IV
The ringing of the phone cut across the silence of the office.
“There’s been a development, Cardinal.” Vertutti recognized Mandino’s light and slightly mocking tone immediately.
“What’s happened?”
“One of my men has been carrying out surveillance of the house in Monti Sabini and a few minutes ago he watched the discovery of another inscribed stone in the property, on the back of the wall directly behind the first one. It wasn’t a map, but looked more like several lines of writing, perhaps even poetry.”
“A poem? That makes no sense.”
“I didn’t say it was a poem, Cardinal, only that my man thought it looked like poetry.
But whatever it is, it must be the missing section of the stone.”
“So what are you going to do now?”
“This matter is now too sensitive to be left only to my picciotti, my soldiers. I will be traveling to Ponticelli early tomorrow morning with Pierro. Once we’ve got inside the house, I’ll have both inscriptions photographed and copied, then destroy them.
Once we have this additional information, I’m sure Pierro will be able to work out exactly where we should be looking.
“While I’m away, you should be able to contact me on my cell phone, but I’ll also send you the telephone number of my deputy, Antonio Carlotti, in case of an emergency.”
“What kind of an emergency?”
“Any kind, Cardinal. You’ll receive a text listing the numbers in a couple of minutes.
And please keep your own cell phone switched on at all times. Now,” Mandino continued, “you should also be aware that if the two men in the house have worked out—”
“Two men? What two men?”
“One is, we believe, the husband of the dead woman, but we don’t know who the second man is. As I was saying, if these men have found what we’re seeking, I will have no option but to apply the Sanction.”
11
I
“I think these verses are written in Occitan, Mark,” Bronson said, looking up from the screen of his laptop. He’d logged onto the Internet to try to research the second inscription but without inputting entire phrases. He’d discovered that some of the words could have come from several languages— roire, for example, was also found in Romanian—but the only language that contained all the words he’d chosen was Occitan, a Romance language originally spoken in the Languedoc region of southern France. By trawling through online dictionaries and lexicons and cross-referencing, he had managed to translate some of the words, though many of those in the verses simply weren’t listed in the few Occitan dictionaries he’d found.
“What’s it mean?” Mark asked.
Bronson grunted. “I’ve no idea. I’ve only been able to translate the odd word here and there. For example, this word ‘roire’ in the sixth line means ‘oak,’ and there’s a reference to ‘elm’ in the same line.”
“You don’t think it’s just some medieval poem about husbandry or forest maintenance?”
Bronson laughed. “I hope not, and I don’t think so. There’s also one oddity. In the last line but one there’s the word ‘calix,’ and I can’t find that in any of the Occitan dictionaries I’ve looked at. That might be because it seems to be a Latin word, rather than Occitan. If so, it translates as ‘chalice,’ but I’ve no idea why a Latin word should appear in a verse written in Occitan. I’ll have to send a copy of this to Jeremy Goldman in London. Then we might find out what the hell this is all about.”
He’d already taken several photographs of the inscription, which he’d transferred to the hard drive of his laptop, and had also typed the text into a Word file.
“What we need to do now,” he said, “is decide what we should do with this stone.”
“You think these ‘burglars’ will be back?”
Bronson nodded. “I’m sure of it. I hurt one of them badly last night, and probably the only reason they haven’t been back already is because they know we’ve got a pistol in the house. I suspect that they will be back, and sooner rather than later. And that stone”—he pointed—“is almost certainly what they’ve been looking for.”
“So what do you suggest? You think we should cover it up again?”
“I don’t think that would work. The fresh plaster would be obvious the moment they walked into this room. I think we need to do something more positive than simply hiding the stone. I suggest we leave the plaster just as it is, but take a hammer and chisel to that inscription and obliterate it. That way, there’ll be no clues left for anyone to follow.”
“You really think that’s necessary?”
“I honestly don’t know. But without that inscription, the trail stops right here.”
“Suppose they decide to come after us? Don’t forget, we’ve seen both these carved stones.”
“We’ll have left Italy by then. Jackie’s funeral is tomorrow. We should leave soon after that’s over, and be back in Britain tomorrow evening. I hope that whoever’s behind this won’t bother following us there.”
“OK,” Mark said. “If that’s what it’ll take to end this, let’s do it.”
Twenty minutes later Bronson had chipped away the entire surface of the block, obliterating all traces of the inscription.
II
Gregori Mandino arrived in Ponticelli at nine thirty that morning and met Rogan by arrangement in a cafe’ on the outskirts of the town. Mandino was, as usual, accompanied by two bodyguards, one of whom had driven the big Lancia sedan from the center of Rome, as well as the academic Pierro.
“Tell us again exactly what you saw,” Mandino instructed, and he and Pierro listened carefully as Rogan explained what he’d witnessed through the dining-room window of the Villa Rosa.
“It definitely wasn’t a map?” Mandino asked, when they’d heard the explanation.
Rogan shook his head. “No. It looked like about ten lines of verse, plus a title.”
“Why verse? Why are you so sure it wasn’t just ordinary text?” Pierro asked.
Rogan turned to the academic. “The lines were different lengths, but they all seemed to be lined up down the center of the stone, just like a poem you see in a book.”
“And you said the color of the stone looked different. How different?”
Rogan shrugged. “Not very. I just thought it was a lighter shade of brown than the one in the living room.”
“It could still be what we’re looking for,” Pierro said. “I’d assumed that the lower half of the stone would contain a map, but a verse or a few lines of text could give directions that will lead us to the hiding place of the relic.”
“Well, we’ll soon find out. Anything else?”
Rogan paused for a few seconds before replying, Mandino noticed.
“There is one other thing, capo. I believe that the men in the house are armed. When Alberti tried to break in and was attacked by one of them, he dropped his pistol. I think it’s in the house and that the men have found it.”
“We’re well rid of Alberti,” Mandino snarled. “Now we’ll have to wait until they’ve gone out. I’m not risking a gunfight in that house. Anything else?”
“No, nothing,” Rogan replied, sweating slightly, and not because of the early-morning sun.