He stopped to document his impressions as best he could, describing the glorious world he had entered. The professor wrote about a dark blue lake, undisturbed by rocks that cut through the surface, and a whimsical landscape that seemed shaped by the Almighty himself
He no longer felt the cold. What lay ahead? With no worry that his lamps would immediately run out, he continued for what seemed an eternity. In some respects it was. For deep in the cavern he saw another passageway that opened into a space more amazing than the last.
Though he couldn’t have realized it, this was a defining moment in time. His scientific curiosity now controlled his feet. He inched forward, raising the lamp in his left hand high overhead.
He was a brilliant man, but suddenly he felt small, insignificant. He’d come to the cave to test his heat doctrine suppositions. Now, he struggled for the meaning of things far greater.
This day changed the course of his research. The experience led him to raise infinite questions about how and why things occurred, not only underground, but high above.
The professor from Pisa returned with readings from his thermoscope which many would credit him for inventing. But there was much more at work in his mind and his mind’s eye; secrets that set the course for what would become a challenging and contentious life for Galileo Galilei.
PART ONE
One
“Secretum,” the old man declared.
Martin Gruber lived a life of secrecy, following the path of his predecessor and those in the same position generations and centuries before. Now, after four decades, it was close to the time to pass the secrets on and relinquish the tremendous responsibility.
“Secretum,” he stated again.
Colin Kavanaugh listened as he knew he should. This lecture, like all of Gruber’s, was conveyed with deliberate intent behind closed doors in the headquarters of Voyages, the most well-respected travel magazine in the world. Gruber didn’t pause for comment or debate. It was always a diatribe, covering old ground and revealing new ideas. Every word had meaning, even those unsaid between the ellipses.
“Trust no one. Know everything. Have eyes and ears around the world. Put nothing in writing — ever. But read into everything. Follow the leads, yet never leave tracks. Don’t allow anyone into your world, but enter everyone else’s.”
The octogenarian publisher was close to believing that Kavanaugh would make a worthy heir apparent. He was a trusted disciple, though egocentric. Perhaps, Gruber thought, that’s what the times demanded.
“Be guided by the undying belief that secretum is what you must live by. Secrecy. Faithfully, unquestioningly, and with true devotion of purpose. Your life and your life’s work will be shrouded in secrecy.”
“Yes, sir, I understand.” Kavanaugh relished the day he’d succeed the old man.
“But enough of my pontificating,” Gruber said, changing both the subject and mood. “How about lunch?”
“I was hoping you’d ask.”
“Good. Today, I have an exquisite mousse foie gràs paired with a 2010 Côte de Brouilly Gamay.”
“From our May issue,” Kavanaugh remarked.
“Yes indeed. Wonderful article and the winery was most appreciative. They sent us a case. I’ve been anxious to try it with you.”
Gruber pressed a button on his phone. “Ms. Dunbar, we’re ready. You may send in our delights.”
“Certainly, Mr. Gruber.”
The voice was obedient and respectful. Kavanaugh had never heard anything but proper business etiquette from Gruber’s secretary. Felicia Dunbar was efficient, but not someone he could ultimately live with after he transitioned into the job. Of course, he kept that to himself.
Such was the world that would soon be Colin Kavanaugh’s. Aristocratic, formal, civilized. He was eager to publicly helm Voyages, reinventing the print and online magazine for younger travel demos. More than that, he believed he was ready to take on the additional burden. The private job. The one that demanded age-old secretum.
Martin Gruber grew up in England, raised to honor civility, duty, and religion. He would be buried in his freshly pressed Brooks Brothers three-piece suit, his Oxford shirt crisply starched, and his hand-made Stefano Bemer shoes polished to a mirror-like finish. All his earthly needs would be put in order. What he didn’t arrange ahead of time, Felicia Dunbar would complete.
The doctors told him he had two to three months. Gruber took out his pocket watch, wound it in the company of the younger editor of Voyages, believing that his physicians didn’t know a damned thing.
His thin gray hair and moustache were accented by large black glasses. Although he’d lost a few inches off his former five feet ten inch self, he never added them to his thirty-two inch waist. On the outside Martin Gruber did everything possible to appear fit. Inside, the cancer was progressing. So, if it were a matter of only months, Gruber was going to listen to his cravings because the doctors had nothing interesting to tell him.
“I shall finally indulge in all temptations and excesses we’ve recommended for our readers, my boy.”
Kavanaugh was hardly a boy. Moreover, at forty-four, he was fully nine years older than Gruber was when he assumed the mantle as publisher and all that went with it.
Colin Kavanaugh, like Martin Gruber, had studied at King’s College in London, and through a religion and philosophy professor, was encouraged to take a special off-campus curriculum taught by teachers from the Pontifical Scots College in Rome. The lessons were not in the catalogue or even sanctioned by the college. Rather, they were quietly offered on an invitation-only basis at a retreat in Bracciano, a small town thirty kilometers northwest of Rome.
The school itself was founded December 5, 1600 by Pope Clement VIII, principally to provide religious education to young Scotsmen, who could not receive a Catholic education because of the laws against Catholics at home. Other than the two times it was shut down — when the French invaded Rome in 1798 and during World War II — it has remained a well-respected institution, renowned for sending priests to Scotland.
However, the special, private program, which carried no course credit or affiliation, provided open-air education in a very closed environment. Secretum. It offered a way to screen for potential candidates who could answer a most important calling.
Colin Kavanaugh went to the head of the class. He was diligent, determined, and above all else, someone who exhibited true courage of his convictions. It brought him to the attention of people he’d never met.
Now twenty-two years later, he sat with his boss and mentor, enduring what he hoped would be one of the last of Gruber’s harangues and sharing one of the last of his boring meals.
Kavanaugh was six feet tall, bald, trim, and more in tune with today than Gruber’s fascination with antiquity. Of course, that would change, too. As publisher, he would have to adjust his habits somewhat, review the worthiness of his friends, and take his obligations to heart. Colin Kavanaugh was still learning what was important and what wasn’t, what was worthy of further review and what was destined for the shredder. There was so much to figure out. But he was hungry to take over. Kavanaugh was determined to further contemporize and upgrade the publication and leave Condé Nast Traveler, National Geographic Traveler and Food and Wine irrelevant in the marketplace. He had the guts and intellect to do it. He loved traveling, spoke four languages, and summered in Rome, wrapping himself in the traditions and rituals.