“Silence, I suspect,” murmured Vergadora. “He clearly had a different agenda.”
“I wonder if he got out of the desert alive? The plane was a wreck,” she said.
“Perhaps it was always his intention that Pedrazzi would die that day,” suggested the old man. He used another match to light his pipe again, then looked at her above the smoking bowl. “Perhaps he had some other means of transportation at hand.”
Hilts reappeared.
“Possible,” he said, sitting down again. “With the right vehicle and enough water it wouldn’t have been too difficult for a man who knew the desert.”
“DeVaux accompanied Almasy on one expedition between the wars and he was with Bagnold on several of his expeditions.”
“Bagnold?”
“The man who organized the Long Range Desert Group; those men in the scorpion cave.”
“Quite right,” said Vergadora. “DeVaux and Bagnold were at Cambridge together. That’s where they met.”
Cambridge, thought Finn. Arthur Simpson, her father, DeVaux, and this man Bagnold, all sharing a single thread. Were there others? She had another thought, this one far removed from Cambridge University.
“Was Lucio Pedrazzi from Venosa?”
“That’s rather an interesting question,” said Vergadora. “And the answer to it is no. Pedrazzi’s family were orphans of the Papal States; his family were burocrates in the commune of Pontecorvo, just south of Rome, until Napoleon threw them out.”
“Then why did he come here? Was there something between your families?”
“Not that I’m aware of. He had an interest in the Jewish catacombs here, that I do know.”
“And DeVaux?”
“The inscriptions in the Benedictine abbey were his specialty. The abbey and the Church of the Trinity are built on the ruins of the catacombs.” The old man made a sour face. “Unfortunately access is controlled by the Vatican. They say one need only apply to the custodian in Rome, but it seems the custodian is never available for such applications. It has been that way ever since I can remember.”
“Could Luciferus Africanus have been buried there?”
“If he was a Jew, which is doubtful. The legate or the tribune of a Roman legion was usually of the senator class; not a group known for keeping kosher.”
“I’m getting a headache,” said Finn. “Too much information all at once.” That and her growing suspicions about Vergadora, not to mention the clouds of smoke from the old man’s pipe.
“So there would be no point in trying to get into the catacombs, is that what you’re saying?” Hilts asked, ignoring Finn’s comment.
“None whatsoever,” the old man replied. “Unless you have some facility with ancient Greek, Latin, and the occasional inscription in Aramaic. The only person who ever knew much about them was an old man named Mueller, one of my teachers. Even DeVaux only scratched the surface, at least as I understand it.”
“Then I guess we’ve reached a dead end,” said Finn. All she wanted to do now was leave, to have some time to think about everything that had happened during the last few days.
“Perhaps so,” said the old man. “It depends of course on what you were trying to accomplish in the first place.”
“We want to find out why everyone’s so interested in this Lucifer Africanus guy for one thing,” said Hilts. He stood up, walked to the table and picked up the cigarette case, snapping it shut over the medallion. “Interested enough to kill for sixtyfive years ago, and interested enough to kill for now.” He handed the old tin box to Finn, who dropped it back into the pocket of her jacket.
Vergadora peered up at them over his glasses from the other side of the table and slipped the pipe out of his mouth. He pushed a nicotine-yellow thumb into the bowl, tamping down the plug of ash and tobacco.
“My suggestion would be to abandon your quest before your curiosity kills you like it did Pedrazzi,” the white-haired gentleman cautioned. There was something in his voice now other than the soft tones of a retired professor. The warning sounded more like a threat, and a threat with something dark and menacing behind it. “Old secrets are like old wounds; they fester.”
“How long have you worked for Mossad?” asked Hilts flatly.
“You mean Hamossad Le’mode’in U’le’tafkidim Meyuchadim, the Institute for Coordination? Israeli Intelligence?” The old man smiled. “Believe me, young man, I really am nothing more than a retired university professor.”
“Sure you are,” said Hilts. He turned to Finn. “I think we should be going.”
Finn stood.
“Thank you for your help, signore,” she said, and held out her hand.
Vergadora climbed to his feet. He shook her hand, his grip strong and firm. “You are traveling in dangerous seas,” he said. “It would be a shame if you were hurt in a battle that was not yours to fight.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she replied. He seemed sincere enough, but again there was an undertone of threat in the old man’s voice.
He walked them to the door and stood at the entrance as they climbed back into their rental car, and watched them as they drove away down the long drive that ran between the poplars and through the ancient grove of olive trees. Then he turned and went back into the villa.
19
“So what do you make of all of that?” Hilts asked as they drove away.
“I’m not sure,” said Finn, gearing down as she made the turn off Vergadora’s drive, then up again as the car reached the main road. “I wasn’t kidding, all that talk gave me a headache.”
“A lot of it was just that, talk,” grunted Hilts. He tapped his fingers on the dashboard angrily. “The old man’s very good at his job, I’ll give him that.”
“What job?”
“Leading us down the garden path. All that crap about Pedrazzi. He knows something about what Adamson’s up to in the here and now. Forget about the past.”
“What was that about him working for Israeli Intelligence? That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it-just because he’s Jewish?”
“It’s not because he’s Jewish, it’s about what he knows-how well and how much. Not to mention the fact that there aren’t too many people around who know the original name of the Mossad. Nobody’s called it the Institute for Coordination since the fifties. A retired history professor who knows that much about the current state of the intelligence community is more than just a retired history professor. I’m pretty sure he’s at least a sayan, if not something else.”
“What’s that?”
“The sayanim are Israeli ‘sleepers,’ all over the world, in all walks of life, ready to help an operation at a moment’s notice. He fits the profile perfectly.” Hilts shook his head. “He even has his pal Al Pacino at City Hall as an early-warning system.”
“Why would he warn us off that way?” Finn asked. “He hasn’t been hanging around in his villa for all these years waiting for us.”
“Not us,” said Hilts. “Anybody who came along showing interest in Pedrazzi or the rest of the story.”
“But why?” Finn insisted. “It’s ancient history. When you get right down to it, does anybody really care about some man who commanded a legion two thousand years ago?”
“The operative date is two thousand years ago. Most of the Western world, the U.S. in particular, sets its watch by that particular clock. The Catholic Church is based on it.”
“Sure,” Finn said and laughed, easing her foot off the gas as they came up behind an ancient tractor pulling a wagonload of manure. “An old Jewish rabbi working for the Vatican.”
“Add it up,” said Hilts. “They tried to kill us in Cairo. A monk from Jerusalem starts sniffing around. Adamson and his pals are up to something in the desert that’s not quite kosher, as Vergadora would put it. We wind up crossing paths with somebody who’s playing possum in a place that’s historically and recently connected to whatever’s going on. A man who’s just waiting for someone to come along and say the magic words, Luciferus Africanus. A man with his own secrets.”
“Such as?”
“Remember when I got up to use the bathroom back at the villa?”
“Yes.”
“I wasn’t using the bathroom, I was snooping.”