He didn’t know what to tell his team. If the operation failed, Mendib might bring on the fall of the community. Sooner or later he would head to the cemetery, or home. Mendib’s great-uncle was waiting. Several days ago he had prepared himself, as so many in the community had done through the centuries. He had had all his teeth pulled, his tongue cut out, and his fingerprints burned off. A doctor had anesthetized him so he would not suffer unduly. Now it was past time to send him in….
Mendib thought he had seen a familiar face, the face of a man from Urfa—was he there to help him or kill him? He knew Addaio, and he knew that he would never allow the community to be discovered. Mendib was aware that if he was careless he could lead unbelievers to the community—and that Addaio would prevent that at all costs. As soon as it got dark, he would go back to the shelter and if possible sneak from there to the cemetery. He would jump the wall and find the tomb. He remembered it perfectly well—and remembered where the key was hidden. He would go through the tunnel to the house of Turgut and ask Turgut to save him. If he could get to Turgut’s house without being discovered, Addaio could organize an escape. He did not mind waiting two or three months underground, until the carabinieri tired of looking for him. He had waited for years in a cell.
He walked toward Porta Palazzo, the open-air market, to buy something to eat and try to lose himself among the stalls. The people following him would have a hard time camouflaging themselves in the narrow corridors of the market, and if he could manage to see their faces, it would be easier for him to lose them later.
They had come for him. The old man took the knife from Bakkalbasi without hesitation. His nephew’s son had to be killed, and he preferred to do it himself rather than allowing other men to profane themselves.
In the car, Bakkalbasi’s cell phone chimed; Mendib was moving toward the Piazza della Republica, probably to Porta Palazzo, the marketplace. Bakkalbasi ordered the driver to head in that direction and stop near the place Mendib had been seen. As they pulled up, he embraced the old man and said good-bye. He prayed that he might complete his mission.
Within minutes, Mendib saw his father’s uncle and felt his heart fill with relief. The community, his family, had not forsaken him. He began to make his way carefully toward the old man. Then he saw his great-uncle’s anguished expression. It was the look of a desperate man.
Their eyes met. Mendib did not know what to do—flee or approach the old man casually to give him an opportunity to pass a note or whisper instructions.
He decided to trust his great-uncle. The desperation in his eyes no doubt reflected fear, nothing else. Fear of Addaio, fear of the carabinieri.
As their bodies brushed against each other, Mendib felt a deep pain in his side. Then the old man fell to his knees and crumpled facedown on the ground. A knife protruded from his back. People around him began to scream and push away, and Mendib did the same—panicked, he ran. Someone had murdered his father’s uncle, but who?
The killer ran along with the crowd, acting as terrified as the rest. He’d stabbed an old man instead of the mute. An old man who was carrying a knife too. That did it; he was not going to make another attempt. The man who’d hired him hadn’t told him the whole story by a long shot, and he couldn’t work in the dark, not knowing what he’d be facing. The contract was over, and he was keeping the up-front money.
On the edge of the market, Bakkalbasi watched Mendib run away as the old man lay dying on the pavement. Who had killed him? It had not been the carabinieri. Might it have been them? But why kill the old man? Distraught, he called Addaio. He didn’t know what to do. Everything was coming apart. The pastor listened and gave a brief order. Bakkalbasi nodded, calming himself.
With his men right behind him, Marco ran over to the old man lying on the pavement. They were all burned, for anyone who was looking.
“Is he dead?” Pietro asked.
The old man’s pulse was fading. He opened his eyes, looked up at Marco as though he wanted to say something, and died.
Sofia and Minerva had followed everything on the police radio; they’d heard Marco’s footsteps, running, the orders he was issuing rapid-fire, Pietro’s question.
“Marco! Marco! What happened?” Minerva shouted into the mike. “For God’s sake, tell us something!”
“Somebody tried to kill the mute—we don’t know who, we didn’t see him—but he killed an old man who stepped in front of him. We don’t know who he is, he’s got no papers. The ambulance is coming. Jesus! Shit, shit, shit!”
“You want us over there?” Sofia asked.
“No, just stay there. Where the hell is the mute?!” they heard him yell.
“We lost him,” said a voice over the walkie-talkies. “We lost him,” it repeated. “He got away in the confusion.”
“Son of a bitch! How the hell could you people let him get away? Goddammit!”
“Calm down, Marco, calm down…” Giuseppe was saying.
Minerva and Sofia listened in silence. After so many months of preparation for Trojan Horse, the horse had galloped away.
“Find him! All of you! Find him!”
Well out of the neighborhood by now, Mendib was having trouble breathing. He pressed his hand over the stab wound at his side. The pain was becoming unbearable. The worst thing was that he was leaving a trail of blood. He stopped and looked for a doorway to step into and rest for a moment. He thought he had managed to throw off his pursuers, but he was not sure. His only chance lay in reaching the cemetery, but it was still far, and he should wait until nightfall. But where?
Willing himself to move onward, he pressed service doors all along the way until one finally gave. It was a little janitor’s closet, holding mops and buckets and a large trash container. He sat on the floor behind the trash can, trying not to lose consciousness. He was losing a great deal of blood, and he needed to stanch the wound. He took off the jacket he was wearing and pulled out the lining to make a bandage, which he held tight against the wound. He was exhausted; he did not know how long he would be able to hide there—perhaps until nightfall, if he was lucky.
His old uncle, a man who had loved him since he was a baby, had stabbed him. What was going on? Then Mendib felt himself growing light-headed and lost consciousness.
Ana was sitting on a terrace at the Porta Palatina, waiting to return to Padre Yves’s office, when people began to run past, shouting. They were screaming that a man had been killed—the killer was still on the loose. She scanned the crowd and noticed a young man on its fringes running, stumbling. As if he was hurt. He ducked into a doorway and disappeared. She walked in the direction the people had come from, trying to find out what was happening. But except that somebody had been murdered, no one could tell her anything coherent.
She saw two young men, similar in appearance to the one who’d looked hurt, heading in that same direction, and instinctively she followed them.
The two men from Urfa saw the woman lingering behind them, so they began to slow, and then to backtrack. She was probably a cop. They could watch for Mendib to emerge from a distance and keep an eye on her as well. If necessary, they would kill her too.
Yves de Charny had been back in his office for a while. His handsome features were shadowed with worry.
His secretary entered the office. “Padre, those two friends of yours, the priests Padre Joseph and Padre David, are here. I told them you had just come in and I wasn’t sure you could see them.”
“Yes, yes, have them come in. His Eminence doesn’t need me anymore, he’s going to Rome, and the work for today is almost done. If you want, take the rest of the afternoon off.”
“Have you heard that there was a murder just around the corner, at the Porta Palazzo?”
“Yes, I heard it on the radio. My God, such violence!”
“Heavens, yes, padre…Well, if you don’t mind my leaving, I can use the time—I’ve been wanting to have my hair done; tomorrow I’m having dinner at my daughter’s house.”
“Go,
go—don’t worry.”
Padre Joseph and Padre David looked grim as they entered Padre Yves’s office. The three men waited for the sounds of the secretary leaving.
“You heard what’s happened,” Padre David finally said, as they heard the outer door closing behind her.
“Yes. Where is he?”
“He’s hidden himself near here. Our people are watching him, but it wouldn’t be smart to go in after him. The reporter is hanging around too.”
“The reporter! Why?”
“Bad luck. She was sitting on the terrace having a soft drink, probably waiting for you. If she shows up here again, we’ll have to do it,” said Padre Joseph.
“Not here—too dangerous.”
“There’s nobody here,” Padre Joseph insisted.
“You never know. What about Galloni?”
“Any moment now, as soon as she leaves carabinieri headquarters. Everything is ready,” Padre David reported.
“Sometimes…”
“Sometimes you doubt, as we do, but we are soldiers, and we follow orders,” said Joseph.
“This isn’t necessary.” Yves stared hard at him.
“We have no choice but to obey,” David said quietly.
“Yes. But that doesn’t mean we can’t speak up against our orders, even as we obey them. We have been taught to think for ourselves.”
Finally luck seemed to be turning Marco’s way. Giuseppe had just walkie-talkied that he’d spotted one of the Turkish tails near the cathedral, and Marco raced over there. When he arrived in the piazza he slowed his pace to that of the other pedestrians, who were still buzzing about the earlier incident.
“Where is he?” he asked as he joined Giuseppe.
“Over there—they’re both there, on the terrace. The same ones as yesterday.”
“Attention all units—stay down. Repeat: Stay down. You’re all invisible. Pietro, get over here; the rest of you, surround the piazza, but keep your distance. These tails have already shown us they can lose us. But they’re our best bet at this point.”
It was late afternoon, and Ana Jiménez decided to try Padre Yves again. The men who had caught her attention earlier had vanished. No one answered the bell for the cathedral offices, but the door opened when she tried it. Everyone seemed to have gone home for the night, but the porter hadn’t yet locked up. She stepped toward Padre Yves’s office and was about to knock when she heard voices inside.
She didn’t recognize the voice of the man talking, but what he was saying froze her in her tracks.
“Most of them are coming in through the tunnel. They want them off the street with all the carabinieri swarming all over the place. What about the others?…All right, we’re on our way. If he makes it out, he’ll try to hide here; it’s the safest place.”
In the office, Padre Joseph closed up his cell phone and turned to the others.
“Two of Addaio’s men are waiting out in the piazza, and Mendib is still in his closet. They must not know exactly where he is, but I imagine he’ll be on the move again; he’s not too secure there.”
“Where’s Valoni?” asked Padre David.
“They say he’s furious—the operation has gotten away from him,” Padre Joseph answered.
“That’s closer to the truth than even he thinks,” Padre Yves said wryly.
“No, you’re wrong,” said David firmly. “He doesn’t know anything; he just had a good idea—use Mendib to get to the bigger quarry. But he doesn’t actually know anything about the community, much less about us.”
“Don’t delude yourself,” Padre Yves insisted. “He’s getting dangerously close to Addaio and his people. They’ve uncovered the Urfa connection with the shroud. Dottoréssa Galloni is pointing them straight in that direction. It’s a shame a woman like that has to—”
“All right,” Padre Joseph interrupted. “They want us in the tunnel. Let’s hope Turgut and his nephew are already down there. Our men are at the cemetery.”
Ana crouched behind a filing cabinet in the outer office, trembling, as the three men headed for the door. Was Padre Yves a Templar, or did he belong to another organization? And what about the two with him? Their voices were those of young men.
She held her breath as they hurried across the room and through the main office door. She waited a few moments and then, gathering her courage, glided silently behind them, following the muffled sounds of their progress not far ahead of her.
They reached a small door leading to the cathedral porter’s apartment. Padre Yves knocked at the door, but there was no response. A few seconds later, he pulled a key from within his cassock and opened the door. They vanished inside.
Clinging to the wall, Ana crept to the entrance to the porter’s apartment and listened. Nothing. She stepped inside, praying that the three men wouldn’t surprise her.
MENDIB HEARD A NOISE AND HE JUMPED, STARTLED. He had regained consciousness not long ago, brought to by the shooting pain in his side. At least the bleeding had stopped. His dirty shirt was stiff with a dry, dark stain. He didn’t know whether he could stand up, but he had to try.
He thought about the strange death of his father’s uncle. Could Addaio have sent someone to kill his great-uncle because he knew he was going to help him? But the old man had done this to him. He couldn’t be wrong about that.
He trusted no one, much less anyone connected with Addaio. The pastor was a saintly man but unbending, capable of doing anything to save the community. Mendib knew that he himself, without intending to, could reveal its existence to the authorities and lead them to his brothers. He wanted to avoid that; he had been trying to avoid it since he was released. But Addaio no doubt knew things that he himself did not, and so he could not discard the possibility that he had been targeted for death by the pastor. He had known that all along.
The door to the janitor’s closet opened. A middle-aged woman carrying a bag of trash stepped inside before she saw him and gave a little scream. Mendib, making a superhuman effort, shoved himself upright and clamped his hand over her mouth.
Either the woman had to calm down or he would have to beat her unconscious. He had never struck a woman—God forbid!—but now it was a question of saving his own life.
For the first time since his tongue had been cut out, he was filled with anguish at his inability to speak. He pushed the woman against the wall, as she struggled and tried to pull his hand away. He gave her a quick blow on the back of the neck and she crumpled, dazed.
Lying on the floor, she was breathing with difficulty. Mendib fumbled inside her purse and found a pen and a date book, tore out a page, and wrote hurriedly. When she began to recover, he covered her mouth with his hand again and showed her the piece of paper.
Come with me—do what I tell you and nothing will happen to you, but if you scream or try to escape, you will regret it. Do you have a car?
The woman read the odd message and nodded, her eyes wide with fear. Pocketing the paper and pen, Mendib slowly took his hand off her mouth, but he kept a good grip on her arm as they moved outside.
“Marco, can you hear me?”
“I’m here, Sofia.”
“Where are you?”
“Near the cathedral.”
“All right. I’ve got news from the coroner. The old man who was killed had no tongue or fingerprints. He figures the tongue was cut out not long ago and the fingerprints burned off around the same time. He was carrying no identification of any kind. Oh—he doesn’t have any teeth either; his mouth is like an empty cave, nothing.”
“Shit!”
“The coroner hasn’t finished the autopsy, but he stepped out to call and let us know we’ve got another mute.”
A voice interrupted the conversation. It was Pietro.
“Marco, listen up! Our guy is at the corner of the piazza. There’s a woman with him—he’s got his arm around her. Should we grab him?”
“Just keep on them, unless it looks like he’s threatening her. Don’t lose him; I’m on my w
ay. Keep on the tails too—if we’ve seen him, then so have they. And no more fuckups—if any of them loses us again, I’ll have your balls.”
The woman took Mendib to her car, a small SUV. He shoved her across the seat and got behind the wheel. His side was on fire and he could hardly breathe, but he managed to start the car and pull out into the chaotic late-afternoon traffic.
He drove aimlessly through the city, thinking furiously. He had to get rid of the woman, but he knew that as soon as he did, she would notify the carabinieri. Even so, he had to take the risk—he could not take her to the cemetery. And if he left the car near the cemetery, the carabinieri would be able to track him down. But he was in no condition to walk far—the blood he had lost and the throbbing wound in his side precluded that. He would pray that the cemetery guard was at his post; the good man was a brother, a member of the community, and he would help him—unless, like the others, he had been ordered by Addaio to kill him.
He decided to risk it: He would chance the cemetery. He had nowhere else to go.
When they were close, but not so close that the woman would realize where he was planning to go, he stopped the car and stared at her, as she looked at him in terror. He took out the pen and paper again and wrote: I am going to let you go. If you tell the police, you will regret it. Even if they protect you now, there will come a day when they do not, and then I will come. Go, and tell no one what has happened. Remember—if you do, I will come back for you.
He thrust the note at her, and the terror in her expression redoubled as she read it.
“I swear I won’t tell…please—let me go…” she pleaded.
Mendib tore the paper into pieces and threw them out the window. Then he got out of the car and straightened up, though not without difficulty. He was afraid of losing consciousness again before he reached the cemetery. As he approached the wall and began to walk along it, he heard the sound of the car pulling away.
The Brotherhood of the Holy Shroud Page 38