“The ultimate punishment.” She cast her eyes to the floor.
“Indeed. The body was completely annihilated.”
“Must’ve scared the crap out of people to see all this. What a sight that must’ve been—walking along a roadway and seeing all those bodies impaled on posts. Talk about suggestive advertising.”
“Rome’s forte. It certainly left an impression . . . kept the subjugated taxpayers orderly.”
A moment of silence fell over the break room.
“Who do you think this guy was?” she finally asked.
Bersei shrugged and shook his head. “It’s far too early to tell. Could be any one of thousands crucified by the Romans. Prior to this, the only crucified remains ever found was a heel bone with a nail driven through its side. The fact that what we’re looking at represents the first intact crucified body recovered makes it an extraordinarily valuable relic.”
Charlotte inclined her head. “That explains why the Vatican’s gone to so much trouble to bring us here.”
“Absolutely. Makes perfect sense. A find like this is monumental.”
“But we only opened the ossuary today and if it was sealed, how on earth could they have known the man inside had been crucified? How did they know they’d need your expertise?”
Bersei considered this. “It’s no surprise they called me here. Having worked in the catacombs for years, I’ve come across many skeletons, many relics associated with burial. As for you...well, I don’t need to tell you that using DNA to examine human remains is a tremendous tool. But let’s hold off on the theories until we study the ossuary further. After all, the physical remains tell only part of the story.”
19
******
Vatican Museum
Down the corridor from the lab, in a cramped space normally used as a storage closet, a network of cables cascaded down to the computer hard drive, feeding live video and audio transmissions from the laboratory and its adjoining break room. Wearing headphones wired to the bank of surveillance equipment, Salvatore Conte was diligently recording all of the scientists’ activity, as directed by the Vatican Secretary of State, Cardinal Santelli.
Two separate wireless links also monitored all phone calls in and out of Charlotte Hennesey’s dorm room (thanks to a simple patch into the Vatican’s main phone server) and Giovanni Bersei’s personal residence. He had paid a special visit to Bersei’s house last night. While the anthropologist was busy eating his wife’s overcooked veal shanks, Conte was outside splicing a transmitter into the phone line junction box on the side of his house— electrical engineering skills, compliments of his previous employers.
Though he found all the science-talk only mildly interesting, most of his attention was focused on the attractive American geneticist. She was hot. Normally, guys like him didn’t get girls like her. But it never hurt to try. And no one tried harder than Salvatore Conte. Perseverance was everything.
Studying Hennesey again—face, lips, hair, body—he had decided that one way or another, he would have a taste of her. He would just need to wait a little longer, until the job here was complete.
On a separate computer monitor, he brought up the computer’s Web browser and linked to the home page for the Cayman Islands bank where he had opened a new account under one of his pseudonyms. Entering his user name and password to access his account summary screen, he paused to make sure that Santelli had made good on his end of the bargain.
Earlier that morning, he’d had a very candid discussion with the cardinal concerning a bonus payment for expedited delivery of the relics as well as additional hazard pay for himself and his colleagues (Doug Wilkinson excluded). He made it clear that he would be “uncomfortable” leaving Vatican City without seeing that the payment had been made. Surprisingly, the cardinal hadn’t protested, readily agreeing that such an efficient operation was well worth the additional expense.
The money was wire transferred through one of the Vatican’s outside banking affiliates, bearing no audit trail back within these walls, Conte was sure. The bank hadn’t even contacted him regarding the sum and the funds had cleared immediately.
As a teen, Salvatore Conte had been a high achiever at Nunziatella Military School in Naples and, upon graduation, went off to fulfill the State’s mandatory eight-month military conscription. It wasn’t long before his unique abilities—both physical and intellectual—caught the attention of his commanding officers whose high commendations earned him a position in the Servizio per le Informazioni e la Sicurezza Democratica, the Italian Secret Service. There, he had learned the core skills that helped him to become a free agent. Assassinations, hostage situations, infiltrating terrorist cells—Conte took any job thrown at him and he excelled at all of them. He’d been loaned out to assist on collaborative operations throughout Europe and in the United States.
His decision to leave the SISDE almost five years ago had been a good one. Having already established plenty of contacts during his years with them, there was never a shortage of clients seeking vengeance against a foe or scheming to “procure” new assets. They always paid in cash, and they always paid on time.
However, he had targeted a small group of clients whom he considered the most lucrative prospects. Among them was the Vatican—a tiny country that considered itself virtually impregnable with its high walls, its nifty security system, and its mercenary army. Conte had taken the liberty in paying a visit to its top guy to remind him that no system was impenetrable. Not the pope, of course—that wouldn’t have been wise. No, Conte had chosen Cardinal Santelli—the man who he knew had truly been the brains of the operation.
He could still recall the look on the old bastard’s face when Santelli came strolling into his office that morning, whistling, only to see Conte sitting at his impeccably organized desk playing solitaire on his computer, which he had hacked into with a portable password unscrambler. He was dressed completely in black—standard attire for a nighttime incursion.
Appalled, the cardinal had yelled, “Who the hell are you?” “Your local security consultant,” Conte quickly replied in kind, standing and rounding the desk to offer a personalized business card with his alias and an encrypted mobile telephone number. “I was in the area and wanted to introduce myself personally to go over some obvious deficiencies in your country’s security systems.”
The truth was, getting into Vatican City hadn’t been easy at all. Stuffed into a backpack beside Santelli’s desk was a bevy of gear: grappling cables, rappelling harnesses, glasscutters, night-vision goggles, the works. He’d had to scale the city’s northern rampart, shoot a grappling line over to the Vatican Museum rooftop, pull himself across the gap, traverse the top of the building to the Apostolic Palace, scramble the security system (using an electromagnetic pulsing device he had lifted from SISDE), rappel down to Santelli’s office window, cut the glass, and unlock the latch. Once inside, he’d eaten a mortadella, prosciutto, and mozzarella panini and drank a Pellegrino Chinotto and waited for sunrise.
It had taken a minute or two for Santelli to calm down, to try and rationalize how anyone could have circumvented the Vatican’s tight security layers. All the while, he had been contemplating the intercom on his desk. Then, after explaining the myriad services he could provide to a “powerful man such as yourself,” Conte verbally ran through a laundry list of available services that the cardinal pretended to be offended at. But Conte knew better. Having seen the file on this guy when he was working at SISDE— particularly the one related to the infamous Banco Ambrosiano scandal—he knew the cardinal was no stranger to nefarious deeds.