“You paid two hundred.”
The man held up his hands, aghast. “ Efendim! As if I would take such advantage of a man like you! In any case-how do you know?”
“I’ve just had a word with the vendor. Not five minutes ago.”
The gallery owner clearly saw that Ezio was not a man to be trifled with. “Ah! Indeed. But I have my overheads, you know…”
“You’ve only just hung it. I watched you.”
The gallery owner looked distressed. “Very well… four hundred, then?”
Ezio glared.
“Three hundred? Two-fifty?”
Ezio placed the purse carefully in the man’s hand. “Two hundred. There it is. Count it if you like.”
“I’ll have to wrap it.”
“I hope you don’t expect extra for that.”
Grumbling sotto voce, the man unhooked the picture and wrapped it carefully in cotton sheeting, which he drew from a bolt by the shop counter. Then he passed it to Ezio. “A pleasure doing business with you,” he said, drily.
“Next time, don’t be so eager to take stolen goods,” said Ezio. “You might have had a customer who wanted the provenance on a painting as good as this one. Luckily for you, I’m prepared to overlook that.”
“And why, might one ask?”
“I’m a friend of the sitter.”
Flabbergasted, the gallery owner bowed him out of the shop, with as much haste as politeness permitted.
“A pleasure doing business with you, too,” said Ezio, aridly, in parting.
FORTY-ONE
Unable to keep a rendezvous with Sofia that evening, Ezio sent her a note arranging to meet the following day at the Bayezid Mosque, where he would give her back the picture.
When he arrived, he found her already there, waiting for him. In the dappled sunlight, he thought her so beautiful that the portrait scarcely did her justice.
“It’s a good likeness, don’t you think?” she said, as he unwrapped it and handed it to her.
“I prefer the original.”
She elbowed him playfully. “Buffone,” she said, as they began walking. “This was a gift from my father when we were in Venice for my twenty-eighth birthday.” She paused in reminiscence. “I had to sit for Meister Albrecht Durer for a full week. Can you imagine? Me sitting still for seven days? Doing nothing?”
“I cannot.”
“Una tortura!”
They’d arrived at a nearby bench, on which she sat, as Ezio suppressed a laugh at the thought of her posing, trying not to move a muscle, for all that time. But the result had certainly been worth it-even though he really did prefer the original.
The laughter died on his lips as she produced a slip of paper; his expression immediately became serious, as did hers.
“One good turn…” she said. “I’ve found you another book location. And it’s not far from here, actually.”
She handed him the folded slip. He took it and read it.
“Grazie,” he said. The woman was a genius. He nodded gravely to her and made to go, but she stopped him with a question.
“Ezio-what is this all about? You’re not a scholar, that much is clear.” She eyed his sword. “No offense, of course!” She paused. “Do you work for the Church?”
Ezio gave an amused laugh. “Not the Church, no. But I am a teacher
… of a kind.”
“What then?”
“I will explain one day, Sofia. When I can.”
She nodded, disappointed, but not-as he could see-actually devastated. She had sense enough to wait.
FORTY-TWO
The decoded cipher led Ezio to an ancient edifice barely three blocks distant, in the center of the Bayezid District. It seemed once to have been a warehouse, currently in disuse, and looked securely shut, but the door, when he tried it, was unlocked. Cautiously, looking up and down the street for any sign of either Ottoman guards or Janissaries, he entered, following the instructions on the paper he held in his hand.
He climbed a staircase to the first floor and went down a corridor, at the end of which he found a small room, an office, covered in dust; but its shelves were still full of ledgers, and on the desk lay a pen set and a paper knife. He examined the room carefully, but its walls seemed to hold no clue at all about what he sought, until at last his keen eyes noticed a discrepancy in the tilework that surrounded the fireplace.
He explored this with his fingers, delicately, finding that one tile moved under his touch. Using the paper knife from the desk, he dislodged it, listening all the time for the sound of any movement from below-though he was certain no one had noticed him enter the building.
The tile came away after only a moment’s work, revealing behind it a wooden panel, which he removed, seeing in the faint light behind it a book, which he withdrew carefully. A small, very old, book. He peered at the title on its spine: the version of Aesop’s Fables put into verse by Socrates while he was under sentence of death.
He blew the dust from it and expectantly opened it to a blank page at the front. There, as he had hoped, a map of Constantinople revealed itself. He scanned it carefully, patiently, concentrating. And as the page glowed with an unearthly light, he could see that the Galata Tower was pinpointed on it. Stowing the book carefully in his belt wallet, he left the building and made his way north through the city, taking the ferry across the Golden Horn to a quay near the foot of the tower.
He had to use all his blending-in skills to get past the guards but, once inside, was guided by the book, which took him up a winding stone staircase to a landing between floors.
It appeared to contain nothing beyond its bare stone walls.
Ezio double-checked with the book and verified that he was in the right place. He searched the walls with his hands, feeling for any giveaway crevice that might indicate a hidden aperture, tensing at the sound of the slightest footfall on the stairway, but none approached. At last he found a gap between the stonework that was not filled with mortar, and followed it with his fingers, disclosing what was a very narrow, concealed doorway.
A little more research led him to push gently against the surrounding stones until he found one about three feet from the floor that gave slightly, allowing the door to swing back, revealing, within the depth of the tower’s wall, a small room, scarcely big enough to enter. Inside, on a narrow column, rested another circular stone key-his third. He squeezed into the space to retrieve it, and as he did so, it began to glow, its light increasing fast, as the room in turn seemed to grow in volume, and Ezio felt himself transported to another time, another place.
As the light was reduced to a normal brightness, the brightness of sunshine, Ezio saw Masyaf again. But time had moved on. In his heart, Ezio knew that many years had passed. He had no idea whether or not he was dreaming. It seemed to be a dream, as he was not part of it; but at the same time, somehow, he was involved, and as well as having the feeling of dreaming, the experience was also, in some way Ezio could not define, like a memory.
Disembodied, at one with the scene that presented itself to him, yet no part of it, he watched, and waited…
And there again was the young man in white, though no longer young; whole decades must have passed.
And his look was troubled…
FORTY-THREE
Altair, now in his sixties, but still a lean and vigorous man, sat on a stone bench outside a dwelling in the village of Masyaf, thinking. He was no stranger to adversity, and disaster seemed, once again, poised to strike. But he had kept the great, terrible artifact safe through it all. How much longer would his strength hold, to do so? How much longer would his back refuse to buckle under the blows Destiny rained on it?
His ponderings were interrupted-and the interruption was not unwelcome-by the appearance of his wife, Maria Thorpe, the Englishwoman who had once-long ago-been his enemy, a woman who had longed to be counted among the Company of the Templars.