Trifariam, The Lost Codex (2012)

by Diego Rodriguez

  On the other side of the window, two men in dark raincoats were approaching the ticket desk as they scrutinized everybody in the station. On the way, they shoved a couple who were hugging each other goodbye. They grabbed them by the shoulders and roughly pulled them apart to see if they were the people they were looking for. Then they moved forward, paying no attention to the insults shouted by the couple who had no idea what had just happened.

  “James, they’re here! Look!” Mary slid down in her chair until she was hidden by a sticker on the window, while she indicated to her friend where to look.

  The young professor jumped. His brain began to run through ways for them to escape without being seen. He didn’t get how they had found out they were traveling by train. “Quick, get up! We’ll go in a different direction.”

  Mary nodded and they both left the cafe linking arms, again pretending to be a stunning couple. James embraced her, wrapping his arm around her waist and squeezing against his body; he felt it necessary to protect her. They were already about thirty feet away from the cafe entrance when somebody called to them. Even though there were a lot of people, they had a feeling that he was shouting to them. They tried to ignore him, but he shouted even louder and people were starting to stare.

  “This asshole is going to hold us up. Who is this guy? Do you know him?” he asked her.

  Mary shook her head.

  When he eventually managed to catch up with them, he addressed them in an insolent way. “Excuse me, but you haven’t paid for your drinks.”

  In a hurry, they had run out of the cafe and had forgotten to pay the bill. Beet red, he took out his wallet and gave him a ten euro bill. Mary, who at the time was looking in the other direction, noticed that the two mean were watching them. The waiter’s performance had caught their attention, and one of them seemed to confirm something to the other; they had found them.

  Mary’s jaw dropped. She grabbed his jacket and pulled him away. “Run! They’ve found us.”

  James looked ahead and saw the two thugs running towards them, shoving anybody who got in their way.

  A young police officer on duty near the ticket desk had started to follow them after noticing their odd behavior. It seemed like there had been robbery.

  The couple sprinted along the corridor at top speed. After heading out of the door, they turned right and kept running alongside a train which was pulling away. They were followed close behind by the two men who refused to pay attention to the young police officer, who was whistling for them to stop.

  Alpha 1 suddenly put his arm out to stop his colleague. “Deal with him, or he might cause us problems later on.” He alone continued to chase Mary and James.

  Alpha 2 positioned himself outside the door that linked the concourse and the platforms, and hid behind a small vending machine. When the officer went through the door, he stopped to check where they had got to, and he soon saw that only one of them was still running. A strange hunch suddenly washed over him, but it was already too late. He suffered a punch to the temple, sending him to the floor. The pain was excruciating, it was if five football players had violently slammed into him. The room started spinning and then he passed out.

  Alpha 2 lifted up the body up by the shoulders as if it were a feather and sat it on one of the benches, while a group of people who had seen what had happened ran away into the station.

  Meanwhile, Alpha 1 was closing in on his prey. James ran just seven feet ahead of Mary, while Alpha 1 chased sixteen feet behind. The distance was getting smaller; twelve feet, eight feet, four feet… the killer reached out his arm intending to grab Mary’s rucksack, but she sharply turned left. She was heading in a different direction from James, catching the assailant off guard. It took him one second to decide who he should follow; the girl was the best option. He could use her as bait later on.

  Mary leapt onto the train platforms, while the thug followed close behind. She ran as far she could until she reached the door of one of the empty cars and, not knowing where to go, launched into a frenzied race down the aisle, knocking over all the cleaning paraphernalia that stood in the way. But when she was least expecting it, Alpha 2 emerged from one of the front doors with a gun in his hand. She tried to escape the same way she had come, but behind her was Alpha 1, blocking her path and wielding a knife. There was no way out; she was trapped. She looked at her watch; there were still fifteen minutes until the train departed for Rome. James and the book weren’t safe yet.

  “Keep quiet, bitch!”

  He slapped Mary’s face, making it pour with blood.

  “I won’t tell you again. Tell me which train Mr. Oldrich is thinking of getting or I’ll slash your belly open like a peach!”

  Mary was on her knees. She looked up until she was staring her assailant straight in the eye and she spat in his face, receiving another, even more violent slap in return.

  Alpha 1 looked at his accomplice while he wiped the traces of blood and spit from his face. “Go and look in the other trains, especially the long distance ones. Something tells me they wanted to get far away from here.”

  Alpha 2 ran out of the carriage, already knowing what lay in store for the woman; although he would love to have been the one who wiped her out, an order was an order. They had been trained to kill from a young age and that was what they knew best. The woman knew too much and she had to die.

  Despite being on her knees and covered in blood at the killer’s feet, Mary didn’t beg for mercy, which only spurred on her attacker. His would finally be able to kill somebody who was brave and didn’t fear death, something that made him deeply excited. He reached into his pocket and took out a double-edged knife, serrated along one side and smooth on the other. He continued with his threats. “This knife is the one the Seals use.” He roughly grabbed the woman’s arm due to her lack of cooperation. “If you don’t tell me where that idiot is, I’ll saw your arm until you pass out from the pain.”

  Even though she knew her life was in danger, Mary wouldn’t say anything. She didn’t want the book to fall into the wrong hands, so she shut her eyes and succumbed to the pain she was destined to suffer.

  A heavy thud made her suddenly open them, giving her the greatest surprise of her life when she saw the killer lying on the ground, clutching his groin and contorted in pain. James had appeared out of nowhere to deliver him a hard kick to the crotch. It had been such a violent kick that the ex-soldier was writhing in agony on the ground and vomiting.

  “Let’s go. Run!” The professor reached out his hand and helped her up. “The other guy is nearby. I saw him get on the train next to the one which is going to Rome.”

  After leaning out and checking that he wasn’t around, they decided to jump onto the platform. Their train was fairly close. They ran alongside all the cars of a regional train until they reached the driver’s compartment. A sharp whistle startled them; one of the trains was warning passengers of its imminent departure.

  “That’s the one! We’ll have to run. Do you think you can do it?”

  The injuries and blows she had suffered had altered her face somewhat. It was covered in blood and swollen.

  “Come on. Just one more train and then we’ll be safe!” he shouted, trying to will her on.

  But when they reached the last train, they came face to face with the other assassin. He was standing at the driver’s end, and they at the other. A simple look was enough for them both to board train via the rear door, while the assassin got on at the front.

  It was a sleeper train. Each compartment had a series of beds built in to extremely small holes. Alpha 2 ran through each compartment, clearing the beds as he went and checking that nobody was hiding inside one of them. The train was almost empty, except for an old drunk who had stormed one of the compartments and seemed to have been living there for several days without anyone realizing. He was probably a tramp with nowhere else to go.

  Alpha 2 kicked the door open and pointed the gun at his head. “I will only tell you once!” he
threatened loudly. Then he covered his nose with a handkerchief to block out the stench which filled the room. “Have you seen a man and woman pass through here?”

  The beggar, clearly drunk, began to laugh like a madman and pointed to the window as he took another swig of whisky. “Are you talking about the two… who got out through that window… and got onto the roof of the train? What a pair of assholes! I asked them for change and they threw me a jacket to shut me up.”

  Alpha 2 saw that he had in his hands the jacket which James had been wearing a few minutes ago, and he saw how the compartment window had been pulled up. Without hesitating, he ran out of the train towards the front.

  A few seconds later, the beggar lifted his blankets. Hidden underneath them were the two friends.

  “Thank you so much,” he whispered in his ear as he gave him fifty euros. “Don’t spend it on drink, good man.”

  “That’s exactly what I will do,” he answered as he polished off the last dreg from the bottle.

  They left the train via that same car and got on the one which was going to Rome at the exact moment its doors were closing.

  The train let out a deafening whistle which was a welcome sound for the two friends. Leaning back in their seats, hidden from view, they were safe.

  Chapter 11

  The two killers had already spent twenty minutes inside one of the trains. One of them was sitting down, apparently feeling unwell and constantly retching. The other mercilessly continued to torture the old beggar, who by now was almost nude, bloody and with numerous knife wounds all over his body.

  “Stupid bastard!” said Alpha 1 as he gave him yet another violent kick which made him cough up blood. “It’s your fault we don’t know where they are, you piece of shit.”

  “Alpha 2,” said his boss with one hand clutching his stomach. “You’ve been torturing that son of a bitch for ten minutes. He’s drunk and high, he won’t feel anything. You won’t get any sense out of him.”

  They both looked at each other and, after thinking for a few seconds, he shot him in the head at point-blank range, his brains splattering around the compartment. Even so, he still wasn’t satisfied and gave the body a couple more kicks full of rage.

  “I’ll call him,” said Alpha 2. “We don’t know where they’re going but everything is going to plan. He shouldn’t be angry.”

  The ex-soldier took his phone out of his pocket and pressed redial.

  Chapter 12

  The train stopped for a few minutes. They were traveling on a single track which was being used by another train at that time. James and Mary were sitting in adjacent seats. The young woman’s head rested on the professor’s shoulder, she was tired and exhausted from the blows she had received. Meanwhile James was carefully sweeping a wad of alcohol-soaked cotton over her wounds, trying to disinfect them.

  “Oww!” exclaimed Mary. The professor had just wiped the cotton over one of the scratches which was still bleeding. “It stings a lot. Didn’t they have any hydrogen peroxide?”

  “This is the only thing they’ve given me.” James looked into her blue eyes and began to stutter. “You’ve been very brave. Very few people would have withstood such a beating. If it had been me, I would have given them what they were looking for.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m sure you would have done the same, anyway - “

  James stopped her and grabbed her hand. “No! What you did was very brave. You could have told them where we were going and you didn’t say a word, in spite of what they did to you. So you were protecting me and the book in case they - “

  “Happened to kill me?” finished Mary.

  James frowned. He seemed not to want to think about it.

  “If you hadn’t intervened, those two would have killed me even if I had told them your plans. I’d be dead by now. Don’t you see that they’re killers? I’m starting to think that we won’t get out of this adventure alive.”

  James couldn’t contain his emotion and he held her tightly, unable to stop a couple of tears from falling down his cheeks. What the hell have we got ourselves into? he asked himself as the train started up again.

  After an hour and a half of traveling, a female voice suddenly rang out through the whole train. “Next stop: Rome”.

  James stood up and threw both rucksacks onto his back. “That’s us.”

  When they got off the train, they couldn’t help but notice that everything was quiet. They went up the escalator which took them from the platforms to outside of the station. James stopped at one of the phone booths soon afterwards, inserted a few coins and dialed his friend’s number. Nobody had picked up the phone after eight rings. That wasn’t normal. He began to get impatient and tried again.

  This time a very excited voice spoke after the third ring. “James, it’s amazing. I’ve spent nearly the whole morning deciphering the text you sent me. You’re not going to believe it!”

  “After the last few hours I’ve had, I’d believe anything,” he replied. “We have to see each other urgently. Where can we meet?”

  “I’m in a hotel near the Trevi Fountain. After what you told me yesterday, I didn’t dare spend the night in my suite and I booked another one. The idea of being woken at five in the morning with a gun pointing at my head terrified me. It looks like I did the right thing, because guess what happened in the hotel last night?”

  “No…They tried to kill you?”

  “Yes, more or less. When I got up this morning, the cleaning staff was very worked up. When they got round to Room 501, they found that the bed was riddled with bullet holes. Guess whose room it was?”

  “Shit, Richard! I’m sorry I got you involved in all this.”

  Instead of blaming him for what happened, Richard didn’t seem to mind. “Don’t worry, the book is worth it. Before I went to bed, I booked another room in a different name and luckily they didn’t find me. But anyway, tell me where we’re meeting! I’m dying to see it in person!”

  James gestured with his arm to his friend and pointed out the exit. “The Trevi Fountain is fine by us. We’ll be there at 12:30.” Just at that moment they were cut off; his money had run out.

  The weather in Rome was very similar to Florence, a dark blue sky with some very small clouds coming into view in the distance. There was scarcely any wind, which was unusual for that time of year and reflected in the people’s summer clothes, mostly T-shirts and shorts.

  “Where are we going?” asked Mary, turning round to make sure that James was walking alongside her. She had been very quiet for a few minutes now, and her silence worried him.

  “My friend is staying in a hotel near the Trevi Fountain,” he smiled. “Good thing for us, because it’s right here.”

  He avoided telling her about the attempted murder. Telling her would just make things worse and she would definitely become more nervous. Anyway, there were so many questions going round his head right now and he didn’t have any answers, no matter how hard he tried. It was only logical that if they had found the hotel Richard was staying at, it was only because they had listened in on their phone call, but in that case… why didn’t the killers know they were going to Rome? Something didn’t add up, that much was obvious.

  After walking for twenty minutes, they found themselves outside the Quirinal Palace, one of the symbols of the Italian state and the official residence of the President of the Republic. It was one of the few places Mary had yet to visit in her beloved country. She had been told about its wonderful gardens that occupied a privileged spot, practically making it a raised island overlooking Rome atop of the Quirinal Hill, one of the Seven Hills of Rome.

  They crossed the square and made their way to Via della Dataria, turning right onto Via dei Lucchesi. At the end of that road stood the famous Trevi Fountain.

  The place was full of tourists, some taking photographs in front of the fountain or tossing in coins.

  It was beautiful and huge, some eighty feet high and sixty feet across, making it the most ambitious
baroque fountain in Rome.

  At first it was impossible to find his friend. The large number of people milling around the fountain and the many groups of tourists who were taking one photo after another made it extremely difficult. He had decided to take out his phone to call him when someone put a hand on his shoulder.

  “How are you?”

  James jumped. He was on the verge of having a heart attack. “Shit, you gave me a fright! I thought they’d found us.” James tightly hugged his friend. “This is Mary. She got caught up in this adventure after saving my life. I couldn’t leave her by herself in Florence.”

  Richard got nearer to the young woman. Although she was covered in bruises, he could see very well that she was a beautiful girl. He gently took her hand and kissed it as if in worship.

  Mary blushed and giggled.

  “Oh, don’t you dare! You’re making me embarrassed. You’ve already started with your garbage! Believe me, your chivalry doesn’t work when it comes to ensnaring modern women.”

  “If only you knew…” he replied, turning back to look at Mary. “And what does your boyfriend think about you embarking on an adventure with two ruthless yet handsome men who are desperately seeking treasure?”

  James nearly threw up when he heard such nonsense and he told him two home truths; he was neither handsome nor ruthless, because he’d be the first to jump off a sinking ship. He didn’t want to come over as jealous, but he wanted this toe-curling spectacle to be over as soon as possible. “How do you feel about us sitting down in a cafe while you tell us about your discoveries?”

  Richard had forgotten about the book for a moment, but his eyes shone with impatience after what his friend had just said, betraying a burning desire to tell them what he had found. And there was only thing which was able to distract this famed paleographer: women.

  “Wait a second, please!” Mary walked over to the fountain and took her purse out of her bag. “Since we’re here, let’s keep to tradition.”