by Tom Fox
After reading the final words aloud, Ben looked up and peered slowly at Thomás, then at Angelina.
‘Whether this is a fake or not, we’ve been overlooking the fact that it is definitely one thing, with absolute certainty.’
His eyes widened as he kept them drilled into Angelina’s.
‘And what’s that?’ she asked.
‘A map.’
67
Underground
The schematics the insertion crew had drawn up had proven remarkably accurate. Given that this was a place about which almost no one knew, secure in large part by that very fact, they hadn’t exactly been able to run to the public records bureau for blueprints. The details they’d pieced together had been gleaned from Emil’s memory, augmented with surveillance and months of technical investigation.
Pretending to be plumbers at a site across the street had provided southerly access to the underground infrastructure, and the plumbing charts for surrounding buildings themselves revealed the size and general shape of the space in which they were interested.
Pretending to be electricians at the store two doors to the east had provided rooftop access to one member of their crew and subterranean access to another; and again, the wiring of the public buildings had been revealing in the gaps that it showed between known structures.
Pretending to be sewer workers . . .
Pretending to be telephone repairmen . . .
Pretending to be drunk tourists, passed out on the kerb until late at night when few would take notice of their snooping about, for all visible purposes to find a place to take a piss . . .
Lots of subterfuge, combined with lots of technical know-how. Ground-penetrating sonar had helped ascertain the precise dimensions of the space, and refined calculations on its readings had assisted in verifying both the thickness and construction of its three-layered walls.
Searching easily hacked computerised city records had also provided them with schematics of nearby underground tunnels, which were essential in getting in – and out – unnoticed.
It had involved drilling a bit of extra tunnel themselves, of course, but they’d had plenty of time to do it. Emil had reflected in everyone’s company that the problem with so many incursion plans was that they relied on everything being done at the eleventh hour. Blow a door off a vault with two kilos of TNT seconds before you want to enter and it’s going to cause one hellfuck of a blast. Only the senseless and the dead aren’t going to notice it.
Far better to start etching your way through before. Not days, not weeks – but months before. A little scratch here, another there, no one notices those things. Let concrete barrier walls flake away a few teaspoonfuls of grit at a time. A metre may take four months to get through, but what the hell is the rush? And eight centimetres of steel? Different tools, but same story. Iron was more of the same.
Little by little. Flake by flake. Chemical etch by chemical etch. Micrometre by micrometre.
Until the day came when it was time to enter, and all a man would have to do was tap through the wall.
68
Thomás’s apartment
Angelina’s brain was working furiously, trying to understand what Ben meant by referring to the text of the fraudulent tablet as a ‘map’.
‘Don’t you see?’ he persisted, sitting back while they continued to search over the page. ‘It doesn’t just tell us what’s going to happen, it tells us where.’
‘The river,’ Angelina said, the first light of understanding starting to dawn, ‘that was obviously the Tiber.’ A connection of event and place, but hardly anything significant. ‘It runs the whole length of the city. It’s not one place but hundreds of them.’
‘And darkness, and fog,’ Thomás added. ‘They happened everywhere. The whole of Rome.’
‘Yes, but,’ Ben said, leaning forward and dropping a thumb on to the line that began the prophecy of the fourth plague, ‘that’s not the case with this one.’
Angelina looked once again at the words he indicated. In the fourth place, a cross of fire shall consume their holy things, the seat of the Mighty See at its head.
‘I don’t know what “a cross of fire” is supposed to mean,’ Ben continued. ‘I can’t imagine it’s just a flaming crucifix – such a thing might be offensive, but it’s hardly a plague.’ His voice went level, stern. ‘But the second part, that sounds like a place to me.’
Angelina bolted upright. At last, Ben’s meaning was clear to her.
‘It’s a specific spot in Rome,’ she said. ‘One we can identify!’
His warm smile resurfaced. ‘Exactly. So long as we know what it’s pointing to, we can figure out where the “cross of fire” is going to emerge – whatever it might actually be.’ He paused, then added dramatically, ‘And when.’
‘When?’ Thomás queried. His face had been a portrait of confusion since Ben had begun this line of discussion, and was newly scrunched up at his latest words.
Angelina was a step ahead of him. ‘To get that answer you have to look at the next plague. The one to come after the fire.’ She placed her own finger on the page, two lines below where Ben had positioned his. She read aloud, aiming her words at Thomás: ‘Then shall come the moment, at the hour of first light on the third day after these things have begun, when above the resting place of the Rock dawn itself shall be stopped and the sun shall be blotted out of the sky . . .’
Thomás seemed to swell at the sound of prophetic utterance, the question of its origins still an open one in his mind, but for Angelina the words had become revelatory for entirely different reasons.
‘“The third day after these things have begun,”’ she repeated. ‘“These things” has to refer to the plagues the text is describing, and “the hour of first light” is straightforward.’
‘This all started yesterday,’ Thomás replied, his own realisation dawning. ‘Yesterday morning.’
‘Which means tomorrow is the third day,’ Angelina added. She looked squarely at Ben. ‘The fifth plague is predicted for tomorrow morning at dawn.’
‘That means the fourth has to happen between now and then,’ he answered.
‘But when?’ Thomás asked. ‘There’s no “at the hour of first light”, or any other indicator of time, attached to the fourth prediction.’
‘But it talks about fire,’ Ben answered. ‘You tell me, Thomás, what time of day is it easiest to spot fire?’
The young man didn’t need to answer. There was no such time of day. As was clear to all three of them, fire was most visible at night.
Ben’s insights into the text fuelled a new fire of enthusiasm in each of them. Night was fast approaching; the next plague was coming. All they had to do was figure out precisely where it was they needed to go to witness it.
And stop whoever’s doing all this, Angelina’s thoughts reminded her. Or at the very least, figure out who they are.
‘Whatever the “cross of fire” will be,’ Thomás said, ‘the text says it’ll have its head at the “seat of the Mighty See”.’ He looked into the two faces opposite him on the sofa, shrugging his shoulders. ‘That doesn’t exactly seem like rocket science.’
‘St Peter’s,’ Ben said, affirming the obvious solution to what was hardly a riddle at all. ‘There’s only one church at the head of Catholicism as a whole, and since all these prophecies have been centred here in Rome, I can’t imagine this one relating to any other church.’
‘Exactly,’ Thomás agreed. ‘The “Mighty See” has a mighty basilica at its head.’
The two men were certain, but Angelina’s head was shaking.
‘You’re wrong,’ she announced starkly. ‘St Peter’s won’t be the target.’
‘What are you talking about?’ Thomás questioned. ‘The symbolism seems clear.’
Angelina found the composure to take another draw of the tea, noticing for the first time that Thomás had left the bag in the mug. Chew yourself through this mouthful, then answer.
‘Are you rea
lly both such devout Catholics,’ she finally asked, setting down the mug, ‘charismatic in variety or otherwise, and you don’t realise that St Peter’s isn’t actually the see of Rome?’
Ben and Thomás simply stared at her.
‘Everyone assumes it is,’ she continued, ‘because it’s grown to a place of such significance over the past five hundred years, and because of its position as the focal point of Vatican City.’
Ben’s features began to change, as if he could sense where she was leading, but Thomás’s expression remained blank.
‘The Pope,’ Angelina continued, ‘is head of the Catholic Church throughout the world, which is administered from Vatican City. But first and foremost he is the Bishop of Rome, his own diocese. And the cathedral of Rome isn’t St Peter’s.’
‘It’s St John’s,’ Ben said suddenly.
‘St John’s,’ Angelina repeated, nodding.
‘Excuse me,’ Thomás interjected, ‘I’ve lived here my whole life. This is the first I’ve heard of this. Which St John’s?’
‘Lateran,’ Angelina answered. ‘Technically, the Papal Archbasilica of St John in Lateran. It stands atop an old Roman fort dating back to the second century AD. And it’s just . . . stunning.’
‘Then,’ Ben said, rising from the sofa and reaching down to fold up the paper and hand it back to Thomás, ‘that’s precisely where we have to go.’
69
Headquarters of the Swiss Guard
Vatican City
The incursion into the home of Ridolfo Passerini had not led Hans Heinrich to an automatic trove of new information. He’d been so sure of success, following their solid ping on his identity from the CCTV footage, the failure to find him at home – or indeed, any signs of him having been there in weeks – had proven a confidence-fracturing frustration. Their first solid lead, cut short and dead.
Though obstacles were never to be accepted as the end of an inquiry. It was something Heinrich had learned early on as he’d ascended the ranks of the Guard, and it was a principle he held to closely.
For the past few hours, his investigations team had been engaged in what they innocuously referred to simply as ‘networking’. It was in-house lingo for tracing out connections on suspects of interest – figuring out who they knew, who they called, where they went; everything they could find, seize or hack their way into.
Ridolfo might not have been home to capture and interrogate, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a whole lot more they could know about him.
‘We’re not exactly the NSA here, as you know,’ one of Heinrich’s team reported as the Major loomed over him at his desk, ‘but we’ve got a few tricks in our arsenal.’
On the screen before them, as on multiple screens around the open-plan office space, data was being traced out and accumulated. Passerini’s physical address had been tied into phone records, which had themselves been linked to national identity numbers. Those opened the gateways to mobile and financial records, travel documents and a host of additional personal information.
More importantly, interpersonal.
Ridolfo Passerini’s email and phone records revealed a connection to an individual called André Durré that went back years. The two men were obviously long acquaintances, and the content of their correspondence revealed that the two had in fact become personal friends. André’s emails were often reflective, even emotional, and Passerini’s replies, if less emotive, were nevertheless the fruit of an intimate closeness. And never had their digital interactions been more active than over the past eighteen months.
Just who was this André Durré?
A search paralleling that undertaken on Ridolfo was begun on him as a new person of interest, and before long André’s own record of networking had linked him to a name of an altogether different calibre in Heinrich’s mind. André’s father. Emil Durré.
The dossier that they began to assemble on Emil registered red flags from almost its first moments. The first, the most compelling, was a single fact: Durré had once worked for the Vatican. He’d been an employee of the Secret Archives, sacked four years back for ‘gross ethical and professional violations’.
Red flag number two.
The more details that emerged on the monitors, the more Heinrich felt the hairs on his neck stand at attention. Inwardly, with a rapidly increasing confidence, he felt he’d found his man. The man at the heart of all this.
‘I want to know everything there is to know about Emil Durré,’ he announced in a loud voice to the whole room. ‘Focus your energies on him. I want his full employment portfolio and personnel record from his time at the Archives, and everything you can get about what he’s been doing since. Liaise with the Polizia di Stato. Get them to trace out whatever connections you can’t get on your own.’ Then, firmly, ‘Find me everything.’
He walked through a glass dividing wall into his small office and picked up his phone.
Cardinal Giotto Forte answered two rings later. Within a few minutes, Heinrich had brought him up to speed on what they’d discovered.
‘Do you remember this man at all, Excellency?’ he asked the Cardinal. ‘Did you ever have any dealings with him?’
‘Only when he was sacked,’ Forte answered. ‘His work at the Archives wasn’t anything to do with me, but a firing from a Vatican post always gets reviewed by the Curia.’
‘What kind of man is he?’ Heinrich questioned. ‘I know his formal details, but I need to know what kind of personality we’re dealing with. A religious zealot? A fanatic?’
‘If anything, I remember him being exactly the opposite,’ Cardinal Forte replied. ‘When he came before us for the tribunal hearing, he struck me as a man who believed in nothing at all.’
Heinrich tried to absorb what this meant for his profile.
‘If he’s your man, Major,’ Forte continued, ‘then it’s not the Church’s power or spirituality he’s out to attack. He’ll want something else entirely.’
70
The courtyard before the Papal Archbasilica of St John Lateran
The late light of afternoon was already fading as Angelina, Ben and Thomás stepped off a city bus at a stop near the end of the tree-lined Viale Carlo Felice. A few paces from the stop no fewer than nine streets converged in a complex interchange of lanes and lights that managed, by the happenstance of city planning over a span of millennia, to create the uniquely triangular courtyard in front of the Archbasilica of St John. The street lamps were already coming to life, though they were hardly necessary yet, and the shadows of an orange sky ahead of them and a purple sky behind cast an unusual, spectral light on the enormous facade of the ancient church.
The structure was stunning. Even though Angelina had never harboured warm thoughts for religion, she’d always been awed by the architecture the faiths of the world could inspire. In this city, Christianity had mounted its finest monuments. St John Lateran gazed solemnly westward with a vast white edifice of enormous pillars in offset spacing, those lining the face an uncommon square style while those at its centre were more typically cylindrical, all capped in ornate Corinthian capitals. Destroyed by earthquakes and rebuilt several times over its nearly two-millennia-long history, the current building looked more like a palace than a church, but was eminently impressive. High atop the structure stood twelve monumental statues of the apostles, added in the eighteenth century at the instruction of Pope Clement XI, and perfectly centred at ground level was the Holy Door, depicting the crucified Christ surmounted over the image of his mother and disciples, all cast out of solid bronze.
‘So, that’s the actual centre of the Catholic Church?’ Thomás asked. He still seemed unable to accept that St Peter’s wasn’t the heart of things as he’d always believed.
‘It’s the cathedral of the Bishop of Rome,’ Angelina answered as they walked closer, ‘and since the Pope is Pope by virtue of being Rome’s pontiff, it’s ultimately from here that his papal authority has its origins.’
‘From the . . .’
Thomás struggled to remember the word Angelina had used when speaking with him earlier about it, ‘the . . . cathedra . . . inside?’
‘Most people aren’t aware,’ Ben offered his own answer into the conversation, ‘that the term “cathedral” technically refers to a church in which there is a throne, or chair, which in Latin is cathedra, on which the reigning bishop sits. The presence of a cathedra in a church – technically it doesn’t matter if the building is immense or tiny – is what makes it a cathedral.’
Thomás shook his head, gazing up at the awesome structure in front of them. ‘This certainly isn’t tiny. You’re saying the actual papal throne is in there?’
‘A version of it,’ Angelina answered. ‘The original is thought to be in the Vatican Museums, though it isn’t shown to the public. But we’re not here for the history.’ She was going against her natural impulse, but necessity demanded it. ‘Night’s falling, which means that if we’re right about all this, something is going to happen here. Soon.’ She glanced meaningfully at both men. ‘Keep your eyes open.’
The triangular courtyard before the basilica was, uncharacteristically, not filled with crowds of tourists. The frightening events of the past two days had Rome’s citizens hunkered down, locked into their homes, and Angelina couldn’t help but notice that even most of the curtains on the neighbouring buildings were drawn, as if their inhabitants simply didn’t want to see whatever was coming next. There were a few brave ones out in the square, determined not to be ruled by the fear that had gripped the city expecting another ‘plague’, but even these appeared tense, sticking together, looking entirely ill at ease.
At the edges of the courtyard, beyond the lanes of depleted traffic, the traditional array of religious stores, coffee shops and tabacchi were scattered on the ground level of old buildings. Ben gazed at the tobacco shops with a longing that couldn’t quite be concealed, but once again Angelina noticed the unusual absence of activity. Shops that never closed, day or night, had blackened fronts and bolted doors. The one food shop whose glass windows she could see through appeared to have its shelves almost entirely depleted, as if the local neighbourhood had panic-bought supplies in anticipation of being holed up for an indeterminate period ahead.