Finn shook the tin but there was no sound. For an empty tin it seemed heavy. Curious, she pried open the lid and was surprised to see a wadded piece of dusty linen inside. Hilts glanced across the narrow cockpit.
“Got something?”
“I’m not sure,” she said. “It looks like a handkerchief.”
“I’m taking us down under the radar,” said Hilts, gently easing the control stick forward. The plane responded instantly, swooping down toward the desert. “Wouldn’t want our friend calling in the cavalry on us.”
Finn unwrapped the cloth. There was a monogram in one corner, two letters entwined beneath a crest. “L.P. Lucio Pedrazzi. The crest is the same as the ring he was wearing.”
“He didn’t get that hole in the side of his head from a scorpion bite,” said Hilts. “A handgun from close range, more likely.”
“Murdered?”
“At a guess, yeah.”
“But according to you the only person with him was…”
“Pierre DeVaux, a monk,” Hilts completed.
“A monk with a pistol?”
“Agatha Christie would have loved it.”
Finn finished unwrapping the handkerchief. In the center of the fabric square a gold medallion gleamed. Staring up at Finn was the embossed malevolent face of a frowning Medusa, lips snarling, hair a mass of writhing snakes.
“A coin?” asked Hilts, looking at the object in her palm.
“A medallion.”
“What does it have written around the head?”
“The inscription is the same as the one of the stone coffin,” she said. “Hic Latito Lux Excito-Vox Luciferus. Here Lies Hidden the Bringer of Light: The Words of Lucifer.”
She turned the golden disk over. Engraved on the other side was the profile of a handsome face and another inscription.
“What does it say?”
“Legio III Africanus-Domus in Venosa est. Third African Legion, whose home is in Venosa,” she translated.
Hilts’s brow furrowed. “Where’s Venosa?”
17
Venosa is a town of some twelve thousand citizens scattered around a volcanic hilltop in the district of Basilicata, a small, out-of-the-way regione that lies roughly in the arch of Italy’s boot, bounded by the Gulf of Taranto to the south and the marble spine of the Apennine Mountains to the north. The architecture is bland, whitewashed stucco competing with beige stone and dusty, red-tiled roofs. Few tourists go there; it has none of the flavors of Tuscany or the grandeur of Rome, but once, a long time ago and under another name, it was one of the assembly points along the Appian Way for the great legions of Rome as they went out to conquer the world. Today it has a number of relatively unimportant churches, several sets of catacombs, a fort, and one good restaurant, Il Grifo, located in the center of town, just off the small central square.
Finn parked the little blue Fiat Panda in the cramped town square and switched off the engine. The only difference between the square and a utilitarian cobblestone parking lot was a medium-sized statue of an old Roman in a toga with a scroll in one hand and wearing an olive wreath on his half-bald head. Presumably this was the town’s best-known famous son, Quintus Horatius Flaccus, better known in literary history as the poet Horace. Finn was the one behind the wheel because she spoke the language fluently, having spent a year in Florence gathering research for her master’s thesis on the drawings of Michelangelo. It was also a practical way of dealing with the relentlessly chauvinistic polizia on the highways, who were always willing to give a pretty red-haired tourist a break; especially one who could say per favore and grazie with such a charming accent.
Finn popped open the door of the miniscule little vehicle.
“Stay here,” she instructed.
“Why?” asked Hilts, undoing his seat belt.
“In this country a woman asking questions by herself works better than if she’s with someone,” Finn answered. “Italian men are all the same-they think they were born to please women and that we’re all damsels in distress and desperate for a man’s attention. You’d be competition, at least in their minds.”
“What if it’s an old guy?”
“Even better,” she said and grinned. “Something to prove.”
“What if he’s gay?”
“He’d still want to pinch me, just to keep up the national honor.”
“Doesn’t say much for the feminist cause.”
She laughed. “There’s the feminist cause and then there’s Italy.”
Finn climbed out of the car and crossed the claustrophobic little square. She entered the local Municipio, or City Hall, a square, crumbling stone building with an entrance like a missing tooth and no distinguishing architectural features of any kind. Hilts settled back in his seat and picked up the guidebook they’d bought twelve miles back at a gas station in Rapolla.
According to the book the town had been called Venusia a couple of thousand years ago, named after the Roman goddess of beauty. These days the most important thing in town was the tomb of the wife of Robert Guiscard, the man who conquered Sicily, the reason the Mafia was invented in the first place and the origin of the word “wise-acre.” As far as Hilts could tell there was nothing here to connect with Lucio Pedrazzi and a cave full of late-model mummies in the Libyan Desert. On the other hand, it was the only clue they had.
Five minutes later Finn reappeared and got back into the car.
“So?” asked Hilts.
“Believe it or not, his name was Alberto Pacino and he insisted on doing bad imitations from Scarface in an Italian accent.”
“So other than saying hello to his little friend, did you find out anything?”
“I didn’t say hello to his little friend, but I found out who the resident history guy is in the town. His name is Signore Abramo Vergadora. He’s a retired professor and he lives in a place called Villa Embreo Errante, a few miles north.
“Embreo Errante?”
“The Wandering Jew,” translated Finn.
18
Signore Vergadora’s villa was located in a pleasant shaded valley between two of the seemingly endless number of rocky hills that rose throughout the area like overgrown piles of discarded dirt thrown up by some gigantic dog searching for an old buried bone. Unlike most of the valleys they’d driven through, this one actually seemed capable of growing something. The villa was located in an olive grove, and off to one side a brook meandered pleasantly through the trees. The villa itself was reasonably modest and very old, yellowed stucco peeling away from ancient stone, the deep windows covered with wrought-iron gratings, the roof dusty red with terra-cotta tiles, a central tower in front standing guard above the rest of the sprawling building.
Finn parked in front of the main door, and she and Hilts climbed out of the car and into the bright, warm sunlight. Finn could hear the brook now, babbling quietly to itself, and the afternoon breeze rustling through the poplars that stood around the house like sentries, much taller than the gnarled grove of olives that might have been here as long as the house, perhaps centuries.
They stood in front of the heavy planked front door and Finn pulled the bell chain. From somewhere deep inside the villa there was a faint tinkling sound and then the shuffle of approaching feet. A moment later the door creaked open and a face appeared: an Italian J.R.R. Tolkien wearing a yarmulke pinned to unruly silver hair, drooping bags beneath twinkling eyes, and rosy cheeks forced down by time and gravity on either side of an almost feminine mouth that looked as though it rarely frowned. The man had bright red reading glasses perched on his forehead and wore a brown corduroy suit much too warm for the summer, complete with vest, white shirt and tie, the vest decorated with a fob and chain that spanned a moderate belly. He wore purple velvet bedroom slippers.
“Ah,” he said happily, “you are the American couple.”
“How’d you know that?” Hilts asked.
“Alberto called me from the Municipio,” the old man answered, still smiling. “That one thinks every American is a Hollywood producer looking for new stars.” He stepped aside and gestured them forward. “Come in, please. My name is Abramo Vergadora.”