by James Becker
“I’ve only ever told those people who needed to know,” he explained. “For Pierro to analyze the snippets of dead languages we’ve been translating, he needed to know what we were looking for and why. He can read Greek, Latin, Aramaic and Coptic, and he’s also something of an expert on first- and second-century encryption techniques. I was lucky to find him.”
The glance Pierro directed at Mandino immediately suggested to Vertutti that the
“luck” might have been somewhat one-sided, and he guessed that Mandino had used threats or some kind of pressure to persuade the academic to work with him.
“You’re obviously familiar with the Latin phrase we found, Cardinal,” Pierro said, and Vertutti nodded.
“Good. We know that all early ciphers were very simple and basic. Until about the fifth century, illiteracy was the norm for the majority of the population, and not just in Europe but throughout the whole of the Mediterranean region. The ability to read and write, in any language, was almost the sole preserve of religious communities and working scribes. And it’s worth remembering that many of the monks were essentially copyists, reproducing manuscripts and books for use within their own communities. They didn’t need to understand what they were duplicating: the skill they possessed was that of making accurate copies of the source documents. The scribes, or amanuenses, on the other hand, did have to understand what they were writing, because they were producing legal documents, taking dictation and so on.
“Because of such widespread illiteracy, there was rarely any need to encrypt information, simply because so few people would have been able to read anything that had been written. But in the first century the Romans did begin to use a simple plain-text code for some important messages, particularly those relating to military matters. The code was, by modern standards, childishly simple: the hidden text was formed from the initial letters of the words in the message. As a further refinement, sometimes the hidden message was written backward. The problem with this type of encryption was that the plain-text message was almost invariably stilted, just to accommodate the secret text, and so it was often obvious that there was a concealed message, which rather defeated the object of the exercise.
“Another common cipher was known as Atbash, a simple substitution code originally used in Hebrew. The first letter of the alphabet was replaced by the last, and so on.”
“So are you suggesting that ‘Hic Vanidici Latitant’ contains a cipher?” Vertutti asked.
Pierro shook his head. “No, I’m not. In fact, I’m quite convinced it doesn’t. We can eliminate an Atbash cipher immediately, because anything encoded in Atbash invariably resulted in gibberish, and the Latin phrase is far too short for a plain-text code to work. As a precaution, I’ve run several analysis programs on the Latin words, but without result. I’m certain that there’s no hidden meaning.”
“So why am I here?” Vertutti demanded. “If there’s nothing more to be learned from this inscription, I’m just wasting my time. And you, Mandino, could have told me all this over the telephone. You do have my number, don’t you?”
Mandino gestured to Pierro to continue.
“I didn’t say there was nothing else to be learned from this phrase,” the scholar persisted. “All I said was that there was no hidden message in the words—that’s not the same thing at all.”
“So what did you find out?” Vertutti snapped.
“Patience, Cardinal,” Mandino said. “That stone’s been waiting for someone to decipher the inscription for about two thousand years. I’m sure you can wait a few more minutes to hear what Pierro has to tell you.”
The lanky academic glanced uncertainly from one man to the other, then addressed Vertutti again. “My analysis of the Latin phrase has only confirmed the literal meaning of the words. ‘Hic Vanidici Latitant’ means ‘Here lie the liars,’ and the most plausible explanation for the inscription is that the stone was originally in one of two places. The first possible location is obvious: it was placed in or close to a tomb or burial chamber that contained at least two bodies. If there was only a single corpse, the Latin should read ‘Hic Vanidicus Latitat.’ ”
“I do read and understand Latin, Signor Pierro,” Vertutti murmured. “It is the official language of the Vatican.”
Pierro colored slightly. “I’m only trying to show you the logic that I was using, Cardinal. Please hear me out.”
Vertutti waved his hand in irritation, but leaned back and waited for Pierro to continue.
“I rejected that explanation for two very simple reasons. First, if that stone had been in or close to a tomb, there’s a very strong chance that whoever found it would also have found the bodies. And we can be reasonably certain that didn’t happen, because there would certainly have been a record of the discovery. Even in the Middle Ages, the significance of the burial would have been quite obvious.”
“And the second reason?”
“The stone itself. It’s simply not the right size or shape to be a grave marker.”
“So what was the other possible location? Where was that?” Vertutti asked.
Pierro smiled slightly before replying. “I have no idea. It could be anywhere in Italy, or even in another country.”
“What?”
“When I said there were two possible locations for the stone, what I meant was that if the stone wasn’t a grave marker—which I think I’ve demonstrated—there’s only one other thing it could possibly be.”
“And that is?”
“A map. Or, to be precise, half a map.”
II
Mark studied the autopsy diagram with care, and listened as Bronson translated the Italian description of the injury to the side of Jackie’s head. Then he nodded agreement.
“You’re a police officer, Chris, and you know what you’re talking about. What you say makes sense. I can’t think of anything that shape on the staircase or down in the hall.”
Bronson could tell that Mark’s grief was slowly being displaced by anger. Anger at whoever had violated his property and—deliberately or by accident—killed his wife.
“So what should we do now? Tell the Italian police?”
“I don’t think that would help much. They’ve already decided this was just an accident, and absolutely the only evidence we’ve got is an unusual wound and the fact that the back door of the house was forced. They would point to the fact that nothing was stolen, not even the cash that we found lying about, and you could interpret the injury to Jackie’s head in more ways than one. They’d nod politely, offer their condolences, walk away and do nothing.”
“So what do we do?”
“I think,” Bronson said, “that the first thing we should do is to try to find out what the burglars—or whatever they were—were looking for. I’ve been around the house a couple of times, and I’ve not noticed anything missing, but if we do it together we might spot something.”
“Good idea.”
But twenty minutes later, having checked every room, they’d found nothing.
Everything of value—money, jewelry and expensive electronic equipment—was, as far as Mark could tell, present and correct.
The two men walked down the stairs to the kitchen where Bronson filled the kettle and switched it on. “Forget anything missing, Mark. Did you see anything out of place, anything in one room that should be in another, that kind of thing?”
“Bloody difficult to tell. Half the furniture in the house is covered with dust sheets, and some bits have been moved into different rooms to give the builders space to do their work.”
“You didn’t see anything that looked as if it had been disturbed or moved that wasn’t to do with the builders?”
Mark thought for a few seconds. Finally he said, “Only the curtains in the study.”
“What do you mean?”
“We haven’t owned this place very long, and there are a lot of things that need changing. The study curtains came with the house, and they’re hideous, which is probably why
the sellers left them. Jackie couldn’t stand the sight of them, so we always left them pulled back, so you can’t really see the pattern. But when we were in the study I noticed they were drawn across the window.”
“And Jackie wouldn’t have done that?”
Mark shook his head. “Absolutely not. There are shutters on the outside of that window, and we’ve always kept them closed—that helps stop reflections appearing on the computer screen—so there would never be any need to draw the curtains.”
“Well, somebody must have done,” Bronson said. “The police would have had no reason to do so. Maybe the burglars closed the curtains because they were looking for something in the study and wanted to ensure no light shone through the window.”
“But we’ve checked the study,” Mark protested, “and there’s nothing missing.”
“I know, so we need to go back and check it again.”
In the study, Bronson switched on the computer, and asked Mark to check every drawer and cupboard in the room, just in case they’d missed something. While he waited for the operating system to load, Bronson rummaged through the papers scattered over the desk, and found invoices, estimates and quotations for the work the Hamptons were doing on the property, plus the usual collection of utility bills.
There were also several sheets of A4 paper that he presumed Jackie had used to write herself notes, as he found shopping lists and to-do lists on a few of them. One of these interested him, and he put that piece of paper to one side, together with another, apparently blank, sheet.
When the computer was ready for use, Bronson checked what programs were installed and then scanned through the “My documents” folder, looking for anything unusual, but found nothing. Then he checked the e-mail client, looking in both the “Inbox” and “Sent items,” again without result. Finally, he opened the Web browser—like most people, the Hamptons had used Internet Explorer—and looked at the Web sites Jackie had visited recently. Or rather, he tried to. There were no sites listed in the history, so he checked the program settings. That puzzled him, and he leaned back in the black leather office chair with a frown.
“What is it?” Mark asked, closing the door of the cupboard they used to store their stationery.
“I don’t know that it’s anything, really. Was Jackie an experienced computer user? I mean, would she have fiddled about with program settings, that kind of thing?”
Mark shook his head. “Not a chance. She used the word processor and the spreadsheet, sent and received e-mails and did a bit of surfing on the Internet.
Nothing else. Why?”
“I’ve just checked the settings for Internet Explorer, and pretty much everything uses the default values, including the history, which is set for twenty days.”
“So?”
“Despite the default setting, there are no sites at all listed in the program’s history, so somebody must have deleted them. Could Jackie have done that?”
“No,” Mark said firmly. “She would have had no idea how to do it and, in any case, why would she have wanted to?”
“I’ve no idea.”
Back in the kitchen, Mark made coffee while Bronson sat down at the table, the papers in front of him.
“Right, then,” Mark said, carrying two mugs across the room. “What have you found?”
“Apart from the anomaly with the computer, I picked up a shopping list and what looks like a blank piece of paper.”
“That doesn’t sound promising—or even very interesting.”
Bronson shrugged. “It might be nothing, but it’s a bit odd. The shopping list, for example. It’s got the usual kinds of things you’d expect to find on it, like groceries and stuff, but right at the bottom is ‘Latin dictionary.’ There’s a line through the words, so either Jackie changed her mind or she went out and bought one and then crossed out the entry when she’d done so.”
“She bought it,” Mark said. “I saw a Latin-Italian dictionary on the bookshelf in the study. I didn’t bother mentioning it, because it didn’t seem important. But why would she want a Latin dictionary?”
“Maybe because of this,” Bronson said, holding up the blank sheet of paper. “There’s no writing on either side of this sheet, but when I looked at it I saw faint indentations, as if Jackie had written something on another piece of paper on top of this one. There are four letters altogether, printed in block capitals, and they’re reasonably clear. The letters are ‘H,’ ‘I,’ ‘C’ and ‘V.’ Those letters, in that order, are not a part of any word I can think of in English.”
“ ‘CV’ could refer to someone’s curriculum vitae,” Mark suggested.
“But what about the ‘HI’?”
“Apart from the obvious, I’ve no idea.”
“I think the dictionary Jackie bought might be a clue. I studied Latin, believe it or not, and ‘Hic’ is a Latin word. It means ‘here’ or ‘in this place,’ as far as I remember, and the ‘V’ could be the first letter of another word. There’s what looks like a dot between the ‘C’ and the ‘V’ on this page, and I think the Romans sometimes separated words with a symbol like that.”
“Are you serious? Jackie had enough trouble with Italian. Why would she be messing about with Latin?”
“I’m guessing here. Apart from this piece of paper, I’ve seen nothing anywhere in this house that looks like a Latin text, but I suspect Jackie found or was given something that had a Latin phrase written on it. That would certainly explain the dictionary.”
Bronson paused for a few seconds, because what he was about to suggest was less a leap of logic than a quantum leap.
“What is it?” Mark asked, seeing the uncertainty on Bronson’s face.
“I’m trying to make some sense of this. We’ve got a newly bought Latin dictionary, and the impression of what could be a Latin word on a sheet of paper, but no sign of the top sheet. That means somebody’s definitely been into the study, unless Jackie herself removed the top sheet and then destroyed it. But what worries me most of all is the deletion of the browsing history from Internet Explorer.”
“I’m not following you.”
“I don’t want to make too much of this, but suppose Jackie found something, here in the house or maybe in the grounds, something with a Latin expression written on it.
She didn’t understand what it meant, so she bought a Latin dictionary. She’d probably have preferred a Latin-English version, but couldn’t find one. She tried to translate the text, but found she couldn’t make sense of it with the Italian dictionary.
“So Jackie did what most people in that situation would do. She logged on to a search engine, found a Latin translation service and input the phrase. Now,”
Bronson said, “the next stage is pure conjecture, but it does make sense, to me at least.
“Maybe some organization, somewhere, put a form of Internet-monitoring service in place, watching for any requests to translate certain expressions from ancient languages. Technically, it wouldn’t be all that difficult to set up, as long as the translation service Web sites were willing to cooperate. When Jackie input the Latin phrase into the search engine, it raised a flag, and perhaps even identified the address where the computer that generated the query was located—”
“Hang on a minute,” Mark interrupted. “Why the hell would anyone today have the slightest interest in somebody trying to translate a two-thousand-year-old—or whatever—bit of Latin?”
“I’ve not the slightest idea, but nothing else seems to make sense. If I’m right, whoever put the monitoring service in place then came here, to this house, to search for whatever Jackie had found. It was that important to them. They obviously recovered the object, sanitized the computer so there would be no record of Jackie’s searches, and took away anything they could find that referred to the Latin text.
“And, in the process,” Bronson finished sadly, “I think Jackie just got in their way.”
III
Pierro reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a
brown envelope. He looked around the cafe’, checking that nobody else was in earshot—a superfluous precaution with Gregori Mandino’s two men acting as watchdogs—and placed several photographs on the table in front of Vertutti.
He recognized the images immediately: they were close-up views of the inscribed stone.
“When I’d concluded that there was no secret message hidden in the inscription,”
Pierro went on, “I started looking at the stone itself, and there are two obvious clues in its shape. First, look at the four edges of the slab.”
Vertutti bent forward over the table and stared at two of the pictures, side by side, but saw nothing he hadn’t previously noticed. He shook his head.
“The edges,” Pierro prompted gently. He took a short ruler out of his pocket, placed it on one of the photographs and aligned it with the top of the stone. He repeated the process with the left and right sides of the image.
“You see now?” he asked. “The top edge and both sides of the slab are absolutely straight. But now do the same to the bottom of the stone.”
Vertutti took the ruler and positioned it carefully. And then he saw what the academic was driving at: with the ruler in place, it was obvious that the bottom edge of the stone was very slightly out of true.
“That’s the first point,” Pierro said. “If the Romans—or whoever prepared this slab—could get three of the edges straight, why couldn’t they do the same with the fourth? And the second clue is related to the first. Look closely at the position of the carving. If you study it, you’ll see that the words are centered on the stone from left to right, but not from top to bottom.”
Vertutti peered at the photograph in front of him and nodded. The gap between the letters and the top of the stone was much larger than that at the bottom. Now that Pierro had pointed it out, the discrepancy was quite obvious. A classic case, he mused, of not being able to see the wood for the trees.
“And that means what?” he asked.
“The most obvious conclusion is that this stone”—Pierro tapped the photograph with his finger for emphasis—“was originally part of a larger slab, and at some point the lower section was removed.”