do , too. But, none is more my friend than you. You are the big brother that I did not have. You know this. Yet you wanted to meet. In person. Not on the phone. Usually you do not consult me during a mission. You just tell me it’s done. But you called this time. It must be serious. Tell me.”

  “It has been six days since our last robbery. I thought you might be feeling anxious.”

  “Not with you. I trust you do what is needed. What is bothering you?”

  “We are missing two photographs.”

  “You found the vase with the pictures, yes? What happened?”

  “Someone tried to interrupt the robbery. My thief fought with him. The vase tipped over. The lid broke the photos fell out. He gathered them but missed two.”

  “I see. Who has them? The someone who interrupted?”

  “I believe so. Or, the police. But if it were the police, they don’t know what they are or what to do with them. I have a person that could ask around the London Met, but I don’t want to generate an interest or a lead.”

  “Good thinking.”

  “I don’t know the identity of the man who interfered. I have a description. I have the identity and address of an acquaintance. I have a man monitoring her home with outside cameras. Our man has not showed up.”

  Branko asked the obvious. “You have not entered her home?”

  “No. She’s a cop. Again, I do not want to raise suspicion.”

  “Your thief, Luc, correct? He is a loose end?”

  Jovan knew what he was asking. “He is. I need him. For the moment. He can identify the hero. Luc put him into the hospital with a concussion.”

  “I see,” Nebojsa said.

  “There were other loose ends. All are taken care of.”

  “Permanently?”

  “Yes,” Zevic said. At least that part was taken care of, he thought.

  “What about negatives? Your message said there were none.”

  “We did not find any in his house. We burnt it down, just in case. We searched the temporary location where his wife lives. We are watching her. We know where she banks, in case there is a safety deposit box.”

  “In three days, June 25th, I would like you with me. In Serbia. Can you make it?”

  Jovan knew the date and knew why he should be there. Still, he felt he needed to wrap up London.

  “I’ll need to push London along,” Jovan said.

  “You know best, Jovan.”

  Nebojsa stood and called his son. He turned, looking directly at Jovan. Acting the part of a new acquaintance he shook hands.

  “Three days, Jovan.”

  That was when Jovan saw the warm grey eyes change to cold steel.

  Chapter 35

  “That’s it?” Harry asked looking under the sun visor at a small, dull looking church wedged into a neighborhood in Mellieha.

  “There’s a nice view of the water,” Chad commented. He stepped out of the car. The church was on a hill overlooking the Mellieha Bay.

  Chad read his phone-googled information. “This started as a grotto sanctuary and then was built up as a parish church over the centuries. The oldest part of the sanctuary was constructed in the sixteenth century. That fits our timeline.”

  “It closes up at six. We have ten minutes, Chad.”

  “Let’s find someone and call Vittor.”

  Thirty minutes later a cooperative priest finished the brief tour of the small church and grotto.

  The archeologist in Chad examined the walls of the grotto. “Have there been excavations here?”

  The priest replied, “Renovations. Restoration. Yes.”

  “More than that? Digging? Looking for objects from the past? Tools, pottery, things used in life. Bones?”

  “No digging. No. It is a holy place.”

  Chad thought there might be more to be learned in a place where historical legends spoke of activity in 60 CE. Including the story that St. Luke painted the Madonna and Child on the grotto wall. It was here that St. Paul and St. Luke were shipwrecked together. Instead, he explained, “We are looking for items and objects that were brought to Malta by the Knights Hospitallers. We have seen records that indicate some were re-located here. What do you know about that?”

  “We are aware of that. We have been visited before for this. People from Valletta. The church. The Knights. We have concluded that when the latest additions were made in the 1800s, many items were moved back to Valetta.”

  “I see,” Chad said as he looked at a very small and empty grotto. He wondered why Vittor didn’t say this and save them a trip.

  “Are there hiding places here?” Harry asked.

  “Hiding places?” the priest asked.

  “Maybe secret caves connected to this grotto?”

  “No. We don’t know of any.”

  Harry pushed ahead. “When the sanctuary was enlarged. Maybe there was fear of theft and wars. Are there hidden rooms or closets?”

  The priest laughed. “You are English?”

  “Yes,” Harry answered.

  “Perhaps you have watched too many spy movies?”

  Harry recognized it was a comment not a question.

  Chad gave up on the cave holding secrets. The walls appeared solid and continuous. He looked overhead and estimated the height of the cave.

  “Can we look again at the sanctuary?”

  The priest led them back up the stairs.

  Chad counted the steps and calculated the vertical distance.

  Harry noted his deliberations. “What do you think?”

  “I need to look outside again.”

  Harry maintained a conversation with the priest until Chad returned.

  “I think there is a three foot gap between the top of the cavern and the floor of the sanctuary. Let’s look around the sanctuary. Father, do you have a rod, a wood stick?”

  While the priest went in search of a tool, Chad walked through the sanctuary looking closely at the floor.

  “Harry, if there is a secret compartment, it will be large. Why else raise the entire floor three feet.”

  “It won’t be obvious. It should be hidden. Could there be several?”

  “Good thought.”

  The sanctuary was filled with the echoes of the wood rod tapping on the stone floor. Chad gave results to Harry who had sketched out the sanctuary. After an hour
, Chad and Harry sat with the priest to look at the map.

  There were ten areas where Chad noted a more hollow sound and feel. Eight were at the edges of large objects like the main altar, the pulpit, the communion rail, side altars, and around the rear wall that separated the vestibule from the main worship area.

  “I don’t suppose we could dig into the floor tonight, eh?” Harry asked.

  The priest laughed.

  Chad gave the sketch to the priest. “Here. This is best left in your hands.” He hoped they would look and hoped also they would find something to make the effort worthwhile. Whatever they would do, it wouldn’t be in time for his deadline.

  “Wait. I will make you a copy. You take it back to Valletta.”

  “One more favor?” Harry asked. “Where can we have a good meal?”

  -----

  “Just one glass for me,” Harry said refusing a refill. “I’m driving unfamiliar roads and it will be dark in twenty minutes.”

  “I’m good as well,” Chad told the waiter.

  Their meals arrived.

  “I’d like to bring Sandy here sometime,” Chad said looking out over the night luminaries of the city to the flickering running lights of the boats in the bay. “Fresh air. Good food. Wonderful wine. We could sit out here every night for a year and not get tired of it.”

  “A year? Chad I’ve known you for four days and even I know you wouldn’t last a week.”

  “Probably right. Did we miss any really promising possibilities at the church, Harry? This was one of your finds.”

  “Nothing anymore promising than the others. In fact, I am not sure any on my list was even located at this church. I remember several were located at Our Lady. That’s it, just two words. I struggled to figure out which Our Lady church it could be.”

  “So these could have been at Our Lady of Victories back in Valletta?” Chad asked.

  “Maybe, but we did not find them there. It could be they are at another ‘Our Lady’ church.”