by Rob Swigart
He nodded. “When it gets dark we’ll leave.”
“Do you think the police have left Raimond’s apartment?”
He was surprised. “Why?”
“They won’t think of looking for us there, and I think Raimond hid something there, something important.”
“What?”
“I know where to find the rest of the Alberti disk.”
34.
The thick-necked driver was waiting impassively behind the wheel. When his passengers appeared he started the van and waited for instructions without acknowledging them. “Convent of St. Cyril,” Defago said when they were on board. The driver swung them smoothly back to Boulevard Montparnasse and headed east.
“The girl?” Defago barked.
The driver responded in the negative with such a slight movement of his head that the roll of fat on his neck barely twitched.
Defago settled back with a bitter grunt.
Sister Teresa, rosary flying between her fingers, rasped, “Well?”
The corners of his mouth turned down sardonically. “The Prior General has the Alberti disk. Forget the girl, he said. She and her friend are no longer important, he said.”
“You do not forget, my priest.”
“No, I do not forget. It seems we must clean up again.”
“I am ready,” she said simply.
“Yes.” He thought for a few moments. The Val de Grâce hospital loomed up and fell behind.
He rubbed his eyes and gave her a thin smile. “We’re to meet him at the convent to collect the message. This is it, what we’ve been waiting for, he said. The message will take us to the Founding Document and the Founding Document will go into the archives of the Order of Theodosius where it will disappear. He said.” His mouth turned down. “He’s destroying our work, everything we’ve done. We might as well have left the Pythos alive.”
“Don’t be bitter, my priest. We… have each other.”
His expression softened as he put his hand on her shoulder. “Yes, my fierce angel, we have each other.” He squeezed briefly and though the corners of her eyes tightened she smiled.
Later the van pulled up to a gate beside the dark brick façade of the Convent of St. Cyril, tucked away on a small side street behind the Gobelins tapestry museum. The gate creaked open and the vehicle passed between a high wall and the semicircular end of a domed wing. It parked in the rear among a number of panel trucks and utility vehicles.
Defago opened the door for Teresa. “Clever, hiding the document in our own library, don’t you think?” he murmured.
She stepped onto the pavement. Her artificial foot made a dead sound. “How do you suppose they managed?” she asked, her expression as grim as his.
“Someone on the inside.” His shrug was fatalistic. “It could have been done years, even centuries, ago, when the library was first assembled. Who reads Bruno any more?”
The Prior General’s self-satisfaction was evident in the way he was bouncing eagerly on the balls of his feet when they entered the newly modernized foyer. A smile creased his cheeks and compressed his eyes into narrow slits. Inside those tiny pockets the irises glittered under the ceiling lights, carefully chosen to simulate sunlight. “Welcome, Brother Defago, welcome,” he boomed, clapping the monk on the back. With a nod at the nun he said, “Follow me.” Rubbing his hands together he set off down a corridor paneled with dark, unadorned wood. The lighting was indirect and muted, as in a museum. Thick carpet and the faint hum of air-conditioning muffled their footsteps.
An elderly man in dark slacks and long-sleeved jersey stood by the door at the end.
Lacatuchi nodded once.
The man looked back uncomprehendingly. “I’m sorry, sir. The library is open only to authorized people.”
“Do you know who I am?”
“No, sir.”
“I’m the Prior General of an Order of the church.”
The old man shook his head. “I’m sorry, sir, even if you come from the Vatican I can’t let you enter without a letter.”
“I do not come from the Vatican.” Lacatuchi leaned close. “A fronte praecipitium a tergo lupi,” he said. Between a precipice and a pack of wolves.
The old man blanched and replied, “Absit invidia.” No offence intended.
“Adversus solem ne loquitor.” Don’t argue against the sun. The Prior General straightened and smiled. He was the wolf. “Open the door. Now.”
The old man unlocked it and stepped aside. “I’m sorry, Eminence.” His voice shook. “I understand now you are to be accorded all courtesy.”
Lacatuchi waved his hand negligently and swept through the door.
“What did that mean?” Sister Teresa wanted to know once they were inside.
“It meant I had the authority of the Holy Inquisition. Even though that office is long abolished, the name continues to inspire obedience.”
“He does appear to have understood.”
Defago’s voice was so dry the Prior General, giving him a hard look, started to say something but thought better of it.
The library of the Convent of St. Cyril was an eclectic blend of modern and traditional. The domed celestial blue of the Baroque ceiling was set off by gilt plaster ornamentation. Four plump cherubs approaching the center from the cardinal directions trailed swags of golden drapery over three levels of modern bookcases under a soaring atrium.
The spiral staircase and balconies in maroon wrought iron were modeled on the famous Handelingenkamer Tweede at The Hague, but it reminded some people of the old round reading room at the British museum. The staircase was built to suggest a Ptolemaic epicycle on the planetary orbit of the room itself. The Dominicans, some at least, still adhered to the old view that in God’s good universe man is the center and Earth is his unmoving pivot.
A paneled cabinet by the door opened to reveal an array of touch screens to monitor and control temperature and humidity, set the alarms, search the library, or surf the Internet. The residents often commanded delivery of a vegetarian pizza in under half an hour from the Speed Rabbit franchise on the Avenue des Gobelins, a fact Lacatuchi relished.
The Prior General called up the catalog on the computer. The library contained over sixty thousand volumes in a number of subjects, from astronomy to zoology, theology to occult magic. Many were rare, bound in leather or vellum. “This library holds one of the approximately two hundred known books bound in human skin,” he said, glancing at the nun. Her eyes glittered.
Lacatuchi consulted the transcript of Rossignol’s confession and entered the title, Spaccio della bestia trionfante by Giordano Bruno. He simulated spitting. “The Great Heretic!” He noted the location and led them across the foyer to the spiral staircase. “The triumphant beast! By ignorance and pedantry, he meant the teachings of the Church. Very clever, that man. Good thing we burned him.”
He climbed ahead, huffing with effort. At the top he waited impatiently. The nun, hand on the railing, followed. Defago wound upward behind her. Once he looked up and smiled, showing his incisors, as if the more this delay annoyed the Prior General the more it pleased him.
By the time they arrived Lacatuchi had fully recovered his good humor. He led them around the balcony, passing bay after bay of bookshelves of dark, fine-grained cherry. Sister Teresa suddenly stopped and stared, enraptured, at the spine of a large folio. Lacatuchi was some distance around the curve of the balcony before he noticed. He came back.
She had taken down a copy of De civitate dei by Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. “This copy,” she breathed, “with commentaries by Nicolaus Trevet and Thomas Waleys, was printed at Mainz by Peter Schoeffer in 1473. The only edition earlier than this was made at Subiaco in 1467.”
She did not mention that this copy in her hands was only two years older than the one she had taken from Foix’s apartment and now had carefully packed in her luggage back at the Dominican guesthouse.
“Come on, let’s get on with it,” Lacatuchi said eagerly.
; They reached the shelves devoted to Giordano Bruno of Nola, which included bound copies of the proceedings of the Venetian and Roman Inquisitions, Vatican documents relating to the philosopher’s trial for heresy titled in gold on a calfskin spine, and a more recent volume of the Processo di Giordano Bruno, whose work had spent centuries on the Index of Forbidden Books. There were many copies of his own books, including De Umbris Idearum, the keywords Rossignol had confessed would unlock the secret message.
Lacatuchi pointed at the spine of an octavo edition. “This is it. Prohibited and anathema! It should still be so. We can only regret that the Index is no more.” Lacatuchi wiped his wet lips with the back of his hand and carefully removed the book. “A work of the devil; also extremely rare.”
He placed the precious object on a table and with the tip of his finger opened it. “Yes,” he breathed, pointing at the bottom of the title page and its dedication “al molto illustre et eccellente cavalliero signor Filippo Sidneo.” At the bottom was printed:
Stampado in Parigi
M. D. LXXXIIII
“Paris, 1584.” He grinned wolfishly. “The Great Heretic thought he could fool the Inquisition by pretending this blasphemy was printed in Catholic France and not Protestant England, but the Inquisitors caught him in his lies and deceptions! The Rossignol said the message is between Dialogs One and Two, yes?” He turned the pages one at a time, past the Epistola Esplicatoria. “Some speculate Sir Philip Sydney paid for the printing so this is the usual hypocritical flattery of a patron!”
He stopped between the first two dialogs at a page, blank except for three lines of small, somewhat crooked letters printed near the bottom.
“This is it!” the Prior General shouted. “You see how everything Rossignol confessed is true! I always said so. Putting heretics to the test yields good information, the best.”
Defago squeezed the nun’s shoulder but said nothing about this obvious lie: the Prior General had said nothing of the kind. They both merely looked on impassively.
The Prior General rubbed his hands together gleefully. “Those letters were put there by Giordano Bruno himself in the very book that condemned him to the flames. The fool!”
“Assuming that is a message,” Defago said mildly.
“It’s the cipher, I tell you,” Lacatuchi retorted. “We have it all. We’ve only to decrypt it and the Struggle will be over.”
35.
It was well after midnight when Lisa and Steve arrived at Foix’s building on the Rue du Dragon. There was no one in sight, no lights, no movement behind curtains along the street; the shutters of the tabac were down. Lisa tapped 2214, the door clicked and they slipped inside.
The light in the entry was dim. She gestured toward the stair. Three flights up and they were in front of the apartment entrance. There was no further sign of the tragedy: no warning police tape, no indication that only two days before someone had been murdered inside. She slid her key into the lock and turned it slowly. The door swung open.
“What about the alarm?” Steve asked.
“My key disables it.” She reached for the light switch. The harpsichord appeared, casting a pool of dark shadow. My Ladye Nevells Book was still open as if someone had just been playing. She scanned it thoughtfully. “I used to sing this. He liked my voice.” She looked at Steve and her eyes were stricken. “He loved me.”
Steve shifted awkwardly and touched her hand. “We’d better hurry.” His face was drawn despite his smile.
“Are you all right? You shouldn’t have come.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll be fine.”
The door to the study was open and the crime scene tape was gone. The police had finished their investigation, taken their photographs and evidence, and left the place to Marie, Foix’s housekeeper. The sawdust and wood chips were gone. The carpet glowed in the subdued light from the hall. She turned on the lights. The starred fractures in the street window where the bullet had struck it flared, a discordant note. The shutters were closed.
The books were back on their shelves, neatly aligned. Of course she knew the library well: she had been dusting the books for decades. It seemed Foix might come back at any moment.
“So where is it?” Steve asked.
Lisa pointed at the desk, the ornate bronze decorative leaves and flowers, the lovely inlaid wood, the cupids, and the pewter lamp on the gallery.
The roll top was down. She raised it slightly and lowered it again. It made no sound.
“How do you know it’s here?”
“The books,” she said, squatting beside the desk and running her fingers over the decoration.
“The books?”
“The ones on the floor. I was looking for something in the titles, or the authors, anything, but it was just the books laid out in a curve toward the desk.” She shook her head ruefully. “Raimond almost fooled me that time. All his other puzzles were complicated. This was too simple.”
“So the rest of the Alberti is part of the desk?”
“Part of it.” She examined the raised metal designs. “Or in it somewhere.”
He joined her. “I might be able to help. I know a bit about hiding things.”
They examined the exterior without finding anything. Now she looked down at the roll top again, the elegant curved surface reflecting the ceiling light.
With a brief shudder she lifted the top again. It slid noiselessly into the hollow at the back, below the gallery, revealing the gray leather writing surface set into the dark red wood. The twelve small drawers on either side of a recessed alcove were closed. Above them was a shelf. She searched and found the metallic tape, a pair of silver grape scissors, some pens and other office supplies.
She opened the three larger drawers below the writing surface, chewing thoughtfully on a fingernail. “He wouldn’t put it in a drawer,” she said softly. “Not where anyone could find it.”
“There’s a hidden compartment,” Steve suggested.
“But where?”
He absent-mindedly reached for the desk with his left hand and gasped in pain. He smiled sheepishly and changed hands. Now he worked slowly, pushing against a piece of decoration, a raised surface, a bit of inlay. He touched all the medallions and swags of bronze and the flat wooden spaces between them, the twelve drawers, the sides of the desk, around the inset leather, along the railing of the gallery. He gently pressed and twisted the cupids at the corners. Finally he leaned back and stared, as if challenging the desk to remain so stubborn.
“OK.” He emptied the large drawers. The desk was soon littered with coins, wooden pencils, folded paper filled with stamps, a photograph of Lisa on an old copy of Le Monde Diplomatique, a plastic boxed set of tiny Phillips screwdrivers, assorted note cards covered with writing in English, Greek and French, and numerous other small objects that must once have belonged to some larger gadget long discarded.
Lisa began to sort through it again while Steve felt the insides of the drawers and squinted into them. Finally he sat back in the big leather chair, tented his fingers under his chin and closed his eyes, relaxing. He nodded and very gently drew the roll top toward him. It flowed smoothly. He pushed it back, leaned forward and felt inside the alcove, passing his hands over its interior.
“Aha.”
The sound was soft, almost inaudible. The back panel of the alcove slid to one side, revealing a small square space.
“It’s built into the roll top!” Lisa exclaimed.
He tipped an imaginary hat. “With the lid closed the hidden compartment is facing the top of the alcove above the shelf. When it’s open the back panel hides the hidden chamber. Clever!” He took her hand and guided it. “Feel that tiny groove. Use your fingernail. It’s the hidden catch.”
She groped around and her fingers touched cool metal, set into a space made especially for it. A slight push on the bottom and the disk fell forward into her hand. She brought it into the light.
It was dark, tarnished bronze. A scrambled alphabet of capital lett
ers was etched around the outer circumference. Lines radiated from the center, separating the letters. “It’s an Alberti cipher disk all right,” Steve observed. “An old one.”
She turned it over. A faint diameter line bisected one of three lines cutting equal chords off the circumference. These lines formed a ghost triangle with the tips clipped off enclosing a faint circle.
“It’s the Delphi symbol,” she said. “Phi inside Delta. The tips of the triangle must be on the outer disk.”
“Which we don’t have.”
“Which we don’t have yet. What do you make of this?” Near one side in crude, uneven characters, was a date: MCDLXII.
He whistled. “Leone Battista Alberti died in 1472, ten years after this date, so this was made during his lifetime. He may have made it himself. If so, this would be the only known original and would be worth a staggering amount of money, especially if we had the rest.”
“Money isn’t the issue, Steve.”
“I know.”
“First we have to uncover the original message on Procroft 506. If it is in code, then we’ll have to decipher it.”
“We will,” Steve said gravely. “Your friend Foix seems to have planned it that way.”
“You’re right, of course. And for that I’m sure we’ll need the rest of the disk. Even though the outer part has just a plain alphabet the real disk is obviously important. If the nun has it, we have to get it back.”
She examined the room. It was as if Foix had just stepped out for a moment. She sighed. “This may be the last time I see this place for a while. I’m going to get something. Wait here.” She went into the bedroom next door. He heard her moving around in the dark. When she returned she closed the bedroom door behind her and they left the apartment as they had entered.
36.
Lt. Mathieu squatted uncomfortably in a low closet tucked under the mansard roof of a building on the rue du Dragon across the street from Foix’s apartment. His vigil had paid off, for he had watched two people enter the building on the screen of his thermal imaging equipment. At first he thought it might be the pair with the gray van seen Friday in front of Rossignol’s apartment, but this woman seemed to be younger, though it was hard to be sure with his night camera’s low resolution. Still, he could barely contain his elation: they must be the suspects!