‘If you wouldn’t mind putting me down, sir, I can explain.’ replied the doctor, not in the slightest cowed by the tirade. Nero let him go and the doctor continued. ‘Based on my medical knowledge and after years of experience in treating injuries like these, I can see that the head wound is infected and it’s too far advanced for me to do anything about it: his blood is poisoned and he’s going to die.’
‘Poisoned? So you’re saying the hag who found him on the Aventine poisoned him?’
‘No, sir. You heard the guard commander’s report. The woman said she found him lying in the gutter in a terrible state and tried to clean him up.’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’ shouted Nero.
‘Dirt from the weapon, polluted water used to clean him, filth from the gutter – any of those could’ve got infection into the wound. Whatever it was, it’s the effects of the dirt that’ve poisoned him, not anything the woman did.’
‘So he’s going to die and you can’t do anything about it?’
‘I’m afraid not, sir. He already has a fever, he’s lapsing in and out of consciousness and he’s delirious. I’ve seen the symptoms before and –’
‘Guards!’ Nero barged him out of the way and kicked the door open, breaking the catch and slamming it against the inside wall, bringing down a chunk of painted plaster. ‘Guards!’ He shouted again, his voice rising to a scream, and almost at once, the sound of iron-shod feet clattering down the hallway signalled the arrival of two Praetorians. ‘That man there,’ he said, pointing at Jozar. ‘Take him outside and kill him.’ The doctor made to protest but Nero turned on him once more. ‘What’s your problem? You told me he was going to die, Mister know-it-all. I’m merely confirming your diagnosis for you.’ Giora started to take a step forward but Josephus held him back.
Nero stormed out, slamming the already damaged door behind him, followed closely by the two soldiers who dragged Jozar away, half-crying, rambling incoherently in Aramaic: it was the last time they ever saw him.
Chapter Eighteen
Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, NY
Giovanni Luzzo checked the address scrawled on the piece of paper. No mistake, this had to be it. Christ, what a dump. He searched for a bell but it had long ago been torn from the rotting frame leaving two lengths of wire sticking out. The glass in the door beside the boarded-up shop-front had been replaced by plywood and at a prod from his foot it swung open, revealing a wooden staircase which, from the paint marks, he saw had once been carpeted. At the top he flicked at the light switch but the bulb had gone the way of the stair carpet and so he groped around in the dark until he found the door. He was about to knock when it swung open and a familiar black face peered at him over the security chain.
‘You’re late,’ said Raymond.
‘Late? Yeah, as in “the late Giovanni Luzzo”: I’m lucky to be alive coming to a ’hood like this,’ he replied as the door closed behind him. ‘Them boys dealing on the corner was looking at me like I was their lunch.’
‘For shame on your scrawny Italian ass, my friend,’ replied Raymond as Luzzo followed him through a grubby hallway, piled high on one side with cardboard boxes. ‘Those boys ain’t dealing, they’re my people, my very own eyes and ears.’
‘Yeah, yeah, ok. I’m sorry. No offence meant.’
Raymond laughed, a deep baritone rumble that shook the flimsy sheet-rock walls with their peeling wallpaper. ‘And none taken. I want it to look like they’re dealing: keeps attention away from us right here and keeps law-abiding taxpaying folk inside their cars with the doors locked. Come on; let me show you the new office suite.’ He opened another door which led into what may once have passed for a bedroom: the carpet and the walls had turned a matching shade of yellowy grey over the years and the whole scene, with its few sticks of cheap furniture – including an unmade bed in the corner – was lit by two bare bulbs hanging from a nicotine-stained ceiling. ‘What d’you think?’
Luzzo shook his head. ‘What do I think?’ he said. ‘I think that even the fucking roaches must’ve moved out. What the hell are you doing in a shithole like this?’
Raymond looked at him over the top of his half-moon reading glasses. ‘I take it you’d have preferred something downtown Manhattan?’
‘Wouldn’t we all. But Bed-Stuy, for chrissakes?’
‘Nowhere safer,’ said Raymond. ‘Take a look out the window. Go on, it won’t bite you.’ Luzzo moved the damp-stained curtain aside and peered out. ‘Now tell me what you see opposite.’
‘An abandoned car, houses. What d’you expect me to see?’
‘True, but what kinda houses?’
‘Shit, Raymond, I ain’t got time for no dumb-ass games. I dunno, vacant lots; rat-infested dumps like this one.’
‘Ah, but they’re not like this one are they? All those windows are bricked up. Anyone trying to get close enough to take a look at us is going to have their work cut out.’
‘Yeah, terrific. It’s gonna give me a real warm fuzzy when I collect a bullet on the way outa here knowing the police couldn’t see in the freakin’ window. Anyway, what do they want?’
‘A meet at Woodchester,’ replied Raymond.
He snatched the printed sheet out of Raymond’s hands. ‘They want to meet where?’
‘I told you: Woodchester.’
‘And where the fuck’s that?’
‘Alabama – just read the goddam letter will you,’ said Raymond with a sigh. He’d had a last name once but that was years back – maybe Raymond was his last name, even he wasn’t so sure these days – but to everyone else he was just Raymond.
‘Alabama? Is he seriously suggesting we go all the way back down there just so’s his people can screw up again?’
Raymond maintained his usual implacable calm in the face of Luzzo’s ranting. ‘Well, I don’t see we’ve got any choice.’
‘I don’t trust them,’ said Luzzo, throwing his cigarette end on the floor and treading on it with a vehemence that suggested he wanted to grind it clean through the cheap carpet and into the boards below. ‘These assholes damn near got us killed last time, they’ve already cost us money and good people. Those Alabama motherfuckers need to understand the price just went up.’
‘Why don’t we go to Woodchester and tell them in person?’ said Raymond, looking up from his laptop.
‘And anyway, how do they expect us to get there? Fly to Birmingham and rent a car like last time? Feds’d be all over us before we could say “shit”. Why can’t they come here?’
‘How would I know?’ said Raymond. ‘All we got’s that damn letter –’
Luzzo screwed up the piece of paper and threw it into the corner before beginning yet another bad-tempered circuit of the room. ‘And who the fuck writes letters in this day and age anyway? What are they playing at?’
Raymond got to his feet and calmly retrieved it, smoothing out the page on the table, taking care to avoid the worst of the coffee stains that formed a pattern of rings on its cracked Formica surface. ‘You don’t get any smarter, do you, Luzzo?’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘You’ve got previous so we have to assume you’ve already got the Feds all over your sorry ass. Do you really think they’re not listening to your cell-phone, following your car around the place with some fancy piece of technology stuck on with a magnet – that’s if they can find enough bodywork that isn’t made of filler? Why d’you think I’ve got those boys on the corners?’
‘And so letters are safer than phones or e-mail? And if the Feds find the address, then what?’
Raymond looked at him, more in pity than anger, waving the envelope under his nose. ‘Your name ain’t Gloria Washington, nor’s any of ours,’ he said. ‘If her mail gets sent to the store downstairs, that’s nothing to do with us.’
‘Yeah, but they could be reading them.’
‘And if they do, they read a jumble of characters. Again, nothing to do with us.’
‘How d’you know they c
an’t decode this shit?’
‘Because they haven’t got the keys. This Josephus guy had access to grid-style ciphers that weren’t re-discovered for nearly fifteen hundred years, he’s the one who gave me the idea.’
‘You’re confusing me with all this code and cipher shit, Raymond,’ said Luzzo, lighting yet another cigarette. ‘So could the Feds read it or not?’
‘Eventually, but it would take them one hell of a time because the text key that tells you how to use the grids is long and unique.’
‘So’s my dick, but where does that get us?’
Raymond looked at Luzzo and shook his head. ‘When you come out with crap like that, I start to wonder if the human race isn’t regressing. It’s the King James Bible, asshole.’
‘What is?’
‘The source of the cipher key. Look, come here, knucklehead, and I’ll show you.’ Raymond spread the crumpled sheet out and weighted it down at the top with a well-thumbed copy of the Bible that he took out of his briefcase. Written underneath the groups of seemingly random groups of characters in his neat, almost feminine, hand was the decoded version, inviting them to meet the men whose money had paid for the robbery in Pompeii. ‘Now, take a look at the first line.’
‘It’s a bunch of letters and numbers.’
‘Excellent. Your mother and I are so glad to know all those years at Harvard weren’t wasted.’
‘OK, Raymond, cut the smartass crap. Letters and numbers. What of it?’
‘Third number, third group is what?’
Luzzo sighed. ‘Seven, teacher. Can I be excused please?’
Raymond ignored him and continued. ‘Which is an odd number, right?’
‘If you say so.’
‘And the word “odd” starts with the letter “O” so we go to “O” for Old Testament. Now if we count another three groups along from there, third character we get the number three, so we go to the third book of the Old Testament.’ Raymond picked it up and thumbed through to the relevant page. ‘And that happens to be Leviticus.’
‘Reckon I’ll wait till they make the movie.’
‘OK, well the rest of it’s very simple. This group of characters tells you that the key comes from chapter nineteen, starting at verse six – that information’s known as the indicator block – and you use the text from the Good Book, Leviticus nineteen, verse six to tell you which squares on the grid to use to generate your cipher-text. You with me?’
‘I think so,’ lied Luzzo.
‘Of course if you know what you’re doing you can brute-force decode a book cipher and each try has about a 1 in 240 chance of success, but I’ve lengthened the odds by flattening out the frequency distribution of the letters rather than using what’s called a tabula recta – so my grid’s got lotsa Es, Ts, As and so on, but not many Js, Qs and Zs. Simple as ABC,’ he said, rubbing his hands.
‘Maybe to you,’ said Luzzo. ‘Makes me glad I never finished high-school if that’s the kinda shit you had to sit through.’
Raymond laughed. ‘No, this was stuff I got interested in when I was at college: I was a math and stats major.’
‘Shit, I bet you had to fight the chicks off with a stick. So how much closer to Nowheresville Alabama does this get us?’
‘It means we go there with a stronger hand than they do. We’ve got the grids and they haven’t. I haven’t done any Latin or Greek since I was eighteen but I’ve managed to decipher a couple of lines and where the plain- and cipher-text are written recto-verso – ’
‘Rectum what?’
‘Recto-verso. Same text on different sides of the page: one side in clear, the other side in code.’
Luzzo scratched his head. ‘And this rectum-version or whatever gives us a stronger hand?’
‘Sure does. Shows them what we’ve got is for real. Like your Italian buddies said, all that stuff in the papers about all the grids having been recovered is just police bullshit and I’ve told the Good ole Boys as much. They pay us for the rest, every last goddam scrap of it, or we go looking for someone who will.’
‘So what do you want me to do about Alabama?’ asked Luzzo.
Raymond pondered for a moment. ‘You go down by train. We’ll get you a new credit card and you can rent a car once you’re down there. I’ll fly down and you can pick me up. And in case you’re worried about the Feds, or the local State Troopers pulling you over, you’ll be tailed by my people to make sure there’s no one tailing you. If there is, you turn around and come straight back here.’
‘What about the finds and stuff?’
‘You leave all that to me. They’re being looked after by people who do this kind of shit for a living. However, as far as our buyers know, they’re sitting in someone’s leaky shed in the back yard being eaten by ants – that’ll give them even more incentive to come to the right decision.’
‘So you’re going to agree to the meet?’
‘Already done so. The letter’s in the mail,’ said Raymond, patting the laptop. ‘I’ve written a little piece of code that turns plain-text into cipher-text and automatically generates the indicator block.’
‘What if someone steals the laptop? We’d be screwed then.’
‘No we wouldn’t. Even if they get past the BIOS password, the code’s obfuscated –’
‘It’s what? Speak English will you.’
‘Obfuscated,’ repeated Raymond. ‘It stops anyone looking at the code and working out what it does or reverse-engineering it. I’ve got other little goodies in there that make it impossible to get at, so don’t you worry about a thing.’
‘Have they talked money?’ asked Luzzo who walked back to the window and began surveying the street scene below.
Raymond shook his head. ‘Nope, they just said they wanted to negotiate face-to-face. And this time they’ve guaranteed no screw-ups.’
‘Can we trust them?’
‘Nope. Can’t trust nobody in this business. But while we’ve got something they want then I can’t see them doing anything stupid.’
‘Well that’s something at least.’
‘You’d better get your ass down there,’ said Raymond, handing him a scrap of paper. ‘Go find a payphone and call this number. Tell them it’s from me and you need train tickets and a driver’s licence. Don’t carry a weapon on the trip down – we’ll get one to you.’ Luzzo stood up and turned to leave but Raymond called him back. ‘One more thing, make sure you’ve got a good cover story in case you get stopped. You need to have a watertight reason for going down there. Got that?’
‘Yes, teacher,’ Luzzo replied from the doorway without even turning round.
‘Fool,’ muttered Raymond under his breath.
Chapter Nineteen
Colchis, Pontus Cappadocius, AD 63
‘We’ve found it. I think I can see a light up ahead.’ Giora had to shout to make himself heard above the wind which was howling down the pass from the north and piling the snow into drifts beside the track.
Josephus kicked at his pony’s flanks to try and drive the exhausted animal forward. Finally he drew level with his companion. Squinting against the swirling flakes he looked where Giora was pointing. Through the gloom he could just make out a dark shape on the crest of the rise and a guttering yellow light. ‘I just hope the natives are more friendly than the last place,’ he said, pulling his cloak tighter around himself.
‘We’re safe, Alityros,’ he said, half turning in the saddle. ‘Did you hear me? I said we’re safe. Alityros? Alityros? Damn, where is he?’
‘I thought he was back with you,’ replied Giora, pulling his cloak down from his mouth in order to reply.
‘And I thought he’d gone on ahead. When did you last see him?’
‘Must be half an hour or more, he just gradually slipped behind, I thought you’d scoop him up.’
‘I didn’t pass him,’ Josephus yelled into the wind. ‘He must’ve wandered off the track.’
‘Hardly, it’s seven hundred feet up on both sides of the valley. Lo
ok, it’s my fault, I’ll go back, you go on ahead and tell them to make ready for three travellers.’
‘And if Paul’s people are already there waiting for us and I turn up on my own?’
‘No,’ Giora shouted back into the gale. ‘They can’t have got ahead of us. This is the only road, we’d have seen them for sure.’
‘Just like we saw Alityros, you mean? Come on, we’ll both go back.’ Josephus turned his horse’s head to retrace their steps, Giora’s further words of protest were carried away on the wind and he turned to follow, noticing with unease that their two animals’ hoof-prints were already buried by fresh snow. Their tough little Sarmatian-bred ponies were ideally suited for the conditions but the extreme cold, lack of fodder and a day’s march had pushed even them to the limits of their endurance.
After ten minutes there was still no sign of their missing friend and Giora steered his horse alongside Josephus’ mount. ‘If we go much further, none of us is going to make it to that caupona, Josephus.’
‘Don’t think I hadn’t thought of that, but we can’t leave him to die out here. Another five minutes: all right?’
Giora muttered something inaudible into his cloak and they set off once more, hunched against the cold, the only sounds now the moaning of the wind and the clatter of the horses’ hooves muffled by the carpet of snow which was by now fetlock-deep.
Josephus had drawn slightly ahead of Giora and so didn’t hear his shouted calls that they should turn round. For a moment, the snowfall cleared and ahead of them, standing forlornly in the middle of the road was Alityros’ pony, its head and back already covered with a layer of snow. It was then that they saw him, a heap of what looked like abandoned clothing left by the roadside and it was only because he had one leg in the air, still attached to the horse’s saddle that they recognised it as a man. Jumping down, they ran over to Alityros and after detaching his foot from the stirrup, brushed the snow off him, hauling him into the sitting position.
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