The Vivaldi Cipher

by Gary McAvoy

  The door opened again. “His Eminence will see you now, Padre,” the nun said. “Please come in.”

  Sister Lorraine led them to a sitting room overlooking a small canal behind the palazzo, then left the room which, Hana noted, had the faint smell of fish in the air. The most prominent features in the room were several extraordinary Old Masters paintings. Both Dominic and Hana looked at each other, their same unspoken thoughts wondering how the cardinal could afford such priceless paintings, art works surely deserving of a museum or the Vatican’s collection itself.

  A few moments later, Cardinal Abruzzo entered the room, now dressed in his official clerical attire.

  “Hello, Father Dominic, is it? How might I be of service?”

  “Yes, Your Eminence, Michael Dominic, Prefect of the Vatican Apostolic Archive. And this is my colleague, Hana Sinclair. I trust we aren’t intruding?”

  “This is Venice, Father. Not that much goes on here that I can’t take a little time for a fellow priest.”

  “I appreciate that. We’re actually here with a request. I’ve tried to get a tour of the restoration studio at Palazzo Feudatario, but they refused, saying I needed your permission. First—and please, I don’t mean to be presumptuous here, but—I don’t understand how the Patriarch can even issue such permission. It is a private business, isn’t it?”

  “That it is. A private business, as you say. The fact is, though, I am the owner of Feudatario. It has been in my family for generations. So Signor Gallucci’s insistence on getting my permission would be appropriate. He is not at liberty to do so himself. You said you had a request?”

  It surprised Dominic that the cardinal owned the property. But he also knew that particular allowance depended on which order a priest belonged to, since many religious orders did not require vows of poverty. Obviously, this was the case with the Patriarch of Venice, as evidenced on the walls of the room in which they were sitting and the fact that he owned a private business.

  “We were hoping you would grant us permission to tour your facility. Would that be possible?”

  The cardinal paused as he stared hard at Dominic.

  “Father, Feudatario works not only for the Vatican. It has valued clients from many museums and other institutions throughout Italy, and our security commitments to them do not permit such casual tours of the premises. I’m afraid I cannot honor your request, I’m sorry.”

  Eager to get inside at any cost, Dominic was just about to cut to the chase and explain about Vivaldi’s accusations of forgery—but suddenly resisted the urge. What if the cardinal himself is in on it? He couldn’t risk revealing what he knew just yet.

  “I understand, Eminence. Of course, you’re right. My apologies if I seemed too assertive.”

  “Not at all, Father. I understand your interest in our processes, but I am pleased you respect our policies. Is there anything else I might do for you?”

  Dominic stood to leave, but a thought struck him. “A pity about Father Rinaldo’s death, isn’t it?”

  He eyed the man for any reaction. And there it was. A slight change in his facial expression, surprise at hearing the name Rinaldo from someone who, in the cardinal’s mind, probably never knew the man.

  “Why… yes, it is. Father Rinaldo was, um… a good man. Did you know him?”

  “Quite well, yes. We were in seminary together. I believe his death to be suspicious, and we have people looking into it.”

  “I was told he drowned,” the cardinal said flatly, licking his lips while averting his gaze from Dominic’s—both obvious signs of someone hiding a known truth.

  “That’s most unlikely, since Carlo was a powerful swimmer. Anyway, thank you for seeing us, Eminence. Arrivederci for now.”

  Having held her piece during the meeting, as they left the palazzo Hana spoke her mind. “That man was lying about Carlo,” she burst out. “He knows something more, I’m certain of it.”

  “I agree, but I wasn’t surprised. Abruzzo is in deep with whatever’s going on here. If Feudatario is implicated, as the owner of a multi-generational company he’s obviously aware of it.”

  “What next?” she asked.

  With a cunning look in his eyes, Dominic said, “I have an idea.”

  Chapter 24

  When Valentina Calabrese lifted the cover of Livia Gallo’s laptop, it prompted her for login credentials.

  “All we need now is your password, Dr. Gallo. Give it to me, please.”

  Livia sat in a metal folding chair facing Valentina, her hands and feet bound. Aldo, the room service waiter from her hotel, had removed the duct tape from over her mouth and now stood next to her. In his hand was a sharp knife glinting under the exposed light bulb hanging overhead.

  “Don’t even think about calling out, signora,” Aldo said, trying to sound menacing. “No one will hear you, anyway.” He slid the blunt back edge of the knife along her throat as an inducement.

  “Go to hell,” Livia snapped.

  Valentina looked at her hostage in a new light. Then, with a grim smile, she rose from her desk and strolled to where Livia was sitting.

  “Things can go much easier for you if you help us, Dr. Gallo. We just want to see what it is you discovered.” In one swift motion, Valentina raised a hand and smacked Livia’s face. “Does that help?”

  Livia’s head whipped to one side from the impact, her eyes widened, and she suddenly shook all over. The slap had stung but the realization that her very life rested on her responses robbed her of any remaining bravado. These same people had likely killed Father Rinaldo. Would they kill her as well?

  “There’s nothing much on there anyway,” she said, her voice now quavering. “The password is ‘il migliore dei mondi possibili,’ all lowercase without spaces.”

  Valentina smirked with amusement. “‘The best of all possible worlds?’ What inspired that?”

  Livia felt that maybe talking would buy her more time. Had talking helped Rinaldo? She pushed away the thought. “It’s a quote from the Enlightenment philosopher Gottfried Leibniz. Not exactly suitable at the moment, but I’ve always appreciated it. Its meaning is derived from one of his works, one attempting to solve the problem of evil in the world. Something you wouldn’t know about.”

  Valentina let the gibe pass, then entered the password. The screen lit up. The first thing she did was disable the need for password protection. This laptop isn’t going anywhere, she reasoned.

  Still showing on the screen were images of old sheet music. As a pianist since childhood herself, Valentina also recognized music composition software. She could read the music, but the tune made little sense to her as she played it in her head.

  Then she looked at the transcription Gallo had made in a word processor—and was stunned to find mention of Vatican conspirators, Operation Scambio, restoration forgers, and Feudatario! She quickly deduced that the pages she was looking at came from the hand of Antonio Vivaldi.

  “Don Gallucci!” she called urgently to the boss. “You must see this.”

  Gallucci entered the room and came over to where Valentina was sitting, then glanced at the display.

  “What is it?”

  Valentina looked up at him with fear in her eyes.

  “You know of the great 18th-century violinist Antonio Vivaldi? He seems to have exposed us—centuries after his death! Look here. These are his original handwritten musical pieces which Signora Gallo here seems to have discovered and transcribed. It looks like Vivaldi used some kind of code she deciphered, but it reveals everything!”

  “Where did you find these?” Gallucci asked, his now pale face looking at Livia with a mix of anger and anxiety.

  “That should hardly matter now,” Livia spat. “Everyone knows about your operation, and they’re working to bring it down. Things might go better for you if you release me. Adding kidnapping to your list of crimes only makes things worse.”

  Ignoring her, Gallucci looked thoughtful.

  “Renzo showed me the transcriptions
his man had found, but I didn’t understand it actually came from Vivaldi’s own hand. Dio mio!” he gasped. He fell into a nearby chair. “After all this time. It cannot be possible.”

  “You must call His Eminence, Angelo,” Valentina said. “This is his problem.”

  “All of us share the problem, Valentina. Operation Scambio brings in millions each year. Restoration work alone is a pittance by comparison. But yes, Abruzzo must be informed.”

  “What do we do with the woman?” Aldo asked, keen to prove himself.

  “I’ll leave that to you, Aldo. Just do it quietly.”

  Livia screamed and kept screaming and struggling until the strip of duct tape was slapped over her mouth again. Aldo placed a white cloth over her nose with something wet on it. The tang of chemicals assaulted her nostrils. Then the room got fuzzy and quiet as she lost consciousness.

  He said do it quietly, Aldo figured, as he slid the sharp side of the blade across her slim, pale throat.

  “Eminence, we have a problem.”

  Don Angelo Gallucci sat in a high-backed Queen Anne chair in the sumptuous library of Palazzo San Silvestro, the Patriarch’s residence. Seated across from him was Cardinal Abruzzo, listening carefully, a glass of Negroni resting in his hand on the arm of his own chair.

  The cardinal said nothing, nodding his head for Gallucci to proceed.

  “We just learned that the priest Dominic and his associates have discovered the special work of Feudatario, and the Camorra’s involvement in Operation Scambio. Now, I should point out that they found this information encoded on an 18th-century musical composition by Antonio Vivaldi, so they may just associate this as a historical footnote. Obviously, your family’s work goes back that far, and how Vivaldi found out then is anyone’s guess today. But the fact remains, now others know it outside our circle.

  “I would not be concerned at all were it not for the fact that Signor Sabatini’s examination of the Giulia Lama painting may have encouraged further research on his part. He is an expert at such things, after all, and Renzo saw him inspecting the piece closely at the contessa’s party. Though our work is sufficiently expert to fool even the most trained eye, if he gets the chance to run forensic tests on, say, the substrate or pigments used, then we may be in store for a more formal challenge.”

  “That doesn’t mean much on its own, Angelo,” Abruzzo said, waving off the Don’s concern. “Did Renzo see him take actual samples from the canvas?”

  “No, Eminence. Renzo left the room immediately to avoid questions they had for him, since the contessa told them she bought it from his gallery.”

  The cardinal took a sip of the Negroni, then lit a Toscano Antica cigar as he considered what he had just heard.

  “I spoke with Bishop Torricelli, our man at the Vatican, yesterday. Sabatini works for him, so we have some control there. I doubt he will be a problem, but he will inform me should anything develop.

  “In the meantime, how is the Raphael project going?”

  Gallucci reacted to the abrupt change in subject with surprise and unease, wondering if the Cardinal took his full meaning of the problem at hand. But he answered nonetheless.

  “It… it is a phenomenal acquisition, Eminence. And the timing of its arrival couldn’t be better. Renzo has a discreet and very wealthy client in Paris ready to purchase it, no questions asked. He believes he can get twenty-five million euros for it. My team is at work on it now, and should have it finished in a few weeks. We are also accepting a Caravaggio soon, also from the Vatican. Since these are in reserve storage there, and not on display in the museums, there is little chance the replicas will be discovered. And with Bishop Torricelli’s help, they’ll stay in storage.”

  The stack was getting higher as Sabatini printed out Condition Reports for the select Vatican paintings sent to Palazzo Feudatario over the past ten years. He had chosen not to go further back in time, focusing on just those restorations which had occurred during his tenure at the Vatican Museum. Plus, he was frightened at what he might find if he went back as far as the records permitted.

  Then there was the matter of time. The stack before him would take some effort to do spot checks, let alone verify the authenticity of every piece. And he dared not tell another soul just yet, uncertain who the inside man was that had been enabling this corruption to continue.

  By the time he finished, he counted thirty-four paintings that he viewed as potentially suspect. Next, he would have to go through the same laborious forensic testing as he did for the Lama painting.

  Titian, Bellini, Botticelli, Gentileschi. From the hands of these men came some of the finest paintings ever made, now among the Vatican’s holdings. And these were just the Italians. Germany’s Bosch, Spain’s El Greco, France’s de la Tour and so many other renowned artists appeared on his list as well. Sabatini’s hands shook as he held the stack, fearful of what he may yet find.

  As he walked through the storage galleries to locate the pieces he would spot check, LED torch in hand, he collected sufficient microscopic grains from each painting that would be put under the microscope and through the spectrometer processes.

  That he could not share his suspicions with anyone yet added to the crushing weight of his task.

  A few hours later Marcello Sabatini was back at his desk, having completed his forensic analysis of just six of the thirty-four paintings. He felt sick to his stomach.

  All six were forgeries.

  Chapter 25

  Marcello Sabatini had just put each of his three children to bed while his wife was cleaning up in the kitchen after dinner.

  “I have one last thing to do, caro mio. But when you are done with the dishes, let’s watch Montalbano on TV, si?” His wife smiled at him, nodding in agreement, then returned to her cleaning.

  Meanwhile, Sabatini sat down at his computer and nervously opened a new message using his Vatican email account.

  Dear Father Dominic:

  I have confidentially conducted thorough forensic testing of Giulia Lama’s Crucifixion with Apostles, along with six other paintings by Old Masters found here in the Vatican Museum’s storage galleries. They had sent these to Palazzo Feudatario for restoration at some point over the past ten years.

  Including the Lama, all seven here proved to be forgeries.

  Over that same period I count twenty-seven other paintings that were also sent to Feudatario, but the constraints of time prevent me from testing all of them. Given the odds, however, we must assume most if not all of them to be forged as well.

  I am deeply distressed by this outcome, as I am sure you will be on learning of it. I have told no one yet of my findings, but intend to speak with Cardinal Petrini about the matter in the morning.

  I cannot trust anyone else here, for someone in the Vatican must be complicit in this activity—someone with the power to oversee outgoing and return shipments and validate Condition Reports.

  I have prepared a package of my test results and will personally give this to His Eminence tomorrow. For now, I share this only with you, in confidence, so that you may deal with things in Venice as appropriate.

  Sincerely / Marcello Sabatini

  After rereading the draft email, Sabatini pressed the Send button. Relieved, he began assembling the package of test results for Cardinal Petrini.

  Bishop Gustavo Torricelli’s mobile phone pinged an unusual three-tone alert, one fairly new to him since he only recently had the Vatican Museum’s employee spyware program installed. Who would be working at this time of night? he wondered.

  A small notification window popped up on his screen, showing an email had just been sent by one of his curators, Marcello Sabatini—the one he had just been warned about by Cardinal Abruzzo.

  Tapping the ‘Review’ button, Torricelli opened the outgoing message Sabatini had sent to Dominic. He grew increasingly alarmed as he read one incriminating sentence after another.

  Something had to be done. Abruzzo had instructed him to handle the matter himself, ob
viously giving the cardinal plausible deniability should blame somehow fall in the Patriarch’s direction. But what to do?

  Torricelli was desperate. After some consideration, he picked up the cell phone on his bedside table, nervously tossed it around in his hands, evaluating the decision, then dialed one of the few special numbers programmed into it. A man answered, “Si?”

  “Faustino, do you know who this is? Good. I have an immediate need for your premium service. I will send you what details I have on the subject and leave the rest to you. Yes, through our secure ProtonMail accounts. And you must do it tonight or before the subject arrives for work tomorrow morning. Details will be in the email.”

  Chapter 26

  Once a proud member of the Italian Carabinieri’s elite bomb squad, Faustino Perez had been quietly discharged from official duties three years earlier as a psychological misfit and conduct unbecoming an officer of the law.

  The whole affair was over a trifling matter, he reasoned, for his planting of a tiny improvised explosive device in his station’s locker room was only intended as a joke to startle his friends. It was hardly bigger than a firecracker, and it hurt no one, for God’s sake. Where was their sense of humor?

  Sadly for Perez, he was alone in his twisted reasoning. Once his closest comrades, fellow officers now shunned him in Rome’s cop bars where they all hung out after hours. His job as a night security guard for a small munitions manufacturer—easy to get since the Carabinieri would never admit it had once hired a psychopath—was a slap in the face given his unique skills. Though he was happy to have it, the pay was so lousy it forced him to take side jobs to make ends meet.