by James Becker
Carlotti still looked confused. “I know about Bronson, and I understand what you’re saying, but Gregori will hopefully recover these objects when he reaches Barcelona.”
Acting on Mandino’s instructions, Carlotti had run exhaustive checks on the backgrounds of both Bronson and the Lewis woman. The only possible contact either of them had with academics based in Europe was Angela Lewis’s previous work with Josep Puente, which was why Carlotti had ordered two of his men to watch the Museu Egipti in Barcelona, with detailed descriptions of what Bronson and Lewis looked like, and why Mandino was already on his way to Spain.
“That,” Vertutti said, leaning forward earnestly to make his point, “is what worries me. Unfortunately, Mandino and I have never seen eye to eye over this matter, and he’s told me that, once he’s recovered these relics, he intends to make them public.
With his religious—or rather anti-religious—views, that didn’t surprise me, and he seems unconcerned that his action will do irreparable harm to the Church.”
“So what can I do?” Carlotti asked.
Vertutti leaned even farther forward, lowered his voice and made the suggestion he’d been working on for the last three days.
Ten minutes later, Vertutti shook hands with Carlotti and headed back toward the Vatican. As he walked, he noticed he was sweating slightly, and it was not entirely due to the gentle heat of the Rome evening.
V
For a short while after Vertutti had left, Antonio Carlotti sat lost in thought. It had been, he reflected, a most unusual conversation. He’d noticed the slight traces of perspiration on Vertutti’s forehead as the senior churchman worked his way through the lies he was telling. Carlotti’s statement about only providing technical support was, of course, completely untrue: he knew just as much about the Exomologesis as Mandino did. But he’d guessed that he’d stand a much better chance of learning exactly what Vertutti was up to if he played dumb, and his decision had been amply vindicated.
Now all he had to do was decide whether to simply pass on what he’d learned to Mandino—which was the obvious and logical thing to do—and leave him to deal with Vertutti on his return to Rome, or do something else. Something that would, strangely enough, achieve exactly what Vertutti wanted, but at the same time benefit Carlotti himself. It was a big step to take, and before he acted he needed to be certain he could pull it off.
Finally, he pulled out his cell phone and made a long call to one of his most trusted men, a call that included the most specific—and highly unusual—instructions.
26
I
Two men walked out of Terminal B at Barcelona airport carrying only hand luggage and joined the queue for a taxi. The names in their Italian passports were Verrochio and Perini, and they were almost identical in appearance: tall and well-built, wearing dark suits, sunglasses with impenetrable black lenses shielding their eyes.
When they reached the head of the line, they climbed into a black and yellow Mercedes cab and, as the driver pulled away from the rank, Perini gave him an address on the western edge of the city in heavily accented but fluent Spanish.
When they arrived at their destination, Perini leaned forward. “Wait here, please,”
he said. “I’ll be about ten minutes, then we need to go into Barcelona itself.”
Verrochio stayed in the car while Perini got out, walked a short distance down the street and entered the foyer of an apartment building. He checked a small piece of paper on which a few numbers were written, then pressed one of the buttons on the intercom. Lights flared on and he stared unblinking into the lens of a camera. A couple of seconds later the electric lock buzzed, and he pushed open the door and walked inside.
Perini took the elevator to the seventh floor, walked down a short corridor and knocked on a door. He heard the sound of movement inside and was aware of an unseen eye assessing him through the security peephole. The door opened and he found himself face-to-face with a swarthy, heavily built man wearing jeans and a T-shirt.
“Tony sent me,” Perini said, in Italian, and the man beckoned him inside, locking the door behind him.
The man led the way into one of the bedrooms and opened a built-in wardrobe. He pulled out two black leather briefcases and placed them both on the bed.
“I can offer you Walthers or Glocks,” he said, snapping open the locks on both cases.
Perini bent down to look at them. In one were two Walther PPK semiautomatic pistols in nine-millimeter, and in the other a pair of Glock 17s in the same caliber.
Both cases also contained one spare magazine for each pistol, two boxes of fifty rounds of Parabellum ammunition and a couple of shoulder holsters.
Perini inspected the four pistols carefully, then replaced them in the briefcases.
“I’ll take the Glocks,” he said, finally.
“No problem. You’ll need them for one day, I was told?”
“One day, perhaps two,” Perini agreed.
“Is there sufficient ammunition?”
“More than enough.”
“Good. Call me on this number when you want to return them.” The man handed over a slip of paper.
Perini slipped it into his wallet. Then he snapped the locks shut on the briefcase containing the Glocks, shook the man’s hand and left the apartment.
“Take us to the Plac¸a Mossèn Jacint Verdaguer,” he instructed the taxi driver, as he leaned back in his seat.
The driver nodded. In a few minutes the vehicle was heading for the center of the city on the Avinguda Diagonal, the major road that divides Barcelona in two.
On arrival at the plac¸a, Perini paid the driver, including a modest tip, and the two men climbed out and stood waiting on the pavement until the taxi vanished into the stream of fast-moving traffic.
Verrochio pulled out a street map of Barcelona.
“We need to get over there,” Verrochio said, pointing. They waited at the pedestrian crossing for the lights to change, then walked across the Diagonal and headed south down the Passeig de Sant Joan, before turning right onto the Carrer de Valencia.
“That’ll do,” Perini said, as they reached the junction with the Carrer de Pau Claris.
Near the corner was a street café with chairs and tables outside. They stopped and took seats that offered them a clear view of the entrance of the Museu Egipti on the opposite side of the road.
When the waiter appeared, Verrochio practiced his Catalan by ordering two cafe’s amb llet and a selection of pastries, and settled down for what was probably going to be a long wait.
Once their coffees and food had been served, Perini nodded to his companion. “You go first.”
Verrochio walked through the café to the toilet, carrying the briefcase, and returned in about five minutes. Ten minutes or so later, Perini did exactly the same thing.
Anyone looking closely may have noticed that the briefcase appeared to be lighter once Perini sat down again at the table. This was because it was now almost empty, containing only forty-odd rounds of nine-millimeter ammunition. The two Glock pistols and loaded spare magazines were tucked in the shoulder holsters the two men were now wearing under their light jackets.
“This could be a complete waste of time, you know,” Verrochio said, his eyes invisible behind his designer shades. “They might never turn up.”
“On the other hand, they might arrive in the next ten minutes, so look sharp,” Perini replied.
But after an hour, the strain of watching, with nothing to show for it, was beginning to tell on both of them.
“I’ll read for an hour while you watch, then we’ll change over, OK?” Perini said.
“And let’s grab another drink next time that waiter comes by.”
“Sounds good to me,” Verrochio replied, and shifted his chair slightly to ensure he had an unobstructed view of the museum entrance.
II
Getting to the museum wasn’t easy. It was the first time Bronson had been to the city, and, once they’d left the
main roads, they got lost in the maze of one-way streets.
“This is it,” Angela said finally, looking up from her map to check the street signs as Bronson swung the Nissan around a corner. “This is the Carrer de Valencia.”
“At last,” Bronson muttered. “Now, if we can just find somewhere to park the bloody car . . .”
They found a space in one of the multistory parking garages near the museum and walked across the road toward the small gray-white building. It didn’t look much like a museum to Bronson, who had a mental picture of stone steps and marble columns. Instead, the building was only about the width of a house, and in fact didn’t look unlike a large townhouse. Above the central double doors were three floors of windows, fronted by balconies with metal railings.
“Not very big, is it?” Bronson remarked.
“It’s not meant to be. It’s a small, specialist unit, not a huge place like the Victoria and Albert, or the Imperial War Museum.”
Inside, they paid the six-euro admission charge. Angela walked over to the reception desk and smiled at the middle-aged woman sitting behind it.
“Do you speak English?” she asked.
“Of course,” the receptionist replied. “How can I help you?”
“We’d like to see Professor Puente. My name is Angela Lewis and I’m a former colleague of his. Is he in the building?”
“I think so. Just a moment.” She dialed a number and held a short conversation in high-speed Spanish. “He remembers you,” she said with a smile, as she replaced the receiver. “He’s working upstairs in the Dioses de Egipto room, on the first floor, if you’d like to go straight up.”
“Thanks,” Angela said, and led the way toward the staircase.
Almost as soon as they reached the first floor, a short, dark-haired swarthy man trotted toward them, his arms held wide in a gesture of welcome.
“Angela!” he called, and wrapped himself around her. “You’ve come back to me, my little English flower!”
“Hello, Josep,” Angela said, smiling while disentangling herself from his grasp.
Puente stepped back and held out a hand toward Bronson, his movements quick and bird-like. “Forgive me,” he said, with a barely distinguishable accent, “but I still miss Angela. I’m Josep Puente.”
“Chris Bronson.”
“Ah.” Puente stepped back, his eyes flicking from one to the other. “But I understood that you two were . . .”
“You’re right,” Angela said, sighing and looking at Bronson. “We were married, then we got divorced and I’ve frankly no idea what we are now. But we need your help.”
“And might that be because of what you’re carrying in that black bag, Chris?”
Puente asked.
“How do you know that?” Bronson demanded, astonishment in his face.
“It’s not difficult to work out. Most people don’t carry overnight bags when they tour a museum. I’ve noticed you’ve not let go of the bag, and you’ve been very careful not to knock it against anything. So, there’s probably something inside that’s fragile, and possibly valuable, that you need an opinion about. What have you brought for me to look at?”
Angela’s face clouded briefly. “I’m not sure. We need to explain the sequence of events to you before we show you what’s in the bag. Could we go to your office or somewhere private?”
“My office hasn’t got any bigger since the last time you were here, my dear. I’ve a better idea. Come down to the basement. There’s plenty of room in the library.”
Angela remembered that the basement of the Museu Egipti housed a private library created by the museum’s founder, Jordi Clos. She told Chris about it as they walked through the modern, open-plan public rooms where white, square-section pillars and stainless-steel handrails contrasted with the classic, timeless beauty of the three-thousand-year-old exhibits.
Puente led the way down the stairs, past the “Privat” signs and into the library.
“Now,” he said, when they were seated, “tell me all about it.”
“Chris has been involved in this from the start, so it’s probably better if he explains what’s happened.”
Bronson nodded, and started at the beginning, telling the Spaniard how Jackie Hampton had died in mysterious circumstances at the house outside Ponticelli, his trip to Italy with Mark and what had happened while they were there, and subsequent events in Britain.
“The crux of this whole saga,” he said, “appears to be the two inscribed stones. Until the Hamptons’ builders uncovered the Latin inscription—”
“ ‘Hic Vanidici Latitant,’ ” Angela interjected.
“ ‘Here lie the liars,’ ” Puente translated immediately.
“Exactly,” Bronson continued. “Until the builders knocked the plaster off the wall above their fireplace, nobody was interested in the house or what it contained. But as soon as Jackie started searching the Internet for a translation of that phrase, well . . .
you know the rest.” He still didn’t like to think about how she and Mark had died.
He explained how Angela had worked out the meaning of the second, Occitan, inscription, how they’d recovered the skyphos and the scroll from below the floorboards.
“And you’ve brought that for me to look at?” Puente asked eagerly.
Bronson shook his head and described how the scroll had been taken from them by the two Italians, and that the leader of the pair had claimed it dated from the first century A.D. and contained a secret that the Church wanted to keep hidden.
“So if you haven’t got the scroll, what have you got?” Puente asked.
“We’re not quite there yet,” Bronson said. He told Puente how Angela had examined the skyphos and realized it was a reproduction, and guessed that the pattern on the side of the vessel was more than just an abstract decoration. Then he described their discovery of the ancient tomb up in the hills near Piglio, and what was inside it.
“Two bodies?” Puente interrupted.
“Yes,” Bronson replied. “We have the photographs that I took inside the tomb, which I can show you. I believe that one of the bodies was beheaded and the other crucified. Above the entrance to the cave the letters ‘HVL’ had been carved, which we assume meant ‘Hic Vanidici Latitant.’ ”
Puente was lost in thought. “Why are you so sure that’s how they died?” he asked, finally.
“On the larger of the two skeletons, one of the neck vertebrae was cut in half. As a police officer, I know that the vertebrae are very strong, and I can’t think of any circumstances in which one of these bones could split like that after death.
Beheading is the only scenario that makes sense.”
“And the second body?”
“That was easy. The two heel bones were still pinned together by the remains of a thick nail, and there were traces of rusted metal in both wrists.”
Puente looked shocked. “Are you sure?”
“I’ve got the pictures to prove it,” Bronson reminded him, “and we could certainly find the tomb again—assuming that the Italians haven’t blown it up.”
“And you’ve still got the items that you retrieved from the cave?” Puente asked, a distinct tremor in his voice.
“There are two diptychs and a scroll,” Angela said, as Bronson opened the leather case and began to unwrap the bundle that held the relics. “The diptychs are sealed, but I’ve looked at the scroll. That’s the reason we brought them to you. I can’t quite believe what I read.”
Bronson placed the final part of the bundle on the desk and carefully unrolled it while Puente pulled on a pair of thin white cotton gloves. The moment the relics were revealed, he drew in his breath sharply.
“Dear God,” he muttered, “these are in excellent condition, the best I’ve ever seen.”
He placed a large sheet of cartridge paper on the table and arranged a couple of desk lights on either side of it. He picked up one of the diptychs and placed it reverently in the middle of the paper, then bent over it with an
illuminated magnifier.
“I thought that might be Nero’s imperial seal,” Angela suggested, and Puente nodded.
“You’re absolutely right,” he said. “It is. And that makes this very rare and extremely valuable.” He looked up at Angela. “You’ve no idea of the contents?”
“No. I only looked at the scroll.”
“Very well. Some of the linum has disintegrated, so I can remove the sections of thread without damaging the seal.”
“This is quite urgent, Professor,” Bronson interjected.
“You must appreciate that proper examination of relics like these will take months or even years,” Puente said, “but I can certainly run some very quick visual checks.”
He unlocked a climate-controlled safe behind the table and took out three boxes containing scrolls and diptychs, and another two holding just fragments of papyrus.
Then he placed the scroll and the second diptych on the cartridge paper, selected four diptychs and a couple of scrolls from the boxes and placed those on the paper as well.
“Comparative paleography is a very complex and meticulous science,” he said, “but a quick comparison with these extant and dated relics might help indicate a likely period.”
Five minutes later he looked up. “This scroll is very early, probably first century A.D., and the diptychs look as if they’re from about the same period. I’ll know better when I’ve opened them, and I’ll also be able to tell you what the contents are.”
He walked over to a cupboard and returned to the table carrying a camera. He took several photographs of the first diptych, then carefully removed the securing thread, placing the lengths beside the object. Then slowly, and with meticulous care, he opened the diptych. Before doing anything else, he photographed it.
Bronson leaned forward to stare at the relic but the result was disappointing. The two wax-covered surfaces looked like muddy-brown layers of paint, covered in faint scribbling.