Thanking him, Kate walked back into her bedroom and placed the grille over the message. Letters forming six words were visible through the cutout boxes:I’M IN THE COCKTAIL BAR DOWNSTAIRS.
Kate hadn’t decided whether or not she was going to call Medina that evening, but…looks like he made up my mind for me.
Still wearing her black strapless dress, she walked across the room toward the spiked Prada sandals she’d borrowed from Adriana earlier that evening. Sitting on the bed to fasten them, she changed her mind—to hell with it—opting to wear hotel slippers instead. Passing a mirror, Kate deliberated for a moment, then gave in, turning toward it to check her teeth for lipstick smudges.
Up on the third floor, the hotel’s newest guest stood peering down into the stairwell.
“Had you a nice evening?” a German woman asked him.
“Perfect,” he responded, using his best American accent. “I went to the theater. Wonderful comedy.”
Reaching into his jacket pockets, he pretended to search for his room key until the old woman was gone, then returned his gaze to the stairwell. A few minutes later, he saw Kate Morgan’s door open and watched until the top of her head disappeared from sight. She was carrying a backpack, but maybe…
Descending the steps two at a time, within seconds he was picking his way into her suite. Spotting a mobile phone on the desk, he strode toward it.
Medina was facing the opposite direction when Kate entered the dimly lit, wood-paneled cocktail bar. He was looking at either a stag’s head or a painting of a horse. She used the opportunity to look at him. He was wearing black trousers and a charcoal gray button-down shirt, which, Kate had to admit, were very flattering. Not that he needed any assistance.
“Nice shoes,” he said, noticing her.
“Thanks, I—”
“No need to explain. I know it’s your way of saying you’re not trying to impress me. But if you really didn’t care, you’d have changed into a sweatshirt.”
Good point, um…“And get frowned at by the snoots around here? No thanks.”
“Damn. I try to get you to miss a beat, just once, but—”
“Cidro, badinage is like tennis. It’s easier to hit a winner off a good shot than a weak lob.”
“A backhanded compliment, nice work. So what can I get you to drink?”
“Uh, I’ve already had a few tonight, so—”
“You’re kidding, right? Come on.”
Kate laughed. “Okay, I’ll have amaretto with milk. But remember, I warned you. Any more booze and my internal censor hangs up her hat and goes home.”
“Sounds like that’s when things get interesting.”
“Maybe. Just don’t get mad if I…oh, I don’t know…call you a pompous ass or something.”
“I’m used to it.” Medina headed over to the bar.
Kate settled into a leather armchair by a window adorned with thick red drapes.
“Tell me, how was your evening?” he asked, placing their drinks on the small table between them.
“Good. I went to a Sotheby’s auction with my college roommate. And your meetings?”
“Good, too. Things are…moving. But what I really want to know is what you like to do when you’re not working.”
“I thought we agreed to talk business.”
“Darling, I don’t know what world you live in, but polite business people exchange more than two sentences’ worth of pleasantries first.”
“Forgive me,” Kate said, lightly smacking her forehead. “But I have to say, getting me talking about what I like most? Cidro, that’s textbook charm school. And you were so obvious.”
“I may’ve been known to ask that question without meaning it,” Medina admitted, “but in your case, I’d really like to know.”
“Oh. Well, then…mmm, I like to travel. Go to a country I’ve never been to, start with some art and architecture, then switch to something physical—hiking or rock climbing or something. You?”
“Actually, you’re not finished yet. How about day to day?”
Kate sighed.
“Last personal question. I promise.”
“Okay. I like trendy pop music. Country, too, when I’m in the mood. Um, hip-hop dance classes…I love watching action movies a little drunk, preferably ones where the star takes his shirt off all the time, and I have a mild chocolate addiction. You know, once in a while, I need a fix. Not like a junkie, really—more like an accountant needs his calculator in early April. I have to have it, but I don’t think, if thwarted, that I’d resort to violence. Is that enough for you?”
Smiling, Medina nodded.
“Ready for your case update?”
“Very.”
“Okay. One of my colleagues looked into the last couple weeks’ worth of calls and emails to and from the Cat—you know, Simon Trevor-Jones—since he had to have had some form of contact with the man we’re looking for. Even if indirectly.”
Kate paused for a moment to try her drink. “I’ve ruled out everyone we identified. There was one number my colleague hasn’t been able to trace yet, but when he does track down the owner…”
“We may find our man.”
“We hope. It’s possible that Trevor-Jones and the Jade Dragon fellow only met face-to-face, or that Trevor-Jones used an agent whom he only met in person, which means I should probably get back toThe Anatomy of Secrets. Are we through here?” she asked, feigning exasperation.
“Not yet. I have one more question.” Seeing Kate’s expression, he added, “It’s related to the case.”
“Yes?”
“The other day in the Pierre, you got me curious about something. I’ve been meaning to ask you about it. You described what you were working on when you left school, whether it was more dangerous to pursue state secrets or God’s secrets in the Renaissance. I know you left before writing your dissertation, but did you have an answer by then?”
“More like a starting point.” Kate said. “Some preliminary ideas.”
“Which were?”
“It depended on how the secret knowledge was used—if it was desired for its own sake or for power, and if for power, who was threatened by it and how.”
Seeing Medina’s expectant expression, Kate asked, “You really want to hear more?”
“Yeah,” he said, looking surprised she’d asked.
“Well, generally speaking, I was confining the state and God discussion to political and military secrets versus discoveries in natural philosophy, what we call science. The two overlapped of course, as they do today. Anyway, the military and political part is fairly simple. People have never really pursued those kinds of secrets for the hell of it; money and power are always involved. So same as now, a Renaissance spy who got his hands on sensitive war plan information could get himself killed. Or if he had damaging information on a political figure, in his own government or in another, same thing,” Kate said, drawing a finger across her throat.
“The scientific discovery part is where it gets more complex,” she continued.
Just then, a young waitress appeared at their table. Dressed in black and white, she had pearls in her ears, minimal makeup, and hair pulled back into a neat bun. “Another drink?”
Medina nodded. “I’ll have another Sapphire and tonic, and the lady will have…”
“Bailey’s with ice. Thanks.”
Once the waitress had left, Medina turned back to Kate. “About science, you were saying…”
“That’s the kind of knowledge that was sometimes pursued for its own sake, and when that was the case, you were safe. Take Copernicus. His theory that the sun was the center of the universe—people tend to think of it as really rocking the Catholic Church, something that got people killed. But the truth is, it wasn’t. No one ever bothered him. Churchmen even sponsored his research.”
“Really?”
“Yeah,” Kate said, turning to thank the waitress as she set down their drinks. “See, Copernicus wasn’t interested in challenging church
authority of any kind, Catholic or Protestant. He was just in love with the idea of getting closer to the truth about the movement of what he called ‘celestial spheres.’ And he was good with numbers, and knew that with an Aristotelian earth-centered universe, the math just didn’t work out. Which irritated him, you know, like a bee in his bonnet.”
Medina smiled.
“He published his book about a sun-centered universe in 1543, and though it completely contradicted Scripture, religious figures barely blinked for the next fifty years,” Kate said. “In fact, the pope really liked his ideas and wanted to use the math to reform the calender. And Protestant scholars—the few who understood astronomy, that is—they recognized that Copernicus kicked Aristotle to the curb, mathematically speaking, and were happy to use his theories, ignoring their theological implications. Strange as it sounds, they found a way to buy into the new astronomy without grafting it onto the physical world.”
“But Galileo’sarrest, ” Medina said, frowning. “And didn’t someone get executed for talking about that stuff? There’s this square in Rome…”
“…where Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in 1600,” Kate filled in. “You’re right. But here’s the thing. Galileo and Bruno didn’t just enjoy the ideas, getting all rapturous about universal truth. They used Copernican astronomy to step on the toes of powerful people. Andthat’s when the shit hit the fan.”
“How so?”
“Well, when he started out, Galileo actually had top Catholics for patrons, even popes, but when he basically tried to tell them how to reinterpret Scripture—in the midst of their turf war with Protestants—they felt threatened, got steamed, and Galileo got arrested. And Bruno, the so-called mad priest of the sun—he considered Judaism and Christianity to be corruptions of ancient truths and used Copernican astronomy to symbolize his ideas for reform. He went to various heads of state to promote his new religious doctrine, telling them that, like the sun is to the universe, they were the center of the world, not the pope.”
“So the pope called in the death squad.”
“Exactly. People think that developments in astronomy caused a massive clash between science and religion in the early modern period, but the clash was never really about the astronomy. It was about politics and who was undermining whose power. Now, are you still awake?”
“Of course. And I’ve finally figured out why I couldn’t make it through university.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I didn’t have a pretty girl explaining everything to me.”
Momentarily forgetting her rebuffing campaign, Kate blushed.What is wrong with me? Oh, alcohol…right.
“But don’t let me interrupt you,” Medina said. “Let’s get back to the shark-infested waters of Renaissance curiosity…. You were talking about scientific discoveries.”
“Yeah. Astronomy. I viewed that as a way of pursuing God’s secrets in the vertical dimension,” Kate said, moving her hand up and down. “Could be deadly if you used what you discovered to threaten kings or popes. But geographical discoveries—those made in the horizontal dimension,” she continued, moving her hand from side to side, “that’s a different story. You sure you want—”
“Yes, Kate.”
“Okay. In a way, exploration was also a means of pursuing divine secrets—sailing to far-off lands once thought to be the haunts of monsters and demons and proving they weren’t. Explorers were, of course, a bit more interested in money and glory than intellectual satisfaction, but travel was definitely a means of dispelling wonder, of sucking the enchantment out of mysterious places. The difference is your government never killed you over what you found. In fact, if you found a new trading route, or a place to start a new colony, or just pillaged and plundered, you were a national hero…perhaps knighted. And if you came back empty-handed, you were a broke loser but perfectly safe.
“Seeking knowledge in what I called the horizontal dimension wasn’t any less dangerous than the other pursuits I’ve been talking about; the threats just came from different sources—storms, malnutrition, pirates, you name it. And sailors were sometimes captured and tortured for geographical information that had potential economic value, like tidbits about the location of the fabled city of El Dorado.”
Kate smiled. “Now, optics, Cidro…sounds boring, but I’ve got a pretty juicy theory. Interested?”
“Very.”
“Most people think that as soon as the telescope was discovered—by some Dutch eyeglass manufacturers in the early seventeenth century—the technology spread like wildfire, which meant that it never gave anyone a military advantage…say, to spot enemy ships before they spotted you. However, there’s a passage in a sixteenth-century text written by a natural philosopher that’s ambiguous, but it really sounds like the guy had used a telescope. I think it might’ve been discovered years before everyone thinks, and that the inventor just kept it quiet. It’s definitely possible someone was killed to keep that secret safe.”
“So, while you could get killed for both back then,” Medina began, looking into his glass as he swirled the ice cubes around, “I’d guess you concluded that being a spy was far more dangerous than being a scientist, because you werealways at risk? Not just some of the time?”
“More or less. The safest thing was definitely to be a humble scientist pursuing knowledge for its own sake, far removed from the power plays at court. I did have a catchy zinger in mind for the end, though,” Kate said, smiling.
Medina raised an eyebrow.
“There were a lot of guys in Elizabethan England who were involved in the pursuit of both kinds of secrets. Like Francis Walsingham and Robert Cecil. They were both top spymasters and also helped finance several explorers, like Francis Drake and Walter Ralegh. And the top intellectual at Elizabeth’s court—a man named John Dee—was suspected of being a spy and pursued God’s secrets, too…claimed to be able to conjure angels and access heavenly truths. It was believed that he practiced black magic as well, and a frightened, angry mob once ransacked his library and destroyed his scientific instruments, but he lived to a ripe old age. However, there was one guy who pursued both, got murdered, and we still don’t know for which. People speculate of course, but—”
“Who?” Medina asked, leaning forward with interest.
“Christopher Marlowe.”
“Big playwright, yeah?”
Kate nodded. “He was also a spy…with dirt on some pretty dangerous political players. On the other hand, he pursued God’s secrets pretty intensely, too. In fiction, at least, if not in practice.”
“What do you mean?”
“His plays really pushed the religion envelope. His Faustus asks the devil’s emissary where hell is located, then says he thinks hell’s just a fable. Later Faustus sets off in a chariot drawn by dragons to explore the universe and, as he put it, ‘To find the secrets of astronomy / Graven in the book of Jove’s high firmament.’ It was pretty subversive stuff at the time.”
Kate took a sip of her drink. “During the last month of Marlowe’s life, the government was investigating him. For sedition as well as atheism, you know, since undermining the church’s authority meant undermining the state’s. A few days before his death, an informant submitted a report suggesting his atheist propaganda was so dangerous his mouth ought to be forcibly shut.”
“So he was arrested and executed?”
“No. He was interrogated, but released that same day. Soon after, though, he was murdered. We know the three men who were in the room with him at the time, but we still don’t know which one did it or why.”
“What do you think?”
“Well, first of all, I don’t think Marlowe was an atheist. Definitely curious, full of doubts, and disgusted with the religious leadership of his day, which could not have been fun in an age when such skepticism was a crime. Whatever his views were, though, I don’t think he died because of them. I think that a political figure had Marlowe framed, either to protect his own secrets or to get dirt on a
rival.”
“Who?”
Kate shook her head. “I couldn’t say for sure.”
Medina smiled. “You’re right, though. The story’s got zing. Packs punch.”
“Thanks.”
“Now, Kate. This Marlowe, youreally like him, yeah?”
“Sure. For what I was studying, he was an interesting figure in a lot of ways,” she responded casually.
The truth was that Marlowe was actually far more than just a subject of academic interest to Kate. When making the decision whether or not to leave school for the Slade Group, she’d thought about Marlowe strolling back and forth between the world of letters and the covert underworld and eventually chose to try following in his footsteps—up to a point, at least. She did not intend to die at age twenty-nine with a knife through her eye socket. But beyond relying on him for professional inspiration, Kate felt that Marlowe was something of a kindred spirit. Since Rhys’s death, she’d known that she would live with painful desire for something she couldn’t have for the rest of her life, and so she was drawn to Marlowe’s tragic heroes, all of whom were doomed by an irrepressible desire for the unattainable.
Medina folded his arms across his chest and narrowed his eyes. “Anyone inthis century put that look on your face?”
Kate sipped her drink quietly.
“Come on. What’s his name?”
“Who?”
“The guy you’re hung up on.”
“What makes you think that?”
“I’ve been hitting on you from day one.”
“And you never get turned down, huh?”
“Not really.” Medina paused, then added, “I’ve been told that spending five minutes with me would turn an arthritic nun into an agile nympho.”
Kate burst out laughing. “An ego the size of Texas and yetsomehow, still charming. Impressive.”
“I’m serious, Kate. We click, and yet…well, I can only conclude that someone else already owns your heart. So who is he? And when can we duel?”
“Not anytime soon. But he’d have kicked your ass. He won a Japanese fencing tournament once.”
The Intelligencer Page 22