Dante's Key

by G. L. Baron

  The practice had proven more complex than expected, partly because the only passenger on the flight was a seriously-ill Italian who would arrive within a few minutes.

  Julia peered over the airport’s sliding doors and finally saw two hostesses appear, dressed in blue with a big umbrella in hand. Behind them, Nigel Sforza emerged with a slight smile, gently pushing a wheelchair. Manuel Cassini was sitting, motionless, with his eyes open and a terrified expression.

  Julia went to meet him – oblivious to the rain – and shook the inspector’s hand.

  ‘If everything is okay, we’ll wait for permission from the tower and take off,’ she said, turning to one of the two girls escorting the invalid.

  ‘One more signature,’ clarified the shorter of the two. She handed Julia a clipboard and a pen, handling the umbrella awkwardly in the continuous gusts of rain.

  The girl stared at the paper in silence.

  For a moment, Sforza was afraid that the customs officials had managed to find out that the documents provided were false.

  They spent ten long seconds. Then Julia signed her doodle on the paper and gave it back to the girl. Sforza gave a sigh of relief.

  ‘Have a good trip,’ concluded the hostess before trotting back in to the dry area, in the company of her colleague.

  ‘Are you sure the stuff you gave him will not paralyse him?’ Sforza moaned, as soon as he had reassured himself that there were only the two of them and the wheelchair. ‘Your colleague planted a syringe in his neck the size of a tube of toothpaste.’

  ‘Not your problem,’ thundered Julia who – for a moment – had locked eyes with Cassini. ‘You worry about finding Meredith Evans’ murderer, the same one as Cavalli Gigli’s. You’re being paid for this, right?’

  ‘I’m afraid that investigation has stalled…’ the inspector admitted with a half-smile.

  ‘Look for a Japanese with one green and one brown eye and you’ll have found the murderer.’ The blonde gave a last look at Sforza and then took the handles of the wheelchair, ready to get onto the plane.

  The professor tried unsuccessfully to open his mouth and protest, scream… escape. In vain. He was paralysed; breathing normally, he was conscious, but he could not even move a muscle. Only his pupils darting nervously from left to right, desperate to ask someone for help. But there was no one.

  ‘Wait… wait.’

  Sforza spun around. One of the hostesses was coming back, trotting dangerously on her heels.

  Julia approached the woman and whispered something.

  Sforza held his breath… He should have left Cassini outside the airport, as he had wanted, and not as Julia had ordered. He had not been paid for that…

  The professor’s gaze held a ray of hope. Someone had discovered that he had been drugged and he was being kidnapped?

  ‘Thank you. Very kind,’ was all he managed to hear.

  Then, he saw Julia smiling at the hostess and taking the passport.

  ‘She’d forgotten…’

  Sforza breathed a new sigh of relief, and shortly after, Cassini and the wheelchair were loaded into the Challenger’s cabin.

  Just before the door closed, the professor could see the Italian and the European Union flags flapping in the rain.

  He wanted to scream. But he could not.

  65

  Dark. Only breathing.

  Then, suddenly, words floating, suspended in the air, as if they were hanging from an invisible glass: MARKER 4048.

  Finally, a yellowish light.

  She was alongside a motorway, at night, in a stationary car.

  The powerful engine hummed behind her. Through the windshield she could see four lanes illuminated by street lamps, tall as buildings.

  Her hazel eyes, outlined in mascara, appeared in the rear view mirror.

  ‘My love… let’s have fun.’

  She buckled her seatbelt and looked at the car’s controls. A shield depicting a golden bull was displayed. All around, a constellation of knobs and buttons, neatly arranged on a red metal dashboard.

  She adjusted her driving gloves and then pressed the accelerator firmly. The pedal sank with surprising ease; it felt like a tablet resting on a soft cushion.

  Marker 4049.

  The ton-and-a-half car moved, gradually increasing speed and swallowing the asphalt up with an unprecedented power.

  The more she accelerated, the more the force of inertia crushed her back against the leather seat.

  The integral traction kept the racing car glued to the road and the V12 engine screamed angrily.

  The skyline of Dubai was becoming smaller, distant, with skyscrapers that seemed to sink like a ship on the horizon.

  She watched the speedometer: 190. 220. 250.

  The highway bent to the right, away from the Gulf, and faded into the desert’s black night.

  Marker 4050.

  She stared straight ahead. There was a big limousine approaching, slow and inexorable.

  She pressed gently on the brake pedal and the automatic gearbox began to downshift. The engine speed shot up and the roar grew.

  She swerved to the left suddenly, and shot into the fast lane. She overtook the car with disarming ease.

  In a few moments it became a shining dot in the rear view mirrors.

  Then she pressed the accelerator again and the seven-hundred-horse-power of the Lamborghini began to operate again in unison, in a symphony of cylinders, valves and pistons.

  For a moment, she took her hands off the wheel.

  The red and white pointer on the speedometer indicated 280. 310. 340.

  A stone on the asphalt would be enough to make it skid.

  Adrenaline.

  Fear.

  Then, suddenly, she put her hands back on the steering wheel and raised her foot.

  Gradually she slowed down.

  Marker 4051.

  *

  Mohamed bin Saif Al Husayn opened his eyes in his laboratory in Dubai.

  Unlike other impressions he had relived in the days before, he had not needed any file or device to recall the last.

  It was there, latent in his brain, neatly catalogued among all his long-term memories.

  In all aspects it had become a memory.

  That car ride was the first experiment of bio support impression.

  And the bio support was Meredith’s brain…

  Shortly before racing the car, his wife had opened the device. This time, instead of starting to monitor the chemical reactions in the neural apparatus, she was limited to impress the experience as a marker.

  It was a kind of digital bookmark. A point of reference information that would then allow, in the subsequent phase, to identify cells directly affected by that experience, and to export the memory.

  In the absence of that marker, with a hundred billion neurons involved in cataloguing everyone’s experiences, it would have been impossible to locate it. The advantage of this technique was evident: the information thus catalogued became part in all effects of the knowledge of the receiving subject, remaining firmly imprinted in long-term memory.

  The difference with the technique based on memorisation via ultrasound support – even using the same microchip – was enormous. With the temporary alteration of the synapsis involved, it was going to affect the primary memory – or short-term – while instead the bio support acted on the most profound memory, able to recover decades-old thoughts.

  The first made the experience vivid, present, as if it had been lived out in that instant; the second simply poured the knowledge from one brain cell to another. That the other was in a different brain was the only differing detail.

  What for some aspects could be an advantage, for others was also a disadvantage; unlike what happened with the ultrasound support – the registration of which could be relived with the same intensity dozens of times – with the bio support, there was no way to review the experience several times. The memory was simply shifted, cell-by-cell with the help of the markers,
from one mind to another.

  The only way to relive the memory was to remember.

  *

  The sliding door of the lab swung open and the curvaceous figure of Julia entered quietly.

  It was the morning of January 5th and the private plane had arrived in Dubai a little over three hours earlier.

  ‘Thanks,’ croaked the Sheikh’s voice synthesizer. His eyes were fixed on the large OLED display, looking at the two Icelandic rivers taken by a geostationary satellite.

  He had a tired face, a clenched jaw, and his eyes appeared more and more ravaged. He seemed to have aged ten years in less than a week.

  ‘I did what I could,’ she sneered at herself. ‘Let’s hope it was enough.’

  Yukiko Nakamichi, one of the neuroscientists employed by the Sheikh, approached them with a white tablet between her fingers. She waited a moment before speaking, then decided, ‘The CAT scan is negative. The other tests will be ready within a couple of hours.’

  ‘Good,’ he hissed. ‘Have the sedative’s effects worn off?’

  Julia cleared her throat. ‘Not entirely. He can speak, but can’t move.’

  ‘At least he knows what it feels like,’ reflected Al Husayn. ‘Okay. Therefore, we have two hours to get acquainted.’

  66

  Dubai, January 5th. 11:14 p.m.

  The room where he opened his eyes was spacious, with walls panelled with bamboo and a single large window, which connected the floor to the ceiling. Out of the window on his left, he could only see a yellowish sky, no clouds.

  The decor was luxurious. A large, shiny black wooden dresser stood in front of the bed, a table with aluminium legs in the same style and a glass display cabinet. There was also a number of African art pieces: decorative masks on the walls, leather shields, wooden sculptures, two geometric spears displayed near the entrance.

  It was certainly an unusual prison. There were no bars on the windows, and it seemed that even the door, however solid, was not steel-clad. But in any case, special precautions would not be needed, given that he could not even move a muscle.

  He wore the same pants and white shirt he had put on before heading to the Vatican Museums. The jacket was laid out neatly at the foot of the bed.

  ‘How is our guest?’ a man in a wheelchair, who had just entered, asked him. He spoke in perfect Italian, through a strange voice synthesizer.

  Cassini swivelled his eyes to see him better: white tunic, olive complexion, wrinkled skin and lifeless eyes. He could have been about sixty. The Sheikh, he imagined. ‘Where am I?’ he asked.

  ‘You have the distinction of being in the world’s tallest skyscraper, the Burj Khalifa. As soon as you’ll have the strength to be able to get up, you can admire the desert’s majesty from the window.’

  Cassini’s eyes turned round to the glass wall. ‘Why am I here?’ he asked, in a tone more resigned than afraid. He was trapped and almost certain they would kill him. What difference did it make?

  ‘I thought it was obvious why you are our guest.’

  Our guest.

  ‘Unfortunately, I’m sorry to delude you.’

  ‘You see, our brain is an incredible machine. Sometimes, what we think we don’t know is hidden somewhere in the maze of our neurons. That’s why we say, “think carefully”…’ Al Husayn stared at him with a look full of understanding. ‘Anyway, I understand, you know? After all that they did to you, it’s normal to feel a little upset. Rest assured, however, all the information needed is already in your mind; you only have to know how to find it.’

  Cassini did not answer. Again all this madness. The answer is already within you.

  ‘Believe me, I know how you feel after an implant,’ the Arab continued. ‘My company invented the technology that made it possible. It’s perfectly normal. Let me show you something…’

  Al Husayn moved his chair so that Cassini could see the IPS screen in front of his eyes. A layout similar to that of an electrocardiogram appeared on the screen. The jagged line was green, but in some places the colour was different: there was a red part, an orange part and a purple one.

  ‘What we see is a kind of graphic representation of your brain. The coloured areas are called markers; they are the sectors of the cerebral cortex in which our device is working.’

  ‘They’re implanted memories?’ Cassini asked incredulously.

  ‘We can define them as such. Yes. What we have done is put some information into your long-term memory. Information that with the knowledge that already pre-exists in your mind should have provided some answers to our experiment.’

  Experiment?

  ‘I still don’t understand! What experiment are you talking about?’

  Al Husayn set the wheelchair in motion and moved again. He went to the window and looked out silently. Evidently he was reflecting on what he could say to Cassini.

  ‘Alright. It’s fair,’ the synthesizer croaked, when the Sheikh had decided. ‘We’ll try to give you more stimulation to elaborate the information. And then, if we want to start off on the right foot, it’s better for you to know. What do you know about the Hospitallers Knights, or rather the Knights of Malta?’

  Cassini smiled. ‘Very little, I know that it’s an order of chivalry that has to do with the church. But I don’t see how it could have anything to do with me.’

  ‘Professor, I, like you, am merely a pawn in a game much bigger than all of us…’ Al Husayn spun round in his chair. The sunlight behind him drew a long shadow on his hollow chin. ‘In 1312, when Pope Clement V disbanded the Order of the Templars, all their possessions were transferred to the Hospitallers. It was great material wealth: castles, money… but also something else.’

  Cassini closed his eyes. If that man thought that telling him seven-hundred-year-old stories would help him to figure it out, he was way off.

  ‘Have you heard the legends about the secrets of the Templars?’

  ‘There are thousands…’

  ‘You’re right. Many are just fantasy, but others are based on historical facts. There is a common denominator in all of them, however. The Templars kept great secrets, great wisdom and, in some cases, important relics unearthed during the Crusades.’

  ‘What you’re telling me is very interesting,’ scoffed Cassini, motionless on the bed with his eyes shut. ‘But I don’t see how the art works of Botticelli, Raphael and Leonardo have anything to do with it. Why have you inculcated other people’s memories in my mind by force?’

  ‘You must have a moment’s patience. I will respond to your question… which is the reason why you’re here. But you must allow me to finish.’

  Cassini said nothing and the Sheikh continued.

  ‘As I said, some theories have historical foundations. What I’m about to tell you I learned many years ago, when I myself was a member of the Knights of Malta.’

  The professor did not interrupt him, but hearing those words, imagined that the Sheikh had started to rave. A Muslim among the Knights of Malta?

  ‘There are numerous historical documents inherited by the Hospitallers that belonged to the Templars. One of these, called Sex dierum iter, is guarded in Venice and dates back to 1217. It is a record of an expedition of eighty knights to Iceland, during a meeting of the Althing, the Icelandic parliament. The purpose of the sortie isn’t mentioned, because unfortunately the document is incomplete. No one had studied it until a Finnish archaeologist, a certain Joonas Eklöf, found it in an archive a few years ago.’

  Mohamed brought up an image of a parchment on the screen. The professor could only read the title: Ab ora Britannica sex dierum iter - Six Days of Sea from England.

  ‘This document has been guarded for centuries among the papers taken from the Templars. If it were not for Eklöf, who also knew the Nordic Sagas, probably that parchment would remain buried in the dust for another seven hundred years. Instead, he had studied the poems of Snorri Sturluson, the most important Icelandic poet, a sort of Viking Dante Alighieri, and those of other poets
from the same period. In one of these legends, the same story is told from Sex dierum iter, an expedition of eighty “knights from the south” during the meeting of the Althing.’ The Sheikh stopped abruptly, as if to give Cassini a way to process that information.

  And the break had the desired effect. A sudden jolt of adrenalin startled the professor.

  ‘These are the facts…’ the Arab continued. ‘And if I hadn’t been a Hospitaller myself, I probably wouldn’t ever have heard anything about it.’

  Hearing about Iceland, Cassini had been shaken and had opened his eyes wide. Unexpectedly, he associated the triangles discovered in Rome and remembered Julia’s words on the excavation conducted in the summer of the previous year.

  ‘March 14, 1319,’ snapped the professor. ‘It’s the date hidden in the allegories of Botticelli’s Primavera… it provided you with the co-ordinates in Iceland… co-ordinates for what?’

  ‘Good. Very good.’ The Sheikh looked him straight in the eye and approached the bed. ‘I see you begin to understand… As you know, wealth and power accumulated by the Templars led the Pope and the King of France to suppress the Order. All the knights on French soil were arrested and their Grand Master, Jacques de Molay, was burned at the stake.’

  ‘But that happened a hundred years after the journey you’ve spoken about,’ remarked Cassini.

  ‘That’s true… but the conspiracy against them was under way long before that… not to mention that the relics found during the Crusades were in need of a secret hiding place.’

  ‘Are you saying that a hundred years before their suppression, the Templars hid something in Iceland?’

  ‘Not necessarily to hide it from their detractors… Don’t forget at that time they were still an Order with great power and great wealth… Perhaps they hid something in Iceland to keep it safe… perhaps because of its great importance.’

  ‘I still do not understand what I have to do with it…’ Cassini just sighed.

  ‘A moment ago you spoke rightly of Botticelli, Raphael and Leonardo… If one of the Templars had survived and had wanted to convey an important secret, what would he do?’