Dante's Key

by G. L. Baron

  ‘Look at John’s head.’

  In that instant, the picture came to life and a blue line began to move from left to right, moving along the border that divided the apostle’s hair from his forehead. The line went down the shoulder and arm, and came to cross the hand of Jesus. From there it started to run up, following the outline of the characters on the painting.

  When the animation was over, a strange pattern was superimposed on the fresco:

  ‘What am I looking at?’ the archaeologist enquired, raising an eyebrow.

  ‘Don’t you recognize it?’ croaked the synthesized voice of Al Husayn.

  ‘No.’

  A moment later, the image of The Last Supper disappeared, leaving just the strange graphical representation. A satellite map appeared superimposed over the fresco. He could see what looked like a river.

  ‘But…’ the archaeologist’s face suddenly went white. He was incredulous. ‘Is that what I think it is?’

  ‘The image was an enlargement taken from Google Maps. What you’re seeing is the course of the river Blákvísl, the most western tributary of the Jökulfall. As you can see, both originate from the Gýgjarfoss falls.’

  ‘But it’s incredible… the rivers’ courses…’

  ‘I know,’ remarked the Sheikh, observing the lines exactly superimposed.

  ‘The waterfall is located more or less on Jesus’ neck. A tributary rises from there following the outline of his face, and the other goes down along the arm, before rebounding on the Apostle to his right.’

  Al Husayn was right. The course of the two rivers, which forked at the Gýgjarfoss waterfall, was identical to the lines drawn on Leonardo’s picture.

  ‘But what does it mean?’ the archaeologist stood up abruptly and walked to the monitor. Despite everything, he was excited. ‘This is the place where we dug,’ he remarked, pointing with the tip of a pen at the river, on the Apostle Peter’s hand.

  ‘Yes, in the painting it is just below John’s forehead. It is two kilometres and five hundred and ninety metres from the waterfall, to be precise.’

  ‘It means that the co-ordinates were wrong?’

  The Sheikh paused for a second. What he was about to say had cost him months of deliberation, millions of dollars in research, and the life of his wife, Meredith.

  ‘No. The co-ordinates were correct.’

  Eklöf spread his hands in resignation.

  ‘It means that the map is more complex than we imagined.’ The Sheikh looked at him straight in the eye and for a moment the synthesizer voice was silent. ‘But now things have come together in the way we planned. Within a few days we will have the key to decipher it.’

  55

  Rome, January 4th. 9:26 a.m.

  The black Mercedes turned onto Via della Conciliazione, becoming gridlocked in the capital’s intense traffic.

  St. Peter’s dome had already made an appearance down the street. It towered above the rooftops, gleaming light blue in the warm morning sun.

  Cassini watched in passing but then turned back to the dark suit he was wearing. It had been left for him on the bed that morning, together with a heavy-hooded jacket.

  ‘We have an appointment at half past nine.’ Julia was sitting next to him in the back seat, her eyes on the clock. ‘One of the Vatican Museums’ attendants will accompany us to the Raphael Rooms. It’s a private visit.’

  The professor stared at her in silence. She was dressed elegantly, with a pinstripe suit, ivory blouse and flat ballet shoes. Her loose hair more than enhanced her perfection. ‘Perhaps it would be better to tell me what we are going to do exactly in the Vatican.’ He gave her a controversial look and held her gaze for a few seconds.

  Julia did not seem impressed. Stroking the briefcase on her lap, she opened it to give the professor a peek inside.

  ‘Is this the famous device?’ he muttered, looking in the briefcase. It contained two small transparent microchips suspended in a glass cylinder.

  ‘It is the only working prototype. We had two, but one was regrettably destroyed in the Vatican Museums.’

  Meanwhile, the car had come to a halt, blocked in a disorderly column among thousands of cars, SUVs and taxis. It did not move even one metre forward in the next few minutes.

  The professor looked away, as if in a fit of rage. He thought of Claude de Beaumont and Andrea Cavalli Gigli. They had volunteered and died… He wondered for the umpteenth time why he was still there.

  ‘Tomorrow we will go to the Vatican. There, everything will be clear. Then you’ll be free to go.’ Julia’s words, uttered the first day, sounded distant, as if they came from the opposite side of a cave.

  He could have escaped during the night spent in bed with her. Yet he had not done so. He only turned over, reflecting about what he knew of the whole story. Only a little, but still enough to keep him attached to that woman, as if she had an invisible leash.

  If he was there, however, it was not just because of Julia’s magnetism, which – useless to deny – he liked a lot. There was more; his curiosity was part of the problem.

  He thought back to the astronomical triangles that he had drawn the previous evening on the Primavera, about the numbers indicated by the fingers of the characters and the symbols hidden in the painting. He especially remembered the adrenaline beginning to flow in his veins, while the mystery he had worked on for years unravelled before his eyes.

  Julia had explained that the information contained within the painting revealed co-ordinates of a hiding place in Iceland, along the course of a river. Wrong co-ordinates, according to what she had told him, but co-ordinates of what?

  His mind went back to the Garden of Eden. The Mercedes moved forward, but only a few metres.

  ‘To the Raphael Rooms, then?’ inquired Cassini. He had already been there, in the past. They were four rooms frescoed in the sixteenth century by the master of Urbino. Up until the sixteenth century they had been the pontiff’s residence. He imagined that the paintings could contain some reference to find what Julia was looking for. After all, if Botticelli and Leonardo had hidden clues in their most important works, it was possible that Raphael had done the same.

  For a second, his eyes narrowed and stared at the woman’s hands, fiddling nervously with the face of her watch, turning and re-turning it round between her fingers.

  A fundamental problem remained in all those arguments, a question that weighed a ton: How was he involved in this business?

  The answer is already within you. Aside from the amusing resemblance to the master Miyagi’s tone in Karate Kid, those words were dramatically significant. The fact that entire verses of the Divine Comedy had bounced inexplicably into his mind for the last three days could not be chance. Maybe it was part of the explanation, and certainly part of the problem…

  Despite the curiosity to know more, to see once and for all his theories confirmed, he felt like a puppet manoeuvred by an invisible puppeteer.

  ‘Stop here!’ Julia ordered the driver, indicating the time. ‘It’s late. We’ll walk.’

  The man unlocked the rear door with a dull click and she got out into the traffic. ‘Come on,’ she ordered Cassini.

  She was not armed, from what he could see. She was evidently confident of his full co-operation. She was certain that the promise to protect him and to let him go at the end of the mission would make him docile and obedient… as indeed he had been up to that point.

  Cassini followed her onto the pavement, where they walked in silence next to each other for a few metres. For a moment it seemed to him that Julia was going to hold his hand. He would have wanted her to… but he was wrong!

  He shook his head. Next to the irrational desire to be close to her, which was growing stronger as she became more reserved, there was a contradictory, rational question: Why had she not clarified the most important issue of forcefully introducing memories into his mind?

  The answer is already within you.

  However enigmatic, he did not like that an
swer at all.

  As Dante’s passages seemed to emerge from his memory like the wreckage of a drifting ship, everything seemed clearer; what they wanted was already in his mind. What they wanted… was him!

  And then he realized that the visit to the Vatican Museum would be only the beginning. Not the end! At best, they would have to work again, perhaps to decipher the clues contained in the frescoes. And the worst? He was sure he did not want to find out… especially if the object of the experiments was his neurons.

  He looked around. For a moment the idea to run away flashed through his head. St. Peter’s Square was a few metres away from him. There would certainly be police officers and Carabinieri. He could ask them for help.

  He observed Julia, who at that moment seemed to read his thoughts. ‘Over there,’ she said, gesturing with her hand.

  They had reached the entrance to the square. Ahead of them a coach had just unloaded an army of noisy children, all with matching salmon-coloured hats and jackets.

  They walked fast along the north colonnade, until Julia stopped in front of a little man with whom she shook hands. He was wearing a cassock under a black coat.

  He had a beard, a ruddy complexion, and auburn hair – so short that it was hard to distinguish where one ended and the other started.

  ‘We have thirty minutes. As you asked,’ he said, giving Cassini – who was a step behind Julia – an odd glance.

  They passed through the colonnade together, crossed the courtyard of San Damaso, and went up through the medieval palace’s back stairs into the Raphael Rooms.

  As soon as they entered the Room of the Segnatura, originally used by Julius II as a private study, Julia put her briefcase on a bench and opened it.

  She did not seem at all interested in the room’s grandeur, with its five hundred years of history.

  Cassini scanned the vaulted ceiling and the motionless museum attendant next to the entrance; in spite of the fact that the visit was to remain private, he had been ordered not to lose sight of the two “special” tourists.

  Along the way, the professor had tried to memorize the route, waiting for the right opportunity to escape. He had not decided yet, and perhaps hoped to see a glimmer of humanity deep within Julia. Maybe she would have convinced him to stay. Instead, nothing; since they had got out of the car she was like a statue of ice, resolute in carrying out the mission that had been entrusted to her… whatever this was.

  ‘We must concentrate on Raphael’s School of Athens,’ she explained, pointing to the fresco while she extracted the OCST with the tweezers from its container. ‘Limit your observation to the characters only. Start with Heraclitus leaning against the corner stone and proceed slowly. Concentrate on Bramante as Euclid, Leonardo as Plato and Cardinal Inghirami as Epicurus. Observe them closely.’

  Cassini stared at the precise point she had indicated; the figure of Heraclitus was right in front of him, in the central part of the fresco. The philosopher, painted with the likeness of Michelangelo, was leaning against a stone cube with rounded edges, and was writing something.

  A moment later, out of the corner of his eye, he saw Julia turn and sit on the bench. Looking down towards the briefcase, she started tinkering with the device.

  His mind went to de Beaumont and Cavalli Gigli, both dead because of that damn thing…

  For a moment Julia seemed completely detached from what was happening around her, focused on the small chips sprinkled with transparent gel.

  Cassini decided instantly: he would not end up the same way as his two colleagues.

  Knowing that he would not have another opportunity, he went up to Julia, sitting on the end of the bench, and pushed her. The woman, taken aback, stumbled and fell backwards with the case.

  She seemed more surprised than worried but Cassini did not even look; he went out through the door and began running towards the back stairs.

  56

  Reykjavik, January 4th. 9:30 a.m.

  Face of ice, heart of fire.

  Joonas Eklöf, born Finnish but Icelandic from love; that was the definition that best summarized his adopted city, built around still-active geysers and steaming volcanoes, and yet so cosy and warm for foreigners like him.

  Since he had moved there with his wife, he loved everything about Reykjavik. From the terraced houses with brightly-coloured buildings overlooking the sea, to the futuristic glass and steel ones built near the port.

  He was sitting in the dark on the rocks of the waterfront, staring at the Solfar, a steel sculpture depicting a stylized Viking ship. He had the taxi leave him there coming back from the airport, just to decide what to do before returning home. He was not used to lying, and especially did not like to betray friends. But the question, unfortunately, was not limited only to that; it was far more delicate… ‘A matter of life or death.’

  He looked toward the rectangular glass building that housed the conference centre and then got up, suddenly overcome by fatigue.

  ‘I need your contacts among the echelons of the Icelandic government,’ his friend had said in that robotic voice. ‘And this time it will be more complicated…’

  The Finn had listened carefully to Al Husayn’s theories. He had not stopped for a second to think that those requests would put him in serious trouble, once again.

  Six months earlier he had agreed to help him, based only on his interpretation of the astronomical triangles. He had personally verified and realized that the calculations were plausible. He did not know exactly what the Sheikh hoped to find, but his enthusiasm had led him to collaborate.

  Shortly after the start of the expedition, however, the problems started; a man had arrived from Venice, a muscular giant with a short and stocky neck, who had wanted to talk to him in private.

  ‘The Grand Master is very worried,’ he had whispered with a serious tone of voice. ‘Brother, the infidel is looking for something that is reserved for a select few. These are difficult times, we must be vigilant and do the right thing… Your role is vital because he trusts you. It’s a matter of life or death; if the Sex dierum iter is telling the truth and you’re able to find the object, you’ll need to prevent it, at all costs, from falling into the wrong hands.’

  What the object was, the Bull had not said… and maybe he did not even know himself. His words were austere but had the effect of catapulting him into a reality of betrayal and lies. A responsibility that weighed on his shoulders and that he could not – and did not – want to bear.

  Then, at the end of summer, everything had ended and he had breathed a sigh of relief; to his Venetian friend’s satisfaction, the excavation had been closed without any antiquities being found. Perhaps there was nothing to find…

  When he thought that the issue had been forgotten, he received the invitation to Dubai and the news that Al Husayn wanted to start again looking elsewhere.

  The Sheikh had not provided the exact co-ordinates; he did not know them yet, he had explained. He had, however, asked him to obtain permits for both riverbanks of the Blákvísl and the Jökulfall, in an area of several square kilometres.

  ‘…The map is more complex than we imagined. Within a few days we will have the key to decipher it!’

  If there really were something in those volcanic rocks, perhaps this time they would really find it… and he, unfortunately, would be forced to act accordingly.

  Eklöf put his hands in his fur-collared coat and went home.

  When he got there, ten minutes later, his wife Krista was standing at the door, wrapped in a heavy woolly sweater, her hair in two large braids.

  She realized, as soon as her blue eyes looked at him, by his grim look, that the spectre that had plagued her husband for the past six months was back.

  ‘Can’t you just say no?’ she merely asked, looking out of the window at the snow-covered Mount Esja.

  ‘I already said I’d go to him… and, I’ve made an oath,’ replied Eklöf. His mind kept repeating the Bull’s words: ‘Unheard of upheavals if it fall
s into the wrong hands.’

  ‘He also has made an oath… but has decided not to care!’

  ‘He’s dying,’ Joonas wanted to reply, but he just looked at her without saying a word. He had no choice; he had to do it. The Sheikh trusted him and if he pulled out, the Knights would have had no infiltrator in the project.

  He went into his studio and started writing an e-mail.

  Most Excellent Grand Master, Chancery Master, as I advised you on the phone a few days ago, I went to visit our mutual friend…

  He finished in thirty-five minutes, read it over several times, and finally pressed the “send” key.

  Soon after, conscious of having betrayed an old friend, he hoped he had not committed the biggest mistake of his life.

  57

  Vatican City, January 4th. 9:31 a.m.

  Manuel Cassini passed a row of metal barriers and turned right, heading back towards the basilica.

  After travelling back through the hallways and stairs that had led to the Raphael Rooms, he had come out near the Courtyard of Sixtus V. He hurried towards Saint Peter’s Square, without stopping, crossing quickly, searching for the police. Although he was already in Vatican territory, he knew that the Italian authorities there guaranteed security.

  The square was crowded with tourists and the faithful, but at first glance, he had not seemed to see any uniformed police.

  ‘Maybe closer to the basilica,’ he thought, with his heart in his throat.

  He moved along the south side, on the opposite side of the Apostolic Palace from where he had emerged, and ran at breakneck speed.

  When he was about halfway along the oval, he turned back to see if Julia was chasing him. He did not see her at first, but he was certain that she would not let him get away.

  He decided to move under Bernini’s colonnade and continued his headlong rush from there.

  *

  Julia shot up abruptly, but remained motionless in the Stanza della Segnatura, watching Cassini run out of the door.