by James Becker
“Good. We’ll slow down and follow them. Sooner or later they’ll have to stop somewhere, and then we’ll take them.”
“I can’t see the helicopter,” Angela said, craning her neck at the window of the Toyota. “Perhaps they’ve given up.”
Bronson shook his head. “Not a chance,” he said. “It’s somewhere behind us.”
“Can we outrun it?”
“Not even in a Ferrari,” he replied, “but I hope we won’t have to. If we can just make it to Piglio, that should be enough.”
Traffic was light on the country roads, but there were enough vehicles around, Bronson hoped, to deny their pursuers any opportunity to drop the helicopter down to the road to try to stop them. Then he looked ahead and pointed at a road sign.
“Piglio,” he said. “We’re here.”
The helicopter was holding at five hundred feet. As the Toyota entered the town below them, Mandino instructed the pilot to descend farther.
“Where is this?” Mandino asked.
“A place called Piglio,” Rogan said. He was tracking their location on the topographical chart, in case they needed to summon help from the ground.
It was a small town, but they couldn’t risk losing their quarry in the side streets. The Toyota had been forced to slow down in the heavier local traffic, and the helicopter was almost in a hover as the men watched carefully.
“Keep your eyes on it,” Mandino ordered.
“Nearly there,” Bronson said, as he turned the Toyota down the side street, following the signs for the supermarket. Seconds later he swung the jeep into the parking lot, found a vacant parking bay, stopped the vehicle and climbed out.
“Don’t forget the relics,” he said, as Angela followed him.
She tucked the towel and its precious contents carefully into a carrier bag. “Got the camera?” she asked.
“Yes. Come on.” Bronson led the way to the main entrance of the supermarket, where several shoppers were staring up at the helicopter, now in a hover about a hundred yards away.
“Land as close as you can,” Mandino told the pilot.
“I can’t put it down in the parking lot—there’s not enough open space—but there’s a patch of wasteland over there.”
“Be as quick as you can. Once we’re out, get back into the air. Rogan, stay in the aircraft and keep your mobile close.”
The pilot swung the helicopter around to the right and descended toward the area of grass that adjoined the supermarket parking lot.
“The Nissan’s right there, isn’t it?” Angela said.
“Yes, but we can’t just climb in it and drive away. That would be a dead giveaway.
We’ll wait here.”
Bronson pulled Angela to the left-hand side of the entrance hall and carefully watched the helicopter.
“They’ll have to land to let someone out to follow us on foot,” he said, “and they can’t put the chopper down out there in the parking lot—it’s too crowded. Right, there he goes.” He watched the helicopter move away and start to descend.
“We walk, not run,” he said, squeezing Angela’s hand. Without even a glance at the aircraft, they crossed to where Bronson had parked the Nissan. He unlocked it, climbed in and started the engine, then reversed out of the parking bay and drove the old sedan car unhurriedly away from the building.
Thirty seconds later Mandino and his two men ran into the parking lot, heading toward the Toyota, the helicopter hovering above them.
But Bronson was already driving away, heading for Via Prenestina and Rome.
An hour later, after a careful search of the parking lot and the supermarket, Gregori Mandino was forced to face the unpalatable truth: Bronson and the Lewis woman had obviously escaped. The Toyota had been abandoned in the parking lot, and was already attracting attention because of the very obvious bullet holes in its windshield and bodywork. They’d peered in the back window and seen the tools and equipment that were still there. One of the men had stuck his knife blade into both front tires to ensure that their quarry definitely wouldn’t be able to drive it away.
The three men had checked everywhere inside the supermarket, then extended their search to the surrounding streets and shops—and even the few cafe’s, restaurants and hotels—but without result.
“They could have had an accomplice waiting here for them,” one of the men suggested. “So what do we do now?”
“It’s not over yet,” Mandino growled. “They’re still somewhere here in Italy, in my territory. I’m going to find them and kill them both, if it’s the last thing I do.”
25
I
“We have to get an expert to look at these,” Angela said.
They’d driven back to the Italian west coast and booked a twin room in a tiny hotel near Livorno. After a couple of drinks in the bar, and a very late dinner, they’d gone back up to their room. Bronson had plugged in his laptop and transferred the photographs to it from the data card in his camera.
He burned copies of the pictures he’d taken in the tomb onto four CDs. He gave one to Angela, put two of the others into envelopes to post back to his and Angela’s addresses in Britain the next day, and kept one himself.
Only then did they unwrap the three relics Bronson had pulled out of the tomb.
Angela spread towels on the small table in their bedroom, pulled on a pair of thin latex gloves and carefully transferred the three objects to the table.
“What are they, exactly?” Bronson asked.
“These two are diptychs. That’s a kind of rudimentary notepad. Their inner surfaces are covered in wax, so somebody could jot down notes, and then simply erase what had been written by scraping something across the surface of the wax.
“But these are very special,” she went on. “You see this?” she asked, pointing at a small lump of wax clinging to a thread looped through a series of holes pierced in the edges of the wooden tablets. The thread had broken in several places on both relics, but Angela hadn’t attempted to remove it or open either of the diptychs.
Bronson nodded.
“The thread is called a linum and the holes are known as foramina. To prevent the tablets being opened, the thread would be secured with a seal, as this has been. That was usually done with legal documents as a precaution against forgers.”
“So we’ve recovered a couple of first-century legal documents.”
“Oh, these are more than that, much more. This seal is, I’m almost certain, the imperial crest of the Emperor Nero. Have you any idea how rare it is to find an unknown text from that period of history in this kind of condition? That wax seal around the stone in the cave seems to have preserved these almost perfectly. This is like the tomb of Tutankhamun—it’s that unusual.”
“Tutankhamun without the gold and jewels, though,” Bronson said, looking more closely at the diptychs. “They both look a little tatty to me.”
“That’s just the paint or varnish on the outside. The wood itself seems to be in almost perfect condition. This is a really important find.”
“Aren’t you going to look inside them?” Bronson asked.
Angela shook her head. “I’ve told you before—this isn’t my field. These should be handed to an expert, and every stage of the opening recorded.”
“What about the scroll? You could have a look at that. You can read enough Latin to do that, can’t you?”
“Yes,” Angela said doubtfully. “I can try translating some of it, I suppose.”
With hands that weren’t quite steady, she took the scroll and slowly, with infinite care, unrolled the first three or four inches. She stared at the Latin text, the ink seemingly as black as the day it had been written, and read the words to herself, her lips moving silently as she did so.
“Well?” Bronson demanded.
Angela shook her head. “I can’t be sure,” she said, distractedly. “It can’t be right—it just can’t.”
“What can’t? What is it?”
“No. My translati
on must be wrong. Look, we have to find someone who can handle the relics professionally and translate them properly. And I know just the person.”
II
“It’s all been a bit of a shambles, Mandino, hasn’t it?” Vertutti asked, his voice dripping scorn. The two men were meeting again—at the same café as previously—but this time the balance of power had changed.
“If I understand you correctly,” Vertutti continued, “you actually had the relics within your grasp, and the Englishman at your mercy, but you somehow managed to let him escape with them. This debacle hardly inspires much confidence in your ability to bring the matter to a satisfactory conclusion.”
“You need not worry, Eminence,” Mandino said, with a confidence that was only slightly forced. “We have several possible leads to follow, and you shouldn’t underestimate the difficulties this man Bronson faces. I know from my sources inside law enforcement that he has no valid passport, so he can’t leave Italy by air or sea. Details of the vehicle he’s driving have been circulated to all European police forces, and staff at the border crossing points told to look out for it. The net is closing in on him, and there’s nothing he can do about it.”
“Suppose he decides not to leave Italy?”
“Then tracing him will be even easier. We have eyes everywhere.”
“I hope you’re right,” Vertutti said. “You must make sure he doesn’t escape.” He got up to leave, but Mandino motioned him back to his seat.
“There’s still the matter of the bodies,” he said. “You know their identities, obviously, so what do you want us to do about them?”
“The bodies, Mandino? What bodies? Ask any Catholic where those two men are buried and he’ll tell you that the tomb of one man is right here in Rome and the bones of the other were sent to Britain in the seventh century.”
“Sent by Pope Vitalian, Cardinal, the author of the Codex. He knew those bones weren’t what he said they were. Vitalian would never have given away genuine relics.”
“That’s pure conjecture.”
“Maybe, but we both know that the tomb in Rome doesn’t hold the body the Vatican claims. What we’ve already found proves that, and now you know it’s not true.”
“It’s true as far as the Vatican is concerned, and that’s all that matters. Our position is that the bodies you found are exactly what the inscription above the tomb stated—they’re the bones of liars—and of no interest to the Mother Church. And now the documents have been taken out of the cave, there’s no proof whatsoever of what you’re suggesting. Take some men up to the plateau and destroy the bones completely.”
III
“So now we’ve got to drive all the way to Barcelona?” Bronson asked. “You can at least tell me why.”
They were in the Nissan sedan, heading out of Livorno toward the French border. It was going to be a long drive, mostly because Bronson was determined to stick to the minor roads wherever he could, to avoid any possible roadblocks. There were more than twenty roads crossing the French-Italian border and Bronson knew the Italian police couldn’t possibly mount a presence on every one, and would probably have to concentrate on the autostradas and main roads.
In truth, he wasn’t too concerned about being stopped, because nobody knew that he was driving a Nissan. The police would be looking for him in a Renault Espace, and that car was tucked away in a corner of a parking lot in San Cesareo.
“About ten years ago,” Angela replied, “just after I’d started work at the British Museum, I did a twelve-month stint in Barcelona at the Museu Egipti, working with a man named Josep Puente. He was the resident papyrologist.”
“And what does that mean?”
“Papyrology is a generic term for the study of ancient texts written on a whole range of substances including parchment vellum—that’s the skin of sheep and goats—leather, linen, slivers of wood, wax tablets and potsherds, known as ostraca. I suppose the discipline became known as papyrology simply because the most common writing material that’s survived is papyrus. Josep Puente is a renowned expert on ancient texts.”
“And I presume he can read Latin?”
Angela nodded. “Just like poor Jeremy Goldman, if you specialize in this field, you end up with a working knowledge of most of the ancient languages. Josep can read Latin, Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew.”
Angela fell silent, and Bronson glanced across at her. “What is it?” he asked.
“There’s another reason I want to go there,” she said.
“Yes?”
“I didn’t tell you what I read in the scroll, because I simply can’t believe it. But if Josep Puente comes up with the same translation as I did, the museum would be the ideal place to announce the find to the world. He has the credibility and experience to be believed, and that’s going to be important, because you have no idea what kind of opposition we’ll face if we go public. Men with machine guns would be the least of our worries.”
Bronson glanced at her again. “Tell me what you think you translated,” he asked.
But Angela shook her head. “I can’t. I might be wrong. In fact, I really hope I am.
You’ll have to wait until we get to Barcelona.”
IV
Antonio Carlotti was not in the best of tempers. His boss, Gregori Mandino, was consumed by this ridiculous quest to track down the English couple and the relics they’d managed to find up in the hills near Piglio, but the bulk of the work involved seemed to have fallen on Carlotti’s shoulders.
He was the man who’d had to supervise the Internet monitoring and related searches. He was the person whom Mandino had told to run down all the biographical details of Christopher Bronson and Angela Lewis, and who’d had to deduce where they were likely to go next. Mandino just demanded results and then made his own plans accordingly, usually with Rogan in tow.
To call Mandino’s pursuit “single-minded” was to understate the case. He seemed to be letting all his other responsibilities slide and, as the Rome family capo, he had plenty of other things he should be doing. The quest appeared to be almost personal to him, and the one thing Carlotti had learned since he’d become a member of the Cosa Nostra was that you never let things get personal.
The bodyguard who’d been wounded at the property near Ponticelli was a good example. The Englishman, Bronson, had called an ambulance and then driven away from the house, and the man had been taken to a surgical hospital in Rome. But for Carlotti, a bodyguard who got himself shot was no use. He knew the man. He even liked him, but he’d failed in his duty, and that was enough. The two men Carlotti had sent to the hospital had distracted the police guard and then killed the wounded man, messily but quickly, before he could be properly interviewed by the Carabinieri.
That was what Carlotti meant by not getting personal.
He was wondering what, if anything, he should say to Mandino next time they met when his cell phone rang.
“Carlotti.”
“You don’t know me,” the voice said, “but we have a mutual acquaintance.”
“Yes.” The Italian was somewhat cautious.
“This concerns the Codex.”
“Yes?” Carlotti said again, now on surer ground. “How can I help? My colleague has already left for Barcelona.”
“I know. He gave me your number before he went. We need to meet. It’s very important—for both of us.”
“Very well. Where and when?”
“The cafe’ in the Piazza Cavour, in thirty minutes?”
“I’ll be there,” Carlotti said, and ended the call.
“So, how can I help you, Eminence?” Antonio Carlotti asked, as Vertutti sat down heavily in the seat opposite him.
“I think it’s more how I can help you,” Vertutti said. He leaned forward and clasped his hands under his chin. “Do you believe in God, Carlotti?”
Whatever Carlotti had expected, this wasn’t it. “Of course. Why do you ask?”
Vertutti continued, ignoring the question. “And do you believe tha
t the Holy Father is God’s chosen representative on earth? And that Jesus Christ died for our sins?”
“Actually, that’s three questions, Cardinal. But the answer’s the same to all of them—yes, I do.”
“Good,” Vertutti said, “because that’s the crux of the problem I face. Gregori Mandino would have answered ‘no.’ He’s not simply godless: he’s a committed atheist and a rabid opponent of the Vatican, the Catholic Church and everything they stand for.”
Carlotti shook his head. “I’ve known Gregori for many years, Eminence. His personal beliefs will not prevent him from completing this task.”
“I wish I shared your confidence. How much do you know about the quest he’s undertaken?”
“In detail, very little,” Carlotti replied, cautiously. “I’ve mainly been involved in providing technical support.”
“But you are his second-in-command?”
“Yes. That’s why you have my number.”
Vertutti nodded. “Let me explain exactly what we have become involved in. This is a quest,” he began, “that commenced in the seventh century under Pope Vitalian. A quest that could affect the very future of the Mother Church herself.”
“And this Exomologesis is what, exactly?” Carlotti asked, having listened to Vertutti’s explanation of the Vitalian Codex.
“It’s a forgery,” Vertutti explained, embarking on the wholly fictitious story he’d worked out the previous evening, “but a very convincing one. It’s a document that purports to prove that Jesus Christ did not die on the Cross. Now,” he added with a smile, “the faith of true Christians is strong enough to dismiss such a fabrication, and the Vatican can demonstrate the fallacy of the document itself, but the very existence of this scroll is enough to raise doubts about our religion. With people increasingly turning away from the Church, we simply cannot afford to have any such doubts expressed.”
Carlotti looked puzzled. “But I thought Gregori had recovered the Exomologesis. I understood that was what had been concealed in the house outside Ponticelli.”
“Mandino removed it from the property, but we found additional text at the foot of the scroll. It said a further copy of the document had been prepared, together with two diptychs which would provide proof of the validity of the scroll. Now, we know that these diptychs, like the scroll itself, must be forgeries, but we simply cannot afford for the contents of these documents to be made public. These three additional relics have been stolen by the Englishman Bronson and his ex-wife.”