"Good. When you've done that, I want you to cross-reference these against any contracts won by companies Miles Devere has a stake in. I want to know exactly how much Little Man Devere has made out of the suffering of others."
The old man hung up on him.
21
The Words of the Prophets Written On Subway Walls Noah Larkin had spent the night alive and well and living in hell. Each one of his personal demons were within arm's reach. There was a bottle of thirty-year-old McCallan scotch whiskey on the nightstand, a plastic cup beside it. The bottle's top lay on the nightstand beside the bottle. The cheap hotel room beside the Rome Stazione Termini reeked of alcohol. He had drunk a third of the bottle but felt like he had downed the lot. He sat on the windowsill, watching the girls out in the street. It would have been easy to call down, and one of them would come up to help him take his mind off things. Sometimes that was all he wanted.
He had music playing simply because he couldn't stand to be alone with his own thoughts. It got like that some nights. The dead started talking to him with the voices of his imagination. The music helped to drown them out, but it didn't silence them completely. That was what the drink was for.
The girls on this side of the world were the same as the girls back home. They congregated on the street corners and in doorways and walked up and down the street, advertising their wares. Every creed and color was out there to be bought. A car trawled the gutter, driving slowly from woman to woman as they walked up toward the rolled-down window. Watching was uncomfortably voyeuristic and made Noah feel distinctly dirty. He poured himself another slug of whiskey before he went back to the window. He thought about Margot, the middle-aged whore he'd found in Kings Cross.
He'd paid her to stay off the street for a night. She wouldn't, of course. She was one of these creatures. This was her life. It was all she knew. Like the song said, it was a hard habit to break. But that was what the money was all about. It wasn't about the sex. He hadn't enjoyed sex for a long time. Now he used it to punish himself. He'd given up on the dream of beautiful flesh and candles and soft music and all of that nonsense. It was hard to lose yourself in beauty when inside your own head it was so ugly. He knew his own psychology as well as anyone could.
He looked at the clock blinking red beneath the small portable television set, with its little round aerial poking out from the back: 2:47. The night was slipping remorselessly into morning. He had a little under seven hours until he was supposed to meet Dominico Neri's man from the Vatican. He could sleep. He could drink. He could screw. The truth was he didn't feel like doing any of that.
He decided to go for a walk and picked his coat up off the bed. Rome at night was a dangerous creature, but what city wasn't. The mood Noah was in, if any local boy had decided to push his luck, he would have ended up hospitalized.
He took the stairs down to the lobby. It was another personal quirk. He had no love of elevators. It wasn't the confined space, he wasn't claustrophobic; and it wasn't the height, he didn't suffer from vertigo. But somehow, with the two put together, all he could think about were the metal cables above sheering away and the elevator car plunging, so he took the stairs.
Noah walked all the way down the hill of Via Cavour to the ruins of the Forum. Even in the dark, Rome was a spectacular place. But like the prostitutes at the top of the hill, there was something worn down and seedy about the place. It had seen better days. Almost two thousand years ago to be precise.
An occasional car cut through the streets, heading down toward the Coliseum and Constantine's Arch. He walked in a circuit, following the beaten tourist tracks along Via Teatro Marcello and over to the Pantheon and then back around toward the hotel. He heard the revving engines of boy racers, proving that Rome was just like any other city in the Western Hemisphere-- full of idiots with fast cars. The entire circuit through the old Rome took him the best part of three hours. The area around the railway station was the one part of the city that didn't sleep. News vendors were up already, pasting up the day's headlines.
One of the girls walked toward him, her smile and the sway of her hips inviting.
He didn't see her.
He only had eyes for the thick black ink of the headline.
One word: Veleno!
Poison.
Rome had fallen silently while he drank his whiskey and watched the whores. He had been looking for fireworks. An explosion on the horizon. Something big. Bright. Bold.
He felt sick to the core.
He turned his back on the woman as she started to ask if he wanted company for the long, hot night.
Despite the drink, Noah was suddenly clear headed.
Noah could see Monsignor Gianni Abandonato was anxious. He shuffled about from foot to foot. He stood at the top of the steps of St. Peter's Basilica. Behind him the white travertine stone of Maderno's facade gleamed in the morning. The statues of Jo the Baptist, Christ himself and the eleven Apostles looked down on the Monsignor. Noah couldn't help but look around himself at the Baroque stonework marvels Bernini had fashioned. There was something truly awe-inspiring about the approach to the cathedral. Bernini had somehow managed to balance heaven and earth in his grand design of a split plaza, with its elliptical circus and trapezoid courtyard. It had soul.
In contrast, Maderno's facade seemed flawed. Instead of inspiring awe and reverence it smacked of mankind's vanity. While Bernini had reached for the heavens, Maderno's work lacked line and symmetry--and its cardinal sin . . . it lacked any form of vertical feature to draw the eye as the pilgrim approached the holiest of holies. That was left to the dome in the distance.
Noah squinted against the rising sun. The attic where the statues stood watch over the great square was too cluttered with detail for its relative lack of height, he realized. It was trying too hard to force grandeur into the white stone. But then Maderno had been frightened by the notion of original thought, almost as though by definition it became original sin, and had clung to the proportions of the rear of the basilica drafted by Michelangelo.
Noah walked slowly toward the Monsignor, who stood across the piazza. He was suddenly at a loss as to how he was supposed to greet the man. Did he call him Father? Eminence? Excellency? Just Monsignor? Gianni? Piazza di San Pietro itself was empty save for a few early morning tourists up with the crows. He counted five crows in the dry basin of the fountain as he walked past it. That made one crow for every early bird. There was no water in either of the fountains. They had been drained at first light, as had every other fountain in the city.
Noah hadn't been able to reach Neri, which was hardly surprising. The Carabinieri man had been working all night, dealing with the effects of the poisoned water. Rome was a city under siege.
The Witness, the ancient Egyptian obelisk that had supposedly seen the crucifixion of Saint Peter, cast its shadow all the way to the dry fountain. Noah crossed the shadow. It felt as though he had passed some sort of boundary. On the other side, this world of God and Saints and Souls seemed so much more real.
He took the opportunity to study the man on the steps. He was wearing the robes of his office but lacked the serenity of a man at peace with his place in the world. Noah recognized the telltale signs of a man on the verge of breaking. How much was he risking by meeting with Noah? Surely not so much as to be looking over his shoulder every few seconds? Noah wondered who was back there, hiding in the shadows? There was someone back there, he knew. One of the Swiss Guard perhaps? Another holy man? Who would he be more frightened of? The archivist was obviously eager to sweep him away from prying eyes and into the labyrinth of the cathedral itself. Curious then that he would choose such a public place to meet, especially as the doors wouldn't open for pilims for a few hours yet. He held up a hand and waved in greeting. He reached the stairs a few moments later.
"Monsignor Abandonato?"
"Gianni. This way please, Mister Larkin," he gestured not toward any of the three doors that led through to the nave, but rather toward another smal
ler passage that led toward the barracks of the Swiss Guard.
"Noah."
"A propitious name if ever I heard one. Some of us are not so blessed," he shrugged slightly. They turned one corner and then another, walking along the side of a narrow, yellow painted wall. There were a number of small doors set into the stone. He opened the fourth they came to and led Noah through into a small vestibule. It lacked the grandeur of the main basilica, but this was part of the administrative buildings not the holy face. "As you can well imagine, being called 'The Forsaken' in this place can prove rather, how shall I put it, convenient for jokes." He looked up at the ceiling. It was a very theatrical gesture, practiced no doubt over many, many years. It was a long-suffering "why me, Lord?" look. Noah found himself rather liking this nervous priest.
Noah followed the Monsignor through a number of narrow passageways, and then the nature of the building seemed to change. For want of a better phrase, Noah thought it went from functional to holy. The ceilings raised. Plain walls became exquisitely painted with frescos, and every raised detail seemed to have been gilded with pure gold. Instead of being beautiful, it was staggering; instead of being calming, it was intense. Like Maderno's facade, there was just too much going on, too much for the eye to see. Did the priests believe that by owning every single work of art they could prove themselves most holy? Most worthy? Was that what it was? Noah could suddenly understand the attraction of minimalism.
He felt very, very small as he followed the priest across the marble floor. Every few feet they crossed a new geometric shape laid into the stone. The sun streamed in through the windows set high above his head. Because of the angle of the sun, they didn't reach the floor, but lit somewhere halfway down the wall on the right side of the passageway. Dust motes danced lazily in the beams. Noah half-expected to hear monks chanting in the distance somewhere or choirboys practicing their harmonies, or something. He knew he was getting his denominations all muddled up, but it felt like there really ought to be singing of some sort, even if it was only a single voice raised in hallelujah.
"Terrible business, this thing with the water," Abandonato said, leading him onto a long, straight passageway that seemed, almost like some optical illusion, to go on and on and on into the vanishing point of the distance. "All these people poisoned. Have many died?" Before Noah could tell him that he didn't honestly know, the Monnor continued, "How could anyone do that? I don't understand. How could anyone knowingly poison all of these helpless people?" He had a handsome face, black hair swept back in a widow's peak, and dark circles under the eyes. His skin had a vaguely waxen tint to it that suggested more than just a passing familiarity with the library stacks and darker corners of the Holy See.
"I think we're having this conversation backwards, Gianni. I'm meant to be the one asking how can something so horrible happen, and you're meant to be the one assuring me it is all part of God's ineffable plan." Noah smiled slightly to show he was joking. The archivist looked uncomfortable despite the gesture.
"Sometimes it is hard, even for us," he admitted. "Our faith can be tested in the most surprising, and sometimes most human, of ways. What man could think of all those children queuing at the water fountains, thirsty for a drink yesterday, and not feel angry that today they are fighting for their lives and losing? But yes, the innocents will find their way to His side, where they will be safe and welcome. There is comfort in that, but the man in me still smarts, Noah."
Noah wasn't certain what he had expected, but he wasn't comfortable taking Abandonato's confession. He thought about making a joke about everyone inside the Holy See being fine because obviously they could just have a word with the Big Guy and get him to do his water-into-wine trick. Thankfully, he played it out in his head before he said it, realized exactly how flippant it would sound and thought better of it. It was one thing to share a wry observation--it was quite another to mock the man's faith--especially when he wanted something from him. Instead, Noah tried to steer the conversation in another direction, asking about Nick Simmonds and what he had been doing during his tenure at the library.
"Nicholas is a good man," the Monsignor said, defending the dead man even though he hadn't been asked to. It was obvious he suspected Simmonds was accused of something. What other reason could Noah have for digging into his background? "He has a good heart. He has been with us for almost two years now, I think. He is quiet, keeps to himself, but then that is rather a bookish trait, is it not?" Noah nodded where he was expected to. "Obviously young Nicholas shares our passion for the preservation of literature. I find it hard to imagine he could have done anything wrong."
"Well, with all due respect, Gianni, didn't you also just say you found it hard to believe people could poison the same water children drank? Sometimes ours is not to reason why."
"Indeed," Abandonato said through tight lips. He gestured to one of the side passageways. "We have been going through something of an upheaval here. The Biblioteca Apostolica has been closed to the public for the best part of three years now. It is undergoing some significant restorative work. Nicholas has been helping us with that. Not the restorative work, obviously,ght="0">
"Incunabula means 'cradle,' as in a baby's cot, or beginning. Think of it as the first traces of anything, that spark of life where it all began. In this case we are talking about the first printed books, even single-sheet manuscripts, anything that wasn't handwritten. You would be surprised how many--or perhaps how few--of these first printings have survived. In the library we preserve extant copies of the very first books manufactured by your countryman, Caxton, for instance. Some of our texts are utterly unique, but in many cases several copies have survived. Take the Gutenberg Bible, perhaps the most famous of all 'first books.' There are almost fifty copies of this known to exist still--forty-eight or forty-nine depending upon who you believe--making it a fairly common book, but of course quite valuable. We have the original hand-written cantos of Dante's Purgatorio and Paradisio as well as La Vita Nuova. Then we have Codex Vaticana, the oldest extant Bible, and Libri Carolini, King Charles' response to the Second Council of Nicaea. It is more commonly known as "King Charles against the Synod," which probably tells you all you need to know about its contents. The library contains the single most important collection of books in the world. Believe me when I say it really is quite some collection."
"If books are your thing," Noah said with a shrug. He managed to keep a straight face. "I'm more of a movie guy myself."
"And even if they are not," Abandonato said, "it is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer scale of everything within these halls, as you will soon see. We need to employ over eighty staff here just to oversee the protection and preservation of these works of art. Eighty people!"
The narrow passage led into what must have been a part of the library itself. There were no bookcases, but at various intervals across the floor there were simple straight-legged wooden tables with glass cases displaying various irreplaceable books. These were perhaps the least ostentatious of the long room's furnishings. Every other table was over-wrought with gold and bore expensive vases, themselves almost certainly every bit as irreplaceable as the books. The room was a headache of colors, reds and oranges and rich blues with a black-and-white checkerboard floor.
Noah didn't know what he had expected, but considering Abandonato's boast, it seemed odd that he couldn't actually see any bookshelves, just lots of paintings of robed people holding books open.
"And it isn't just books," Abandonato continued. "We are responsible for over one hundred thousand prints, drawings, engravings and maps, as well as three hundred thousand papal coins, medals and so forth."
Gianni Abandonato led him through two more corridors, these opening into a final room that finally looked like it ought to be part of the world's most extensive library. Banks of card index files went back into the distance. Each one probably catalogued twenty-five thousand items. The banks went back as far as the eye could see. Two tiers of shelving and a gant
ry filled one wall, each tier packed floor to ceiling with abstracts and indices and other leather-bound texts bearing surprisingly uniform binding. No doubt they were books about the books the library housed. There were reading lecterns arranged conveniently along the gantry and booths set aside for scholarly study. There was an unerring uniformity to everything in the room.
"I had heard," Noah began, looking around to see if anyone was in listening distance, "that the Vatican library had the largest collection of, ah-okay, this is going to sound stupid no matter how I say it--I had heard that you had the largest collection of erotica in the world?"
Abandonato burst out laughing. He had a deep, rich, laugh. It reached all the way down into his belly and came out of his mouth, filled with proper mirth. The sound swelled to fill the entire chamber, echoing off each of the walls. He looked immediately contrite and seemed to shrink about three inches in height. When he continued, his voice was barely above a whisper. "Someone has been pulling your leg, I am afraid, Noah. Unless you are willing to consider the odd Renaissance nude as pornography? Our tastes are far more prosaic.
"Now, Nicholas, Nicholas. What can I tell you about his work here? Nothing particularly glamorous, I am afraid. Nicholas is one of nine volunteers we have working in the archives at the moment. With the renovations we have been forced to transfer many of the Lateran and Pre-Lateran texts down to the subterranean archives. Moving this many books, many of which are so fragile they can be damaged by the merest touch, is a monumental undertaking."
"I'm sorry?"
"Ah, we divide our texts up into five historical periods for ease: PreLateran, marking the earliest days of the Church; Lateran, wh lasted up to the reign of Boniface the Eighth in the 13th century; then there are the Avignon texts--there was a time from 1370 onwards when the Popes were in residence in France; Pre-Vatican, and Vatican, when, in 1488, the library moved here. From then until now the collection remains unbroken. But of course you didn't come here to listen to me wax lyrical about old books. It is difficult. I could talk for hours about this place and what happens here. Nicholas has been helping with the preservation and storage of some of the oldest Hebrew codices."
Silver Page 22