Sign of the Cross

by Glenn Cooper

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I don’t understand the relevance.’

  ‘Look, it’s a very thin reed, I’ll admit, but when I saw it I started making some connections. One: the monastery at St Athanasius is one of the oldest in Europe, it’s seventh century, maybe even earlier. Two: According to the only surviving monk, Brother Ivan, there’s been a long line of secret stigmatics there. Three: Giovanni began having stigmata after visiting the crypt. Four: what’s typically kept in crypts? Burials and relics. Five …’

  ‘I see that you’re either very creative or very crazy.’

  He bowed his head at the half-compliment. ‘Could be both.’

  ‘Are you suggesting there could have been an important relic in the crypt? One of the Holy Nails of Christ?’

  ‘The thought crossed my mind.’

  ‘But how could a relic cause stigmata? And why would some people commit terrible crimes because of it?’

  ‘Like I said, it’s a thin reed of a theory.’ He searched the reading room for Pandolfi. ‘Why’s he taking so long?’ he asked.

  Minutes turned into tens of minutes.

  When Pandolfi finally appeared it was patently obvious that something was wrong.

  The monsignor began speaking with his hands before any words came out. ‘Professor, a great calamity I’m afraid. The book. It’s gone.’

  Cal understood the gravity but Irene asked innocently, ‘Did someone check it out?’

  Cal answered for Pandolfi. ‘There’s only one person on God’s green earth who’s allowed to check out a book from the Vat and that’s the pope.’

  ‘And the Holy Father isn’t to blame, I assure you,’ the librarian said. ‘Here’s what I’ve discovered. Our digital files indicate the book was last requested three weeks ago by a researcher from Belgium, a reputable scholar. It was returned to the shelves when he was done with his work. So it has disappeared within this time period.’

  ‘What’s your protocol?’ Cal asked.

  ‘We must close the library immediately and enlist all our staff to do a search in case it was misfiled. There are some other tasks we must also perform on the personnel side. Cal, please give me your mobile phone number and I will call you later in the day. Until then, please say nothing, whisper nothing, tweet nothing of this matter.’

  Guido Pandolfi hastily arranged a meeting later that afternoon. He arrived at the office of the Cardinal Librarian in the Apostolic Palace the same time as the other two men. One was his immediate superior, the prefect of the Vatican Library, who was a Dutch archbishop, and the other was a member of the Vatican Gendarmerie, the deputy inspector general, Colonel Emilio Celestino.

  The Cardinal Librarian, Cardinal Vittorio Pessoa, a scowling, portly man stuffed behind his ornate desk, dispensed with pleasantries. He was the man who answered to the pope and the Procopius book was one of the truly priceless treasures of the collection.

  ‘Tell me what you know,’ he demanded, wagging his finger at Pandolfi.

  ‘We know the book was in the library three weeks ago when a well-respected academic requested it. It was logged out and logged back in two hours later. One of my most trusted librarians was the one who handled the transaction and she assures me she replaced it in its proper shelf in one of the new, climate-controlled rooms.’

  ‘You believe her?’ the cardinal asked.

  ‘I do, Your Eminence. However, suspicion immediately fell upon another librarian, a young man named Flavio Costa, who has been with us for only four years. He abruptly resigned two weeks ago in a most unsatisfactory manner, giving essentially no notice and a vague explanation of his actions.’

  The cardinal looked dyspeptic. ‘Do you think he stole it?’

  ‘I suspect so.’

  ‘But surely it’s not an easy matter to walk off with one of our manuscripts,’ the Dutch prefect said. ‘The book, like all our volumes, will have had an RFID computer chip that would have set off an alarm. Furthermore, all employees are subject to a physical search when they leave the library.’

  Pandolfi nodded. ‘Our librarians know where the chips are located and how to remove and destroy them. As to the security searches, let me ask Colonel Celestino to address this.’

  Celestino, a youthful man in a smart civilian suit, said, ‘We went through the duty rosters for the day that Costa resigned and identified the guard who was responsible for employee searches. At first he denied any irregularities but we had evidence to the contrary. The security camera at the employee checkpoint showed him waving Costa through that evening.’

  The cardinal’s mouth dropped open. ‘What?’

  ‘With persistent questioning the guard admitted his complicity,’ Celestino said. ‘He was paid one thousand euros by Costa to let him pass without a bag check. He is now under arrest.’

  ‘And what of Costa?’ the prefect asked.

  ‘He’s not answering his mobile or home telephone,’ Celestino said. ‘Working with the Roman police we have a search warrant for his flat. I personally intend to exercise this warrant now.’

  Celestino accompanied a trio of municipal Roman policemen to Costa’s apartment building in the San Lorenzo neighborhood of Rome. It was an area heavily populated with students, the kind of place where a poorly paid junior librarian might afford a studio flat.

  As they were about to enter the building, a young man with facial piercings leaned out a first-floor window and called out, ‘It’s about time you guys stopped ignoring us.’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ one of the policemen said.

  ‘We’ve been complaining about the smell on the third floor for a week.’

  When Monsignor Pandolfi rang Cal in the late afternoon to see if he was available to talk in person, Cal suggested they meet over dinner at Gigetto’s in the Jewish quarter, explaining he had a serious craving for fried artichokes.

  Cal and Irene arrived before him and were into their second glass of wine before the priest arrived, out of breath and apologetic.

  ‘This has surely been the strangest day I have ever experienced,’ he said, accepting a pour of Pinot Grigio.

  ‘Did you find it?’ Irene asked.

  ‘Unfortunately no, but we know what happened to it, up to a point.’ He glanced at the other diners on the terrace and dropped his voice. ‘One of our young staff librarians stole the book and abruptly resigned. He must have been paid a great deal of money, because he gave a library security guard one thousand euros to look the other way.’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ Cal asked.

  ‘We do. Unfortunately we cannot ask him any questions. We found him in his flat this afternoon. He’d been shot more than one week ago. Murdered. The book was not there.’

  ‘My God,’ Irene gasped.

  Cal thought she looked faint and filled her water glass. He could see a panic attack coming on.

  ‘Are you unwell, signorina?’ Pandolfi asked.

  ‘I’ll be fine,’ she said unconvincingly. ‘It’s awful.’

  ‘Yes, an awful affair,’ the priest agreed.

  ‘Do you have any idea who’s behind this?’

  ‘The Roman police and our Vatican Gendarmerie are investigating but no, unfortunately not. Professor, may I ask why you wished to see the book today?’

  Cal wondered if the vice prefect was suspicious about the timing. ‘It’s for one of my research projects on the seventeenth-century Church.’

  ‘The text of The Secret History is widely available. I myself own several editions.’

  ‘It’s not the text I’m after. It’s the marginalia in Latin and Greek on VAT. GR. 1001.’

  ‘Ah, the marginalia, I see. Most were made by the librarian, Nicolò Alamanni, to aid him in the preparation of the first printed version of the book.’

  ‘That’s what I’m interested in, an insight into the Church attitudes and official censorship.’

  ‘Well, Procopius held very little back in his description of vice and sexuality in Justinian’s court,’ Pandolfi said.
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  ‘Exactly,’ Cal agreed, hoping that Pandolfi was unaware of the other marginalia. ‘So it’s a major tragedy that the book’s been stolen and a minor tragedy for me that my research is stymied. I tried to see the book once before, years ago when I was doing another research project. It was unavailable then, so my luck with Procopius is pretty bad.’

  ‘When exactly did you previously request it?’

  Cal pulled out his mobile phone, searched his calendar and found the exact date he’d been at the library.

  Pandolfi tapped his forehead with his finger a while and declared, ‘You know, I’m quite sure we were in the midst of a photography project. The Cardinal Librarian at the time decided to grant an Italian publisher of art and photography books, the right to produce a book that was called, Treasures of the Vatican Library.’

  ‘I know the book. I own a copy,’ Cal said.

  ‘The photographer hired by the publisher set up his equipment in our restoration laboratory and the book was probably there during the period you requested it. I’m quite sure that only the title page of The Secret History was ultimately published but I’m also quite sure that many of its pages were photographed.’

  Cal leaned forward expectantly. ‘Do you have those photos, Guido?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Cal, but I don’t.’ As Cal was deflating with disappointment, Pandolfi added, ‘But the publisher might.’

  TWENTY

  The offices of Edizione Penta were located near the Piazza Navona in an elegant townhouse that originally had belonged to the publisher’s great grandfather. Monsignor Pandolfi had called on Cal’s behalf. When Cal and Irene arrived the next morning for their appointment, Laura Penta, the company chairman, met them.

  ‘We are very pleased to meet you, Professor Donovan,’ she told him in the reception hall. ‘I Googled you this morning and I see what an eminent authority you are. We will try to help.’

  Cal thanked her, mentioned he owned several of the publisher’s lavishly produced art and architecture books and introduced Irene.

  ‘Berardino,’ Penta said, thinking for a moment. ‘That’s the name of the missing stigmatic priest, isn’t it?’

  Cal hoped that Irene would answer vaguely but she didn’t.

  ‘I’m his sister.’

  ‘My heavens!’ the publisher said. ‘I’m so sorry! What a horrible time for you. Does your appointment today have anything to do with this?’

  Cal quickly answered, ‘It’s a complete coincidence. Irene is assisting me with my research and she thought she would carry on, to help keep her mind off the situation. The police have the family’s full confidence.’

  Irene pursed her lips then said, ‘Yes, full confidence.’

  ‘Well, come with me to our boardroom. We have all the prints from the Treasures of the Vatican Library book in boxes. That’s the good news, as one says. The bad news is that, five years ago, we temporarily ran out of photographic file boxes. We urgently needed some for a new project so we robbed Peter to pay Paul. All the photos from the Vatican Library book were transferred to larger boxes, without respect for their organization. At least we retained them. We’re bursting at the seams but I can’t bear to throw out work we’ve paid for.’

  Cal blanched when he saw the conference table. It was piled high with unlabeled, large cardboard boxes filled with developed photos and contact sheets.

  ‘Yes, it’s a big job,’ Penta said. ‘Fortunately there are two of you. There’s a coffee machine and mineral water. If you need anything, my assistant is just down the hall.’

  Cal opened a box at random. It was stacked to the lid with color photos. He placed the top one on the table for both of them to see, a page of parchment with Latin calligraphy. He turned it over to see if there was any label on the back. There wasn’t.

  ‘This is a problem,’ he said.

  ‘Why?’ she asked.

  ‘If they’re all like this, it’s going to require me to read a few lines of each to see if it’s from The Secret History. We’re not going to be able to split the workload.’

  ‘The book is in Greek, right? I know the difference between Latin and Greek so I can sort the photos for you. And if I see any writings in margins, well, so much the better.’

  Cal gave her a thumbs up. ‘Smart,’ he said. ‘Very smart. Let’s get going.’

  The room was sweltering hot.

  Giovanni lay on a narrow bed, the sweat streaming down his face. There was a ceiling fan but it was operating at a low speed and it moved almost no air. The two windows were open but the shutters were nailed shut. The bright sunlight cast the pattern of the shutter slats onto the peeling paint of the opposite wall. He’d been told that calling for help was useless – the house was isolated – but if he disobeyed, he’d be beaten. The only other furniture was a flimsy chair and an empty bureau. There was a ceramic jug for his urine and a few plastic bottles of warm water, with labels removed. If he needed the toilet, he had to ring a bell and the smaller man would come with a blindfold to take him along a corridor to the WC.

  The journey by boat had ended the night before and when they docked, his hood had been replaced and he was blindly marched a short distance to a car. There a third man greeted the other two in German. The car journey had lasted well over an hour. When he was removed from the vehicle he had heard crickets, so he had assumed he was in the countryside. His shoes had crunched on gravel and then he was inside. When his hood had been removed he was in this bedroom.

  The key turned in the lock and the large man entered with two thin sandwiches on a paper plate. Apparently, Giovanni’s room wasn’t the only one that was hot, because the man was shirtless, his bronze skin glistening with sweat. The priest stared at him for a moment then looked away self-consciously. The only times he had ever seen such a massive chest was at the cinema in action movies.

  ‘Eat this,’ Gerhardt said.

  Giovanni held up his hands. The wounds on his wrists had bled through, soaking his bandages and his bedsheets were streaked with blood.

  ‘May I have fresh bandages?’ he asked.

  ‘We have no gauze,’ Gerhardt said. ‘I’ll bring strips of linen later.’

  He watched while Giovanni hungrily consumed the sandwiches.

  When Giovanni had taken his last bite of bread and cheese he said, ‘It’s time to tell me what you found inside the crypt.’

  ‘I can only repeat what I told you before. There was nothing.’

  ‘I gave you food. I was nice to you.’

  ‘Kidnapping me isn’t nice. Hurting me isn’t nice.’

  ‘I’ll give you until tonight to think. I’ll come back when it’s dark and I’ll hurt you worse than before. You’ll tell me what the monk gave you in the crypt. It was a spike, I think. You’ll tell me where it is. Until you do, you won’t get any more food. You’re fat. You can last a long time. And no more trips to the toilet. You’ll use the floor.’

  Gerhardt turned to pick up the ceramic jug and purposely spilled the urine on the tiles. When he did, Giovanni got a good look at his huge left biceps and the rest of the tattoo he’d seen on the boat.

  ‘Four down, sixteen to go.’

  Cal replaced the lid on the box, lifted it off the table and placed it on the floor beside the other three they’d searched.

  ‘At this rate, we’re going to be here tomorrow too,’ Irene said, stretching her arms over her head.

  She was already partway through the next box, sorting photos into piles based on the language of the text: Latin, Greek, other. He initially checked her work to make sure no photos of Greek texts got into the Latin pile, but after a while he was satisfied that she was making the correct assignments.

  He was reaching for the pile of Greek photos from the fifth box when he suddenly stopped and stared at the wall.

  Except he wasn’t seeing the wall.

  He was seeing something else, a black and tan image.

  His breathing quickened and his pulse raced.

  Finally, his blinking se
emed to wipe the image away and he looked over at Irene, about to talk when he noticed that she too was blinking, with a bewildered expression on her face.

  ‘I just saw something,’ she said.

  ‘So did I.’

  ‘I’m going to draw it,’ she said urgently. ‘Give me a pen, please.’

  He got two pens and two pieces of loose paper from his bag and they both began to sketch.

  When they were done they slid their drawings across the table to one another.

  They were identical.

  They had to take a walk around the Piazza Navona to clear their agitation.

  Amidst the multilingual chatter of tourists and the sound of flowing water from Bernini’s Fountain of Four Rivers, they tried to make sense of their latest message.

  ‘You’re a hell of a lot better of an artist than me,’ he said, looking at the two sketches, one in each hand.

  ‘But they are the same, that’s clear,’ she said. ‘It’s some kind of Nazi symbol, isn’t it?’

  Cal agreed. ‘Those are definitely the SS lightning bolts.’

  ‘And in between them?’ she asked. ‘Some kind of spear?’

  ‘You don’t recognize it?’ Cal asked.

  ‘Should I?’

  ‘It’s not just any spear. It’s the Holy Lance.’

  He told her its history: how it was cleaved in the eleventh century by an artisan trying to insert what had been thought to be a Holy Nail into the relic and patched with a sleeve of gold, how it was seized by the Nazis in the Anschluss and how it was returned to Vienna by the Allies after the war.

  ‘But where would Giovanni see this kind of symbol?’ she asked. ‘A painting, a poster, a book?’

  ‘No clue,’ Cal said. ‘I’m sure I’ve never seen it before. If I had I’d remember. What I can’t figure out is why he only saw the bottom half of the symbol first.’

  ‘It made an impression on him,’ she said. ‘First the bottom part, then the whole of it. We’re not seeing everything he sees, that’s for sure, so I can only think we’re seeing the things that are most important, maybe the ones that are causing the most stress. And I have to tell you, Cal, as upsetting as it is to receive these – I don’t know – transmissions, I’m thanking God because it tells me he’s alive.’