"The only peculiar thing about him-for a priest, anyway-is that he likes martial arts. Apparently as a child he was kind of a ninety-seven-pound weakling, so to keep him from being hammered on all the time, his father decided he needed to learn karate. He took to it, and besides having his black belt with who knows how many notches or whatever in it, he's also a master at tae kwon do, kickboxing, and aikido. The martial arts seem to be his only indulgence, but considering the other predilections one runs across in the Vatican, this one is nothing. Oh, and despite how good-looking he is-I'm judging by the photographs-he's never been known to stray from his vows of chastity, with girls or boys. Nothing, absolutely celibate."
"What else have we got?" Marco asked without aiming the question at anyone in particular.
"We've got squat, boss," Giuseppe said. "We're still at square one. No leads and, what's worse, no motive. We'll look into the door being forced if you think it could be a plant to throw us off, but then where the hell do they get in and out? We've gone over the cathedral with a fine-tooth comb, and I can promise you there are no secret doors or passages. The cardinal laughed when we asked him about that possibility. He assured us that the cathedral has nothing like that. And I think he's right-we've looked at the maps of the tunnels that run under big parts of the city, and in that area there aren't any. In fact, Turin makes a lot of money taking tourists into the tunnels and giving them the history of its hero, Pietro Micca, and there's no hint of anything under the cathedral."
"The motive is the shroud," Marco insisted. "They're looking for the shroud. I'm still not sure whether they want to steal it or destroy it, but the objective is the shroud, that I'm sure of. Okay, any suggestions?"
There followed an uneasy silence. Sofia looked over at Pietro, but Pietro, head down, was busying himself lighting a cigarette, so she decided to just dive in.
"Marco, I'd turn the mute loose."
Everyone stared at her.
Sofia plunged on. "I mean, if you're right, Marco, and this is an organized, long-term effort to go after the shroud, then it's clear that this mutilation is part of their M.O.-they send tongueless men in to do the job, so if they're caught, like this guy in the Turin jail, they can keep silent, cut themselves off, not be tempted to communicate. And not only tongueless, right? Their fingerprints are burned off, so there's no way to discover who they are, where they come from. And in my opinion, Marco, threatening this guy is not going to get you anywhere. He let somebody cut out his tongue and burn off his fingerprints-do you think you scare him? So there's no way he's going to look at your card and say, 'Hmm, maybe I'll just have a chat with this cop.' He'll serve out his time-a year is all he's got left.
"We can do one of two things: wait a year, or try to convince the big boys upstairs to approve a new line of investigation-turn the guy loose, and once he's on the street put a tail on him. He'll have to go somewhere, get in touch with somebody.
"It's a thread that might lead us through this knot, get us into the conspiracy-our own Trojan horse. If you decide to go that route, though, there're a lot of preparations that have to be made first. We can't turn him loose right away; we'd have to wait I'd say at least a couple of months and even then do a lot of acting so he doesn't suspect why we've let him go."
"God, we've been idiots," Marco said after a long moment. Then he slammed his fist down on the table. "How could we have been so stupid! Us, the cara-binieri, everybody. We had the solution right in front of us, and we've spent the last two years with our heads up our asses."
Marco's next words dispelled any final doubts Sofia had about her thinking.
"Sofia, you're dead right. It's what we should have done from the beginning. I'll talk to the ministers and explain it to them-we need to get them to talk to the judges, the prosecutor, whoever, but get them to let him out, and from there we start an operation to follow him, every step he takes. No one can argue seriously anymore that this is random. And I'll make sure that no one wants to be on the wrong side of securing the shroud for good. It's time-well past time-to get to the bottom of what's been going on. And end it."
"Boss," Pietro interrupted, "we shouldn't rush into this. Let's think first about how to sell the mute guy the idea that we're turning him loose. Two months, as Sofia suggests, doesn't seem like enough time, considering that you just talked to him and told him he was going to rot in jail. If we turn him loose now, he'll know it's a trap and he won't move."
Minerva shifted uncomfortably in her chair, while Giuseppe looked distracted and Antonino stared into space. They knew that Marco expected to hear from each of them.
'Antonino, why haven't you said anything?" Marco asked the team's other art historian.
"Honestly, boss, I think Sofia's plan is brilliant. I think we ought to do it, but I agree with Pietro that we can't turn the guy loose too soon; I'm almost inclined to let him serve out the year he's got left."
'And meanwhile what? Sit back and wait for the next group to try something?" Marco almost shouted.
"The shroud," Antonino replied, "is in its own vault at the bank, and it can stay there for the next year. It won't be the first time it's spent that long without being exhibited to the public."
"He's right," Minerva broke in, "and you know it. I mean, I agree that it's hard to have to sit and wait, but if we don't, we could lose the only lead we've got."
"Giuseppe?"
"I hate to wait, boss," the cop answered. "But I think we have to."
"I don't want to wait," Marco said emphatically. "Not a year."
"Well, it's the most sensible thing to do," Giuseppe argued.
"I'd do more."
All eyes turned back to Sofia. Marco raised his eyebrows and extended his hands, inviting her to go on.
"In my opinion we need to go back to the workers and interrogate them again, until we're absolutely certain that the short circuit was really an accident. We also need to investigate COCSA, which means interviewing D'Alaqua too. Behind that impressive facade there could be something we've missed."
Pietro glared at her. He was the one who'd interrogated the workers, and he'd done so exhaustively. He had a file on every one of them, the Italians as well as the immigrants, and he'd found nothing on them in either the police computers, the files of Europol, or the background checks he'd done. They were clean.