by James Becker
‘Over here.’
The two men stood side by side looking down at one particular case.
‘That’s it?’ Stefan said, comparing what was written on the sheet of paper in his hand with what they were looking at inside the glass case.
‘Yes,’ his companion agreed. ‘In fact, that’s both of them.’
The glass on the locked display case wasn’t armoured in any way and offered no more resistance to the crowbar than the pane of glass on the balcony door.
‘These other old books and stuff have got to be worth something.’
‘More than you or I could ever earn in a dozen lifetimes,’ Dragan said, ‘but you know the way we work. We do what we’re paid to do and nothing else.’ He opened up the neck of his rucksack while his companion lifted out the two objects they had been told to steal, and laid them carefully inside it.
As they walked down the corridor between the Hall and the Borgia Apartment the younger thief grabbed the other’s sleeve and gestured towards a glass case.
‘Look at this,’ he whispered. ‘It’s gold, a crown of gold.’
‘Yes, but—’
Before he could finish his sentence, Stefan had already lifted his crowbar and cracked the glass that covered the ancient relic.
‘What are you doing?’
‘Look, I know what you said, and you’re right. But this is gold. We can have it melted down, so it’ll be untraceable. We’re only ever going to get an opportunity like this once.’
Without waiting for a reply, Stefan plucked the gold crown out of the shattered display case and placed it in his rucksack. Almost as an afterthought, he also picked up a small and highly decorated copper and enamel box and took that as well.
* * *
‘Put those on now, and don’t take them off until I tell you.’
The order was unsurprising. They had encountered their employer only twice before, and each time they had been blindfolded and driven some way outside Rome to a large and clearly expensive villa, and the entire time they’d been in the building the man himself had been out of sight behind a screen, so they had no idea who he was, except that he probably wasn’t Italian, because his instructions had been relayed through an interpreter.
This time, the journey to the villa took about forty minutes and, after removing their hoods, they were led through to the same room they had been in previously. There, an arrangement of screens had been placed at one end, and a table positioned more or less in the centre of the room, the man they believed to be an interpreter standing beside it.
‘Do you have them?’ the man asked.
By way of answer, Stefan opened his rucksack, lifted out the two objects they had been told to steal and placed them on the table.
The interpreter smiled for the first time since they had seen him.
‘Excellent,’ he purred. ‘You have done well. Now leave the room while my employer inspects these two relics.’
Stefan reached out his hand to pick up the rucksack, but the interpreter shook his head.
‘You can leave that here. My employer will not take long.’
The two men glanced at each other, then shrugged and left the room as they’d been told. They had no option but to comply: the presence of two tall and heavily built men standing by the door ensured that. They were ushered into a small anteroom by one of these two guards, who then took up a position in the open doorway.
But the interpreter had been right. Less than ten minutes after they’d been told to leave, the two men were called back inside the room. The scene appeared to be exactly as it had been when they’d left, albeit with three small changes: in addition to the two literary manuscripts they’d been told to steal, the golden crown and the enamel box were also placed on the table — their rucksacks had clearly been searched — as well as a single piece of brown parchment.
The interpreter stared at the two men in a disapproving fashion.
‘The instructions we gave you, the most specific instructions issued by my employer, were extremely simple. He wished you to steal these two manuscripts’ — he pointed at the two leather-bound objects on the table — ‘the work of the Italian poets Petrarch and Torquato Tasso, and nothing else. Yet you apparently saw fit to take this crown and box of mementos too. Why was that?’
For a moment, neither man replied. Then Dragan took a half step forward and pointed at the crown.
‘It was my decision,’ he said. ‘It was obvious that the theft would be discovered almost immediately, and I thought it might help to muddy the waters slightly if we picked up another couple of items from the library while we were there, to disguise the real objective of the robbery.’
That was nothing like what had actually happened, but as a spur-of-the-moment improvisation, he thought it was quite inventive, and almost believable.
The interpreter stared across the table, his eyes moving from one man to the other, then he nodded, turned and disappeared behind the screens at the far end of the room. The sound of muffled voices could be heard. After about half a minute, he returned.
‘We applaud your quick thinking, though my employer does not believe you for a moment. You took the other two objects, intending to keep them for yourselves. However, that is not important because you did recover what you were paid to find. Now we have one other question for you.’ The interpreter pointed at the single sheet of parchment lying by itself on the table. ‘What is that?’ he asked.
The two men stared at the object.
‘I’ve no idea,’ Dragan replied. ‘I’ve never seen it before. We picked up the two sets of manuscripts from the display case and took nothing else from that room.’
‘That was at the back of the Tasso collection, but it is obviously not a part of it.’
Dragan shrugged. ‘Sorry, I’ve no idea.’
‘Very well. You have already received half of the agreed fee, and later today we will pay you the remainder, once you have completed one further task for us.’
‘That was not a part of our arrangement,’ Dragan replied. ‘We were to carry out the theft, deliver the goods to you and then we were to be paid.’
‘But you’ve already broken your part of the agreement by stealing these two other items. My employer is a fair man, and he has agreed you may retain the enamel box and the additional sheet of parchment and try to sell them if you wish. Call it a bonus. And the additional task we want you to perform is very, very simple, but we will be watching you to make sure that you complete it exactly as we order. You are to take the crown and the two manuscripts, place them in a secure metal container we will provide and then throw them away at the precise time and place that we tell you.’
‘What? I don’t understand.’
‘You don’t need to. You just need to do what we ask.’
* * *
Five days later, the man who had organized and paid for the apparently pointless burglary in the Vatican left Italy in his chauffeur-driven car. Hidden in a secret pocket in one of his sets of matching suitcases were the two original manuscripts, handwritten by Petrarch and Tasso, which he would store securely in his extensive collection of ancient relics as soon as he got back home.
In the meantime, from what he’d been able to gather from the newspaper reports in Italy, Vatican officials appeared quite satisfied that the first-class forgeries he’d commissioned the previous year were actually the real thing, dumped by amateur burglars who got cold feet. All in all, and despite the somewhat unexpected greed of the two burglars he’d employed, it had been one of his most successful collecting expeditions.
2
Vatican City, Rome
14 April 2010
Adolfo Gianni was dying, and he knew it.
The doctor’s diagnosis of terminal cancer of the lungs had not been entirely unexpected. He’d been coughing for years, and recently his chronic shortage of breath had got significantly worse. He’d put it down to old age, to the body simply getting less able to cope with the rigours of day-to-day life
, but when he’d noticed blood on his handkerchief after one particularly violent bout of coughing, he’d guessed the worst.
He remembered the consultation a few days later very clearly. When he’d heard the diagnosis, he’d immediately remarked to the doctor that it was extremely unfair.
‘I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my life,’ Gianni had said, his voice resigned and flat, ‘or even associated with people who enjoy an addiction to tobacco.’
‘That’s probably the commonest cause of lung cancer,’ the doctor had replied, ‘but there could be a number of other reasons for the disease taking hold. Several chemicals and foods have been identified as possible carcinogens, and some recent research has even suggested that burnt diesel fuel could also be a cause. And Rome traffic has always been heavy. Your illness may simply be a product of your environment, nothing more.’
‘What about treatment?’ Gianni had asked.
The suddenly grave expression on the doctor’s face would, the old cleric knew, remain etched on his memory until the very end, which he guessed would be rather sooner than he had hoped.
‘I am terribly sorry to have to tell you that there really is almost nothing we can do for you. You are not in the best of health generally, quite apart from the cancer, and at your age I don’t believe that an operation would be possible or advisable. And,’ the doctor had continued, ‘even if such a surgical procedure could be performed, I have little hope that doing so would achieve very much. As far as I can tell, the cancer is simply too far advanced for that. We can, of course, control the pain you will soon start to experience but, to be perfectly frank with you, that is about all we can do.’
For a few moments Gianni hadn’t responded, his brain reluctantly processing the quietly clinical death sentence that had just been pronounced. And then he had asked the inevitable question.
‘How long have I got left?’
Again the doctor’s face had clouded.
‘I can only give you my best guess. Perhaps six months, perhaps less. Perhaps a lot less. It will all depend upon how aggressive the cancer is, on how quickly it invades all the tissues of your lungs. The truth is that I really don’t know, and I’m certain that no doctor would be able to give you a definitive answer. But at least I’m sure that you will have ample time to make your peace with God.’
Gianni had smiled slightly at that.
‘I made my peace with God a very long time ago,’ he had replied, ‘though I still have one more task I must complete before the end.’
Actually, the doctor had been somewhat optimistic. Within six weeks Gianni had been forced to take to his bed in his tiny room in the Vatican City, a bed that he knew he would never again leave.
And now, as he slipped in and out of consciousness while the opiates did their work and eased the burning in his chest, reducing it to a dull but persistent ache, he guessed that the end was near. But he still had one more duty to discharge before he finally stood before his maker.
Adolfo Gianni waved away the nun who had been adjusting the flow of painkilling drugs through the intravenous line attached to his left arm, and gestured feebly to the other man, a slim and dark-haired young priest wearing rimless spectacles, who was standing uncomfortably against the wall of the room, mounting the death watch.
‘Yes, Father,’ the man murmured, stepping forward immediately and looking down at the frail, thin-faced man, his head outlined by a virtual halo of white hair, who lay on the bed, his body markedly and almost daily diminished by the disease which was steadily killing him. ‘Do you wish me to administer the Viaticum now?’
Despite the pain in his chest, a clutching tightness that made breathing difficult and any kind of strenuous movement completely impossible, Gianni summoned a weak smile from somewhere.
‘Not quite yet, Francis. I can delay the last rites for a little while longer, I believe. No, I must see Father Morini.’
3
Until his terminal illness had forced him to cease work within the Vatican, Adolfo Gianni had been the Prefect in charge of the Secret Archives, and of the staff of priests appointed to work there. The archives weren’t a collection of dusty books and manuscripts ranged on shelves in a darkened room, but were bright and busy most of the time, people coming and going throughout the hours of daylight, and often late into the evening as well.
When it became clear that Father Gianni would not be able to continue with his work, another very senior cleric, Father Antonio Morini, had been appointed in his place, and had been spending most of his time in the archive ever since, improving his knowledge of the way the system worked and familiarizing himself with his new employment. Francis Gregory knew exactly where he would find his new superior.
He knocked twice on the Prefect’s door, waited a few seconds, then opened it and stepped into the office.
The man sitting behind the desk was heavily built, his broad shoulders straining at the fabric of his habit, with a ruddy, round face, topped by a thatch of greying hair. He looked more like a farmer than a senior Vatican official.
Morini looked up as the young man entered his office and gave him a slight sad smile.
‘Has he finally slipped away?’ he asked.
Gregory shook his head.
‘Not yet, Father, but I think the end is very near. I offered him the Viaticum, but he declined, at least for the moment. Instead, he asked me — in fact, he told me — to summon you to his bedside.’
‘Perhaps he wants me to personally administer the last rites to him?’ Morini wondered.
Again Gregory shook his head.
‘Possibly, but I think it’s something else, something that he wants to talk to you about.’
Morini nodded, glanced at the papers covering the desk in front of him, and then stood up.
‘I could do without the interruption, but of course in these sad circumstances I will speak with Father Gianni if that is his wish.’
Morini closed and then locked the door of his office — some of the documents he had been studying were fairly sensitive and, even within the Vatican, curious eyes were to be discouraged — and the two clerics strode away down the corridor.
A few minutes later, Gregory opened the door to Gianni’s room and stood to one side as Father Morini stepped into the chamber. The dying cleric’s eyes were closed and he did not appear to have moved, but Gregory noticed that there were flecks of blood around his mouth that had not been there before. The medically trained nun was still in attendance, and as they entered she was again altering the dosage of the opiates the old man was receiving. Seeing Morini, she dipped her head in respectful salute and retreated to sit on a chair in one corner.
Morini crossed the short distance to the head of the single bed and looked down. He reached out and took hold of Gianni’s right hand and applied gentle pressure.
The dying man opened his eyes and looked up, summoning a weak smile.
‘Thank you for coming, Antonio,’ he said.
Then he glanced around the room and noticed the two other people in attendance there. He gestured to Morini to bend forward slightly and murmured into his ear.
‘You must be my confessor, Antonio, and what I have to tell you is for your ears alone,’ he muttered. ‘Please ask the others to leave the room.’
Morini nodded. Like every other Roman Catholic priest, he fully appreciated the sanctity of the confessional.
‘The Father would like me to take his confession,’ he said, turning to Gregory. ‘Can you and the Sister please give us a few minutes alone?’
When the door closed behind Gregory and the nun, Morini again turned to face the old man, and knelt down beside the bed so that his head was as close as possible to Gianni’s.
‘We are quite alone now, my old friend — just you and me and the heavenly Father. I will gladly hear your confession and grant absolution.’
Gianni nodded, the movement of his head barely perceptible.
But what he said next was not at all what Morini had expected.
Gianni clutched the younger man’s hand with a grip that was surprisingly firm and began to speak in a low and weak voice.
‘I am not confessing my sins, Antonio. I attended to that matter regarding my departure from this world some two weeks ago. I didn’t believe I could commit any important sins just by lying here, except perhaps being guilty of sloth.’
Morini smiled at the feeble joke.
‘So how can I help you?’ he asked.
‘What I have to tell you is a confession of sorts, I suppose, but it is far from personal, and involves my professional position here in the Vatican hierarchy, a position that you now occupy. I have some important information to impart to you, and you must solemnly swear never to share what I have to say with anyone else, inside or outside the Vatican.’
Gianni sank backwards onto his pillow. The effort of speaking at all was clearly taking its toll on his ravaged body.
Morini stared at him, wondering if the opiates — or even the disease itself — had deranged the old man, if he was hearing drug-or pain-induced ramblings with no basis whatsoever in fact. But Gianni neither looked nor sounded as if that were the case. His voice was weak and slightly slurred, but his eyes were bright with intelligence.
‘What information?’
‘First you must swear never to reveal what I’m about to tell you.’
Morini shook his head in slight irritation, then did as the old man asked.
‘I swear by Almighty God that I will tell no one anything I learn in this room. I would never breach the secrets of the confessional under any circumstances, and I will accord whatever you tell me here exactly the same status.’
‘Good. How long have you been here, in the holy city?’
Morini looked slightly taken aback at the question.
‘Just under twenty years,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
‘I arrived here in the mid-seventies, and I became Prefect at the end of the nineties. Even now I still remember having an interview, a very similar interview to this one, in fact, with my predecessor. Who also, if I recall correctly, had contracted a form of cancer. Perhaps the disease is one of the risks of this particular job.’