by A D Davies
Toby stood with his hands in his trouser pockets. “Was it you, Alfonse? Did you take the manuscript?”
Alfonse shook his head. “Sadly, no. Otherwise, I would give it to you with my compliments. Please. Step inside. Let us talk.”
Jules had never been great at reading people until he spent four months in Austria with a psychologist called Professor Graham Milburn for intense one-on-one tutelage that cost him $15,000. It wasn’t mind-reading, and it wasn’t an infallible process, but even so, the equivalent of a three-year college degree crammed into such a short time gave him something of an edge when dealing with different personality types—be it cops, clients, or opponents.
Alfonse struck him as a benevolent narcissist. It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing as long as those surrounding him delivered with the same quality that he demanded of himself. Narcissists weren’t all delusional, but they all lived as if they were the center of the universe and acted accordingly. Here, as they wandered Alfonse’s pristine art-lined hallway, even Jules could not help but be pulled into the man’s orbit.
“These people, this Institute,” Alfonse said, swinging his arms around in the manner of an opera singer, “we know each other a long time. Toby the longest. A good man.” He slapped Toby’s back. “And Harpal.” He lowered his voice as if confiding in Jules. “We didn’t always get along.”
Harpal plainly felt no need to lower his voice. “Because I helped bust a ton of his operations before he went legit.” He grinned at Alfonse.
“Hardly a ‘ton.’ Maybe a few kilograms.” The Sicilian bristled but left the genial smile in place. “And I am forever making up for it.”
Toby took up his mantle of human encyclopedia. “Alfonse used to run with a bad crowd. Drugs, prostitution, extortion.”
Alfonse stopped and faced the group, smile fading. “Toby, Toby. I did not run with anyone. I ran the operations. Please, if you must sully me by bringing up the past, at least get it right.”
“Mafia?” Jules said. “Seriously?”
Toby bowed his head before offering an awkward wave of one hand. “Alfonse’s Italian... family, shall we call them? They set him loose from the family business when he made confession to Cardinal Valdez at the Vatican.”
Alfonse laid a hand on his heart. “I came away with my penance. To do nothing but God’s work for the rest of my days.”
Toby turned to Alfonse. “And doing a wonderful job, I might add.”
Alfonse guffed out a big laugh and reinstated his happy demeanor. “This way!”
As the three men followed Alfonse through a wide doorway, Jules walked slower next to Bridget. “Your sweet guy is a gangster?”
“Ex-gangster,” Bridget said. “He really is a sweetheart now.”
The next room was airy and bright, the french doors open to a pool, beyond which the vineyard stretched for just under two miles. Out on a patio, white sofas and chairs formed a loose circle. The table in the middle bore water, coffee, and wine. Alfonse invited them to sit at the prepared area, and when they stepped through the doors, Jules spotted the first of Alfonse’s armed guards.
The man wore a white shirt and tan slacks with a shoulder strap from which dangled an MP5 submachine gun. He wandered a hundred yards away, sunglasses facing out, making a deliberate sweep of the land as he patrolled.
There would be others.
Jules sat as invited although he picked a chair that positioned his back to the building’s outer wall so he was able to scan the scene at a 180-degree angle.
Alfonse did not sit, instead adopting the pose of a manager about to embark on a presentation rather than the game-show host supposedly retired. “Thank you for coming. You were in Windsor looking for the journal of Saint Thomas. The one stolen from Kerala in 1882, correct?”
A pregnant pause fell over them before Toby answered, “Yes. That’s correct. We were hoping Colin might loan it to us—”
“Of course you were! A loan. What fun. Unfortunately, the manuscript was stolen last month. A great, massive embarrassment to our mutual friend Colin Waterston.”
“Mutual friend?” Jules said.
“We met last year at a gala in Paris. One of my people used a device to clone his phone. I get to know so much about him, I feel we are friends.”
“So you did steal the manuscript?” Toby asked.
“Sadly, no.”
“But you had it stolen?” Dan said.
“No, no, no.” Alfonse held up two defensive hands. “You forget, I am legitimate now. I only put my people to work in the service of our Lord.” He untucked a gold crucifix from the tangled gray hair inside his shirt and kissed it. “No, the world is a bad place. I made it worse during my time, and I am trying to fix it in my small way. Governments are corrupt. They lie. They cheat. They make policy to keep themselves in power, wage wars for profit. Gangsters such as my former colleagues lose their code of honor because their enemies grow more brutal. So I try. I hear of injustice concerning the church, and I help make it right. This is how I hear of the manuscript. A great wrong to take it from the Christians in India of course, but it was safe with the curator at Windsor. Until it wasn’t.”
Jules managed to keep half an eye on the landscape, spotting another man patrolling between the vines, and the rest of his attention on the task of working out exactly why they’d been summoned here and why Toby and the others wouldn’t speak about it on the plane over. Now he knew.
He said, “So who stole it?”
“No one knows. My inquiries turned up nothing except a dead investigator.”
“Oh,” Bridget said. “I’m sorry. Did you know him?”
Alfonse crossed himself, forehead to navel, shoulder to shoulder. “A subcontractor, but an innocent one. After that, I reached out to my... family.” A quick nod to Toby. “They hear little, except one outfit who usually smuggle weapons and explosives, they are suddenly silent. This is odd. Stranger than this outfit making noise. Then we get a message that Mr. Waterston has heard from a certain Toby Smith. A certain Toby Smith who is in town and wishes to drop by at short notice, and so I ask myself, ‘Why is he coming?’” Speaking directly to Jules now, he said, “You see, I know Toby. I know the Lost Origins Recovery Institute. They help me sometimes, and I make a contribution to them.” To Dan, he said, “You are looking after my airplane, eh?”
“She’s holding together.” Dan sipped coffee. “Great stuff.”
“Only the best here!” He spread his arms. “So I make connections between LORI and manuscript. Day before you book meeting with Colin Waterston, you look for a piece in Prague, but little rich boy Valerio Conchin steals it from under your nose. And guess what?”
Jules had guessed as soon as Alfonse mentioned the cloned phone, but he’d waited until now to voice it. “Valerio paid for the manuscript theft but waited until he had my bangle to pick it up. Lets the heat die down. Now he has one bangle, he’s hot on the other. The manuscript’s gonna surface. Or it already has.”
Alfonse had lost his smile. A cough from Toby prevented Jules from adding more.
“Sorry,” Jules said. “Go on.”
“An impressive insight.” Alfonse picked up his previous rhythm. “Yes, it seems he had a specialist group obtain the document, and when Mr. Waterston realized it was gone, he moved the remaining contents elsewhere. Mr. Conchin is on his way to Rome to collect it.”
“Rome? That’s convenient.” Jules clamped his mouth shut. He didn’t want to offend the man, but that just slipped out, and now Alfonse was frowning again.
Bridget patted Jules’s leg. “I imagine that convenience came about because of Alfonse’s moves in the international markets. Am I right, Alfonse?”
Alfonse softened again. “You are correct, my dear Bridget. I doubled what Mr. Conchin was offering, and this has developed into something of an auction. As the person initiating the auction, I insisted it happen close to my home. I could not bring them all the way to Sicily, but Rome is a short flight.”
Toby cro
ssed his legs and leaned back. “What’s in this for you, Alfonse? You want to donate the manuscript to the Vatican? I doubt the House of Windsor will take kindly to that.”
“If possible, yes, but that is not all.” Alfonse clasped his hands before him. “The bangle you lost in Prague is one of a pair. If you want the manuscript, I suspect that leads to the other. And since my friend and confidante Cardinal Valdez knows of only one other such bangle lost to the ages, it is an educated guess that you also wish to obtain an item worn by the mother of Christ.”
Toby nodded in understanding. “You want the Mary bangle.”
Alfonse’s hands spread open, feigning that he was the most innocent man in the world. “For the Church, my friend.”
Toby looked to Dan, who shrugged. Harpal leaned in, and Toby inquired in his way, silently. Jules began to wonder whether they believed themselves to be telepathic.
Bridget said, “It won’t be cheap.”
Alfonse laughed. “It never is. But, my dear, I am willing to pay.”
He swept a hand to the side to reveal a smart man in tan slacks, white polo shirt, and sunglasses stepping out of the house with three rucksacks—two red ones over his shoulders, a black one in his hand. He dropped the black bag on the tiled floor.
“This bag,” Alfonse said, “contains the four hundred thousand euros the mercenaries are demanding for the manuscript, plus another hundred should the price rise. The next... Carlo.”
The newcomer responded by passing one of the red bags to Toby, who opened it to see it was full of cash. Harpal whistled, impressed. Dan settled for a single nod.
“Five hundred thousand for you, Toby,” Alfonse announced. “Up front. You take your expenses from this. When you deliver the Mary bangle to me, you receive the other half of your fee.”
On cue, Carlo held the final rucksack out in one hand but did not relinquish it. After a beat, he disappeared back inside.
“A million euros,” Bridget said. “That would keep the institute going for some time.”
Toby hadn’t taken his eyes off the cash. “And accelerate a few other projects.”
“Hey,” Harpal said, “this is great, but could we transfer it to something else? Maybe a more traditional briefcase or a big handbag? Folks get tetchy around backpacks these days. Especially if I’m in the vicinity.”
Jules was more interested in the first bag. “This buy, why isn’t your, uh, family buying the book for you?”
Alfonse gave him a faintly sad smile. “Alas, they will help with information where they can, but they will not partake. My mission is holy now. I cannot taint it with their bloody ways.”
“And this manuscript, it definitely tells us where this other bangle is?”
Bridget reached over and closed the bag of money, drawing Toby back to the matter at hand. “There are no definites. It’ll be written in Hebrew or Aramaic, possibly something we haven’t considered, so I’ll need time to translate. Even then, Thomas may not have committed to a specific place. It certainly won’t be latitude and longitudinal coordinates.”
Jules snorted, a well of impatience bubbling again. “Look, I’m all for creeping around stealing old dusty books, but we know this Valerio Conchin has my mom’s bangle. Why don’t we just take it from him?”
“Because you cannot,” Alfonse said. “This is a man who was small time until five years ago. Since then, he has used his wealth to seed a worldwide network, one searching for antiquities, out of place objects that he might use, and many construction and IT projects. Projects normally denied to such people. But he has accelerated them through bribes and blackmail. It is rumored he bought a whole village in the Ladoh region in northern India where he imported skilled workers from across the continent to work on powerful computer research. Julian, my friend, he has murdered dozens in his search for the oldest antiquities of mankind.”
The big man stepped closer, his shadow falling over Jules as if the sun had shifted in order to emphasize the point.
“He is obsessed, my friend. Or at least this is what is whispered in the shadows. The older the artifact, no matter its value in jewels or gold, he wants it. And he buys the best. His bodyguard, for one example, is known only by the name ‘Horse.’ In my former family, we know many assassins. He was one of the most sought after. The most expensive. Now he works exclusively on retainer for the other party interested in the Thomas manuscript. Be careful.”
Jules focused on the man’s mouth, unsure why exactly. Partly, he thought, because it helped cut through his accent, but also because what he was saying was direct, actionable intel, something in short supply around here.
Specifics.
“Valerio Conchin is scheduled to land at one of Rome’s smaller airports,” Alfonse said. “You must beat him to the salesman. Leave now. Complete the transaction today. Or you will never get hold of that manuscript.”
Chapter Fourteen
Rome, Italy
With Charlie online back in the UK and her husband smoothing over the landing permit at Ciampino Airport, the smaller of Rome’s two internationals, LORI flew in on their jet donated by a former mafioso. With Alfonse’s help, Dan collected two compact Glock 19 pistols from someone on the tarmac—one for him and one for Harpal. He’d offered Jules a third, but Jules had learned from others in his line of work that when you start carrying a gun, your opponents obtain bigger guns to come after you. Plus, the trouble a person could get into with an unlicensed firearm was pretty severe, so nonlethal weaponry was just a practical requirement for him. Although his clothes looked light and casual, the lining of his jacket hid six throwing knives (non-lethal unless he made a mistake), a telescopic baton inserted up one sleeve between the crook of his elbow and his wrist, a bungee cord and grappling hook up the other, and his belt held six mini flashbangs.
From Ciampino, they drove into the city where Jules had made an unclear number of enemies. He’d traveled under the name Frederick Pickles, which wasn’t a perfect cover, but it was enough for crossing between EU countries thanks to the bloc’s enthusiasm for free movement. It wouldn’t stand scrutiny if he were to cross to America or even Russia, but he preferred to keep his head down in places such as this.
In his early days of mastering the skills connected to burglary—lock picking, scaling tall buildings, safe cracking—Rome had been a perfect feeding ground. It was also a massive retail hub for black-market antiquities, so zipping between here, Milan, Budapest, and Paris, he learned the trade that made him the most money but never got him close to his mom’s stolen bangle. A couple of mistakes occurred, as was normal for a novice in any field, but he achieved what he needed to without police involvement beyond the odd wagging finger.
LORI used two vehicles, again arranged by Philip Locke, a small SUV for Dan, Harpal, and Toby and a white Prius for Jules and Bridget. It was beginning to feel as if the men were avoiding him, leaving Bridget to babysit—first in London, now here.
Could it be that Jules wasn’t making enough of an effort, and the men felt snubbed?
On the other hand, Bridget seemed genuinely interested in him. He just hoped it wasn’t romantic interest. Like the notion of conventional friends, he had little time for intimacy. He’d tried it. He’d tried it plenty. But ultimately, it was pointless. Every girl he met, even those who loved the adventure, wanted him to settle down—not always right away, but eventually—or tried to “cure” him of his goal. Even those who promised not to saw it as a problem to fix, not an achievement to aim for. Bridget wanted to solve it the same way as Jules.
They just had different reasons.
Bridget drove, claiming to “know the streets here” and Jules didn’t dampen her spirit by revealing he had already mentally mapped every road within the ten square miles of Rome’s center. Entering the city limits with Italian radio playing, though, he conceded that some of the layouts and architecture had changed in the two years since his last visit, so he wouldn’t be confident racing around here the way he used to. He was a GPS unit
in need of an update.
Nearing the central area, Bridget pointed out landmarks that he was already highly familiar with, taking a route that marked them as tourists: She beamed when, in the distance, the dome of Saint Paul’s within Vatican City came into view; chattered nonstop as they whizzed by the fountain of the Piazza Navona; and like many out-of-towners, she slowed to a crawl past the Colosseum, drawing honks from irate locals as they maneuvered by what must be a mundane sight after living alongside it for so long.
Despite the circuitous route, they parked at their destination ahead of the men’s car, which Bridget took great pride in. “Like I said, I know these roads. I did a six-month placement here.”
Jules sensed she wanted to elaborate, but he did not encourage her just in case her interest in him stepped over the line of the professional.
Ego? Yeah. But he wouldn’t be crushed if it turned out she was just being friendly.
The bar they were supposed to meet in, L’Esploratore Bello (the Handsome Explorer), was situated atop the Vatican View Hotel on a wide side road off Via Giulia. They adjourned to a café across the street that had tables arranged on the sidewalk behind a rope barrier. Arching their necks to look around the foot traffic, through the ornate buildings lining the street, they could just about see Vatican City, a quick hop over the River Tiber.
Jules ordered water, Bridget a Diet Coke. No food, which made the waiter bow slightly and say “Bellissimo” in a tone meaning, “Go to hell, cheapskates.”
The Vatican View Hotel offered four stories of midbudget accommodation, linked to the building on its left—a clothing store that claimed to produce “genuine-looking Armani, made to measure”—with a gap to its right and a sign that read “Car Park” in Italian, English, French, and German. According a travel website, the bar boasted a partial awning but could be fully covered depending on the weather, and because this was a street made up of buildings of the same height, L’Esploratore Bello afforded the best chance for the hotel to fulfill its name’s promise.