by Chad Brecher
Alex pointed towards the grand building across from the Biblioteca Marciana.
“The doges ate, slept, and worked in the palace. They rarely were permitted to leave the building. Some have called the palace a gilded cage in that the doge was very much controlled by the representative council of nobles.”
“Who was the ‘black doge?” Ellie asked.
“I’ve never heard the term before. I don’t think any of the doges were black in the sense of skin color.”
“What if ‘black’ refers to a quality of the doge — like an evil nature,” Ellie offered.
“It’s an interesting thought. There were two dark periods of Venetian history. The first was when a Venetian noble named Bajamonte Tepielo tried to overthrow the Venetian government and the doge. The second was when a doge named Marin Falier tried to stage a coup of his own to overthrow the republic. It failed and he had his head chopped off not too far from here. If there ever was an evil doge, most would probably say it was Falier.”
“I’ve heard this name before. Bernardo used to talk about him, especially when he used to take us on tours through the city,” Ellie responded.
“It’s got to be Falier that he is talking about in his message. But what does he mean that the key is behind Falier? One thing is certain, Dr. Gozzi felt that it was important enough to pass a message to us and convey that message in a code that no one but you could translate.”
“My God, Alex. Bernardo must have known he was in danger!” Ellie scanned the piazzetta suspiciously. She suddenly felt profoundly guilty. Bernardo was dead and instead of feeling depressed, she was buoyed by the excitement of deciphering the message. The mystery of the chest, the box, and Bernardo’s secret message were all consuming and she felt intoxicated by the prospect of running full-speed ahead into this quest.
“Where do we start?” Ellie asked.
Alex slid his arm under Ellie’s and began to walk towards the Porta del Frumento, the seventeenth-century gateway into the palace along the waterfront that served as the modern-day entrance to the museum.
“If you are looking for the doge, let’s start at the top.”
18
“It’s all here…sort of,” Martin said. He impatiently scratched the back of his neck and then flicked the tip of his index finger across the stubble on his cheek. The glow of the computer screen reflected off his glasses and mixed with the smoke rising from the cigarette precariously perched on a makeshift ash-tray.
“I can always count on you, my boy,” Solomon smiled and patted Martin on the shoulder.
He had come to rely heavily on Martin’s computer expertise of late and considered him to be a crucial member of the team. Martin couldn’t fire a gun for shit (he would probably blow off his foot before he could lift it). His nervous tics were distracting, but he was a wizard with technology and technology was the name of the game these days. Why blow down a door with C4 if you could delicately unlock the same door with a string of keystrokes. With all the money that was floating around in the ether and the ghostly world of wire transfers, Martin was a great insurance policy to certify that they all got paid at the end of the day.
He had a lot of faith in his team. They had been through a lot over the years. There were many dangerous missions and close calls — some failures but even greater successes. Solomon peered over Martin’s shoulder and beyond the screen of the laptop. He could see the massive form of Ox sitting next to a small table dutifully cleaning his revolver. Picked off a farm in the Gamadeoulis as a teenager, Ox had served with distinction in the South Africa Defense Force during the dirty war in Rhodesia. What he lacked in keen intellect was more than compensated for by an unholy love of weaponry and an impossibly muscular frame. Behind him was Pieter, sitting upon a dilapidated sofa as he flipped through a local newspaper. Pieter was a product of the South Africa Defense Forces elite special ops unit. He was a soldier through and through — stealthy, reliable, and deadly. The two remaining members of his team, Bryce and Fredrick, were the youngest of the group. Although Bryce looked more like a professional surfer than a mercenary, he had been trained by the Australian Special Air Service Regiment, where he gained a great aptitude in jungle warfare. Finally, Fredrick was a humorless German from the Kommando SpezialKraefte, whose skills as a sniper were essential for several prior missions. His words were few and his gunshots even fewer.
“Who would have thought that old guy was such a sneaky S.O.B.” Martin blurted out, disturbing Solomon’s thoughts. “Gozzi attempted to erase a series of email messages about thirty-seconds before we busted into his office.”
“Attempted?” Solomon asked, realizing Martin was once again sucking him into one of his patented “ta-dah” theatrical performances.
“Nothing really disappears from the internet. There are always trails and ghosts. If you know where to look, you can dig up the bone, so to speak. It seems that Gozzi was engaging in an email correspondence with a certain Eleanor Griffin and Alexander Stone.”
Solomon watched with arms crossed as Martin retrieved a series of emails. Solomon read through the emails as Martin clicked through them.
“This attachment from Eleanor Griffin may interest you.” Martin brought the arrow of the mouse to the attachment icon and clicked on it. A digital image of a wooden box appeared on the screen.
“Son of a bitch!” Solomon muttered through clenched teeth. It’s the Polo box! He nearly laughed. The events in Mosul were as close to a disaster as possible. To begin with, one of his men got trigger-happy and plugged the Arab antiquity dealer too soon. Then the Americans arrived much quicker than his well-paid intelligence predicted. They were lucky to get out of there with their lives. He did think it was a nice touch to booby-trap the store and draw in the insurgents for a fireworks show. It allowed for a tidy exit. Phillip, his mysterious patron, was livid with the outcome but did agree to transfer funds to cover the cost of the mission.
“There’s more. The last message that Gozzi sent looked like this:
VSMHMCBUYMSBLAVSMYJPRHANDM.”
Martin grinned. “Looks like verbal vomit, huh. Well I had a hunch and ran it through your basic military grade decryption program that I had lying around from that Caspian pipeline thing we did a while back and you get several permutations each with different weights of confidence.”
Solomon stared at the screen and saw a series of rearrangements of the letters, most of which still did not make much grammatical sense.
“The computer predicts with a 99.985% confidence that the message Gozzi sent says:
THE KEY IS BEHIND THE BLACK DOGE
“O.K,” Solomon answered, uncertain of what the message meant. He ran his hand through his hair. He quickly switched into mission mode. “Martin, we need to find out who this Eleanor Griffin and Alexander Stone are. We need to locate them.”
Martin smiled and scratched his cheeks with both hands. “One step ahead of you, boss. I took the liberty of tracking them down. Eleanor Griffin is a professor of Mesopotamian history at New York University and incidentally a member of MART. She might not be too fond of you.”
Of course, Solomon thought. She found the Polo box! She was in Mosul that day.
“There’s not much on Alexander Stone. He’s just some graduate student from Columbia University. But, the best part is that we don’t need to hop on a plane to New York because they are on their way to Venice.”
“They’re already here.”
Solomon pulled the pistol from his holster and leveled it at the intruder. The man did not flinch at the sight of the gun and gave an amused smile. He had the look of omnipotence that only a man in law enforcement has, especially the corrupt ones. Smug bastard, Solomon thought. We will take care of him in due time. Rule number one is never to leave loose ends behind.
“Inspector,” Solomon nodded and returned the pistol to his holster. Solomon motioned to Bryce and Fredrick, who having accompanied Inspector Calvino, hesitated by the door before leaving.
Inspector Calv
ino sauntered around the dilapidated apartment room, nodding his head. “I could find you better accommodations.”
“This will do,” Solomon replied, trying hard to mask the venom in his voice.
The Inspector sat down on a chair, crossed his legs, and attempted to straighten out the pleats in his pants. He removed a notepad from his pocket and flipped it open. “I had a delightful visit with Eleanor Griffin and Alexander Stone over an hour ago at the Biblioteca Marciana…”
Solomon’s cell phone began to vibrate vigorously and he raised his finger to silence the Inspector. He walked into the adjoining room, shut the door, and brought the phone to his ear. He looked out of a window onto the canal below.
“Howzit?”
The voice was impatient and gruff. “I have reviewed the photos of the items from the chest you sent me. It is incomplete. There are missing items. In fact, the most important items are gone!”
Solomon felt immediately frustrated. “Why don’t I go ask Dr. Gozzi what he did with it? Oh, I can’t because he is dead. I killed him like you wanted me to. How about giving me some clue of just what I am looking for? It might just help both of us out. None of this secret shit.”
The line grew silent and Solomon wondered if his patron had finally tired of his failures and hung up. “It is a key…a key that opens a box…the box you couldn’t find for me in Mosul.”
Solomon began to pace. “A key you say? Well, this is interesting. What if I told you that I might be able to get your box after all? What if I could get the key at the same time?”
“I would say my people have been waiting for a man like you for centuries. You would be well compensated for such a feat.”
“Phillip, I may need your help to point me in the right direction. I believe Bernardo Gozzi hid the key before we got to him. He left a message saying, ‘The key is behind the black doge.’ Does it mean anything to you?”
The line grew silent again. Solomon strained to listen. It almost sounded like laughter. “More than you will ever know.”
Solomon listened as Phillip spoke. When he hung up, he lingered by the window, watching a gondola stream by with a couple cuddling in the back of the boat. He instinctively patted the gun in his holster and made for the door.
Inspector Calvino and Martin looked at him as he re-entered the room. “Inspector, I need you to get us into the Doge’s Palace for a private viewing.”
“When?” the Inspector asked, his eyebrows raised with curiosity.
“Tonight.”
19
Alex pushed the Euros across the counter, slipped the book out of the transparent bag, and retreated to the corner of the gift shop. He had searched through the limited selection of books in hope of finding either a work focusing on general Venetian history or, even better, on the history of the Venetian doges. He was disappointed to find such works absent from the gift shop’s collection and settled on a glossy paperback on the history of the Doge’s Palace. Alex was immediately frustrated to find that the book was little more than a guidebook geared towards the visitor desiring a self-directed tour. Small vignettes were devoted to each of the rooms that comprised the palace and schematic diagrams mapped out possible itineraries. Alex searched in vain for an index.
“Find anything useful?”
Ellie had quietly sidled up to Alex, rested her chin on his shoulder, and peered down at the book.
“It’s hard to say. The palace is a pretty unique building, combining the living quarters of the doge, administrative and governing chambers, and even prison cells.” Alex continued to scan through the book, stopping at a portrait of an austere looking man dressed in a pink and gold robe with an aquiline nose and sunken cheeks. The ceremonial como ducale, the bejeweled, horn-like ducal hat, sat on the camauro, a white linen cap, that was snuggly fitted to the man’s head. The figure held a long strip of parchment in his left hand, listing his accomplishments during his tenure as doge.
“Is that Marin Falier?” Ellie inquired.
Alex read the fine print in the caption. “It’s a portrait of Doge Mario Babarigo by the painter Domenico Tintoretto. I’m not sure if there will be much on Falier here,” Alex pronounced. “Maybe we are headed down the wrong road. I think Falier had a palace that has been converted into a hotel somewhere in Venice. Maybe that’s the place we should start. Hell, who knows if the ‘black doge’ even refers to Falier in the first place.”
“Look Alex, the way I see it is the museum closes in about two hours.” She produced two tickets and waved them in front of Alex. “We already bought the tickets. I say we see what we can find on Falier here. At the very least, we might see what the guy looks like. I wonder if he is as creepy looking as, what’s his name? Doge Mario Babarigo,” Ellie smiled as she read the name off the page. She reached out and took the book from Alex’s hands and made for the entranceway to the palace.
As they handed over their newly purchased tickets to an elderly woman by the entrance, Ellie folded back the book and showed the woman the portrait of the doge.
“Scusi. Do you know if there is a portrait of Doge Marin Falier?”
The woman squinted at the page, reached into her pocket, and slid reading glasses on. “Falier? No portrait of Falier.”
Ellie could hear Alex sigh with disappointment. Ellie thanked the woman. As they began to walk away, they could hear the woman say, “No portrait, just nero, nero.”
Alex gripped Ellie’s elbow, halting her progress with the pressure from his fingers. He swung around and approached the woman again. “Nero? Black?”
“Yes, yes, black, only black…no picture,” the woman stuttered.
“Where signora?” Ellie eagerly questioned as she pushed up against Alex’s side.
“In the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio of course…but it is closed.” The woman pointed to a placard by the entrance apologizing in multiple languages for the scheduled closure of the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio due to a restoration project.
Ellie glanced over at Alex and watched him scrunch his nose in thought. Alex thanked the woman and directed them into the Museo dell’Opera. Ellie looked around at her surroundings as Alex feverishly flipped through the book in search of the Sala del Maggiore Consiglio.
The Museo dell’Opera housed archeological artifacts from earlier incarnations of the Doge’s Palace such as large capitals and columns that had been located along the waterfront arcade. The palace, as Ellie understood it, was a composite version, the piecemeal creation of numerous artists and patrons through the centuries. The palace had been destroyed so many times through its tortured history from civil disturbances and fires that many of the great works that had adorned the interiors of the buildings had been lost and recreations or replacement pieces had been placed to fill the voids.
“I found it,” Alex remarked. “We need to go through the courtyard. It is on the first floor above the loggia. It’s the room with the balcony overlooking the basin.”
They left the Museo dell’Opera and entered the large central courtyard. A series of archways crowned the perimeter. In the center of the courtyard were two large, octagonal well-heads cast in bronze by Allbergeto and Nicoló dei Conti. An oversized, ornate marble staircase, the Scala dei Giganti, led down from the East or Renaissance wing of the palace, which housed the doge’s private apartments. Flanking the sides of the top of the stairs were two large statues of Mars and Neptune, symbols meant to conjure up Venetian land and sea dominance. One of the gilded domes of St. Mark’s Basilica towered high above the stone and marble arch dedicated to Doge Francesco Foscari at the base of the staircase.
“This way.” Alex reached out, delicately gripped Ellie’s hand, and led her across the courtyard to a marble staircase, the Scala dei Censori. Ellie could feel Alex’s excitement transmitted through her body and found herself periodically looking down at their hands entwined. She felt a sense of exhilaration and freedom she had not experienced for some time.
They walked up two flights of stairs and reached the level
of the loggias. As they traversed the covered, arched arcade, they could see the courtyard below through the airy, expansive openings. Built into the inner walls of the loggia were stone faces of lions known as bocche di leone. In the past, Venetians would deposit accusations and complaints on folded papers into the lions’ mouths for collection by the appropriate magistrature or government department.
Alex followed the map to the Scala d’Oro. The Scala d’Oro or Golden Staircase was an elaborate staircase decorated with white stucco and gold leaf that sparkled in the late-day sun. As they crossed under the archway at the foot of the staircase, Alex pivoted back to see the ducal crest of the commissioning doge, Andrea Gritti, surrounded by cherubic angels. A large, arched window loomed tall at the top of the landing. As they arrived at the first floor above the loggia, Alex turned towards the right and steered them through the old governing chambers until they were in the Liagó, a long hallway where the nobles gathered during meetings of the grand Council. Two doors led from the Liagó into the Sale del Maggiore Consiglio. Both doors had red velvet ropes stretching across the openings with signs reiterating that the chamber and adjoining rooms were closed to the public during the period of restoration.
Alex and Ellie inched as close as possible to the rope barrier and looked into the massive room. Alex brought out the book and located the section on the Sala del Maggior Consiglio.
“It says here that the Sala del Maggior Consiglio was the chamber where the legislative body of Venice met to deliberate. The Maggior Consiglio or Grand Council was composed of nobles and was presided over by the Doge and the Signoria. It was the central seat of power in Venice until the legislative power was transferred to the Senate. In 1577, a large fire destroyed much of the chamber and many works of art were almost completed damaged. The chamber was then reconstructed and filled with artwork, mostly depicting military victories of Venice.”